I ride my bicycle 50 or 60 miles every week in a mix of roadways, walking and bike paths and parks. The added benefit beyond exercise is the opportunity to observe people close-up. What I notice the most is that the majority of people create around themselves a shield or wall of insularity courtesy of electronic devices. Headphones, ear-buds and cell phones indicate to the outside world that not only is no inter-personal interaction sought, it is outwardly discouraged. They might as well hang a sign around their necks that says, “Do Not Disturb.”
A walk in the park serenades you with song-birds, rustling trees, babbling streams, laughing children, buzzing bees and the casual greetings and conversations you will not have when you block it all out in order to be left alone. Everything electronic can be viewed or heard at any time. Every moment of you life, if you stay in the moment, is un-recordable, un-reviewable as it passes into yesterday.
As I bike past a young mother and her baby in a stroller, I alone hear the soft coos from the infant as mom has her head buried in her phone, tuned out.
The push for exchanging gas for electric in transportation is an idea that has ironically placed the proverbial cart in front of the horse. While the problems of an inadequate power grid, too few charging stations, short range, high costs, long recharging times and battery fires are real, there are two gigantic issues looming that rival them all.
Current state and federal gas-tax regulation siphons off about 67 cents from every gallon of gasoline purchased in New York State. In California, that amount is $1.18-per-gallon. Nationally this equates to more than $53 billion a year in tax revenue. Those taxes account for more than a quarter of the expense of road and highway costs around the nation. No such system of taxation exists for electric vehicles. For every ten-percent reduction in gas vehicles being replaced by electric, a resulting decrease of more than $5 billion in tax revenue will occur.
Add this to the long list of issues that the rush to electric crowd has failed to address but the second concern is a direct threat to our freedom, our autonomy and our God given right to be left alone, (the abuse of which fits nicely into the liberal wish-list of control.) The electrical connection from charger-to-car doubles as a stealthy surveillance tool. Every interaction records the time, date, location, mileage, etc. basically interfacing with the extensive computing system of the vehicle to potentially deliver any and all of the data contained in the vehicle, which is extensive. Even charging at home, with the advent of “smart meters”, consumers can “program” their vehicles to charge at off-peak power times in order to save money. This same smart meter of course is also recording the time, date, duration of charge and potentially more data from your vehicle of which you won’t even be aware.
Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer has got the ball rolling in taking advantage of not only the surveillance aspects of the modern-electric vehicle, but to simultaneously solve the lost-revenue problem as well. Whitmer proposes using GPS technology to track vehicle-miles-driven data in order to tax driving based upon usage.
While most people don’t think of lost freedom when it comes to these technological issues, it is time we did. Incrementalism is the hardest to identify poison because it kills you so gradually and slowly while providing what seems to be a nice service or that makes your life easier and better.
Is it really a stretch to believe that if you can summons “Siri” or Google on your smart-speaker that perhaps they might be capable of eavesdropping on you? If electronics in your car can call 911 after sensing a crash, is it really a stretch to believe that same technology might be able to know how long you were parked in a bar parking lot to the interest of the local police? If you show up between charging stations and your speed was above that posted, is it a stretch for you to see yourself getting a ticket by mail a day later? Is it hard to fathom a jilted police Captain searching license plate camera databases to identify his wife’s lover?
Every time you link your phone to a vehicles blue-tooth connection in order to use hands-free cell service, that vehicle “infotainment system” dumps the entire content of that device; call logs, list of phone numbers, texts, pictures, all of it. Think of that the next time you rent a car or sell yours to a stranger. You’re unwittingly leaving your digital DNA all over the place.
The final piece of this tech-driven plan to eliminate personal freedom completely will be the replacement of our currency with a digital version. Once this happens, (God-literally forbid), the oversight will be complete. Not only do we know where you are, how long you were there and how fast you were going; now we know if you eat too much junkfood. (Expect a call from your health-care-provider.) You drink too much alcohol. (Time for some counseling or your insurance goes up.) Didn’t show at the gym again? (Report to the doctor.) Expect “social scoring” type schemes to develop, of course for your own good, just like the Chinese system.
