Happy New Year From Niagara At Large

A Message from NAL Publisher Doug Draper

 Maybe I’m just turning old and crabby as I hesitate to wish people a Happy New Year any more.

I’m still stupidly doing it again though, in t\the days leading up to this January 1st whenever I cross paths with people I know in the real world, or on the phone, or in the virtual world of the internet.

It just seems like wishing people a ‘Happy New Year’ is the courteous thing to do as we count down the clock to another calendar year.

Then again, it is a tradition, and I don’t mind respecting a bit of that.

But I’d rather say something like the following to all of you out there who have been kind enough to support Niagara At Large, as a rather renegade, independent news and commentary site for a greater binational Niagara region that includes our friends in Buffalo and other communities in Erie and Niagara Counties. Id rather say the following that “from one struggling soul to another, I wish you a relatively peaceful and stress-free year, and one where if any false prophets, whether they be from the private, commercial or public sectors make promises that seem to good to be true, be careful not to drink the Kool-Aid.’

If truth was told – and lets all finally face the truth – we have a challenging year ahead of us. Our American neighbours in Erie and Niagara Counties, New York, where federal and state funding has been drying up for domestic services like schools and libraries and such basics as fire protection, now face a Republican-controlled Congress that would rather cut taxes for the upper two per cent of million and billionaires and than cut spending – God forbid – for the Pentagon. On the Canadian side of the border, it isn’t too much different.

This Niagara region is struggling with one of the highest unemployment rates in the province and country, and we’ve got provincial and federal governments that seem more bent on killing people at the lower and those still left at the middle end of the income spectrum with regressive taxes like the GST and HST, than on raising income taxes, which is fairer. Indeed, we have provincial governments that would rather slam lower and middle income earners on higher sales taxes and other fees, while at the same time lower taxes for corporations in this province and country that are outsourcing jobs of countless thousands of Canadians overseas. And we have a federal government in Canada that seems just as juiced up to go along with the same.

My resolution in the New Year is that all of uspay attention to what our governments our doing and comment.  All of us – you and I the people – have got to speak out.

Please embrace Niagara At Large and its comment boxes below as one more way to speak out. Speaking out, whether you are on the left or right or somewhere in between, is what Niagara At Large is all about.

(Visit Niagara At Large at http://www.niagaraatlarge.com for more news and commentary on matters of interest and concern to our greater binational Niagarra region.)