We’re All In This Together Spend Money To Fight Internal Threat: Bad Health Government exists to protect a self-defined group – a tribe – from outside existential threats. Long ago the threat was other tribes. Today it includes fire, crime, disease, drunken drivers, natural disasters and more. But government’s first reason is to protect us from them – to ensure that which our tribe holds dear is successfully defended. Be that property, principles or our basic human right to exist.…
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Columns - Page 134
A Front Porch Perspective My Right Leg Has Always Had Bad Karma I’ve been on the porch this afternoon, enjoying one of the last days of sitting out there. A windy Halloween’s just past, and Delaware Street is full of fresh-fallen leaves spinning in whirlwind gusts of chill air from the northwest. Above me are repeated flights of honking geese, hell bent for the South and warmer climes. My right leg’s propped on a second chair. Right foot and calf…
LEAGUE OF WOMAN VOTERS SAYS: 5¢ Fee Will Reduce Solid Waste, Pollution Editor’s Note: This position paper was prepared by Liane Hirabayashi and Julie Sorensen, co-presidents, League of Women Voters of the Cooperstown Area and Steve Londner, Chair, Steering Committee, League of Women Voters of the Oneonta Area. “No, I brought my own bag,” many shoppers are telling store clerks when asked “Do you need a bag?” And more shoppers will be giving the same reply starting in March 2020…
McEVOY MEMO REVISITED After Long Republican Rule, Gives Democrats A Chance By CHAD McEVOY • Special to www.AllOTSEGO.com Republicans have been in charge of our county for as long as anyone can remember. And for as long as anyone can remember, Otsego County, as beautiful and full of potential as it is, has not kept pace with its neighbors on many key indicators. This means, in effect, that the Republican Party has overseen a protracted period of regional demographic and…
THE VIEW FROM WEST DAVENPORT Regulation Coming Home To Roost By MIKE ZAGATA • Special to www.AllOTSEGO.com For several decades our nation’s environmental policies have, for the most part, been driven by emotion or what “seemed,” according to popular opinion, to be the “right” thing to do. As a result, many of those policies lacked a scientific basis and the unintended consequences are, like lost chickens, coming home to roost. New York State’s ban on fracking may well be such an…
ISSUE & DEBATE Will Lofts On Dietz Use Too Much Parking? Editor’s Note: Following a sometimes heated Oneonta Planning Commission public hearing Wednesday, Oct. 16, which focused on whether the Lofts on Dietz, 66 proposed units of artists’ lofts and housing, will use too much of the Dietz Street parking lot, this exchange appeared on Facebook earlier this week: ►from ALAN CLEINMAN, president, Cleinman Performance Partners, Oneonta Fellow citizens of Oneonta: I feel compelled to challenge the notion that the…
WE’RE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER In Land Of Plenty, Many Are Needy By LARRY BENNETT • Special to www.AllOTSEGO.com This column is titled, “We are all in this together,” but it doesn’t always appear to be so. The U.S. economy is the world’s largest – our GDP will exceed $21 trillion in 2019. Our GDP represents 20 percent of total global output, is larger than China’s GDP, and is projected to grow 2.5 percent in 2019. Our GDP per person…
What’s The ‘Plus’ Of PolioPlus? By MICHAEL JEROME • Cooperstown Rotary PolioPlus Chric Thirty years ago, Rotary International made a promise to the children of the world – we will eradicate polio worldwide. This pledge launched the PolioPlus program, the first global initiative to provide mass vaccinations to children. Rotary and its partners in the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) have made great strides in their sustained effort to end polio forever despite many challenges over the years. Rotary remains…
A FRONT PORCH PERSPECTIVE She Would Have Loved That Smile Editor’s Note: Jim Atwell penned this column on Aug. 30, 2001, when he and Anne were still living in Fly Creek. By JIM ATWELL • Special to www.AllOTSEGO.com I can’t do justice in words to an incident last Saturday. It was too rich with meaning. But the moment was so wondrous that I’ll still try to tell you. Read the words, please; then make up for their shortfall from your…
THE McEVOY MEMO County Manager, Certainty; Energy, Pot Still Up In Air Editor’s Note: Chad McEvoy, the Otsego County Democratic Party’s communications director, emailed this memo Oct. 1, alerting county Democrats they are one seat away from winning a majority on the county Board of Representatives, and what it means if that happens. By CHAD McEVOY • OCDC Communications Director In 2019 the political stars are aligning just right to give Democrats the best shot yet at capturing an outright…
