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Remove the label of shame from schools in Youngstown

For 16 years now, the Youngstown City School District has stood as a distant relative of Hester Prynne, the adulteress protagonist of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s classic 1850 novel, “The Scarlet Letter.” Like Prynne, who was forever branded with a scarlet single-letter A for her transgressions, the urban school system has been forced by state decree to suffer the stigma and endure the public humiliation of its previous shortcomings, namely through branding it with a big, bad, bold AD for the entire state to see. That AD, signifying its status as the sole Academically Distressed ...

The perfect metaphor at the UN

The perfect metaphor to characterize the U.N. General Assembly delegates who walked out before Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke is this: “There are none so blind as those who will not see.” You can’t make people understand the truth if they choose to ignore it. The problem with the Middle East is that both sides have their own “truth,” which is contradictory because the only alternative to truth is falsehood. Prime Minister Netanyahu, as he has done in previous U.N. appearances, laid out the truth which dozens of delegates didn’t want to hear. “Moral ...

Stop buying votes, everybody!

It would be hard to find a more insulting offer than to exchange money for your vote. That’s exactly what President Donald Trump did in announcing that if voters keep Republicans in power come the midterms, he’ll send every adult citizen a $5,000 check. Now, one would not put money on that promise. Even if Republicans do retain control of both the House and the Senate, the promise will surely be thrown in the same manila folder as the vow to release the Epstein files, all of them. Of course, Trump would not be paying us five grand — the federal government would. That would ...

Letters to the Editor

A grocery store is more important than a hotel DEAR EDITOR: I find it quite interesting that The Vindicator offered an orchid to the Youngstown Council representatives who voted down the proposed bailout of the Cornersburg Sparkle market. While I find myself torn about the subject and do agree with the statement that this would have set a dangerous precedent, it makes me reflect on a similar situation here in Youngstown. It raises questions that nobody seems to want to answer. Where was the outrage when the city bailed out that failing hotel downtown by extending its loan? The ...

Archbishop Fulton Sheen and me

History yields people whose influence extends far beyond their earthly lives. They become teachers to generations they never met, spiritual companions to people whose names they never knew, and reminders that faith is not merely a set of propositions to be accepted but a way of life to be embraced. For me, one of those extraordinary figures is Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen. Fulton Sheen possessed a rare gift: He could bring the richness, beauty and intellectual depth of traditional Catholicism into the homes of ordinary Americans. Through his Emmy Award-winning, half-hour weekly ...

If TMH will not reopen, start with houses next door

Warren has spent two years trying to keep a hospital on East Market Street. That effort was right. A city this size should not have to send its emergencies, its births, and its paychecks somewhere else. It is time to say out loud what a lot of people already know. The building we still call Trumbull Memorial Hospital is not, at this moment, on a path back to being a hospital. The TMH campus has passed through Forum Health, Steward Health Care, and Insight. Steward’s bankruptcy closed the doors. Insight took over, closed, briefly reopened an emergency room, then surrendered its Ohio ...