1) Pilgrims rejected socialism 11/29/09

The True Story of Thanksgiving

http://ltpbazzo.wordpress.com/2009/11/29/pilgrims-rejected-socialism/

2) Have a Merry Christmas, not a happy holiday: 12/20/09

http://ltpbazzo.wordpress.com/2009/12/20/have-a-merry-christmas-not-a-happy-holiday/

3) Sign up here for the Scrooge Fan Club 12/20/09

The True Meaning of “A Christmas Carrol”

http://ltpbazzo.wordpress.com/2009/12/20/sign-up-here-for-the-scrooge-fan-club/

4) I’d rather live in Pottersville 12/20/09

The True Meaning Of “It’s A Wonderful Life”

http://ltpbazzo.wordpress.com/2009/12/20/i%e2%80%99d-rather-live-in-pottersville/

Bazzo 11/25/10

IN MY OPINION : Have a Merry Christmas, not a happy holiday

By Anthony Bazzo
The first right that our Founding Fathers protected was speech; the second was religion. The first amendment to our constitution states, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” In layman’s shorthand this meant freedom of religion. Our founders were afraid of a national church such as the Church of England. So when did freedom of religion become freedom from religion?

This happened in 1947, when the Supreme Court ruled on the case “Everson vs. Board of Education.” This case involved a New Jersey statute that permitted local school districts to create their own rules for transporting children to and from school. The Board of Education for Ewing Township, New Jersey, reimbursed parents for their children’s fares for the use of public transportation, which was the form of transportation that district employed. This also included parents who sent their children to parochial school. This use of public monies was challenged and made its way to the Supreme Court, which sided with The Board of Education (See Men In Black by Mark Levin, Chapter Three).

In the majority opinion, Justice Hugo Black cites a letter written by Thomas Jefferson to a Baptist community in 1801, in which he used the phrase “a wall of separation between Church and State.” Since then, the secularists among us have used this phrase to change freedom of religion to freedom from religion.

I bring this up because we are now in the season in which the secularists among us wish to remove long-held traditions and (to quote former Peekskill Councilman Bill Schmidt) “make this an antiseptic holiday, devoid of value and values.” We now have “holiday” and “family” tree lightings instead of “Christmas” tree lightings. We have school bands and choruses not allowed to perform Christmas Carols. Stores have “holiday” sales and sales reps who say “happy holidays.” This is all done in the name of tolerance, when it is in fact censorship. Sad to say, the secularists have accomplished through judicial fiat and/or the fear of lawsuits what they could never have accomplished at the voting booth.

As we enter this Christmas season, let not your heart be troubled. Do not let the grinches, bureaucrats, and weak-willed politicians afraid of lawyers spoil your fun. Say “Merry Christmas” if you are so inclined. Boycott stores that say, “happy holidays” and have “holiday sales” if you choose, without guilt. As for me and my partner, we will continue our long-held tradition of giving Christmas cards and presents to those who have patronized our business throughout the year.

This is my opinion, you may beg to differ.

IN MY OPINION : Sign up here for the Scrooge Fan Club

By Anthony Bazzo
One of my traditions every Christmas is returning from Midnight Mass and turning on the TV to watch Charles Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol,” starring Alastair Sim.
To my mind, it’s the best interpretation of the classic story, closely followed by the George C. Scott version. The uplifting ending, where the announcer intones, “nobody knew better than Ebeneezer Scrooge how to keep Christmas,” would carry me the rest of the day.
It took a number of years for me to realize it was propaganda.

Evil and successful Scrooge is the villain, and poor Bob Cratchit, overworked and underpaid, is the hero. The reform of Scrooge is not complete until he becomes a socialist and spreads his wealth. Only then does he, too, become a hero. My Lord, was I a sucker.

In revisiting the story, consider that our villain Scrooge makes a success of himself in spite of odds a more generous God would allow. He is born, his mother dies in childbirth, his father blames him, and banishes him to private school, where he is left alone every Christmas.
Does he wallow in victimhood? No! He turns to books to better educate himself. One day, as he reaches his teen years, his sister (the only one who loved him for himself) tells Scrooge he can come home, filling him with hope and promise of a family.

