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Opinion

Americans are free to be suckers

Editorials

Many of today’s consumer loans are legal but abusive. Payday lenders and used car sellers often steer customers into costly contracts they barely understand. Low-income borrowers with jobs, and therefore, dependable cash flow to siphon off, are favored targets. Sure, there’s a sucker born every minute, as P.T. Barnum allegedly said. But now we have a federal government that’s gone backward in providing protection from predators just as they adopt sophisticated technology to ply their craft. Criminals now use AI to generate fake images and scrub their pitches of misspellings ...

Sound off!

Letters to the Editor

I take issue with a Sound Off last weekend. I was admitted to Emergency at St Joe’s recently with minor auto accident injuries. I was treated very well even though I ended up in the hall while in emergency due to extreme overcrowding. The hospital was 100% occupied. I remained in emergency until a room opened up. I received a pacemaker and was treated well and courteously the entire time by all, even though they were short-staffed. The food was excellent too. Thank you St. Joe’s staff! — Cortland It was just announced that the White House is holding Medicaid benefits from both ...

Can Trump sue himself?

Editorials

The question recently asked by a federal judge in Miami — can the president sue an entity in the executive branch of the federal government and benefit from the resolution of that lawsuit? — seems to beg the question. How could anyone sue an entity he controls and derive a benefit from the amicable resolution of such a lawsuit at the expense of others who are not parties to the lawsuit? Here is the backstory. During President Donald Trump’s first term in office, an IRS employee unlawfully released the tax returns of hundreds of thousands of taxpayers, among which was ...

Michael Ciccone needs to go now

Editorials

It is beyond time for Mahoning County Clerk of Courts Michael Ciccone to read the room — or in this case the entirety of the local political scene — and resign. It should have happened last fall, when it became apparent in the wake of a scandal ignited after the firing of former deputy clerk of courts Jennifer Ciccone, that this man is not fit for office. Jennifer Ciccone was fired Oct. 17 after a falling out with her former boss and friend. Hours later, she took to Facebook and posted several incriminating and embarrassing text messages from and photos of Michael Ciccone. The ...

Data centers produce myriad economic, practical benefits

Editorials

Last week I took a daylong field trip touring a giant data center near Dulles International Airport in Loudon County, Virginia. The facility is operated by CloudHQ. A “cloud,” by the way, is the hardware that stores trillions of data files, research, love letters, the entirety of the Library of Congress and virtually everything else ever written, invented or retrievable online. The cloud is synonymous with “data center.” Many people don’t realize that without these massive data centers — that have somehow been demonized by everyone across the political spectrum from ...

It’s beginning to look a lot like a close governor’s race

Editorials

It’s premature to handicap the Ohio gubernatorial race in July as a lot will happen between now and the Nov. 3 election. But it looks like the state will have one of its most-contested governor’s races in a number of years. Ohio governor races aren’t typically close. Since 1982, there’s only been three races that could fall into that category. In 1998, Republican Bob Taft beat Democrat Lee Fisher by 5.3%. In 2010, Republican John Kasich beat Democrat Ted Strickland, who was the incumbent, by 2%. In 2018, Republican Mike DeWine defeated Democrat Richard Cordray by ...