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Are Dems Smart Enough To Take Yes For An Answer?

Here’s the fail-safe test for whether a political party is growing and strengthening or shrinking in size and prospects: Is that party spending its time, energy and effort seeking, recruiting and welcoming converts to its ranks, or is that party instead hunting down heretics within its ranks and, in the name of political purity, banishing them to some outer darkness? Because American politics is always a matter of addition, not subtraction, the convert-seeking and convert-welcoming party is healthier and almost always has the better prospects of winning the November general election. ...

$350K Prendergast Library Tax: Vote No

Here we go again. For a third time, the James Prendergast Library Board is attempting to raise property taxes by $350,000 by a 259 vote referendum being placed on the June 9 Jamestown School Districts School voting ballot. Now the library is forcing parts of outside towns (Ellicott, Busti and Kiantone) within the Jamestown School Districts to pay a library tax. All registered voters within the Jamestown Public School District were mailed absentee ballots on May 28. The library board tried twice previously to raise property taxes to fund the library (2005 — $560,000 and 2016 — ...

Get Up Off Your Knees

Dear law-abiding Americans: You have done nothing wrong. Being white is not a crime. Being a Trump voter is not a crime. Being a police officer sworn to “protect and serve” every day is not a crime. Being a non-white police officer proud to uphold and enforce law and order is not a crime. Being a black or brown or yellow American who rejects excusing criminal behavior is not a crime. Rejecting collective guilt is not a crime. Refusing to acknowledge “white privilege” when you were born poor, or in a broken home, or with physical or psychological challenges, is not a crime. ...

Civil Rights — The Struggle Continues

Fifty-six years ago (1964) I became involved in the civil rights movement. I was in seminary in the Chicago area, and a group of seminarians and Methodist ministers were assisting students at Tougaloo College near Jackson, Mississippi in their attempts at worshipping at white-only churches. At the time, under Jim Crow laws, the deep south had segregated most institutions including, in this instance, the Methodist Church. When we walked up the church steps that Sunday accompanied by a black student from the college, the local police were quickly sent after us. After being turned away ...

Watch This Republican Primary

Across the country, primaries involving the Republican Party’s two main flanks are fairly common. Those involving such names as Taft and Eisenhower, Goldwater and Rockefeller, Reagan and Ford, Reagan and Bush 41, Huckabee and McCain - and many more - come to mind. Pick whichever labels you like for the two flanks. One flank reflects the conservative movement, and the other flank doesn’t. Republican primaries happen in New York, yet state law in effect discourages them, because of the possibility that different candidates will win the Republican and Conservative ...

Straight-Line Mowing Vs. Scattershot Seeding

By Denny Bonavita Ah, spring. Revive the old saw: “Spring is sprung, the grass is riz; I wonder where the posies is.” “The flowers are right beneath the mower blade!” she shouts. Yes, my wife and I continue to amuse our dogs, cats and chickens with traditional sounds as we revert to our springtime outdoor work patterns. May brings mowers. Mowers beget the Brutal Battle of the Begonias, the Titanic Tussle of the Tulips, the Dreaded Damage to the Daffodils. She plants. I mow. Oh, she does mow, too. We split the weekly nine hours or so about 70/30. I honcho riding mowers ...