Pity poor Ebenezer
But noooo, it is not to be. His father sells him into servitude. There, Scrooge meets his one true friend, Jacob Marley, and his one true love, the boss’s daughter. Life starts looking good, and Scrooge finds success.

Not so fast! Next, his fiancee dumps him, saying she would rather be poor. Then, his sister dies after giving birth to Scrooge’s nephew. And Marley, his only friend, passes away, leaving nobody left to love him.

When we encounter Scrooge’s clerk Bob Cratchit, he has been toiling at his underpaid job for seven or more years. (Have you ever met anybody who thought he was underworked and overpaid?)

Bobby C. is our hero, but why? In all those years, he could not find a better paying job to support his growing brood? Somehow, we are to believe, this is Scrooge’s fault, as if the well being of someone else’s children is this unrelated man’s responsibility.
Perhaps Cratchit is a lousy clerk and that is the best job he could manage.
To tug even harder at our heartstrings, Dickens brings on crippled youngster Tiny Tim. His future, if he is lucky enough to have one, rests solely in the hands of Scrooge.

Classic nonsense
Oh, what irony. In the entire town where the Cratchits live, where every person, save one, is blessed by the spirit of charity, only the miser Scrooge can save Tiny Tim?
Yet, as awful a person as Scrooge is portrayed, he has that loyal friend, Jacob Marley, who returns from the dead to save him from a life of misery.
Why is Cratchit a hero, and why is his family Scrooge’s responsibility? Where is the principle of personal responsibility?

Scrooge not only takes responsibility, but overcomes misfortune to succeed, yet is demonized.
Cratchit avoids responsibility, because he does nothing to improve his lot by pursuing a better job, and is lionized.

Am I missing something here? Or is everybody else?
Yes, I continue to watch “A Christmas Carol” each holiday season, but no longer am I fooled by its socialist propaganda.

This is my opinion, you may beg to differ.

P.S. Have a Merry Christmas. That is also my opinion.

IN MY OPINION: I’d rather live in Pottersville

By Anthony Bazzo

In Christmas tradition, I watched “It’s A Wonderful Life,” and to tell you the truth, I would rather live in Pottersville. The one thing you must understand about “It’s A Wonderful Life” is that for all the nickels and dimes that George Bailey’s friends contributed to help him out at the end of the movie, it was his rich friend Wainwright and his check that bailed him out. So the real moral of the story is, while it is nice to have lots of friends, you still need one rich friend for emergencies.
Bedford Falls reminded me of Peekskill when I was growing up. Yorktown, where I grew up and still live, like much of Cortlandt Manor, Putnam Valley and Continental Village, was pretty much a bungalow community. By that I mean that much of the housing was summer housing; more than 50 percent of the population disappeared for the winter. The Town of Cortlandt was what you drove through to get to Peekskill. Other than the Hollowbrook Drive-In and Lou’s Corner Store, there was nothing.

When the Beach Shopping Center was built, that was big news. Every year, right after Thanksgiving, Santa came by helicopter to the Beach and set up shop in the corner in an igloo. Kids from all over stood in the cold waiting to see Santa. Macy’s had nothing on us. The Peekskill Evening Star (the local paper) held a contest for the best-decorated house for Christmas and ran letters to Santa in every edition.

East Main Street in Jefferson Valley and Shrub Oak was Route 6. It was two lanes all the way to Peekskill with only two traffic lights between Yorktown and Peekskill. Most of the side roads were not paved because it was not necessary. In fact, putting gravel and oil on most of these side roads was done annually and that lasted till the first good rainstorm. If you wanted to purchase anything or do your banking you had to go to Peekskill. You had one movie house, The Paramount, and during the summer the Hollowbrook Drive-In. The Peekskill Hospital, where I was born, was on Bay Street (the building is now co-ops). The police, store owners and politicians knew you or your family.

