Hayseeds No. 251

Monday, March 31, 2008

Paterson's Scandal of the Day. It looks like Governor Paterson got a meeting for his wife, a lobbyist for a major hospital with Shelly Silver as personal favor.

Another day, another scandal. Paterson certainly is a colorful character, the more carefully you look at him. But he was a power broker of a legislator, who played the game the way the Albany boys play it.

From the New York Times:

When Gov. David A. Paterson was the State Senate minority leader, he got in touch with Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, a fellow Democrat, with what seemed like a routine request: Would he meet with a representative of a small Harlem hospital that was in need of financial assistance?

As it turned out, the hospital’s representative was Mr. Paterson’s wife, Michelle Paige Paterson, who was responsible for lobbying the State Legislature for aid. Mr. Silver agreed to meet, but warned that it would be improper for the senator to be present. As a result, Mr. Paterson did not attend the session, held on April 7, 2003; he would later say that arranging the meeting was a mistake.

But that meeting was not the only thing Mr. Paterson did for his wife’s employer. He also directed state grants of at least $150,000 — with a pledge for as much as $500,000 more — to the hospital over the next two years, a period that overlapped substantially with his wife’s employment there from 2002 to 2005.

Read Fuller Picture Emerges of Paterson’s Aid to Hospital That Employed His Wife. P'Link

What Albany is Cutting. If your poor, you not only will be paying higher taxes and fees, but also will be loosing out on a variety of programs

From New York 1 Network:

The list includes immigration, the food stamp program, tuition assistance for college students, and even the amount the state reimburses New York City for death payments for cops and firefighters.

A spokesman for the governor calls the cuts modest, and says they're needed because of the rapidly declining economy.

"Given the rapidly deteriorating economic climate and the need to enact a timely and fiscally responsible spending plan, the governor proposed modest across-the-board reductions that will protect the state's finances in this difficult economic climate," the spokesman says.

Paterson has proposed cuts of about $800 million as the state wrestles with a nearly $5 billion deficit.

Read Albany Mulls Budget Cuts on NY1. P'Link

Not All Odometers Are Created Equal. From the article:

AS researchers who test the accuracy of odometers know, your mileage may vary, and when it comes to a car’s warranty, that could cost an owner money. An odometer that piles up mileage faster than it should will push a car out of warranty quicker than an odometer that is calibrated correctly.

That is what was happening to many Hondas and Acuras until the problem was noticed by a lawyer in Arkansas, who, along with several other lawyers, filed a lawsuit against Honda in 2004. A final settlement was approved last December, but the deadline for owners to file a claim is approaching: June 26.

Read Not All Odometers Are Created Equal in New York Times. P'Link

Paulson Proposes Financial Overhaul. From the article:

The Bush administration Monday proposed the most far-ranging overhaul of the financial regulatory system since the stock market crash of 1929 and the ensuing Great Depression.

The plan would change how the government regulates thousands of businesses from the nation's biggest banks and investment houses down to the local insurance agent and mortgage broker.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson unveiled the 218-page plan in a speech in Treasury's ornate Cash Room. He declared that a strong financial system was important not just for Wall Street but also for working Americans.

Read Paulson Proposes Financial Overhaul on NPR. P'Link

Tuesday, April 1, 2008

Sound Recording Predates Edison Phonograph. From the article:

Thomas Edison wasn't the first person to record sound. A Frenchman named Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville actually did it earlier.

He invented a device called the phonautograph, and, on April 9, 1860, recorded someone singing the words, "Au clair de la lune, Pierrot repondit." But he never had any intention of playing it back. He just wanted to study the pattern the sound waves made on a sheet of paper blackened by the smoke of an oil lamp.

Read Sound Recording Predates Edison Phonograph on NPR. P'Link

Giuliani and Tedisco For Governor? That's what the Times Union is claiming:

Tom Buchanan, Schenectady County Republican chairman, is excited about reports Rudy Giuliani is interested in being a candidate for governor.

He envisions the possibility of Jim Tedisco, Assembly minority leader, being Giuliani's lieutenant governor running mate.

Read Giuliani and Tedisco on the same ticket?. P'Link

The Purpose of April Fools Pranks The New York Times has an interesting article on the importance of pranks in social group building and getting people to get along.

A definite read for April Fools Day! P'Link

Wednesday, April 2, 2008

Everybody Continues To Investigate Spitzer. The New York Times says there is eight investigations currently going on, including one investigating the investigations.

There is also an eighth one, revealed on Tuesday: The State Commission of Investigation, an independent body controlled by Republican appointees, announced it would conduct an inquiry not of the matter itself, but of how the other investigations were conducted.

“Many people in the state have felt that the various investigations have been dysfunctional, that they haven’t proceeded in an orderly fashion to say the least,” Alfred D. Lerner, the commission’s chairman, said in a statement released on Tuesday.

“The Commission is investigating the investigations,” Mr. Lerner continued. “We are seeking to determine the efficacy of the various investigatory efforts.”

The latest developments suggested that the reviews of Troopergate could outlive Mr. Spitzer’s 14 �-month administration. The first of six earlier investigations was conducted by Mr. Cuomo’s office, which determined last July that the Spitzer administration had misused the State Police as part of a plot to disseminate travel records detailing Mr. Bruno’s use of police cars and aircraft.

This is quite amazing, and at the same time kind of disturbing. So many of these investigations are politically motivated or otherwise trying to make somebody look good or bad. I'm glad the Commission on Investigation is now investigating all the investigations to try to find a little truth out of all of them.

Read In Albany, Spitzer’s Out but Inquiries Keep Coming - New York Times. P'Link

Many Very Critical of the State Budget. It's a real mess this year, and everybody is very unhappy in the direction it's going.

"It really is frustrating," said Barbara Bartoletti, legislative director of the League of Women Voters. "Nobody knows what's going on." She said it is the least transparent budget process she's witnessed in 15 years.

Budget critics noted that state operating spending would rise by 4.4 percent even as the state's economy is weak and expected to worsen.

"We're going to be back here in November, December and cutting. Revenues aren't there," Bartoletti said.

Alair Townsend, columnist and former publisher of Crain's New York Business, said the budget being put together is "unaffordable and irresponsible."

"I don't think we've seen the bottom of Wall Street; the state's leaving itself no cushion," she said. "To have spending growth in excess of inflation at this time ... It's impossible to think there is no place that can be cut to bring that rate down and moderate the tax increases they're talking about."

Assemblyman Michael Benjamin, D-Bronx, added the budget may be giving people a false impression of the state's fiscal health. "It's got a lot of gimmicks in it," he said. "We haven't made the cuts needed ... We've gotta come back."

I'm not surprised. The budget is a mess this year, done in secret, and is completely unresponsible. In an effort to appease health care unions and NYSUT, they continued to bolster spending, but at the same time, they pretended not to raise taxes and fees except on cigarette smokers.

The impact on local governments and counties hasn't been even measured yet. Moving Medicaid reimbursement to share of counties to 52% is going to have dramatic impacts on property taxes, driving some of the biggest property tax hikes in our state's history, when the tax bills come out in October.

It's also going to bankrupt cities teetering on the edge, or what is New York State's equivalent of bankruptcy—fiscal control boards, assuming the state can continue to bail out cities. Albany already was screwed before the cuts and the revenue drops, this budget ensures the city will be in serious fiscal crisis before next year is over.

Read Secretive push for agreement on budget in the Times Union. P'Link

Can the Fed Handle New 'Super Cop' Role? The Bush adminstration has given the Federal Reserve bold new powers to regulate markets.

But NPR and several others are asking tough questions about weather or not such an arrangement makes sense and whether or not it's sustainable.

This week the Bush administration proposed what amounts to a massive overhaul of the way the government regulates financial markets. A big part of the administration's plan involves the Federal Reserve. The Fed already plays a central role in keeping the U.S. economy growing and stable.

But Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has proposed turning the Fed into a kind of financial-market super cop. It could also look into the books at hedge funds, investment banks and even some companies.

This has been a time of turmoil in the U.S. economy, and the Fed has been pressed into action in some new and dramatic ways. Last month, for instance, the central bank engineered a takeover of the troubled investment bank Bear Stearns. And the Fed has agreed to lend money to other troubled firms as well.

Read Can the Fed Handle New 'Super Cop' Role? on NPR.org. P'Link

Independent Truckers Protest Fuel Costs. Fuel costs are really biting owner-operator truckers who find it increasingly unaffordable to haul goods as shippers are unwilling to pay what it costs to ship goods across the country.

Jimmy Lowry, 51, of St. Petersburg, Fla., and others said it costs about $1 a mile to drive one of the big rigs, although some companies are offering as little as 87 cents a mile. Diesel cost $4.03 a gallon at the truck stop.

So the solution was an informal strike yesterday by Independent Truckers, with shippers reducing their rate of shipping, driving slow on freeways, and in some cases stopping all together.

