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Editorials

Celebrate a safe homecoming season

Homecoming celebrations for area high schools have begun. The festivities give students the opportunity to get out and enjoy themselves during this time of year, joining friends, family and alumni as they cheer on their team hopefully to victory, getting dressed up and dancing the night away. But they also should remember to do all of these things as safely as possible. There is certain to be lots of fanfare surrounding all of these events, but precautions must be taken. As during any time when students are out on their own, they must make certain to be careful if they are driving. ...

Johnson inspires us to reach for the stars

Most Mountain State residents already know what a treasure the late Katherine Johnson was, and how important she and her colleagues were to any successes the United States had at the beginning of the space race. The White Sulphur Springs native and West Virginia State University graduate was among those known as human computers for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics and then the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Their work helped put a man on the moon. Though Johnson had already received the Presidential Medal of Freedom back in 2015, Congress did the right ...

Reading remains fundamental

Weirton Elementary School has organized numerous programs through the years to encourage its pupils to read, emphasizing the importance of literacy throughout their lives. Whether it be the One Book, One School, One Community campaign, Accelerator Reading or its Reader of the Month, youth from Pre-K through fourth grade are instilled with the idea that reading is fundamental. Now, a new program has been launched at the school through the purchase of three Inchy’s Book Vending Machines. Global Vending Group placed its first book vending machine in 2018, identified with the Inchy ...

We’re drowning in credit card debt

When finances get tight, some households turn to credit cards to get by. It’s not an ideal solution, and can lead to bigger problems down the road, but sometimes feels like the only way. According to WalletHub, the collective credit card debt of the United States is approximately $1.28 trillion — and $109 billion of that came from 2023 alone. But some regions are faring better than others, the Washington, D.C.-based personal financial website reports. “Some parts of the country are racking up credit card debt at an alarming rate,” financial writer Adam McCann reported in ...

Remember our nation’s foundation

Some 237 years ago, a contingent representing the states of the newly independent United States of America gathered in Philadelphia. There to reform the Articles of Confederation, they came up with this familiar grouping of words, “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic Tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” That carefully worded ...

More success, less bureaucracy

It’s hard to understand what the lawmakers who rode into office boasting of their aim to “right size” state government were thinking when they decided to turn the Department of Health and Human Resources into three new agencies (four if you count the Office of Shared Administration that supports the other three). Maybe they really did believe the change would provide better, more efficient service for Mountain State residents. But surely they knew enough about bureaucracy’s ability to serve itself to know that improvement wasn’t going to come easily. Now, more than two ...