Forest City – South Main street is enjoying a veritable building boom at present.  Imbued with the spirit of progress, McCormick Brothers will build their store building to the line limit, or about 10 feet additional frontage will be constructed.  The building is now occupied by S. Leham and M. J. Connelly.  The building will be raised to a uniform height with stucco siding.  The Forest City Lumber and Construction company have the contract and will soon break ground.  Also  John R. Bell has secured the services of John McGranaghan, of Hancock, NY, as assistant in his undertaking and furniture business.

Brookdale - On Saturday the sad news came to the friends of Mrs. Mary Comstock Stanford, of her death in Binghamton.  The funeral was held at her home on Sunday.  She was 80 years of age and was one of Susquehanna county’s Teachers in 1864.

Montrose – J. L. Somerville has sold the C-Nic Theatre to Floyd Myers, of Waverly, NY, and the ice cream parlor run in connection with the theatre will be discontinued.  Mr. and Mrs. Somerville will return to their former home in Elmira.  and At the Montrose Fair, Harrington & Wilson had a fine display of machinery.  One of the features was threshing rye done by the gravity method with screens, and coming out very clean.  The straw was also baled in an improved bailer.  The enterprise of the firm was rewarded by selling nearly all the machinery they had on exhibition.  The model dairy barn on exhibition, which was the work of the Montrose High school students, in the agricultural course, was viewed with admiration.  Also  lost, a small pocketbook containing a cash register key.  Please return to the Montrose House.

Uniondale – Uniondale has organized a Woman’s Suffrage club.

Ainey – Candidates of all ages and sizes are shaking hands with the voters in this section, but when the women get to voting they will vote for the man who remains in the house.

Harford – The High school commenced Monday last in the lecture room of the Congregational church.  The other departments will not commence until the completion of the new school house, which is being pushed rapidly forward.

Hallstead – A number of Italians employed on the Lackawanna cutoff have returned to Italy to take up arms against Austria.

Friendsville – T. F. Kelly and Prof. Warner went to Montrose Sunday.  Mr. Warner is a popular music teacher ad “Tom” is proprietor of a flourishing blacksmith shop here.

Middletown – In a game of baseball, September 11, the Middletown team took a double-header.  The boys defeated Friendsville by a score of 7-6 and St Joseph, 8-2.  Murphy and Guiton twirled for Middletown, while Reilly pitched for St. Joseph and Golden for Friendsville.  Fast infielding by Watson and Coleman saved the first game for Middletown.  Also The ball game, which was played in Little Meadows on Labor Day, for the championship of Bradford and Susquehanna Counties, between Middletown Center and Warren, was largely attended.  Middletown Center defeating [Warren] by the score four to three.  The game was very interesting but it was plain to be seen from the beginning that the Warren boys were outclassed.

Herrick Twp. – Robinson G. Bolles, in his 82nd year, died at Burlington, Bradford county, on Sunday, Sept. 5th, 1915.  His body was brought to his former home here and laid beside his kin in the neat and well-kept East Herrick cemetery.  Mr. Bolles was a grandson of Robinson Bolles, one of the first settlers of Rush, now Jessup Twp., Susquehanna county.

Susquehanna – One would think by the amount of money that was expended on our streets, the past month, they would be in ok condition, but the taxpayers are wondering what was done with the money.  Also  Charles Birdsall is the agent for the Saxon car here.

East Rush – Quite a delegation from this place attended the Lawton fair.  All report a good time, there being very few drunks on the grounds.  Children and old people were not in danger of being insulted or run over.

Brooklyn – A lady suffragist, from New York City, addressed a company of women from L. S. Ely’s porch, Monday afternoon.

Choconut Valley – Mrs. Wm. McCahill has gone with her two little girls, Virginia and Marie, and three of her sister’s children, to Quebec, Canada, to place them in school.

Forest Lake – The cottages around the Lake are nearly all closed for the season.  Hope our city friends will not forget to spend their vacations with us another season.

New Milford – The infant son of Mr. and Mrs. Ernest Williams died last Thursday after a long illness of dropsy of the brain.  The funeral was held from the home Saturday, September 11.  Interment in the New Milford cemetery.

