This year's resolutions

Well, it is the 3rd day of the new year 2023 and I’m wondering how your New Year’s resolutions are going.

Did you make any? Have you broken any yet? To be honest I too have cheated a bit. Grannie Annie and your old columnist are trying to lose a bit of weight using the current Weight Watchers app on our cell phones. My goal (resolution) is to get down to what I weighed in high school and am about halfway there. For the new year I resolved, to myself, to stop eating the wonderful Christmas treats that were leftovers and it isn’t going as well as I’d hoped. Kind of tough to resist the Polish pastry, called Krantz, which Grannie crafts and mostly gives away to dear friends. Of course, she keeps the ones that don’t turn out “just right” and that we treat ourselves with. Had a chunk of it this morning in a weak bit of resolve.

The major TV news outlets, at least FOX that I watch, have been spending hours on the “border crisis” across the river from Mexico ongoing at the moment. Numbers of illegal immigrants, those that waded the river are checking in with our US Border Patrol or have evaded and are classified as “got-aways”. The latest number of “undocumented migrant encounters” is something like 2.76 million plus 140,000 gotaways for the year 2022. Compare that number to our latest, April 2020, census which listed 1,961,504 residents in our state of Nebraska. Our United States land mass is huge and we have many large cities but where are all these people going to live, learn English (American version) educate their young ones and work? Why is our federal government encouraging such immigration in the first place?

Federal law has established an immigration system with quotas from different countries for those who have made application to come to this country to work or eventually to become citizens. Why is our president and his minions overlooking or disregarding what our Congress has established by law? Cynically I can propose that it is a scheme by the liberal progressives to build a block of loyal Democrat voters. Their next trick will be to grant amnesty to all those that have entered illegally, make them citizens by fiat and thus insure that the Nationally Socialist Democrat Party will always be in control and they can establish a true Communistic United States of America. Sad thought!

To my knowledge, none of those illegal border crossers have come to our little part of this world to live. In the past McCook has hosted at least one family, Cambodians, that were refugees from the Vietnam War. That worked out well and they became good citizens working and establishing at least one business in this community. Much earlier several families immigrated from Old Mexico (illegally? who knew or cared) that have lived here forever working, intermarrying, and making great contributions to our community. We’ve had a good experience with immigrants.

The current swarm of illegals crossing our southern border are reportedly coming from countries all over the world. I’m sure that they are unsatisfied with their current system of government, want to escape that tyranny and have heard the beacon of liberty that this US of A stands for. Still, there are problems. The last that I knew employers are required to check that prospective workers are either citizens or have proper work permits so that person can be legally employed. Skip that stem and the employer will be punished with fines. Where will these illegals be able to find jobs to support themselves and family? Most possess minimum skills of education, technical or language. Where do they turn to for medical help in time of need? Lots of questions with few answers forthcoming. Your thoughts or ideas?

New Year’s resolutions are they a good or bad idea? While yet a young and unknown lawyer in Illinois Abraham Lincoln wrote to a friend: “I must regain my confidence in my resolves when they are made. In that ability, you know, I once prided myself as the only, or at least chief, gem of my character; that gem I lost — how, and when, you know too well. I have not yet regained it; and until I do, I can not trust myself in any matter of much importance.” Years later a more experienced President Lincoln, on New Year's Day 1863, boldly proclaimed that “That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty three, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people thereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.” Oh how our country changed with a civil war, my great grandfather included, that finally in fact did free the slaves and enabled it to become the great nation that we, you and I, have enjoyed all our lives.

Resolution—we can all do it to make our lives better. I’m working on it.

That is the way that I saw it.

Dick Trail