close

Hits & Misses

3 min read

MISS: In order to be a public servant, you must actually serve the public. Unfortunately, it seems that a couple of Monessen’s municipal leaders missed class the day they taught that in Local Government 101. Councilman Gil Coles hasn’t attended a meeting since February, and Mayor Matt Shorraw was absent from a special meeting Monday and the May 24 regular council meeting. Their unexcused absences are leaving the city in a lurch with the recent death of Councilman Ron Chiaravalle, meaning the council has been unable to pay some bills and likely doesn’t have enough votes to appoint a new councilman. It’s time for both Shorraw and Coles to either get to work or get out of the way and let someone else serve the people of Monessen.

HIT: The decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to allow a Colorado baker to avoid making a wedding cake for a gay couple was a setback for LGBT rights advocates, but some of our representatives in Harrisburg are using it as a springboard to attempt, once again, to win passage of bipartisan legislation pending in the state House and Senate that would ban workplace, housing and public accommodation discrimination because of a person’s sexual orientation and gender identity or expression. “This is about much more than cake – this is about people being denied a job or a place to live just because of who they are,” said state Rep. Dan Frankel, D-Allegheny, who co-chairs the Legislature’s LGBT Equality Caucus. Frankel is absolutely correct. Polls have shown that most Pennsylvanians support legislation such as the Pennsylvania Fairness Act, and we commend those in the House and Senate who are continuing their fight to win its passage.

MISS: The official death toll in Puerto Rico from Hurricane Maria still stands at 64. But a new study in The New England Journal of Medicine estimates the death toll was considerably higher than that. The study puts the probable toll at about 4,600 people, with many of those deaths resulting from delayed or absent medical care. To put this in perspective, just a little bit fewer than 3,000 people died in the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. Almost nine months after Maria, Puerto Rico is not out of the woods. “The situation is not over,” according to Domingo J. Marques, an associate professor of psychology at Albizu University in San Juan. Marques told The New York Times, “We still have people without power, without running water, and it’s already hurricane season again.” Keep in mind, these are American citizens. We should feel just as much urgency to help them as we did for the victims of Hurricane Harvey in Houston, Texas, last summer.

HIT: The Miss America pageant has been swamped by problems in recent years. Its CEO, along with some board members and executives, had to resign last year after it was found they had used vulgar language to describe previous Miss America contestants in email messages they had exchanged. Even worse for the pageant’s long-term prospects, the ratings for its television broadcasts have been plummeting. Whether there should even be a contest that attempts to pinpoint an ideal woman is one question, but Miss America did take a step toward modernity this week by doing away with the swimsuit competition. Organizers said they are now moving Miss America away from physical attributes and focusing more on ideas, talent and intelligence. One can only hope that other pageants follow suit.

CUSTOMER LOGIN

If you have an account and are registered for online access, sign in with your email address and password below.

NEW CUSTOMERS/UNREGISTERED ACCOUNTS

Never been a subscriber and want to subscribe, click the Subscribe button below.

Starting at $3.75/week.

Subscribe Today