West Haven Voice

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Opinion

Not the way to do impeachment

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By Rich Lowry

Syndicated Columnist

It’s easy to forget what the Senate impeachment trial is supposed to be about. It was not a fight over whether the Senate will call a couple of witnesses that the House couldn’t, or didn’t bother to, obtain on its own.

The underlying question was whether the United States Senate will impose the most severe sanction it has ever inflicted on any chief executive, voting to remove a president for the first time in the history of the country and doing it about 10 months from his reelection bid.

This is a truly radical step that, if it ever came about, would do more damage to the legitimacy of our political system than President Donald Trump’s underlying offense.

If Trump were actually convicted, the 2020 election would have proceeded under a cloud of illegitimacy. Tens of millions of Trump voters wouldn’t accept the result. They’d see it as an inside job to deny the incumbent president a chance to run for reelection, without a single voter having a direct say.

The GOP would be brought to its knees by internal bloodletting, a prospect that Democrats surely would welcome, especially given that it would deliver them the presidency. Republicans would be out for revenge, and instead of a halcyon return to normalcy, our politics would be even more poisonous than before.

Democrats argued that Trump should not have stayed in office because he’s such a threat to the integrity of our elections. But the portrayal of Trump’s Ukraine scheme as “election interference,” as the Democrats always said, was tendentious and inapt. If the Ukrainians had complied with the Trump team’s pressure to announce an investigation of the energy company Burisma, it wouldn’t have changed one vote in 2020, even if former Vice President Joe Biden eventually is the Democratic nominee.

The fact is that impeachment, as my colleague Ramesh Ponnuru points out, is a weak check on the presidency. It requires a supermajority of the country to remove a president and one of the political parties being willing to nullify the choice of its own voters for president and an election he won. Both the Trump and Clinton impeachments show that this is a hateful prospect for the president’s party.

The best case for what the Democrats were doing is that Republicans impeached Clinton in the 1990s with little or no hope for conviction in the Senate, and turnabout is fair play. But it’s time to conclude that this is a failed model of impeachment. It depends on a process that diverts the time and energy of the nation’s political institutions as if the survival of a presidency is at stake, even when everyone knows it isn’t.

Congress can hold hearings on a president’s conduct, subpoena witnesses and documents and fight the executive with full force if they aren’t produced, hold officials in contempt, withhold funding, deny the executive traditional forms of inter-branch comity and, if it wants to put down a long-lasting marker, censure the president.

But it needn’t drag the country through a melodrama based on the fiction that any president who hasn’t crashed to, say, a 25% approval rating is going to be removed by his own party — in other words, exactly what Adam Schiff and his managers were doing.

Rich Lowry is editor of the National Review.(c) 2020 by King Features Synd., Inc.

Editorial

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Tolls only on trucking? Pardon our skepticism

When I-95 was opened in the 1950s, tolls were set up at several points, especially around well-traveled areas where traffic was heavier and revenue more available. From Old Saybrook (later Madison) to Bridgeport no less than four tolling stations were erected with more toward New York. The tolls were for the upkeep of the highway.

In the 1980s, the move to get rid of tolls was growing. People in the southern part of the state saw other highways built, including I-91 and I-84, which had no tolls. That was seen as unfair to the commuters in the southern tier of the state. Eventually, a catastrophic accident, resulting the deaths of many, happened at Stratford, and the General Assembly eliminated tolls. But, we were told, federal funds would be further available, making the need for tolls unnecessary.

The General Assembly found other ways to repair and maintain highways, especially after the Mianus Bridge disaster, increasing the gas tax to stockpile funds for roads. But as with many “earmarked” funds in Hartford, they find their way into other programs, while spending increases at three and four times the rate of inflation.

In the last decade, ideas for bringing back tolls have been floated because we need funds for maintenance of bridges and highways. What happened to the “earmarked” funds from the gas tax? We know. The General Assembly spends it. And, it is easier to push through a tax than to exercise fiscal restraint.

