Broome County Is Not For Sale!

Speech delivered by Ron Jones to the Broome County Legislature

Thursday, October 10, 2013

 Abe Lincoln said that governments are instituted to do for its citizens what they cannot do or what can be done better for them. That in essence is why we have public schools, libraries, public works for water and sewer, fire departments, post offices, etc. And–all of those have worked quite well for scores, even hundreds of years. Read the rest of this entry »

Don’t Privatize the Broome County Bus System

By Dave Duncan

Broome County Executive, Debbie Preston, has commissioned a study that can lead to the replacement of the Broome County owned public transit system to private owners.

Returning the transit system to private hands would be a benefit only to a new company that would need to squeeze out a profit from the public, the riders and the current employees.  Read the rest of this entry »

Missing from the List is the Largest Financial Contributor—Taxpayers

The people who put up the lions’ share of the money for this project; the taxpayers of the Village of Endicott, Endicott School District, Town of Union, Broome County, New York State and the federal government have no standing in this bankruptcy scheme nor do the workers who were to have jobs. Read the rest of this entry »

Did You Get a Ride on the Private Jet?

    While EI and IBM are declining in their space use, the Huron Campus in now filled. This situation occurred when NYS paid $40 million to BAE to move from a flooded facility in Westover to the Huron Campus. The British owned BAE is the largest defense contractor in the world. Read the rest of this entry »

Transparency Needed in Public/Private Deals

 By Emma Pulaski and Dave Duncan

 In recent months the corporate printed media in this area, the Press &Sun-Bulletin has printed a number of articles that present a fairly detailed description of the bankruptcy proceedings of the local EI Corporation. Through these articles the readers have learned some of the ins and outs of how the well-connected capitalists operate. Many of the sordid financial details of this privately owned company have been laid out. But the picture put forth by the Press is very limited. Nowhere is there a full picture of how much public and private money has been invested in this scheme and just who benefitted. A heavily subsidized public plan that began in 2002 to save jobs and maintain the tax base crumbled in 2013 when a majority of the original owners bailed and the company declared bankruptcy. The financial details of the EI/Huron deal are very complicated and serves to limit the understanding of such a deal to a very few insiders. To whose advantage is it to keep the full details from the public Read the rest of this entry »

The Attack on the Public by the Press and Preston

   The biggest circulation day of each week for the Press & Sun-Bulletin is Sunday. The editorial page that greeted the reader on Sunday September 15 presented a coordinated attack on the services provided to residents of Broome County and the workers who provide these services.  The editorial by the Press stressed that the county must do more to keep taxes down. To provide guidance to the reader, the Press states “In the business world higher cost in one area often means reducing costs in other areas. The cliché in private industry has become, what can we stop doing?” Read the rest of this entry »

Fast-Food & Retail Slavery

by: The Recalcitrant Gourmet

  I’m writing this article to promote a boycott of mega-corporations and fast-food chains that refuse to pay their workers a living wage. I want them to know that I, along with many of the staff at this paper, are in solidarity with the workers and; their strikes, their right to organize and their right to form and join a labor union. Read the rest of this entry »

Fracking Protest: A Lesson in Being Ignored

By C. Arthur Reavis

On August 23, 2013 I attended the anti-fracking protest at Binghamton University. This protest was planned because President Obama was coming to BU to deliver a speech about education. Though I was not present for the speech, (I did not care to enter my name in a “lottery” on the White House’s website.) by all accounts he stuck to that topic: Not once addressing his support for Hydraulic Fracturing of the Marcellus Shale deposit upon which we live here in the Southern Tier. Not to mention the fact our water table, from which we get our drinking water, sits atop.  Moreover, his motorcade and bus took less than a minute to pass the hundreds of protesters holding signs and shouting: Mr. Obama did not even pause to acknowledge our existence. Read the rest of this entry »

How do I feel now that NP&P will soon be in operation in our neighborhood?

by   Isabell Hashem

DECEIVED, DISGUSTED, AND APPREHENSIVE!

DECEIVED: Betrayed and mislead by the very people that have vowed to “protect the health, safety  and welfare of the community and to protect the character of the neighborhood”. By allowing the extensive variances to NP&P, our Town Boards have violated and nullified the purpose of the Town Code concerning this type of construction. Read the rest of this entry »

Where Do West Endicott Residents Stand?

There are only five codes that the town of union Board of Appeals must follow. All members of the Board of Appeals Boldly and Blatantly went against four of those codes, they allowed NP&P to Boldly and Blatantly  go against the fifth.. I am listing those codes so that all who read this article will understand why, we here in West Endicott feel the way we do, toward all members of our town boards. Read the rest of this entry »