Wows & Scowls
May 31, 2008 Wow: Two intense rivals in the Pittsburgh newspaper market have buried at least part of the hatchet. Post-Gazette delivery drivers will start delivering the Tribune-Review in Allegheny, Beaver, Butler and Lawrence counties, under an agreement starting July 1. Cost savings as relief from high gasoline prices helped fuel the jointure.
Scowl: State Sen. Jeffrey Piccola, a Dauphin County Republican, wants to ban all gifts from lobbyists to lawmakers, but doubts the measure would pass the General Assembly. Current law requires disclosure only if a lobbyist’s gifts to a lawmaker exceeds $250 per year – or if it’s at least $650 in meals, airfare and hospitality. Absent a ban, the public should know about every penny’s worth of lobbyist influence peddling.
Scowl: At least 4,081 members of the U.S. military have now died in the Iraq war, which began in March 2003. Although President Bush declared victory shortly after the conflict began, service men and women are still being killed. Their families should be asking, “Why?”
Wow: Andrea Shimko Raho of Uniontown visited a U.S. military cemetery in Italy, where her late uncle, Michael Shimko, is interred. He was killed April 2, 1944, while serving with the Army. And he was the youngest of nine brothers from Lemont Furnace who served in the military during World War II. That’s real patriotism.
Wow: Laurel Highlands senior Scott P. Brownfield, 18, created a memorial for Fayette County’s only missing in action soldier from the Vietnam War, Samuel D. Shimek. Frank Voytek, president of Vietnam Veterans Inc. of Fayette County, praised Brownfield during a special ceremony in Hopwood, where the memorial is located. It was a worthy project.
Wow: Since we’re living in a global economy, it should surprise no one that Britain’s largest union is merging with the United Steelworkers of America, bringing 2 million workers into a union that already has 850,000 members in the United States, Canada and the Caribbean.
Wow: Frank Buckles is proof that he who lives the longest will see the most. He’s 107 years old – and the last living American-born veteran of World War I. Born in 1901, Buckles served in the “war to end all wars.” That didn’t turn out to be the case, by a long shot.
Scowl: