Readers’ Column for the week of March 22, 2020

You may call the Owego Pennysaver Readers’ Column at (607) 687-2378 24-hours a day, or email comments to readerscolumn@stny.rr.com. We reserve the right to revise or reject any message.  

The Newark Valley Food Pantry is taking requests for Easter food baskets for anyone in the 13811-zip code area. Pick up will be on April 11 from 10 a.m. to noon. Call 642-3339 or 642-8172 to sign up for baskets.

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No matter what happens with the coronavirus epidemic or the stock market, it’s a sure thing Owego village sewer department will still get their whopper payday every three months.

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I don’t know if people have noticed all the garbage along the road coming out of Owego north on Route 38. One day I saw a Taylor garbage truck going down the road, garbage flying out of the back, papers especially. Now they are all over Route 38 and it looks like a mess. Maybe we can get a bunch of people together to go out and clean up the side of the road because it looks terrible.

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I wonder if New York State is collecting money to combat the coronavirus. I’ve noticed that nobody has won the New York State Take 5 in about two weeks, there has only been one winner, no winning free plays and no winning quick picks.

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Now that school is out for 30 days when should I be looking for a refund on my school taxes? They’re based on a school year and with the kids not being there for 30 days or possibly more, I expect Cuomo to be sending me something in the mail. I’ll be watching. 

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The determined smokers may smoke outside but the smell and contamination of the air around you is breathed in by non-smokers; secondary smoke affects others also. If you smokers were more responsible, the cost of cigarettes could have gone to college payments, retirement, and vacations. Instead it goes to medical expenses for you and your family members. 

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This present pandemic condition could also be used as biological warfare. What if some country was experimenting and something got loose accidently? 

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I realize we got the coronavirus but we still have potholes. People are still going to work and still being paid. The snow is gone, let’s get out there and take care of the roads a little bit. Nothing’s a freebie.

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I wonder if anyone reading this knows of a good way to get rid of those or stop those ladybugs from entering your home. If you do please let me know. I’ve dealt with them for years entering around my three kitchen windows somehow. I wonder if you know. I would really appreciate it.

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This coronavirus should get people to think about what’s really important. Not all this foolishness like Bigfoot Sasquatch. I think that is a bunch of foolish nonsense.

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With everybody staying home due to the coronavirus, I was just wondering if we would have a baby boom in nine months. 

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Are you looking to rent a place to live, or start a business in our village? We dare you! We will fine you, not once, but $50 a month until you get out of our village. We call it our EDU fine.

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I’ve never seen so many panicking people in the U.S. before! Could you imagine standing shoulder to shoulder on the battlefield with this group? We would be crushed within seconds!

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I see where a reader loves Andrew Cuomo and says he’s proud that he is the governor. I didn’t realize that Chris Cuomo read The Owego Pennysaver. 

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Is anyone else having trouble with track phones that we have to buy in order to stay with Safe Link Wireless? Between money spent and time used on other phones trying to get them to work properly, this free service is getting to be most costly for those of us who need it.

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Did everyone notice that the homeowners in the village of Owego aren’t complaining about the sewer EDU bills? That’s because business owners and apartment owners are paying the majority of the bills. 

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The best advice now is for everybody to wear a smile, but in the meantime, Superman where are you?

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People need to just calm down and relax. We’ve been here before and we’ll get through it. Live your life in faith and not fear. We will get over it.

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To the reader that thinks I need help – I really did see some sort of Bigfoot / Sasquatch up on Lillie Hill! He, or she, did chase my truck and fell into a ditch. I was up there just the other night, same time of night and saw him/or her crossing the road again with a roll of toilet paper in its paw or hand! I got out of my truck to get a pic with my phone and it threw the toilet paper at me and took off through the woods into the hillside. He or she is very real. People; don’t leave your pets or toilet paper out!

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When we got the storm last year in the Village of Newark Valley, Owego came up with their street cleaner and did a great job for us. So why can’t we? If not mistaken, the street cleaner picks up sand. Maybe it could be recycled for next year. Just a suggestion.

