Author Archives: Sam Ross Jr.

In March, we posited that Johnstown’s struggles made sense if you looked at them as the results of a plan by the elites to keep the area on its back, the better to maintain the handout money flowing here. Now, fresh off a chat yesterday with a like-minded individual, we expand the theory to the intentional hamstringing of the entire United States.

If you have any shred of traditional thinking remaining in your troubled cranium, you no doubt are confused by the abundance of actions nationally that defy rational explanation.

But it does all make sense if there is plan hatched among elites, new world order types, and discontented home-growns in general, which would include socialists, progressives and left-wingers of all stripes, to burn it all down and rebuild things their way.

This would provide a tidy explanation for the prevalent combination of backwards thinking, ineptitude and general disregard for the law that we encounter daily.

The contradictions within our judicial system are a gigantic tell. We are supposed to be, at our core, a nation of laws, with those laws applied equally no matter whom the accused might be. This is why those “justice” statues you see around judicial facilities have a blindfolded person holding the scales of justice.

But, in current practice, we see conservatives pilloried by the court system, persecuted and over-sentenced, while liberals are given free passes.

This is typified by the massive shoplifting being tolerated in California and other deep blue areas, while Jan. 6 protesters are thrown in jail, sometimes for nothing greater than being in Washington, D.C., on that date.

And, if your last name is Biden, the sky’s the limit.

We have governmental law enforcement and national security agencies spying on conservatives.

We have an Internal Revenue Service giving conservative organizations greater scrutiny.

We have gender confusion being preached to children in grade school.

We have monetary mismanagement by both the federal government and the Federal Reserve Board, which is charged foremost with maintaining stable prices and maximum employment.

But the Federal Reserve’s long-term infatuation with below-market interest rates created a massive economic distortion both here and around the world that resulted in so-called “free money” flowing into otherwise inefficient uses.

Now that interest rates have risen and money again has a cost to borrow, banks are failing and businesses in general are having trouble securing fresh capital.

Stock market averages have been kept levitating by outsized money inflows into a few huge stocks even as most stocks are down for the past year or more. This likely cannot last.

Debt, both private and governmental, is growing exponentially, to the point where eventually it will require virtually all new money just to service the existing debt.

The great COVID shutdown was a useful tool to get Americans out of the habits of going to school, going to work, or paying their bills.

The theater that is the debt limit crisis federally is yet another example in which common sense seems to have left the building.

And we’re supposed to believe that Artificial Intelligence will rescue us from ourselves. But this, too, is a product of leftist minds and will be programmed to further their leftist goals.

Throw in that our government is shipping money blindly into Ukraine to fund a proxy war with Russia, many of our governmental officials are in bed either metaphorically or physically with intelligence agents of Communist China, and our military is being turned into a Woke/Climate Hysteria Petri dish likely to be unable to fight and win the wars the hawks are looking to instigate and the picture simply defies logic – unless failure is the goal.

The only sense it all does make is if it is part of a larger plan to gut this once-great nation causing its death from self-inflicted wounds. And it may be too late to stop the bleeding.

The election results are in and presumably my precinct eventually got around to counting my ballot and those of others whose votes would not scan in timely fashion. Now, what have we learned?

Foremost in the election aftermath is the reaffirmation that the electorate continues to be satisfied with our sad state of affairs in Greater Johnstown and Cambria County in general, and so keeps putting in the same people, or other names operating under the puppetry of the usual area elites.

I voted for plenty of candidates who didn’t win, and a few that did. Mostly this did not surprise me.

As a youth in the area, I remember an executive of Bethlehem Steel, commenting on the company’s future plans for Johnstown, saying something to the effect “expect the worst and you never will be disappointed.”

That’s one reason why, when my dad called seeking my counsel about retiring early from Bethlehem Steel by taking a company buyout offer, I strongly urged him to take the money and run. He did, and got 10 years of retirement before his death, instead of the four years or so had he retired at normal retirement age.

His experience encouraged me to save and invest and, when the newspaper business, the steel industry of the 2000s, provided me a buyout offer in early 2009, I grabbed it eagerly at the ripe, old age of 53 ½ years. No regrets.

