Like clockwork, efforts to weaken public notice requirements appear before the state’s legislature routinely. The proposed alternatives often are flawed and often would make a system that has worked for generations weaker, not stronger. Requiring boards and councils that need to be ...
Our friends on Wall Street and in Washington keep saying that inflation is vanquished as they hope—plead—for lower interest rates. Yet the economic data aren’t bearing out their optimism, as the Labor Department’s consumer price report for August revealed on Thursday. Consumer prices climbed 0.4% in August and 2.9% over the past year, both the most since January. Price increases last month were broad-based, hitting food consumed at home (0.6%), alcohol (0.6%), children’s shoes (1.5%), clothing (0.5%), new cars (0.3%), used cars (1.0%), housing (0.4%), hotels (2.6%), vehicle ...
Events in two school districts in Lycoming County recently have left us concerned. When Loyalsock Township School District recognized the need to lock down a campus and have armed state police patrolling its perimeters, we unfortunately found the district and the state police to be reticent ...
The Wall Street Journal reported in its Sept. 3 edition that the gap in confidence between high-earners and low-earners “is now the widest it has been in the seven years of tracking the data.” The newspaper said that, for this nation’s middle class, this summer has been one of cooling confidence, with consumer sentiment dropping nearly 6% in August. If that “confidence dive” continues, 2025’s end-of-year holidays could prove dismal for retailers, not only somewhere else but here in the Southern Alleghenies region as well. Black Friday, already a skeleton of its former ...
Euphemisms distort thought, and no entities are more adept at producing euphemisms than governments. President Donald Trump’s rebranding on Friday of the Department of Defense as the Department of War is a worthy blow against government euphemism. Perhaps it can be followed by clearer thinking about the military’s role at home and abroad. President George Washington created the War Department as a Cabinet-level agency in 1789 to oversee the Army. It was joined by a Cabinet-level Navy Department in 1798. In 1947, the service branches were merged under the National Military ...
We are thankful that Hughesville’s borough council is reviewing how the municipality can address the irresponsible use of e-bikes and e-scooters, as reported in last Wednesday’s edition of the Sun-Gazette. We hope other communities take note and follow their lead. We are confident that ...
