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Opinion

Chautauqua’s New President Has To Fill Big Shoes

In Our Opinion

Chautauqua Institution officials announced a new president with quite an impressive resume. Mark Coolidge Johnson is a senior Foreign Services Officer and attorney - as well as a third-generation Chautauquan. Johnson currently serves as deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City, the largest American diplomatic mission in the world, where he oversees more than 3,000 employees, nine consulates and nine consular agencies with a $282 million operating budget. He recently directed the completion of the new $943 million, one-million-square-foot embassy facility, which ...

Freshwater Wetlands Act Regulations Are Delayed, Not Dead

In Our Opinion

The more time one gets to look at the judge’s decision in local lawsuits challenging the state’s Freshwater Wetlands Act regulations, the more it is clear that the regulations are likely merely delayed, not dead. Judge Richard Platkin’s ruling last week in state Supreme Court in Albany didn’t strike at the heart of issues the local challenges to the regulations raised. Platkin found that the Freshwater Wetlands Act changes and the Part 664 regulations don’t violate landowners’ due process rights, that the challenges didn’t prove that the 2022 amendments and Part 664 ...

Signed, Sealed And ‘Maybe” Delivered, Too

Local Commentaries

Seeing things through is not merely a sign of maturity but also a mark of strong character. Unfortunately, we live in an age where a handshake and one’s word often mean nothing. There was a time when such a gesture was as binding as a legal contract—a bond or an agreement signifying that an obligation would be fulfilled and a job completed in its entirety. This carefree attitude of going wherever the wind takes you toward commitment spills over into many areas, especially concerning character. People have become lax in matching their words with their actions. Many profess to have ...

Daffodils, Omelets And Rosemary Clooney

Local Commentaries

Is it finally Spring? I think Mother Nature might have made up her mind. She has been sort of a brat about it: “Oh let’s give them a nice day that soars above 78 degrees but plunges them down to 19 overnight. And tomorrow, bright sunshine but keep it at a high of 36. That should keep them guessing.” We’ve been guessing alright. I don’t know whether to leave the house in a black down winter jacket, a cardigan sweater or a striped summer tee top. I still have both boots and flip-flops by the front door. I don’t understand how the daffodils and jonquils have put up with it. ...

Readers’ Forum

Letters To The Editor

Growing Plutocracy Has Risen To Power In America To the Readers’ Forum: We can thank the shortsightedness of the Roberts Court for the rise of a plutocracy in America that gave us a Donald Trump. On January 21, 2010, in Citizens United v. F.E.C., the Roberts Court opened the door for corporations (and other organizations) to pay for political ads made independently from candidate campaigns, by overturning the provision of McCain-Feingold law that barred such expenditures because of their corrupting, political influence on those who are supposed to represent us. In effect, the ...

Surprising Truths About America’s Tax History

Local Commentaries

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Taxes, for instance, have been changing and staying the same ever since Reagan and the 1980s: They’ve been heaven for corporations and the rich, purgatory or worse for everybody else. Now comes a groundbreaking book that looks back not just decades but centuries. It’s Vanessa A. Williamson’s The Price of Democracy: The Revolutionary Power of Taxation in American History. The surprises never stop coming. Surprise No. 1, the Boston Tea Party. We’ve been brainwashed into believing that taxes were the cause. Not so; the Sons ...