I have done various things since, including working for a short time at a group home, and doing seasonal work with health insurance as a licensed agent.

Also there was some freelance writing for the Tribune-Democrat, and now I spend my own money to keep the power on for this blog, just because I like to write and comment free of the restrictions of others.

It is a great opportunity to provide unsolicited advice to others and I would direct some of that to John DeBartola and Joseph Taranto, the guys I voted for in the Cambria County commissioner race.

Since you two have shown a willingness to bang your heads against the metaphorical wall of establishment resistance, keep doing it. Sometimes, the wall eventually breaks.

I recall a conversation on my porch with Jim Rigby, who was tiring of running and losing. But he kept trying, and eventually won.

DeBartola and Taranto will have a tougher time, because as noted in a previous blog post, they most likely will find themselves running as Republicans, but without Republican establishment support. The sad fact of American political life is, with the exception of Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis, Republicans are mostly Democratic-lite products.

These RINO Republicans run in fear of alienating the so-called “swing” or “undecided” voters they perceive as vital to their election. I love it when, days ahead of any election, a large percentage of the population has yet to make up its mind. Really? It just smacks of a desperate ploy for attention.

Republican leadership tries to help shepherd “electable” (read: lacking in commitment to supposed Republican principles) candidates to the general election, hoping they win by not offending anybody.

Forget the swing types and appeal to the base. Be true to that base, energize it with enthusiasm, and you might surprise yourselves and others.

DeBartola and Taranto, should they decide they are running again for county office, need to get started earlier building a ground game.

Facebook is fine as far as it goes, but it won’t push you over the finish line in first place. Getting out and talking to people. Somehow raising money to advertise and place those annoying, but somehow effective yard signs, is a must.

Finding ways to obtain more media exposure – radio, television, print – without necessarily paying for it is vital, too. Trump was and is the master of this. CNN just gave him a huge bit of exposure with a televised Town Hall and he took over the show.

The DeBartola-Taranto message of transparency, accountability, economic effort beyond the silly tourism push, should and could be a winner, especially if the economy should head south even further before the next election.

But this pair of outsider candidates must understand that the electorate is quite lazy. Like the proverbial mule, you need to hit them over the head with a 2-by-4 (figuratively speaking, of course) just to get their attention.

If you can get them to hear your message, you just might win their votes.

Now that Superman is coming out as bisexual, and his signature motto of fighting for “truth, justice and the American way” already has had the American way part excised in a bow to political correctness and the one-world order, it’s time to make further concessions to these strange times.

Let’s also knock off the pretense of truth and justice abounding in these United States. Fresh evidence rolls in seemingly daily that truth and justice are on their deathbeds, if not already beneath the grass.

In recent days, special prosecutor John Durham returned from his three-year sojourn on the missing list investigating the Trump-Russia hoax to announce that the FBI had been a political tool, wrongfully persecuting Donald Trump in 2016 and afterward despite lack of any legitimate evidence of wrongdoing, even as the FBI was giving Hillary Clinton a pass on any transgressions, real or imagined.

FBI response to Durham: Whoops.

Various intelligence mouthpieces, who are figuratively if not literally in bed with Democrats, Davos types, or other leftist political operations, routinely spouted mis-information on Trump, the better to hamstring his presidency and prevent his re-election.

Even as this has been unfolding, these same usual suspects were busy protecting Clueless Joe Biden from having to deal with unpleasant truths regarding his conduct, or that of his son, or maybe of the pair together.

Lies from the government and its various tentacles, spread without question by lapdog media, and leveraged to the point of mass hysteria by one-sided social media, have become part and parcel of the American existence.

Historians will look back at the 2016 legal harassment of Trump and the subsequent embrace by elitists of the so-called “COVID emergency” to kill the economy and Trump, as turning points when truth, justice and personal freedom were lost.

Getting those basics back is going to be an arduous, ugly process.

How were we lied to?

Masks prevent COVID transmission. Vaccines are safe and effective.

Inflation was transitory.

Trump was/is a Russian agent.

We’re going to cease draining the Strategic Petroleum Reserve for political gain and begin to refill it (at potential political cost).

Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren is a Native American.

Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal is a veteran of the Vietnam War.

Clueless Joe Biden got the most votes in the history of American politics.

The FBI, CIA and U.S. Justice Departments are nonpartisan.

COVID was not a lab experiment that escaped those confines.

Our southern border is secure.

Our economy and financial system are sound.

Social media did not censor conservatives and further left-wing propaganda.

No one really needs to work, just rely on the government.

Kamala Harris is vice president strictly on merit.

John Fetterman was the best choice to be one of Pennsylvania’s Senators.

Joe Biden knows what day of the week it is without consulting crib notes provided by his handlers.

I could go on, but it’s too depressing.

Just got back from voting today and, as usual, it was a slice.

One advantage of being retired is being able to pick a time that isn’t likely to be very busy. An additional advantage to being a registered Republican is having a lot fewer decisions to make in primary elections once you eventually get there.

There were seven county offices for which I had but one option. Another county office had no one running as a candidate. In my typical election day protest of the lack of effort by my party in finding candidates, I wrote in my own name for that one.

Other local races, such as school board and borough council, had plenty of openings and not a lot of names to consider.

Even the larger state races had little in the way of choice.

My precinct is the Southmont Borough Building and the experience there didn’t disappoint. I announced my name to the worker at the check-in desk in my outside calling voice, giving the last name first and then my first name. She found Ross in the binder.

“Robert?” she asked.

“No, Sam, I replied” to which she said, “Right, that’s what you told me.”

Perhaps this was a test to see if I knew my own name? I passed, apparently, because I received a ballot.

Often in the past I’ve been misidentified as Dan until I corrected the worker. Many of these people are familiar faces from previous elections, and I’ve lived at my current address for about 37 years, so . . . never mind.

The ballot was basic, but also two-sided. Despite the heads-up regarding this from workers, I suspect some will neglect to flip and fill.

With all the bubbles filled in fully – front and rear — I marched to the scanner. All the workers were huddled around a nearby desk chatting. Not knowing whether voters were free to scan their own ballots, I waited.

A man walked over and told me to attempt to insert the ballot, which promptly was rejected. The worker was not surprised. He told me it had been rejecting ballots all day and the county would be around to address it.

But, he directed me to a slot beneath the machinery, into which the electronic ballot could be deposited for later scanning (or, I thought, disposal if this were a ballot from a Republican voting in a general election).

Seeing the quizzical look on my face, the man added that this was a “lock box.”

“Like Al Gore’s lock box?” I asked.

And away I went.

I will note that upon arriving at the building, and seeing knots of election types and other people clogging the customary pathway to the main door, I had walked in via the handicapped ramp.

The situation was the same upon my exit, so I left that way. While making my way to my vehicle, I glanced down toward the gathering of humanity in time to see an elderly woman voter miss the one step – highlighted in yellow paint – and pitch forward to the sidewalk.

Fortunately, there were plenty of people there and she didn’t seem to be harmed badly. But, I do believe I caught a glance of one candidate for County Commissioner leaving a parked car emblazoned with his name on the door, and rush to aid.

Good for him. Bad for him is that the vehicle he left was proudly badged as a Hybrid Jetta.

That candidate was neither Joseph Taranto nor John DeBartola, the pair for whom I had voted. This hybrid thing just made me a little more sure that I’d made the right choice.

Punxsutawney Phil has a prognosticating brother, Punxsy Pol, whose specialty is politics. Pol emerged from his burrow today, one day in advance of Pennsylvania primary elections, and predicted six more weeks, months, years and even decades of bad government.

Pol has it easier than Phil when it comes to gazing into the future. Where Phil has all the vagaries of weather to consider, Pol need only count on an uninformed electorate.

Thomas Jefferson wrote often on the vital relationship between informed voters and the protection of freedoms. Jefferson wasn’t referring merely to knowing something about the candidates and the issues, but also knowledge of a nation’s history and general intellectual enlightenment.

Dolts and morons, the ignorant in general, make poor voters.

This helps explain why progressives in education teach little in the way of legitimate history, and instead flavor it with a twist based on the causes of the times.

All these misinformed school children typically grow into easily manipulated voters.

