Featured Commentary category, Page 67
Peter Morici: Silicon Valley Bank’s failure is no reason for stricter bank regulation
Silicon Valley Bank’s failure rattled confidence in small- and mid-sized banks across the U.S. and once again ignited cries to more tightly regulate banks. That’s wrong-headed. We need to step back and examine how non-money center banks, which are essentially depositories, get into trouble and better apply the tools we...
Jason Altmire: Pennsylvanians deserve real Medicaid solutions
More than 12 million people live in Pennsylvania, and 3 million of them — nearly one-quarter of the state’s population — depend on Medicaid. That’s why it’s so concerning that the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) recently issued new guidelines that will add an extra burden to Pennsylvania’s...
Dr. Andrew Smolar: Medicine and humanity
Doctors have known for some time that we are falling short of our humanistic ideals. It was my turn to learn it firsthand. I had avoided covid until February. Although I had a short course — mitigated by Paxlovid— some weird lab results surfaced after I recovered. My internist wanted...
Sally C. Pipes: Price controls in Medicare will kill new cures
President Biden just released his budget plan for the next fiscal year. It purports to extend Medicare’s solvency by decades and reassure the millions of Americans who rely on the program. But once they realize his approach will grind drug research to a halt, perhaps they’ll come to a different...
Sean Beadle and Teyah Spangler: Conquering the disease of addiction
Drug and alcohol addiction is a growing problem that continues to cause wreckage in the lives of individuals and families across the country and especially in our local communities. In 1987 alcohol and drug addiction was added to the list of known diseases, and in 2011 addiction was defined as...
Rachel Marsden: How Washington is losing its control of the world over Ukraine
PARIS — CIA Director William Burns hightailed it to Saudi Arabia last week, reportedly frustrated, according to the Wall Street Journal, that peace was on the verge of breaking out — the kind that could end the Global War on Terrorism in the Middle East, which has been the pretext...
Madeleine Para and Bruce Cooper: As Earth Day approaches, climate solutions have never been more appealing
As we gear up to celebrate Earth Day, it’s now easier than ever to reap the rewards of embracing a cleaner, greener world. The annual spring event, which reminds us to protect the planet that sustains us, is especially poignant this year. It follows the passage of the 2022 Inflation...
Colin McNickle: The solid case for an Allegheny County reassessment
The next Allegheny County chief executive must make a critical decision on property assessments, says the research director of the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy. And it’s clear — as a matter of the state Constitution, basic fairness and repeated litigation, the latest of which is wending its way through...
Rep. Arvind Venkat: Medical debt, a uniquely American problem
Medical debt is the most common form of debt in the United States, plaguing more than 100 million Americans. Other industrialized nations do not bear the load of medical debt as we do. So only Americans will ever require a GoFundMe or similar crowd-funding page for a beloved community member...
Cal Thomas: Kindness could go a long way in politics
From the beginning politics has always been a contact sport with competing interests attempting to achieve power over each other. A friend recently said to me he has never seen it so bad as it is today. The friend appears to be in his 50s, so he missed the divisions...
Morgan Polikoff: 40 years later, are our schools ‘mediocre’?
The National Commission on Excellence in Education’s release of a report titled “A Nation at Risk” in 1983 was a pivotal point in the history of American education. The report used dire language, lamenting that “the educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of...
Ronald Suny: Finland, NATO and the evolving new world order — what small nations know
In the world of geopolitics, great powers make, break and play by their own rules. Smaller states largely have to make do with adjusting to the world as determined by others. Which is why the decision by Finland — a country of just 5.5 million people, noted for decades as...
Habibeh Khoshbouei: Misuse of Adderall promotes stigma, mistrust for patients who need it
The nationwide shortages of Adderall that began in fall 2022 have brought renewed attention to the beleaguered drug, which is used to treat attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and narcolepsy. Adderall became a go-to drug for ADHD over the past two decades but quickly came under fire because of overprescription and misuse. In...
