Readers’ Column for the week of January 22, 2023

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. 

 

To the mayor of Newark Valley, I sure hope you have done your research as to what the town may or may not do with the village when it dissolves. As a known fact, you have not talked to or attended a town board meeting to gather the factual information. Village residents are currently connected 100% to town tax, you are correct, but that tax is justifiable. The town paves our roads; they stone and oil our roads. The town also replaces our culvert pipes. Hell, the town even replaces when you have to fix a water line, they repave. Sounds like the town bends over backwards to help keep your sinking village afloat, and as far as relying on the town to maintain the roads, hell, they pretty much do that now. Five miles of road isn’t going to make much of a difference. It would be a tremendous savings to the village taxpayers. Three DPW workers is pretty extreme for five miles of road. 

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We are having a very warm winter due to all these solar farms here in Tioga County. They draw in the sun’s rays, which heats the ground and makes it warmer here. That’s the reason it’s getting warm.

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Are any of you readers tired of hearing about Harry and Meghan? I sure am; to me that’s not news.

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GO BILLS!

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Plastic bags. Yeah, I gave a lot of those away to family members and I wish I kept them, but if you really look hard and long you will find small plastic bags in stores. I bought a pack with 40 in them; not very strong, but will fit in small wastebaskets. You just have to look. Good luck people; don’t stress it.

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As I’m reading this week’s Pennysaver, I was very glad to hear that Catholic Charities will be able to remain in their location for a few months more thanks to Tioga Downs and the Food Bank of the Southern Tier. Their programs are much needed in our area and always have been. So my question is this; if Catholic Charities has to move, what becomes of the empty building? Seems to me the current rent is better than none at all. An empty building still has to be maintained, so who’s paying for that? The taxpayers of Nichols? Just asking. 

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For those individuals that want to adamantly hang onto the Indian symbol for the school, I wonder if any consultation has been done with clan leaders of the Haudenosaunee.

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This is to the person that needed a zipper in his hoodie; there is a woman that does all kinds of sewing and repairs, her name is Jean and her number is (607) 687-2069. She lives across from Tioga Gardens and next to the river.

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Many people are against getting rid of the American Indian mascot for Owego. I, for one, am. I think the school board ought to have the guts to tell Her Royal Highness in Albany to stick it where the sun doesn’t shine!

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Does anyone know someone who fixes regulator pendulum wall clocks in the Owego / Endicott area? Please leave your phone number, thank you.

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Regarding the Village of Newark Valley, they don’t plow for the 66-plus houses on Main Street / Route 38. Not counting businesses and churches, the State does. We should at least get a tax break. And what’s up with the tar and stone on the village side streets? Looks terrible, that’s meant for the back roads.

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“Yeah, no one could fix the computer glitch. One guy at the F.A.A. said, ‘I don’t know, maybe unplug it, plug it back in?’” — Jimmy Fallon

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Attention Candor and Owego residents, it’s really a simple concept. WE do NOT get to decide if someone else finds our name for them objectionable. WE cannot decide for Smith if he is offended by being called “Bonehead”. WE do NOT get to override Smith’s feelings and call him “Bonehead” without consequences. And so WE do NOT get to decide if the Native Americans object to the “Indian” name on our schools and want it stopped – without consequences. Is it really that hard a concept?

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It’s no wonder there is a petition going around the Village of Newark Valley to dissolve the Village, after seeing how our budget is done! 

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“On June 10, 2012, Lakota elders ritually blessed two new South Dakota Army National Guard UH-72A Lakotas [Army Helicopters] at a traditional ceremony on the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota. Ceremonies like these happened often over the past several decades. So when you think of these helicopters, remember the spirit, confidence, agility, endurance and warrior ethos their names evoke,” stated the U.S. Army on Nov. 4, 2020. Her Highness Hochul and the other Dem perpetrators of dividing Americans should be in prison for committing moral crimes. Democrats have criminalized differing views, wrong words, and images. 

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I’m glad someone has the spare dollars to pay for the “privilege” of shopping in a “club” plus additional money to literally throw away on purchasing plastic bags by the thousands. That’s certainly ecologically sound thinking! Not! If only our politicians, who are mostly baby boomers, went back to some of the common sense policies of our youth, if plastic is such a concern. Paper bags used up leftover pulpwood, and small bags from the produce department were re-used as dog poop bags or lunch bags. Grocery / department store bags were used for garbage. Meat was bought directly from the store butcher wrapped in paper and a bit of twine, not plastic and Styrofoam. Juice, milk, and soda came in reusable glass bottles providing employment for bottle washers in local bottling plants. Water came from your faucet. And I can hear the whining about stuff being heavy; well, my mom was five foot nothing and 100 pounds soaking wet, and she hauled groceries on the bus.

