Category: Guest Authors

Gigi Williams Inspiring Autobiography

Gigi Williams Inspiring Autobiography

By Bob Small

This is the backstory of how I came to read Gigi Williams’ autobiographical book

God’s Hand in my “One” (looking back at the Master’s Plan). We had traveled to the village of North East , MD, to visit a friend — let’s call her M — as this location was equidistant from our homes.

While at a picnic table by the Bay, a few people came up to us. One of them was Gigi, a middle-aged woman with one hand, who offered her book, for free, which I accepted, on the condition that she sign it, which she did. My acceptance was based on the fact that I always accept free books, whether on peace, politics, poetry, or religion.

Gigi Williams Inspiring Autobiography

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.

These words from Proverbs 3:5-6, are part of the introduction to Chapter 8 and this summarizes a main message of Gigi’s book, that she has had to lean on faith, as opposed to medical technology, which she has also tried.

Along with her faith she also stresses her acceptance which, in her case, means she sees herself as different rather than “disabled”. Her book talks about the faith and acceptance that led her to have a career, a college degree, a driving license,a marriage and a family, all while being different rather than being “disabled.”

She writes in a very direct, unemcumbered way.

Camp no limits, which she mentions towards the end, is still active in Maryland.

See https://nolimitsfoundation.org/ and Facebook. This is a camp focused on children with “limb loss”, not to be confused with the no limits foundation which focuses on autism related issues. Camp no Limits has a religious connection, which permeates the whole book. My sense is that her religious faith has sustained her, which I accept as one way to get through this labyrinth we call life.

This book can be ordered through www.gigiwilliams.info and also is carried by Amazon, and Barnes and Noble.

Gigi Williams Inspiring Autobiography

Woke Against Democracy

Woke Against Democracy

By Joe Guzzardi

On July 28, The New York Times published an op-ed titled, “There Is No Good Reason You Should Have to Be a Citizen to Vote.” The Times described Atossa Araxia Abrahamian’s opinion piece as “part of a series [‘Snap Out of It, America’] exploring bold ideas to revitalize and renew the American experiment.”

Bold, revitalize and renew are the misleading words that the Times chose instead of the more accurate: radical, audacious and subversive. The American experiment that the Times boasts proudly of championing is overthrowing America’s existing, time-honored voting system which legally excludes voting rights for noncitizens.

Woke Against Democracy

Abrahamian, the Canadian born author of “The Cosmopolites: The Coming of the Global Citizen,” and who holds Swiss and Iranian citizenship, proposes, among other extreme concepts, that voting rights be given to foreign nationals residing in the U.S. on temporary work visas, and Green Card holders. Those immigrant categories would include non-English speakers and those who have briefly lived in the U.S. Ironically, Abrahamian’s proposal would also extend to illegal aliens who have knowingly and willingly broken U.S. law, and presumably would also be granted to the estimated 2 million aliens who will surge the Southwest Border this year.

The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, however, expressly barred noncitizens from voting. But the 1996 act has been steadily chipped away at and criminally disregarded. A San Francisco 2016 referendum joined a few other municipalities to give illegal immigrants voting privileges in local school board elections. The supporting argument was that about one-third of San Francisco school district pupils had foreign-born parents. Whether those parents were legally present was not part of the debate. Advocates also speciously argued that participating in the electoral process gives unlawfully present immigrants a greater sense of community involvement.

Illegal immigrants have, fraudulently and feloniously, registered to vote and have cast possibly deciding ballots in federal elections. In its essay, “Aliens and Voter Fraud,” the Center for Immigration Studies wrote that when Old Dominion University (ODU) and George Mason University (GMU) researchers analyzed noncitizen participation rates from the Cooperative Congressional Election Studies’ 2008 and 2010 data, they estimated that roughly 620,000 noncitizens were registered to vote prior to the 2008 election.

The researchers then turned their attention to the 2008 North Carolina presidential results as well as to the Minnesota senate race. By comparing the noncitizen turnout to the vote margin needed to win the elections, ODU and GMU analysts concluded that noncitizen voting likely won the elections for the Democratic Party candidates in both instances. In the North Carolina election, the ODU and GMU authors wrote that “it is likely … that John McCain would have won North Carolina were it not for the votes for Obama cast by noncitizens.”

