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Bipartisan bill needed to keep affordable connectivity afloat

Unless Congress acts soon, a federal program that connects low-income Americans to the internet, the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP), will run out of money, and the fallout will not only impact millions of low-income internet users but the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) that provide them service. Bipartisan legislation, the Affordable Connectivity Program Extension Act, which will provide $7 billion in funding has been introduced in Congress, but at least one analyst, New Street Research’s Blair Levin, gives the bill less than a 50 percent chance of passage before ACP ...

Saving Social Security should be a greater priority in Congress

Last month, U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, told former White House aide Steve Bannon that some lawmakers want to reduce Social Security benefits so that the federal government can send more money to Ukraine, which Vance argued would flow through to Ukrainian President Zelensky’s underlings to “buy a bigger yacht.” While Vance’s statement may come across as an amusing sound bite, the ultimate butt of his joke are millions of American seniors and the others who rely on Social Security. The fact is that Social Security faces significant financial challenges over the next few years. ...

Green agendas and political cliffs

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon are riding the same “green energy” horse, trotting into the sunset — or toward a political cliff. After voicing concerns, Shapiro is pressing ahead with Pennsylvania’s proposed participation in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, appealing a Commonwealth Court ruling barring the governor from unilateral action. He also has proposed expanding subsidies for “alternative energy” sources. In the Cowboy State, Gordon advocates “decarbonizing the West” with a facility that would suck carbon dioxide from the ...

Paxlovid — Not a magic pill, but a very good one

Paxlovid was given an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in December 2021 for the treatment of mild to moderate COVID-19 in certain patients. By the end of February 2023 an estimated 48,000 people with COVID died in the U.S. because they didn’t get Paxlovid. Why didn’t they? Paxlovid is an anti-viral treatment combining two medicines, nirmatrelvir and ritonavir. Taken together, they prevent mild to moderate COVID from progressing to severe disease leading to hospitalization or death. Nirmatrelvir keeps the SARS-CoV-2 virus from spreading ...

Colleges and the politics of exclusion

The president of the University of Pennsylvania, Mary Elizabeth Magill, and the chairman of the board resigned after the president testified before Congress that she could not unequivocally say whether calling for the genocide of Jews was against university policy. She denounced antisemitism in a well-crafted video released after the hearings, but still not clearly stating that the policy of the university was offended by calls for genocide against the Jewish people. The heads of many other colleges and universities are in the same spiral of hate, having been hung on their own petard ...

Left to rot, Bedford Springs celebrates regaining its former glory

BEDFORD — For nearly two decades, every time the alarm rang out from Bedford Fire Department No. 1, people in town would say a little prayer that the call wasn’t for the old Bedford Springs Hotel — a primarily wooden structure built when Thomas Jefferson was president. Bedford resident Bette Slayton said, “We would be in town and hear the fire whistle go off and look at each other and just cross our fingers that it wasn’t the Springs.” Any time she had to head south along old U.S. 220 past the white-columned hotel, she would gaze at the rows of wooden porches jutting from ...