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People are confused today about how things work

Kimball Shinkoskey Woods Cross In school, Americans were taught that the world works on the basis of education, science, law, honesty, goodwill, elections, free enterprise, corporate responsibility, government ethics, service-oriented political leadership. You get the picture. Except for brief periods of time, all that good stuff has never really materialized in the lives of most citizens and leaders, and certainly not since World War II. Today we work almost entirely on the basement instincts of humankind. These are the kind of exploitative instincts that are made possible by ...

Troops in Williamsport?

Tim Mannello Williamsport “When scaled to comparable population sizes, Williamsport, Pa., exhibits a higher murder rate per capita than both New York City and Los Angeles.” This startling conclusion from an AI analysis draws from crime data from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program. This analysis means that if Williamsport possessed the same population as either New York City or Los Angeles, it would theoretically experience a significantly greater number of homicides per 100,000 than these cities currently do because of its elevated per-resident killing ...

Why public education matters

Frank Redmon Lock Haven In today’s ongoing discussions about education policy, it’s essential to remind ourselves why public schools are so crucial to our communities and our future. Public education is more than a network of classrooms; it is one of the bedrock institutions that help hold our society together. Public schools serve every child. They welcome students from all walks of life, regardless of background, income or ability, and provide free education to all. In small towns like ours and large cities across the country, public schools are community pillars. They not ...

Clean Energy Tax Credits: Use them or lose them

Richard W. Jones State College The “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” is expected to raise electricity rates between six and 11 percent for residential, commercial and industrial customers in Pennsylvania. So says Energy Innovation, a think tank. That’s due to the loss of low-cost renewables and the resulting increase in gas prices. “As deployment of new energy resources and advanced manufacturing decline under the bill, Pennsylvania will lose out on significant planned private investment,” Energy Innovation reports. “We forecast annual losses of $2.3 billion in GDP by ...

Open letter to Congress

Robert H. Workman Lock Haven What are you doing? You do realize that once Trump has taken complete control, you will be out of a job anyway. You know how he really is. You have allowed him to take your powers away at an alarming rate. Do you really believe you will have jobs once he has complete control? He’s using you to get what he wants and when you are no longer needed, goodbye. You are not representing your constituents. You are representing your own self-preservation and making this once great country a dictatorship. You know this is his intention, yet you continue to ...

‘Nothing Gold Can Stay’

Diane Mills Lock Haven “Nothing Gold Can Stay Nature’s first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf’s a flower; But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay.” —Robert Frost, 1923 Robert Frost wrote this poem in 1923, and he was awarded the 1924 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry the following year. This spring, while perusing a small book store in Tarrytown, N.Y., I purchased “The Poetry of Impermanence, Mindfulness and Joy,” edited by John Brehm. My intention was ...