It was my family that brought pizza and live entertainment with cabaret shows to Yorktown in 1949 and Chinese food in the early ’60s at Club Nino (now Ceola Manor in Jefferson Valley). The property consisted of five restored bungalows and 2,000-square feet of lakefront. During the summer, the lake was open as a public beach where I operated the candy concession. We used to call Osceola Beach on the other side of the lake, “Coney Island,” because that’s where the tourists went. The locals went to our side. During the winter, there were car races on the lake and my grandmother served coffee and doughnuts to the racers and spectators for 10 cents each.

There were many woods and lakes, so hunting, fishing and hiking were the norms as no licenses were really needed and nobody asked. An old tire meant a tree swing; it was not something to be recycled. Discarded lumber was a tree house. If you wanted to cut down a tree or upgrade your property, burn leaves in the fall or just burn your garbage, you could without asking any government entity for permission. Corporal punishment was allowed in public schools and the parents sided with the teachers if it was used. The local enforcement was pretty much assured that home justice would be more severe than criminal justice. It was a good time to be a child. Manners, respect, personal responsibility were what was taught at home and reinforced at school.

However, when I reached the age to drive, it was New York City where I headed. Night life was night life. At that time, White Plains rolled up its sidewalks at 11 p.m. It’s pretty much boring up here when you’re in your teens and early 20s. I could understand why George Bailey wanted out of Bedford Falls. I also understood why the family business kept him there.
Have a Merry Christmas.

IN MY OPINION: Pilgrims rejected socialism

By Anthony Bazzo
The real first Thanksgiving should be a lesson on what ails our economy now. The one thing you are not taught in school is that the Pilgrims showed all the way back in the 1600s that socialism and collectivism does not work.

When the Pilgrims landed in Provincetown and moved to Plymouth Rock five weeks later, they all shared the land and whatever they produced went into a collective where each could take what they felt they needed. Soon, discontentment set in as those that produced more saw that others who did little received the same. In fact, some of the settlers realized that they did not have to produce to receive and ceased producing. There was nothing to prevent the leeches from taking whatever they wanted.

To prevent rebellion, William Bradford, the first governor of the Plymouth colony, rewrote their pact and assigned each their own land to produce what they wanted and sell the rest so they could profit from their labors. This produced the abundance that these first settlers used for that first Thanksgiving. They held Thanksgiving to give thanks to the Almighty for this abundance and to the native Indians who showed them how to survive off this new land. If Bradford did not see what had to be done, there would have been no abundance to give thanks for. Socialism and collectivism did not work then and will not work now, for it kills the spirit of initiative and innovativeness that are necessary to grow and expand.

Envy, a venial sin, is at the heart of socialism and collectivism. You may be envious that someone has more than you, even though they obtained it through their hard work, innovation and/or being somewhere before everyone else. The most successful baseball player hits what others cannot; the most successful entrepreneur sees what others cannot see. Yet, our political class in New York wishes you to believe that is not fair. So, they enact entitlements to redistribute the wealth these earners have amassed. They have convinced you that people start businesses to create a job for you, not to make a profit. Those in the political class believe profit is a crime and business should be a zero-sum gain; they believe that the employer is somehow responsible for your health care and that you should make as much as the employer.

Tax the rich! That is the continued mantra coming out of Albany. So what has been the result? Since 2008, 1.5 million people have fled this state for less- taxing climates. The average income of those fleeing is $50,000. They are being replaces by people making less than $20,000, hence the revenue shortfall in our state and local tax coffers. These politicians tax income, not wealth, or else they would be taxing themselves. Instead of passing laws that create incentives for people with the means to invest and create, they pass laws that punish success. The redistribution of wealth did not work 400 years ago. Our present situation in New York proves it still does not.

So now Thanksgiving is here. We gather with family and friends to watch football, eat till we can’t digest another bite, and oh yes, maybe give thanks for surviving another year. You might want to even remember those fighting overseas helping us to keep safe at home. Starting this Friday, if you feel like shopping till you drop for the Christmas holidays, do so without guilt. The best thing you can do for the economy is spend money. Right now it is the only thing you can do to help.

This is my opinion, you may beg to differ.