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Opinion

Understanding our U.S. Constitution

Commentary

For 250 years this country has remained as free as one can be. Each citizen enjoys such liberty as freedom to speak their mind. To pursue the happiness that is granted by their creator. As Americans we can freely roam the globe, and especially within the confines of our own borders we can come and go as we please. Although each state of residence offers unique observance of power that is granted and accepted by the constituents, in most cases their freedoms and privileges are held in reciprocity by the other states in the nation. That means that if you can drive a car here in New York ...

People’s column

Peoples column

Editor, OBSERVER: You know, Democrats talk all the time about how they hate President Donald Trump. They hate President Trump but they never say what he's doing specifically that they hate. So, is it the $1,000 trust fund for all the children being born? Just for being born. And when they become adults many of them will be millionaires, possibly multi-millionaires. Is it the lower drug cost on drugs that many of us use everyday through Trump RX? The fact that manufacturing is coming back to our country bringing high wage jobs like Toyota just announcing they are bringing Tacoma ...

The more things change, the more they stay the same

Commentary

In the spring of 2010 I arrived home from work to find my street lined with small orange flags, the type of which usually indicate some sort of digging soon to take place. The flags were quite curious to me since Ryan Place had only been established a few years prior and our street seemed to have all the necessary infrastructure already in place. What could anyone be digging along the entire south side of the street and right in front of our three year old house? I reached out to a contact I had at the Fredonia DPW who told me that the flags were markers for the no parking signs to be ...

Large egos ultimately decide fate of world

Commentary

In August of 1945, President Harry S Truman made the momentous decision to go ahead with a plan to use nuclear bombs against Japan. It was a lose-lose situation, justified in the end simply by calculating the number of potential fatalities — how many people would die if we used it versus if we conducted a full invasion of Japan. Truman’s decision has been criticized and defended ever since, and recently re-examined in the film “Oppenheimer.” Truman grew up in a middle class, Presbyterian family in an agricultural environment in Missouri. His early adult life involved five years ...

Merger progress stays quiet, even after funding

The OBSERVER’s View

We are not against the recent action by the Chautauqua County Legislature to approve additional funding to the town of Pomfret for a study to investigate options for shared services and mergers. We do believe, however, that not enough is being said regarding where the effort stands. In July, lawmakers approved a resolution to award Pomfret $25,000 from the county's Government Reduction initiative for the initiative. The money is not part of the county's budget but rather will be coming from its reserve accounts. To his credit, Chautauqua County Executive PJ Wendel called upon the ...

U.S. seems paralyzed by ‘devastating chaos’

Commentary

Recently, the media has pinned the phrase “a failure of imagination” on Donald Trump’s presidency. That phrase applies to the actions (or inactions) of the Trump administration, but the real failure of imagination may lie with all of us who are subject to it. The phrase expresses the challenge of grappling with the question of “what if?”— gaming out the consequences of our actions and decisions. We make countless cause-and-effect calls on a daily basis, predicting outcomes based on past experiences and on our imaginative power to contemplate future scenarios. Initially, ...