Drain the Swamp? Suggestion: Start With These People

Thank you, Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Yes, that's right. Not a mistake; sincerely I want to really thank you. Thank you, Notorious RBG.

Oh, not for your predictable liberal left-wing views and votes; rather, thank you for not retiring during Barack Obama's 8 years. Thank you for not being able to think far enough ahead like a seasoned chess player. Thank you for not retiring and allowing Barack Obama to replace you with a younger version of yourself; one that would probably sit on the court for decades or, at least longer than Donald Trump will be President. Speaking of Trump, thank you for gambling that he would never be elected. And thank you for some really (now hilarious) quotes; to wit:

• 7Jul 2016, about the possibility of Trump winning: "I don't want to think about that possibility, but if it should be, then everything is up for grabs."
• 8Jul 2016: "I can't imagine what this place would be - I can't imagine what the country would be - with Donald Trump as our President." Followed by "Now it's time to move to New Zealand."
• 11Jul2016: "He is a faker. He has no consistency about him. He says whatever comes into his head at the moment. He really has an ego. How has he gotten away with not turning over his tax returns?"

Well, RBG, I'm not a lawyer. You are, and before I'd ask how somebody has "gotten away" with something that infers a crime, perhaps I'd see what the law says about it. Hint, RBG: The law is silent about it. Considering all the comments you made about Trump (nothing like jaundicing yourself) , these other quotes of yours really seem ironic:

• "Judges should refrain on commenting about a candidate for public office."
• "I would not look to the U.S. Constitution if I were drafting a constitution in 2012."

Well, those comments take the guesswork out of how you got nicknamed Notorious RBG, although it's better than your other nickname floating around the internet, Darth Bader Ginsburg. With such progressive thinking like that, I wondered how your conscience justified taking an oath to uphold the Constitution, seeing as it is clearly not one you like very well. Oh, I still wonder, by the way.

We're flesh and blood mortal human beings and our days are numbered. Sooner or later, we all shuffle the mortal coil. I hear your health is not very good lately, and for the record I don't wish sickness or death on people, even those I don't respect or personally like. We hear rumors that you might not make it to see Trump re-elected. Lately we notice you're not sitting on the bench with the other justices, and further rumor has it some of the more morbid White House visitors are already casting lots for your ... robe.

I'll miss you, RBG. Oh, for about a tenth of a millisecond, at least. Then I will fall back on those famous words to everything there is a season and consider that, for whatever reason you chose, you didn't think you'd have to worry about your replacement ... that Trump would never be President ... that the thing you accused Trump of having (an ego) is also one of your weaknesses.

So, for not resigning, I thank you. It looks like you intend to go out feet first, as is your privilege as written in that old, musty document called the constitution. You know, the one you'd never draft if you were the writer.

Which, thank god, you're not able to do. Although you did try to put your fingerprints on the Bill of Rights a few times ... you remember, Heller v District of Columbia (Amendment 2)? The legality of displaying the 10 commandments in a public park (Amendment 1)? No, Ruth. Thank god your attempts to rewrite the Bill of Rights fell short.

I'll close by commenting on Chief Justice Robert's comments when he stated that there are no 'Obama judges or Trump Judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges'  when he tried to defend the the judiciary as independent. Yeah, right. (Do you really think Americans are that stupid, John?). After watching the Kavanaugh circus, where the Democrats lowered the bar to the bottom of the ocean floor trying to derail his confirmation, it is patently obvious that conservative Presidents nominate conservative judges, and liberal Presidents nominate liberal judges. Otherwise, the Senate Republicans and Democrats would not squabble about it in such a partisan way. Oh yeah, Obamacare is a tax too, even when it was specifically titled as anything but a tax. Thanks, John Roberts. You were the only one out of nine that came up with that reasoning.

Gee, I wonder how your successor will be, Ruth. No, I'm kidding. We can probably safely bet ... he or she will not follow your legacy.

Live long and prosper.

PS: I considered going to watch the syrupy homily Hollywood produced about you, you know, the RBG movie. But I was busy that night re-primering the Jeep.

PPS: I hear the weather in New Zealand is awesome this time of year.

Dear Anthony Brindisi

Hello, Congressman Brindisi.

Yes, I wince when those words are assembled together, but you won NY's 22nd Congressional District race and as such, you are entitled to them for the next 2 years. Or more, maybe. We'll see. As you can probably deduce, I'm not a big fan of yours. I also know how fast 2 years ticks by, and we'll revisit you then. In the meanwhile, here's a reality check for you.

If you don't already know it, you're in a tough position. You reside in the proverbial location known as somewhere between a rock and a hard place. Out of over 248,000 votes cast, you won by less than 4,000. 3968, if the final numbers are right. It was a close race, 50.9% to 49.1%. It's hardly a mandate, especially considering over $14 million dollars were poured into your campaign, much of it from outside New York State. With the help of a clearly biased local newspaper, you eked out a win.

As you finish out your first week in Congress, I note you've made a few bad choices already.

The big mistake you have already made was throwing away your vote for Speaker of the House. Joe Biden isn't a Congressman and wasn't even in the running. If this wasn't a political stunt, then nothing ever is, or has been. Yes, you told us you were not going to support Nancy Pelosi for Speaker. But you didn't tell us you were going to throw away your vote for Bozo Biden either. You could have at least joined with some other Democrats and actually used your 22nd District vote for good. You chose to throw it away and that's just plain goofy. We're not fooled, and we're certainly not amused either.

Besides, we kind of already know how your relationship with Nancy is, and if I were a betting man, I'd put money that you are going to dance the Nancy Pelosi tango practically right away. After all, she did pump  ... $14,000 into your campaign, didn't she? We'll be watching, Anthony.

New York State is a blue state, but Upstate New York isn't very blue. Nobody knows that better than Andrew Cuomo, who skated into the Governor's mansion for the 3rd time ... winning only 15 out of 62 NY Counties. Upstate, he won 6. That's pretty shabby and if there were an electoral college in NYS, he'd be out of a job right now.

Considering the kakistocracy (yes, it's a real word, google it) in place in our state, it's no wonder we're suffering a population exodus of epic proportion in the last few decades. In Oneida County alone, the numbers show we've lost about 7% of our population since 2000. In real numbers, that's more than 2 people a day, every day of every year leaving Oneida County (and NY State) for good. This doesn't bode well for you, Anthony. You're the new kid on the block and you barely squeaked into office. NY State has 27 Congressional Districts at the moment, but this is 2019 and next year there is going to be another federal census. At the moment we're projected to lose 2 seats cutting it to 25 districts. Number 1, this means the footprint of the districts are going to get larger and number 2, it means some of the current incumbents are going to be in the Congressional bread line in a short few years. Do you think you're going to survive? You barely won, Anthony. Upstate may be fickle, but it comes back to its senses sooner or later.

Besides, some of your Assembly positions didn't really set well with some people. Sponsoring the late-term abortion bill didn't earn you bonus points with many undecided voters. Abortion is probably the last thing a Roman Catholic Assemblyman should have taken a hard stance on, but you did. Why you chose to support the wholesale slaughter of developed viable human beings in utero is something only your conscience can come to terms with. Abortion is an unpopular political topic in any event, and this country is divided over it. Roe v Wade didn't legalize it; it only decided that it was a state decision, not a federal decision. And, as legal matters go, it got warped the more and more it was handled by different courts. Until the Supreme Court revisits this (if they ever do), expanding it to making the murder of  human beings during birth legal ... is probably not a political position you want to brag about to your constituents.

Let's talk about money in politics. I'm not entirely sure how much was spent on your campaign, but something over $14 million is the number floated around internet sources. The 22nd Congressional District has a little over 720,000 (about 1/3 of them actually balloted) residents. You could have sent every person in the district $20 with money like that. I'm sure some people would have appreciated it more than those awful PAC ads in slow-motion black and white contorting the views and faces of the opposition ... and yes, in this case, both sides are guilty. Those ads turn stomachs, Anthony, and if there's anything that I will support you on, it'd be changing the PAC system via McCain-Feingold (what a joke) to kill that vile character assassination the general populace is subjected to every 2 years.

Besides, are you going to try to tell us you're independent ... that you can work with both sides, when you have a $14mil political debt to repay? Do you think these donors gave it to you out of the goodness of their own hearts? No, Anthony. To the big donors, you're nothing more than a loaf of Wonder Bread on the shelf. They bought you, you took the money and now they're going to come calling every now and then asking you for something, a vote on this, funding for that ... No, Anthony. You sold your soul for the campaign cash and some of these people are going to bare their fangs and let you know it. If you don't curtsy to them nicely, they'll find somebody else to take their money sooner or later. Probably sooner, in your case.

