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Budget proposal threatens stability

A recent OBSERVER/Post-Journal editorial asked if the Chautauqua County 2027 budget is realistic. I think a better question is: “Is the 2027 budget prudent?” The answer to that question is “No.” I was the County Budget Director from 2017-2023. I worked for three county executives, including Executive PJ Wendel. The executives and the Finance Department agreed the budget should be structurally balanced, the tax levy should not exceed the levy limit, and general fund balance should only be used for unusual or unexpected expenditures. In this year’s tentative budget, two of ...

Worlds of difference separate East, West

People ask when the conflict with Iran will be over. But the Iran conflict is merely a continuation of the 1,400-year war between contradictory cultures. From Rudyard Kipling’s 1889 poem: “East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.” The East-West divide pits Western beliefs in Natural Rights and freedom of conscience against Islamic (Sharia) Law – which forbids both. The current conflict is simply the latest salvo in Islam’s war against everything non-Islamic. (The word “Islam” means “to submit”.) Since the early 7th century, Islam has ...

Blakeman brings energy, enthusiasm to campaign

Let’s pick up where we left off last week. It’s worth encouraging “Never Trumps to imagine what would have become of the law if Donald Trump had lost the 2016 presidential election and not filled the three Supreme Court vacancies from 2017 to 2020.” Please think about that. We’ll ...

Democrats ran up the tab we’re all paying for

This election season, Democrats have latched on to the issue of affordability, a problem that the Biden administration did much to cause and which the second Trump administration is working to correct. It is important for Americans to understand that price increases due to inflation do not ...

Edibles with a shelf life of 25 years

It began during another cleanout day in the garage. We expect to be moving within the year and are trying to purge everything we don’t use. It’s a nightmare. The dictionary defines purge: “to get rid of whatever is impure or undesirable; to cleanse; to purify.” Well, anything stored ...

Major consequences in this election

The Democratic Party is not the same party it used to be. The Socialists are taking over your party. You have Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Kamala Harris, Hakeem Jeffries, Hasan Piker, and Abdul-El-Sayed who have taken over the moderate Democrats. They are all socialists-communists. They can’t beat us on the battlefield, so they decided to bring our country down from within. Look what’s happened to California with Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and Gavin Newsom in control. Both Barack Obama and Joe Biden said Iran can never have a nuclear weapon, but never did ...