Those who seek to control people will suggest that you write this off as a dystopian, hyper-paranoid tale of things to come. The Covid era was a Beta-test on our reactions to authoritarianism and fear-mongering and we failed miserably. This has emboldened those who seek to control us. That good-old incrementalism isn’t noticeable until it’s too late. Don’t say you weren’t warned.
What a cruelly-ironic harbinger of thing-to-come to know that that iconic symbol of freedom and mobility, the automobile, might well serve as the intrusive and unrelenting sentinel of the beginning of that next era in American life that sees the sun-setting on what it means to be free.
Today, I walked into 80 Allen Street in Johnson City, NY for the first time since I left there in my mother’s arms some 66-years ago. A seven-family, three story walk-up with a basement apartment on the side, the standard flat-roof box of an apartment house sports a crumbling concrete front-staircase overwhelmed around the edges by grown-over weeds guarding a wide-open front door.
The place was no palace back-in-the-day, but at least it was clean, neat and occupied by modest-hard-working families like ours. Two apartments on each floor, left and right, opposing doors on a small platform between stair flights, the same today, but in 1957 the soft tones of a radio or TV show, the smells of meals being cooked or the soft cry of a baby would be the norm. Today the overwhelming odor of a wet dog and cat crap, a blaring TV, a barking dog, loud shouting and as I climbed the stairs, filthy walls probably painted while I was last there and that unmistakable smell of poverty, so familiar and so much the same no matter where you find it.
In 1957, my parents had been married only 6-years. My dad worked in the local hospital laundry and mom stayed at home with me. My sister was about to be born and we needed bigger and better digs. My grand-mother made a deal with my dad and bought a single family home just up the street that had a mother-in-law apartment, the condition being that she had her home within ours into her old-age. She died there. The rest of the in-progress Kingsley family, eventually 6 of us, lived through our formative years at 40 Allen Street, 100-yards up the street but across that imaginary line that separated poverty from plenty.
We had occupied the third-floor apartment on the left side of 80 Allen and today, instead of driving by and wondering, as I had done 100 times before, I stopped and made my way up those squeaky dirty stairs. As I made that last 180-degree turn between the second and third floors I could see that both apartment doors on the third floor were open. I heard some noise from the apartment on the right and as I approached that open door, I said, “Hello?” just as he came into view. “He” turned out to be Alan, the tenant and who would have been my neighbor across the hall had he been there 66-years ago. But Alan was there today, a slightly build black man, introducing himself as “A-L-A-N” as he paused the video game I had interrupted. I wondered why he thought it important to spell it for me, maybe because we were on A-L-L-E-N Street I guess. He had been sitting on a square plastic milk crate while playing his game and at his feet was a tin-foil ashtray with maybe 50 filtered cigarette butts competing with the other odors of the place.
Alan got up and we began to talk. I told him that I used to live across the hall and seeing the door wide open and the place vacant, I asked if he thought it would be ok if I took a quick look inside. He told me that the place was not only vacant but condemned and with that, he proceeded to give me, completely unsolicited, a tour of his own apartment before I could say thank-you and good-bye.
As Alan began the tour he warned me about the infestation of the bed-bugs. Our first stop was one inwardly facing-windowless room just off the hallway that made the lack of light seem like twilight no matter the time of day. Inside and on the floor of this door-less room Alan declared this his “shoe-closet.” Perhaps as many as 50 or so pairs of sneakers were strewn and unmatched all over the floor. As he began to tell me about his, “collection worth $5,000.00,” he snagged two multi-colored Nike shoes from the pile, holding them up while telling me they were worth $150.00 but stating that he got them for $50 bucks.
The next stop was the other bedroom, this time instead it was clothes strewn in a semi-circle on the floor in just the same fashion as the shoes, again, self-described as the mans closet.
As we moved into the kitchen, Alan demonstrated how none of the 4-burners on the gas stove would light, never mind there were no grates over the functionless burners showing nothing but the igniter sparks as Alan proved his point by turning on the burner knob only to hear the staccato tick-tick-tick-tick of the false promise of a flame.