Now, Gov. Ned Lamont is pushing through a proposal to erect toll gantries in various parts of the state, but we are told these will be for trucks and commercial vehicles only. Really? This is the “camel’s nose in the tent.”

Let’s take this idea. First off, trucks will be able — to a greater or lesser degree — avoid many of the tolls. Those tolls that are paid will result in increased costs not for the trucking companies per se, but for the consumers who purchase those products transported. The ripple effect will make families and individuals pay more.

We are told by assembly officials, particularly Sen. Martin Looney, majority leader, no one should fear expansion of the tolls to cars. Maybe not now, maybe not in five years, but we know how these things work. Make no mistake, this is the “camel’s nose in the tent.” Getting people used to seeing toll gantries is the first step, along with sequestering those tolls to only commercial vehicles.

As with the gas tax and other levies earmarked for roads and bridges (think driver’s licenses, registration, etc.), the revenue is too enticing for a state that cannot curb its budgetary bloating. Remember when the income tax was passed. The General Assembly passed with it a 2 percent spending cap – one that was ignored and now is all but moot.

We live in a state bleeding residents. Yet, instead of finding ways to curb spending and reorganize governing, we find more ways to raise revenues.

We don’t believe the mandarins of the General Assembly telling us this will not lead to toll expansion. The temptation is too great. They will find a way to expand the tolls, and residents will be forced, again, to foot the bill for the legislature profligacy.

Trump is no neocon on defense

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By Rich Lowry

Syndicated Columnist

Donald Trump isn’t George W. Bush. T

hat should be obvious to everyone by now, but his critics and even some of his supporters immediately acted as if it were 2003 on the cusp of the Iraq War when Trump took out Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani.

Suddenly, the neocons had cachet again (Vox warned that “the Iraq War hawks are back”), and we were about to launch yet another endless war. Trump’s decision to kill Soleimani, New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg wrote, repeating a common refrain, “has brought the United States to the brink of a devastating new conflict in the Middle East.”

There’s no doubt that the operation against Soleimani carried risks, but it didn’t transform Trump into a conventional interventionist. In fact, taking out Soleimani was wholly consistent with the president’s approach to the world that can’t be plotted on a simple hawk/dove or neocon/isolationist axis. As a Jacksonian, Trump is none of the above, combining a willingness to whack our enemies with a distaste for ambitious foreign interventions.

The Jacksonian label is the famous construction of foreign-policy analyst Walter Russell Mead, who traces the tradition back to Andrew Jackson and the cultural influence of the American backwoods. Jacksonians are content to let the world sort itself out, except if they perceive a threat, in which case they react with great ferocity.

Trump’s victory overturned the reigning Republican foreign-policy consensus, but it didn’t herald a lurch to isolationism pure and simple.

Even when Trump sounded most hostile to U.S. commitments and alliances abroad in 2016, he promised, in one of his most Jacksonian sentiments, to “bomb the s—” out of ISIS. No matter how much Trump disdained being in the Middle East, it wouldn’t be possible to follow through on this threat without military assets, an intelligence network and allies on the ground. Once elected, Trump did, sure enough, bomb the s— out of ISIS.

Killing Soleimani is keeping with this general orientation rather than a departure from it. In fact, the whole thing is shot through with Jacksonian attitudes.

Trump’s red line to Iran didn’t have to do with our values or shipping lanes. It reflected the most basic imperative of a nation protecting its own: Don’t harm Americans.

When a rocket attack by an Iranian-supported militia killed an American contractor and injured other Americans at a base in Iraq, Trump’s response was also characteristically Jacksonian: a stunning, bolt-out-of-the-blue droning of an enemy commander who was thought to be safely out of bounds, designed to create the maximum deterrent bang for the buck.

For his most loyal backers, the killing of Soleimani is likelier to add to the legend of Donald Trump instead of give them pause. In their view, here is President Trump once again doing what no other president would do, taking an inordinate amount of criticism for it, often from a perpetually hysterical press corps, and having it work out (so far).

