Everyone needs a role model, someone to look up to, demonstrating by example how to better live our lives and nobly conduct our affairs.  Finding such people is rare because possession of those qualities is scarce.  Recognizing the purveyor of such wisdom requires astute observation, as well as some luck, so not to miss the opportunity.  You must seek it.  It won’t find you if you’re not paying attention.

In my life, that man was Joe Hester.  Many have known him as a politician, or a lawyer, or a judge.  To his friends and me he was just Joe.

We met on the squash court at the Y in the 70’s, he, an accomplished player and me the upstart beginner.  Joe was a fine athlete, a collegiate tennis player at Yale, a solid A level squash player.  It took me three years to develop the skills in order to be barely competitive with Joe and another few years to begin winning.  I think Joe admired the tenacity of a self-taught, public school upstart chasing, catching, matching and finally surpassing the Ivy League, varsity team, private lesson stalwart.  The grace he demonstrated during that year’s long transition was inspiring.  Rather than being bitter about his defeat, Joe celebrated my improvement.  He saw it as a project he helped to flourish.  My advancements gave Joe as much pleasure as if they were his own because indeed they were; we were making each other better by being fierce competitors, pushing each other to advancements impossible to cultivate without mutual adversity.

As our relationship grew beyond the squash court, I came to know Joe’s family, his friends, and his personal life.  Joe was uniquely genuine.  When he asked how you were, he really wanted to know.  If a blank canvas expresses a life and our living provides the tints and brush strokes, Joe’s landscape combined the vividness of bold colors with the quiet subtleties of subdued shadows and a depth of field that commands your attention.

Squash, competition and the adversity of the contest exposes phoniness and character flaws as spatters of thick, black oil onto a vivid, bright white canvas that for better or worse, hangs in plain sight in the gallery of men’s minds, unalterable except by performance, honor and nobility.  Joe’s canvas glistens only with colors.  Nowhere appears a flaw or an opaque, stretched, errand shadow, only the vividness of a life well lived.

Joe passed away last week.  Family and friends celebrated his life while consoling each other with sharing personal stories of how he touched us all.  It was one of the greatest honors of my life to know Joe and humbling to be asked to carry him to his final resting place.  Joe never said good-bye at the end of a phone call, ironic when judges generally are known for always having the last word.  So, as usual, the conversation ends without a good-bye from him, but this time, a final good-bye from me to my friend.  Godspeed.

Whether you love or hate guns, we all formulate the same question after mass shootings:

How do we prevent evildoers?

People are evil not things.   Police represent the good and gang-bangers the bad, yet whether guns are in the holsters of police officers or in the waistbands of gang members, they are just interchangeable objects.

Peoples intentions define good and evil, not the objects they wield.  Intent is uniquely human.  Objects have no intention.

Frustration comes from the realization that identifying evil in people might only happen after a horrible act.  Controlling objects is easier than controlling people.  Vanquishing guns does nothing to address evil.  Evelyn Waugh reminds us that, “There’s only one great evil in the world today. Despair.”

A free society recognizes and acknowledges the existence of and even the toleration of evil amongst its members.  Mikhail Bulgakov said, “What would your good do if evil didn’t exist, and what would the earth look like if all the shadows disappeared?”

Ursula LeGuin answers him: “To light a candle is to cast a shadow.”

Realizing that freedom casts many shadows, we should not despair over the existence of evil, nor let its threat extinguish our resolve to remain free.

Conservative pundits that enjoy a national audience have got this whole Harvey Weinstein story wrong.

First, one will never win any argument or change anyone’s opinion by simply pointing our hypocrisy.  You don’t change minds while simultaneously criticizing and condemning people.

Second, Weinstein is a bellwether in the hedonistic world that is Hollywood.  Why would this kind of behavior come as a surprise?  Does anyone really believe that the smut, filth, garbage and evil that bubbles out of the film and entertainment industry does so under the leadership of noble and virtuous people?  My dad used to say, “If you lay down with dogs, you’ll get up with fleas.”  In order to become rich and famous, the so-called “victims” in this case knowingly flirt with this evil, contemptuous caldron of deviant devils that make or break careers.  There are no victims here, just slimy opportunists and

high-risk wannabes willing to sacrifice their souls for celebrity, their dignity for dollars and their honor for vanity.

Abortion is to our generation what slavery was to our forefathers and equally worthy of another civil war.  This stage 4 cancer on America’s soul rests in our last best hope of a constitutionally based Supreme Court and a courageous President willing to right a moral wrong.

58 million innocent lives snuffed out along with the unknown promises their unique personas were meant to deliver to mankind.  Exterminating perhaps the greatest thinker of all times, undiscovered cures for diseases, poets, Presidents, popes, paupers and prophets, all erased, their glory and the worlds rewards of their accomplishments extinguished along with them.

The biblical character Jeremiah, challenged God when he was chosen to become a prophet.  God answered by proclaiming, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you.”

WWJD bracelets were all the rage a few years ago, meaning:  “What Would Jesus Do?”

Dare we ask the Creator of Life His thoughts on abortion?

A pro-abortion stance today is the equivalent moral failing of a pro-slavery stance in 1850 only worse because slaves, unlike dead babies, were alive and were freed.

If you believe that Senator Bernie Sanders idea of universal medical care is a legitimate “right” that you are entitled to, you need this refresher course in civics and the Constitution.

There are two basic types of rights; natural rights which come from God and apply to all people everywhere and then the additional rights, created by man in the form of laws supported by the US Constitution, expressly unique to this country.

Examples of natural rights are life, liberty, freedom, self-determination, self-defense and the pursuit of our own internally determined goals and aspirations.  All rights have conditions; the main one being that exercising a right is legitimate only in the absence of interfering with someone else.  It is also true that in spite of having rights, securing them has no absolute guarantee, even within the US.  The simplest and most important right, that of life itself, can be forfeited by law or nature, examples: (the death penalty or justifiable homicide), or by Planned Parenthood, (via abortion and a tortured view of the Constitution), and finally, by being struck by lightning or simply dying of old age.

Laws stemming from the Constitution define personal and property rights.  Examples of personal rights include the right to assemble, vote, speak, have a trial by jury, not be compelled to self-incrimination, etc.  Property right examples include property ownership and the freedom to enjoy the fruits of your labor on and from that property.  Again, these rights are not absolute and can be abridged by issues of law, nature and lawlessness, examples: (you can’t yell fire in a movie theatre, your property can be destroyed by a hurricane, and over-reaching government can miss-use eminent domain regulation or EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) regulations can render your property useless.

President Calvin Coolidge said:

“Ultimately property rights and personal rights are the same thing.”

No right is absolute and absolutely no right is legitimate when it compels others to action in order to serve someone else.  Demanding performance from others for our own self-interest is by definition socialism pushing towards communism as defined by the following dictionary definition of the term:

“a political and economic theory of social organization that advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.”

This describes the “single-payer” system of health care as Senator Sanders defines it.

Today, nearly 130 million people, or approximately 40% of the US population is already on Medicare or Medicaid at the expense of the taxpayer.  If the government would de-regulate the insurance industry, the free market forces would create competitive advantage and then insurance would be affordable.  Competition makes everything better and the private sector consistently demonstrates better efficiency, proficiency and expedience than any governmental agency, (think DMV or IRS.)

Demanding and then expecting others to secure your “rights” is a moral failure and will steepen our already sharp trajectory into an unrecoverable decline.

Communist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin coined the term, “useful idiots” and what is happening regarding the proposed natural gas compression station in Fenton, NY lends itself well by comparison.  Lenin predicted that liberals and other weak-minded people in the West could be relied upon to be ‘useful idiots’ as far as the Soviet Union was concerned.  Inciting indigestion via ignorance, those local like-minded haters of capitalism, fossil fuels and America’s progress use the misinformed citizens in and around Fenton to gin up opposition to this job-creating business.

Even though the company proposing this project complied with all zoning, review, regulatory and statutory requirements from the local, county, state and federal governments, anti-big business, fossil fuel activists created false narratives to scare people into action.  Opposition has to happen under false pretenses because the activists understand that their hatred of capitalism is not acceptable in the main stream of American thoughts and values, so they are forced to fabricate alternative excuses explaining why they are trying to shut down this development.

Torn from page one of the community organizer handbook on activating the masses is to create a narrative that involves danger to their children.  Using the nearby schools as reasons for denying this project, opponents have no explanation for their apparent disinterest in safety when it comes to the myriad of potentially deadly substances passing by the school on a continual basis by both rail and interstate highways, both located closer to the schools than this project site.

Although the activists would have the public believing that the vast majority of citizens are opposed to this endeavor, the fact that only a dozen of these supposedly concerned folks took advantage of a free tour of a similar facility should speak volumes about facts fighting fictions.

Page two of the community organizer handbook is the threat to property values and quality of life concerns.  Again, this is an obvious canard if you simply look around.  This project is being built in an industrial area, along side of many other industrial businesses, including at least one that stores thousands of gallons of petroleum products on-site, right next to the river, and even closer to the local high school than this proposed location.  The area is already zoned industrial, and it is adequately separated from the communities’ neighborhoods surrounding it.

Recognize this for what it actual is:  Radical anti-capitalism, anti-fossil fuel, anti-progress new-era socialists engaging the “useful idiots” of the Chenango Valley school board to do their bidding in stopping a completely legal and legitimate business from creating much needed jobs, while using the taxpayers monies to fund a ridiculous lawsuit.

It’s embarrassing enough to find ones self unwittingly being played like a pawn as a “useful idiot.”  It’s quite another to learn that your tax dollars are being spent by them.

Symbols continue to be more important to liberals than actual results.  This explains their sudden outburst of outrage when it comes to monuments and statues.  If their collective distain for such things was genuine, why now, why not last year, or the year before, or the year before that?  These icons to our countries heritage can’t talk, hear or fight back, so they make perfect targets for the liberal cowards who assail them.

Denying history doesn’t erase it.  The Democrats were pro-slavery.  Destroying the symbols of our legacy changes nothing except exposing those responsible for the lawless and destructive criminal thugs that they are, attempting to wash away the stains of their own historic sins buy assaulting Trump in effigy.

Slavery predates the formation of the United States by more than 3,000 years and was practiced in the first civilizations in Mesopotamia, continuing in almost every other civilization in the world.  The Byzantine-Ottoman wars resulted in enslaving large numbers of Christians in the 1400’s and as late as the beginning of the nineteenth century, an estimated three-quarters of all people were trapped in bondage against their will in some form of slavery or serfdom.  The United States of America was the first civilization that not only recognized the evils of slavery, but was willing to fight a civil war to end it.  More than 600,000 Americans sacrificed their lives in order to do just that.

Judging two-hundred year old societal norms from the lofty heights of todays supposed enlightenment movement’s morally superior frame of reference is unethical and unfair.  The human condition has evolved and become enlightened in the quickest and many would argue best ways, in a culture created and nurtured in and by the United States of America.

Along with slavery, we also burned witches at the stake, publicly tortured and even executed criminals in the public square, mistreated and killed American Indians and unjustly interred thousands of Japanese-Americans during WWII.  At the time, these were thought of as good, sound practices, not worthy of debate.  The examination of those actions is clearer, brighter and more discerning from the self-righteous perch of self-proclaimed aggrandizement courtesy of the smug wisdom of the liberal elite here and now.  Tomorrow’s analysis of today’s abortion position in America will rival our enlightened distain for yesterday’s slavery as sins of the worst order, unimaginable in that present time.

The bigger and more important point is that the United States of America was willing to put at risk the very survival of our new nation in order to end the evils of slavery and we did so at significant risk, sacrifice and cost.  Ironically, the hoodlums currently threatening our monuments, our history, our statues and our fellow citizenry are as dangerous and poisonous to today’s nation as their fellow travelers in the Democrat party were to us in 1861 when the first civil war began.  Continuing and expanding their behavior might just see them face the same fate as their forefathers.

In the effort to censor and destroy conservatives, the discredited liberal media machine has wrongly intertwined the phrases “White supremacists” and “White nationalists” in order to falsely unite the two into a singular meaning vilifying conservatives.

The truth is that nationalists of any color, any race identify with their particular culture, color, ethnicity, or race, within the shared context of also being citizens of a particular country.  Supremacists view themselves as superior to others.  When you add the word “white” to either term, therein lies the dog-whistle; however it harkens to the hounds of liberalisms hatred, falling silent on the ear of conservatives.

Major media outlets long ago abandoned reporting, and instead now recruit for, define and orchestrate the liberal agenda.  Relying on the mistaken notion that the average consumer of news is too stupid to know they are being led, media elitists forge, twist and manipulate public opinion disguised as reporting.  This is why they hate the alternative news outlets like the Fox network and talk radio.

Traditional media’s veneer of credibility melts in the light and heat of the unvarnished truth and they grossly miscalculate the wisdom of the average American at their own peril.

Freedom

A classic example of Not-In-My-Backyard, (NIMBY) is evident concerning the proposed natural gas compressor station in the Town of Fenton.  An active rail line runs through this area, transporting all sorts of explosive, corrosive and poisonous materials continually, every day.  A major interstate highway runs along side this area accommodating thousands of trucks carrying explosive, corrosive and poisonous materials traversing the area continually, every day.  If safety is really the issue, where is the fear of these already ongoing activities?  Until a few years ago, the Hillcrest Federal Depot stored a wide host of military goods and supplies right in the heart of that neighborhood and nary a word about safety.  Not 300 yards from this proposed facility, a petroleum product distribution company already exists with many trucks delivering all kinds of fuels all over the area.  And what about the countless convenience stores everywhere, with thousands of gallons of gasoline directly beneath our feet.