So, Congressman Brindisi, how do you like the job? You're up for re-election almost already, and remember: The President is up for re-election the same year, and he won NY 22 by almost 16 points in his first run. You're facing being on the short list when 2 seats are shaved out of the NY Congressional delegation. I'm not sure the local RINOs like Griffo and Picente will be able to help you next time. Griffo has his own problems, the main one being for the first time ever he's in a minority seat and the shock value of that is probably going to assist him in losing what hair he has left. Picente's choir is not sounding all that enthusiastic lately either, and his seat is up for grabs soon also.

Well, enough for now. You're a freshman, and I guess I should take that into account. But do note NY-22 is paying attention. And we're taking notes, too. See you in less than 2 years.

PS: I'm sure it wasn't intentional, but you probably cost Dave Gordon the county clerks seat with the high Democrat voter turnout in Utica and Rome. So indirectly, every time I wait in an inefficient Oneida County DMV line, I'll think of you when I consider how badly it needed to be fixed and ... wasn't because Sandy DePerno rode your coattails to re-election.

You're being lied to...

Every day. From every possible angle. Every Day.

Yeah, you are. Every day, the news you are being spoon-fed is laced with half-truths and whole lies. Some lies are obvious and some are really pretty sneaky. The news industry is feeding you lies wholesale banking on the fact that human nature makes us readily susceptible to believing what we hear. Oh, the airplane crashes, erupting volcanoes and such are pretty much ordinary news, but anything to do with politics is laced with descriptive adjectives and misleading headlines meant to influence your thinking.  And the reason why they do it is clear: The liberal mass media hates Donald Trump and will stoop to any depth to lower your opinion of him. The continued onslaught of manufactured crisises by the liberal media is the preferred method of delivery.

It's almost like pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey. One week it's about the children of illegal immigrants being separated from their parents (a regular Obama-era practice), the next it's the Supreme Court candidate, and then back to Russia, Putin, and whatever sort of darkness they can cast on their take of the events. It's their ink, their paper, their broadcasting equipment and they get to choose the words. Never mind that they get it wrong. Never mind that the cover of Time magazine with Trump and the small child is a compete and utter 100% lie and fabrication, one that resulted in Time's apologetic retraction. They will cherry-pick what fits their agenda first and foremost and they will seek out comments from individuals friendly to their cause.

Take for example when I see President Trump is meeting with Vladimir Putin and it's presented as Trump's fondness for the Russian leader, I immediately know I've been lobbied by Trump-hating liberal news media to believe Trump actually has a fondness for Putin. Does he? Who determined that? It's an opinion, not  factual news.  It is a deliberate attempt to make you suspect that Trump is up to no good, and further sway your opinion against a President that the liberal media detests.

The other night, I watched Lester Holt open NBC News with the story that Trump attacked our allies. Good Lord, how awful. Did he use airplanes and bombs? But when the story got to the meat of it, we found out the President is telling these allies they are going to have to start paying more for their own military defense. This is an attack? No, it's another example of network news that hates Trump and is going to carefully and continually choose words to deliver the message that no matter what he does, they are going to do everything in their power to present it in a bad light. Let's take a careful look at how the information you base your opinions on is presented to you.

First, let's identify the majority of news presenters and how they feed you their lies. For convenience and simplicity, I've broken the news groups into subsets and I've grouped them together. I've even assigned them a weight, but let me be the first to say my numbers are just an estimate and probably vary greatly. They may be close for some and far off for others; but in any event the news we hear and how we hear it adds up to 100%. Feel free to ignore my percentages if you think they are inaccurate.

Average people get their news from major TV and radio networks. These include (but are not limited to) ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, CNN and MS-NBC. I've assigned 40% as a number to start from realizing that this is an arbitrary number, but I have to start somewhere. These major network news channels do dominate the airwaves.

The next three groups are Local news, Internet/Social media and Print media. By these I mean your local newspaper/TV/Radio/subscription news magazines and what you read on social media such as Facebook (or other internet sites). Beware of what you read on the internet! A good deal of it is completely made up foolishness, and what is actually real is often mixed or slanted so as to make you believe it all because some of it is true.

The last two groups are entertainment and other. Entertainment would be late-night TV such as the two Jimmy's, Colbert, SNL and daytime feeds such as The View and Rush Limbaugh. I assign these such a low number because most of us are smart enough to recognize these people are bobble-heads that take news and twist it into jokes we might find funny. In the case of SNL and the View, these are off-the-chart left wingnut shows that play the same broken record over and over again, so much that many of us won't bother with them because we know they're played out by left-wingers doing the bidding of other left-wingers. Remember, when you see people clap on these shows, it's because their bosses turned on the applause sign to emphasize a point; more often than not, a liberal viewpoint.

And there are some wild cards in the mix: News sources that sell their stories (AP, Reuters) ... Off the wall liberal college campuses that brainwash students and then send them out into the world ... and some radical far-left and far-right groups that pose as legitimate news sources, but are pretty transparent. These news sources will do everything to paint themselves out as reliable and untainted, but don't be so easily fooled. They are selling the same soap with a different label. Add to this mix the opinion pages and political cartoons that have a left-bias; pretty soon you begin to see how tilted the tables are in what is called news. Let's look at another example of media bias and use the coverage of President Trump when he travels to a location to give a speech. Fox News covered it extensively, giving the President hours of prime-time TV coverage. MS-NBC covered eight minutes of his location-based speeches since April. CNN didn't give it any prime-time coverage whatsoever.

The point here is that if there is a chance that airing the President will make him look good, the liberal media will give it little or no coverage.

Have you watched any of the White House press conferences in the last year? When reporters (and I use the term loosely) ask a question, often they put an opinionated narrative into their comments before they actually ask a question. When did this begin? Just ask the questions, please. We already know what you think politically;

So, looking at 100% of where you get your news ... Based on the chart above, how would you break them down on the political spectrum? Conservative or Liberal?

Overwhelmingly, Liberal. Fox may lean Conservative, Rush Limbaugh may be a right winger, but after that, it doesn't take much to conclude the vast majority of your daily news feed is being carefully crafted to deliver a left-leaning bias in what you hear. CNN and MS-NBC are pretty much liberal organs that often can't even get their corrections right. People like Chris Mathews and Rachael Madcow are nothing more than snake-oil salespeople. They prey on weak minds that want to believe the Kool-Aid these people hash out on a regular basis. Sadly, my siblings and their families drink this Kool-Aid readily and worse, believe it. I'm the lone Republican left standing.

Is all of the Liberal viewpoint wrong? No. Is all of the Conservative viewpoint wrong? Again, no. But the sources aren't even close to being balanced. If the world were flat, many of them would have fallen off the left edge by now.

I'm going to leave you with some sage advice: Be suspicious of what you hear from the mass media organizations. Learn to question what they say. Cast a jaundiced eye on the adjectives they use and ask yourself why they would choose, out of thousands of possible words, to have carefully chosen those. Don't readily accept what you read or hear no matter how reliable you deem the source. Consider every picture as photoshopped until proven otherwise. Disregard memes posted on social media for the most part.

Or, just keep drinking the Kool-Aid. It comes in many flavors nowadays.


-Don

Dear ABC Television:

To: Ms. Channing Dungey, somewhere in ABC TV Lala-land

Dear Ms. Dungey:

I see you canceled your highly-watched and successful TV remake of the Roseanne show after she shot her mouth off. What she said was not very PC, but you see, those of us end-consumers of the crap you put on TV really don't care what TV stars say in their own time. We're numbed with the endless stream of political diarrhea from other brain-dead Tinseltown personalities and we notice the industry hasn't really addressed their potty mouth. It came as a shock when you canned one of the TV shows that we would actually pencil in time to watch. Rebooting Roseanne was a stroke of pure genius. Americans are nostalgic and we really liked the idea of catching up with the Connor family 25 years later. You didn't hurt Roseanne Barr anywhere near as much as you hurt your viewing audience ... You know, the ones you shove the ads to that end up paying for it all. You were worried about losing advertisers? Tut tut. The ones that are stupid enough to publicize they are leaving over what she said are the ones many of us are going to go out of our way to avoid anyway. The blacklist works both ways, Ms. Dungey. If you don't believe me, just ask a few million NRA members where they stopped spending their money recently.

I have to ask in all earnest, Ms. Dungey why you and your ilk have turned a blind eye to what others have said and either never apologized for, or took their sweet time for a half-baked insincere apology later on ... Let's start with one of your own, Channing. May I call you Channing?

