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Pa. voters have a big decision

Voters here in Pennsylvania have a significant decision to make today at the ballot box. Don’t let your voice go unheard as the Keystone State has become the center of the 2024 presidential election. Consider: both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris were in Pittsburgh Monday evening for rallies, and Harris followed that up with a late Monday event in Philadelphia. Both campaigns have courted voters here for the past month. This much is clear: Pennsylvania will be the difference maker in this election. Most experts agree that whichever candidate wins the state, wins the election. That ...

Saving pets truly a cause worth ‘sharing’

Back in 2005, when the Mirror launched the first Season of Sharing campaign to aid a worthy cause within the local area, the fund-raising effort was but a positive experiment to determine how this area would react to such a well-intentioned undertaking amid the hustle and bustle of the end-of-year holidays. At the campaign’s close, the Mirror, contributors and everyone else associated with the campaign were optimistic that Season of Sharing could be a positive addition to all of the other good things that make the holidays here special — without damaging other charitable activities ...

HASD must be financially prepared

The main question hovering now over the Hollidaysburg Area School District is how district taxpayers are going to react to the proposed $130 million building consolidation plan that, once it gets underway, is to involve four steps covering a total of 12 years. Details of the project as currently envisioned were presented in a lengthy article beginning on the front page of the Mirror’s Oct. 26-27 edition. The article made clear that much decision-making lies ahead and, at this time, district officials are more focused on the plan’s major components and parameters than on any ...

Rethinking family policies a necessity

It is difficult not to be pessimistic about the possibilities for success of efforts in countries around the world to encourage larger families — that is, if you yourself believe many more couples should be opting for more than a child or two in this increasingly busy, expensive, complicated, unsettled, helter-skelter world. As the Wall Street Journal pointed out in an Oct. 15 report, countries’ years-long efforts at reversing the decline in birthrates have been largely unsuccessful, and in some places have recorded zero success. The Journal’s report noted that many couples ...

Questions about vaping need answers

The Oct. 11 Mirror article headlined “Coalition targets youth vaping” focused on the possibility of a health nightmare emerging at some point in the distant or not-so-distant future. Specifically, the article covered an Oct. 10 informational session in Hollidaysburg organized by the Healthy Blair County Coalition. “A proliferation of e-cigarette flavors and forms, coupled with marketing efforts from manufacturers and parental enabling — and even encouragement — has led to a surge of vaping among younger and younger kids,” the article said. A related quote from the ...

Take the time to learn about government

A recent survey by the Annenberg Public Policy Center revealed that about a third of America’s adults cannot name the three branches of the federal government, which, by the way, are the executive, legislative and judicial branches. It is not unreasonable to believe that the names of those three branches should have been mastered by the fifth or sixth grade, if not before. Meanwhile, it is not unreasonable to think America’s high school students, by the time they complete their senior year, should have mastered much more civics-related information, not only about the federal ...