As a part of the Prospect Mountain interchange project, the roadway on Chenango Street that goes underneath the Route 81/17 highway was renovated into a concrete tunnel.  Recently installed lights in this 150 foot-long structure include 89 separate LED light fixtures connected to 89 separate circuit boxes, 38 on either side of the roadway and 13 down the center of the roof.

After FOILing the NYS Dept of Transportation, I learned that the cost of the lighting portion of the project was $336,914.23.

Inexplicably, all 89 of the lights are on during the day.  Only four of the fixtures are operable at night.  The daytime illumination is so bright; you literally need sunglasses as you drive past.  At night, the four fixtures do a completely adequate job of illuminating the entire structure.

The State did with 89 light boxes what it should have done with just four, wasting over $300,000.00 in the process.

Over $300,000.00 of tax dollars squandered in this single project alone.  Lord only knows how many more examples of boondoggle, waste and over-spending exist in a project of this magnitude when those who do the work also oversee their own accountability.

US Senators being forced from office provide the opportunity to examine the unintended consequences of the 17th amendment to the US Constitution.

The original Constitution called for the office of US Senator to be appointed from within the ranks of the sitting members of the respective statehouses.  The collective membership of these statehouses were tasked with choosing from their own membership, the two Senators that would represent their state.  The genius of this system was that the states had the authority to not only select their Senators, but theoretically, the power to recall them.

In 1913, the Constitution was changed by the 17th amendment, mandating popular election of US Senators.  The change meant that any otherwise eligible, state resident could run in a general, statewide election.

The 17th amendment is the only significant structural change ever made to the original version of our Constitution.  After witnessing over 100 years of federal governmental functionality courtesy of popularly elected US Senators, it seems self-evident that a 28th amendment needs to be passed to repeal the 17th.

The only other repealed US Constitutional amendment was in 1933 when the 21st amendment repealed the 18th. (the nation-wide prohibition of alcohol.)  It took voters only 13 years to see the folly regarding prohibition.  After 104 years of popularly elected US Senators, the wisdom of our founders originally designed notion of senatorial selection via statehouses should be a vision gaining increasing clarity.

Regardless of individual political bent, we all likely have our own personal opinions regarding Senators we might label as buffoons.  With the average senatorial election campaign costing some $10.5 million dollars, what was once a carefully considered mechanism tightly linking states interests and states control over the ever-present threat of a too powerful federal government, has turned into a pay-to-play popularity contest.

The recent resignation of Minnesota Senator Al Franken serves as perfect illustration supporting a 28th amendment.  Franken was a comedian and never held public office until his senatorial election.  Because Franken enjoyed celebrity via national television notoriety, he attracted the horsepower and the financial backing of a hyper-liberal political machine that vaulted him into national office as a complete political neophyte.  It is hard to imagine any statehouse deciding that the best and brightest they had to offer would mirror the Senate we have today.

Clearly, the federal leviathan needs to be weakened and the States need to take back the power that our founders originally intended they preserve.  James Madison made it clear in 1788: “The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite.”  Re-linking states interests to federal legislative undertakings insures the superior strength of states and checks what our founders feared most and what we have today: the unbridled growth of a too strong, too over-arching federal government.

While helping addicts to overcome addiction may be noble, using other peoples money to do so is wrong.  It is a moral failing to expect productive taxpayers to underwrite the costs of treatment for those who made bad decisions and became dependent.  If the demand for such services is sufficiently high, private enterprise is the appropriate solution, not the public sector.  Government run anything is always over-priced and inefficient.  The same services in the private sector are always better, faster, more successful and cheaper.

Considering that Broome County taxpayers are already over-taxed, over-regulated and over-burdened by unnecessary layers of government, over-lapping bureaucracies, fees, fines and regulations, the creation of a new and expensive treatment facility is a bad idea.

Government at all levels, should focus on the core duties and responsibilities they were created to provide, not wander off into enterprises and undertakings that compete with private sector providers.  Roads, bridges, police and fire protection, the legal system of adjudication, courts, these are the things to which government is limited.  Over-reach beyond those services is clearly outside the scope of what our founders intended.

Government was envisioned to be severely limited, leaving citizens to pursue their own business, determine their own interests, while being mindful of unnecessarily interfering with the citizenry.  Ideally, governments should be as small and unobtrusive as possible, just large enough to accomplish its the basic services.