Springville – Mrs. Olive Stone visited here a couple of days recently.  She spent one day at the Newton cemetery where she was overseeing the graves of her father, mother and also nine graves of her own little ones. Of a family of thirteen children she has only two living ones--Mrs. Harry Olmstead of Mount Morris, NY, and Ed. Stone of Tunkhannock. Her husband, Benjamin Stone, died this spring and was buried by the side of two sons, in Tunkhannock.

Franklin Twp. – A. Rhinevault remarked to us the other day that he has never seen so many fields of standing hay in September as this year.  It has been possible to secure most of the hay crop, though, under difficulties, the job being a long and tedious one, but the quality of much of it will be inferior.  Too much rain was the cause.

A local attorney stopped by to ask me an interesting question: Can a landowner lawfully shoot down a drone that is flying over his or her property?  Apparently, there have been an increased number of reports of landowners blasting trespassing drones out of the sky – and then facing potential prosecution for destroying the drone.  A quick internet search revealed that there were a number of publicized cases nationwide.

Last September, a New Jersey man was arrested for shooting down his neighbor’s remote control helicopter, which was being used to take aerial photographs of a friend’s home with permission.  After an investigation was conducted, the property owner was charged with criminal mischief for destroying the toy helicopter.

In July of this year, a 47-year old Kentucky man, James Meredith, was arrested for criminal mischief after he shot down a neighbor’s drone, which he contended was hovering over his property and taking pictures of his daughter sunbathing.  In the news report, Meredith was quoted as describing the event as follows: “My daughter comes in and says ‘Dad, there’s a drone out here flying.’  I went and got my shotgun and I said, “I’m not going to do anything unless it’s directly over my property.’  Within a minute or so, here it came.  It was hovering over top of my property, and I shot it out of the sky.  I didn’t shoot across the road, I didn’t shoot across my neighbor’s fences, I shot directly into the air.’”  Based upon media reports, the destroyed drone was worth about $1,800.

In Deer Trail, Colorado, the local municipality considered enacting a local ordinance that would grant “hunting permits” that would allow landowners to shoot down drones for the nominal cost of $25.  The proposed ordinance went further – it created a $100 reward to any person with a valid hunting license that appeared with the pieces of a shot down drone.  The proposed ordinance was created by a local resident – and he managed to get ten percent of the population to sign onto his petition – which required the local municipality to consider it.  It never passed, but it did get the attention of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

The FAA issued a national warning that firing upon drones could result in arrest and prosecution, in addition to the general risk that it presented to the public and property.  The FAA went further to note that a drone “hit by gunfire could crash, causing damage to persons or property on the ground, or it could collide with other objects in the air.  Shooting at an unmanned aircraft could result in criminal or civil liability, just as would firing at a manned aircraft.”  The FAA is working on “drone regulations” but there is nothing in place as of this date.

For those looking for a clear answer, the law simply has not caught up with the technology.  Some legal scholars contend that the use of force to defend property against a trespassing drone is reasonable as the drones pose a threat and a privacy invasion.  Other legal scholars disagree and contend that more than the mere offending presence is necessary to warrant the use of deadly force in destroying another person’s property.  Under the current Crimes Code, the Criminal Mischief statute is very clear – if you intentionally destroy another person’s property, you have committed a criminal offense.  There is no clear “self-defense” or justification defense available for trespassing drones.

At this point, as the national reports demonstrate, if you shoot down a drone that you believe is trespassing on your property, then you should be prepared to face the legal consequences and make your case to a jury of your peers.  If you want more clarity on the issue, then you should call your state legislators to address trespassing drones – and what remedies, if any, the law should provide to landowners seeking to defend their property and privacy.

Please submit any questions, concerns, or comments to Susquehanna County District Attorney’s Office, P.O. Box 218, Montrose, Pennsylvania 18801 or at our website www.SusquehannaCounty-DA.org.

Is money spiritual? Readers of the “Good Book” know that the love of money is the root of all evil, but what of money itself? Well, the truth is money DOES have metaphysical characteristics. What we think of money, how we use it, and the physical characteristics of money’s imagery give us many clues as to both what America values and what has happened to our money during our current anesthetized state. Ominously, history also provides us with lessons on the destructive consequences when money‘s nature is perverted.

