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Abnormal is the new normal for the quality of our nation’s air

There’s poison in the air outside my house, a bitter smoke of ashes and hot freeway, and it is keeping us all inside. Yesterday morning, the kids’ summer camp announced that the planned trip to the pool had been cancelled. They would do activities indoors all day. “How high can it get?” one of the boys asked, and I admitted I didn’t know. We had gone through a stretch of bad air a few years earlier — also due to invading smoke from Canadian wildfires — and I remembered feeling worried back then, seeing numbers in the 180s. The air quality index for the town today ...

Someone should have been looking out for those kids

A Vinton County case in which 16 children were rescued from horrifying conditions and four adults now face child endangerment charges has raised a host of questions. One that repeatedly surfaces is how in the world no one noticed what was happening to those children, inside that house. The answer highlights the crucial role of public school truancy officers and the safeguard we take away from kids when we allow them to be removed from the public school setting without proper monitoring and assessment. NBC 4 requested records from Gallia County, where it reports the local school ...

In defense of data centers

New York just became the first state in the country to sign a moratorium on data centers. There are two paths forward on this issue. One path builds the infrastructure that runs the next 50 years of the American economy. The other bans the future, then acts surprised when the jobs show up somewhere else. I’m here to defend the data centers because most of the fear you’re hearing is manufactured. Most people opposed to data centers don’t live anywhere near one. Their concern isn’t experience. It’s a propaganda campaign. The legitimate worries all have answers. Yes, you often ...

Democrats sue to keep CNN biased

The left has thrown a completely counterfactual fit about how the Paramount takeover of CBS created some kind of “MAGA-coded” news division under Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss. No one who watches network news daily right now can see much of a difference today between CBS and ABC and NBC. But mere internal questioning of whether CBS could attempt to be less biased to the left has caused a tsunami of panic. Now, as the Paramount merger with Warner Brothers-Discovery approaches its conclusion, 12 attorneys general filed a last-minute lawsuit to block it — but they won’t say it’s ...

Orchids & onions

ORCHID: To the Poland Township Police Department for its statewide honors and recognition as this month’s Agency of the Month for outstanding community policing from The Law Enforcement Foundation and the Ohio Association of Chiefs of Police. The award is most fitting, given the police force’s hodgepodge of community engagement programs that include its Citizen Police Academy, Coffee with a Cop, Safety Forces Appreciation Picnic and many others. The value of such transparent and highly accountable community policing programs can never be overstated. They include fostering greater ...

Don’t be misled by Valley’s high jobless ranking

The latest unemployment report from the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services is not kind to the Mahoning Valley. In fact, Trumbull County holds the dubious distinction of ranking No. 1 in highest unemployment in the state among all 88 counties. Mahoning County trails close on its tails, ranking No. 3. But before anyone flips out, a bit of perspective will prove that while there may be cause for concern, there is definitely no cause for alarm. We’re a far cry from the COVID-19-induced recession that shot local jobless rates soaring above 20% six years ago this spring and ...