Influence is power to affect others, power to produce effects due to wealth or high position.

There is power in being able to be an influence. And, there used to be standards in placed on how to go about being a good influence.

I called them Gentlemen Cigar Clubs. Policy war rooms. Each member was invited to be a member because they shared a passionate common cause.

When members agree, much good can get done. When members disagree on the fundamentals of the cause, nothing can get done. Well, what little gets done, I would hardly call influential.

I go to policy board meetings because I believe that in order to have an informed opinion, it’s because I do my homework on the fundamentals of the cause, and am now ignorant enough to ask questions about policy.

What surprises me in these policy meetings is, no policy is made. Oh, well there are many recommendations, some really good ones too. I just feel that there is much talk, and little action.

Turns out there may be a reason for this. It could be there are policy board members who do not share a passionate common cause with the other members. I wonder why one would join a club that holds no interest for them?

It makes me think that there isn’t any thought put in to club appointments. If one is to influence a cause, why would you set one up that appears to fail? Or, is that a very good reason not to put the right people in the right clubs?

Years ago, when these cigar clubs formed, the members were more of the genteel common cause. These men and women were progressive thinkers. I consider them to be “Renaissance” men and women. They planned for the community and all its members, not just cigar smokers.

Today there are planners who can envision how world changes may, or may not, effect the community and have practical working solutions. In this county we are just realizing that not much planning has happened, since we no longer have a county planner. Good county government includes its own county planner.

We are at a moment in time in which decisions will indeed effect us all. Having weak policy boards, because there isn’t definite county support, is very poor planning. It certainly doesn’t speak well for the future and the clean up that will happen to undo the actions, or in some cases inaction, of a few tired out public servants. It doesn’t seem fair to the rest of us informed citizens.

I know some very progressive thinkers, right here in our county, who would be an asset to our communities, and have never been approached for club membership. No one likes to do much in the way of volunteering due to the “same ones” who either don’t know what to do, or how to go about doing it, but retain the position.

I think the reason that progressive thinkers aren’t invited is because they don’t have old family money. Seems a shame that old money doesn’t remember the old family members, who were considered progressive for their day, planned and executed good policy for the community in which they thrived in. And interestingly enough, the community allowed them to prosper, and the future they envisioned is here..now. The “new” old money members do not want progressive thinkers, because the thought of doing something else is scary. Certainly the thought that they wouldn’t control the outcome, well, that’s just not the way of its people.

Well, there is always next month’s meeting to go to. Maybe this will be the meeting in which the county shows support of its cigar clubs with some real ideas and money, and let the policy boards do their jobs. I think, maybe some names should be submitted to fill vacancies, including one for county planner. Now is the time to plan the future of Susquehanna County, for all of its citizens.

Sincerely,

Cynthia Allen

Summersville, PA

Why do We, The People, have to beg you, our elected Senator, to stand with the House and get engaged in the Continuing Resolution fight? Stand with your colleagues in the House and oppose Harry Reid’s attempt at closture and limiting debate. Stand with the people who voted for you and oppose funding for ObamaCare.

We, the People, now have our own “red line.” Any House or Senate member who supports funding ObamaCare will be remembered when they run for office again. Enough is enough.

We heard Senator Toomey’s views regarding ObamaCare on the radio. How can he in all conscience claim that some of what he terms the most ‘egregious’ portions of the ObamaCare bill can be removed, while keeping the rest of the bill, as a compromise? How does he justify his ‘waivers,’ or, better stated “subsidies,” while the rest of America pays his way? Isn’t that egregious? We haven’t heard a word from him about those subsidies, or his desire to refuse them. Know why? Because he hasn’t refused to accept them. Who will give us a subsidy? Isn’t that egregious? House members and their staffs get the same ‘waivers’ or subsidies. Please don’t tell us you don’t.

Isn’t it ‘egregious’ that more than 70% of America is opposed to ObamaCare, but our representatives think it’s good legislation, no matter how many times their constituents have told them the opposite is true? Many of us have ‘read the bill’ and know what’s in it. Have all congressmen and senators read it? Do they know what’s in it? Do they know that under ObamaCare our finances, personal family information, our very sex lives, will be exposed to low-level employees of HHS and the federal government? Do they understand that we will all receive diminished health care? (Blue pill or red pill?) Maybe they and their staffs won’t, but we will. Do they know that once this ‘bill’ is fully implemented, insurance companies will go out of business and the only source of insurance, and healthcare, will be the government? Do they realize that doctors will cease to treat patients because they won’t be paid enough for their services? Do they understand that medicines and medical care are already being withheld? Do they realize that insurance premiums are rising exponentially because of the demands made by ObamaCare? Do they know what the devastating consequences will be to all those on Medicare? (Again, blue pill or red pill?) Do they even care? Senators and Congressmen, ask your constituents. Listen to them. ObamaCare is the crown jewel of socialism. Wake up.