The Minnesota senate election was one of the most crucial congressional races in the 2008 election cycle, given that it ensured a 60-vote filibuster-proof Democratic majority. Notably, after a mandatory recount, and eight months after Election Day, 312 votes determined the Senate winner. Highlighting the paper-thin margin in which Democrat candidate Al Franken defeated Republican incumbent Norm Coleman, the authors wrote that “participation by more than 0.65 percent of noncitizens in MN is sufficient to account for the entirety of Franken’s margin. Our best guess is that nearly ten times as many [noncitizens] voted.”

A University of Alabama study, “Immigration Status, Immigrant Family Ties, and Support for the Democratic Party,” concluded that immigrants, their children and theirgrandchildren are all more likely than Americans without close immigrant relatives to support the Democratic Party. If the entire illegal alien and temporary resident population were granted voting rights, Abrahamian’s goal, years if not decades will pass before the GOP won enough federal elections to make a difference.

To all but the woke, a group that includes the Times, globalist Abrahamian and far too many Washington, D.C., elites, sovereign American and inalienable voting rights that go with citizenship are treasured values to defend, fight and die for.

Joe Guzzardi is a Progressives for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org.

Woke Against Democracy

Woke Against Democracy

Home In India, A Review

Home In India, A Review

By Bob Small

Almost every Saturday Night around 11:30 p.m. (9 a.m. Indian time the following day), we find ourselves going to Epiphany’s Church Service, in English (Cuttack,India), via Zoom. One of the most inspiring pastors is Rev. Moumita Biswas of the Church of Scotland.

Rev. Biswas is featured Andrew Mills’ book Home in India, which can be ordered at https://www.andrewmillsbooks.com/

This weekly schedule is not due to any great religious fervor, but rather relationships formed by my wife while she was in India previously, that were recently re-established.

This was many years and one husband ago.

Part of the story of Andy Mills in India is his role as in India as a Lay Missionary.

The Andy Mills we know is from his work in Witness for Peace. Witness for Peace was founded in 1983 and campaigns for “peace, justice, and sustainable economies in Latin America”.

Andrew Mills connects both these topics and more; He has been a Chairperson of Witness for Peace (1994-2012). Previously, he went to India , in a dual role as a consulting groundwater hydrologist/programmer and a lay Missionary under the UCBWM (United Church Board for World Ministries). This was from 1956-61, and 1967-71.

This book introduced me to a part of Andy that I never knew, the Missionary. He felt he was in India to help with both bodies and souls.

He talks honestly of the dichotomies between his views as a Christian Westerner, and both the Christian Indians and Hindu Indians. Along the way, there are also the differing views within the Christian Missionary Community.

One vital point he makes is the notion that he should live simply, in the same way that the Indians live. This adjustment was not easy for him as an American.

He also explained that the different groupings had much to learn from each other when they chose to listen.

Recently, when I looked up the current status of CNI, the Church of Northern India, I discovered that some of the same concerns that he wrote about were still in the process of being resolved.

The book is divided into sections covering his dual activities in India, and three epilogues, honoring both British and Indian Christians he worked with.

Home In India, A Review

More People Means Reservoirs Shrink

More People Means Reservoirs Shrink

 By Kathleene Parker


Showing reservoirs, including iconic Lake Mead at Hoover Dam, shrunk to a fraction of their intended size, national news media is reporting that the American Southwest is in the worst 20-year drought in 1,200 years.

Yet, no one asked why President Biden is hellbent on increasing immigration – which has exploded the U.S. population by an average approaching 30 million a decade over the last three decades – when he can’t ensure adequate water for those here now. The Southwest is the fastest growing region of ours, the third most populated nation and one of the world’s fastest growing developed nations – something else never reported.

More People Means Reservoirs Shrink


There are roughly 200 reservoirs along the length of the Colorado River – the primary water source for at least 45 million people in the Colorado River Basin and beyond – that were thought to ensure a 50-year water supply in drought. Yet, by the early 2000s, that 50-year supply was sucked dry!

