Readers’ Column for the week of May 17, 2026

You may call The Owego Pennysaver Readers’ Column at (607) 687-2434, extension 2, 24 hours a day, or email comments to ReadersOP@gmail.com. We reserve the right to revise or reject any messages. Please limit your comments to 100 words or fewer. If they cannot be cut down to 100 words, we will not run them.

Tuesday morning, I guess another scam is going around. So I answered my phone, and it sounded like a big, burly, tough guy saying he was a cop, and then put somebody else on with a Southern accent. Basically, they were trying to say the cops are being beaten up all the time, but they wanted money. So just beware: if you want to donate money to local policemen, I suggest you call them directly and ask where to donate. Don’t give your hard-earned money to anybody! Have a good day, and I missed the column last week.

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The Owego Apalachin school board budget vote is coming up. Before I vote, I need to know why Waverly has 200 fewer students than Owego Free Academy and a budget that is $16 million less, as compared to Owego: $16 million for 200 students. Please somebody explain that to me and clear it up.

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I find it very hypocritical that every year we’re asked to help fund the local libraries in the school budget vote. OFA removed its library, but OACSD expects the taxpayers to dig deeper to support a library. Taxes are high enough. This adds $60 to my already too-high school tax bill. ENOUGH!

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A golden opportunity for someone – we need a replacement wine and liquor store in the Village of Owego. I like the convenience of not having to jump in the car for every little thing, and it would be nice to have somewhere closer than nearly two miles away to buy a bottle of wine to enjoy with dinner.

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The NVCSD Superintendent states that the district is facing significant cost increases. We all did! Unfortunately, we can’t ask Social Security or our employer for a 2.85% increase. I think we should send a message and vote NO on the budget (May 19 from noon to 8 p.m.) and make them rethink and redo the budget. Everybody has had to rethink how and where to spend, and NVCSD SHOULD TOO!

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I couldn’t help but notice that there were no local comments in the last Pennysaver. We are focused on the Democrats and the Republicans. They are like bad parents who conquer and divide to get what they want. We need to be strong and support our neighbors and especially our local businesses. Change starts at home. Just saying. 

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Is anyone else getting a lot of spam calls lately originating from the 607 area code? Every time I block a number, a different one comes through. I shut them down on the landline and block individual numbers on my cell phone. The “Do Not Call” register is a joke.

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Reasons to vote NO on the SVE school budget: lack of transparency from School Admin and the Board, the School Board fails to comply with State Open Meeting laws, and increased administrative hiring despite a decline in student enrollment, low student scoring, recent capital budget increases that will lead to higher taxes, funding student work programs with taxpayer dollars, purchases of larger buses instead of more efficient smaller buses, high employee benefit and retirement costs, and inconsistent spending policies. 

National Political Viewpoints

Kathy Hochul, Chuck Schumer, A.O.C., you’re all fired!

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I don’t know about anybody else in this country, but I’m a Democrat. I’ve been a Democrat for over 50 years. But I refuse to sit there and watch my party get on television and act like fools. It’s a total disgrace! I watch Newsom sit there and blame Republicans. I watch Jeffries, A.O.C., it’s a crying shame. You lost, and you sit there and want the world to watch you act like such idiots. It is no wonder the Democratic Party is losing so badly.

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I heard on the news today that the United States has so much oil stockpiled right now that we don’t know what to do with it. And yet, we’re paying these ungodly fees because of a war Trump started in the Middle East for Israel and the oil companies. That son of a gun can sign an executive order any time he wants to increase the price of gas and lower it down to what it was before. There is no reason in the world why he doesn’t, except he’s helping his rich buddies. 

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I see where Ukraine is slowly but surely gaining its territory back. There’s a good chance they might even win the war! So, the hell with Vladimir Putin. 

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I cannot believe the amount of corruption and foolishness that goes on in our government. Kash Patel handed out bottles of bourbon with his name and the FBI on them. Then, to see Sean Duffy, our Transportation Secretary, making a reality show out of road trips across America. With gas prices, people cannot afford to get to work; cannot afford child care; can barely afford groceries; and there he is creating a reality TV show. If you complain about it, he says it’s because you’re un-American. Un-American is not letting people have the money they need to live in America.

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We did learn one thing this week. There is no more Supreme Court in this country. All the Supreme Court is, or used to be, is nothing but the branch of the Republican Party. They made it so obvious that they want to keep Republicans in power. It’s ridiculous how this country’s turned out. The Supreme Court, just another branch of the Republican Party.