The Jacksonian impulse alone is not enough to solve the complex foreign-policy problem presented by Iran. But it can be useful in a contest of intimidation and escalation. The killing of Soleimani isn’t a deep-state or neocon project, rather an unmistakable expression of Trump’s distinctive worldview.

Rich Lowry is editor of the National Review.(c) 2020 by King Features Synd., Inc.

Editorial

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Dems divide nation

By the time this publication hits the streets, the Senate impeachment trial will reach its third day. No one knows where it will be at this point, but we should be very cognizant of how we got here. Simply put, this impeachment – the finding of “high crimes and misdemeanors” by the House of Representatives marks new low point in the political life of this nation. It has accomplished two things: made us more divided than at any time since 1861; and has infected the nation with doubt about its institutions.

On the first point, the argument can be made that we’ve been headed in this direction for decades. The post-war notion by liberal elites that the United States is an illegitimate and dangerous nation has become main-stream. It is taught in our universities and public schools. In the name of diversity, these elites teach of oppression of native peoples and the imposition of slavery. Yet, they never complete the story. They never put a context other than the darkest and most evil on the events of our nationhood.

Slavery is considered the original sin of the nation. That argument can be made. But let us remember that slavery was a worldwide institution, and importation of African slaves was the work of other Africans, Middle Easterns and Europeans. Slaves were usually the vanquished tribesmen, captured or defeated in battle. Many times, whole populations were killed, other times they were put into slavery, and either kept by the victorious warlords or sold to others. Is that context ever taught?

We don’t condone slavery. We fought a civil war because of it. Imprudent attempts after that war to vanquish the South caused many of the subsequent problems. Yet is was the moral code of a Christian nation that brought about the end of slavery. And it took more than a century to bring about the changes that we have today. Yet, there are those who would divide us again by race, ethnicity, social status and sexual orientation, not to mention the faux issue of “gender.”

The second division, distrust in our institutions is a lesson in irony. It was the Democratic National Committee, the Hillary Clinton campaign and an Obama Justice Department that used false information against an American citizen to get into the Trump campaign. It was they, not Trump, that used this information to do what they accuse Trump of doing: sowing discord and distrust.

Irony is lost on the Democrats, but they accuse Trump and his supporters of destroying our political institutions, when it was their actions, their constant investigations, and their disinformation campaign that has brought distrust to many. Russian leader Vladimir Putin could not have done a better job – the job he is accused of – than the Democrats did.

Democrats have also done what Trump himself could not have done: brought many people to his side. Their constant call to “resist,” their incessant insanity, and their desire to impeach from Day One of his administration have turned many people against the party and tacit supporters of the President.

Recent reviews show that more than half the people attending rallies for Trump were either Democrats or Independents. That should scare the hell out of the Dems. But they are too focused on this fool’s errand of impeachment to mollify their rabid base. We hope they enjoy it…while it lasts.

Killing unleashes the idiotic

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By Rich Lowry

Syndicated Columnist

In the torrent of idiotic commentary unleashed by the killing of Qassem Soleimani, Colin Kaepernick’s deserves a place of honor.

The NFL washout and Nike persona who makes sure the company doesn’t produce any overly patriotic sneakers tweeted, “There is nothing new about American terrorist attacks against Black and Brown people for the expansion of American imperialism.”

For Kaepernick, Soleimani is just another dark-skinned man brutalized by the United States. The Iranian terror master was, in effect, driving while nonwhite and paid the ultimate price. For all we know, the operator of the MQ-9 Reaper drone that took him out was making a white-supremacy hand signal while unleashing this racist attack.

This interpretation of events takes identity politics to a whole new level, defining the blood-drenched hit man for a terroristic, profoundly anti-Semitic, deeply intolerant theocracy as a victim, based on his skin color alone.