The current crop of voters tends to get half of its mission correct. They vote out of some sort of misguided sense of civic duty, but can’t take time in advance of elections to learn about candidates for whom they will vote.

I would periodically write of this during my newspaper career. Simply voting, without knowledge, is not fulfilling one’s duty.

If you doubt me on this matter, do a little experiment tomorrow. Ask a few people you know who voted to recite the list of candidates for whom they voted.

You likely will have a few solid responses and a lot of wavering on something as basic as recalling a name.

Ask for platform issues on which the candidates ran and you are likely to receive a blank stare.

Some will say these are only primary elections so it’s no big deal. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Clever liberals have found that they can cross over and influence Republican primaries by voting for candidates most likely to lose a general election to the Democratic candidate.

And the big money Soros-type liberal backers flood money into the campaigns of these lesser Republican primary candidates for much the same reason.

This doesn’t work – at least it shouldn’t – if the voters are educated on the candidates and the issues.

Alas, such is not the case. There’s still a little bit of time to acquire some election knowledge in advance of the trip to the polls tomorrow. Hopefully some of you will use that time wisely.

The United States is a ticking time bomb and we’re not referring to the ongoing debt limit kerfuffle, which is just another in a continuing series of such things.

The real problem is the ever-widening philosophical chasm between conservatives, who tend to deal in reality, and liberals, who reside deep in fantasy land.

The debt limit debate is but one aspect of that basic dichotomy. There is no near-term solution for this massive rift in the way the different camps of the populace operate.

And both sides are becoming increasingly frustrated by how the other half thinks and functions.

Conservatives can’t expect to change the minds of the fantasy people. After all, reality can be a female dog. Avoiding admitting to unpleasant truths seems to make life more bearable for the liberals.

And liberals are playing the long game, minting fresh morons ripe for indoctrination annually by dint of controlling public schools and producing functional illiterates deemed to be scholars. Unable to fend for themselves, these simpletons are eager to take advantage of all manner of government welfare programs, no matter what they are called.

Student loan forgiveness, aid for financial laggards to buy houses at the expense of the creditworthy purchasers, massive gifts to all things green, regardless of benefit, these are but a few of the allegiance-buying techniques of the liberals.

This educational failure is not peculiar to the U.S. There was a story out today that the United Kingdom is investigating grade inflation at the university level. If the student can’t earn the grade, due to lack of ability or effort, just give it to them.

Beyond the bastardization of the educational system, if the liberals believe they still can’t produce enough mental deficients to swell their ranks sufficiently, they also have the carrot-and-stick approach of government handouts to appeal to the older electorate and get them to abandon any semblance of fiscal conservatism in the pursuit of self-interest.

Think stimulus payments, all manner of tax credits and government pork projects.

Back to the debt limit problem: Conservatives in the ranks of the Republicans have passed an increase, but with provisions to cut back spending. They’ve mentioned such things as clawing back from the governmental coffers money already appropriated to deal with the COVID emergency, which even the government now admits no longer deserves that scary title.

Cutting spending when there is a debt problem makes sense to those who still possess any financial mental faculty. That’s why Liberal Democrats, lacking that acumen, are screaming about Republicans trying to gut government, failing to make Social Security payments, and going door-to-door slaying pet dogs and cats, too.

The reality is the U.S. owes more than the mammoth admitted-to total of $31-plus trillion. If, as would be the case with, say, a family or a corporation, one would include the unfunded future promises of Social Security and Medicare, the Cato Institute estimated slightly more than a year back that would add more than $160 trillion to federal debt.

Donald Trump, as he usually does, was able to slice through the bullspit during his CNN Town Hall earlier this week. CNN, being populated by delusional liberals, thought it could handle Trump the way Clueless Joe Biden is managed in his public appearances.

But, Trump is a raging stallion and Biden is a gelding. Given a live platform which denied CNN the opportunity to edit Trump, he got his points across on many hot-button issues. This included Trump positing that a default might not be such a bad thing.

This is a businessman who is credited (pun intended) with filing for bankruptcy with six of his concerns. There is life after bankruptcy. There is life after default.

