Breaking News

Opinion

Rebutting ‘America’s Sketchiest City’ video

Local Commentaries

I would like to respond to the local video recently produced claiming Jamestown is best known for its massive drug problem, high crime rate, and decaying infrastructure. The title states “Jamestown, America’s Sketchiest City”. If that didn’t give a clue as to the direction, or more importantly, the objective of the video, I don’t know what would. There are 19,460 cities in America (did my homework- more on that to follow). The number of cities depends on definition but you get my drift. It is quite apparent the lead was for the purpose of earning “clicks” on YouTube, ...

Dunkirk Battery Energy Storage project is another scam

Local Commentaries

The average cost of residential electricity in New York is 29 cents to 31 cents per kilowatt hour. The average in Chautauqua County is 22 cents to 24 cents per kilowatt hour. In Pennsylvania residential electricity costs 13 cents per kilowatt hour. Why do New York residents pay so much more? A recent article in the Post Journal provided clues. It was titled “Blistering temps take toll on state grid” It cited the New York Independent System Operator (NYISO) dashboard indicator regarding how electricity is made in NY. It said total NY electricity produced by ...

A history lesson in how we measure success

In Our Opinion

As early as 1990 - six years before it opened - the idea of a Lucille Ball Museum was being talked about in hyperbolic terms. "In conjunction with the Civic Center and the New Comedy Festival, this could be one of the most exciting and important developments to come down the road for ...

Other Voices: Democracy doesn't require truth police

In Our Opinion

It became fashionable a few years ago for people to blame “misinformation” for others holding views they find wrongheaded. Social media platforms, sometimes jawboned by the federal government, invoked this supposed crisis to justify censorship, especially during the pandemic. This insulted the intelligence of the American people, who can make up their own minds without being told what to think. A new study explores how exposure to “misinformation” on social media affected voters in 2020. The answer, drawn from a three-month experiment on nearly 16,000 users, is very ...

Reagan movie is superbly made, worth seeing

Local Commentaries

CHAUTAUQUA—After seven decades of tyranny, the Soviet Union and its empire collapsed due in no small measure to the efforts of two former actors and a grocer’s daughter. One actor—named Karol Wojtyla—grew up in Wadowice, Poland, and later moved to Krakow, where he eventually became a Roman Catholic priest, bishop, archbishop, and cardinal. The other actor—nicknamed Dutch—was born in Tampico, Illinois, grew up in nearby Dixon, and became a sports announcer at WOC in Davenport, Iowa, and WHO in Des Moines before moving on to acting. The two, of course, are John Paul II, ...

Homelessness proving to be an intractable problem

In Our Opinion

The population of homeless in Chautauqua County didn’t explode last year like it did in the last two-year study by Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli’s office. That first study of homelessness put a number to the increase (103% from January 2022 through January 2024) in homelessness we had been seeing all around us. The increase is a lot less in 2025 than it was in 2024 - 23.7% year-over-year. That’s the good news, if one can call it that. The bad news is that homelessness across the state decreased by 7.9% over the same time period, though that decrease was largely driven by New ...