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Tennessee just approved a new congressional map. It’s nice to see more seats stolen from this dirty state of New York, where there are tax-hungry people. Glad to see that other states are doing so much better. Also, Corning is going to merge with NVIDIA, and they’re going to create 3,000 new jobs. Isn’t that great news? Corning, New York. NO! New plant in North Carolina, new plant in Texas, 0 jobs in New York. Thank you, Kathy Hochul, for running all these jobs and companies out of the state. The only thing she wants here is desperate people.

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This is for the National Political Viewpoints. Don’t blame me. I didn’t vote for Trump.

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Farmers are vital. “Two percent feeds the rest of us,” Dan Osborn, a Senate Independent candidate in Nebraska, stated on “All In with Chris Hayes” on MSNOW. Osborn recognizes how farmers’ hard work, and now their extra burdens and hardships under Trump, are affecting farmers and how this will escalate for us. We need independent and democratic thinkers and action-makers in government to protect our food and families from the bad tariffs and foreign policies of Trump and the spineless Republican Congress, who have gone along with Trump’s horror policies as war-hungry Trade and Commerce destroyers.

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The Trump-stacked Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act last week! This has allowed Republicans to ignore their state constitutions and redraw (“redistrict”) their voting maps in their favor. So a Republican Louisiana governor stopped an ongoing primary election to rig Louisiana elections against Democratic voters there, stripping them of their voice in government. To counter this, Virginia voters voted to legally allow redistricting to rebalance elections, but were shut down. The Republicans just rigged the system to strip away our democracy! Republicans are cheating for Trump and for their own gain. (Learn more at DemocracyDocket.com.)

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I have to laugh at the comments about immigrants stealing our jobs and buying up houses. The only jobs immigrants are “taking” are the backbreaking jobs that Americans refuse to do because they are hard work. Immigrants are cleaning rich people’s houses and motels. They are laboring in farmers’ fields in the hot sun for 14 hours a day. And they are washing dishes in the back of hot kitchens. And they are paid less than the minimum wage, so they aren’t buying up houses either. Please stop believing everything you hear on Fox “news” and read on the internet.

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Mr. Maratea, I so enjoyed your letter in last week’s paper. It is great to hear from someone who experienced the hardships of WWII personally and who actually understands why President Trump had to go into Iran to stop the real, serious threat we were under for almost 50 years, and what that threat can turn into. 

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One man with courage is a majority. — Mama Gump

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Our President does NOT want to abolish programs for which Democrats believe they should get “credit they deserve”; he wants the elimination of fraud and overspending in those programs. As far as gas prices, it has more to do with blue-state governors and blue-state sales tax than Hormuz.

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I’d like to thank Mr. Joseph Shortino for another wonderful Letter to the Editor. It is so refreshing to open The Pennysaver and read well written, thought out, common-sense letters. I especially enjoy Mr. Shortino’s reminder of 1917 Russia, 1933 Germany, and 1950’s Venezuela. We need to learn a lesson from those things, not follow it as a game plan for the future. There is a lot of information available about things; we need to stop listening to what legacy news is trying to sell us and stop this push to destroy the USA.

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For those so afflicted with TDS that they use the Iranian war to bash Trump, you need to think again. Trump would be the greatest villain since the Nazis if he didn’t prosecute the war. Once Iran had the bomb, it would be only a short time before our planet would have glowed in the dark. Eighty-one years have passed since Hiroshima and the Treaty on Nuclear Non-Proliferation has been effective for 58 years. The Trump administration is making the best of the poor choices created by his predecessors. If things go sideways, that is better than the alternative.

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I read last week’s letter to the editor with great interest. What struck me as I read it was that, if written as an essay in high school or college, it would fail based on the metric offered as back-up for your facts. What also struck me was the technique used by the Moonies in the 1970s – throw out a lot of disconnected facts that make it sound like you know what you’re talking about, but it’s really to quickly keep changing the topic so you can’t keep up with any measuring/ gauging thoughts you might have.

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Global affairs journalist David Rothkopf wrote today in The Daily Beast, “Not since Vietnam have we seen a more systematic effort by an administration to lie about the nature, costs, consequences, and results of a war than we have seen from the White House on Iran.” — Heather Cox Richardson. May 6, 2026