I heard from a few of you about the Chesprocott Health District post and the closing of 16 newspapers by the Journal Register Company.

This Chesprocott issue is worth looking into further and hopefully I will be able to get a few questions answered this coming week.

I know from reading the minutes of the old Southington Town Council meeting in 1996 that the State of Connecticut had a matching per capita fee for towns over 5,000 population, I don’t know if the state still has this in effect, and if they do, I wonder if it will fall victim to a budget cut.

And as far as the newspapers are concerned, I am sure there will more closings.  In fact, to save expenses, and to try to stay afloat, one paper I know, let’s say, doesn’t have any “employees” so to speak.

I don’t know if any of you read the comments below the New Haven Independent article, but one of them hit the nail right on the head. The commenter basically said that the reason many newspapers are closing is because THEY DON’T REPORT THE NEWS!! I think many of these papers were started just for additional advertising revenues.

I know that is probably why the Post abandoned the “tabs” I used to write for around 1990, right before I left. The tabs were just filled with feature stories, not news. The paper wanted additional advertising money. That was the old Thomson thing-bottom line–revenue-not news!! It didn’t work and the Post abandoned that idea a few years later.

People want and deserve the truth-no matter how unpleasant or how unflattering it makes a community appear. People deserve to know what is going on in their communities. Of course the powers that be don’t want you to know. They want all the power for themselves. I just hope our local paper will get on the stick and be a NEWS paper. Go out and dig for stories and ask questions.

While I am on that topic of news, people can’t stop talking about the Madoff Ponzi Scheme. This is serious business. And, as many of you know, this Ponzi scheme has left Fairfield holding the bag for something like $40 million.

I just wonder how many other towns were affected by this tragic event. Was Cheshire? Probably not, but even if it were–I wonder if we would ever find out to be honest!!

Maybe Cheshire should float a Ponzi Scheme to fund the pool and the artificial turf. Sounds good to me!

Many people, like myself, have heard of the Ponzi Scheme, but really don’t understand exactly what it is. Here is an article to help clear the air.

What is a Ponzi Scheme

Hmm!! Why does a Ponzi Scheme sound like Social Security??

Impact of Ponzi Scheme on municipalities

Ok, I am making this short today because of the snow shoveling and snow blowing we had to do practically all day. To make matters worse, my spouse went out around 8 p.m. last night to try to stay ahead of the snow. He did fine until around 2 a.m. this morning when the PLOW came by, and deposited several inches of snow back onto the sidewalk he had cleared off a few hours earlier.

Isn’t that always the way? I told him to wait until after the plow comes by and not try to kill the same bird twice.

Some people complained to me that the roads were in bad shape and not plowed the way they used to be say like 20 years ago. Well, things were a lot different economically 20 years ago. I remember the plows used to come by several times during a storm. But, they also threw that awful red clay sand and salt that made ones car look like a dirt pile. Not withstanding you would track that crap into your house and spend the entire winter vacuuming it up.

I hated that. And God knows what all that salt did for your car and for the environment. I would rather have it the way it now. Plus, with the state of the economy the way it is, we are lucky to get plowed at all.