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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 ...

It’s Full Speed Ahead With Roundabouts

Editor's Corner

Apprehension within the northern Chautauqua County community that included a lawsuit by a local business to stop the road project greeted the announcement of a proposed roundabout at Routes 60 and 20 in the village of Fredonia in 2017. Even today, some opponents remain vocal regarding the New ...

With The Benefit Of Hindsight, Westfield Hospital Finds Its Niche

In Our Opinion

It’s been 20 years since the Commission on Health Care Facilities in the 21st Century, or the Berger Commission, said Westfield Memorial Hospital should be turned into a diagnostic treatment center. The community rallied on the hospital’s behalf, with the state choosing to reverse the Berger Commission’s recommendation, giving Westfield Memorial Hospital five years as an Article 28 licensed hospital. That five years gave hospital officials time to look at its health care system and find ways to make improvements and provide services more effectively to the community. Fast ...