The Hayseeds blog, No. 240 for the week starting January 19, 2008.
January 5, 2008
Hayseeds No. 239
January 19, 2008
Hayseeds No. 240
January 26, 2008
Hayseeds No. 240
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Last week the state police announced they issued a million tickets, half for priority traffic offenses which where speeding, drunk driving, and not buckling up.
So the question is what where those other half million tickets issued for? Broken headlights? Having sex while driving? Shifting gears in an intersection? There really isn't that many traffic offenses besides speeding, drunk driving, and not buckling up.
Not much with DiNapoli saying that the millonares Wall Street bonuses promising to give the state $4.3 billion less then last year.
It's amazing how much our state depends on the revenues from the super-rich and their bonuses to balance their books. While, I certainly agree those people have the ability to pay far better then us mere mortals, this source of income is less stable then other sources.
While Hillary is still way ahead for most consituencies in New York State, it seems that African Americans are backing Barack Obama over Hillary in our state.
It should be interesting to see if this constituencies' break will mean something important for New York State.
It seems that Mitt Romney and McCain are having a good ol' time bashing each other for supporting various fuel efficiency measures that has irked some Michigan voters who believe it's their right to build poorly designed and inefficient cars and trucks, and that they can never do better.
Michigan of course needs to get into the 21st century, and realize the auto industry is a dying business that's going overseas and is increasingly owned by foreign companies that can build better cars for less money. But of course, Republican candidates in Michigan won't do that.
I suspect Mitt Romney will win in Michigan. People in that state still love his father, and they think his son isn't that bad either. I don't see Huckabee catching on fire there, so that leaves McCain whose also dead in the water.
Harold Meyerson in a widely quoted statement had this conclusion about the Republican and Democratic debates:
Based on the performance of the two parties in the two debates, the Republicans want to employ Americans building a fence on the border; the Democrats want to employ Americans retrofitting what's on this side of the border.
And there seems to be a definite difference on who wants to spend money to blow up the Middle East in pointless wars only to raise gas prices.
A.2460 / S.2095 by Morelle-DeFransico recently was advanced out of the Senate Investigations and Government Operations Committee and is now on the floor of the State Senate on first reading.
It hasn't moved yet in the Assembly, although the Assembly Government Operations committee will be considering it over the next few months, with a likely passage.
This means that there is a good chance that it will get through the Senate this year and quite possibility the Assembly. The previous stumbling block was that no state agency wanted to have the responsibility and minor expense to implement such technology at the Plaza.
So it's possible by next summer to be surfing the web at a high speed, sitting down by the reflecting pools of the Empire State Plaza, or at least checking some legislative information from the gallery of the Assembly chamber.
Watch Spitzer's Address right here if you go there now. He's listing what has gotten done right now, and announced some of his plans to use money to bring more jobs to Upstate.
It looks like he just announced that Arkimax will buy the Wyeth Pharmaceutical old plant and that the pharmaceutical jobs will be saved in Rouses Point, an otherwise dying community on the Canadian border North of Plattsburgh.
Read the entire speech here.
It looks like Romney won his first primary, putting him up against a real mess of Republican campaigns that each seem to be picking up different states, based on the historical strengths of every particular states.
New Hampshire picked McCain, whose loved by moderate New England Republicans. Iowa picked Mike Huckabee, for his evanglical roots. And Michigan picked Mitt Romney for his business roots and his leganary name in Michigan politics, where George Romney once was a big-time auto exective, candidate for President, and Governor of Michigan.
For whatever bizarre alchemy of reasons, Romney passed his do-or-die test in Michigan. On Saturday in South Carolina, Huckabee will be on the hot spot--he's holding on to a slim lead over McCain there, with Romney not far behind. McCain needed the Michigan win to boost his South Carolina prospects, but Huckabee's once-rocketing campaign has stalled there as everywhere--and Romney has been running a strong third in the polls. If Huckabee gets his must-win in South Carolina, it will set up a criticical four-way battle in Florida on January 29. Rudy Giuliani desperately needs the state to position himself for Tsunami Tuesday on February 5, but he's tied in the polls with McCain, with Romney and Huckabee in striking distance.
It will be very interesting to see how things play out in future states and how the GOP will pull things together. Not that the Obama-Hillary mess is much neater with later states having much relevancy figuring it out.
It looks like not only where we in a recession, we also where having some significant inflation in our economy.
New federal government statistics show the Consumer Price Index rose 4.1 percent over the 12 months ending in December, 2007, compared to a 2.5 percent increase in the 12 months before that. Energy prices, responding to a surge in the cost of oil, rose 17.4 percent over the period. The price of food increased 4.9 percent—the largest rise in 18 years.
