Tioga Herald

This is how bad search engines have become, whether Google or DuckDuckGo. There was a time when I was able to find information about how to write a formula in Microsoft Excel or LibreOffice Calc. The formulas were to calculate the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th or 5th Wed of each month, projecting the dates into the future because the Wednesdays are important for my finances. I saved the formulas. For most of the formulas, they still work. All of a sudden, I experience a NAME? error in the formula to calculate the 1st Monday. I have changed nothing in the names in this particular formula nor for any of the others. The others work as usual. This one gives an error when I changed nothing in the spreadsheet which contains these formulas. This is a common thing. Having settings changed on us on computers, laptops, or smart phones when we did not do the change and have no idea as to find the setting or the change and have to spend hours trying to find out and no one in the tech industry gives one damn about helping their fellow human beings. Me, me, me first and being consumed only with me and not giving one damn about others. You don’t believe me? Walk in my shoes to see for yourself.

So. I search for the help aids I once had to write the formulas. Whether I use Google or DuckDuckGo, and search with word such as “calculate” (which is what I used in years past), I get, “how to find…” I don’t want how to find, so I use what once existed in search engines to eliminate “find” from search. It was the word NOT preceding, in this case, find or the “-” sign to indicate NOT. In other words, -FIND. These search mechanisms once worked. I know. I used them for many years after retrieving instructions provided by Google in those years. Today I can add NOT find about a dozen times in the search and the first result, whether with NOT or without NOT, the first result is FIND.

People. I spend hours and hours trying to find the answers, something I once DID NOT do in spending the time. Yet, when I explain this to others in this GODDAMN me-first society of Ebeneezer Scrooges, I get this… for example, excess spam in Google email or other gmail functions I know about…… TRY THIS, as if I am some kind of idiot and don’t know enough to TRY THIS… I did. Over and over again, plus many other ways to attempt to solve the problem. None work. So don’t treat me like I am an idiot who does not know what I am doing when my statements are to find a team of people in this nation who are interested in solving the problem for more than just “me, me, me first.” If I solve a problem, I share it with others and it is NOT just for myself.

Another example. Walgreens has bought up many rural drug stores which were once serving their communities with pharmacists who were local, owned their own pharmacy, and cared about the customers and the community in the way George F. Johnson showed care and concern when he founded and ran Endicott Johnson Shoes. Walgreens sucks because it does not care about how best to provide prescriptions for the communities on weekends. They shut down on weekends in rural areas. In one community east of Binghamton, NY, the people there got up in arms and protested the decision. The situation in that town got put on channel 12 News from Binghamton. Here in Newark Valley, the ones who complain are nothing but complainers, even though it’s the same situation in another rural town where they did not just fall over and play dead.

We are such complainers that a pharmacist told me to “just leave this nation.” “I would if I could, was my reply.” And then I departed.

I would if I could means this: if I could take the MEDICARE MONEY I invested over some 40 years in a CAPITALIST way (and this was done by means of taxes, a socialist way, so Rick the Prick Scott now in the U.S. Senate can claim its socialism and STEAL, STEAL, STEAL from our money we INVESTED in Medicare. The SOB Rick the Prick Scott has stolen from the people in other ways, too. I can go into many examples it was done, for the sake of big oil of Texas.

But Donald Trump likes this prick of a SOB Scott, but says, “even pleading the 5th amendment means someone is guilty.” How many times did Rick the PRICK Scott plead the 5th when the trial against the fraudulence of Rick the Prick in Florida? Another words, it’s ok to plead the 5th if you are wealthy, like a Trump or a Rick the Prick, but if a Democrat who does not have as much money, it’s wrong to plead the 5th.

Once again, I diverge in order to try to hammer out my point. I don’t give a damn any more whether I diverge or not. Because either way, no one gets my point.

Medicare tax and FICA tax have given an excuse for the wealthy to call this “socialism” when it is NOT socialism. I can prove that it is LONG-TERM CAPITALIST INVESTMENTS INTO LOWER-RISK POOLS OF MONEY FOR THE COMMUNITY OF PEOPLE CALLED THE USA. Shall I repeat this or is someone going to find SOME WAY to shoot holes in what I say, rather than consider the IMPORTANCE of what I say. OK. Repeat. Medicare and Social Security are LONG-TERM CAPITALIST INVESTMENTS INTO LOWER-RISK POOLS OF MONEY FOR THE COMMUNITY OF PEOPLE CALLED THE USA.