At Lake Mead, the water level recently fell below the trigger point for the first-ever federal water emergency. That will mean mandatory water cutoffs, delivering a body blow to the Southwest’s economy and drying up farmland needed to feed the nation’s exploding population. But even that might not stop a collapse of the Colorado River system, a vast network of diversion projects and reservoirs stretching from Wyoming to the Mexican border. Meaning, reservoirs might run dry and diversions might no longer take water into cities of millions!

Today’s Phoenix, Arizona, was so named when settlers in the 19th century realized that they were building on the ruins of some long-ago civilization – that of the Hohokam – and named their new settlement after the mythical bird that arises from the ashes of another.

The Four Corner states – Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico and Utah – today are dotted with the ruins of the mysterious cliff dwellings and towns of the ancestral Puebloans – the Hohokam, the Anasazi and the Mimbres – who were forced into what we call the Great Abandonment, during the prolonged drought of the late 1200s though the mid-1300s. Hundreds of thousands of people fled what had been relative paradises in Colorado’s Montezuma Valley and on the once-verdant Mesa Verde, in the Gila Mountains of New Mexico and on the high uplands of Arizona, relocating to areas, mostly along the Rio Grande, with somewhat dependable water.

Lake Mead, the second largest reservoir in North America, is now 35 percent “full,” but since the bottom 20 percent is useless sludge, that means nearly empty, just as the Scripps Institute of Oceanography warned would happen in the 2020s. In California, some reservoirs can no longer generate hydropower, and Lake Powell, just upstream from Lake Mead and the largest reservoir in North America, also flirts with being empty. Yet, Big Media never ask if Biden grasps:

  1. That this might not be drought, but merely a return to far-drier norms than 1960 to 1995, the wettest time in the Southwest in 2000 years.
     
  2. That there is not “always ‘new’ water” to be found or some miraculous technofix to save us – although, admittedly, more people mean more sewage effluent to process for drinking. Yum!
     
  3. That the current drought might pale in comparison with what climate change might bring.

In 1922, the Colorado River Basin states of Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada and California met near Santa Fe to legally divide, or allocate, the Colorado River. But the resulting Colorado River Compactbegan with an “Oops!” of staggering proportions, as 16-million acre feet were divvied up, even though the river usually carries only 13 m.a.f. (An acre foot is the amount of water it takes to cover an acre of ground with a foot of water.)

That didn’t matter in a Southwest that at the time supported under 5 million people. But, if immigration continues at the astronomical rates of recent decades, or even increases, the Southwest could see its population double, even as flows on the Colorado will likely average a paltry 7 m.a.f. a year, maybe even as low as 5 m.a.f.

So, twice the people, half the water.

Will that bring our own Great Abandonment, an exodus of 45 million people trying to flee anywhere other than a drought-and-climate-change seared Southwest?

Are you even aware, Mr. Biden, of that possibility?


A contributing writer to Progressives for Immigration Reform, Kathleene Parker, of Los Alamos, New Mexico, is a fifth-generation resident of the American Southwest. A retired journalist who long covered a national laboratory in New Mexico, she now writes nationally on water, population and the need to re-regulate major media.

More People Means Reservoirs Shrink

Border Surge And Drought Are Incompatible

Border Surge And Drought Are Incompatible

By Joe Guzzardi

The federal government’s U.S. Drought Monitor indicates that nearly half the nation is suffering from abnormally dry drought conditions. States in the West are the most adversely affected, but parts of the Midwest and the East are classified as experiencing extreme, severe or moderate drought. The Pacific Northwest had not seen a spring this dry since 1924, and this is the second driest March to June on record for Washington, Oregon and Idaho.

Border Surge And Drought Are Incompatible

In California and Nevada, reservoirs are low, approaching but not quite matching 2012 to 2016 levels. Continued drying increases wildfire risk throughout the region, reflected in several recent out-of-control incidents in northern California, which has more than 200 vulnerable communities. The Dixie Fire, California’s second largest in the state’s history, destroyed iconic Greenville, burned hundreds of homes and forced evacuations in the adjacent 48,000 acres. As of August 8, Dixie has torched more than 463,000 acres and is only 21 percent contained.