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Congratulations on missing my point. 1) Cuomo is not liked, wanted or needed in upstate New York. 2) Cuomo would not have won if it weren’t for New York City and Long Island, plus a few pockets of liberal Democrat voters. 3) I realize Cuomo won; it was in all the papers. I also realize that my vote and your vote means nothing to him and if you think it does you’re delusional. Finally, no matter where you went to school 65 percent beats 35 percent. 

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Dear lover of Cuomo – too bad Andy had to praise the President for his handling of the COVID-19 situation. I guess Andy had to bend over to, instead of standing up to President Trump. As for the NRA, Andy has supported more killings through Planned Parenthood than the NRA has ever committed. Ever.

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Please patronize restaurants just as often as you normally would. You still need to eat. They need the business. Just use take-out. You drive there and back just as you would if you were eating there. Only change is that you actually eat at a different location.

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Not all car washes recycle, nor do they remove impurities (i.e. salt). Especially in our area where the majority are pulling water from private wells not approved for consumption in household or businesses. Their drainage is a leach field. A few in zoning areas may be using public water and sewage, but in our area it is the exception not the norm. Any grey water derived from water originating from baths, sinks and washing machines, is subject to local codes and state regulations. You usually find grey water being used by large hotels to water their lawns or golf course. If there were a mandatory use for providing purification systems to remove minerals, as are salts, it also would be subject to local zoning, code compliance and state regulations.

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To the crew that worked on Frederick Drive last week. Learn what it means to set up and place proper signage on a project. Placing a road-closed sign close to your work doesn’t warn drivers early enough. Would you expect the fire department or ambulance to do a U-Turn or back down that street with their rigs in an emergency? Why couldn’t you place detour signs at Highland and Brookside and direct cars around the job? 

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When the Owego mayor was canvassing for signatures for his new term, I signed his petition. At that time I asked him if he could get with SUEZ and have them format the water user’s consumption in the old format that was used when we paid based on consumption and he said “they wanted too much money”. He did not say the amount. If the format is available, we could assess each sewer user for that cost and use that water usage figure for equitable sewer charges.

National Political Viewpoints

All these fine gifts coming from China. Three years ago, the Equifax breach for their military personnel steal millions of American’s financial secured information. Today, the coronavirus. Can you imagine what it’s going to be like in a few years when the first nuke is heading for New York City sent by China? You think there’s a pandemic today, give it a couple years.

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A couple weeks ago Trump said the coronavirus was a hoax was perpetuated by fake news and the democrats.

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Hey, am I the only one that notices China’s working their butts off? The U.S. is going to take a break because of Trump. I bought a package of socks and you know the paper wrapper they put around a five pack of socks, the only thing written on that was sold in California, made in China, may cause cancer. I’ve got the paper to prove it because I saved it.

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Joe Biden’s going to take the reins on the coronavirus?

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Hey now, you dimwitted knuckle dragging baby killing democrats, I hope you’re real happy with all your impeachment and wasting our tax dollars on that crap. Now you’ve killed us all by letting this coronavirus get out of hand. Every voter in this country should start a class action lawsuit, get a good lawyer, and sue every politician in the country and not elect anybody because we’re all going to be dead and ain’t nobody going to vote for anybody. You sure put us in a pickle because you’re lazy and didn’t do the job you were paid to do because you were too busy trying to get elected; and nobody wants you to begin with. Now you’ve really cooked your own goose by being stupid and you’ve probably killed the rest of us off too, so it’s your own fault. 

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So I see now we are shutting our borders off. No more trips from Europe to here, closing our borders all because of the coronavirus. Why can’t we close it because of illegal immigration? Why can’t we close it because of disease that comes from them? Why the hell are we closing the border for coronavirus? Everybody is freaking out! You can’t keep toilet paper on the store shelves. People are freaking out about coronavirus but they’re not freaking out about illegal immigration, which costs you tons of money. It costs everybody tons of money, but they have no problem spending a couple of hundred bucks to buy toilet paper and sanitizer, but don’t do anything to correct the problems that are costing them money. That’s just stupid to me.

