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Ecklund Should Follow Horrigan’s 2014 Budget Plan

In Our Opinion

Former County Executive Vince Horrigan used to say that a government can’t simply cut its way to prosperity - it has to grow its way to prosperity. At the time, Horrigan was asking for two actions to stabilize the county’s financial situation: an increase in the county’s sales tax rate and sale of the Chautauqua County Home. Both of those things happened and, coupled with a drastic increase in county property values, the county’s budget and its fund balance grew to the point that we now argue about how best to spend it. Horrigan’s words are prescient now when one looks at ...

The Middle East, Donald Trump And The Nobel Prize

Local Commentaries

It has been disconcerting to me that the President of the United States has been lobbying to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. If I were in his inner circle, I would advise him that this is an honor for which you are chosen—not one you lobby or campaign for. But, that aside, if he can pull off a solution to the current Israeli/Gazan War, perhaps he should be so honored. As the columnist Thomas Friedman recently wrote: “If Donald Trump is able to secure a cease-fire, Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, return of Israeli hostages, and it holds and paves the way for negotiations on the only ...

Funding The Country

Letters To The Editor

To the Reader’s Forum: The Jamestown BPU is facing $27 million in cuts to vital energy infrastructure projects, collateral damage in the Trump Administration’s crusade to dismantle government as we know it. Leading the charge is Russel Vought, head of the Office of Management and Budget, who is taking advantage of the government shutdown to terminate $8 billion worth of these projects, primarily in states run by Democrats. Consider his words in the infamous Project 2025, where he called for “aggressive use of the vast powers of the executive branch” to “bend or break the ...

Just Say No To Nuclear In Dunkirk

Local Commentaries

Bent Flyvbjerg sounds like a made-up detective character in an obscure Danish murder mystery, but he is a very real and very serious person. A Danish economic geographer and professor at the IT University of Copenhagen, he was the inaugural chair of major programme management at Oxford University’s Saïd Business School before returning to Copenhagen. He is a recognized global authority on how best to accomplish large projects from airports to the Olympic Games. Among his many books and articles is the fascinating, How Big Things Get Done, which he co-authored with Dan Gardner. ...

Billionaires Could Soon Face More Taxing Times

Local Commentaries

Billionaires, beware: Thousands of your countrymen are focusing hard on reining in your riches. All of them, including large numbers of millionaires, want you to pay higher taxes. They want a twenty-first century America with less income inequality and more tax fairness. Something like the America of decades ago, before the laws started leaning toward high-income taxpayers. (And they’re still leaning that way: see the gifts handed out to the rich in the Big Unbeautiful Bill rammed through by the GOP earlier this year.) The posse that’s pursuing billionaires includes tax experts, ...

Hopeful Signs Continue At Chautauqua

In Our Opinion

CHAUTAUQUA—When Justice Sandra Day O’Connor announced her retirement from the U.S. Supreme Court, the Bush 43 administration considered several possible successors. One of them was the author of the 2024 memoir Quiet Counsel: Looking Back on a Life of Service to the Law. Meet Larry Thompson, who picked a fitting title for his book. Thompson, who from 2001 to 2003 had been deputy attorney general under Attorney General John Ashcroft, received a call from the White House asking whether he’d consent to being considered for the Supreme Court. Thompson writes that the call never ...