Nevada and California, both states in 100 percent drought conditions that range from moderate to exceptional, had record warm temperatures in June which escalated the severe effects, including fire potential, water temperature impacts on fish and increased evaporative demand. Drought impacts on pasture conditions, ecosystem health, water supply, recreation and fire potential have intensified and expanded.

Just as the National Weather Service predicts no relief in sight, neither do population analysts foresee a reduction of the numbers of new arrivals that will drink, cook with, bathe in, irrigate or flush with the increasingly scarce water normally available for everyday activities. California Gov. Gavin Newsom asked residents to voluntarily cut water use by 15 percent. Many but not all will comply. Posh resorts, golf clubs, baseball diamonds, college football fields as well as the rich and famous like the Kardashians likely won’t do their share. Post-pandemic California anticipates millions of visitors this summer season, and through 2023. Out-of-state tourists who pay an average $2,757 per week to visit California may take their 15-minute shower and opt for freshly laundered linens.

Whether California residents heed Newsom or whether visitors pay attention to their lodgings’ pleas to consume less water is beyond anyone’s control. But controlling the millions of future water consumers pouring across the Southwest border is well within the federal government’s power. At the current pace, by the end of his first year in office President Biden will have overseen and unconstitutionally sanctioned the unlawful entry of more than 2 million illegal immigrants. Add those 2 million to the autopilot annual 1 million lawful permanent residents and hundreds of thousands who arrive on employment-based visas but rarely return home, and more than 3 million new arrivals will join the country’s already overcrowded 330 million.

Here’s the simple formula: too many people will equal not enough water. Some areas have been dramatically hurt by too little water, and too rapid population growth. The Texas Commission on Environmental Equality found that since 1940 the population of the 10 largest sister cities that straddle the U.S.-Mexican border, an arid region already short of water, has exploded twentyfold, from 560,000 people to roughly 10 million today.

Without taking into consideration the ongoing border surge, the Census Bureau predicts that the nation’s mid-century population will exceed 400 million, a 25 percent increase from today’s level, and about 90 percent driven by immigrants and births to immigrants.

Don’t blame immigrants for the water crisis. The Biden administration graciously invited border crossers to live in the U.S., and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Majorkas facilitated their safe and orderly dispersal throughout the nation. After immigration officials apprehend the aliens, they’re released into the interior, often on charter flights. Eventually, they’ll receive the government’s full complement of affirmative benefits. Those who have come, and those who will continue to come. are here to stay. But the water that they’ll need can’t be manufactured. The looming, acute water shortage will create a hard time for all, immigrants and citizens alike.

Joe Guzzardi is a Progressives for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org.

Border Surge And Drought Are Incompatible

Border Surge And Drought Are Incompatible

Gov Lamm Supported Sensible Immigration

Gov Lamm Supported Sensible Immigration

By Joe Guzzardi 

On July 29, Richard D. Lamm, Colorado’s three-term governor, 1975-1987, died of complications from a pulmonary embolism. He was a week away from his 86th birthday. Lamm was a Democrat who earned his J.D. degree from the University of California, Berkeley, served in the U.S. Army and became an attorney for the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Commission. Once his third gubernatorial term ended, Lamm was executive director of the University of Denver’s Center for Public Policy, and wrote several books.

Gov Lamm Supported Sensible Immigration

During his 12 years as Colorado’s governor, Lamm spoke out unflinchingly about the issues most important to him – protecting the fragile environment, defending women’s rights and promoting commonsense immigration. Lamm, who criticized overdevelopment and the relentless sprawl it spawns, opposed Interstate 470, a proposed circumferential highway around the Denver Metropolitan area. Years later, and because of never-ending development, the highway was built. Today, Denver has some of the nation’s most congested highways, and much of Colorado’s open spaces are a distant memory as housing projects have paved over what was once rural land. Lamm knew and loved Colorado’s countryside; in 1974, running on his campaign to limit growth, he walked across the state to promote his platform.

