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Maybe the "base" should just re-register as a separate party and quit complaining
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Jerrold Jordan, Knoxville, Letter to the Editor 5:32 p.m. CT March 31, 2017
Niko Medved, the new head coach of the Drake men's basketball team speaks during an introductory news conference on Monday, March 27, 2017, in the Knapp Center. (Photo: Kelsey Kremer/The Register)Buy Photo
I finally struggled through the latest diatribe of Joel Kurtinitis [Steve King kerfuffle exposes GOP establishment's priorities, March 26]. I may be wrong, because I'm never quite sure of the direction of his boat, but I think this torpedo was aimed at the Republican moderates, assuming there are any left.
I think everyone knows there is more than one Republican Party, especially after last week's health care scramble in the U.S. House. Maybe the "base" should just re-register as a separate party and quit complaining. The problem might be with the name.
I would be glad to sponsor a naming contest. It might help focus anyone trying to become a "poor man's" George Will.
Jerrold Jordan,Knoxville
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There's more than one Republican Party - DesMoinesRegister.com
Earl L. Jann Jr. was a former pharmaceutical sales rep and a long-time Marilla supervisor when he was appointed six years ago to the board of the Erie County Water Authority, a patronage post that paid him $22,500 a year.
But now he is preparing to maneuver into a bigger role. He wants to become executive director of the public utility, which supplies water to more than half a million people.
This job would pay more than $145,000 a year.
And why does Jann think he is fit for the job? Because he's been a hard-working board member.
"For my six years as a board member, I have worked to reform the Authority's employee relations, fix a deteriorating infrastructure, and replace an outdated IT system," Jann said in a statement to The Buffalo News. "There are many important things that still need to be done. With my board term finishing, I realize these remaining tasks require me to roll up my sleeves and take on a daily role within the Authority."
Whoever controls the Erie County Legislature currently the Republicans controls the top jobs at authority.
Jann has personally contributed more than $10,000 to local Republican committees and candidates since 2006. He's contributed $2,279 since the start of last year, including a $1,500 gift to the Erie County Republican Committee Chairman's Club in July.
Good government and public policy advocates have taken withering looks at the water authority and other public utilities that have become frequent stops for political patronage appointees. Agencies charged with providing clean, safe and reliable water are too important to be led by people with no trainingin the matter, they say.
Fred Floss, chair of Economics and Finance Department at SUNY Buffalo State, said that while Jann may be well intended, formal training matters.
"An executive director should probably have a degree in engineering and a specialty in water to understand how all of that works," Floss said. "It's hard to see how you can run something this technical if you don't have a reasonable background in the area."
If Jann is named executive director, he would take over from Robert Gaylord, a Democrat, former banking administrator and Collins town supervisor. The Republican-controlled ECWA Board refused to reappoint Gaylord to a second term last year.
Jann, a 1968 graduate of Canisius College who majored in history, is expected to lobby for the position based on his six years of experience overseeing the authority and on the long hours he already spends at ECWA headquarters. Those close to Jann say he can point to his role in improving employee relations, championing a more systematic approach to replacing old and deteriorating water lines, and pushing for much-needed technology upgrades during his time as chairman.
[PDF: Earl L. Jann Jr.'s resume]
Jann said he wants a more hands-on role to further his goals at the authority.
"For this reason, I feel the role of executive director will allow me to be most effective," Jann said in his statement.
Floss, however, contends that without professional expertise, it's harder for a Water Authority administrator to effectively lobby for state and federal support of water system needs. The authority is likely to spend more money than necessary on consultants and specialists because in-house expertise is insufficient.
"Water is a fundamental builder of all infrastructure," said Floss, who also serves on the Buffalo control board. "Without clean water, you can't do anything else. So to the extent that we're going to politicize this, it is a real problem. It's not just a problem in Buffalo, but all across the country and New York State."
He recommended the ECWA board conduct a national search for the next executive director and vet those candidates in an open, public process. If Jann is truly the most qualified for the job, he said, that will be become apparent in the vetting process.
"From a good government perspective, we want to have an open process and let the best person win," Floss said.
With Jann no longer in the running for a seat on the board, the Legislature will be asked to vet two other candidates for the board. They submitted resumes and letters of interest this week. They include Karl J. Simmeth Jr., a community liaison who works for Republican Assemblyman David DiPietro and was former Boston town councilman; and Blasdell resident Peter Reszka, who worked his way up the ranks as a Water Authority employee for more than 40 years.
Simmeth, a Town of Boston resident and assistant buildings supervisor for Erie County Medical Center, holds an associate's degree in business administration. Reszka holds no college degree, but he retired from the authority last year as an assistant business manager and previously served as a member of the Town of Hamburg Planning Board.
The families of both men have each contributed thousands of dollars to Republican candidates and committees.
See original here:
Republican water authority chairman angles for $145000 job - Buffalo News
NARELLE HENSON
Last updated12:00, March 31 2017
GETTY IMAGES
A statue of Communist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin in Wuensdorf, Germany.
OPINION: Let's meander through the Museum of Marxism today. It's a good time to do it, because the oldest exhibit is 100 this year.
