Drivers traveling Route 8 south of Butler have gotten used to seeing the long empty former car dealership buildings on the east side of the highway in Penn Township. Over time, empty buildings become less marketable and can begin to deteriorate, even becoming eyesores.

For those reasons, it’s encouraging to see the recent renovation work at the buildings. Last week, it was reported that Valencia-based Frank J. Zottola Construction was expanding and had purchased the properties. It expects to move in during spring, possibly by the end of March.

Zottola, which also has a facility in the Strip District in Pittsburgh for staging larger jobs, works as a subcontractor for Verizon, Comcast, Sibertech and the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority. The company’s increased workload has led to a need for more space.

After having sat empty for so many years, it’s good to see the two substantial buildings, containing 3,173 square feet and 2,280 square feet, receiving some overdue attention and a new life.

Zottola, which employs about 75 workers and has an adminstrative staff of seven, will be a postive addition to that stretch of Route 8.

Jeer While Americans have been focused on the tragedy in Connecticut, halfway around the world, there was more senseless violence — the murder of nine health care workers in Pakistan giving anti-polio vaccines.In coordinated attacks attributed to Islamic militants, nine health care workers, including six young women, were shot and killed while working to eliminate polio in Pakistan, one of only three countries in the world in which the crippling disease is endemic.Some Islamic extremists believe vaccines, such as those used in the anti-polio effort, are part of a Western conspiracy to make children sterile. Support for public health efforts by Western aid organizations suffered after a Pakistani doctor operated a fake vaccination program to help the CIA locate, and then kill, Osama bin Laden.Recent efforts to immunize children against polio in Pakistan have reduced the incidence of the disease by about 70 percent compared to 2011, but the recent attacks and the resulting suspension of the program by the U.N. World Health Organization threatens to see that progress reversed.The murder of anti-polio workers in Pakistan is a reminder of the heroic efforts taken by health care volunteers and humanitarians around the world — risking their lives to save those threatened by disease.

JeerLeft-leaning groups have begun an aggressive campaign to prevent any reductions to national entitlement programs including Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.As unpopular as it might be to slow the growth of spending in those programs, it is nonetheless critical if the United States intends to get its financial house in order.The $16 trillion national debt and ongoing trillion-dollar budget deficits are fueled, in large part, by the growth in entitlement spending.The liberal group Moveon.org is sending out e-mails blasting any possible agreement that President Obama might reach to avoid the fiscal cliff involving reductions to entitlement spending.Obama has been promoting a balanced approach, including higher tax revenues and reduced spending. Every credible plan to reduce the national debt involves slowing the rate of spending growth in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.Moveon.org’s website features the slogan, “Hands off Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.” But it’s simply irresponsible to suggest the federal budget can be sustainable without signficant reductions to the rate of growth of entitlement spending.There are many ways to slow spending, including means testing and slowly phasing in later retirement years, as well as a later Medicare eligibiilty age. A small, but broadly supported cost reduction involves using a different inflation measure, called the chained-CPI to calculate annual cost-of-living adjustments for Social Security.Shifting to the chained CPI, which many economists support as a more realistic measure of price inflation because it allows for consumer switching to less costly products, would save about $220 billion over ten years. The difference between the chained CPI and the current CPI figure is about 0.3 percentage points, so the difference for monthly entitlment payments would be minimal.Yet even this modest change and cost saving is strongly opposed by Moveon.org.It’s a dishonest message to suggest some reductions in entitlement spending are not necesary to put the nation’s finances on a sustainable track.