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Trump’s tax cuts helping the poor more than the rich

Since the Republican Congress began debating the bill that eventually became the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, leftists have accused the legislation of being a huge tax cut for the wealthy – funded by middle- and lower-income Americans. In reality, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), passed into law in 2017, has particularly benefited working- and middle-class Americans while increasing the total tax burden paid by millionaires and billionaires. In 2021, The Heartland Institute released a study, “Measuring the Effects of the Republicans’ Tax Cuts and Jobs Act on Personal Income ...

State needs cyber charter reforms

A $400 per month fuel stipend for every employee who comes into the office to work. Concessions, parking, and tickets to a major league baseball game for the whole family. Gift cards for groceries, Amazon, Target, Domino’s, and Dunkin’. Lavish budgets for commercial shoots, TV advertising, and expensive swag. Perks for a fancy tech company? Line items for a Fortune 500 company? No. These are just a few examples of what Pennsylvania’s cyber charter schools are spending money on--money they receive from school districts. These are tax dollars that home and business owners pay to ...

The efforts to shrink the government

The purpose of government is to “maintain order and stability, ensuring citizens can live safely and productively, while also protecting individual rights and freedoms within a framework of law and justice.” (AI Overview) Our agencies were created to serve us. The personnel staffing them are experts in their fields. There are entities doing everything from predicting the weather to warning us about devastating diseases and finding cures and/or vaccines. They take care of the elderly and children, help the disabled and veterans, protect us from attacks from foreign governments and ...

Homer City project a ‘game-changer’

Eleven days after the massive smokestacks and cooling towers of Pennsylvania’s largest coal-fired power plant came down in a dramatic fashion in this Indiana County village, causing both emotional and economic distress and a sense of hopelessness, Homer City Redevelopment announced that an even bigger natural gas power center would be built in its place. The Homer City Energy Campus will be a series of natural gas plants that will power a massive data center campus. The emotion coming from hometown boy Shawn Steffee was palpable -- not just because the build will resurrect Homer ...

Reflecting on violence — and how different cultures understand it

Every spring, I share a couple of stories from Heinrich Hoffmann’s children’s book “Der Struwwelpeter” (“Slovenly Peter”) with my students to practice the German past tense, and every time, students express their surprise at the level of violence displayed in these stories. The same happens every Halloween when I bring Wilhelm Busch’s children’s book “Max and Moritz” to class. Both books are classics, and like so many other German-speaking children, I grew up with them. “Der Struwwelpeter” was published in 1845. Hoffmann, a physician who loved writing, wan-ted ...

Governor keeps betraying poor children

Immanuel Christian School is in dire straits, but not for lack of students who want to go there. Demand is high for the K-12 school’s limited number of seats, reflecting the sorry state of nearby public schools. Yet in this predominantly low-income and nonwhite eastern Pennsylvania community, many families struggle to afford tuition, and the school nearly shut down permanently in December. Not long ago, Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro promised to pass a scholarship program to help students in struggling communities afford schools like Immanuel. Now the governor seems willing to abandon ...