What are the origins of the word “money?” Tad Crawford’s book, “The Secret Life of Money” provides us some insight. “The word ‘money’ derives from the Roman goddess named Moneta . . . Coins minted in her temples were issued to the far reaches of the [Roman] empire.” Moneta is merely an aspect of Juno, the mother goddess of Rome, protectress of women, marriage, and motherhood. In essence she is a fertility goddess from whom flows abundance and riches beyond measure or imagination.

A further aspect of the word “moneta” is the root from which it derives, “men-,” which means to use one’s mind, i.e., to think, hence our word, “mental.” As such we must comprehend that our memory and mental faculties are crucially important in the handling and use of money. Crawford draws the connection between Moneta’s root and derivation to show us the connection between our minds and money. Money exerts an inexorable power over our minds, such that confusion and illusion can captivate and manifest as idol worship. A common medium of exchange is meant to facilitate transactions, but failure to comprehend the metaphysical aspects of money inevitably leads to the debasement of money’s quality as well as the morality of its users.

Regular readers of this column will recall that I have previously referred to money (“dollars”) as certificates of appreciation. Money honestly earned is that which has been transferred from the served to the server. The person served expresses her satisfaction with the good or service provided by awarding the server with green certificates, commonly known as money. Voluntary exchange of goods and services could be accomplished by barter, but we generally find that inconvenient unless a “coincidence of wants” and equality of value exist. Barter’s inconvenience promotes money to the status of being the most utilitarian method for promotion of exchange. But money’s relative scarcity (aside from legal tender laws) is one of the keys to why it has purchasing power.

Ideally, money has the characteristics of homogeneity, durability, divisibility, scarcity, along with the ability to serve as a store of value. Precious metals, gold and silver, ideally served as America’s commodity money in a relatively inelastic form until 1933 and 1968, respectively. They were perfect forms of money in that it took real toil and sweat to mine the scarce metals and mint them into a finite number of coins which varied little. By the use of precious metals as money “value for value” was intrinsically exchanged in every transaction. Long term there was very little inflation in the period 1879-1913 because the dollar was “as good as gold.” The dollar WAS gold.

The substitution of fiat (elastic) paper money for (inelastic) commodity money changed the very nature of money. Money, which was previously of a finite quality, could be printed, seemingly to infinity. The consequence of changing something precious to something common destroyed its quality of “relative scarcity.” Reduction of scarcity necessarily devalued money’s purchasing power. The masters of the financial universe responded by merely printing more.

But an interesting development happened in 1958. The consumer credit card was invented that year. By the 1980’s credit cards were ubiquitous. Today they are accepted almost universally. The net effect of this transformation—from commodity money to paper money to credit extension has changed the entire nature of our economy and the world’s (globalized) economy. America’s economy in 1913 (before creation of the Federal Reserve System) was based on a value-for-value system. The remnant of that system’s existence (international redemption of dollars with gold) was extinguished on August 15, 1971 when President Nixon “closed the gold window” and America essentially defaulted on her international obligations.

The profundity of that last sentence cannot be overstated. America was already living beyond her means when the gold window closed. She has been living beyond her means every day since, borrowing money conjured out of thin air, as well as “borrowing” money from every foreign creditor willing to do business with her. While individuals live by credit, our government has made a virtue of profligacy. You see, America had what is called “The Exorbitant Privilege” as the world’s one and only reserve currency.

“The Exorbitant Privilege” rests upon the petrodollar, the requirement that any nation wishing to purchase oil from Saudi Arabia/OPEC must pay for it in dollars. That arrangement allowed America to continue as the world’s reserve currency even after defaulting on her promise to redeem dollars in gold in 1971. The trade-off for this deal with the devil was the de-industrialization of America and the shift of jobs overseas, all as wages and benefits stagnated, declined, and ultimately melted into nothingness. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics there are 94 million working-age Americans who are no longer in the workforce, and virtually every job created since the year 2000 has gone to immigrants, illegal and legal, at the expense of working-age Americans.