Alan must have been saving the worst for last because the small bathroom off the kitchen was truly wretched with ripped off jagged layers of yellowed linoleum exposing a soaked wooden sub-floor dark with 100 years of stains and what must have been the original tub, crammed into a 5-by-5 closet.
As we made our way to the back porch, this was a place I remembered as a child. The wooden and open porch stretched across the width of the building linking the back doors of the apartments. A stair case zigged and zagged its way down to the parking lot, now mostly grown-over with trees and weeds gradually besting the beaten and cracked tarmac and pushing the surface back into dirt and reminding me of how 66-years can change things. As I looked over the single, three-foot-high wooden railing, I wondered what miracle of miracles kept any number of toddlers from falling to their deaths during the past 100-years.
The back door to my old apartment was open and I entered the kitchen and looked around. There was a vague familiarity but mostly I was surprised by how small the rooms were. My recollection had them twice their real size in my minds eye. As I made my way into the front of the apartment, Alan pointed out the pile of dead bumble bees in the corner of the living room. The darkness and dinginess made for a somber and sad tone that seemed to define this space now, but it wasn’t always that way.
I don’t think we knew we were poor back then, just like Alan sees himself today, the heir to his valuable sneaker collection today. No, 66-years ago, the Johnson City Fire Chief and his wife lived right next door. Next door to them was Miss Cuttings little apartment, my later-to-be high school English teacher and the woman I credit with teaching me how to write.
We were blue-collar but moving up, learning to appreciate what we would have later in life, as my father became a police officer and we finally moved up the street into 40-Allen with my grand-mother.
At 13, I became the streets paper-boy, giving me a passport into the living room of everyone on the street. Even as a young teen, the compare and contrast of what we once had versus what we now were was conspicuously obvious and now here I am back at 80 Allen standing with my new friend Alan, after a lifetime lived.
This is what it seems to me. 66-years ago, life was defined by work, family, faith, friends and community. People were on their way up; the country was on its way up. We had shared goals, shared dreams and shared interactions regardless of financial stations. It wasn’t unacceptable to start from the bottom and work your way up, it was honorable and expected.
Today, it seems that the many who are defined by the 80-Allen Streets of the world are stalled out at best, and more likely on their way down. The country is on its way down. A culture of excuses, excesses and expectations without effort has gutted what used to be a common work-ethic. We are divided like never before, have as many nightmares as dreams and wall-off each other according to financial status. The 80 Allen Streets throughout our country are crumbling and along with them those they house.
Simple observation tells the not-so-obvious story and holds the key to why. With churches on every other corner, 66-years ago most of them were well attended on Sunday’s and families, mostly spanning at least three generations went out of their way to have meals together. Today, those same churches are teetering on bankruptcy, are sparsely attended, and during the week, after the remaining few Sunday faithful have gone home, church halls quietly replace the traditional family meal for the poor and down-trodden that have nowhere else to go and no one to turn to.
Maybe, just maybe, it’s our floundering relationship with God that holds the answers.
I tell people all the time that I am so happy to be 70 instead of 30 and that is because I don’t see a happy landing for our future. I for one ply the memory of the 80 Allen Street that forged the future of our family as we passed through that station on our lives with dignity, humility and grace, earning what we eventually accomplished and buoyed by the experience that then allowed us to fully appreciate our new lives by comparison. So much of that is gone today and other than my telling others about it, I fear mightily that building a sentiment for recreating that system of maturity and growth my soon exist only as a short story as told by some old guy that has faint and fading memories of a better time.
When is enough enough? Apparently never with you. In spite of driving mostly empty buses up and down and back and forth on routes that could be easily serviced with a motorcycle and a side-car, you are happy to take your check and the taxpayers be damned. As long as you’re getting yours, those of us who pay the freight can go to hell, is that it?
What happened to the good old-fashioned concept of letting your conscience be your guide, remember, before you traded in your sense of right-and-wrong for a paycheck?
