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Lawmakers need to hold firm on spending

About 10 weeks ago, Gov. Josh Shapiro unveiled his 2026-27 state budget proposal. The budget is due June 30 — about 11 weeks away. As close to the mid-point as we are, we hope our lawmakers are making substantive progress on deciding what the state budget should look like. We can reiterate what we said about 10 weeks ago — Shapiro’s proposal spends too much money. Our state is facing real, long-term challenges to how we fund public education. Courts have determined the disparities between school districts and property values are great enough that Pennsylvania is not truly ...

Youth sports shouldn’t be limited to rich

It’s often said a parent’s love can’t be measured, but a recent survey on youth sports may come close. For each day a child plays a sport, researchers found, parents expend three hours and 23 minutes in effort: organizing and driving, watching games and practices, making snacks and doing laundry. Then there’s the money. At $40 billion per year, spending on youth sports has surged in recent years. This burden falls disproportionately on middle-class parents, whose average annual expenses of more than $1,000 (for a single sport) comprise a larger portion of their income than the ...

State’s maternal care plan proves underwhelming

Gov. Josh Shapiro’s Healthy Moms, Vibrant Futures’ Maternal Health Strategic Action Plan sounds like a real step forward in helping expectant mothers in rural areas. Perhaps it’s unfair to expect a problem that has metastasized over the past two decades to be fixed quickly, but in our view Shapiro’s plan doesn’t seem likely to accomplish much in its first year. And that’s too bad, because there are hundreds of soon-to-be mothers in rural counties across our state who we think deserve better. The plan has several components, but given the closures of labor and delivery units ...

Artemis II mission offers inspiring unity for deeply divided nation

National confidence, unfortunately, is in short supply these days. In this season of springtime renewal, Americans would do well to look up – literally. Artemis II, NASA’s first meaningful manned space mission in over a half-century, has taken the nation by storm this month. In so doing, it has provided a timely reminder of what a great nation, acting with confidence and clarity of purpose, can still achieve. Public polling confirms that Americans are a largely pessimistic lot. Our politics are fractured, our institutions mistrusted, and our birth and marriage rates have plummeted. ...

There’s No Amazon Prime overnight delivery for war

In a world tied inextricably to social media, there's something deeply and spectacularly unserious about the way modern commentators talk about war. Anyone who has scrolled through online platforms following the outbreak of war with Iran will find the same childish questions of why the war isn't over yet, as if military conflict is supposed to function like an Amazon Prime delivery -- putting in an order from your couch and waking up to find it gift-wrapped on your doorstep the following day. Sorry, but this is all a fundamental misunderstanding of reality. War is not a ...

Natural gas remains important part of economic puzzle

As often as we’ve editorialized about the interconnectedness between affordable energy and the successes and opportunities American families may enjoy, world events unfortunately can bring that interconnectedness into sharper focus. An article in Thursday’s edition of the Williamsport Sun-Gazette in which an official with the Marcellus Shale Coalition demonstrated that. “Global instability is a stark reminder that energy security is national security,” Pat Henderson, vice president of communications and government affairs at the Marcellus Shale Coalition, said. “America, ...