Because it adds millions of new residents to the U.S.’s population annually, Lamm, unlike many Democrats with similar academic and professional credentials, bluntly criticized federal immigration policy as ill-conceived, destructive to the environment and harmful to low-wage American workers.

In 2003, Lamm gave his most widely known speech, “I Have a Plan to Destroy America.” At the time of Lamm’s speech, Congress had passed the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, and the Immigration Act of 1990. Republican presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush had signed the two legislative acts that opened the borders to more illegal immigration, and created more employment-based visas that, over the last three decades, helped displace millions of American low- and high-skilled workers.

Presciently, Lamm foresaw immigration’s growing, detrimental effect on the U.S., as well as the amassed power that its advocates had on Congress and the media. Lamm’s eight-point program, which he subtitled “and many parts of it are underway,” include, despite multiculturalism’s multiple global failures, making America a bilingual, bicultural country; encouraging immigrants to maintain their own language and culture instead of, as previous immigrant waves did, assimilating; ensuring that the fastest growing demographic is the least educated, thereby creating a second, permanent underclass; getting big business and powerful foundations to donate huge sums toward promoting ethnic identity, victimology and diversity. Lamm’s most compelling point noted that all of his above observations must be treated as “off limits…taboo.” Make sure that opposition is squelched on unfounded xenophobe and racist charges that end debate. Because immigration was “once good,” Lamm predicted that its advocates would insist that it “must always be good.” Lamm anticipated that the immigration-related problems he identified in 2003 would grow worse over the years to come.

Although often at odds with Lamm, especially about immigration, the Denver Post’s editorial board wrote a mostly gracious commentary about the former governor, and referred to him as “a kind, humble and generous man…. a man of conviction… whose policy on immigration was drastically different from that of the modern Democratic Party.…”

I knew Dick from several Washington, D.C., conferences where we met, began and maintained a friendship. On a trip to Denver years ago, Dick and his wife, Dottie, invited me to their home for dinner. Dottie, once a Colorado U.S. Senate candidate, Dick and I spoke about his 2003 speech, and bemoaned how much of it had come true.

Dick enjoyed a long, full life. In an era where most politicians speak double talk or test which way the wind blows before addressing a crowd, Dick spoke his mind even when he knew his foes were ready to pounce. As the Postwrote: “Colorado will be poorer without him here offering his unvarnished and genuine takes on the most important policies of our time.”

Governor Lamm’s many allies in the uphill climb for stable, sustainable population and manageable immigration will deeply miss his strong, rational voice. The fierce battle that Dick predicted will be more challenging without him.

Joe Guzzardi is a Progressives for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org.

Gov Lamm Supported Sensible Immigration

A Tranquil Time In Northern New Hampshire

A Tranquil Time In Northern New Hampshire

By John Gilmore

A small town, almost a village in northern New Hampshire near Conway, the prime time tourist location in the winter for skiing, sledding, snowshoeing and winter sports, and in the summer hiking the many trails and pine forests, sits quietly and tranquil today.

It is rainy today, in Tamworth. I sit looking out the window in the wooded area from a small cabin in a community of people who seem to have found a way to live with all of the modern amenities, but be in a small, quiet community surrounding Moore’s Pond. No need to go to a park to walk the trails for the visitor. This small community is full of many dirt roads with beautiful cabins, all uniquely designed, close enough to see from the road.

It is rainy now. It just enhances the sleep ability factor here from the rain and most importantly, the quiet. Sometimes it is good just to be in a quiet place. To be away from the city and the roar of cars and blazing sirens, and the lawn mowers and weed wackers constantly going in the suburbs and immersed in the sounds of birds singing, wind blowing through the trees and the natural noises that we often don’t hear or even pay attention to anymore is both fulfilling and enlightening.

It is just life in it’s rawness and in its fullness instead of the hustle and bustle of living according to the wishes and demands of others and the great machine-like culture we often find in US American overcrowded cities . It is what is needed for the healing of the human soul. The human soul needs quiet, it needs solitude as well as community. The human soul thrives while immersed in nature with other human beings, not in avoidance.

As I sit and listen to the sound of distant conversation in the house in which I am staying, and look outside of windows and off of the balcony surrounded by the beauty of nature, I find that I am more relaxed and more at rest than I have been for quite some time. This seems more the real world than my small suburban town.