Meanwhile, the Fed has done nothing but blow bubbles since 1984. By 1985 a majority of married women were no longer home-making, but taking jobs to supplement or replace the income or sub-optimal level of income formerly earned by their husbands. The October 1987 stock market crash led to the Fed’s creation of the Plunge Protection Team to prop up the stock market. The year 1999 saw the tech market (NASDAQ) collapse. The events of 9/11 revealed a collapse already under-way. To re-inflate after 9/11 the Fed created a nationwide housing bubble. The bursting of that bubble caused the financial collapse of 2008/2009, an event from which our economy has yet to emerge from depression.

The mainstream media has proclaimed the economy’s recovery since at least 2010, but the lie is put to their narrative by the fact that over 47 million Americans are on food stamps (SNAP/EBT); over 114 million Americans are dependent on a federal check for benefits based on entitlement; few families can support themselves on one pay-check; and the Fed has artificially kept interest rates repressed for 90 consecutive months at near-zero interest rates. There has not been a Fed rate hike in a decade.

When America’s money was commodity money, the mining, refining, and minting of precious metal coins carried a real cost, and it was conveyed intrinsically in the coin’s face value. The coins, in a very real sense, transmitted value, both materially as well as metaphysically. Conclusively inelastic commodity money was and is “moral money.”

Irredeemable paper money is merely a claim on wealth—a claim check, if you will—the ghost of money, conveying not intrinsic wealth but misplaced confidence in a system of “extend and pretend.” Because it is money that essentially requires no labor or extraction costs, it can be printed ad infinitum in theory. Central bank printers need never worry about redeeming it with metals of tangible and intrinsic value. Think about it, a $100,000 bill can be printed at no more cost than a $1 bill. Is it not obvious that a claim check on money can never be moral money? Even if the amount of money printed were tightly controlled and men were not subject to the temptation of printing it in quantities larger than the value of tangible assets in existence, it could only be said to be “amoral money.” Any system of irredeemable paper money, by its very nature, is intrinsically disqualified from metaphysical morality.

Credit is an illusion, digitized money existing only as a book entry or in the computer systems of banks and individuals. Central banks create digitized money as a result of a political decision. Inevitably its greatest value is at the time it is initially conjured—to benefit of those banks and insiders who receive such “hot money” first. Credit creation is subject to limitation only in the sense that its creators walk a fine line between maximizing plunder and crashing the world’s entire globalized economy and banking system.

Our fractional banking system has always been a system of credit which creates “money” out of thin air, but there existed a very real limit on how much “money” it could create. What we have today is a system of credit which operates commerce at every level from production to retail sale. Gold and silver do not circulate as money; paper money makes up a mere fraction of daily financial transactions; credit is now the life-blood of our economy and of every advanced economy in the world. Here’s the problem, credit is built on Trust. Without Trust, credit dies. Withdraw Trust from society and exchanges (commerce) fall precipitously. Not to offend, but there’s a saying, “When the tide goes out, it reveals who’s been swimming naked.” The sudden disappearance of credit would have likewise effect, revealing credit as the least moral system that has ever been entrusted to government stewardship.

Our government has utilized almost every conceivable artifice to keep the matrix of lies going. “Credit” has been a key mechanism without which the Federal Leviathan could not have grown into the collectivist totalitarian state it is today; credit destruction will bring about its downfall. To recap, commodity money cannot artificially inflate an economy (short of the insertion of fractional reserve banking). Irredeemable (inferior) paper money can artificially inflate an economy vastly. Credit, an intangible creation upon which our economy rests and upon which our economy has been exponentially inflated, is dependent upon Trust. At a critical juncture it will become apparent that Trust is unworthy; Trust will be withdrawn; Credit will collapse; and Virtue will be restored, albeit after a terrible price is paid for a folly that will one day be seen as self-evident.

If any reader doubt the differences in the quality of moneys, I provide the following test. Supposing you have three kinds of money, a $20 gold dollar coin, a paper $20 dollar bill, and a credit card. If you are at a store, which would you hand to the store clerk and which would you hold back on spending to the last?

Credit, now a convenience, will transform into a weapon of mass financial destruction and detonate at some imminent point. While America slept the timer was set and the fuse lit. Credit will vanish in the twinkling of an eye, and her partner, Debt, will upend all.