How in good faith can you burn through thousands of gallons of diesel fuel in land-yachts capable of carrying scores of people and do so, happily, without a care in the world, knowing that your efforts are a make-work-joke? If this were a private business, it would have been shuttered years ago. Properly managed, smaller vans would be put into use but no; the grand masters at the almighty union would rather waste taxpayer dollars then use common sense.
Over the past 50-years or so, many in our country have tried to retire the concepts of shame, embarrassment and honorable behavior in the name of preserving self-esteem and not being “judgmental” or critical. In doing so, we have created a climate of comfort for slackers, the lazy and those that believe someone, anyone, owes them something.
Driving mostly empty buses, day after day in silence clearly demonstrates your acquiescence in accepting those terrible alternatives instead of proud, honorable and productive life’s work.
Ending by saying “shame on you” is sadly wasted breath because you apparently buried the concept of shame some time ago when you decided to shut-up and drive your bus, even when it makes no sense, except to your bank account. You my friends offer no solutions but are a core part of the problem. Complain no more about government or social justice issues when you clearly have no concern about them when the rubber meets the road.
Upstate New York is one of the prettiest places on the planet and the Finger Lakes region is right in the heart of it. While the glacial magnificence of the lakes and ravines, gorges and waterfalls are the main attractions, tucked away in Bath, NY near the South end of Keuka Lake is the Bath National Cemetery. This is a very special place and everyone visiting the region ought to put this destination on their list of things to do.
My work takes me all over New York State so I am fortunate to stumble upon interesting places in my travels. The first time I visited this place, I was taken by the sense of going back in time. The quaint and austere brick buildings that make up the Veterans Administration campus adjacent to the cemetery are actually the original buildings that comprised a veteran’s hospital and small support community dating back to 1877. Little has changed and the government does a nice job of maintaining the property mostly in its original manner.
On my first visit, as I came into view of the grave sites, it took my breath away in seeing the thousands of white, wind-burnished headstones, arrayed like the good soldiers they were, in orderly rows and columns stretching far across the rolling landscape. After I had stopped the car to get out and take a look around, I could hear the sound of a lawn tractor and saw a man mowing and making his way in my direction. As I had finished taking a few photos, the man pulled up along side of me and turned off his tractor and asked me if I had any questions.
For the next 10 minutes or so, this maintenance man took the time to explain to me the significant of this place. He told me that over 13,000 souls are interred here, including five Medal of Honor recipients, the highest honor the country bestows to a member of the armed services. This gentleman told me about the history and the tradition of this landscape. He was as proud of this cemetery as the father of a newborn and was outwardly emotional in explaining the significance of this patch of earth and his patriotic spirit in caring for it so thoughtfully and carefully was pride and enthusiasm he could not hide.
This man was hired to maintain the physical premises of this 28 acre cemetery, to cut the grass, rake the leaves and plow the snow. He was however, also something so much more. He was the absolute highlight of my visit because he instilled in me the spirit of that place; the sense of pride, of awe, of honor that he shared was such a jolt of inspiration. This man knew as much or more than what one would expect from someone trained and hired as a tour guide, but he wasn’t that, he was a maintenance man that took it upon himself to share with me the history, the significance the immortality of this hallowed and sacred ground that is the final resting place of the finest examples of the soldiers and sailors that define and defend the United State of America.
This solitary maintenance man could not have made me feel stronger about being an American and his example bolsters my faith in what I see as our future. I want to publicly thank him for his service and for his patriotism and for giving me the hope that there are more like him out there that I just haven’t met. yet.
Michael Pillsbury is an expert on China. In a recent Forbes article citing his work, this is what the author, John Mauldin had to say. “In his book, The Hundred-Year Marathon, Michael Pillsbury marshals a lot of evidence showing the Chinese government has a detailed strategy to overtake the US as the world’s dominant power. They want to do this by 2049, the centennial of China’s Communist revolution. The strategy has been well documented in Chinese literature, published and sanctioned by organizations of the People’s Liberation Army, for well over 50 years.”