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Newsflash. The dimwit democrats want open borders. Explain how that squares with stopping Wuhan’s coronavirus. Let’s get real for a change. 

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12,000 people died under Obama in 2009 of the H1N1 flu, 275,000 were hospitalized. The democrats and fake news are trying to blame President Trump for using the Wuhan virus as a weapon. They are cheering for recession, destruction and death of Americans just to defeat Trump in November. Guess what, it will not work.

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Trump was tweeting Sunday about the news outlets of all things. For God’s sake, stop it Trump and figure out a way to take care of this country. Trump is just not presidential material, period. Don’t you republicans see this? If Obama acted this way he’d be run out of town. Oh, I just remembered, Trump told his followers at his last rallies that coronavirus is a hoax. Guess what, they all agreed with him. 

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So Biden says there are a number of democratic women that are qualified to be an excellent president. So my question is, where are they? There were none in that line of 22 and there are none right now. I cannot believe the best person in the democratic field to go up against President Trump is Biden or Bernie, neither of them stand a chance. 

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So during the debate, both Biden and Bernie are in great favor of open borders, let everyone in, we’re not going to vet anybody, we’re not going to check to see if they’re bringing in disease. Yea, that’s somebody I would want running this country, especially now with the COVID-19 scare. I’m so grateful President Trump is the one in control. He is brilliant, he’s got brilliant people working with him, I have no fear, I do not live my life in fear, I live my life in faith and we will get through this. But heaven help us if Bernie or Biden or any other democrat was in charge right now. We’d be in such a mess; I guess I would have to live my life in fear.

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This is in regards to all the store closings and business closings due to the coronavirus. It seems like this political government would think about postponing this year’s elections. They should postpone it and do it again in another two years to give everybody time to recuperate and get their thoughts back together, possibly four.

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In response to the coronavirus, we’re locking up the southern border, locked tight sure sounds like a good idea to me.

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President Trump is doing a fantastic job in fighting the Wuhan virus and it was he who closed our borders early to Chinese travelers. It was dingbats like Schumer who criticized and wants to weaponize the virus and use it to attack our great president. Well Chuck, it won’t work. Go Trump!

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The current pandemic and its results could have been mitigated by 90 percent had the leaders of the country paid attention to the medical professionals in our country and around the world. It was not necessary for it to become this extreme. Putting your head in the sand and telling everybody it is no big deal is negligence and endangerment of our great country. Remember this in November. There were plans in place to prevent this from happening or greatly limiting the effects. If they were implemented in January when this was initially detected and if the appropriate medical professionals had still been in the government it would not have gotten to this extreme. Need to pay attention to history, that’s how they knew this was coming and had the appropriate people informed, notified and allowed to do their jobs it would not have become this massive disaster for our entire country.

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When will Liberals learn that their incessant whining, moaning, complaining and nitpicking are just so much noise in the echo chamber? It’s like the boy that cried “wolf”. No one hears you or pays any attention because we’ve become so used to it, it’s no longer even heard!

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Republican primary results were published which is how you found out, so your basic premise is false. Trump got 98 percent of the vote because the RNC would not allow a challenger, while the Democrats split their votes over several candidates, eliminating the possibility of any one getting a large number; so comparing vote totals is meaningless. 

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Don’t you just love all these Republican Kool-Aid drinkers that write in this column. They give Trump the credit for an economy that Obama built! They don’t blame Trump for his totally incompetent response to a looming Pandemic that crashed the market with a loss of 11.5 trillion dollars of value. Instead they blame Democrats for the COVID-19 virus problem, even though it was their dear leader that dismantled the very department whose sole purpose was to track these infectious diseases and be an early warning system so we would be prepared for a Pandemic like this. This Administration was warned months ago this was coming, but Trump chose to ignore and downplay it.