Mother Hubbard Janet Yellen, the in-over-her-head Treasury Secretary moved on from being an in-over-her-head Federal Reserve Chair, is wailing about default being a death blow for the U.S.

As I’ve pointed out previously in this blog, the U.S. has defaulted before, at various times and in various ways, and we’re still here.

For those who are apoplectic about the possibility of default leading to losing world reserve currency status for the dollar, relax. We’re already headed in that direction as various world powers, fed up with the U.S. too often using currency control as a weapon of mass destruction, have been moving and continue to work toward making their transactions in their currencies.

It’s only a matter of time until the dollar no longer rules, joining the English Pound and other currencies who have been deposed as the world standard.

Running up ever more mammoth national debts only hastens the process.

That’s reality, something conservatives understand. Liberals won’t get that religion until it’s too late, and this flimsy financial structure implodes in the metaphorical manner of the World Trade Center.

The starting field of the Stanley Cup playoffs has been halved to eight, but the remaining teams provide a window into the Woke bent of the NHL.

Here’s a rooters’ guide so climate crazies and socialists can align with the team best representing their lunacy, and the rest of us can hope that teams with non-Woke sponsorship prevail.

The greatest dichotomy is present in the series between the Seattle Kraken and Dallas Stars.

Seattle, host city in the past to ongoing rioting, CHAZ (Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone) and CHOP (Capital Hill Occupied Protest), predictably has some wacko sponsorship for its hockey team.

Said team, in only its second year of existence as an expansion franchise, leads its current best-of-7 series 2-1 and looks like a strong bet to move on in the chase for the Cup, thereby providing yet more evidence of the NHL’s penchant for being overly generous to new franchises.

Las Vegas, too, is a recent expansion operation that has experienced immense success due to the NHL being a combination Woke and Socialist organization. Think of expansion largesse visited on these newcomers as the NHL equivalent of forgiving student loans and subsidizing mortgages of poor credit risks at the expense of people with good credit ratings.

Existing NHL franchises such as Buffalo, which in 52 years of existence has exactly zero Stanley Cup championships, and hasn’t even made the playoffs since 2011 — losing in the first round then — might want to wonder why they even bother to flesh out the regular season field.

Seattle opponent, Dallas, is the social opposite of the Kraken. The Stars play in American Airlines Arena, celebrating a company that burns fossil fuel and emits carbon into the atmosphere in the interest of transporting passengers and freight to better the world.

How horrible. And Dallas is right smack in red state Texas. Just mentioning that causes leftists to whine of being traumatized.

Seattle, meanwhile, plays in Climate Pledge Arena, which sounds more like a lemon-scented spray-on climate polish than a sporting facility.

The Kraken helmet sponsor is Amazon, whose various sins are forgiven by the socialist crowd because it provides cheaper incense delivered to their doors. The Kraken jersey sponsor is the Muckleshoot Indian Tribe. That’s so Elizabeth “Pocahontas” Warren.

Meanwhile, the Dallas helmet sponsorship is a two-barrelled approach of Energy Transfer for home games (a nod perhaps to a better reception in an oil-friendly state) and 7-Eleven on the road.

The Toronto Maple Leafs are a curious contradiction of sponsorship. Canada’s serial playoff underperformers, despite spending the equivalent of the country’s GDP annually on salaries, finally made it past the first round this year, but are in a 3-0 hole to Florida in round two.

The Maple Leafs play in Scotiabank Arena. Nothing could be more fitting than a powerhouse financial institution as a sponsor for a freespending, underachieving hockey operation.

Maple Leaf jerseys bear a script Milk insignia, representing sponsorship by the Ontario Dairy Farmers. It was amusing to read the response on one fan site, in which the deal was headlined as “offensive, disgusting.”

Why? The milk business is a “terrible and controversial industry,” detrimental to animals, the environment and our health.

Ironically, Maple Leafs helmet sponsor TikTok was mentioned in the same screed, with nary a bad word about that.

This might seem curious considering TikTok is under a bit of bi-partisan fire for being a propagandizing and spying operation of the Chinese Communists. This doesn’t matter to the Woke types. They just want to post and/or view insipid videos.

