FRONT PORCH PERSPECTIVE But What’s Her Name? By JIM ATWELL • Special to www.AllOTSEGO.com I’m at ease on my front porch on a beautiful afternoon, admiring the perspective up tree-lined Delaware Avenue. As the long last block heads toward Chestnut Street, curbs and sidewalks seem to draw together, trees conspire more closely over the street, and the two rows of handsome house fronts, bedecked with flags and hanging planters, draw closer till the last ones opposite each other almost block…
Online home of The Freeman's Journal and Hometown Oneonta
Advertisement
Opinion - Page 298
VIEW FROM ALBANY A Little Here, A Little There. Suddenly, It’s Many Millions By State Sen. JIM SEWARD • Special to www.AllOTSEGO.com Death by a thousand cuts. Nickel and dime. If those adages come to mind when you think of New York State government, you are not alone. Now the latest example: the governor’s push to require millions of drivers to buy new license plates, needed or not. Recently, the governor’s office launched a statewide survey to select a new…
LETTER from ROBERT MOYNIHAN To Predict Recession, Read Entrails To the Editor: Predicting an economic future? Just forget the past and reliable evidence. 1. No society has survived by increasing debt and reducing income – that is our present national pattern of lowering taxes and inflating expenditures. 2. Whatever minor tax relief given average citizens, increased fees and higher prices for goods limit their spending ability. 3. Because of new tariffs, U.S. farming communities already face depressed markets and massive…
EDITORIAL How Can We Make 8th Most Vibrant Arts County Thrive? What? In a United States that some insist on characterizing as a burning dumpster, can there be good news? Well, here it is: Oneonta, as Otsego County’s “urban core,” has been ranked the eighth most-vibrant small community in America in Southern Methodist University’s fifth annual Arts Vibrancy Index Report. According to the Census Bureau’s American Factfinder, there are 16,360 towns in the U.S. Not all of them, of course,…
COLUMN Some Indicators Suggest Recession Not Looming By TOM MORGAN • Special to www.AllOTSEGO.com Are we staring at a recession? You have surely seen or heard reports, opinion and speculation to that effect. Gloom has been a mini-rage lately. A few questions are in order. Are economists able to accurately predict recessions? No. If their accuracy percentages were batting averages you would bench them. Why is the subject of recessions in the air so much lately? The Left salivates at…
EDITORIAL How Often Can We Help Something 1st-Rate Happen? Solicitations, by phone, mail, email or in person, are a pesky part of 21st century life. The advantages the Susquehanna SPCA’s “Shelter Us” campaign for $3 million to build a new animal shelter are: one, the people who are running it are our neighors – we know them. And, two, everything about it is first rate. Anita Vitullo of Clinton, Staffworks’ president and philanthropist to the pet world, underscored the many ways…
COLUMN Questions Are Neutral. Answers, Not So Much By JIM KEVLIN • Special to www.AllOTSEGO.com Asking questions: It’s a method of teaching that goes back to earlier than 399 B.C. and Socrates, the seminal thinker who laid the foundation for much subsequent Western thought. Hence, the Socratic Method. The idea is that a question, in itself, is neutral; at worst – or best? – a provocation to think. It’s the resulting answers to the question that aren’t neutral. The hope…
COLUMN VIEW FROM FLY CREEK On Flying The Flag By ADRIAN KUZMINSKI • Special to www.AllOTSEGO.com The other day I was chatting with a long-time local business man in Cooperstown who occasionally reads this column. He brought up the recent decision of the Village of Cooperstown to officially fly the Gay Pride flag on Village property. He expressed discomfort with at least some aspects of gay lifestyle, and clearly felt that the village action did not represent him and, by…
Doesn’t That Sound Better Than A Mantra Of Hate? All this talk about hate. Maybe it’s different in a rural enclave like Otsego County, but how often in the course of a week or month or year do any of us come face to face with something we can define as “hate.” Yet Governor Cuomo, last Thursday, Aug. 21, in announcing our state will be the first in the nation to enact a “Hate Crimes Domestic Terrorism Act” (see excerpt…
LETTER from CHIP NORTHRUP Whartons Best President, First Lady We Never Had To the Editor: Your newspaper did us all a great favor with its coverage of Dolores Wharton’s autobiography, which serves as a fine complement to her husband’s book. You have helped put the Whartons in their proper historical context – they were pillars in the advancement of minority meritocracy in the United States, moreso than any ballplayer in the Hall of Fame. Because, while Jackie Robinson proved that…