Obviously, no one will mistake Colin Kaepernick for an original thinker; he’s only repeating things he’s read or been told, in a slightly more lurid form. His worldview is disproportionately represented in academia and on the left, which objects to calling Soleimani a monster (hence, Elizabeth Warren’s pathetic backtracking after forthrightly condemning Soleimani in her initial statement).

It is certainly true that racism has had a large hand in U.S. foreign policy through much of our history. We drove Native Americans from their lands, in part based on racial animus. Thomas Jefferson refused to recognize an independent Haiti after a successful slave revolt, for fear it would fuel insurrections here. The American South coveted lands in Latin America prior to the Civil War, seeking more territory for slavery. After World War I, Woodrow Wilson opposed a racial equality proposal made by Japan at the Paris Peace Conference.

All of this, and more, are stains on our nation’s history, but to consider racism the chief principle of a rapacious U.S. foreign policy is reductive, malicious, dishonest and incredibly stupid.

The U.S. engaged in titanic struggles in the 20th century against Imperial Germany, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, none of which were brown or black. Enormous resources of blood and treasure were poured into stopping these truly imperialist powers from subjecting foreign peoples to their rule.

The United States opposed European colonialism, and its biggest wars since World War II were fought shoulder to shoulder with Asian people in Korea and Vietnam who didn’t want to be overrun by rival Asians allied with totalitarian powers.

In the more immediate, post-9/11 period, we toppled the Taliban and Saddam Hussein. These were interventions motivated by national interest, but also optimistic and idealistic to a fault. Viewing these conflicts through a racial prism requires ignoring that the Taliban and Saddam overwhelmingly killed, tortured and repressed other non-white people.

The same is obviously true of Qassem Soleimani. He has prodigious amounts of American blood on his hands (of Americans of all races and creeds), but he mainly killed other people in the Middle East — Syrians opposed to Bashar Assad, Iraqis protesting Iranian influence, anyone who got in the way of the Iranian imperial project.

His end is a boon to humanity, which should be obvious to anyone who’s not drunk on ideology or racial obsessions.

Rich Lowry is editor of the National Review.(c) 2020 by King Features Synd., Inc.

Editorial

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Resident goals listed for the next 12 months

Last week this publication named three “goals” or areas of improvement we would like to see in the next 12 months. Those goals were directed at the city’s political class and administrative officials. This week we seek to take a different tack, and put forward three goals we would like to see city residents and taxpayers take over the next 12 months that would make our city a better place to live and work.

Property upkeep – West Haven has many private residences, but it is also flush with rental properties. From three-story homes to multi-unit apartment houses, the city has many residents who do not own, but rent. Unfortunately, many of these rental properties are absentee ownerships and that creates problems for the rest of us.

Cars parked on front lawns are becoming a big problem, not only along major thoroughfares, but in all parts of the city. Property owners, whether they be agencies or private citizens who live elsewhere, should be strict prohibiting the practice. It speaks ill of the owners and the people who leave the cars. Renting a property doesn’t mean you can trash it. This is a type of blight that brings down property values, and, in turn, brings down the pride people should have in neighborhoods.

Similarly, renters are not exempt from keeping their residences tidy. Putting out trash in front of the property for pick-up much later, mounding refuse along the curb, and not helping with sidewalk maintenance are things that harm the upkeep of the city.

Red, Yellow, Green – This is not only a city problem, but something we have seen all over the state. In the State of Connecticut, yellow means to begin to stop, not gun right on through the intersection. Only those cars unable to stop or already past the stop line may proceed. Over the last several years red lights seem to be thought of as a suggestion, rather than a responsibility.

We have seen drivers slow at a red light, see no one is coming from the other direction and just go right through. This is a problem waiting to become a tragedy. It is a symptom of a bigger illness: the dismissal of authority and authority figures. That is the topic of a future editorial.

Understanding city issues – Despite publications, news reports and social media, there are too many of us who have very little understanding of how things work in the city, and what issues are facing it. Understanding leads to involvement. One of West Haven’s difficulties over the years are too many of us just allow things to go on unchecked or unquestioned. This has allowed factionalism, bossism, and a certain style of elitism to enter into our politics and our way of doing things.