Excluding volatile food and energy costs, so-called core inflation was more moderate as consumers benefited from lower prices for housing, apparel and other goods. The core inflation rate, closely watched by economists, was 2.4 percent over the 12 month period, slightly below the 2.6 percent increase registered in 2006.
The Boston Herald had this to say about the possibility of Stagflation:
The specter of stagflation - or stagnant economic growth combined with inflation - is a growing concern among economists.
The last time the U.S. economy went through a severe bout of stagflation was in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Steve Andrews, vice president of capital markets at Sovereign Bank in Boston, said he’s not convinced yet that stagflation will occur. But he said if it does, it will “really knock the economy on its heels.”
He said he believes the Federal Reserve will first move aggressively to stimulate the economy - and then deal with inflationary pressures later.
It could definitely happen this year, especially as we start consuming more gasoline and prices head further up to the $4 dollar mark. I think $4/gallon gas is likely by summer, if things in the world stay the same and driving shoots up. That will make people buy less as they will start feeling the pinch.
It's so amazing thin that you can slip it into an manila envelope and carry it around much easier then my bulky Levono ThinkPad R60.
It's less then an inch thick and has a 13.3" screen, 2 gigs of memory, and an optional 250 GB solid state hard drive. It makes the old iBooks and Macbooks look big.
It's also less environmentally destructive. It's circuit boards don't use brominated fire retardants or toxic vinyl, and they don't use mercury in the backlighting or arsenic in the screen's glass. It has a beautiful aluminium case.
So when can I trade up my ThinkPad? Probably not for a while I spent a lot of money on it, and it's just as powerful, if not as beautiful. But it's amazing how Apple continues to make fantastic computers.
In some very large buildings there is a real problem with evaluating big buildings with the stairs for disabled people, and those who are less then thin and are slow going down the stairs.
The solution is elevators that are fire safe—designed not to stop on floors with fires and have internal power storage to ensure that they keep running even if the building's power supply burns. These two problems in the past made elevators dangerous.
Now they just need start a public information campaign to explain which is the safest choice to evacuate buildings, and ensure they understand what is the safest way to get out of the buildings in an emergency.
In most states, lobbying judges directly is fround upon, especially when they are going to rule on your case. It's particularly bad if your on a junket to Monaco with a major corporate interest.
This article in the times probably shows judicial corruption at the highest level. While I'm sure corruption at this level is relatively rare, it's still shocking and I'm sure corruption at a much lower level is prominent in our justice system today.
Just as dangerous though is ideology of some of the men on our country which blinds them to the fact. We rarely see great justices like Supreme Court Justice Bill Douglas anymore.
The Albany Convention Center, once announced to be a $150 million dollar project is widely expected to become a $400 million dollar project even before the first building is demolished.
This means, that at minimum we are looking at a half billion dollars before the project is done if maybe even closer to a billion dollar project. And while a billion dollars won't buy you that much as the gas station or supermarket anymore, it sure adds up.
Seriously though, this has to give people ponder about any big project. I know the city wants more union jobs for it's residents. But this project, funded almost entirely by public money, is not the way to get it done. It's going only to lead to a much higher cost of living in our county—be it higher property taxes or other fees that will effect many people who will never use the convention center.
We all know why the politicians are pushing it. A few words on their rational:
BBL Political Action Committee
Among others. There are big donations going into the coffers of people like Mike Breslin and many county legislators who are more then happy to smile the shits out themselves, and talk good about this big project that's a gift to the unions and contractors at taxpayer expense.
Campaign donations don't make Mike Breslin or anybody else in the county legislature rich. They do make for good parties and lots of unneeded campaign signs. But what they donations really do is they buy clout in local and state politics, where candidates like Breslin can give big to their friends.
His critics are skeptical that a Democrat can ever win a seat that covers a major portion of the Tugg Hill Plateau from Saint Lawerence down to Watertown, and even down to Oswego.
Yet it seems like Assemblyman Darrel Aubertine has a great chance to win in an yet to be announced special election against another sitting Assemblyman, Bill Barclay. Why?
This commercial explains a lot:
Aubertine by profession is a dairyman who has a relatively small dairy farm outside of Canton, NY. He's fairly socially conservative, but also is good on many of the important issues of the day.
He's running against Bill Barclay, son of a wealthy law firm in Syracuse. Barclay is known as one of the more liberal Republicans in his conference. He's gotten everything in his life as one big hand me down after another.
See the following websites for more:
