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Cultural curators face reckoning

PITTSBURGH -- Walking out of the Allegheny County Republican election night event at a local luxury hotel, the young men waiting to valet my car got into a discussion with me about the just-announced election results. All four men were in their 30s. Two were white, one was Black and the other Hispanic. As I traditionally do, I asked them how they voted, and they all answered with President-elect Donald Trump. The conservative populist coalition was always right in front of reporters and experts in working-class neighborhoods, suburbs and cities. If only they had not treated those ...

Why Donald Trump won the presidency

If you are reading this column, you are not the audience that needs to hear this. After reading article after article and listening to countless pundits about why Trump won this election, I have come to my own conclusion: those who voted for Trump (Republicans, Independents and, yes, even Democrats) did so because they were constantly fed a diet of unvarnished lies about how bad the Biden/Harris administration was. All the ads focused on the terrible economy, illegal aliens murdering innocent Americans, etc., etc. People nowadays, even though they have access to all the knowledge in ...

LIVE UNITED and a community that cares

Two weeks ago, the fourth edition of LIVE UNITED in Music took the stage, starring Michael Cavanaugh and the music of Billy Joel and Sir Elton John. It is hard to imagine a better combination of community, connection, and talent assembled in one place. That is exactly what happened on October 18 and has happened since 2019 when the vision of a signature community event came to life on October 12, 2019. Joined by local and national talents like Tess Marshall, Mallory Scoppa Gardner, Kimbo Reichley, Abby Traxler and new stars like Stephanie Nappi and Isabel Butters, LIVE UNITED in Music is ...

Ignore no more — Iran’s regime is too bad to succeed

The Oct. 7, 2023 invasion of Israel by some 6,000 Hamas gunmen has changed America’s political conversation in multiple respects. Who knew, for example, that there actually exists a pro-slaughter constituency on the far left and college campuses, at least when it comes to Jews, spawning chants by professed progressives of “We are Hamas! We are Hezbollah!”? Who imagined that, as a recent House Committee investigative report demonstrated, Harvard University officials who consider themselves moralists would email each other rejecting the use of the word “violent” to describe the ...

Should the Fed cut rates again?

If you’re like most Americans and you’re barely keeping up with your credit card bills, you’re not alone. The share of credit card balances that are past due reached the highest level ever in the first quarter of this year, according to data the Philadelphia Federal Reserve has tracked since 2012. When the Federal Reserve’s key interest rate falls, borrowing costs for consumers also fall, influencing the cost of financing purchases with credit cards, car loans, and personal loans. Easing borrowing costs can be the difference between businesses choosing to hire new workers or ...

Society needs therapy — better therapy

Our local school board voted down a social-emotional learning curriculum. My feelings about this are mixed. Social-emotional learning integrates lessons of morality and getting along with others into the variety of classes many students take. This makes some sense. Schools have our children for the best hours of their days and such lessons of self-and-other awareness are necessary for growing up. The home is the best place for these lessons, but more often than we would like to think, it is not happening. In fact, parents can be very destructive to their children. The board voted this ...