For young people, playing, performing or working with professionals in a field they enjoy or are considering for a career can be a joy and an inspiration.

Twelve members of the Butler Golden Tornado Marching Band were given that opportunity Tuesday night when they were on stage playing with the U.S. Army Field Band.

The sold-out performance, which was sponsored by the Butler Eagle, featured the Army Band and the 29-member Soldiers Chorus. In addition to Butler band members joining the Army Band, eight members of the high school chorus joined the Army vocalists on stage.

Apart from bringing top-quality musicians to the community, the Army Band concert provided an opportunity for a handful of young musicians to join professional musicians in what was possibly a chance of a lifetime. For some student musicians, it might also have been an inspiration toward a career in music themselves. It's quite possible that one or more of the members of the Army Band recalls a similar experience when he or she was still in high school.

A standing ovation to the Army Band for making the experience possible. And a big round of applause for the high school students selected to be on stage Tuesday evening.

When former state Sen. Vincent Fumo was sentenced in 2009 to less than five years in prison following his conviction on 137 counts of fraud, misuse of funds and obstruction of justice, there was a public outcry. Other public officials had been sentenced to longer prison terms for lesser crimes.To their credit, federal prosecutors pressed for a resentencing and in August the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ordered the judge who sentenced Fumo to resentence him. The appeals court concluded that the judge's reasoning for the light sentence was legally flawed and that the amount of money misused by Fumo was vastly underestimated.Defense lawyers for Fumo say that the 68-year-old former power broker is in poor health and that he was a dedicated public servant who did many good things for Philadelphia. Prosecutors say Fumo should get no special treatment for doing his job.Fumo was famous for boasting about always looking for ways to spend OPM (other people's money), before spending his own.Fumo's lawyers argued in 2009 that he misused <I>only</I> $2.4 million. That figure is critical because sentencing guidelines jump to longer sentences for amounts over $2.5 million.Federal prosecutors presented evidence that Fumo misused at least $4 million. And now, defense and prosecution lawyers agree Fumo could face a new sentence of at least 17 years, unless given special leniency.Based on Fumo's pattern of years of abuse of power and misuse of $4 million, he should be resentenced to no less than 17 years in prison.

It’s classic Washington — say one thing, and do another. In this case, it involves farm subsidies and the need for major cuts in federal spending to reduce the budget deficit.In recent years, the U.S. farm economy has been prospering and it’s been encouraging to hear farm-state lawmakers and farmer groups saying that the time had come to end farm subsidy programs that send billions of dollars a year to mostly large, corporate farm operations.The message has been that farmers are prepared to sacrifice, along with everyone else.Last week, however, a story in the New York Times reported that farm-state lawmakers want to link the end of one subsidy with the creation of a new one.If successful, the plan would send most of the federal tax dollars saved by ending the current subsidy back to the same farmers under a different program.It’s worth noting that the current $5 billion annual subsidy, known as the direct payment program, was created in 1996 as a way to gradually wean farmers from federal crop supports. Instead of being phased out as planned, it was made permanent a few years after it was created.This possible Washington bait-and-switch is a good example of how difficult it will be for the super committee in Congress to hit the target of $1.2 trillion in spending reductions to cut the budget deficit. Powerful, well-funded special interests with teams of lobbyists will fight for every dollar of spending that benefits their constituents.Ending the farm subsidy program was looking like a no-brainer. No longer. It’s again clear that the public has to pay very close attention to what happens in Washington, D.C.