Moving ER is a good idea

The Emergency Department that has existed at the site of the old Winsted Memorial Hospital building is scheduled to move to another location just across the eastern Winsted border in about two years if the plans with which Charlotte Hungerford Hospital’s board of directors have agreed comes to fruition.

Just a month into 2013, members of the Winchester Board of Selectmen are facing some of the town’s most crucial fiscal problems in years, and townspeople are growing increasingly frustrated with the notion that the school system has come close to seeing its electricity shut off or that the town’s Water and Sewer Commission may be nearly $2 million short on cash.

Martha Dean, who ran for attorney general in 2010, isn’t the worst candidate for high office Connecticut has produced in the past century or so though her recent activity gives her a huge sympathy vote for that distinction.

We’ve had plenty of discussions regarding the financial status of the town recently. The detail and depth of the conversations can be somewhat confusing to most residents who have never had the opportunity (or perhaps desire) to examine municipal finances. Nonetheless, it is imperative that you at least understand some of the basic concepts of the ongoing discussions. Several issues warrant closer examination.

WINSTED — It’s still cold outside, but there is plenty of hot dancing once a month at Northwestern Connecticut Community College’s Greenwoods Hall.

Thirty people from Winsted and other towns took part in the first ballroom dance class of the year on Friday, Jan. 25, learning the waltz, foxtrot, swing, tango, rumba and cha-cha.

The classes are taught in a noncompetitive atmosphere by co-instructors Damian Vincent and Janice Jacobsen.

A friend asked me what I was thinking while listening to President Obama’s inaugural address. Here were my reactions:

Obama: “They [the Patriots of 1776] gave to us a republic, a government of and by and for the people.”

The flood of money-shaping elections and politics has given us a corporate government of the Exxons, by the General Motors, for the DuPonts.  

Obama: “Together we resolve that a great nation must care for the vulnerable and protect its people from life’s worst hazards and misfortune.”

In testimony before Senate and House committees, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton enthusiastically endorsed increased U.S. intervention in Africa. When government officials seem incapable of learning obvious lessons from the recent past, maybe their incentive is not to learn but to keep doing the same destructive things.

President Obama’s inaugural speech contained this line, which has gone quite overlooked: “America will remain the anchor of strong alliances in every corner of the globe. And we will renew those institutions that extend our capacity to manage crisis abroad.”