Breaking News

Editorials

High turnout shows voters are engaged

It isn’t really a surprise when people don’t turn out for an election the year after a president is selected. Especially in Pennsylvania. As a perennial swing state, Pennsylvania is lobbied hard during a presidential year. The ads are everywhere — on TV, on the radio, online and in mailboxes, flooding homes in a monsoon of postcards. So when we come to the off-year, when positions like municipal council seats and judges of election are on the ballot, it’s understandable that people are still exhausted from the year before. The 2024 election was enough to make anyone want to ...

Women most affected in return to work

“Women have fallen behind in the (post-pandemic) return-to-office push, reflecting the barriers they can still hit when juggling careers and families, even after decades of workplace gains.” That was the observation of the Wall Street Journal in a report in its Oct. 25-26 edition. The message within that paragraph is that, although women’s pay has experienced a decline, when stacked against men’s, it is not due to intentional, gross, beefed-up unfairness — less pay for the same work — on the part of companies toward them. Rather, it is the unfortunate impact of shouldering ...

Complete GACTC study important

The Greater Altoona Career and Technology Center did not err in approving a presentation delay until early next year regarding a long-anticipated facility and feasibility study. Because the study is so important to the school’s future and present, it must be carried out in a responsible, comprehensive manner, not haphazardly with questions and issues left incomplete and otherwise not fully addressed. A haphazard study would benefit no one and, worst of all, hurt the school over the long run — and thus the students depending on it to provide them the excellent education and ...

Dreams Go On with the help of community

Mention the words “horse racing” and the words “triple crown” almost automatically come to mind. Fans of horse racing, both in terms of the races themselves and the wagering that they inspire, know that the Triple Crown events are the Kentucky Derby, Preakness Stakes and Belmont Stakes and that Triple Crown-winning 3-year-old thoroughbreds generally have been few and far between, although there have been exceptions, such as during the 1970s. Those facts aside, perhaps the most memorable horse in the Triple Crown series was Secretariat — Big Red — who set records in all ...

While helpful, COLA hike isn’t enough

Blair County retirees will join about 53 million other senior citizens across America in welcoming the announced 2.8% average increase in their Social Security benefits, effective in January. The word “average” is important in this editorial because individual increases could be above or below the Social Security Administration’s announcement that the average monthly check next year will be $2,064, up $56 from this year. However, buried or absent among some of the increase announcements has been the fact that the standard Medicare Part B premium will be increasing by $21.50 a ...

Med usage troubling when misconstrued

A front-page headline in the Oct. 20 edition of the Wall Street Journal — and the lengthy article that followed it — evoked the troubling question of whether many people in this country who don’t really need to be taking antidepressants are becoming hooked on them. For people of the Southern Alleghenies region — Blair, Cambria, Bedford, Somerset, Huntingdon and Fulton counties — the obvious question needs to be whether such a scenario might be playing out here. “Out-in-the-open” dialogue dealing with the issue should be welcomed here. It might open many people’s eyes to ...