If you think this hyperbolic, consider the following:
Approximately 290,000 Chinese nationals attended American colleges and universities last year. Because Chinese nationals live in a totalitarian state, every student here in the US is a potential spy for the Communist Chinese Party, (CCP.) Cyber-security company Cybereason reports that “trillions” of dollars in data have been stolen (hacked) from some 30 multinational corporations over the past several years. The FBI estimates US corporate loses from theft and espionage from China at between 225 and 600 billions dollars annually.
China is clearly not only an adversary, but our largest and most dangerous threat. In a speech in April, FBI Director Christopher Wray said, “There is no doubt that the greatest long-term threat to our nation’s ideas, our economic security and our national security is that posed by the Chinese communist government.”
China is the largest surveillance state in the world. IHSMarket estimates that China has approximately 226 million Closed-Circuit Television, (CCTV) cameras in public places. Chinese people are “graded” by the Chinese Communist Party, (CCP) in terms of their “social credits” by monitoring and then critiquing their behaviors. This in turn earns them negative consequences if their behaviors are reportedly “bad”, like driving too fast or smoking in public areas then limits ones ability to travel, lowers their credit score or slows their internet speeds.
Between 2009 and 2018, China’s military, the People’s Liberation Army, (PLA) spending rose 83%, the largest increase of any developed country in the world. The Chinese military has over 2-million soldiers and sailors with half-a-million in reserve. Comparatively, the US military manpower count is approximately 1.3 million. China has approximately 340 warships to 300 for the USA.
Quoting from the Council on Foreign Relations, (CFR ) article, “according to reports filed to the Justice Department under the U.S. Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), China has spent more over the past six years—$280 million—to influence U.S. politics… Again, in the words of the CFR article, “A report by the Hoover Institution, a U.S.-based policy institute, found that Beijing or its proxies, such as pro-China business people, now control nearly all of the Chinese-language media in the United States. This allows the Chinese government to feed its propaganda to millions of people, potentially influencing how they vote; many of these readers and viewers live in highly competitive congressional districts in California, New York, and other states. The report also said that Beijing is gaining control of U.S. university associations for students of Chinese heritage and using those to try to shape campus and political discourse.”
China’s Belt and Road Initiative, (BRI) is designed to dominated the worlds demands for consumer goods, commerce and the establishment of Chinese currency as the global default.
Does this look like sound planning? According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, China now accounts for 95 percent of imports of ibuprofen, 91 percent of imports of hydrocortisone, 70 percent of imports of acetaminophen, 40 to 45 percent of imports of penicillin, and 40 percent of imports of heparin.
The CCP has also established “police stations” throughout the world, including here in the US. According to an article in The Hill, “According to one assessment, at least 102 known or suspected Chinese overseas police stations are currently active in 53 countries. The real number is undoubtedly higher. In the U.S., stations have been identified in New York City, Los Angeles, Houston and San Francisco, as well as smaller cities in Nebraska and Minnesota.
And most recently, we all remember the infamous Chinese spy balloon finally shot down over the Carolina coast. This is what the Wall Street Journal had to say about this. “… Analysis found the balloon was crammed with commercially available U.S. gear, some of it for sale online, and interspersed with more specialized Chinese sensors and other equipment to collect photos, video and other information to transmit to China, officials said. Those findings, they said, support a conclusion that the craft was intended for spying…”
China also owns some 384,000 acres of US land, some of which is alarmingly close to sensitive US military installations throughout the country.xiv China owns some $859 billion of US debt. According to an April article in Reuters, Jared Bernstein, a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, told a Senate Banking Committee hearing there was “some evidence” that China wants the dollar to weaken as the international reserve currency.
And finally, consider that China is the foremost producer and exporter of fentanyl to the US. This is what the US Justice Department said in June of this year. “The Justice Department today announced the arrest of two individuals and the unsealing of three indictments in the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York charging China-based companies and their employees with crimes related to fentanyl production, distribution, and sales resulting from precursor chemicals.”
