District Attorney right on bail, discovery Otsego County District Attorney John Muehl is in a dangerous spot when it comes to what we understand his position to be on the third-rail issues of bail and discovery reform. He can see both sides of the issue. That’s poison these days – acknowledging, in this case, that those calling for reform to the criminal justice system had reason to do so but that those saying it went too far are equally justified.…
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Opinion - Page 187
Opportunities for Otsego: The Childcare Dilemma By Dan Maskin I recently listened to an interview with journalist Claire Suddath about childcare. She was speaking about her November 2021 article in Bloomberg Business Week titled “How childcare became the most broken business in America: Biden has a plan to make day care more affordable for parents — if the providers don’t go out of business first.” The high cost of childcare is mainly due to it being a private market that…
Rust never sleeps My patient and considerate son-in-law, Alex, had had just about enough of helping me carry seemingly countless and too-heavy crates of records from the U-Haul into the long-term storage facility, their home for the next 10 months or so. “Have you not heard of Spotify?” he half-joked as he lugged another crate. Sure I’ve heard of Spotify. I even signed up for a subscription so I could trade playlists with our daughter who lives out in Tucson.…
Sternberg on COVID this week: Getting better? We’ve been hearing reports that the spike in cases and deaths from the Omicron variant of COVID-19 has peaked and is decreasing. This is certainly true in metropolitan New York. Epidemiologists have estimated that greater than 40 percent of the City’s population has been infected with Omicron even though the confirmed case rate is much lower. Most people infected there probably experienced mild or no symptoms and didn’t even bother to get tested.…
Letter: Meanwhile in Texas Texas’s new voter suppression law is a great example of how to keep lots of people from voting. The new statute requires a voter to present either a driver’s license or their Social Security number in order to get an absentee ballot. Since Texas only requires one of these IDs to register to vote, if a county registrar receives an absentee ballot request with a type of ID they don’t have on file, they can’t match…
Letter: Cooperstown vote reform It seems like almost every day we hear about state legislatures across the country passing laws that make it harder to vote. Systemic voter suppression continues to degrade our democracy and the consequences of doing nothing will be felt by generations to come. I’ve been thinking a lot about what we can do on a local level to improve the system of elections in our village. As a Village Trustee, I feel it’s my obligation to…
Sunset Stolen: Key West By Terry Berkson After a visit with relatives in central Florida, my wife, Alice, and I headed all the way down to Key West to see one of those famous sunsets. The last 100 miles on the causeway were like flying low in a turquoise sky. We arrived in the late afternoon, paid through the nose for a room and headed over to Mallory Square to watch the sun go down. There was quite a crowd…
Bound Volumes 210 YEARS AGO It seems to be a settled point that our Navy must be augmented. What kind of ships are best adapted to our purpose is a question on which there are different opinions. Some are for a proportion of men of war; others for frigates and smaller vessels only. There are strong reasons in favor of small swift sailing vessels. They should be the most effectual in offensive operations. February 1, 1812…
News from the Noteworthy: Have a plan: Start the conversation New York State is 50th in the nation for hospice utilization, and I wish I knew why. I believe most people know about hospice. It is a service that helps and supports those with life-limiting conditions to address their symptomatic needs. Additionally, hospice supports the patient families, including bereavement care after the patient passes. New York has a hospice utilization of 30 percent, meaning only 30 percent of those who…
Letter: Diplomacy the only route After fighting in Afghanistan for 20 years and spending more than 1.5 trillion dollars and accomplishing nothing but starvation for millions and political instability in the country, the withdrawal was the correct step. What did the United States learn from this terrible mistake, which cost the American taxpayer $300 million a day for 20 years? It seems that our current government had not learned anything to avoid making the same mistake again in Ukraine. Let’s…
