People are irate over the Beeches-Turning Stone deal where the State Liquor Authority has given permission for the owner of the Beeches to reap untold amounts of dollars from the liquor concession at the casino while the owner's wife, Assemblywoman Destito, sits on a government panel that oversees State Liquor Authority legislation, formerly sat on a committee that oversaw the casino, and is still part of the same state government that now refuses to collect its taxes from the casino.
Mrs. Destito has remained in power for so long because the Republicans have put up fake candidates to run against her. The last one didn't campaign, didn't show up for one of his WIBX shows, and didn't know the issues when he did.
On another level, one of last bills that Mr. Boehlert pushed in Congress was to require mandatory mental health testing in schools. Now Mr. Arcuri is pushing the healthcare reform that will put all your private health records on federal computers. Both are unnecessary, unwaranted, and unconstitutional intrusions into people's privacy and their everyday lives.
The Republicans and Democrats have become different sides of the same coin. They've both enriched their friends at your expense, and used the government to accumulate more power over you, taking away your freedom.
A pox on both their houses.
21 comments:
Well said. There is no two party system here; there are the "ins" and the "outs". The "ins" share the control and therefore the spoils. This situation of the perpetuation of the status quo renders talk of reform, including governmental structural reform virtually hopeless. The interesting question is why the people, those taxpayers footing the bill, tolerate it. I am working on a book that deals with answering that question.
I think the Declaration of Independence more or less acknowledged that it is human nature to tolerate a certain amount of abuse ... until a breaking point is reached where people won't take it any more. However, I thought we'd reach the breaking point long before this, quite frankly.
So did I but I continue to be wrong. Perhaps there is no breaking point.
I find it ironic that the Socialist states (i.e. the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), China and to a lesser extent France) are all turning away from their Socialist based economies to embrace a more capitalistic form of economics as the United States of America seems to be embracing a more Socialistic form of economics. Is more government intervention killing the “free society” that the founding fathers intended for the United States? Only a very few Americans can realize the dangerous metamorphous this country is embarking on. Instead, as the designed economic ruin placed a strangle hold on U.S. jobs, the citizenry has been fooled into believing that total government domination over the economy is the preferred option serving as the Twenty-first Century opiate of the masses. We have witnessed the U.S. government systematically disarm its citizenry, dumb down the students, corrupt the political process, devaluate of the dollar, export the industrial base employment, take control of the financial institutions and now socialize health care. This begs the question as to why the United States bothered to fight the Cold War in the first place. After the Berlin Wall was dismantled, the U.S. society systematically imploded to emulate the very socialistic societies the Cold War $Billions were spent to crush. Precious American blood has been spilt on foreign soil in the name of Freedom just to have our society turn into the very States that fought to impose their Socialistic form of government on Americans. I greatly fear the new U.S. political and economic atmosphere, just as we have witnessed with the former Soviet Union, may be becoming fertile ground for a possible Military based coup d’état.
G&B -- I think that what we are witnessing has been in the making for many many years. (1) The education system has undergone changes that systematically, it seems, have withheld core knowledge from students while at the same time trained them into thinking and processing information in particular ways which sets society's opinion up to be controlled by whoever controls the information flow. (2) Radicals from such former terrorist groups as the SDS and Weather Underground have wormed their way into some of the highest positions of influence in state and national government. How the hell they could have passed a background check is beyond me unless those doing the checks were infltrated long ago.
Our military have taken an oath to uphold the Constitution. A military coup may, indeed, be in our future . . . and, unfortunately, many of us may welcome it.
The mission of the Alexander Hamilton Institute for the Study of Western Civilization, based in Clinton, should be checked out. An open house is being held on Saturday.PS. Talk of coups should not be part of anyone's agenda
"Talk of coups should not be part of anyone's agenda" -- agreed.
So...why can't the Turning Stone get a liquor license despited repeated attempts? (I'm honestly asking...I'm not up on the dynamics...) retiredmaj
That's a good question retiredmaj . . . and I don't know the answer to that. But as long as TS cannot get a license, that clears the way for Mrs. Destito's family to clean up.
Regarding the Assemblywoman’s denying possibly being in collusion in terms of aiding her husband’s business dealings with the TS exhibits her narcissistic entitlement attitude she has developed by manipulating the political atmosphere here in Central New York. When the political cards are stacked in one’s favor, it allows them to funnel sway publicly influence in order to enrich their family and friends. Even her political allies are scoffing at her denials of political favoritism towards the Oneidas. How could any rational thinking individual make the statement like the one in the Utica Observer Dispatch on Thursday expressing “She says she sees no conflicts and says she has nothing to do with her husband's business.” http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_action=doc&p_docid=12A58E03D2D86EB0&p_docnum=1&p_theme=gatehouse&s_site=UODB&p_product=UODB
Who is she trying to fool? I’ll wager that if her husband were to decree that he wanted a divorce she would be claiming that she was entitled to 50% of his share of all business assets and reciprocating incomes. Come on Assemblywoman, stop insulting our intelligence . . . "If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family anatidae on our hands."
— Douglas Adams
Yes, her public comments are laughable and insulting. She has nothing to do with her husband's activities? Some marriage! One would think she would be too embarassed to make such comments. But, I guess nothing embarasses people like that!
The "one coin/two sides" of the two-party system was pretty evident ever since the 1980s, when the two parties completely meshed. Their bickerings were publicized merely to fool the spectating public. Francis Schaeffer said as much in several of his books. That was 25, 30 years ago. me thinks it is too little-too late now to suddenly be seeing the two "parties" for what they are.