We don’t want government to control our healthcare or medical decisions. We expect that you, our elected officials, will stand with the House, the American people and the Constitution. Instead of voting “no” to surrender, vote “YES” to fight ObamaCare.

Do you really think that this administration is going to sit across the table from you and negotiate, when you weren’t even given a place ‘at the table’ when they shoved this monstrosity down our throats?

We know what the administration and their ideology is all about. We didn’t elect you to figure out the most politically correct way to lose - we sent you to the House and Senate to stand for conservative values and individual freedom. Where does ObamaCare fit in with that narrative?

Sincerely,

Bruce & Edna Paskoff

Montrose, PA

Charles P. McClure is dead. No one noticed his passing. Yes, of course, his mother and father mourned his death, as did his three sisters and brother. And his relatives and friends will miss him sorely. But to everyone else he is at most just a faceless number, number 2,243, the latest U.S. soldier to die in Afghanistan.

There was nothing heroic about Pvt. McClure’s death. He did not die fighting for freedom, or democracy, or any of the flimsy platitudes used to glorify the shattered bodies of our war dead. He died in a motor vehicle accident 7,000 miles from home in his 21st year.

Now as another war and another defeat nears its end we ask, does it really make any difference whether Pvt. McClure died a hero, or coward, or just incidentally?

In a larger sense, was the eleven-year war fought for naught? Did we spend half a trillion dollars, cause the collateral deaths of 2,848 Afghan civilians, and wreak havoc on property and land—-for nothing?

There comes a point when enough is too much. It is time for the U.S. to fold its tents and silently steal away into the night, as the Russians did before us, the Brits before them, and the French before them. And so it goes back to more than a hundred Empires to 550 B.C. when Alexander the Great barely escaped with his life. It is not for nothing that Afghanistan is called the graveyard of empires.

The ritual of a draw-down begins.

There will be the de rigueur peace talks with the adversary, though no one knows exactly who the adversary is. Maybe that generic mob of jihadists, the Taliban? Or could it be any one of the 1,500 insurgent groups that Afghan intelligence service has identified?

Next, the face saving. It will be peace with honor (a favorite word of the military). No mention of words like “defeat,” “disaster,” “waste,” “loss,” or their lexicographical kin. No, it will be a triumph.

We leave behind a trained, equipped, and motivated Afghan army immune to factions and dedicated to building the new, westernized Afghanistan. They will continue where we have left off. We have planted the seeds of democracy in a wasteland of tribal warlords. We did our noble best, now it is up to them.

But the reality is that we have built sandcastles. The Taliban, will reemerge from their “Laos” in the East, Pakistan. The Afghan Army will disintegrate leaving its armories as spoils for the warlords, and Afghanistan will revert to its roots as it has done for two thousand years.

We are finished, tired, even bored. And, yes, the generals, too, those junkyard dogs, admit as did the supreme military commander in Afghanistan, Joseph Dunford, that “. . . the only way it’s going to be fixed is when the Afghan people demand that it be different. This is not something that we can impose. We can suggest, we can train, we can assist. But at the end of the day [it will be up to] the people.”

And that’s about the most dismal a forecast as one can make.

There remains but one unknown: What will be the number of the last U.S. soldier to die in Afghanistan?

Note: This letter was written some six months ago. At that time the writer’s attention was diverted to a number of other events that were much in the news: combat assignments for women, the Zimmerman trial, Syria, and Fukushima, to name a few.

Returning to Afghanistan, we find that an additional 29 soldiers have returned to home but not to hearth and greeted with tears and eulogies.

The latest is Staff Sergeant Robert Thomas, 24, of Fontana, California. His last day was September 13 when he succumbed burns covering 90 percent of his body from an explosion last April.

Robert Thomas is now number 2,272.

Sincerely,

Bob Scroggins

New Milford, PA