While we cannot afford the expense of this program, even if the costs were not an issue, the reality is that government should not be in this business.

Make not mistake, this is not an argument against the treatment of addicts or a dismissal of the anguish, suffering and heartache families endure.  The scourge of drug abuse is real and deserves attention.  The argument is about the morality of expecting productive, successful total strangers to pay for solving a problem they had no role in creating.

Those pushing this agenda have so far relied heavily on emotion and heartache to sell the idea.  When the loved ones and relatives of addicts attend public meetings holding up pictures of those souls lost to their addition, their tears, grief and sorrow are weaponized in order to sway opinion and convince others of the wisdom of this project.  Whenever the chosen primary tool of persuasion is emotionally based, it is at the expense of reason.  When it is likely that logic, reason and thoughtful discussion will prove to be a more powerful persuader to the contrary, the tears of emotion are employed to obscure the vision of the bigger picture.

The thoughtful and reasoned discussion is the question of the legitimacy of government involvement in projects best suited for the private sector.  The unjustified assertion of a moral authority that demands of hard working taxpayers their hard-earned dollars is unconscionable.  It is unreasonable and ironic to think that those who have managed to remain productive and successfully un-addicted are obligated to pay for expensive and often times unsuccessful treatments for those who are.

One of the things that make the United States a glorious country is that no artificial restrictions are placed on the abilities of anyone to attain anything they aspire towards.  Many cultures prevent achievement through a caste system or other social barriers, (classes), that make upward mobility impossible.  In this country we have no “classes” with one hideous exception, that being the “ruling class”.

Love him or hate him, President Trump has proven that any meddling in the status quo of the ruling elite will not be tolerated.  When it comes to a lust for power, there is no difference between parties or people.  Behind closed doors, politicians collude amongst themselves to keep their positions, their power and their fortunes.  When members of both political parties demonstrate equally ample quantities of hate and animus towards this political neophyte Donald Trump, it indicates to me that the President is really on to something.

There were always the indicators of a fix in the system, yet most voters either held their nose and voted for the lesser of evils, or begrudgingly supported candidates who seemed fine, only once in office to be swallowed alive in the swamp.  Broken promises and government gone crazy finally awakened angry voters.  Trump’s mere presence in this corrupt system has unmasked the panic of the power brokers once their fiefdoms were threatened.  Trump voters were right in their suspicions, just look at the reactions of the ruling class as they lose control.

The founding principles of this nation; self-governance and co-equal branches are similar to an orchestra.  The strings, horns and woodwinds blend and compliment one another, each ebbing and then flowing into and out of prominence, depending on the percussion to set the tempo and finally the conductor to manage it all.  Trump marches to his own drummer and this leaves the traditional power-players performing out-of-tune with no predictable beat to follow.

With typical Senate campaigns costing upwards of 30 million dollars, those who underwrite that expense do so to see a return on investment.  That means control over the candidate in exchange for the seat in office.  When this system was bypassed by Trump, it took away that influence.  Whatever you think of the President, thank him for unmasking the scoundrels and proving that those in the ruling class put their own interests in front of their constituents.  Although “follow the money is a long-used cliché, it is nevertheless a truism.  When Trump owes no one anything, he is free to be his own man.

Add to this the direct link to people via Twitter and his unwavering goal of dismantling the regulatory state and rebuilding a judiciary that respects precedent and law without legislating from the bench and you have at least a start in the right direction for the people finally awakening to the reality that for far too long we have failed to pay attention and government has morphed into a beast from the swamp.

Let the drainage continue.

Those who loath cats do so out of ignorance, intimidation and misunderstanding.   Cats pose an interesting and challenging relationship.  Dogs simply fill a lonely soul’s need.  You don’t “choose” a cat.  If on the other hand you decide to possess a dog, you go out and pick one, like apples or a couch.  You can’t do that with a cat, no one actually possesses a cat.  A proper relationship with a feline must begin with the animal seeking you out, not the other way around.  Go looking for a cat and it will forever view you as weak, needy and pathetic, like a dog owner.

During the initial meet-and-greet, when the cat needs you most, it is imperative that you take advantage of the power imbalance.  In that rare moment, you forever and firmly imprint on the animal the fact that it came running to you and not the other way around.  Throughout the life of that newfound relationship, you and the cat will be constantly jockeying for superior position, you in order to keep that power, and the cat, in the never-ending struggle to wrench it from you.

