"If you make the truth unknowable, accountability becomes impossible." Trump's war on statistics matters for the area.

Locally we had a hotly contested race for mayor. This post will look at the influence of write-ins and the Johnstown mayoral election.

Imagine your fridge is empty, your mailbox is quiet. and the federal safety net you depend on is just… paused.

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic Tranquility

From October 17th to 19th, when the People Rise: Inside the 13th Annual Put People First PA Membership Assembly.

From homelessness to homeownership, the Cambria County Housing Summit. Magellan % Healthcare hosted the Cambria County Housing Summit.

Today I interviewed Shannon Burch Errett. She is a GJSD school board candidate. GJSD stands for Greater Johnstown School District.

On October 14, 2025, I was observing the Charlie Kirk Vigil at the Pasquerilla Center in Johnstown. Pennsylvania.

Yesterdays No Kings Rally Part 2 had an amazing turnout. Between 300 and 500 people turned out to voice their frustration with Trump.

Denise Miller wrote this poem titled No Kings in America on her Substack about the No Kings Rally on June 14 (reprinted here with permission)

On Saturday Mayoral candidate Reverend Sylvia King held a Johnstown Democratic Candidate forum at her church in Kernville.

They’re being sent here by a broken housing system — overflow from bigger cities Johnstown Isn’t the Problem - the system is.

With the assassination of Charlie Kirk still in the news I will take a look at his organization Turning Point USA in the Alleghenies.

The martyrdom of Marat and Charlie Kirk have some eerie parallels, even though some might see them on opposite sides of the political fence.

I recently attended 2 events locally and took some footage: Bardstock on August 23 and the Cambria Arts and Heritage Festival on September 13 and 14. Bardstock was a hastily organized literary festival by the group Poeming through the Dark. The video above is the footage I took at the event. Ronald Shawley organized The Cambria Arts and Heritage Festival.

Lyrical Capo attended a recent Put People First healthcare rights meeting to discuss medicaid and food stamp cuts. In the heart of Oakhurst, a beacon of hope shines bright. Put People First! PA (PPF-PA), a member-led organization driven by everyday working-class people, is on a mission to fight for healthcare rights, community welfare, and human dignity. With over 13 years of experience, PPF-PA has been a vocal advocate for the rights of Pennsylvania's citizens, particularly in Central Appalachia.

When looking at the Unmet Need Score (UNS) from the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) data tool, Downtown Johnstown (zip code 15901) had the highest UNS in Pennsylvania of 96.07 out of a possible 100. The UNS is a composite of 33 statistics. These statistics are in the table below for the 15901 zip code. To see how Downtown Johnstown compares to Pennsylvania, the mean and medians for all Pa zip codes are presented along side each of the 33 statistics.

Lyrical Capo has written this piece on the Workers over Billionaires Rally in Johnstown on Labor Day. On September 1st, Labor Day, community leaders and citizens alike gathered to express their concerns about economic inequality and government policies. The rally, aptly named "Workers over Billionaires," highlighted the struggles of everyday people and the need for fair representation. In Johnstown, PA, organizations and individuals have been uniting to address these issues.

Last week I posted on 2 factor analyses of the health resources and services administration's unmet need score map tool for zip codes in the Alleghenies and Pennsylvania as a whole. There were minimal differences between the regions on the two largest factors (health behaviors and mortality). For this post I am taking a look at the next 2 smaller factor differences between Pennsylvania and the Alleghenies.

I have looked at Unmet Need Scores (UNS) in Pennsylvania and the Alleghenies. The UNS is a composite of dozens of related health, social and economic variables. Teasing apart the relationships among the variables one by one is tricky. There is a method that allows for identifying clusters of highly correlated variables called factor analysis. This allows us to identify underlying health factors in Pennsylvania and in the Alleghenies.

After looking at the unmet need scores (UNS) in the Alleghenies, I thought that I should backtrack and look at unmet needs in Pennsylvania. There are 1,945 zip codes in the state. As you can see in the image above, some of these cross state lines. One hundred and forty nine zip codes have a UNS greater than 75. In addition to having the highest UNS in the Alleghenies, Downtown Johnstown has the highest UNS in the state at 96.07 (100 is the highest it can go).

Jackie Allison has submitted an article on her concerns about freedom of speech in this current day and age. I placed a 9x12-inch envelope on the counter at the post office. The postal worker jumped into a spiel about hazardous materials, alcohol, explosives, perfume, and other stuff. You’d have thought I was mailing an atom bomb instead of exercising freedom of speech by sending a newspaper to my aunt.

Last Saturday I went to the Rage Against the Regime protest in downtown Johnstown. I interviewed some of the participants in the video above. Groups like Indivisible organized the rally. Previously I posted on the unmet need score (UNS) for 708 zip codes in the Alleghenies. These zip codes are seen in the map below. A high need area has a UNS of 75 or above.

I have looked at County Health Rankings variables in Pennsylvania correlating them with Trump's vote at the county level. This time I am looking at the Health Resources and Services Administration Unmet Need Score online tool. This tool provides health data at the zip code level. Zip codes are classified as high need areas if they have a score of 75 or more and it has a population of at least 1,500.