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The road to Branson wasn’t traveled alone

The Mifflin County Babe Ruth 15-16-year-old All-Stars left Monday for the Babe Ruth World Series in Branson, Missouri, carrying something more than their baseball equipment. They’ll carry a county with them. That may sound like a lot to place on 15- and 16-year-old baseball players, but it comes with earning a place on a stage this big. Nobody handed these players a trip to Missouri. They earned it on the field. They gave Mifflin County another reason to be proud. Mifflin County opens pool play Friday, Aug. 7, against Fort Myers, Florida, then faces the United Kingdom, Arizona and ...

NS merger must be watched

The fate of the proposed merger under which Norfolk Southern Railroad would be acquired by Union Pacific Railroad, creating America’s first transcontinental rail freight carrier, is beginning to undergo scrutiny by the U.S. Surface Transportation Board under what is being touted as a tough new standard. Therefore, the review, now just beginning, will not only decide whether the proposed merger would be in customers’ best interests; it also will deliver a verdict on the correctness and effectiveness of the new standard itself. For communities like Altoona that have a stake in ...

Cellphone use ban reflects reality, disruptiveness

It’s more apparent every year that when children are in school, they should not be using their cellphones. We have all been entranced by the lure of the technological marvels we carry with us every hour of the day. But we have also begun to realize how distracting and disruptive they can be, for adults and students in school. Frederick County Public Schools is implementing a policy to completely ban cellphone use during the school for the upcoming school year. The district will be ahead of the deadline to comply with the Maryland General Assembly’s recently passed Phone-Free ...

State’s health care system needs triage

The cost of staying healthy is climbing. The cost of getting sick is even worse. Prescription drug costs are up. So is the amount of money people spend in urgent care — and that’s affordable compared with an emergency room visit. Testing, diagnostics, office visits, the little extras you don’t think about until the bill shows up in the mail. They all add up. It’s not surprising. Everything is more expensive these days. And people are more and more concerned. According to the Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker, healthcare costs are making people worry a lot, more than food, ...

A familiar number, a far more dangerous moment

The yield on the 30-year Treasury bond has climbed back to where it stood in 2007, north of 5%, and it pushed a little higher again this week after the Federal Reserve left its own rates alone. On its face, that sounds almost reassuring, a return to some pre-crisis normal. It is nothing of the sort. The same number today carries a very different, and far heavier, meaning than it did 19 years ago. In 2007, the federal debt held by the public was roughly nine trillion dollars. Today it is about four times that. A yield is simply the price of borrowing, and paying the 2007 price on four ...

More Than a Vacation: Lessons from Hudson Valley (Continuation of Part One)

Next came Springwood, the lifelong home of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Before this visit, I knew surprisingly little about either his home or his presidency. What I discovered was both informative and inspiring. I found myself taking more photographs of Roosevelt's quotations than of the furnishings. One quote especially caught my attention: "The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little." As I walked through his presidential library and museum, another exhibit struck ...