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Letters

Keep kids safe online

As students across Pennsylvania have returned to school, safe and responsible social media use will soon be taught alongside math and reading. State Representative Jim Prokopiak’s Social Media Literacy Bill, folded into the state budget to incorporate social media literacy into academic standards, is another win in the fight to help kids navigate the digital world safely. As a mother, I know firsthand how technology shapes our students’ lives and the urgent need for commonsense safeguards that protect kids. Finally, lawmakers in Harrisburg and on Capitol Hill are passing meaningful ...

Give survivors day in court

Tuesday’s election gave Pennsylvania a rare chance to right a long-standing wrong. With Democrats taking control of the state Senate, the Legislature can finally pass civil statute of limitations reform and open a window for child sexual abuse survivors of any age to seek justice. As an attorney who has represented child sexual abuse survivors for 35 years, I have had the humbling responsibility of helping give voice to courageous men and women who have sought to hold perpetrators, and the institutions that enabled them, accountable. I have sat with survivors as they spoke their ...

Russian diesel fuel

Some thoughts about the Russian diesel fuel that is coming our way: First, who actually purchased the fuel? The federal government? An oil company? Second, I think a news organization should have a “Diesel Drone/Tanker Tracker” follow the lead tanker’s progress to the US. Kind of like following O.J. Simpson’s white Bronco. Third, while the Russian diesel will not make any difference in the price of fuel here, the money Putin gets from the sale will make a difference in the number of Ukrainians he can kill. Finally, knowing that this fuel will help Putin kill Ukrainians, ...

The impact fee is working

Pennsylvania local governments have been receiving a pay day from the state’s natural gas industry. The Commonwealth’s Independent Fiscal Office has estimated that the state’s natural gas impact fee collections will come in at $239.9 million for 2025 – an increase of 46 percent over the previous year. This fee (which is really just a tax on the industry) is unique to Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania is the only natural gas-producing state that has structured its taxation of the industry this way and designed the tax to directly benefit every county within its borders. Regardless of ...

Cancer screening saved my life

The American Cancer Society now recommends that anyone 45 and up get screened for colorectal cancer, but when I turned 45, the recommended age to begin testing was still 50. However, with my family history of colorectal cancer, once I hit mid-forties, I asked my doctor about early screening. Looking back, that choice saved my life. During the colonoscopy, my doctor found pre-cancerous spots on my colon, but because of how early we found them, they were able to be removed right then and there. I left that appointment feeling like I’d been given a second chance, and it really opened my ...

Taxes should be fair

No tax on tips! That means that a person making $30,000 per year with tips, gets a tax break while a person making the same $30,000 per year with no tips does not get that tax break. How fair is that? How shortsighted and/or illogical did a member of Congress have to be in order to vote for the BBB that included this travesty? Meanwhile the Federal Deficit and the National Debt increase due to the loss of revenue that no-tax-on-tips creates. Why not give every worker, tipped and untipped, the same tax break by raising the standard deduction, and then claw back the resulting lost ...