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A Small Frame For Life’s Big Picture

Local Commentaries

Our family has cut way back on Christmas presents in recent years. We all still enjoy filling some desires from the grandchildrens’ wishlists. Honestly, they are the only ones who really need anything. But I have a problem, and it is probably a hangup going back to my childhood. I want everyone to have a package or two under the tree. A few years ago, we set a modest limit, so the gift shouldn’t be big, fancy, or expensive. It just has to be wrapped and tagged “to and from” so everyone gets to feel special. We are such a small family that giving each other a small gift is ...

Don’t Forget What Happened On Jan. 6, 2021

Letters To The Editor

To The Reader’s Forum: As the fifth anniversary of the Trump-led attack on the U.S. Capitol goes by, along with facts of over 140 injuries to police guarding the Capitol building, the deaths of several people involved in the attack and calls for the hanging of then Vice-President Pence, apparently, voters in America are not afraid of the fascism displayed by Donald Trump but are afraid of the state of their pocketbooks! Why do I say this? Well, in spite of the election of Joe Biden in 2020, the biggest reason for Trump being reelected was the fact that the “cost” of ...

Nation’s Tax Unfairness Soars Under Trump

Local Commentaries

Three incredible what-ifs, one right after the other, underscore the direction of America’s tax code over the last several decades. They appear early on in the 2021 book Tax the Rich! How Lies, Loopholes and Lobbyists Make the Rich Even Richer. Shock after shock, here they come: “If you had worked every single day from the time Columbus sailed to America to the present and earned $5,000 per day, you would still have less money than Jeff Bezos makes in a week.” “If you had made $100,000 every single day since the year 1 A.D. and saved every penny, you would still have less ...

Finding The ‘One Thing’ In Life

Local Commentaries

By J. Paul Lombardo One of my favorite movies, (and its sequel, too), that almost always stops my channel surfing when I’m doing that is, the Billy Crystal, David Stern, Jack Palance Western, comedy, City Slickers. As many times as I have seen these movies, and even though I can recite most of the movie script, it never stops me from laughing out loud when the parts I find funny (and that’s a lot of laughing), occur. There was one conversation in the first movie which showed the soft, gentle side of the appeared rough, tough, “leathery” character, Curly (Palance) when he was ...

State Minimum Wage Increases Show State Values Work

Local Commentaries

As of January 1, New York State’s minimum wage for Upstate is $16.00 up from $15.50. New York State’s minimum wage was the same as the Federal minimum wage of $7.25 as recently as 2013, 13 years ago. Beginning in 2014, the State Legislature put in place increases in the State minimum wage that has brought us to $16 now. The United States Congress, in contrast, has not raised the $7.25 Federal minimum wage since 2009, 17 years ago. In the face of Federal inaction, at least 30 states have enacted state minimum wages above the Federal $7.25. That means, however, that 20 states, ...

Sizing Up The Winter Of 2026

Local Commentaries

It’s a real winter—at least that’s what all my neighbors are saying. It’s not a real winter unless local people say it is. They know. And I’ll take that one step further: it’s not a real winter unless someone who was a child in the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s says it is. We grew up in the Ice Age of Western New York, after all. Not only did we grow up in it, we walked to school in it, we were forced outside on Saturdays by our parents to go play in it. We took our road tests in snow storms, delivered newspapers by climbing six-foot snow banks, and walked two miles in ...