With all of this knowledge and solid evidence demonstrating the malicious intent of the CCP, why do we continue to allow Chinese nationals access to our universities, or allow them access to our country at all? In the interest of national security, American sovereignty and the preservation and furtherance of American ideals, Chinese nationals should have no access to the US or our universities.
The CCP is at war with us and Chinese citizens are subservient to their dictatorial government. It’s about time we defended ourselves.
Many pundits and modern-day philosophers, myself included, have opined upon “the break-down of the family” as the primary cause of societal failures. While no doubt fundamental in addressing the question of “what in the name of God is happening to our society?” I sensed that there was a deeper, more sinister force at work.
As I heightened and intensified my observations of the ever-changing human condition, it became alarmingly obvious to me that mental illnesses have become epidemic. Complicate that with all of the socially-acceptable substance abuse alternatives, alcoholism and the general malaise and sense of hopelessness felt by many and one can see the toll this is taking on us by simple observation. The profoundly mentally ill are conspicuously in our midsts; it is not at all uncommon, we all see it every day. Add to that the not-so-obviously afflicted; tormented and tortured but functional and outwardly able to mask their despair. After all, we each carry our burdens, mostly private and unseen but burdens nonetheless.
I ruminated upon and carefully considered my new theory, believing that the increase and intensity of the advent of mental illnesses was the more foundational underpinning to our societal woes, but I neglected a consideration so obviously important that it took my breath away in my moment of illumination.
Our relationship with God.
While I try my mightiest to write in a secular tone so to not alienate non-believers, there comes a time when the truth and the Word rule the day.
Jesus casting out demons was a reoccurring theme in the Bible, referenced in some 25-Bible verses. Our evolution into modern times did not eradicate those demons they are with us still today.
While Jesus may not physically walk amongst us today, his church and his soldiers carry on His message and His hope for us. The demons are still amongst us and if anything they have multiplied, tormenting many souls, just as they did in biblical times. Casting out these demons requires from us faith. No demon can stand up to God’s love but it is up to us to seek Him out and ask for His protection and grace.
The line between the modern science of mental health and the demons of satan and evil are blurred to me but they are clearly both undeniable factors in explaining the degradation of our society. The interplay between broken families, those infested with demons and the mentally ill are the three-key-components in understanding where we are in today’s shameful world.
We see the unthinkable without flinching, fail to revolt at the untenable, and are slow to recoil at the unspeakable and yet are pilloried if we fail to concur with the latest obscenity. The word of God warns us in Isaiah 5:20 when He says: “Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; Who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness; who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!”
Where we cast out the Lord, we invite in the devil. If you doubt me, look around.
The physical presence of Jesus on earth was to demonstrate to mankind His power and His grace. His disciples were tasked with creating the church extending to the ends of the earth. Jesus was crucified, died, rose from the dead, and on eight separate occasions He came back to Earth to reinforce his commandments upon the chosen; empowering them through His spirit and making possible all of the power of His salvation and redemption, even in the absence of his physical presence. The church today is the physical manifestation of God on Earth, with all of those capabilities for us today that Jesus bestowed on the people of His time.
Good deeds, kindness and doing no evil are not hallmarks of God’s salvation. The grace of God, combined with our own humility and surrender to His will are the keys to everlasting life. The simplicity of grace is so flatly understated that its concept is widely and wildly misunderstood and yet ironically, it is the only pathway to heaven.
Say this prayer with me and obtain from God your place in his realm. Dearest Father in heaven, please hear my prayer. Father, I’m not worthy, but I come before you as a believer. You are the messiah and the Son of God. You are the son of man and died for my sins. With you anything is possible and without you nothing is. I seek your forgiveness and with it your redemption, of which I am not worthy, but nevertheless you love me and provide for my salvation. Thank you Father and please guide my life in a way that pleases you, I pray it in your holy name Father, Amen.
Until we acknowledge our rightful place in this life and humble ourselves to God’s will, we can count on a continuation of the depravity, despair and degradation in which we have created for ourselves all because of our rejection of God.
In County government, the most personally threatening kind of power manifests itself in law enforcement and adjudication. Power at this level can literally end a human life, imprison a man forever, force someone into a mental hospital or keep a parent from their children.