All relationships are like this.  We are perpetually in a state of trade-offs and consolations of either being in control, being controlled, (or God forbid, being out-of-control.)  The healthiest human relationships hover around a ratio of 50-50 in who controls what, but how many relationships are healthy?  And while it might initially feel good to have a 95-5 control advantage over your cat or your lover, neither will tolerate that level of helplessness and imbalance for very long.  While even-steven might make for a happy human relationship, that power imbalance over the cat needs to be comfortably in your favor but not slavish.

Cats are natural born killers, only seemingly domesticated by virtue of their own willingness to play nice.  Google “cat fights” if you need convincing that the line is scarily thin between purring, loving lap warmer and flesh-shredding bloodletting killer of the first order.  While cats try to satisfy their blood lust with birds and rodents, make no mistake, with one hit of acid, exposure to rabies or a brain aneurism, your apartment could become a major crime scene, with you the victim of a thrill killing courtesy of Fluffy-the-Feline Assassin.  Afterwards, the cat would sleep peacefully without a tinge of regret.

As a counter to that possibility, all cats should be out-door cats.

By letting the cat out, you are saying, “Go ahead, go, do as you please, take your chances in traffic, tease the dog or skunk, eat from the garbage, live it up, decide for yourself between water and anti-freeze, have a completely unsupervised free-for-all ball.  When you come back, you’ll tell yourself it is only for the food, but we both know the truth.”

Power established.

Cats have conquered even those who truly hate them.  Think about all of the laws, ordinances, rules and regulations concerning dogs, requiring leashes at all times, a total lack of freedom and hyper supervision.  Dog parks?  Please.  Cats have the run of the planet.  There are no cat-controlling laws because cats don’t play by any rules.  Recognizing this, authorities didn’t even bother to try legislating cat control.

Cats are the Hell’s Angels of the domesticated animal world, true one-percenters flipping off everyone while purring a pretender’s song.  Dog owners carry poop-bags and collect hot feces as their reward for taking Bowser for a walk.  Incredible that “Man’s Best Friend”, demands of his partner the manhandling of his crap.  Some kind of friend.

Cats take a dump in the neighbor’s flowerbed, kick a few claw fulls of dirt in the general direction and calmly move on to return to their neighborhood patrol duties.  By killing a chipmunk and depositing it on your door mat, a feigned sign of submission which every cat fancier mistakenly takes as the highest form of praise, what fluffy is really telling her person is, “This could be you.”

As a mature man with decades of experience, I know that convention today portrays cat fanciers in the exclusive domain of lesbians, crazy old ladies and the homeless.  While Bowser the Buffoon is tangled up in his owner’s legs, leash wrapped around his head and poop-bags flailing, my little cat is doing her own thing while I do mine.  While my macho friends reinforce their tenuous manhood with large dogs, long trucks and loud motorcycles, I sneer at this obvious sign of their sexual “short-comings”, clearly demonstrating an over-compensation mechanism that sadly still has them falling short.

One of my lady friends was telling me how much she detested cats.  For her, it is an instant deal-breaker once she learns of a potential date’s fondness for felines.  Given her record of accomplishment regarding relationships, I’m thinking she ought to veto Danny the dog-lover and experiment with men who are comfortable in their own skin and don’t feel the need to compensate by way of distraction via shiny, loud objects, spray-on tans and fake boobs.

I like pink shirts, cool shoes and cats.  I don’t feel the need to compensate or explain myself, it ought to be self-evident, real men like cats.  The companionship of a cat requires from both human and animal the loving toleration of each other, yet a mutual agreement to keep a respectable distance, both physically and emotionally.  Recognizing and appreciating that balancing act is the essence of understanding ourselves and our abilities to cope in a complex and amazing world.  Cats keep us humble while we suppress the killer hiding inside that purring, loveable ball of fur.

Dogs and their “owners” on the other hand are needy co-dependents.

If this is all odd, confusing and maybe even insulting to you, enjoy a lifetime supply of warm feces, twice daily, a few millimeters of shopping bag plastic the only barrier between your fingers and Fido’s feces, courtesy of Man’s Best Friend.

The cats I know would never demand such demeaning actions from their human companions.  There are rules of common decorum for god’s sake, even amongst killers.

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.