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Ohio SB 113 on diversity is not good legislation

Opponent testimony is piling up against Ohio Senate Bill 113, and rightly so. The effort to “prohibit diversity, equity and inclusion in public school,” was primarily sponsored by state Sen. Andrew Brenner, R-Delaware, who introduced the measure last year but has since lost his Republican primary race. “This bill is frustratingly vague about what does and doesn’t qualify as prohibited diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives,” Ohio Federation of Teachers President Melissa Cropper said during last week’s Ohio Senate Education Committee meeting, according to a report by ...

Scrappers score respect, support from the Valley

As June begins to bust out all over on this sunny Monday, that must mean the Mahoning Valley’s boys of summer soon will be busting out all over the 7 17 Credit Union Field at Eastwood — to the delight of tens of thousands. Yes, Tuesday marks the start of the Mahoning Valley Scrappers’ 28th glorious year as an organization and its sixth season as a member of Major League Baseball’s increasingly respected Draft League. We suspect a full house will be on hand at the newly named stadium in the Eastwood Mall Complex in Niles when the first pitch against the State College (Pa.) ...

Remove dangerous dams for conservation, public safety

I stood on the riverbank in Milltown, Indiana, with Allen Pursell of the Sam Shine Foundation. We watched young people fishing on either side of the low-head dam on Blue River. May 31 was National Dam Safety Awareness Day, and I wanted to learn why the Sam Shine Foundation was committed to dam removal. Milltown’s dam is not one that will come out anytime soon, but it is the first one Allen and his colleague Cassie Hauswald considered. It all started about 10 years ago when the Nature Conservancy, a global environmental nonprofit, received an unrestricted gift for freshwater ...

End massive tax breaks for data centers in Ohio

The explosive growth of data centers in Ohio in recent years has been matched only by an equally explosive growth in heated opposition to the high-tech facilities for housing, storing, processing and distributing massive amounts of critical data and digital applications. A plethora of communities in the Mahoning Valley and throughout the state understandably have enacted moratoriums on their construction. A statewide referendum campaign has gained steam toward banning construction of most new, large-scale hyperscale data centers altogether. Environmental and consumer advocates decry ...

Hey, America: Stop complaining

Whatever the outcome of the “deal, or no deal” scenario with Iran, the public attitude toward the war has been disturbing. Despite President Trump’s constant admonition that Iran must never have a nuclear weapon, a majority of those polled oppose the intervention. A side effect of the war has been complaints about higher gas prices. That grumbling caused me to do some reminiscing about a different America and different Americans. Over Memorial Day weekend we again heard about “The Greatest Generation,” but do we take the time to consider what made them great? While ...

Children are running our big cities

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani earned national attention in a not-good way when he recorded himself in front of Ken Griffin’s Manhattan home revealing the billionaire’s address. He tapped the lens in a threatening manner and said guys like Griffin are going to pay more taxes. Griffin is the founder and CEO of Citadel, a giant hedge fund. The wisdom of raising taxes on expensive second homes can be debated, but doxxing Griffin in that nasty, personal way was flat stupid. Griffin accurately described Mamdani’s stunt as “creepy and weird,” in addition to showing a ...