It takes very little effort to get to know and understand why the city is in a financial mess. It takes very little to understand the problems that face the city’s school system over and above funding. It takes little to understand that the district in which you are residing has its own set of difficulties and problems that need input.

We all work, we all have lives, but that doesn’t mean we can drift through and not be informed individuals. This last goal is one that can transform the city

Over the next 12 months we hope to see one or all of these goals attempted by our residents. Implementation will make our city a better place to live and work.

Letters

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The Haven, needles and a neighborhood

Demolished ‘blighted’ home on corner of First Avenue… was it too nice to be kept standing?

Perhaps someday we will have a shopping mall called The Haven. The developer will take down the homes and bury the empty bottles and hypodermic needles that now cover the vacant site. But we will always remember what was given up, under the guise of a promise of economic development that was built on a premise that economic development has to be a zero-sum game.

We could have had economic development without forcing people out of their homes and small businesses under the threat that their property would be taken by force under Eminent Domain. We could have built upon what we had by using the vacant lots that the city already owned,  instead of destroying the good parts of the area under the mistaken assumption that the homes weren’t good enough and had to be annihilated. Many people in West Haven will say that the displaced homeowners ‘made out like bandits’, ‘ran to the bank’ with their supposed windfalls, or ‘couldn’t wait to run to the table’…and perhaps that characterization did pertain to a small number of absentee owners.  But for the majority of people who lived in the non-blighted family homes or ran the numerous small businesses that populated the area, this was not the case. They wanted to retain their homes and neighborhood.

This case is a sad lesson in the domino effect, and how the fragile balance that makes a neighborhood viable and vibrant isn’t just based on economic factors. The homes that were once occupied in the area bounded by First Avenue and Water Street, Main and Elm Streets were critical to the integrity of a wider neighborhood — one that is now profoundly destabilized because of what happened next door.

The City of West Haven has done a great disservice not only to the homeowners who were vacated, but also-and perhaps more so-to the homeowners who remain on the fringes of this project footprint. They cannot refinance their mortgages. They cannot take equity out of their homes. But still they hang on, because they really have no choice. 

The approval of The Haven South Municipal Development Plan by the West Haven Redevelopment Agency, the West Haven Planning and Zoning Commission, and the West Haven City Council in 2015 wreaked havoc in a large swath of West Haven.

Over a year ago, then-Councilman Aaron Charney proposed a citywide ordinance to prohibit the use of Eminent Domain when the purpose is to convey certain private property to another private party for an economic development project. This ordinance was never acted upon by City Council, and it died when the last council session ended.

Such an ordinance will prevent a repeat of The Haven and will give some protection to those homeowners north of Elm Street, which was to have been the target neighborhood for Haven Phase II.

I urge the new City Council to resurrect this ordinance or to develop a new one and to act on it.

Patricia Bollitieri

Thank you for your help

Growing up in West Haven I was always acutely aware of the Veteran population that sought help and housing with us here. They were a segment of the population about whom not much was known back then but they made a mark on the psyche of many of us who grew up here. And they left many of us with questions…

Upon my retirement I moved out of town to another city to be closer to my family, but I missed the energy of West Haven and the many friends I’d made over the years. When retirement didn’t agree with me, I decided to see if I could get involved with those Veterans who had made such of an impression on me while trying to find the answers to those long- ago questions. I was fortunate enough to be hired by a non-profit, the Veterans Support Foundation, which provides transitional housing for homeless Vets. While I learned that there were many federal programs for Veterans, I also saw holes in the services provided and wondered how they were filled. What I learned about, most importantly, was that those holes were filled by the is the kindness and generosity of the people of West Haven and the strength of purpose exhibited by the West Haven Chamber of Commerce. The Board of Directors of the Chamber, supported by local businesses and a caring population seeks to fill the need of people who are struggling to get by. This year, 2019, the focus was on our Veterans. When the non-profit for which I work came up two Thanksgiving dinners short for the holiday, the word was put out and two complete dinners magically appeared for the two apartments that had none. Recently, the Chamber held a luncheon so that they could provide gift cards and much needed necessities and gifts for the Christmas holidays.