Bill Kovarik: Reporting is not espionage — but history shows that journalists doing the former get accused of the latter
The detention of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich in Russia on espionage charges marks an unusual throwback to the old Soviet tactics for handling foreign correspondents. Authorities in Vladimir Putin’s Russia have increasingly used criminal charges against their own journalists as part of a “increasing crackdown on free and...
Hallie Dong: Early school start times harm students’ health, success
BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! It’s 5:30 a.m., and all around the North Allegheny School District, alarms jolt teens from their dreams. They wake up, contemplate life choices, then groggily crawl out of bed, sometimes eat breakfast, and try to catch the school bus in time. Sleep deprivation, whether due to late-night...
Katelyn Salva and Kylie Lichtenstein: The ADHD medication shortage — what can be done?
There has been an unprecedented increase in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) diagnoses since the covid-19 pandemic. Prescriptions for Adderall, used to treat ADHD, for adults rose 15.1% during 2020 (over double the 2019 rise of 7.4%). This increased consumer demand for ADHD medications has resulted in a shortage of Adderall. The...
Natalie Frydryck: Young Methodists concerned about disaffiliation, too
The last few years have been a challenging time for the United Methodist Church (UMC). Since 2019, some individual churches have started the process to disaffiliate, many doing so over disagreements about the church’s welcoming stance on members of the LGBT+ community. Dealing with the struggles of disaffiliation is hard...
Molly Parzen: Farm Bill a bipartisan opportunity to ensure America’s bounty, sustainability
In our hyper-polarized political environment, examples of bipartisan lawmaking are hard to find, and it’s understandable why many Americans believe policymakers accomplish little for their constituents. However, this year we have an opportunity to pass genuinely bipartisan legislation: the United States Farm Bill. Not only does this legislation represent an...
Mike Huwar and Tom Melcher: Focus on critical issues in county executive race
The next Allegheny County executive will face unprecedented challenges that will affect the future of our region. Allegheny County voters should conduct rigorous and productive job interviews with anybody who applies for the job. To help accomplish that, the business-organized labor alliance Pittsburgh Works Together is launching an initiative intended...
Guy Ciarrocchi: Democrats are now the ‘cool kids table’
“How come the suburbs used to be so Republican, and now they’re Democrat?” I’ve lived in Chester County in suburban Philadelphia since 1995. I was raised in South Philly and started out in politics campaigning for President Ronald Reagan. If I had a dime for every time I’ve been asked...
Elizabeth Stelle: Medicaid needs a better ‘normal’ in Pa.
This month, Medicaid is finally returning to normal — but “normal” was never that great. Currently, an estimated 600,000 ineligible Pennsylvanians — many of whom are able-bodied, working-age adults — receive taxpayer-funded Medicaid benefits. Temporary pandemic provisions that prohibited states from regularly reviewing Medicaid eligibility expired this month, giving Pennsylvania...
Lee Trepanier: How AI could save liberal education
There have been discussions about AI writing programs like ChatGPT in the academy. The past few months have seen a flurry of activity with college administrators calling emergency meetings, professors changing their assignments and educators writing essays (some perhaps written by AI?) that range in reaction from the nonchalant to...
Carla Sofronski: Time is now to allow statewide syringe services programs
Drug overdose deaths and other harms related to the overdose crisis continue to ravage Pennsylvania families and communities. Pennsylvania has the fourth highest rate of drug overdose deaths in the nation. We have the ninth highest number of new HIV infections in the country. Our most vulnerable communities are seeing...
Daniel F. Stone: Your political rivals aren’t as bad as you think — here’s how misunderstandings amplify hostility
U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene drew raised eyebrows when she suggested on Presidents Day that the United States pursue a “national divorce.” Even in an era of seemingly ever-growing political polarization — and despite Taylor Greene’s record of making controversial statements — the proposal shocked members of both political parties....
Carl P. Leubsdorf: This is just the beginning for Trump
Here’s an important thing to remember: This is probably just the beginning. The end is unforeseeable. That’s because the unprecedented indictment of Donald Trump by a New York County grand jury on charges of paying “hush money” to a former porn star is almost certainly the first of several criminal...