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I suppose that making a point about terming a country’s economic methodology as socialist or not, ignores the fact that one need not pay any attention to the designation but rather the reality. The wartime economy of Nazi Germany relied heavily upon the large-scale employment of slave labor. Germany imported and enslaved some 12 million people from 20 European countries to work in factories and on farms. Approximately 75 percent were Eastern European. Poor living conditions led to high rates of sickness, injury and death, as well as sabotage and criminal activity. The wartime economy also relied upon large-scale robbery, initially through the state seizing the property of Jewish citizens and later by plundering the resources of occupied territories. So, please, make the point again about how the American right is somehow responsible for Hitler’s totalitarian state where nearly all aspects of life were controlled by the government. Sounds more like the position of the modern American left than the right.

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I find it strange that Republicans are so quick to notice Joe Biden’s mental lapses while they have endured, without comment, three years of President Trump. While Biden is no doubt declining, he was at one time completely sane. The President, on the other hand, has always been a few bricks shy.

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Okay people, we all need to get together on this coronavirus. Instead of blaming President Trump for this pandemic, which came from China, how about if you have any good suggestions how to battle this epidemic, let’s hear them. Even with the top health people working on this, this is something new that they are trying to figure out how to get a grip on. Instead of China trying to blame us for this they need to step up and tell us the truth. Now they are kicking all the news media out of the country. What are they hiding? What’s weird is that the journalists and the news media are sticking up for China. Why? I thought it was a good idea for President Trump to get the trade deal with China done because for years they and other countries have not been paying a fair share, the U.S.A. has been paying it all and that’s not fair. Makes you wonder, is this retaliation from them? Have faith, God Bless, and we will get through this.

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To the smarty-pants who called last week saying those of us who did not vote for King Cuomo and think his policies are inane, you do realize the super thick “reusable” plastic (germ laden) shopping bags will eventually end up in landfills, along with billions of totally silly, unrecyclable K cups, and should just meekly accept him because he won – the same goes for those who rant about Trump ad nauseam.  

3 Comments on "Readers’ Column for the week of March 22, 2020"

  1. Michael Riley | March 23, 2020 at 6:35 am | Reply

    I feel a little confused. I called a seemingly good man a ‘supposed christian’. Was I wrong calling a person that when they steal firewood and then lie about not knowing the property line when they have an app in their phone that clearly showed it was theft of NY property?
    Do pro life voters know that women die from cheap plastic surgery? There’s quacks that would take advantage of abortion being illegal and many women will be injured and a bunch will die.
    When did God give you his job as to who should die? That question is for all the supposed christians that thought,, “she was gonna murder a baby so who cares”
    If a fetus was a baby, abortion would be W crime, not the issue that keeps putting, harmful , thriving ,treasonous republicans in office.
    We’re going from the story of The Boy Who Cried Wolf to The Emperor Has No Clothes. Wake up and do research on the lies from trump and the lying russiapublicons before it kills your loved ones. before it kills your loved ones

  2. Michael Riley | March 23, 2020 at 6:51 am | Reply

    A pro lifer told me that God told her that the person with the cure for cancer was aborted.
    I asked in return, if everything is God’s plan then why would he allow that, then rub it in our face. Why not bin ladens and bad people being aborted to save people from their harm.
    You fight gay rights too. If God hated gay people why did he allow the cure to be found?
    Was he testing if christians were christians?
    To see how many of you would realize that God gave the cure for people with AIDS.
    I’m not for abortion in my life or family but that decision is between God and the people making the decision. Nor am I gay.
    Seems the only medicine or science christians believe are the ones that fit they’re narrow sights.

  3. Michael Riley | March 27, 2020 at 8:24 am | Reply

    I still can’t believe my rich supposed religious neighbors have knowingly stole firewood from me and were about to steal firewood again. Hundreds of dollars worth and in the middle of a national emergency. I’m very angry too.
    Should I have them arrested is the question.

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