It's just there on the left, in fact where you see Lenin's Bolshevik uprising in 1917. That was where the little child conceived by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels first entered the world, and was christened "communism". This baby idea that would soon storm the world is decorated in red flags. Red for the blood of the tens of millions whose lives it demanded in the name of equality, freedom and true justice.
In the Soviet Union alone, as you can see, the bones of 20 million people are piled under communism's smiling face. Those bones were earned through war, through the purging of those with different ideas, or through starvation induced by property and industry reforms. Academics argue over the body count. Communism didn't care enough to chronicle the names of the workers it murdered while claiming to rescue them.
At our next exhibit you can see the hammer and the sickle in the hands of Mao Zedong. He too stands atop a pile of bones taken from 65 million people. With the hammer he destroyed thousands of years of "bourgeois" culture, with the sickle he culled comrades in ways so cruel, and in numbers so great, it would make a normal human cry to think about. And still, communism didn't care to record their names.
Communism also made a move into Cambodia and his lust for blood was still not satisfied. As he had everywhere he went, he killed dissidents, intellectuals, those from different ethnic or political groups and he killed the religious. He claimed around 2 million lives through disease, starvation and torture, out of 8 million people.
In the other exhibits, of course, we find communism calling workers of the world to unite. And they do unite, in every one of the scores of countries in which he is or was present. Under the guise of redistributed wealth he unites them in poverty. Under the guise of equality communism unites workers in some of the most unequal nations. Under the guise of justice, communism unites them as victims of terrible human rights abuses. Under the guise of freedom he unites them in an intellectual and political prison. His hollow-eyed citizens don't even have the energy to laugh any more at the words "equality, freedom and true justice".
There are five nations where the dying man still maintains a firm grip: China, North Korea, Laos, Vietnam and Cuba. Perhaps they are the five points of the communist star, but none shines as a model for freedom or equality.
We have reached the end of our tour for today, and just outside the back door (for they refuse to come in) you will find intellectuals even in New Zealand telling you that old man communism is yet "untested" and may still work under the right conditions. They have never lived in communist states, nor have their families. You will know them by the hammer and sickle on their hats, or the red star on their shirts symbols that, on body count alone, are 10 times more offensive than the swastika.
These intellectuals will say Marx was right, it is just his followers that got it wrong. Ask them how many more they are willing to sacrifice to find out if this is true, and how much more time we will need.
Because, as the Little Black Book of Communism says, the body count is almost at 100 million, making Marx and Engels' ideas the most deadly ever conceived in human history once they were put into action.
Surely it is time to put communism in the museum forever.
-Stuff
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Narelle Henson: 100 years of communist history enough - Waikato Times
Entering East Berlin in 1989, the air was dark and suffused with smog. Unlike the west, the Communist east had no environmental controls not on factories nor on the tinny Trabant cars that put out toxic emissions.
The news of Donald Trump dismantling environmental protections got me remembering that cold day in 1989 when I crossed from free West Berlin to the Communist east.
And saw an unexpected contrast.
The air.
The west was clean and bright, the east darker and suffused with smog.
You wouldnt think it possible for pollution to blanket just half of a city, but that was Berlin.Because of policy.
Unlike the west, the Communist east had no environmental controls not on factories nor on the tinny Trabant cars that put out toxic emissions.
I had rushed to Berlin in November of 1989 when the first reports came of the wall opening a literal crack in the iron curtain of Communism.
It wasn't wide open yet East Germans had been allowed to visit the west a few times, but soldiers with gunspatrolled the top of the wall. And it was an ordeal for westerners to go east.
I finally got papers and transited through four sets of guards at Checkpoint Charlie. It was like going back to 1949, buildingsstill scarred with World War II damage. Signs of Communism's economic failure were everywhere, with long lines at stores and gas stations.
And then there was the polluted air.
Id have thought the west side, with its traffic and skyscrapers, would have been more polluted. But in a democracy, the people have a voice and demand livability.
By contrast, the Communist leaders were totalitarians who tossed aside bothersome environmental standards in a single-minded push for growth.
The impact went beyond smog in East Berlin. Six months after the wall fell, The New York Times reported that Eastern Europe's environment was "ravaged."
"Corrosive soot," theTimes said, "has fouled water and soil, and in blackened industrial cities the air is laced with heavy metals and chemicals. In a world ruled by production targets, there was no pressure to clean up."
Things were similar across much of the Soviet bloc, so bad that it was a big driver of the historic 1989 protests that swept away Communism itself.
I remember that as I planned my trip, I searched for names of the first groups challenging power and one of them was in Bulgaria, and based on the word glasnost, for freedom.The group called itself Eco-Glasnost because what first drove people there to rise up was the ruined environment.
I don't doubt that President Trump thinks his rollback of environmental regulations and carbon standards will help create jobs. And who here doesnt celebrate the way Americas free-market capitalism has been one of historys greatest economic engines?
But one reason for its success is balance.
If pollution had been left uncontrolled in West Germany, would it have been as prosperous?
That day in 1989 showed me clearly that successful economies factor in livability.
And that prosperity comes not just from prioritizing jobs, but theenvironment, too.
mpatinki@providencejournal.com
(401) 277-7370
On Twitter: @MarkPatinkin
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Mark Patinkin: Communist East Berlin showed that Trump's environmental rollback comes with a price - The Providence Journal