Of the remaining eight teams, I find myself obliged to align with the New Jersey Devils and Edmonton Oilers for sponsorship reasons.

First, the Devils play in the Prudential Center. What is more American than a life insurance/financial services giant? That arena is nicknamed “The Rock,” an homage to Prudential advertising. And the Devils’ helmet sponsor is Prudential.

Edmonton plays in Rogers Place, sponsored by the Canadian communications megalith. The traditionalist Oilers will not besmirch their jerseys with corporate sponsorship, and keep their home helmets similarly sanitary.

On the road, those Oilers helmets have sponsorship from SkipTheDishes, a Canadian online food delivery service.

I once had Prudential life insurance, but, alas, switched to Northwestern Mutual for a better deal. If only I lived in Canada, I’d support SkipTheDishes with an order or two.

Meanwhile, let’s go Devils and Oilers.

Cambria County commissioner candidate John DeBartola has posted on Facebook of the possibility that a county Republican poll is indicating DeBartola and running mate Joseph Taranto are doing “better than expected.”

DeBartola alleges that as a response “outside money” will be used to raise awareness for a wallflower establishment Republican candidate in order to beat down the unendorsed DeBartola/Taranto primary challenge.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

The bigger issue here is what can we expect from this DeBartola/Taranto effort in terms of their chance for success?

My brother told me the other day he has voted by mail for them, mainly because voting for the traditional Republican menu has done squat for the area. But, he was prompted to look at DeBartola and Taranto due to my urging. Alas, my circle of influence is relatively small, so I’m not sure I’m going to help produce many votes beyond my brother and me.

And I fear the DeBartola/Taranto message, which just might ring true to disaffected Republicans, is not getting enough exposure to garner the necessary votes.

I have yet to see a yard sign for the two. By way of contrast, my area (Southmont, Westmont, Upper Yoder) sports a disconcerting number of signs for the incumbent candidate who writes Facebook posts like English is his second language.

Some very savvy political types I know, in the lead up to the first Trump presidential election, noted to me his extremely wide edge in signage, indicating informed and motivated voters who might carry him to a surprise win over The Hillary.

It’s getting late in the election run-up for DeBartola and Taranto to mount any kind of advertising, direct mailing, or campaign rally effort.

Where Trump in his first run had national media that, like him or not, couldn’t ignore him, DeBartola and Taranto are being ignored by the local media.

They have a strong Facebook presence. But, as hard as it may be for Facebook warriors to digest, there still are a lot of people (read: voters) who do not frequent Facebook.

How DeBartola and Taranto can mount a late charge to graduate from doing “ better than expected” to winning is uncertain.

I hope they are out knocking on doors, pitching themselves as best they can. I hope their Facebook fans will take it upon themselves to tell the DeBartola-Taranto story to five or 10 people, in the pursuit of gaining votes.

Time is short, but the potential of a DeBartola and Taranto win sticking it in the face of our Republican keepers and telling them that we as an electorate are not satisfied with the same old stuff, would be glorious.

If you think Johnstown has more than its fair share of blah weather days, you’re right.

And if you think Johnstown seems to revel in this, right again.

I call these area precipitation worshipers the We Need Rain People. Let the sun shine for consecutive days and these people pop up saying stuff like “Things are getting awful dry!”

Amateurs mouth this sentiment on social media and in general conversation. Even the weather professionals tend to spout as much on broadcasts and web sites.

You’d think a town that has suffered through three major floods would not be so welcoming when it comes to clouds and rain.

A typical period of rain and overcast conditions that ranged for almost a week ended midway through Friday. Today, Saturday, was glorious, with abundant sunshine.

For those of us who have hobby cars we only take out in good weather, this means trying to cram a week’s worth of experience with the car(s) into a day and a half.

Responsible types – and I lump myself into that category – also need to use the rare nice days to accomplish other things, too, like mowing the grass. And so it was that yours truly, less than a month removed from a heart procedure and a couple of weeks past a knee mishap, found himself fitting grass mowing sessions between car joy rides.

The Mustang convertible got 30 miles or so of exercise yesterday afternoon and evening. I figured the grass still was too wet to mow well. At least that excuse sounded good.