Using CB radios and trucking Web sites, some truckers called for a strike Tuesday to protest the high cost of diesel fuel, hoping the action might pressure President Bush to stabilize prices by using the nation's oil reserves.

"The gas prices are too high," said Lamont Newberne, a trucker from Wilmington, N.C., who along with 200 drivers protested at a New Jersey Turnpike service area. "We don't make enough money to pay our bills and take care of our family."

On the Turnpike, southbound rigs "as far as the eye can see" staged a short lunchtime protest by moving about 20 mph near Newark, jamming traffic on one of the nation's most heavily traveled highways, authorities said.

Some shippers canceled their orders all together in fear that their shipments could be derailed all together. Truckers are really getting screwed.

What they want from the government:

• 65 MPH national speed limit
• More oil drilling in the US on protected lands

The first is interesting, when truckers where a big reason why the 55 MPH limit was repealed. The second probably is overstated—drilling even the few protected areas out there, will barely make a dent in the problem.

See Traffic Jam: Truckers Protest Fuel Costs in the Associated Press and see this Associated Press video:

Also from Wired Blog:

With the average price of diesel hanging at $4.02 a gallon, independent truckers are going broke. And so today, truckers staged a protest, snarling the New Jersey Turnpike to as slow as 25 mph.

What do they hope to accomplish? The American Truckers Associations called on President Bush to release fuel from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to help bring down fuel prices. It demands a national speed limit of 65 mph. It called for a coordinated effort from the 50 states' attorney generals to combat price gouging. And it called for environmentally responsible development of crude-oil area in the U.S. that are currently off limits.

Truckers say consumers will get hit hardest of all with high diesel prices. Read after the jump.

The price of diesel is up 42% from a year earlier, according to the AAA. These costs will eventually get passed to consumers. Large trucking corporations can insulate themselves from spiking fuel costs by buying fuel futures and in purchases of sometimes million-gallon quantities. Independent truckers have much less cushion. As a result, they're simply being put out of business.

It's a real problem. I suspect owner-operators will continue to diminish in number, and more big corporations will cut in their business, along with the railroads. Rail becomes a more profitable alternative, although it's difficult to do with logistics with smaller amounts of freight and time sensitive materials.

Knowing some owner-operators myself, I can tell you, life really sucks for them. How can anybody be in the business with the economics as it currently is? To say nothing of the cost to buy anything over the internet anymore. P'Link

Pay Your Car Payment. Or find your car disabled long before it's reposed:

When the light starts to flash, you had better have the cash.

That's the reality for millions of subprime borrowers whose used car purchase is contingent upon having an unusual option: a little box mounted underneath the dashboard that forces them to make their payments on time.

A light on the plastic box flashes when a payment is due. If the payment isn't made and the resulting code punched in to reset the box, the vehicle won't start. The next step is a visit from the repo man.

That or don't lease a car. What's wrong with a used car? It makes parallel parking in Center Square much more fun and less stressful.

Read High-tech gear disables car if borrower misses payment in USA Today. P'Link

Thursday, April 3, 2008

DOT Starts Route 67 Bridge Reconstruction. Unfortunately they forgot to tell the community about their plans to close off the bridge and detour traffic in the process.

Tracy Serbalik was surprised to see orange cones and detour signs outside of her Main Street tanning salon on Tuesday.

The detour is part of a $5.7 million state Department of Transportation repair project on the Route 67 bridge that carries motorists between Mechanicville and Schaghticoke.

The problem is nobody told her that the detour was starting on Tuesday, she said.

“I think that they could have come to the business owners that were going to be affected by this and said, ‘this is what we’re going to do,’ so we could let our customers know that it was going to happen,” she said.

The detour redirects northbound traffic on Main Street onto a side street several hundred yards south of the Route 67 bridge.

This would suggest a need for more communication in the community. I am surprised though, as the DOT usually is quite good at getting communities involved in their proposals, and at least soliciting comment and keeping people afloat of what is happening.

Probably part of the problem is that the project was relatively minor and did not require a full SERQA statement, which would have required public comment and more awareness of the change. But still, people should have made alert of what is happening, even if the inconvenience was minor at worst.

Read DOT starts Route 67 bridge project in the Daily Gazette. P'Link

Carl Strock on Peace Officers. He has an interesting perceptive on what it means to give peace officers status to volunteers at the SPCA.

So Schenectady County has a new SPCA, and the head of it is a state-certified “peace officer” with powers that perhaps not everyone understands, powers that parallel those of a policeman.

