Breaking News

Opinion

OneOhio awards help Valley agencies protect, save lives

Editorials

With another school year underway, the Mahoning Valley feels a renewed sense of possibility. Students are back in classrooms, families are settling into their workday routines, and communities are looking ahead. But for too many parents, grandparents, siblings, friends and neighbors, the sense of renewal that comes each autumn also brings a quiet heartache, because it reminds them of individuals young and old who should be celebrating next steps in life but whose futures were instead cut short by substance use disorder. These deaths and their impact on the community are why my service ...

Let’s not turn stay-at-home mothers into welfare queens

Editorials

The Trump administration is drafting a rule that would let married couples with a stay-at-home spouse collect federal welfare benefits. The money comes from a 1990s Health and Human Services fund meant to cover daycare so low-income parents could work or go to school. About 870,000 families draw on it now, roughly 80% headed by a single working mom, and it pays about $9,000 per child per year. Vice President JD Vance champions the change, and the administration intends to do it without a vote in Congress. Superficially, the policy sounds good. Children raised in two-parent, ...

Don’t sit out this election in Ohio, W.Va.

Editorials

A disturbing number of intelligent, well-informed people have taken a look at the state of our government and decided to wash their hands of it by removing themselves from the voting process. How often have you heard, “It’s all a mess. Neither side cares about anything but winning. No one represents me. I’m just not going to vote?” And so, elections are increasingly decided not by those who feel as though they are caught in the middle, but by those who are happy to fall toward one of the extremes. It is an understatement to call that less than ideal. “In West Virginia, ...

Homeland Security agency rises as danger to citizens

Editorials

“True is it that we have seen better days.” — William Shakespeare Pearl Harbor brought out the best in the American people. We responded by pulling together for a major mobilization when an act of war landed on our soil in 1941. That December day, which Franklin Roosevelt eloquently declared would “live in infamy,” is within living memory. Twenty-five years ago afterthe Sept. 11 terror attacks, the opposite happened. The George Bush White House sowed a society of suspicious, separate and scared strangers. When the World Trade Center towers fell in crumbling clouds of ...

Legislators face large agenda but little time

Editorials

Time is rapidly running out for our great state’s lawmakers to address a wide host of critical public policy issues gnawing at Ohioans. Too bad they plan to squander most of that potentially productive time. Now that summer is unofficially over, you’d think our state legislators would be rip-roaring ready to high-tail it to the Statehouse to get back into action. If so, you’d be sadly mistaken. The Senate plans to convene this coming week for committee work and a possible full session with only a handful of other dates on their legislative calendar for the next two months. ...

Rent control still does not work well

Editorials

In 2022, politicians in Minneapolis and St. Paul voted for rent control. I said that would lead to bigger problems. Was I right? My update video reveals what happened. St. Paul politicians pushed rent control, saying rent caps would stop “unfair profiteering.” But what the heck is “profiteering,” and how is it different from “profit”? Who decides what is “unfair”? The opportunity for profit is what persuades people to invest in things. And build things. If enough people invest in new housing, rents will stop shooting up. That’s just how markets work. ...