A Visit To White’s Lake

White’s Lake is a very large lake about two miles from Tamworth. There is a beautiful beach with a cordoned off area for swimming, many picnic tables, and a small store and rental shop where you can rent one and two people kayaks, paddle boats, and canoes. The water is warm. A lot of activity is going on.

A Tranquil Day In Northern New Hampshire

Instead of going in the water we decided to hike the two mile trail around the lake, noticing the beautiful landscape, and resting along the edge, every so often, looking out over the beauty of the pristine looking, yet well utilized lake. The lake is large enough for people to swim in a very small section without disturbing the fisherman and people in boats and canoes, and large enough so people doing the boating don’t usually cross paths unless they want. The best part–no motor boats, or jet skis.

I realize those things must be fun, considering that almost every quiet lake where people swim, canoe, or kayak eventually gets overrun with someone loudly running up and down with a wake following so large that it can sometimes swamp a kayak if the paddler is not careful. Though it may be exciting for the few grinning speed lovers on those vehicles it usually ruins the atmosphere for everyone else. This doesn’t seem to be a problem at White’s Lake.

The major problem for me is the steep entrance fee of five dollars per person for out of state visitors compared to three dollars a car for state residents. Despite all of the fun, the water, the friendly atmosphere with music, picnic tables and children laughing and playing, I doubt that we will return there with only one day left to explore more of his fascinating area when we can for free elsewhere.

The trees, the trails, the quiet, the friendly atmosphere, all of these things add to the charm of the area. I marvel at how few African Americans and People of Color are located here, yet again, I lived in NH for several years so I shouldn’t be surprised. The greatest thing that I notice, and noticed back then, was that it is more comfortable for a black person here than it is in many of the suburban towns surrounding Philadelphia, or Boston. I think many of the people in NH believe in minding their own business and giving people the space they need.

On some issues they are quite conservative. On some they are quite progressive. They are, however, by no means moderate. I kind of like that to be truthful. Stand up for what you want, don’t hate people who don’t agree with what you want has always been my motto. Don’t water down everything that you want or need to the point that it is useless. I think we can all learn something from the state of NH. It isn’t perfect, but what is? And we can make what we learn from it perfect if we have the nerve to stop driving down the middle of the road and get to one side or the other appreciating the fact that we may need to go in the other direction sometimes if we want to get back home.

A Tranquil Time In Northern New Hampshire

A Tranquil Time In Northern New Hampshire

Biden Bucks In Swarthmore Pa

Biden Bucks In Swarthmore Pa

By Bob Small

There’s always something to learn at your local Borough Council Meeting.  We learned at the July 26 Swarthmore Borough Council Meeting that the Feds have allocated us $664, 230.82.

Now, according to the US Department of the Treasury, these funds can be used to “address negative economic impacts caused by the public health emergency”  and “replace lost public sector revenues”, among other generalities.

Like many communities, we have a volunteer fire department.  They could use some monies.  Our police department is funded, though they could always use more.  (They don’t need their own tank, though.)  The Library and some of our Senior Groups always need additional funding. And, of course, our business community will all be vying for their share of the Biden Bucks.  The new vaping shop will apply but that money could go up in smoke.

Luckily, we do not have an Antifa or Proud Boys Chapter in Swarthmore, as they might also  try to apply. (I’m not suggesting formation of either for these purposes.)

I’m somewhat regretful that I’ve retired from coordinating any Political Forums or Poetics, which means I’ll miss out on this magic money tree.

A direct quote, says that within these overall categories, five overly broad categories, “recipients have broad flexibility to decide how best to use this funding to meet the needs of their communities”  (home.treasury.gov)

Outside of a child’s allowance, when are monies issued without some guidelines?

I still remember hearing my parents say “Now, Bobby, don’t spend it all on cookies and beer.”  (We lived in Northeast Philly.)

You don’t just give monies to local government.  That involves a level of trust that most local government has yet to earn.

These are monies meant to earn approval ratings and votes, nothing else.

Bob Small is a resident of Swarthmore, Pa.

