According to H.L. Mencken, a Puritan is a person with a haunting fear that someone, somewhere is happy.
My own new year resolution is to dispense with the fear that a republican somewhere is happy and try to look at our troubled times and seek common sense solutions.
Both Republicans and Democrats have created the mess we are in, although I naturally tend to assign more culpability to the far-right crowd.
Over the last several decades we have allowed a minority of our citizens to dictate what shape our economy should take.
American corporations opted to shift manufacturing jobs to other countries. Walmart and other big box stores have squashed small town businesses and hired millions of our fellow citizens at substandard wages.
Banks have evolved from the principal role of lending and now are heavily engaged in all kinds of global trading that hardly anyone can understand, much less control.
When corporate and financial tycoons and our public officials all sing the same tune, we are the ones who suffer and we have for quite some time.
As I start the new year I find some inspiration in our Constitution’s Preamble: “We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common Defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
It’s time to get to work.
William Tunney
Grantsville
Opinion
Tycoons and politicians sing the same tune, and we suffer
- Opinion
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Maryland has stopped being “The Free State”
I am a lifetime member of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Disabled American Veterans and, last but not least, the National Rifle Association. I am a yearly member of the American Legion.
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Outrageous
Distrust of government secrecy has been elevated to an exceptional level with the disclosure the Justice Department covertly examined two months of Associated Press phone records to determine who leaked details to the AP about a foiled terrorist plot.
This amounts to spying on an American news organization — common practice in dictatorships but scary conduct in a democratic system that prizes the public value of an independent watchdog press. -
Save the Bridge Program
Please do not close the Frostburg United Methodist Church Bridge Program. The community and many families need this program. Let me enlighten you about a few things.
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It’s good to be the queens
One of the many nuggets of knowledge that Crash Davis tried to bestow upon Nuke LaLoosh in the movie Bull Durham was that ‘strikeouts are boring. Besides that, they’re fascist.’
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Harper just needs to stop scoring the wall
• Happy birthday, Brooks Robinson. No. 5 will be 76 tomorrow.
Remember, in the words of Gordon Beard, “Brooks Robinson never asked anybody to name a candy bar after him. In Baltimore people name their children after him.” -
Town of Westernport needs a police force and a curfew
Since the consolidation of Bruce and Valley high schools the town of Westernport rapidly deteriorated from what was once a quite respectable community to a community in a decline in residents, and along with that came a collapse in local government due to lack of knowledge and bad decisions that set the town of Westernport back 60 years.
One bad decision was to give up their police force, and with no constant visual law enforcement it has created an open range for drug dealerss, addicts, thieves, drunks and speeding vehicles that choose to ignore our city laws and speed limits and have totally disregard for the safety of the citizens who are on the streets, especially the children who are like deer, you don’t see them until their in front of you. -
Financial gutting will damage school system
I am writing in response to the Allegany County Commissioners’ efforts to cut local education spending to the lowest possible level allowed under state law.
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Cemetery organization plans events to mark Memorial Day
This upcoming Memorial Day marks the 30th anniversary of the Cumberland Historic Cemetery Organization (CHCO).
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Rowley proof of experience breeding opportunity
When Bob Rowley learned of the fund-raising efforts to help provide Fort Hill football player Zac Elbin the opportunity to play in the Down Under Bowl this summer in Australia, it became a mere reflex for him to make a significant contribution on Elbin’s behalf. For while very few area high school football players have followed in his footsteps, Rowley, the former Fort Hill great from the late 1950s, had certainly walked in Elbin’s, having faced similar circumstances following his senior year in high school. And thanks to the support of the community, Rowley says he was able to realize an opportunity of a lifetime.
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Better fix it
The West Virginia Division of Highways should not give up on improving safety at the intersection of U.S. Route 220 and Stoney Run Road in Keyser merely because the intersection does not meet the state’s criteria for a traffic signal.
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Maryland has stopped being “The Free State”