While we all hope that those whom we elect to govern are honorable and honest people with the best interests of the community in mind, we all know that this is not always the case. This is why the positions of the county Sheriff and the District Attorney are crucial in defining the overall integrity and reputation of the entirety of the community. The people we elect to these offices reflect the highest and best individuals we can elevate to those positions of trust, honor and ultimately, power.
There should be a healthy, professional distance and a respectful skepticism separating the relationships between police agencies and the judicial/adjudication side of the administration. Clear personal relationships, even friendships to the point of mutual campaigning and commingled staff and volunteers does not set the proper tone for the natural inter-agency separation that should exist between entities that many times find themselves at loggerheads.
The use of power demonstrates ones character. When a inner-office romance bloomed with a subordinate, as it did in the sheriff’s office when then Captain Akshar was living with a female co-worker, or when then captain Akshar had a sexual encounter with the mother of a murder victim while the matter was actively being adjudicated, or when then Senator Akshar had another affair with a young woman that worked in his office, tripling her salary, prompting the ethics panel in Albany to slap the Senator’s wrists, or when District Attorney candidate Battisti called then Captain Akshar and ultimately had him dispatch his brother, a Broome County sheriff, to arrest Battisti’s estranged wife, in which all charges were ultimately dropped, well, we see power and character in action.
This kind of a quid pro quo power-structure is the worse thing that could happen to the residents of Broome County. Those who play fast and loose with the rules, use their power inappropriately and are indebted to one another in a Gordian knot of payback and one-hand-washing-the-other shenanigans sets the bar too low and demonstrates a dangerous tenor from which all police agencies will get their cues and when those cues suggest anything other than fair-play, integrity and honorable behavior, you can count on getting none of that in return.
The people we entrust with great power should be those most reluctant to use it. The lust for power is the surest sign of why the person seeking it should be kept from it. Power engorges the ego of the tyrant while humbling the wise, the tyrant’s eager first choice, and the humble man’s reluctant last resort.
Einstein warned us when he said, “Force always attracts men of low morality.” Edmund Burke finished his thought when he said, “The greater the power the more dangerous the abuse.”
In the past, the summertime stench wafting over western Broome County was the byproducts of the Vestal-JC Sewage Treatment plant. A similar stink has shifted further west and now hangs over the Vestal Town Hall. Technology defeated the sewage plant stink, now voters have their change to do the same in voting out self-serving elected officials that treat Vestal taxpayers like their personal Piggy Bank.
Hopefully, political new-comers Maria Sexton, Robert Greene and Glenn Miller can provide the industrial-strength air freshener so vitally needed to rid the Town of Vestal of a closed, autocratic governance structure that has provided insiders with bloated salaries while punishing taxpayers with unfair assessments and in general, ignoring the concerns of residents. The reek of self-serving political operatives that distain their constituents while lining their own pockets is hopefully over.
Sexton, Green and Miller are running against the incumbency in the Democratic primary coming up on June 27, 2023, for Supervisor and town council spots respectively. Notoriously low turn-outs for primary campaigns is what breathed life into the likes of Congresswoman Alexandria-Ocasio-Cortez in 2019. If Vestal residents sit on their hands in this race, current Town Supervisor John Schaffer and his muted-minions on the town board will continue to ransack the town and betray the interests of Vestal residents so please get out and vote.
Under the cover of a Covid scare, this is what current Vestal leadership has done:
Schaffer has doubled his salary in less than 3-years to over $100,000.00, pretty good for a part-time job but that’s not the worst of it. The Human Resources Director saw her salary package increase over 130% in three-years to well over $90,000.00, oh and so you know, her husband, who is also the Town Attorney, is making north of $119,000.00, up 74% from 3-years ago. Those are just the highlights. For more go to:
Sexton is a political new-comer with an impressive resume of leadership, integrity and a full understanding of systems, administrations, budgets and people. Mr. Greene and Miller are likewise poised to provide principled leadership by paying close attention to what residents want as opposed to enriching themselves at taxpayer expense.
