TCJA benefits significant for many

February 7, 2018

The benefits of the Tax Cut and Jobs Act (TCJA) passed at the end of 2017 will positively impact the take home pay of many Americans as soon as this month. Unfortunately, to listen to many media reports and some politicians, it amounts to “crumbs” and favors the “rich.” This is pure demagoguery which is exposed by a reading of the bill’s provisions. First, marginal income tax brackets are reduced across the board. The 15 percent bracket drops to 12 percent, the 25 percent bracket to 22 percent, the 28 percent bracket to 24 percent and the 33 percent bracket to 32 percent ...

Newspapers’ real news never left

February 2, 2018

Mark Zuckerberg recently announced that Facebook would begin prioritizing high-quality news on the social network by allowing its users to rank news sources that they see as the most credible and trustworthy citing “too much sensationalism, misinformation and polarization in the world today.” Shortly after this statement was made, the New York Times’ stock jumped nearly 9 percent, indicating that the public’s interest in real news has hit the comeback trail. For newspaper companies and newspaper readers across Pennsylvania, it never left. News media organizations across the ...

Justices ignoring constitution

January 31, 2018

HARRISBURG — We’re nearly a week removed from one of the more consequential decisions rendered by this current iteration of our state Supreme Court, and we still don’t know how the court came to that decision. Sure, all the people moaning and writing about “gerrymandering” in the state’s congressional district map are satisfied the map has now been ruled unconstitutional, and they apparently need no explanation as to how or why because … well, because they agree with the court. If this had been a decision to, say, find all cities within the commonwealth imposing their ...

Opioid addiction has no limit

January 30, 2018

By Teresa Osborne and Bill Johnston-Walsh Earlier this month, Gov. Tom Wolf took an unprecedented step for Pennsylvania by signing a disaster declaration to fight the heroin and opioid crisis. In doing so he acknowledged that the epidemic is a public health emergency affecting every walk of life — at least 14 Pennsylvanians die every day from an overdose, with more than 4,600 overdose deaths in 2016 alone. While much of the media attention has focused on younger individuals obtaining opioids illegally, older adults are more likely to be prescribed opioids than any other ...

New tax law could contribute more confusion

January 23, 2018

Hate the Internal Revenue Service? Worried that you won’t be able to fill out your returns correctly under the new tax law? Do not take it out on the poor IRS employee who could not answer your tax question, even after you spent a half-hour on hold. Blame the GOP-led Congress, which, in its anti-IRS fervor, has driven the agency into the ground. It has become one of the most reliable traditions in contemporary Washington: Every year, the national taxpayer advocate explains that under-funding the IRS makes the tax filing process unnecessarily miserable for those who follow the ...

‘Proud he was my president’

January 19, 2018

Sen. J. William Fulbright of Arkansas, who created the international scholarship program that bears his name and that has produced 59 Nobel Prize winners among its estimated 360,000 alumni, was not, for entirely legitimate reasons, a humble man. Admitted to the University of Arkansas at 15, he would become a star halfback on the school’s football team and a Rhodes scholar. He also studied at Oxford for three years before being named president of his alma mater at 34. By the time of his last Arkansas campaign, in 1974, when I worked for Fulbright, he had already won national ...