Biden Bucks In Swarthmore Pa
Biden Bucks In Swarthmore Pa

To Mask or not to Mask

To Mask or not to Mask

By Bob Small

Being someone with underlying conditions who is not yet ready to be living under, I still continue to mask. This is my individual decision, and I would no sooner tell anyone else to mask as I would tell anyone else what else to do.

To Mask or not to Mask

Now, in the community which we dwell in, as in many others, the common understanding is that they have declared Covid 19 to now be over and done. Hopefully the virus has heard this and agrees. However, in this community, called Dartmour in my on-going fictional rendering of it (to protect the guilty), there is an unspoken insistance in both requiring that all be vaccinated and, having done that, that they now unmask on an immediate and unilateral basis! Furthermore, there is an unspoken intimation that any refusal to whole-heartedly return to indoor dining, indoor concerts, indoor everything, requires an immediate explanation. We are not exactly being shunned yet but, when my meetings went from zoom to face to coughing face, my absence may have been noted. Or worse, not noticed at all.

Though I have the requisite Pfizer jabs, there is still my feeling that they did not take, or were the wrong ones, as I do not have confidence. Of course, any feeling of being in rebellion against the general public conclusions, of not tossing off of masks, having this new knowledge that we cannot now get Covid 19, or Covid 117, this confidence has yet to infect me.

We continue to hear “Trust the Science” while forgetting science is not always absolute and unchanging. Thalidomide turned out to be a disaster, though it was scientifically approved in 46 countries, though not the US, thankfully. Though we can say gravity will never change, despite the many Spiderman movies, other “absolute” science has changed over the years.

Probably the vaccine will protect me from any Covid. However, that is still my wish and not yet my certainty.

Bob Small is a poet and resident of Delaware County, Pa.

Shapiro Lets Lawbreaker Pension Remain

Shapiro Lets Lawbreaker Pension Remain

By Leo Knepper

Last week, Representative Margo Davidson (D-164) submitted her letter of resignation to House Speaker Brian Cutler. She resigned due to criminal charges filed by Attorney General Josh Shapiro. The criminal charges Ms. Davidson faces are related to the misuse of campaign funds and legislative expenses. According to media reports, she received reimbursement for overnight stays in Harrisburg paid for by her campaign account (getting paid twice for the same expense). She also filed for reimbursement for nights she didn’t stay in Harrisburg (receiving money she wasn’t owed). Ms. Davidson, according to court documents, also asked witnesses to lie for her and cover up the criminal activity.

Shapiro Lets Lawbreaker Pension Remain
Protecting Democrats and other cronies

All the alleged criminal activity is a massive breach of public trust and clearly an abuse of her position as a Representative. However, she will likely not only keep her pension, but Davidson and her husband will also continue to be eligible for the taxpayer-funded health plan and long-term care insurance. 

You are probably wondering how on earth any government employee, let alone a Representative or Senator, convicted of crimes like these can still be a drain on taxpayers for the rest of their lives. Former-representative Davidson will likely receive the taxpayer-funded benefits because the crimes she will probably be convicted of don’t result in losing them. Enter Attorney General Josh Shapiro.

Shapiro, a Democrat, and an all-but-announced candidate for Governor charged Davidson with crimes that fall below the threshold for pension forfeiture. The criminal conviction must be related to a crime specified by the Public Pension Forfeiture Act 1978-140 and be over the severity threshold. According to an article by the Harrisburg Patriot-News:

“However, the second-degree misdemeanors of theft and hindering apprehension or prosecution misdemeanors of which Davidson is charged fall below the threshold of the crimes when the state’s pension forfeiture law applies...The House comptroller said the chamber’s policy on forfeiture of medical benefits aligns with the pension forfeiture law….” (Emphasis added)

Why did the Attorney General’s office and Josh Shapiro not pursue more serious charges? It seems like this is an open and shut case. Did Shapiro level less serious charges specifically to prevent Davidson from losing the pension and healthcare benefits? If he plans on running for Governor, the public has the right to find out the answers to this and other questions about Shapiro’s record.

Shapiro Lets Lawbreaker Pension Remain