But today, the late mother’s grass was mowed (it’s a long story) and then it was on to mow the son’s grass. I will get to my lawn Sunday – weather permitting and rain is forecast for the afternoon.

After doing my mowing chores today, and running to Burger King for myself and the wife who was cleaning out my late mother’s house (also a long story), it was time to ride the other Mustang, this a hardtop GT.

Just Friday afternoon, when the sun had reappeared after a long absence, I was telling a neighbor that I recall once reading how Johnstown rivals rain capital Seattle for rainy and overcast days. She was incredulous.

So, after putting the orange Mustang into its rented garage stall this evening, I took to the internet for some quick weather research.

What I found, in a posting from 2020 on the WTAJ-TV web site, is that Western Pennsylvania in general rivals Seattle, which has on average 156 overcast days a year. DuBois is ahead of that with an average of 162 overcast days each year and so is Pittsburgh, with 158. We in the Johnstown area trail Seattle by a tad, with 147 overcast days and Altoona is close by, with 143.

Any way you slice it, that’s more than our share of rain and overcast skies.

But this can be a good thing because it makes us appreciate those nice days, or stretches of same. It’s a reverse example of water tasting better in a desert.

Good weather quickly can be taken for granted. I recall one stretch of covering Pirates spring training in Florida when weather was beautiful for 10 consecutive days. It was boring in a way, and I found myself wishing for rain.

You can take the Johnstowner out of Johnstown, but . . .

The current narrative whopper making the rounds in regards to our debt ceiling “crisis” is that the United States risks its first ever default, as in failing to meet its obligations.

Those of us who attended schools in the good, old days, when history was taught without a revisionist slant, would recognize this as an outright falsehood. Incredibly, most of today’s populace buys this pap without blinking an otherwise comatose eye.

A reason might be provided by a recent U.S. Department of Education release of the National Assessment of Educational Progress that finds a record low 13 percent of Grade 8 students are proficient in history. Even more laughable, “proficiency” as defined by the Education Department is scoring 58.8 percent or better on a standardized test.

That was failing when I went to school, yet now it is deemed “proficient.”

It all reminds of a 2006 movie, “Idiocracy,” in which an average man participates in a hibernation study, is forgotten, and emerges many years later the most intelligent man around due to a rapid decline in the overall population’s intelligence.

Back to defaults: The truth is, if we fail to pay bills beginning in say, June, this would be just another in a long line of U.S. defaults.

Defaults began with the birth of this nation. The Continental Congress took to issuing currency, ‘continentals,’ in 1775 to finance things and, before that printing press had ground to a halt, the currency had been devalued to worthlessness. As a new country, we also chose not to repay debt to foreign nations.

That, my friends, is a default.

Between the Revolutionary War and our Civil War, the federal government left currency creation and debt-building to individual states and banks, resulting in many defaults, just not, technically, federal defaults. Still, most would concede that all the states and banks were U.S. entities.

Fast-forward to the Civil War and the need for a federal currency was great, so the greenback was created in August 1861.

Five months later, January 1862, the U.S. defaulted on these by refusing to redeem greenbacks for the specified amount of gold. New greenbacks were issued, without gold redemption qualities, and these proceeded to trade in the open market at severe discounts to their face value as war fortunes waxed and waned. Eventually, these greenbacks also went away.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt led a Great Depression default by devaluing the dollar and refusing to redeem World War I era Liberty Bonds for gold as promised.

In 1971, then-president Richard Nixon pulled off a similar default by ending the promise to redeem U.S. dollars for gold

And, in the longest-running, least-appreciated default, the purchasing power of the U.S. dollar has declined 97 percent since 1913, when the Federal Reserve was set up to address banking panics and to stabilize the currency.

Some stability, a 97-percent decline!

In 2023, the debt numbers are much greater, but the principle is the same. When debts become too burdensome to be repaid, they are defaulted upon.

Engineering a hyperinflation, and eventually paying back debts with relatively worthless dollars, technically would avoid a default. But, in truth, it would deny repayment in value, so that’s a default in my book.

Now you know our default history, even if most of the population remains blissfully ignorant.