`We are fighting against being swallowed up by a party 20 times our size'
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Over the past 25 years, I regularly railed against Grover Norquist's demand that every Republican candidate pledge never to raise taxes because there are times when raising taxes is necessary and economical.
The federal gas tax is 18.4 cents per gallon, but it has not been raised since 1993. Raising the tax Incrementally over the years might have prevented the crumbling of our infrastructure and need to spend $1.2 trillion in the most recent infrastructure bill. Anyone who owns a house knows that upkeep is essential to maintain your home's value.
So many of you under the age of 50 fear the Social Security account will be empty by the time you retire. You may not know that Social Security tax is deducted only up to $168,000 in income. Any earned income beyond that does not have Social Security taken out. By raising that standard to $300,000 or $400,000, decades or more could be added to Social Security's solvency.
Anyone who pledges never to raise taxes is not concerned with the upkeep of the country and doesn't care about saving Social Security.
Political parties regularly demand primary candidates to endorse the eventual nominee no matter what. That "loyalty" demand is a red flag.
We're hearing a lot about that these days.
Party members locally have been called on the carpet for simply putting the wrong political sign in their yard.
When Glens Falls Mayor Robert Regan ran against Dan Stec for a seat in the Assembly in 2012, he conveniently forgot to mention Stec's name during a hastily called press conference - one media member was there - after the local Republicans decided Stec was their man and there would be no primary. So Regan went to the press conference with a gun to his head and endorsed "everybody" on the Republican line.
"If they had asked him to endorse a baby giraffe in a pink tutu, Regan would have endorsed it too," I wrote at the time.
Local Republican leaders were so upset they forced Regan to clarify with the one reporter present.
"In addition to my earlier remarks," Regan added in an email, "I would add that I strongly endorse Dan Stec for the state Assembly. He is a good leader, a hard worker and will represent us well."
That's the loyalty demanded even if you don’t really believe that.
So when I read about the chairman of the Saratoga County Conservative Party sending letters to 32 party members asking them to appear to talk about their "loyalty" to the party, my first reaction was "McCarthyism."
The "loyalty oath" being kicked around in this story was a bad look for the Conservative Party, but there was apparently something even more insidious going on here.
David Buchyn, the Saratoga County Conservative chairman who sent out the letter about loyalty, and Carol Birkholtz, the Warren County Conservative chairman, explained to me this was an attempt to wrest control of the Conservative Party away from them the current leadership.
The major parties don't like having smaller parties like the Conservative Party around, even if they often endorse the same candidates. When they don't, they siphon off votes from Republican candidates. The major parties don't like that.
Buchyn reached out to me by email Wednesday morning and explained that the Republican Party is trying to infiltrate the Working Families Party (left-leaning organization) and the Conservative Party (right-leaning) organization by having Republicans join both parties and run for leadership positions so they fall in line and endorse Republican candidates.
"So we are fighting against being swallowed up by a party 20 times our size," Buchyn said in his email. "This happens all across the state. There are Republicans that don’t want an independent, fully functioning Conservative Party and will do anything to stop that from happening."
Buchyn said this happened in Saratoga County when Republicans took over the Working Families Party, a left-leaning minor political party.
"When the Saratoga Springs GOP took over the Working Families Party in 2021, the Working Families Party complained and bitched and moaned, but they didn’t do anything," Buchyn wrote in an email. "We in the Conservative party are fighting back as best we can against the much larger GOP. People are entitled to join any party they want. But when I see Working Families Party members coming to the Conservative Party as a group, that raises a red flag."
That is what precipitated the Conservative Party letter and the questions about "loyalty."
"I agree the wording on the letters didn’t sound good and was scary and mysterious," Buchyn said. "But that is the way the lawyers wanted it because that’s how the issue is framed in election law."
Politics makes for strange bedfellows and sometimes the bad guys aren't the bad guys after all.
Buchyn explained that at Saturday's hearing he asked questions such as:
Why did you join the left-leaning working Families Party?
Do you adhere to a left-wing ideology or were you doing this to take the party over for ballot access?
And now, why are you joining the Conservative Party and moving from the farthest left party to the farthest right party?
Buchyn says Tom Sartin is the leader of the Working Families Party who is trying to take over the Conservative Party.
It was Sartin who told a Schenectady Gazette reporter after the meeting Saturday that this was a "witch hunt" by Buchyn.
That term sounded familiar.
It should have tipped us all off that something nefarious was afoot.
It is another reason people hate politics and why good people no longer get involved.
Commenting
Both Will Doolittle and myself try to set a tone for respect and debate when people comment on our writing.
There are some that are always changing the subject or steering the conversation back to politics even if the commentary is not about politics. They always seem to be looking for an argument. That can be frustrating.
One of those people commented on Glens Falls basketball legend Joe Girard III saying his Clemson teammates this year were the best he ever had. The commenter said Girard had insulted his high school teammates. I disagree.
Some people find the negative even in a compliment.
It’s great to see the debate on The Front Page, but let’s practice listening once in awhile, too.
Targeting journalists
Whenever Northern Ireland is in the news, I pay attention. My mother was born in Belfast and that's where she met my father when he was in the Navy.
Her sister and her family lived through "The Troubles" years ago and it has been encouraging to see the peace take hold over the past 25 years. We've visited several times.
This past week, I saw that a journalist was targeted for taking photos at a protest where "petrol bombs" were thrown at him for taking photos.
The incident comes two years after the death of another journalist who was accidentally shot during a protest.
Over the years, I've talked to my cousins about what it was like to grow up in a war zone during the 1970s. It's a reminder to all of us of how lucky we have it here.
The Great Recession
When it comes to recent economic times, many have bad memories and believe they were better off four years ago.
Fifteen years ago, I wrote a column about "The Great Recession."
My brother had just lost his job after working at the same place for 30 years. He was 48 years old and not sure what to do next. A couple of my cousins lost their jobs as well as the unemployment rate reached 10 percent.
And that was just 15 years ago.
Many of us lost a third or more of our retirement savings, although if you stayed in the stock market, we were able to earn most of it back.
The column about my brother and "The Great Recession" made my book The Last American Editor, Vol. 2. It is worth a look again as a reminder that times have been far worse.
When those younger than me complain about the recent inflation, I can relate. My wife and I bought our first house during one of the Reagan recessions in the 1980s. The first bank said we did not make enough money to qualify for a mortgage. When we finally did find a bank to take a chance on us, our mortgage was 12.5 percent.
Definitely not the good old days.
The Great Recession column and the one about Mayor Regan are both available in my latest book.
Albany Film Festival
If you are a big film buff, you might want to check out the Albany Film Festival on Saturday at the University at Albany.
The entire experience is free with 17 different events, movies, shorts and an appearance by actress Jacqueline Bisset.
The film festival runs from 10:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. You can find more information with the link below.
As to your comment in the Girard column’s last paragraph about listening once in awhile… a great many of us could benefit from a class that my husband took in college called the art of listening.. he could even benefit from a brush up class.. ah but I digress.
there should be no cap on social security wages at all. if the cap were removed, ss would be solvent into the far distant future. why should rich people pay a smaller percentage of their wages than middle-class people? it makes no sense.