Breaking News

Opinion

DUNKIRK: Nobody here can fix a broken city

The OBSERVER’s View

It usually takes a crisis before a community starts to care. The city of Dunkirk’s chaos has been long overdue. A municipality with a population of 12,400 residents needs a budget of $30 million to operate. With a shrinking tax base — and high poverty rate — it is a recipe for disaster. Last week, union workers and leaders from across the region voiced their displeasure with contract talks during a council meeting. They even included a “no confidence” vote against Mayor Kate Wdowiasz. “This action follows a long and troubling pattern of leadership failures that have ...

Perspective keeps skewing global reality

Commentary

President Donald Trump is loudly proclaiming, “We won! We won!” The Iranians are saying not so fast, the strait is closed. Trump is complaining forcefully that “Fake News” is not reporting the administration’s great success. If there was success, gas would not be $4 a gallon, soon to be $5. With the internet people can seek out news. We can talk to people from around the world. We can watch Independent media like “Democracy Now!” www.Democracynow.org NPR and PBS How do we know Democracy Now, NPR and PBS are telling the truth? They interview people who have written ...

‘Progressivism’ not part of Declaration

Commentary

AUSTIN, Texas—The 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence is at hand. America needs history-rooted expositions of founding ideas to celebrate this semiquincentennial. It’s also called the bisesquicentennial, sestercentennial, or quarter millennium. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has ably provided such an exposition. You, faithful reader of this column, will recall the principle that in America, government has only those powers that We the People surrendered to government in the first place. This is the default setting. It’s like the default settings on ...

No magic can fix city’s disappearing funds

Editor's corner

Dunkirk’s fiscal frying pan became more like a broiler on Tuesday evening. Numerous city workers showed up in force at the Common Council meeting to voice their displeasure with the current administration, announcing “no confidence” votes in Mayor Kate Wdowiasz. Labor advocates turned ...

COUNTY: Making investment in Comedy Center

The OBSERVER’s View

There are going to be some who will be upset if the Chautauqua County Legislature approves a $200,000 allocation to the National Comedy Center when the legislature meets Wednesday. We understand the concerns. Millions of government dollars have been given to help build the center, and hundreds of thousands of dollars have been given – largely from the state and federal governments – to help market the center and sustain it during the COVID-19 pandemic. There are some who will say the National Comedy Center shouldn’t get more local government money given the needs facing the ...

Big time sports on our big screen

Commentary

The Masters Golf Tournament this year was a doozy. For us golf junkies, the Big Kahuna of the season’s contests was incredibly exciting, especially for Rory McIlroy fans. I joined that fan club about 17 years ago when he was a new name on the PGA Tour. Rory (he lets me call him by his first name) is an up-from-childhood player like Tiger Woods. His dad bought him plastic clubs at age two and he never stopped swinging. I didn’t realize until recently that he was an only child born to working-class parents. Both of them worked second jobs, hardly seeing each other, so their boy ...