I do not mean to be critical, but certainly there has been a complete disassociation and denial of this ploy for most of our adult lives... and NOW it is finally being spoken against? Too late. Our Constitution, for all intents and purposes, is just a sheet of paper now. The U.S. is being controlled by panels of bureaucrats.
P.S. Regarding the comment, "Talk of coups should not be part of anyone's agenda." Whose agenda? Certainly not ours, the Constitutionalists-- we are retaining the legal form of government. It is THEY who are planning these coups. We have every legal RIGHT-- nay, the legal DUTY-- to push back.
That's fine as long as the "push" is through the Constitution you claim to follow.
What happens if the president of the US decides to overstay his term -- like the president of Honduras recently did. If the Military takes over, like it did in Honduras, is it a "coup," or simply enforcing the Constitution?
The Honduran president that overstayed his constitutionally defined term was supported by Venezuela, Cuba, and the UN. Our media called the military action a "coup" as though what they did was illegal.
In Honduras the military claimed to be following the ruling of its supreme court . . . but what happens if our supreme court decides not to follow the constitution as well ... then what?
Thank you Strikeslip, again you have so perceptively realized just where I was coming from when you make my coup analogy connection with the recent incidents regarding Honduran President Zelaya’s Venezuelan Chavez-esque style of perpetual power. Many Tom Clancy readers thought that he was pushing the reality envelope when he wrote “The Bear and the Dragon.” Many thought that Clancy may have lost it when he wrote that having China invade Siberia and with the US backing Russia was simply preposterous. But the recent Honduran “coup” is even stranger than this unjustly ridiculed novel. President Zelaya’s term as President runs out in January 2010. But he has plans to hold on to his enormous power in spite of the fact that the Honduran people want their democratic right to their November 2009 Presidential election to be constitutionally upheld. To their credit, the Honduran military seems to be the only branch of government that seeks to uphold their national constitution. Therefore, one only needs to define just who is perpetuating the “coup” in Honduras? Is it the administration of President Zelayas who seeks to ignore the Constitutional mandate to honor the term limits placed upon his elected office? Or is it the Honduran military who seeks to enforce the National Constitution of the land?
One would think that President Barak Obama’s administration would want to side with democracy, free elections, and the will of the people. But think again, this administration has scrambled its State Department attorneys to unearth some bogus “legal way” to empower Secretary Hilary Clinton into sanctioning a proclamation for President Obama to officially condemn the free will of the Honduran people and officially back the hegemonic dictatorship of President Zelaya. This, in conjunction with the incidents mentioned previously, should strike fear in our hearts because these are dangerous times for American democracy too. This unbecoming behavior of a U.S. President, who fancies himself as the leader of the “Free World,” would surely terrify our nation's Constitutional forefathers.
We are in more trouble than I thought when we start to imply that we may, or perhaps will, mirror a banana republic as Honduras. Turn down the heat level, please. We are the strongest functioning democracy in the history of the world.
Why should we think that we cannot not go the way of a banana republic? Has our president supported Zelayas in Honduras -- or not?
The answer is our history, our institiutions, our economic system and our Judeo Christian foundation. One man nor one election result can alter our character.The support of Obama for questionable characters and systems is one thing; the change and collapse of our traditions and accomplishments are another. Remember Carter? Was he but one term? We are by far the most succesful and brilliant experiment in the history of the world. One election mistake cannot permanently alter that. If it could, I would not waste my time writing if I were you. I'd be in church or Los Vegas!
I wish I could be confident, but I am not. True, no one election mistake cannot permanently alter our history -- but a course of conduct by stratigically placed people over a course of many years can ... And people in both parties driven by greed or lust for power have contributed to this situation.
No -- It is NOT one election. Why, after all, did we allow our banks to get so big that they became "too big to fail?" Why did we allow our oil companies to merge? (Whatever happened to anti-trust regulation?) Why have we exported most of our manufacturing capabilities? Why are our borders porous when we, allegedly, are so concerned about terrorists? Why are our children indoctrinated in schools while, at the same time, being denied core knowledge? Republicans and Democrats both did/allowed these things which are all threatening to our security and economic well-being ... and seemingly preparing us for ... something else.
I apologize if I frightened anyone. I am not one of those conspiracy theorists. However . . . The systematic implosion of this “great American experiment” cannot be denied. It also did not commence during this administration. I believe, with hindsight being 20/20, that it actually started in 1971 when President Nixon took the American dollar off of the gold standard. In the 34 years prior to Nixon’s abandoning the gold standard, the money supply in the U.S. grew less than two fold. Subsequent to the gold standard abandonment, the U.S. money supply has grown thirteen fold. As the Federal Reserve printed more and more dollars to finance the Viet Nam conflict, inflation proliferated ushering in the dollar’s devaluation and depleted a substantial amount of the U.S. economy’s wealth and the citizen’s discretionary spending ability.
I wonder how many Soviet citizens thought that a coup could never happen there when on August 19, 1991the KGB cut all communications as they attempted to take control of the Soviet Republics away from Mikhail Gorbachev. Only after Russian President Boris Yeltsin successfully seized back power on behalf of Gorbachev, did the Soviets avert a bloody civil war. For us to think that this could NEVER happen here is implausible. This may be the reason that our forefathers made provisions for the individual states to maintain their own militias.
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