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Orchids & onions

Editorials

ORCHID: To Carl Foote of Boardman for embarking on an ambitious and compassionate 700-mile bicycle trek to benefit research to battle the debilitating Alzheimer’s disease. Foote, 74, a veteran benefit bike rider, is in the middle of his excursion across the entire perimeter of Lake Erie in Ohio, Michigan, Canada, New York and Pennsylvania. This isn’t Foote’s first rolling rodeo. In 2024, he biked 2,200 miles across the country on U.S. Route 62 for the same mission. As he put it before launching his Lake Erie project, “Every mile of this ride represents a step forward in the fight ...

Will AI destroy humanity?

Editorials

In the "Terminator" movie series, the artificial-intelligence system known as Skynet is given control of the nation's nuclear weapons and uses it to try to destroy humanity. One reason that apocalyptic scenarios involving AI are implausible is that, having seen how that particular movie ends, we are unlikely to be foolish enough to give AI custody of the most destructive weapons on the planet. The unthinkable is nonetheless a hot topic of conversation, given that a researcher at Anthropic just resigned and issued a doomsday warning. According to Jacob Coxon, the rush to develop ...

Mother’s milk gone sour

Editorials

“Money is the mother’s milk of politics,” said Jesse M. Unruh, who in the ‘60s was a powerful Democratic politician and speaker of the California State Assembly. It is a disgrace, if much is disgraceful these days, that we spend so much on getting people elected to Congress, who do little or nothing to solve real problems once they get there. AdImpact, the leading advertising intelligence and market analytics company, estimates more than $3.4 billion will be spent on this year’s midterms across all races. In Texas, alone, an estimated $446 million will be spent by ...

OMA gets its chance to help manufacturers

Editorials

It is no small feat to reportedly mismanage something so terribly that the federal government steps in and says you’re done. But that’s what happened last year with Ohio’s Manufacturing Extension Partnership Center, for which the Office of Inspector General says the Ohio Department of Development failed to report accurate financial results and ensure subrecipient expenses were allowable. Now, the National Institute of Standards and Technology says it trusts the Ohio Manufacturer’s Association Educational and Industrial Development Institute to handle the job. OMA says it will ...

Trump continues murderous assault on Washington landmarks

Editorials

WASHINGTON — First came the murder of the Kennedy Rose Garden. That was just a prelude for the killer in the Oval Office. His next victim is likely the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the arts heartbeat of the capital and the nation. Symphony, opera, theater and ballet lovers are aghast since President Donald J. Trump shut the building in July, stripped the art and declared it would go bankrupt if his name wasn’t on the wall. On a Sunday walk, I ambled along what was once the Reflecting Pool. Now it’s a mangled mess behind a chain-link fence. As you know, the ...

Gerrymandering, big money make state legislative races in Valley noncompetitive

David Skolnick

Gerrymandering and money — largely provided by special interest groups — mean there will be very few competitive state legislative races in Ohio, or the country for that matter. It’s no different in the Mahoning Valley. When the Ohio Redistricting Commission — consisting of five Republicans and two Democrats — unanimously approved the state Legislature maps in September 2023, its members gave the Mahoning Valley only one competitive district among the five House and two Senate seats in its boundaries. That contested seat is the 64th Ohio House District with state Rep. ...