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I did not grow up in New York State, but I can tell that the schools here do not teach New York State history. Otherwise I can’t explain the hand wringing and histrionics in response to the “Indians” mascot being in jeopardy. Sports mascots are an American invention. In the rest of the world teams play games against each other, and that’s it. But in America we have to take it one step further. It’s not just a game, and the other team is not simply another school. They are the enemy, and they must be vanquished, pilloried, conquered, and humiliated. If the mascot is a bulldog, the logo must depict a snarling, rabid animal with prominent incisors dripping saliva. The “Indians” mascot was chosen for similar reasons. The connotation is that of “savage” Iroquois warriors who scalp their enemies and show no mercy. It is not paying homage to the area’s original inhabitants, and to make that claim is to be disingenuous. As a matter of historical fact, the aggressors were never the Indians. The historical marker that greets visitors coming across the Court Street Bridge tells you everything you need to know. General Clinton raided “Owagea” and burned it to the ground, just as he had done to every Indian settlement he encountered en route to his rendezvous with General Sullivan. It was genocide. By modern standards, they were war crimes. His forces slaughtered men, women and children, indiscriminately. If you think it’s absurd that the descendents of the Iroquois request that our school’s sports teams use a different mascot, you are embarrassingly unread in American history.

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Very disappointed with the Village of Newark Valley budget and process. Went up 5.47%! For those interested go to the website for the Village of Newark Valley and look up the budget. Very good reading! No wonder so much talk and interest in dissolving the Village. 

 

National Political Viewpoints

Hey Joe, don’t tell anybody but I know a great place to hide some more of your files, put them under your bed. Nobody will ever think of going there. Okay? Keep it quiet.

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You Republicans, where are your plans that you’re supposed to have had in place to start handling high inflation, high gas prices, and crime problems at the border? I hear nothing; all I see is that you’re trying to put Hunter Biden in prison. Then you have Santos that lied, and that’s okay, but oh boy, if a Democrat lied about something and you caught wind of it you would want them locked up and thrown in prison. You guys need to get your priorities straight and you need to do something about all your campaign promises because all they are just lies and that’s all they will continue to be, just lies, because you guys have no plan. 

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I am confused, is it a big lie that the election was stolen or a big lie that no man is above the law?

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I love the way the fake news describes anybody that disagrees with Joe and the liberal agenda as far right-wing extremists. Well, guess what, then half the country is a right wing extremist. You and your new green deal and your open borders, you are the extremists.

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I’m so sick of hearing about raising the retirement age to 70 to collect Social Security and cutting Social Security. The more I hear about this, the less love I have for this country. We have debit cards for high school students, Snap debit cards, we have some getting pregnant at 14 years old, three or four kids paid for by the government, food stamps, Medicaid, medical, everything, heat, apartment, anything you want, giant cell phone, everything is paid for. Yet, when it comes to working people that have spent their whole life supporting this country that’s on the wrong track to socialism do we want to play this game? Please keep sending migrants to New York City. The system is at the brink and can’t keep sheltering migrants. So please keep sending them here; New York City and New York State deserve them.

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I just love all of this that is coming out for the Biden family right now, and now these documents that everybody was so outraged that President Trump had at Mar-a-Lago? When are the raids going to come on the Biden household? No, he’s on vacation. The Biden fans and supporters must be proud of their man now. This is only going to get better and I’m so glad that Republicans have taken the House so we can get to the bottom of a lot of this and hold people accountable, and leave President Trump alone!

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No vice president has any authority to take any documents, none, zero. You broke the law, Biden; it isn’t apples and oranges with Trump. Yours is worse. You are a crook and a thief and you’re trying to protect yourself and your son.

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According to fake news, Trump having documents is a crime; Biden having documents is a gaffe. That’s hilarious!

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When Richard Blumenthal, senator from Connecticut, embellished on his resume and lied about serving in Vietnam was he asked to resign from the Senate or did he resign from the Senate? No, why? Oh, because he’s a Democrat and Democrats are allowed to lie and embellish on their resumes, and no one greater at that than Joe Biden.

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Democrats fight to expand voting rights as Republicans push new laws restricting voting.