I am even hearing lunkheads who are among the common folk and put down the developments of alternative fuels, solar, and so forth, in defense of the pricks of oil men in Texas. They have companies which are SOLELY oil and don’t want any competition from those who promote the continued subsistence on oil which pollutes the atmosphere. What about those of us who invest in OIL companies which are also doing research on the alternative fuel sources? What are we, chopped liver who need to leave this nation because, as asshole Texas oil men and Abbott or Cruz of Texas, think, “it’s my way or the highway” – fascists. We who lived during the Vietnam war era, started with a false Gulf of Tonkin Resolution for the sake of power over oil, recall people saying, “America, love it or leave it.”

I say to the GODDAMN freaking fascists like Trump, Rick the Prick, Ron DeSantis, AMERICA, LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT – an America for which we need to appreciate what was given to us by wealthy people who actually loved this nation over “me, me, me” and being like Scrooge was.

I belong to the Sons of the American Revolution, as does Jeb Bush of Florida. Jeb has no idea what that means, another SOB from another SOB family. My ancestor upon whom I joined, Capt. Frederick J. Schoonmaker, was a wealthy man during the time of the American revolution. He did not try to avoid taxes. He CONTRIBUTED TO THIS FLEDGLING GOVERNMENT AS A MEANS TO INVEST IN THE FUTURE OF AMERICA. HEAR THIS OR DO I NEED TO SPEAK MORE LOUDLY? THE PARK SYSTEM, WHICH TRUMP AND OTHERS WISH TO DESTROY, WAS CREATED AS A METHOD TO CONSERVE WILDLIFE IN AMERICA. THAT PARK SYSTEM WAS CREATED WITH THE HELP OF WEALTHY PEOPLE IN AMERICA WHO WANTED TO PRESERVE OUR WILDLIFE AND NOT MAKE MONEY BY POLLUTING IT.

Even, Teddy Roosevelt, a GOOD WEALTHY POLITICIAN, wanted to conserve the wildlife of American. Interesting enough, my Capt. Frederick Schoonmaker is from a family inter-married with the wealthy Roosevelts.

Franklin D. Roosevelt was smart in starting the pooled funds for Social Security. He was stupid in calling the revenues into Social Security the FICA tax. it is NOT a tax but a long-term investment into a government-run pooled resource with lower risk than individual accounts.

My dad told me he had essentially lost his shirt with individual retirement accounts. His losses, according to what he told me, were in the 2008 recession, a recession run by Shrub. He HAD to rely only on his investments by way of FICA (plus VA benefits for health where his return on investment was only because he served his nation and no money invested in it). Yet it was Shrub and others who privatized Medicare and made it the nightmare of a system it is today, for the benefit of the wealthy. I like to eat donut holes and clear them off a plate of donuts.

So, the complaints about the hours of a rural Walgreens, the convoluted practices of the Medicare donut hole for common folk in their older age, glucose monitors REQUIRED by —- WHOM? That is a good question —- WHOM —- Medicare or Medicare Excellus private insurance —- WHO is at fault? When the glucose monitor FORCED down our throats is a lousy one which I can take numbers repeatedly in a matter of a minute or so and every number comes up lower by several points. And asking WHY I see a monitor in Walmart which says ON THE BOX, “paid for by Medicare Part B, but am told by Walgreens that there is only ONE monitor paid by Medicare – the lousy Libre one. And when I ask about the monitors, I get told to call the company. Yeah. Call and wade through hours and hours of speaking to computers before getting a human being. I told this pharmacist that when my dad owned a business here, he did not tell his customers to call Gibson refrigerators when one broke down. He went to fix it – backed up what he sold as a small business person. And he did not charge a “minimum charge” just for coming to the house. The only ones who did that were the lousy sales and service people on lousy Long Island and had big companies – and fraud and unethical behavior, too. From dating a girl from Long Island, I learned about those, too.

And many complain about drive-by shootings? Someone should live in Lake Worth or Boynton Beach, FL, to see just how bad they can be. I am speaking about the state run by a Republican one-party government for more than 20 years now. Run by fascists like Rick the Prick and Ron DeSantis. Even Jeb Bush was a fascist who privatized the jail system so it becomes one of TRYING to put people e in jail so as to support a profit motive. All due to Jeb Bush and his “me, me, me” stand your ground gun shit.

And I try to find out WHY, for all these concerns i have and I am told that if I did not like these things, that I need to “leave this nation” —- ?????

The days that this Walgreens pharmacy was owned by a LOCAL small business man, as my dad was, and we had a local person interested in the community and the customers. Walgreens sends us a pharmacist who, when I ask questions which impact my LIFE AND DEATH, I get told to leave this nation. Don Jordan, who once owned Valley Pharmacy NEVER would have done that. NEVER.

