Pennsylvania USA Today Network Editorial Board
Should politicians vote their conscience or vote the will of the people who elected them?
Our editorial board wrestled with that question this week in the wake of Washington County Republican Party chairman Dave Ball s blunt response to Senator Pat Toomey s vote to convict former President Donald Trump in his second impeachment trial.
Ball told a Pittsburgh-area TV station We did not send (Toomey) there to vote his conscience. We did not send him there to do the right thing or whatever he said he was doing. We sent him there to represent us.
Pennsylvania USA Today Network Editorial Board
Armstrong County native Nellie Bly helped give rise to investigative journalism when, in 1887, she feigned mental illness to gain entry to the Women s Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell s Island in New York City s East River. The 23-year-old Bly spent 10 days in the asylum and emerged with a harrowing expose on brutality and neglect for the New York World newspaper. Reforms followed.
Two years later, in another project for The World, Bly set what was then a record by circling the globe in 72 days. She traveled alone mostly via railroads and steamships.
Her husband s death in 1903 left her in charge of a manufacturing company where she went on to patent a number of related innovations.
Pennsylvania USA Today Network Editorial Board
Imagine having a job with a guaranteed annual salary of $93,000 where, if you are inclined to work the system and get assigned to a relatively quiet office, you can probably go long stretches of the year working just two days a week.
Every year, you go the equivalent of several months without showing up. You use all that extra time to get a second job to supplement that salary. After all, there s no rule that says you can t.
Now imagine that your tax dollars are paying that salary. Suddenly this scenario sounds less like a dream job and more like a waste of money, doesn t it?