The Iran pact offers peaceful resolution of a threat
I am happy to see the successful resolution of the negotiations with Iran. This represents a great contrast with President George W. Bush’s attempt to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq: That effort cost us billions of dollars and thousands of lives, and there turned out to be no such weapons at all.
Meanwhile, Iran seems to offer a more credible threat, and I’m glad we’ve found a peaceful way to deal with the threat. JIM MORGAN
Squirrel Hill
Outer space thrills
At the tender age of 57, the excitement that surrounded the moon landing lives somewhere in the echoes of my mind. Charles Krauthammer’s “New Horizons’ Flyby of Pluto Is Sure to Make Spirits Soar” (July 11 Perspectives) brought that excitement to the forefront. Putting aside politics, Mr. Krauthammer describes what we can achieve when we dare to dream. What a beautifully written piece! SHELLEY SEGAL
Squirrel Hill
Downtown retail gap
Although my wife and I left Pittsburgh in the early 1990s, I suspect, as is the case with many who were born and raised there, we will always be Pittsburghers at heart. How sad that Downtown’s last department store is closing (“Macy’s Plans Exit From Downtown,” July 14).
For whatever reason, Pittsburgh can’t seem to get it right all at the same time. When Downtown had three major department stores (Kaufmann’s, Gimbels and Horne’s), it lacked in the arts and residential living. Over the years, a great deal was done to enhance Downtown’s cultural aspects, but then retail began to decline.
Now residential aspects are booming, but retail will be gone. Do the powers that be understand that the appeal of downtown living in any city is that the downtown has it all? The notion that one would live Downtown and then have to drive to the suburbs to shop is absurd. MARK MARCHETTI
Thatcher, Ariz.
Sick-leave sense
At $9 an hour, working a full 40 hours a week, hourly earners like myself earn just $360 a week, before taxes. After rent and bills, I’m lucky to have $75 left for food, transportation and any other “incidentals.”
If I get sick and take a day off, I lose $72 in pre-tax income. If I get sick and lose a day of work I have to choose between paying my electric bill and buying food. So I go to work sick unless I’m physically unable. Do I want to go to work sick and infect my co-workers and the general public? No.
Worse yet, when one of my children gets sick, I have had to send them to school sick because I couldn’t afford to stay at home with them. They have had to go to school and suffer like their mom does at work, getting their teachers and classmates sick at the same time.
We need paid sick days in Pittsburgh.
We need paid sick days so I don’t have to go to work sick or face hunger for the rest of the month.
We need paid sick days so I don’t have to go to work sick and get the people I work with, and the general public, sick.
We need paid sick days so my children, grandchildren and all the other children of workers without paid sick days can be at home with a parent, where they belong, when they get sick.
We need paid sick days because I am one of the thousands of workers in the city who can’t afford to get sick or take care of my children when they get sick.
It makes sense for me and my family and it makes sense for the city to protect everyone by enacting paid sick days. LaSHAWN McBRIDE CLANCY Homewood
Fiscal Code and gas
In the July 10 letter “GOP Lawmakers Would Give Gas Drillers a Gift,” the writer asserts that lawmakers are giving “another gift” to the Marcellus Shale industry through an amendment to the state’s Fiscal Code bill.
In fact, the proposed language in the Fiscal Code refers only to “conventional” oil and gas drilling operations. These are the smaller, shallow well drillers that have been operating in the northern tier of the commonwealth for well over a century. The regulations the Department of Environmental Protection has drafted to apply to Marcellus (or “unconventional”) operations are not reasonable or relevant for conventional drilling, and they threaten the future of this industry.
Last year, the General Assembly passed a law requiring the DEP to separate regulations for the two types of drilling, but the agency has effectively ignored the will of the elected representatives of this commonwealth by simply giving the two sets of regulations different names.
Therefore, we are seeking legislation that would force DEP to go back to the drawing board for conventional oil and gas regulation. The process for Marcellus regulation would advance as planned. However, conventional operators would continue to abide by current regulations that have effectively and fairly regulated that industry for more than three decades.
DEP’s effort to overregulate this industry benefits no one but instead threatens to kill an industry that provides quality, family-sustaining jobs for tens of thousands of people. STATE REP. MARTIN CAUSER Harrisburg