Your network runs a daytime show called 'The View' and may I say it is one of the worst pieces of excrement on the air... ever. Simply put, it is a veritable toilet that one Joy Behar seems to dominate. When she shot her mouth off about the Vice-President and his religion, she offended TENS OF MILLIONS with her comments when she intimated Pence was a mental case for how he addressed deity regularly. Her apology not only came late, but only after an uproar which, as you know, may affect ratings and cost you some advertisers. Why didn't you fire Joy Behar  then, Channing? Why don't you fire her now? Why the double standard? If there is any one person that rises to the top of my list of people I'd like to shove a fluffy cream pie in their face, she's the winner. Considering the people who have earned place and show slots on my list, the fact that she's number one speaks volumes on how average people like me rate your network.

You're not alone; many other channels boil the liberal cauldron also. When Bill Maher dropped the N-bomb on his show, he found out quickly it was not well received. He ran for cover, hid for a while and now he's back blowing his liberal horn. When the feckless runt Samantha Bee used a gutter slang word to describe the President's daughter, her apology was also nowhere as immediate as Roseanne Barrs was, yet Barr is the only one that paid the price. I'm beginning to notice a pattern here, Channing. Liberals get a wink and a nod and Conservatives get the guillotine immediately. We're not stupid, Channing. We can tell the difference. Actually, some of us think your canning her had more to do with delivering a pro-Trump message than what she said. Perhaps the danger of Roseanne delivering an explanation of why Trump got elected was dangerous to you. So you waited for the former stand-up comedienne to shoot off her mouth as she always does, and that was that. She may have handed you the rope, but you pulled the lever on the trap-door just as quick as you could. In your haste, tens of millions viewers like me were hit in the crossfire. It's not as if your channel lineup is anything to write home about, Channing.

I notice one of your divisions (ABC News) is not doing all that well, so much so to the point of having to sell your prime location in Manhattan and move some distance away. I notice your network is not getting top ratings. Yet you shot from the hip without taking time to ruminate over things. You screwed up, Channing and we're pissed. We're taking notice of the rumors that you plan to reboot the Roseanne show, sans Roseanne.. Let me save you some time: Most of us won't watch it. Sara Gilbert without Roseanne to prop her up is a nobody. It didn't take her long to verbally stab Roseanne in the back after you canned the show, and considering how Gilbert owes her career to Roseanne, we found that distasteful. Here's a heads-up, Channing: Don't bother.

Thanks for nothing, Channing. You over-reacted and we're the ones suffering for it. If it's any consolation, you didn't make my pie-in-the-face list, though. Try harder, maybe next time.

Sincerely,

A former ABC watcher.

Ain't Nobody Got Time For That

It's the Christmas season, so let's take a look at who has been naughty and who has been nice in Upstate NY.

This year, I confess I was stupid. I decided to run against, as it turned out, a machine politician for the Oneida County Board of Legislators. With the help of the machine (a State Senator who turned out to be her $75,000 bagman and the County Executive who worked for her behind the scenes), she won. As I have always believed, people deserve whomever they elect. Let's take a look at Oneida County and see what the people are going to get in their gift bag (aka the tax bill that will arrive in your mail shortly before next year):

Your first present is the salary increase of 91% that the Board of Legislators gave themselves. Timing being important, they somehow managed to vote on it after the election. Gee, I wonder why. One of the best reforms that could ever happen would be moving election day to a week or two before taxes are due. $16,000 per annum (more for plum positions) for 12 official meetings a year is ludicrous. Knowing that there are people in the district I ran in that live at or near poverty wages (take a walk through Chadwicks; it's not 90210) that live (in some cases) at or below that $16k a year, I'm embarrassed to live here. As I learned after 12 years on New Hartford Town Board, there are quite a few people living one paycheck away from disaster. Every elected official should experience what it's like to live on a shoestring at some point in their life so as to know the impacts their decisions may have on those they govern. Sadly, when I ran I addressed this by promising  I would not vote for any increase larger than what the rank and file workers got. It's a pretty safe bet nobody else got 91%... and if I'm not mistaken, there are 2 unions at an impasse with county government and they have not had any pay increase for quite a while ... years, if what I'm told is true. But, ain't nobody got time for that.