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I was thinking about those classified boxes found at Biden’s home. Maybe they’re Hunter’s classified papers and he’s left them there at his dad’s. He was living in that Delaware home for a while.

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I woke up in a grouchy mood, but then I turned on TV and watched Joe Biden try to read off the teleprompter and give a speech. It always cheers me up, makes me laugh. 

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The fact that it took a few votes to get McCarthy in as House Speaker is really a good thing. It shows that Republicans can stand on their own two feet, debate and then come together, unlike the Democrats who all stick together and cannot think for themselves.

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Democrats are the very definition of polyps and hemorrhoids.

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I’m calling about all the nonsense about climate change. I grew up in the 60s and every winter, every storm you got was almost 2-feet of snow. They didn’t have trucks big enough to push and they were pushing it with dozers, and you know what, they were going to get cleared. It doesn’t have anything to do with climate; it has to do with the Democrats pushing their nonsense to feed China so China can get richer and more powerful. So any of you people believing in this climate stuff, you might want to go to church because it’s happening. Grow up, ask the professionals, don’t listen to Democrats.

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Does anyone know why Biden whispers when he speaks? Is it because he doesn’t want us to hear the lies that he’s spreading to the American people?

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“I know you’re retirement age – are you starting a collection? They’re classified documents, not spoons from the Delaware Train Museum.” — Stephen Colbert 

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“The White House announced today that President Biden’s aides found classified documents at several locations inside his Delaware home. And he’s had them for a while, because a lot of them have to do with the Louisiana Purchase.” — Seth Meyers 

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“Which is more dangerous, Joe Biden having classified documents in his garage, or Joe Biden having the keys to a Corvette?” — Jimmy Kimmel

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We have had egg and other poultry products go up over the years due to outbreaks of bird flu, so this is not this disease’s first rodeo. But never have prices increased such a huge and outrageous percentage. Is there a coffee bean flu? The price of a (smaller amount) can of coffee has nearly doubled. I bet if the last guy was still President he’d be after folks to come up with a vaccine for bird flu or even a way to eliminate it entirely, just like he pushed for a COVID vaccine (which he gets no credit for from the dems). If they had been in charge, we’d still be waiting.

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The Dems stole the election, lied about what they injected into your body, shut down our churches and schools, destroyed the borders, weaponized the government against us, destroyed the economy with inflation, and censored dissenters online. Marxism is here, some just don’t realize it yet.

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The contributor who was so happy that the Republican House had voted to eliminate 87,000 IRS workers that had already been budgeted really should do some fact checking. First of all, while they may have voted to eliminate them, that bill was DOA in the Senate, so those workers are still going to be hired. One other fact that the writer failed to mention is that those workers are to be hired to replace clerical and IT personnel and yes, some agents that will be retiring over the next 10 years. The IRS wasn’t going to hire an army of auditors to make it harder on you. Another tidbit of information, had that bill actually passed it would have added 114 billion dollars to the deficit; so much for fiscal responsibility. I guess Fox news failed to mention those facts. This writer really should fact check. Oh, I forgot, facts are not important to Republicans.

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Biden Democrats just floated the idea of prohibiting gas range tops. Next will be gas water heaters, gas furnaces, dryers, ovens, etc. They know we are stupid, dumb, and addle-headed. Any electric device that is used for heating is resistive heating. This is extremely inefficient. Your electric range will require at least 40 amps, at least 60 amps for an In-garage EV charger, dryer – 40, oven – 40, dishwasher – 20, water heater – 30, forced air heating – 80, other – 20 amps. Total possible max load is 330 amps. Residential homes, at best, have 220-amp services. Should residential amperage demand reach 220 amps at 6:30 a.m. on Dec. 21, the Winter Solstice, there will be ZERO solar panel electricity available. Rewiring your home will cost a fortune, if possible. It will take perhaps 30 to rebuild the grid and there is not enough copper on the planet to do this. This doesn’t work! Other solutions need to be found. 

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Trump tried, and is continuing to ruin and destroy America’s democracy, now with the help of wacko and dangerous Congressional Republican extremists. Let’s see if they hold up the normal bipartisan automatic raising of the debt limit, which would cause great harm to our economy, lower your 401K, and possibly throw the entire world into a recession. All for personal grandstanding when they should be voting for their constituents and our country’s best interests. Obviously they don’t know how to govern. George Santos, along with MAGA and QAnon Republicans, is a clear and present danger to all of us.

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The difference between embellishing a resume and being a pathological liar would be obvious to anyone but a Trumpster.