Next door to this Walgreens is a locally owned supermarket which has been in the family for some three or four generations. I don’t get treated in that supermarket in the manner I was treated at a large-scale pharmacy chain. If I see a need for a product they don’t have in the supermarket, they are very kind and attempt to get it. I am most thankful for what they do. If they can get it they will bring it to their shelves. If not, I understand – they can’t get it. They are small, so there are times I need to drive eight miles away to Weis, Price Chopper, or Grand Union. Or order through Amazon. But those are always last resort because I appreciate the efforts of those in a small business who are the greatest.

Even the Weis, Price Chopper, and Grand Union are stores owned by chains. Those stores are part of smaller chains than Walgreens.

Walgreens, a corporation with top brass fat pigs who wished to LEAVE THIS NATION and move overseas. It was the Obama administration which worked to keep it here, for the sake of providing jobs for Americans. People also need to understand the history here. When this tiny little supermarket was begun in a small store on Water Street, they faced competition from A&P across the street. A chain store. Which remains here in this town? A small supermarket. Where is A&P? Gone. The A&P in a nearby town remained for many years until the chain went belly up. A CVS Pharmacy sits on the spot of that A&P, a Walgreens across the street in an building which once was home to Grand Union. I don’t remember the A&P here in this town because it was gone before I was born.

When my dad got pissed at the larger company which bought out the small business in which he worked for some 20 years. He quit and formed his own business. I am told my father’s business outlasted the bigger company.

Today, the buildings for that larger company are now the Hutchinson Town Hall. Hutchinson. A relation to the family which ran the local supermarket for years. Part of my dad’s business is now being run from a location near the southern town line. That other business is gone.

The local supermarket people have been most wonderful, including the owner whom, I am told, had to be taken to Cleveland because there was no healthcare facility, locally or even across the PA border, who could help him. He went to the same hospital which also owns a hospital in Miami, FL, where I used cardiologists from that same organization.

And when we sat in a bar to get a meal (not drinks), waiting for our car which was being handled nearby, we heard, for almost two hours, the men in that bar, talking about the lousy healthcare in the Binghamton area. Never once did I hear ANY one of them speak about the bail situation in New York. Not once. It was about the lousy healthcare and UHS was one name I heard come up.

I don’t want to bring this up, but… I was born in the hospital which is now owned by UHS. A couple years after I was born there, several babies died at Wilson Memorial because someone put salt, rather than sugar, in the formulas. My dad read the newspaper quite frequently and shared that article with me, from the Evening Press of Binghamton. I was just a little kid at the time. But I don’t forget it.

So, I am a complainer who should leave this nation? According to a pharmacist I should. Just do things “prescribed” (no pun intended) in the fascist way, by the big fat pigs of America who refuse to pay their taxes, have had an increase of some 1000% since BEFORE Reagan and his freaking lousy deregulation and supply-side economics (which is NOT capitalism) and shut up, huh? Like politics in a democracy, capitalism is about checks and balances. Deregulation removes the balances between supply and demand or between investments and return on investments. In the process, the little guy, including small business people, are destroyed. I will not shut up. And I chose to live in this nation because of my ancestors who built it, for which I appreciate, even with the lack of perfections over time. There is no perfection. And that is why we common folk need to put our heads together, speak up, and work together to find the best solutions based on best practices, not on what the “me, me, me” lousy attitudes of the fat pigs at the top. I have an investments in oil companies which pursue alternative fuels, including SOLAR and ELECTRIC CARS. Checks and balances for our future and those who follow us in death.

Am I supposed to be subservient to those who have tons of money and only push for a Keystone project, oil drilling on the coast of Florida with a danger of pollution, fracking (which destroys well water), and the big oil of Texas? What am I? Chopped liver? If you say so, then YOU are the traitors of this nation which was built for YOU, the common person.

Right now, the only one who gives us checks and balances is a man named Joe Biden. He is MY president. With his good and his imperfections. He is still OUR president. I am sick and tired of hearing the lies about him. I am not going to shut up about having to leave the nation in which I was born so that some people can steal from other Americans, as much as I have observed, among other events, in the 20-year one-party fascist Republican system of Florida. The Republican Party of Florida (RPOF).

As I once told a friend who felt as if I did not like her because I sounded as if I did not like Republicans anymore, it is not being a Republican for which I characterized her. I told this person that it is how wonderful I think of this one person and the great person she is, not which political party to which she belongs. After all, I was once a Republican, but I could no longer tolerate the LEADERSHIP of the party. It was not those individuals at my level in which I formed my ideas because many of them are good people. But the people I associated during Vietnam conflict era were NOT those who said, “America, love it or leave it.” I tried to stay as far away from such people, as possible. And I know there were some in this little town where I grew up who felt that way. But I won’t mention names.