Your second present is the big increase the County Executive wants, and most likely will get considering how the dog and pony show is run. He thinks he's worth a raise of 22%, which in real dollars is over $25,000. $114k to $140k? Ain't nobody got time for that, Mr. Picente. You're not doing a great job even though you think you are. (Humbleness is not your forte.) Looking at your (yes, YOUR) Marcy-Nano failure, your refusal to submit a budget that lowers the sales tax (I'll get to that in the next present), your blowing the OC budget up ~ $15 million in one budget year ... And other idiotic ideas, like touting how you're trying to get Amazon here .. As if we're in the running! FWIW, Amazon has been courted by better than us. Chicago has offered to let Amazon pocket $1.3 billion dollars in income taxes paid by it's employees to do whatever it wants to with the money. Chula Vista has discussed giving Amazon $100 million in free land along with a 30 year exemption on property taxes (worth $300 million). Boston is willing to get in bed with Amazon with a task force of city-paid employees. Fresno has pledged to set aside 85% of all taxes and fees generated by Amazon into a fund partly overseen by company executives. And you think Oneida County is in the running? What can you offer them that even begins to compare with these things? And the real question is, if we have to bribe companies by giving away everything, why would we even want them here? Employment is nice and all, but infrastructure load and support costs could easily put us in the red. But yet, we (the taxpayers) still pour money into your going-nowhere projects. Look how your AMS deal in the Marcy project went bad: A nice big, new building with a big lighted sign that proudly said 'AMS' was constructed ... and after it was built, they pulled out. What, you built the building and put the sign there with no inked commitment? No good faith money? Please correct me if I'm wrong because we're going to pay for these boneheaded ideas for decades to come regardless if what happens.

Your third present is the 8.75% sales tax (highest in Upstate NY) that could have been reduced by half a percent so easily in this budget. Watching a $15 million dollar increase in any one years budget tells me that the money was there to reduce the sales tax levy and the County Execcutive refused to do it. He chose to spend it. According to one legislators website, a quarter of a percent equals about $7 million dollars in revenue; this means $15 million is easily able to wipe out half a percent. Considering our immediate bordering counties can run their governments with a sales tax rate ranging from 7.75% to 8.25%, the question is obvious: Knowing we are over-taxed and over-regulated and it is the most identifiable cause of our population loss (10,000 people every 10 years since the mid-1970s), the question begs: What course of corrective action should government be taking to stem that loss? The answer is obvious, of course. But again ... Ain't nobody got time for that.

Your fourth present is the bill you are going to pay for a downtown hospital that is going to come in (after everything is totaled up) at about the billion-dollar mark. I can understand why the Utica Mayor wants it, but looking at it from outside, I ask myself why county leadership is pushing for it also. It is obvious most people in the county do not want to go into the inner city for healthcare. It is clearly unpopular considering that if we really, really need a new hospital, the existing St. Lukes Hospital complex can easily accommodate it. St. Luke's is already tax-exempt which would save the city from removing four or so city blocks of taxable property via the eminent domain process, there is already a separate power plant at St Luke's and traffic wise, it is more centrally located. But the county and the city are already moving ahead by approving the construction of a parking garage there ($45 million before change orders and cost upgrades) ... I really don't want to pay for this and most certainly I will go to Cooperstown, Syracuse or Albany before I will consider going to downtown's new hospital. And I'm not alone. This new hospital is going to be such an issue of contention that it will take a generation or two to get comfortable with. In the meanwhile, it will have to be paid for and we all know where that money is coming from. I feel sorry for Uticans who own property because they will get to pay for it twice: Once in their city taxes and again in their county tax. Why county leadership turns a deaf ear to vox populi is beyond me and I just add it to the raw stupidity of those who are better at running political campaigns than they are at governing. Lastly, a very smart person told me long ago not to put all of your eggs into one basket. Currently, we have three hospitals serving the region. If there is a major catastrophe and it impacts one of the hospitals to the point of closing, we still have two others to rely on. Do we really need a new hospital, and is it wise to have only one hospital in the area? If for any reason it is forced to close (use your imagination, bad things have happened to hospitals before) ... are we protected? Uticans, again your future is being mortgaged: They have eyes on the Police Station and Court Building, and if they get what they want, you are going to get to pay for a new multi-million dollar facility to replace these. The rumblings are already there; last week the newspaper ran an article about how the police station is old and has problems. You're being softened up, do you see it coming? Ain't nobody got time for that.

