from CHIP NORTHRUP Texans Say, Don’t Mess With Cattle To the Editor: Had the local dairyman moved to Texas and knowingly allowed his cows to starve to death, he would have been charged with up to 25 felony counts, each carrying up to 10 years in prison and a $10,000 fine per head – which adds up to 250 years in the state pen and $250,000 in fines. About the same as for manslaughter. In New York, he gets a…
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Letters To The Editor - Page 88
from SETH CLARK 58 Businesses Shut Leaving ‘Spooky’ City To the Editor: Oneonta has felt spooky to me lately. “Spooky” is kind of a funny word for a newspaper, but it really is the word that best describes how I feel about so many longstanding local businesses closing. Several were touchstones of my life, businesses that have operated in the greater Oneonta area for decades. I decided a couple of weeks ago to see if my spooky feeling could be…
from NICK PALEVSKY Super-Majority Aims To Keep Tyranny Out Of Zoning Plans To the Editor: For 150 years after Independence, government attempts to limit how landowners use their property were seen as unconstitutional because: 1. Zoning laws take property rights without compensation, and 2. Zoning laws constitute unequal treatment under the law. Then came the ‘progressive’ era, in the early 1900s, which brought us the income tax, direct election of Senators, the Federal Reserve and Prohibition – all the so-called…
from NICHOLAS CUNNINGHAM Take Heart: Make Capitalism Work For Us To the Editor: Adrian Kuzminski (May 30-31, 2019) recalls Garrett Hardin’s classic 1968 “Tragedy of the Commons” with appreciation, but closes with a rather forlorn, indeed hopeless take-home message. As I recall, Harden pointed out that, faced with exploitation of “the commons,” rationing provided a workable solution: for example, if “free” parking becomes scarce and is being exploited by the powerful or the feckless, parking meters offer a simple practical…
from CARL SEELEY Nothing Is Perfect, But Green Movement Is Looking For Answers To the Editor: I don’t always catch Mike Zagata’s column, but every time I do, he’s revisiting the same two themes—one right, one wrong. Theme One is that even “green” technologies have negative environmental impacts. This is true, and it’s important to understand and keep in mind. When we get electricity from photovoltaics rather than coal or gas, we reduce our CO2 emissions, but we increase other…
from CATHE ELLSWORTH Trustees Should Help, Not Hinder Downtown Revival To the Editor: In last week’s newspaper, Cooperstown Village Trustee Richard Sternberg penned a column in which he went to great lengths to point out all the various village projects that need to be completed. Included on the list such things as the roads, not to mention other infrastructure needs, and the wastewater treatment plant as well as the Doubleday Field upgrade. When added to this list of needed undertakings,…
from RICK HULSE SR. Main Street In Trouble, Yet Housing In Demand To the Editor: Your editorial about Main Street is timely. When CVS and the General Store closed, businesses that remained experience a plunge in traffic and revenue. We are in a tragic situation with no apparent leadership equipped to deal with it. My advice to Matt Hazzard at the time was to go all out nationally to determine interest in the CVS space. Parking revenue is probably restricted…
from JASON HEWLETT No One Should Be Forced To Take Psychiatric Drugs To the Editor: As a man diagnosed with a mental illness for the past 20+ years, I have the lived experience to give the public a patient’s view of the dangers of psychiatric drugs. They are not at all what most people, including those who are mentally ill, think they are. If you were to Google “Psychiatric Drugs: Cure or Quackery?” by Lawrence Stevens J.D., you would get…
from JULIE HUNTSMAN, CHRIS KJOLHEDE Methodists At Fly Creek Pray Peacefully Together To the Editor: We appreciate this paper’s coverage of local dissent from the global United Methodist Church’s “Traditional Plan” which passed by a slim majority at the church’s conference in February of this year. To those not acquainted with the issue, the Traditional Plan continues the UMC Book of Discipline’s codified discrimination of people identifying as LGBTQ. Those so identifying are not turned away from church, but…
from SHIRLEY O’SHEA RSS Foes ‘Do Not Want To Live Near Crazies’ To the Editor: The individuals comprising the Sixth Ward Neighbors United are clearly not willing to be neighbors to persons with psychiatric disorders who need housing assistance. The Neighbors claim that they want full investigation of Rehabilitation Support Services (RSS) for financial improprieties prior to approval of applications for low-income housing for mentally ill residents.…