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Orchids & onions

ORCHID: To teachers in the Boardman Education Association for taking one for the team last week by approving a three-year contract with the large suburban school district that contains zero base-pay raises for them. Their unconventional and selfless action will benefit their team — namely the administration of the school system and its taxpayers — during these tough inflationary times. At a time when the National Education Association reports average teacher salaries are rising 3.5% this year, the nearly 300 BEA members’ personal sacrifice not only will help avoid deficit spending ...

All must play role toward productive, safe school year

Change is in the air as about 70,000 students trek back to more than 200 schools in the Mahoning Valley beginning next week for the traditional start to an exciting new academic year. Changes in personnel, curriculum, technology, security and more await many students, staff and faculty in districts large and small. The mission of all of them, of course, is to improve the educational climate for pre-schoolers through college students. As a result, optimism rightly abounds. Nowhere is that optimism greater or the expectations set higher than in the Youngstown City Schools District as ...

The Hamas ‘deal’

President Trump and members of his administration are (pick your metaphor) whistling past the graveyard, engaging in wishful thinking and/or deluding themselves into believing a demon can be transformed into an angel. The Trump administration has announced a “deal” has been reached between the terrorist group Hamas that has occupied Gaza for years and Israel that will lead to Hamas’ disarmament and the withdrawal of Israeli troops from the strip. What would supposedly follow is a rebuilding of Gaza, which has been reduced to rubble. Much of the world and its media blame Israel ...

Closed primaries driving America crazy

How could Donald Trump with bottom-scraping approval ratings decide who would represent the Republican Party in the upcoming Texas senatorial race? The primary system offers an explanation. A simple open primary system would have let the broader public choose — and, ironically, save Republicans from a very possible loss in November. Open primaries let registered voters cast a ballot without being members of the party. Closed primaries allow only party members to vote. About 15 states now run genuinely open primaries. There are mixed systems that still help small numbers of voters ...

The Iran war is eating Trump’s presidency

An Iran war that was supposed to be brief, and then was supposed to be over, is imposing an increasing price on Donald Trump’s presidency. We’ve seen a second term of a Republican administration go this way before. There are distinct echoes of George W. Bush’s Iraq War — the conflict that Trump has long excoriated — in the president’s predicament. Now, the Iran war is different from Iraq. There is no ground invasion, no regime change, no occupation, no counterinsurgency. The casualties aren’t close to the same scale, and Donald Trump has been fighting Iran for ...

Why the Blanche nomination should be rejected

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche is not qualified to be the attorney general of the United States because he has demonstrated a hopeless conflict between the rule of law — which he has taken an oath to support — and his sense of personal loyalty to President Donald Trump, whom he represented for several years in a notorious but frivolous criminal case in New York. What to do about a nominee as chief law enforcement officer in the land who has and will not disavow this conflict? Reject him. Here is the backstory. For America’s first 100 years, there was no Department of ...