From 2005 to 2017, Pennsylvania tripled its daily production of natural gas with the help of the Marcellus and Utica shale reserves. The abundance of natural gas has opened a door of economic opportunity for Pennsylvanians, but to fully take advantage of these energy resources, we must also …

Public employee pension reform now is in full bloom in Pennsylvania. But if the limited data available from the first of two groups is any indication, there hasn’t been any rush by employees – new or old – to embrace defined-contribution plans, suggests an analysis by a researcher at the All…

It is time for the Democrats in the House to initiate the impeachment process. The Democratic leadership fears that impeachment, while justified, is a losing proposition politically because as long as the Republicans control the Senate, they will stop the process, which will allow Trump to c…

Pennsylvania collected the highest total impact fees ever in 2018, fueled in part by a court ruling but paced largely by increased demand for shale gas, concludes a review of state data by the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy.

Remember all the excitement among Democrats when Conor Lamb won the special election for Congress in a Republican district? This euphoria was repeated when the Democratic Party took back the House of Representatives in the mid-term elections. Now it is happening again, as Trump levels racist…

It is difficult enough to keep track of family schedules, local news and domestic politics. Attempting to keep informed on the status of other countries is beyond the capabilities of most of us. Unless one is blessed with entirely too much free time and an insatiable appetite for reading the…

It was good news to see four sold-out concerts of the Pittsburgh Symphony performing Beethoven’s 9th symphony (Ode to Joy) at Heinz Hall. It was disheartening to see many of the patrons using walkers and hearing aids with few twenty-somethings in attendance. One would expect that the symphon…

Fundamentalism has long been part of religious and political thought. For centuries, faith was an all or nothing proposition. Strict adherence to religious texts and dogma were maintained. There could be no compromise as the great monotheistic religions sought to rule the world. Within faith…

Thanks to President Trump’s economic policies, Pennsylvania’s unemployment recently hit an all-time low of 3.9 percent, while the state’s job count hit a record 6.2 million. In his first two years in office, Trump fostered job and wage growth by enacting the largest tax reform in 31 years an…

Much has been made of the Trump presidency and of illiberal democracies around the world resurrecting the menace of far right political views. Under this theory, voters in this country and abroad have been converted to the ideology of the far right, including the rebirth of political institu…

“There’s nothing nice about the prospect of going back to war again. Anybody who has been in war and wants to go back is a plain damn fool in my book.”

NORMANDY BEACHHEAD, June 16, 1944 – I took a walk along the historic coast of Normandy in the country of France.

NORMANDY BEACHHEAD, June 12, 1944 – Due to a last-minute alteration in the arrangements, I didn’t arrive on the beachhead until the morning after D-Day, after our first wave of assault troops had hit the shore.

For those of us who travel everywhere by personal vehicle, it is easy to miss the public transportation system humming along each day in Washington County. The truth is that without mass transit serving our elderly and many others who lack the ability to drive, thousands of our residents wou…

Student debt can destroy credit, delay marriage and children, make buying a home impossible, and turn hopes of career success and financial stability into a nightmare of struggling for decades just to catch up.

In his essay in the April 28 issue of the Observer-Reporter, Gary Stout described the decline of history in education. There’s easy proof of that in the actions of our elected representatives, particularly our Pennsylvania legislators.

Editor’s note: This is the second of two parts on immigration reform.

Editor’s note: This is the first of two parts.

In March, Gov. Tom Wolf visited Greene County to discuss the bipartisan Restore Pennsylvania proposal to address Pennsylvania’s most critical infrastructure needs like broadband access, blight and flood protection. By providing the funding needed to tackle these problems, Restore Pennsylvani…

Remember all the excitement among Democrats when Conor Lamb won the special election for Congress in a Republican district? This euphoria was repeated when the Democratic Party took back the House of Representatives in the mid-term elections. Now it is happening again, as Trump levels racist…

It is difficult enough to keep track of family schedules, local news and domestic politics. Attempting to keep informed on the status of other countries is beyond the capabilities of most of us. Unless one is blessed with entirely too much free time and an insatiable appetite for reading the…

It was good news to see four sold-out concerts of the Pittsburgh Symphony performing Beethoven’s 9th symphony (Ode to Joy) at Heinz Hall. It was disheartening to see many of the patrons using walkers and hearing aids with few twenty-somethings in attendance. One would expect that the symphon…

Fundamentalism has long been part of religious and political thought. For centuries, faith was an all or nothing proposition. Strict adherence to religious texts and dogma were maintained. There could be no compromise as the great monotheistic religions sought to rule the world. Within faith…

Thanks to President Trump’s economic policies, Pennsylvania’s unemployment recently hit an all-time low of 3.9 percent, while the state’s job count hit a record 6.2 million. In his first two years in office, Trump fostered job and wage growth by enacting the largest tax reform in 31 years an…

Much has been made of the Trump presidency and of illiberal democracies around the world resurrecting the menace of far right political views. Under this theory, voters in this country and abroad have been converted to the ideology of the far right, including the rebirth of political institu…

“There’s nothing nice about the prospect of going back to war again. Anybody who has been in war and wants to go back is a plain damn fool in my book.”

NORMANDY BEACHHEAD, June 16, 1944 – I took a walk along the historic coast of Normandy in the country of France.

NORMANDY BEACHHEAD, June 12, 1944 – Due to a last-minute alteration in the arrangements, I didn’t arrive on the beachhead until the morning after D-Day, after our first wave of assault troops had hit the shore.

