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Scandalous

Letters

City Council’s action with regard to Bill Nichols is scandalous. Bill Nichols served the City of Williamsport for faithfully for decades. No money was appropriated by Bill Nichols. The money in question was used for a public purpose and even though not properly authorized, benefitted the city residents exclusively. Bill Nichols worked tirelessly for the city and earned his pensions over many, many years. The action of City Council, to deny Bill Nichols his earned pension is mean spirited and wrong. I certainly hope it is overturned ELLIOTT WEISS Former city council ...

What other newspapers are saying: FDA’s recent performance embarrassing

Editorials

The Food and Drug Administration shouldn’t be in the news if it’s doing its job right. By that measure the FDA is failing in spectacular fashion. The agency this week is making news for all of the wrong reasons, and the dysfunction could have life and death consequences for patients. The biotech firm UniQure on Monday reported that the FDA had moved the goalposts for approving its Huntington’s disease gene therapy. There are currently no approved drugs that can slow progression of the brutal neuro-degenerative disease, which afflicts about 40,000 Americans. The FDA in April ...

Our house

Letters

I and millions of other Americans recoiled in shock and anger at the first images of the demolition of the East Wing of the White House. Wrecking cranes scavenged through the rubble like raptors in Jurassic Park. From the air, the sacred site looked like it had been bombed. The White House belongs to the American people: it’s not the private property of our billionaire president. Yet he claims the right to do whatever he wants with it – tear off a wing or burn it to the ground. He is planning to build a massive gold-gilded ballroom reminiscent of the Russian Tsar’s Imperial ...

The shutdown and the rest of us

Letters

We should all be thankful for the thousands of federal government workers who have continued to work without pay during the weeks of shutdown. Air traffic controllers, National Weather Service employees, members of the military services and National Guard, altogether hundreds of thousands of people whose services we depend on to keep the country running and keep us safe. But there are just as many federal employees who have been furloughed, who aren’t working and aren’t getting paid. And this is to say nothing of the millions who depend on SNAP benefits to feed themselves and their ...

Growth needs to be priority for state government

Editorials

We agree with the warning state Sen. Gene Yaw, R-Loyalsock Township and state Sen. Tina Pickett, R-Towanda, shared in an op-ed column this past weekend about the effect Pennsylvania’s bureaucratic barriers have on expanding broadband in rural Lycoming County and we urge their fellow ...

Topical

Letters

Every decent doctor knows you don’t treat a deep skin cellulitis with topical medicine. One must give oral or IV antibiotics. One could draw a parallel to the fix for big-city crime. What the Trump administration is doing currently with the National Guard is providing a slick, savvy, yet superficial remedy to a far deeper problem made worse by their cuts to education. It will make it worse because it is the wrong medicine. But I suppose, the bigger the problem, the greater the application of Trump’s own remedy. In the end, he might just prove himself right through sheer ...