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A View From Lake Erie

I (Michael Dee) have lived most of my life on Lake Erie. In 1955 my dad escaped the city and bought a place on the lake, hoping to expand a boat livery there. But the devil fools with the best laid plans. Lake Erie nearly died in the 1960s, as did our boat livery. Today, while fishing five miles out, I ponder the magnificent fishery, the tranquility of a summer day, the impressive spring waterfowl migration, the majesty of winter ice, and the awesome storms of Lake Erie that rival the surges of hurricanes. Twenty-five thousand years ago the half-mile thick glacier that covered us for ...

Justice Requires Pardoning Jason McGuire

GENESEO—No one could have reasonably anticipated that at 5 p.m. on summer of 2025 Fridays, supporters of Rev. Jason McGuire would gather with him near the Livingston County jail entrance just before his surrender for weekend-long incarceration. Yet that’s what has happened. ♦♦♦ McGuire, a former Livingston County Conservative party, or LCCP, chair, and the current executive director of New York Families Foundation and New York Families Action, is bright, personable, cheerful, dedicated, and principled, all of which make him an effective advocate. According to ...

Comedy Connecting And Bonding The Community

We were heartened and encouraged by The Post-Journal’s recent editorial (August 16, 2025) noting that comedy is Jamestown’s unique strength – and we couldn’t agree more. The Lucille Ball Comedy Festival, now in its 35th year, once again welcomed visitors from 43 states and brought some of the brightest stars in comedy to our community. Together, the National Comedy Center, the Lucille Ball Desi Arnaz Museum, and the festival make Jamestown comedy’s hometown – a place where comedy is both celebrated and shared. Each August, the Lucille Ball Comedy Festival brings visitors ...

A Barbecue In The Backyard

I read someplace, a long time ago, that this phrase was once used by former General and President of the United States, Dwight D. Eisenhower, in describing who an American was. Ike is purported to have said something along the line that: “Americans are people who enjoy having a barbecue in their own backyard.” It sounds a bit “hoaky,” but I can envision him saying it, and it really does say a lot about who we are. We like our free time and are good at having fun doing it. Whether you are at a ball game, out on your boat on the lake, or sitting down in the backyard having a ...

Better Ways Than Tariffs To Help Middle America

The August 16 commentary by Scott Axelson and Michael Dee concludes that “Tariffs are only a tax in uneducated minds suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome.” I consider my mind to be reasonably well educated on business and economics, but I struggle to find any coherent argument in their commentary to justify that conclusion. The authors are responding to another commentary on July 12 by Fred Larson which argued that “the United States has essentially imposed, for the first time, a 10% national sales tax on the wholesale value of everything imported into our country.” The ...

Big Corporate Real Estate Versus The Rest of Us

Recent newspaper reports of well-known national big-box retailers demanding huge reductions in their real property assessed values by Chautauqua County towns is not a new phenomenon. In 1998, then County Executive Mark Thomas and the Chautauqua County legislature saw these huge corporations “strong arming” town governments into granting huge tax assessment reductions that were not warranted. In response, the County Legislature passed Resolution 216-98 making it possible for the County, on a case-by-case basis, to assist our towns to fend off big corporate demands for assessment ...