Your last present is that this area is going to continue to suffer and that is directly a result of the decisions of those you have elected over the last three or so decades. A look at the political personalities almost guarantees it. You have a County Executive who loathes our (same party) Congresswoman and has gone out of his way to throw every stone possible in her path, you have a State Senator who has hurt her in the past by helping redistrict her previous Assembly district into oblivion (how did that turn out, Joe), and you have both of them seemingly putting her almost-guaranteed opponent into the limelight lately. How these people will function together is a mystery to me. Meanwhile, about 1,000 people a year are voting with their feet and leaving for greener pastures. Some head to states with no income tax and (much) lower sales tax rates, some head to states with much lower property taxes and some just look at the bleak employment picture and head out. All of this is happening, btw, while thousands (estimated over 25,000 so far) of refugee immigrants are moved into the area. No, I'm not against this resettling. Filling the empty inner city housing and getting people here is a better solution than continued atrophy. We need better leadership. But, as somebody once said ... Ain't nobody got time for that.

Merry Christmas.

Now for National Politics: The Humor is the Profit

Last week I received an unexpected piece of mail. It was a request for a political donation from a US Senator from the Boston area. Yes, Ms. Elizabeth Warren has somehow decided that I am friendly to her views and that I might be inclined to donate money to her "grassroots" cause. Ms. Warren couldn't be more mistaken; I am not one of her supporters and if there ever was a lesson in grassroots politics, it came from the current 45th President who recently demonstrated how to get elected as a populist. Here is some of her propaganda:

Yeah, I couldn't help but laugh. Ooh scary! The GOP's heavy hitters are here and We'll win if we're united were real gut-busters, but the best one was Thank you for being a part of this. ... Which almost is as humorous as your claim that Breibart is taking aim at you and using some billionaire to do it. Why, the nerve! I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess it's not Bloomberg or Soros. To add insult to injury, you resort to the politics of fear in your message and of course, that's page two out of Saul Alinsky's handbook for anarchists. Or is it page three? And FWIW, Breibart is taking aim at all of the liberal left, not just you. But really, aren't you taking aim at each other every day?

No thanks, Elizabeth. You are one of the last people I will consider donating to in this upcoming political season. I'm thinking more that I'll contribute to the Conservative Republican representing the Congressional district I live in next year. So that you don't think I'm some sort of sexist white supremacist, my Representative is Claudia Tenney and she's much more in tune with how Upstate NY thinks than you are.

But thank you for sending out a mailing to somebody that doesn't think very highly of you or your politics. It is always good to see the opposition at work, and it's good to see you work so hard 'protecting Americans' as if your party is the only one interested in doing so. (They're not, FWIW.) The last time I mentioned you online, I used a term to describe you that upset some of my kin: I called you Fauxcahontas and they expressed displeasure. Personally, I can't think of any one word that describes you better and it comes from ... ah, let's say you got mixed up in the Brian Williams era and conflated the claim that you were part native American. I'd like to congratulate you for choosing Cherokee; it's the same tribe Bill Clinton used when he said one of his grandmothers was Cherokee. I can't find a popular male native name to put faux in front of that quite has the ring of your popular nickname, but we all know Bill Clinton and his wife as ... well, let's just say they are economical with the truth just as you seem to be.

There’s a running joke in Indian country: If you meet somebody who you wouldn’t necessarily think is Native, but they say they’re Native, chances are they’ll tell you they’re Cherokee.

Thank you for choosing the left fork of the road in claiming your false heritage. I read your two-page letter and I already know about the "fight." Problem is, Ms. F. Cahontas, the side in the fight you've been waging since Election Day 2016 (I love the Youtube videos showing you say Donald Trump will never be President)  is not the side I'm on. Frankly, I view you as an obstructionist.

And after researching your net worth online, it appears you are one of the 1% ! A $2.4 million dollar house in Cambridge and a DC Condo at 3/4 of a mil don't really put you in the trenches at a 9-5 job every day. Looking at net worth is always subjective, but yours seems to be quite a bit more than mine. I'm not sure how Harvard law professors who taught one class get to be worth ... $5 to $10 million, but it seems your luck got better since you were elected. Now tell us about giving you money again. All I can think of you at this point is as a mendicant begging for alms when in fact you've never been in the bread line in your life.

So please forgive me for not sending you money. It seems you have plenty already, and as I always say, put your money where your mouth is, Ms. Cahontas.

Your friend,

-Don

PS: I'm going to go out on a limb here and paraphrase you: You will never be President. God help us if you ever are.