John Schaffer is a loud-mouthed bully that holds court in a manner that is opaque, autocratic and outwardly abusive and dismissive to any dissenting voice. The current board members are potted plants that take their nourishment from Schaffer and rubber-stamp his agenda.
If the voters in Vestal want more of the same, keep ignoring your local politics, but be aware, if you do nothing, nothing will change and if that happens, well then keep your mouth shut when the reality of continued mismanagement and uncontrolled taxes is the order of the day.
There is a largely undomesticated segment of society that lives in the stained shadows of poverty, ignorance, crime and mayhem. These miscreants exist in a world of chaos and filth and care nothing about their home, the quality of the neighborhood or the welfare of their neighbors. These are the schemers, the scammers, criminals, professional failures, reprobates, repeat-offenders and general agitators; the bottom-feeding under-belly of the rest of a civilized society.
Liberals will tell us that putting these people into “nicer-housing” will make them nicer people. It won’t. What it will do is result in that nicer housing being trashed. This is why slums and crappy housing exist, not necessarily because property-owners want it that way, but because providing anything better is rewarded with destruction. Why keep replacing doors and walls that have been punched through with holes when these vermin will simply re-punch the same doors and walls over and over again? Better to let their domain fit their temperament.
Even scum-bags need a place to live, and so some property owners provide exactly the standard of housing these uncivilized people create on their own by the life-styles they choose to live, and by the decisions they choose to make. Ironically, this cohort is by in large representative of domestic, passed-down generational failure generally unique to those born here and rare in those who risked it all to come here.
Just as fathers are treated terribly in family court, property owners are likewise seen as the “bad-guys” in the legal system. There is little if any accountability placed on tenants and the presumption of favorable treatment and outcomes is always pointed in their direction while the property owner is generally perceived as evil.
I took a large financial gamble by purchasing a two-family home in a tough neighborhood because I saw the faint signs of revitalization. After evicting both tenants for months-long non-payment, the clean-up effort was so bad it began by using gas-masks and snow-shovels to remove the filth and debris from the floors. One tenant had buried her dog in the middle of the back yard in a grave so shallow the lawn mower dug it up. After waiting months to drag the one tenant into court, the judge asked her if she wanted free legal help in having her case reviewed. I was paying my lawyer by the hour while this scum-bucket-tenant was being spoon-fed free legal advice by a judge that had no concerns at all with my rights, my losses, and my bad investment.
After thousands of dollars in remediation and months of lost-rental income, I finally got two really good tenants, only to have them regularly frightened by the constant street noise, the fighting late at night the loud-unlicensed motorcycles, the illegal fireworks and on and on. The police and the city were no help, except by reminding me to pay my taxes on time.
These two great tenants had to sleep at night because they had jobs. The street-trash partying all night had no such obligations and had nary a care about the welfare of the very neighbors that actually worked and paid taxes so these same lazy welfare-rats can milk the system and annoy everyone around them.
After 4-years of trying my best and hoping for the revitalization of this neighborhood, it became clear it wasn’t going to happen and I recently sold the building to investors from Boston. My former tenants just reached out to me, asking if I had anything they might rent because the new owners raised their rents by 40%.
Here is my prediction. My former great long-term tenants will be forced to move and the Boston investors, managing from afar, will make the mistake of renting to scum-bags and the cycle of destruction will begin again, the investors will sell and walk away and the street and neighborhood will continue its downward decline. This is what happens when liberal policies paint the world as they wish it were, rather than how it actually is. This fantasy happens when out-of-touch policy makers live in their privileged and completely segregated world that floats above the rest of the wretched humanity they pretend to try and save while privately abhorring.
The City of Binghamton has a dual-system of tolerance regarding law-and-order; one set very high for poor neighborhoods, and the other set low for the wealthy and privileged. This emboldens and encourages the very behaviors that are the least desirable and insures that positive changes will not come. Say what you will about “gentrification”, but without it, the undomesticated amongst us make our communities unsafe, undesirable and a bad investment.
Perspectives from the INTJ angle 