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Editor, OBSERVER: A recent column by one of the many pro-Trumpers around here offered up "pragmatism" as the reason so many Democrats hate President Donald Trump. Here are just a few of the real reasons. Trump has repeatedly disrespected our men and women in the Armed Forces, a service he himself avoided back in the day. Trump lied profusely during the campaign about immigrants in Ohio eating neighborhood pets, even after the facts proved otherwise. Trump is a felon convicted of 34 counts of financial fraud. Trump is a civilly convicted of sexual assault against E. Jean Carroll. Trump ...

The home of state champions

This has been quite a year for sports in our county. Several schools won at the sectional level, we have had state championships in wrestling and swimming, and recently the Frewsburg Girls Basketball team and the Panama Boys Basketball team brought home state championships. Sometimes we get overly obsessed with our smallness and remoteness as a community. When we are out-of-town and asked about where we live we often say: “Oh, a few miles south of Buffalo...” thinking that the inquirer may assume that we are from New York City and that Buffalo is the only upstate place that ...

Wind industry keeps preying on region

The industrial wind grifters are back. This time their targets are the towns of Ellery, Stockton, North Harmony, Sherman, Westfield, and Ripley. The snake-oil salesmen are busy signing up landowners — promising them lots of taxpayer-provided money to lease their land to Bedrock Renewables (Golden, Colo.) which is looking to erect 600-foot industrial wind turbines across the western portion of Chautauqua County. The Wind Target Zone stretches across the fourth most important migrating bird flyway in North America on the Lake Erie escarpment where flocks of birds seek the updrafts ...

April’s annual spring tease is in full swing

Believe it or not, it’s Spring! If you look at a calendar, you will know I’m not lying. In fact, it’s been Spring for over a month, and the pictures on your April calendar probably show things like fields of green grass and budding flowers, robins dangling worms from their beaks, and greedy squirrels gorging themselves on bird feeders. Another sure sign is the number of dead rabbits on the roadside, those speedy creatures that are so hell-bent on practicing their reproductive rights they forget to look before crossing. There are other signs. You might hear a cardinal singing out ...

State budget process is bad government

This year, New York is struggling to pass a budget, for the third year in a row. If the Majority needed only to agree on how to spend billions of your tax dollars more than last year, the budget would be done on time. But our state government’s wasteful spending is only a part of the problem. See, every year, the governor, along with the Senate and Assembly Majority leaders, adds substantial changes to our laws through the budget. Most of those changes, like the pro-criminal bail laws, have been disastrous. If the governor dislikes the submitted policy changes, then she laments the ...

Americans keep losing rights, voices

No food, water or other supplies have entered Gaza since March. People are starving to death. People are dying of diseases because there is no clean water. Their relatives in Yemen, the Houthis, are desperate to do something. They are launching missile attacks on Israel. We are responding with airstrikes, one on a market in the capital that killed 12 people and wounded 34 others. Why are we attacking civilian targets? How long before they attack us directly? People in the region blame us for the genocide. Israel is doing it with our weapons and support. Young people in ...