A-4 HOMETOWN ONEONTA
HOMETOWN Views
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 2021
EDITORIALS
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MASTER GARDENERS: Our National Mission xtension Master Gardener programs educate people, engaging them in learning to use unbiased, research-based horticulture and gardening practices through a network of trained volunteers directed and supported by land-grant university faculty and staff.”
In Time Of Pandemic, Hope Blooms
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nderneath the quiet of pandemic strictures and social-distancing, the world hasn’t completely come to a stop. Just as, soon, crocuses (not, croci, we’re told) will begin poking through the snow, so will the Otsego County Master Gardeners’ exciting plan start to become a reality. “The Grow With Cornell Cooperative Extension” fund drive has reached
HELP MASTER GARDENERS HELP US ►To donate, click on the “Grow
With CCE” link at www.cceschoharie-otsego.org, or email Don Smyers at drs269@cornell.edu for more information.
70 percent of its $200,000 goal, Extension Director Don Smyers announced this week, and thus, with
LETTERS
climate to change, and it’s all related to the “jet stream.” The science gets complicated, but can be expressed in a simple four-step explanation that summarizes scientific publications of the past decade. None of this involves seasonal summer/winter changes. Here’s the explanation: STEP 1 – Atmospheric circulation is generated as the earth rotates during normal daily changes that bring day and night. STEP 2 – This circulation causes regions of the atmosphere to constantly shift in a meandering pattern (the jet stream), which accounts for daily weather changes. STEP 3 – During cliPlease See ZEIGLER, A6
Get Jabbed – Or Get Lost To the Editor: Got my second C-19 vax the other day at a public center. Only fainted once this time. No wait, no line, plenty of technicians and vax. All paid for by the government. Ain’t socialized medicine grand ? We are truly blessed to have these vaccines available to us. So where was the crowd? Where were the lines? Why are so many people still refusing to get vaccinated ? Since vaccinating the majority of the population could effectively wipe out the plague, why not tie
HOMETOWN
getting government paychecks and subsidies to vaccinations? Air travel? If you refuse to do your civic duty and get vaccinated on religious, political or conspiratorial grounds, that is your prerogative. But you forfeit your ability to get a government paycheck or get on a plane. You won’t be able to fly to Mexico. You won’t be able to leave your poodle at home to freeze. But that will be the price you pay for refusing to do your civic duty. It’s up to you. Get jabbed or get lost. CHIP NORTHRUP Cooperstown
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& The Otsego-Delaware Dispatch
James C. Kevlin Editor & Publisher Advertising Director & General Manager
Larissa Ryan Business Manager
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IN MEMORIAM: Mary Joan Kevlin, Co-Publisher, 2006-17
MEMBER OF National Newspaper Association, New York Press Association The Otsego County Chamber Published weekly by Iron String Press, Inc. 21 Railroad Ave., Cooperstown NY 13326 Telephone: (607) 547-6103. Fax: (607) 547-6080. E-mail: info@allotsego.com • www.allotsego.com
want your voice,” wrote Rubin, “and we encourage your engagement to step in and involve yourselves in any way you might be able to utilize your skill sets and connections within our community.” For sure. Intrigued chamber members should jump in. Likewise, all other organizations and businesses should be preparing for the rebound, be it this spring, mid-summer or sometime this fall. Thanks, Al, for the reminder.
Probe Of Cuomo Administration Must Run Its Course
Editor’s Note: By covering stories other big newspapers have ignored, the New York Post, founded in 1801 by Alexander Hamilton, is regaining some of its luster. In this latest editorial on the Cuomo Administration’s latest crisis, it questions whether campaign contributions played a role in the March 25 order requiring nursing homes to accept COVID-19 patients. Also, below, is a sampling of editorials on the issue.
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overnor Cuomo is trying to rage his way through the horrific nursing-home scandal, vowing to “take on the lies and the unscrupulous actors” even as he repeats his own lies blaming the feds for his fateful March 25 mandate that homes accept COVID-contagious patients. Will the feds let him get away with it? New Yorkers who lost family members in nursing homes were cheered by news of a federal probe into the matter. But the Biden Justice Department might buy his effort to blame the Trump administration, even though it’s transparently false.
the true numbers for fear they might be “used against us” in a federal probe. Prosecutors need to determine, among other things, if withholding that data amounted to obstruction of justice. The danger, of course, is potential White House interference. Cuomo, after all, has been a staunch supporter of President Biden, and the prez and his Justice Department may look to protect the governor. (Audrey Strauss, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District, is DeRosa’s mother-in-law.) Any federal probe must be comprehensive and allowed to run its course independently. “We opened a file” won’t do. Nor should this end with a narrow, criminal probe. If Cuomo, for example, The New York Post’s Saturday, Feb. 20, front page, ordered patients be sent to nursing homes to suck reporting on a stormy press conference the day before. up to the hospital industry, which donates heavily to The probe, by the FBI using data the state finally his campaigns, there may and Brooklyn US attorney’s handed over under court be insufficient grounds for a office, is reviewing Team order, suggests the March criminal conviction, but it’s Cuomo’s actions in the 25 order did, in fact, fuel no way to make policy. COVID deaths of 13,000hundreds of fatalities. No, getting all the answers plus home residents and the In a rare moment of won’t bring back loved ones. ensuing long coverup of the candor, the gov’s top aide But they need closure. As do true fatality count. A new Melissa DeRosa admitted all New Yorkers. Empire Center analysis, Cuomo’s folks concealed
Here’s What Other Newspapers Are Saying
WHITHER TRANSPARENCY? Democrat & Chronicle, Rochester
T
he issue facing Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration isn’t simply having made mistakes — no government leader or agency can claim perfection in a public health crisis that has killed nearly a halfmillion Americans in one year. The issue, as it so often is, stems from a startling lack of transparency regarding data on nursing home illnesses and deaths. Hiding from the public information that might not be flattering to an administration is a textbook “self-own” by public officials
such as Cuomo, who should know better. It might seem ludicrous now, but Cuomo ran for his first term in 2010 promoting public transparency.
federal government. It’s also a crime to conceal information and otherwise obstruct government investigations. New York may have engaged in a conspiracy to defraud the U.S. and its agencies and possibly obstruct justice, among other crimes.
CRIMINALITY, PERHAPS? The Wall Street Journal
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ZUCKER SHOULD RESIGN Syracuse.com
op Cuomo Aide Melissa) DeRosa’s reported admissions indicate the Cuomo Administration’s conduct wasn’t merely negligent, but intentional and perhaps criminal. Numerous federal criminal statutes could apply. It’s a crime to make false statements to the
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ealth Commissioner Dr. Howard Zucker should resign. For months, Zucker claimed the state was still working to compile an accurate count of nursing home Please See OPINION, A5
LIFE SKETCHES
Tara Barnwell
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ith herd immunity headed our way – by mid-summer or earlier – it IS time to look toward what’s next. So interim Otsego Chamber President Al Rubin’s letter to members, which arrived Monday in e-mail boxes, is ideally timed. The letter was an appeal to members to volunteer for chamber committees: Marketing/Education, Membership Services/ Events and Finance/Audit. “We want your input, we
FALL from GLORY
In Winter, Global Warming Pushes Arctic Air To South To the Editor: How can a warming climate lead to a “frozen Texas”? Media coverage of freezing conditions, power outages and millions of desperate Texans summarizes the life-threatening conditions brought on by freezing temperatures and snow that are foreign to that part of the country. It may seem contrary to “climate change,” but in fact that’s exactly what is causing this and other extreme weather; but how can that be? A warming atmosphere should bring warmer weather, not polar conditions! The explanation is actually pretty straightforward from the perspective of meteorologists and those who study conditions responsible for
spring, an innovative redo of the organization’s parking lot at 123 Lake St., Cooperstown, (just before you get to The Farmers’ Museum), will get underway. The Master Gardeners’ organization – its members instruct would-be gardeners in how-to and best practices, and its Memorial Day plant sale Please see EDITORIAL, A5
Chamber Looks Past COVID, And So Should The Rest Of Us
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Brussels Sprouts & Billy Joel
russels sprouts are did the peppers, but before the just about the last Brussels sprouts found root thing we harvest my wife dropped a shovel on from our garden. the pack crushing some of the I can remember many a plants. deer season when I’d walk “I feel terrible,” she said. out in the snow-covered “That’s okay,” I offered. yard to get some. Alice likes “We have plenty left.” to simmer them in chicken As if to prove I was wrong, broth and later pour some Alice lifted the plant box with honey on them. a gloved hand, only to have it TERRY Several years ago I drove BERKSON slip to the ground upside down. over to our local nursery I turned the box over. Now, to pick up some vegetable every stem was broken. “Is it seedlings. Alice was weeding when I that you don’t like Brussels sprouts?” got home and she offered to help with I asked. planting. The broccoli went in OK, as “The gloves made me do it,” she
Terry Berkson photo
Alice and the Brussels sprouts
said in a tone reminiscent of Flip WilPlease See BERKSON, A6
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