So the answers to my question of who fills up the gaps in services that are inevitable in caring for a population this large is, in West Haven, the caring community in which the Veterans live. So to the organizers of this effort, Teddi, Patty, and Alan and all the rest of the generous individuals who came forward, thank you from the bottom of our collective heart. The Veterans at all the houses in West Haven certainly know that Christmas angels are among us.

May the peace of the season be with us all…

Susan Booth

Veterans Support Foundation

Vaping and the current hysteria

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By Rich Lowry

Syndicated Columnist

Never before has a boon to public health been met with such hysteria and ingratitude.

Vaping is almost all upside in comparison with traditional smoking, a wanton destroyer of health and lives, and yet the nation is in the grips of a panic about e-cigarettes. In a rarity for the Trump era, the anti-vaping sentiment jumps traditional geographic and political bounds, running from the Oval Office to San Francisco, from President Donald Trump to his most fervent enemies.

Trump has announced a proposed Food and Drug Administration ban on flavored e-cigarettes, while the San Francisco Board of Supervisors banned the sale of vaping products at retail outlets. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo imposed a ban on flavored e-cigarettes on an “emergency” basis. “Vaping is dangerous, period,” Cuomo pronounced, citing, like the president, teenage use in particular.

Actually, there’s little evidence that vaping, as a general matter, is hazardous, especially when compared with traditional cigarettes, whose smokers inhale a witch’s brew of carcinogens and carbon monoxide. Smoking accounts for 30% of all cancer deaths, and 18% of all deaths.

A credible estimate is that e-cigarettes, which involve inhaling a nicotine-infused vapor rather than smoke, are about 95% less harmful than cigarettes.

The vaping-related illnesses that have recently garnered headlines and prompted the regulatory actions appear not to implicate standard vaping, but rather the use of black-market liquids containing THC, the active ingredient in cannabis. We could make the risky products involved illegal, if they weren’t already illegal.

The problem with the flavor bans — and especially a San Francisco-style outright ban — is its effect on adult e-cigarette users. About 11 million adults vape, and some percentage of them are former smokers or would be smoking in the absence of e-cigarettes.

A robust study in the United Kingdom found that vaping is twice as effective as other common nicotine replacements in getting smokers to quit. The flavors, according to surveys of users, are a big draw for smokers quitting traditional cigarettes. It’s manifestly absurd to ban vaping products and leave cigarettes, including flavored cigarettes, on the market.

Another source of the current panic is that teen vaping is way up, but there’s nothing to suggest that this increase in vaping is encouraging real teen smoking, which has fallen below 6%. Everyone would prefer that teens not develop a vaping habit, but this presents nothing close to the health issue presented by combustible cigarettes.

By all means, let’s crack down on retailers who are selling products to minors. But exaggerating the harms of vaping and prohibiting the products is a formula for giving back some of the gains against traditional smoking. The libertarian publication Reason points to one study that, insanely, shows more people beginning to consider e-cigarettes as dangerous as regular cigarettes.

The U.K. has adopted a much more sensible approach that welcomes e-cigarettes as an important harm-reduction measure. A couple of National Health Service hospitals have even allowed vape shops on their premises.

That would cause a hue and cry in the United States, where we can’t agree on anything except, apparently, our irrational hostility to a product that is an alternative to a terrible scourge.

Rich Lowry is editor of the National Review.(c) 2020 by King Features Synd., Inc.

