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Brenda J. Linert

Democrats’ race for White House getting interesting

When even liberal and left-leaning columnists start criticizing Democrats and their shaky promises of free stuff, you know there’s trouble. Syndicated political columnist Froma Harrop’s piece published in this newspaper Sept. 22 did just that. In that column, Harrop pointed out that Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts still is refusing to say what taxes she would raise to cover her “Medicare for All” health care plan. Harrop pointed out that Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders’ similar vision — a single-payer plan that does away with ...

Mike DeWine wants answers on chemicals in Ohio’s water

My family and I try to do our part to protect the environment. We recycle our cans, bottles and newspapers without fail every week. I drive a Chevy Malibu gasoline / battery-operated hybrid that saves fossil fuel every time I back out of the garage. My husband even has taken a great interest in ensuring that our home is surrounded by the types of flowers and plants that are friendly to northeast Ohio’s dwindling population of bees and monarch butterflies. Despite all that, we don’t consider ourselves “environmental activists,” and we don’t generally panic or overreact ...

Journalist recounts path to citizenship

In his mind, Luis Sanchez Saturno has been an American since he was a teenager. After moving to Warren from Venezuela at age 13, he learned to speak broken English as an eighth-grader at Warren’s Western Reserve High School. Later, he attended Howland Local Schools, where he settled into his school work and American life. “I was pretty much ignorant to my immigration status,” Sanchez recounted to me last week. He initially had come to America on a tourist visa with his father and brother, leaving his mother and young sisters, just ages 5 and 2 at that time, behind in ...

Don’t take local military value for granted

Michael Dustman, director of constituent services for U.S. Sen. Rob Portman, was adamant last week that the Mahoning Valley should not “give up the fight” on the possibility that a local military installation still could be chosen as home for a proposed East Coast Missile Defense site. If that happens, it would mean a $4.5 billion investment, plus thousands of direct and indirect temporary and permanent jobs to our area. Dustman spoke as part of a panel discussion I moderated during the “Impact Ohio” conference Thursday in Youngstown. The event was sponsored by the Youngstown ...

Voter roll purge dispute all about politics

I was a little girl growing up in southwestern Pennsylvania when I recall hearing some aunts and uncles in my large extended family engaging in discussion about an upcoming election at that time. Some in my family were not regular voters, and I recall them chatting about the chance that they may have been required to re-register to vote because the possibility existed that they had been removed from the rolls for inactivity. Later, when I asked about the overheard conversation, my mother explained to me if you don’t vote for a number of consecutive elections, your registration ...

Fairs and newspapers are a long tradition

Attendance at county fairs has been a long-standing tradition of my family every summer. But last week, as I strolled past the grandstand at the Canfield Fair, it felt different. That’s probably because this time I had come alone. And I wasn’t immediately in search of a lemon shake. Instead, I was heading toward my newspaper’s tent on the corner where The Vindicator tent has been located for as long as I could remember. I was going to spend some time there greeting new readers and talking about the undertaking we were preparing to launch today — our first edition of the ...