This project creates 150 local jobs.  The pipe is already here, it is in the ground.  The company complied with all of the rules and regulations in making this business decision and the legal permits were sought after and obtained.  For those of us with a good memory, you’ll recall the former Port Dickinson mayor Wilfley fought the placement of this pipeline hammer and tong, claiming the Port Dickinson Park would be dangerous and ruined.  That was all false hysteria.

On what authority did the Chenango Valley School District decide, on behalf of taxpayers, that this was an issue worth suing over?  Did the Board of Education survey the taxpayers?  What about those of us that actually think this is a good idea?  I live in Port Dickinson and I support this project.  Not only did the school board exceed and abuse their authority, they saw fit to hire a law firm from Albany, thereby taking taxpayer money out of the area for a fight we shouldn’t be waging.  How much does this cost taxpayers?

NG Advantage made available a free tour bus that took concerned people from the area up to a similar site in Vermont, in order to demonstrate what that facility looks like when in full operation, and to address concerns and questions.  Only 12 individuals chose to take this trip yet scores of lawn signs indicating opposition to the project are overwhelmingly prevalent throughout the area.  It is abundantly clear that people have made up their minds in the absence of all of the available information because they don’t want or need the truth; they simply don’t want it in their neighborhood, period.

The next time these same NIMBY people complain about the depressive state of New York, the lack of jobs, opportunity, and the “brain drain” we see as our kids seek friendlier environs by voting with their feet, remember, it is just this kind of narrow-mined mentality that largely defines what is wrong with New York State.

Today, ReclaimNY.org shares the major concerns our founders had over 241 years ago when conceiving our nation and its unique system of self-governance.

What worried our founding fathers the most was not England’s army or even sacrificing their own personal fortunes and security.  What they doubted more were individuals levels of goodness and integrity and societies ability to maintain those traits in high enough order to secure and preserve our own liberty.  James Madison said, in Federalist 51, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.”  Today, our angels are few and far between.  Accordingly, the laws and regulations government produces are mostly designed to thwart evildoers instead of encouraging noble behavior.

Here in New York, we have seen what happens when those of dubious character become lawmakers.  No fewer than 30 elected officials have been arrested and convicted of crimes in the recent past.  The infamous project dubbed the Buffalo Billion is awash with scandal and currently more than half a dozen individuals are under indictment for various illegalities involving graft, larceny and conspiracy, including Joe Percoco, long time Cuomo family friend, confidant and close advisor to current New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.

According to Politifact.com, researchers from the University of Missouri have compiled a database that focuses specifically on public corruption at the state level across the country.  Their findings?  New York is the most corrupt state government in the union, and has held this title exclusively since at least 1986.  The article goes on to state: “Historically, New York has struggled with corruption and continues to do so,” said Jennifer Rodgers, executive director of the Center for the Advancement of Public Integrity. “While measuring corruption is a challenge, I think it’s fair to say that New York remains one of the most corrupt states if not the most corrupt state.”

The corruption in New York State is likely rooted in culture, Rodgers says.

“Much of corruption is cultural, and in New York that means that you have to think about the way the New York political system has developed over more than 200 years,” Rodgers said. “So you start with these corrupt political machines like Tammany Hall, and over time the problem replicates itself as the next generation figures out how things work and how much corruption will be tolerated, and so on down the line.

As reported in Crainsnewyork.com, consider the words of former federal prosecutor Preet Bharara during a speech to the Citizens Crime Commission in Manhattan.

“It increasingly seems that the best way to find Albany on a map is to look for the intersection of greed and corruption,” Mr. Bharara said. “So is corruption in New York rampant? And is it worse than it is elsewhere? And I think all the available evidence says that the answer, sadly, is yes.”

One way to expose corruption is to make government at all levels transparently accountable.  The ReclaimNY.org website provides a simple and easy way in which any of us can get involved.  Click on the link word “transparency” at the top of the page and there you can either view your local government or school district’s check book, or if it is not already published, use the “Send Your Government a FOIL Request” button and get involved.

The wisdom of Madison in recognizing our own shortcomings can lead to only one real solution; our renewed accountability to God Almighty and the faith we establish in our belief that we were born in His image and need to pray for His divine guidance.  Without a divine and absolute moral guidepost, everything is negotiable and nothing is sacred.  The absence of a divine authority allows corruption to flourish and as Edmund Burke reminds us, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil, is for good men do nothing”.

Join those of us who are involved with ReclaimNY.org and get involved.  When good people do something positive, God may save our state and our nation.