Editorial

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New Year’s wishes – 2020

With the coming of the New Year – and no, the new decade doesn’t start until 2021 – the West Haven Voice has given three major goals it hopes the city and residents accomplish in the next 12 months. In many cases over the years, the goals and accomplishments are recurring. Brevity and expediency – getting things done in a timely manner under this definition – are not the city’s strong suits. As we enter 2020, we hope the coming year finds us fulfilling these goals:

The Haven – This has been a goal for the last several years, and we’re unsure it will be accomplished in 2020. The revelation last year that the Haven Group, the developers overseeing the site, have expected state funding to help the process puts much of the last four years into perspective.

According to the developers, certain promises were given to the group regarding city attempts under the O’Brien administration, to gain state funds to help enable the project. The languishing and decay of the site area then becomes more understood. The developers might have, indeed, sought DOT plan approvals, and other bureaucratic red tape might have been cut through, but the major hold up is the promised funding.

This makes the success – or even the potential completion – of the project murkier. For years we were told permits would be sought, giving the city millions in revenue. When it came down to it, the group was looking for funds.

What we hope for in the coming year is closure one way or the other. Is the Haven going to be completed? If so, when? The promise of the Christmas of 2021 or 2022 seems somewhat remote at this point. We are at a point when a decision one way or the other must be made crystal clear by the developers to the city. Full stop.

Charter Revision – The 18-month review of the charter and proposed revisions were filed last summer. We hope over the first quarter or at most by the end of the second quarter the revisions will be put to the voters. The City Council in its last term completed its work, what needs to be done now is setting a date for the referendum.

Because of the interweaving of the revisions, one to another, that vote has to be an up-or-down one. Some members were hoping for the city to slice and dice the questions into several, making it easier for the voters. However, doing so would play havoc with the whole document. The changes are so interwoven, doing so could potentially set up a chaotic situation with some parts approved and others not – thus making the whole document inoperable.

Return of the Savin Rock Festival – It has been two years since the Rossi administration canceled the Savin Rock Festival because of financial constraints. While we concur the city should not spend money it doesn’t have, we wonder if some other accommodation could have been made.

Regardless, with the city having a better bankbook, the festival’s return was mentioned as a probability this year. We hope so. The taxpayers of West Haven get very little in the way of payback for their levies. This is one of them.

We hope over the next several months a committee will be formed and the three-day celebration be put back on the schedule of events. We also hope that concerts, once a summer-long staple will be increased. Finding sponsors and getting performers for summer music lovers should be another “perk” taxpayers get for their buck.

In the next 12 months, the city can make great strides in becoming an even better place, and solving some of its internal problems. We hope in the first editorial of 2021, we are able to tout those accomplishments.

Editorial – A visit from St. Nicholas

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A visit from St. Nicholas

By Clement Clarke Moore

‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house

Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,

In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there;

The children were nestled all snug in their beds,

While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads;

And mamma in her ’kerchief, and I in my cap,

Had just settled our brains for a long winter’s nap,

When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,

I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter.

Away to the window I flew like a flash,

Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.

The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow

Gave the lustre of mid-day to objects below,

When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,

But a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny reindeer,

With a little old driver, so lively and quick,

I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick.

More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,

And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name;

“Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer and Vixen!

On, Comet! on, Cupid! on, Donder and Blitzen!

To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!

Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!”

As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,

When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky;

So up to the house-top the coursers they flew,

With the sleigh full of Toys, and St. Nicholas too.

And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof

The prancing and pawing of each little hoof.

As I drew in my head, and was turning around,

Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound.

He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot,

And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot;

A bundle of Toys he had flung on his back,

And he looked like a pedler just opening his pack.

His eyes—how they twinkled! his dimples how merry!

His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!

His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow

And the beard of his chin was as white as the snow;

The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,

And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath;

He had a broad face and a little round belly,

That shook when he laughed, like a bowlful of jelly.

He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,

And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself;

A wink of his eye and a twist of his head,

Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread;

He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,

And filled all the stockings; then turned with a jerk,

And laying his finger aside of his nose,

And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose;

He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,

And away they all flew like the down of a thistle,

But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight,

“Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night.”