For those of us who travel everywhere by personal vehicle, it is easy to miss the public transportation system humming along each day in Washington County. The truth is that without mass transit serving our elderly and many others who lack the ability to drive, thousands of our residents wou…

Student debt can destroy credit, delay marriage and children, make buying a home impossible, and turn hopes of career success and financial stability into a nightmare of struggling for decades just to catch up.

In his essay in the April 28 issue of the Observer-Reporter, Gary Stout described the decline of history in education. There’s easy proof of that in the actions of our elected representatives, particularly our Pennsylvania legislators.

Editor’s note: This is the second of two parts on immigration reform.

Editor’s note: This is the first of two parts.

In March, Gov. Tom Wolf visited Greene County to discuss the bipartisan Restore Pennsylvania proposal to address Pennsylvania’s most critical infrastructure needs like broadband access, blight and flood protection. By providing the funding needed to tackle these problems, Restore Pennsylvani…

Editor’s note: This is the first-place winner of the Law Day Essay contest, sponsored by the Washington County Bar Association and the Observer-Reporter. This year’s theme explores how the freedom of speech and the press are among the most important foundations for a free society. All winner…

Dave Ball’s recent commentary in your paper, “Climate change hoax comes to Pa.” (April 20), subjected readers to falsehoods about the science of climate change and untruthful assertions about me specifically.

“A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots.” – Marcus Garvey

Love and marriage, as the old ditty has it, may not always go together, but incivility and polarization sure go hand-in-hand in contemporary American politics. It’s virtually impossible to separate them. More importantly it has led to chronic dysfunctionality in government.

The canard of the government-union educratic establishment long has been that more state dollars spent on public education yield better academic results.

Hoax: A falsehood deliberately intended to deceive by masquerading as truth.

In the United States, April is tax month. Nobody likes to pay taxes, but as Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. famously said, “Taxes are what we pay for a civilized society.”

State-sanctioned gambling – “gaming,” in the parlance of its overlords – has seen marked growth in Pennsylvania. But as a new analysis by the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy notes, the returns – initially sketched as the be-all and end-all on many fronts – remain marginal when consider…

While we have not yet seen the Mueller report, Attorney General William Barr and Assistant Attorney General Rod Rosenstein have, and have summarized it thusly: no collusion, no obstruction, total vindication. At least, that is how President Trump and his allies see it. But as is the case wit…

Over the past several weeks my commentaries have addressed the history of American ethnic immigration and the politics of “no.” I will now turn to a religious discrimination story and the mid-19th century politics of “no” Catholics and “no” Mormons.

“Stay away from negative people. They have a problem, for every solution.” – Albert Einstein

Recently, the Observer-Reporter published an important story on the health of our local economy. The article, “Officials bullish on county economy,” (March 29) highlighted events from the seventh annual State of the Economy presentation. As hosts of that event, Community Bank and Washington …

It’s been a really tough few weeks for the left. It is losing on all fronts and not reacting well at all.

Capitalism has created more wealth than any other economic system; material wealth is not the only measure of happiness, but conservatives are right to credit capitalism for lifting millions of people out of poverty. Adam Smith was a genius, and “The Wealth of Nations: is one of the most imp…

Step into my DeLorean and travel back in time about 30 years with me. Back to when gas still cost about a buck a gallon, George Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev were working out an end to the Cold War, and “Back to the Future II” was once again taking us on a high-speed journey through time.

Editor’s note: This is the second of two parts.

“Great civilizations are not murdered, they commit suicide.” – Arnold J. Toynbee

Editor’s note: This is the second of two parts.

Pennsylvania voters can expect some important improvements at their polling place in the next year.

A proposal in Gov. Tom Wolf’s fiscal 2020 budget to raise the minimum wage for Pennsylvania’s public school teachers and support staff by a whopping 140 percent would have expansive and expensive consequences for taxpayers, concludes an analysis by the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy.

Editor’s note: This is the first of two parts.

The chaotic, dysfunctional, and corrupt nature of Donald Trump’s presidency and administration cannot be overstated.

Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) is consuming the Democratic Party. It has turned the House of Representatives into an obstructive, hateful, functionless mob. This poses a real and present danger to our nation.

Recently, President Trump went to El Paso to rally his base in support of his border wall. His rally was yet another example that Trump revels in political theater while caring little about actual policy.

“There’s battle lines being drawn

Editor’s note: This is the winning essay in the Black History Month essay contest sponsored by Washington Health System Teen Outreach.

Stop me if you have heard this one before. A barmaid from New York walks into the House of Representatives ... Unfortunately, this is no joke because one did. No disrespect to New York barmaids, but this one has a mouth that won’t stop and a brain that won’t start. We are speaking, of course…

Recently, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf proposed a plan to increase the minimum wage to $12 an hour later this year and raise it gradually over the next six years until it reaches $15 per hour in 2025. This immediately brought consternation from the many economic “experts” who frequent the vari…

Overall job growth continues to be lackluster in Greater Pittsburgh. And in an interesting twist, the sector pacing that meager growth does the least to boost economic growth while the one so regularly touted as its future is showing paltry gains, say scholars at the Allegheny Institute for …

“Everybody’s joining up to fight

Editor’s note: This is the second of two parts.

After the terrorist attack everyone was afraid. Any Muslim might be a terrorist. The news media branded Islam a religion of hate and violence. Muslims were a potential threat. And they could be anyone, even your neighbor. Something had to be done. It was obvious the old laws were obsolete in…