It’s a situation unique to New York, as far as I can determine, this conferring of what amounts to police powers on representatives of a private non-profit organization, which is what an SPCA is. A Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

Such a “peace officer” needs state-approved training, but having gotten that training, he or she then operates independently, not beholden to any city council, county legislature, mayor, or public safety commissioner, much less to the voters.

He or she can carry a gun, make arrests, conduct searches, and even use deadly force.

The founder of Schenectady’s new SPCA is a lawyer, Matthew B. Tulley, who lives in Niskayuna and brings with him experience from Long Island.

He promises not to be confrontational like the SPCA of Upstate New York, based near Glens Falls, but more like a social worker, helping people who try to care for animals, but he also says he will be investigating reports of dog fights and cockfights, of which there is an extremely scanty history in Schenectady County.

Read "Peace-Officer Powers" in Strock Freestyle. P'Link

TroyRecord Says Tax Hike Will Make Smoking Obsolete. It will greatly increase the cost of smoking to the point where most people won't be able to buy cigarettes in state.

When lawmakers pass the state budget later this week it could double the tax on cigarettes, driving the cost of a single back to around $7.

The proposed state budget includes a provision to double the tax on cigarettes from $1.50 to $3. Cigarette buyers also pay a regular sales tax on top of the tobacco tax.

With the increase looming, smokers are considering one important question: What’s my price?

It will certainly make it much more expensive to smoke. Will people just go out of state or visit Indian Reservation to fulfill their addiction or buy cigarettes on the black market? Yes. But it also will be a powerful incentive to quit, with it so difficult to get a cigarette.

Read New tobacco tax could break Joe Camel’s back in Troy Record.com. P'Link

Plattsburgh State Students Protest War. The Press-Republican ran a confusing article today about a so-called protest against a protest.

Tensions run high in a country at war for more than five years and struggling economically.

Some take their frustrations to the street in protest. Plattsburgh State Student Association President Angel Acosta and others are holding a silent protest Friday to urge students to act strategically and to address perceived excessive force by law enforcement.

So what where they protesting? The acts of the protesters? The police? The war? I just don't understand what the protest is really about, and I'm sure most people in the North Country don't really understand either.

Read Plattsburgh State students to protest against protests in The Press Republican. P'Link

Friday, April 4, 2008

Gallagher: Legislators To Go Home For the Weekend. He is claiming the following on Politics on the Hudson:

The budget deadlock is expected to roll into next week, with lawmakers leaving the Capitol today with major issues like education aid and new taxes and fees still undecided.

They have been in town for 10 days and are eager to get home, an aide said this morning.

They stayed last weekend as part of a push to adopt a budget by the April 1 deadline, but that effort fell apart.

The budget was late every year from 1985 to 2004. It was on time the next two years, then a day late last year.

Lawmakers not being here doesn’t actually slow down the process much since most of the negotiating is done between Senate and Assembly staff members. But the elected representatives have to be here to ratify any final agreements.

They have to be back Monday to adopt a bill to allow New York City to charge motorists $8 to travel into the most crowded parts of Manhattan during business hours, in case there is an agreement to do that.

Why not? The budget on time bullet is off their heads now, and with no due date left to pass, they can dilly-dally as long as they want to. Congestion pricing is a far bigger question, as the deadline of Monday is a bit more firmer.

They might complete the budget next week or they might not. Who knows at this point. The revenue bill (with new taxes and fees) might still have some sticking points, and the same with education appropriation. I don't think it will drag into May or June though.

Here is the current status of the budget.

It's not done, but we've made significant process. P'Link

Will Democrats Switch Parties if They're Favorite Doesn't Win. That's what at least one poll is suggesting, according to NPR:

In the early days of the Democratic presidential contest, voters partial to Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama told pollsters they'd be happy with either one as the party's nominee. That was before the campaign entered its hand-to-hand combat phase.

Recent polling shows that almost 30 percent of Clinton supporters and nearly 20 percent of Obama supporters say that if their preferred candidate doesn't win the nomination, they'll vote Republican.

It's an interesting question. But remember, most voters still don't know much about McCain or Obama for the most part, so those who might vote for McCain right now, may decided not to vote for him after they hear his conservative stances, and might warm up to Obama's liberalism.

Read Democrats Thinking the Unthinkable: Voting GOP on NPR. P'Link

The Tragedy of Albany's Schools. Over at Democracy in Albany, Roscoe has a fascinating diary entry about how much the city spends on education, with such poor results.

The Albany City School District is not a school district, it's an Adult Employment District. In the last few days, our Board of Education has taken a disastrous Administration budget, shaved a chump-change $125K, and is preparing to shove the whole bloated community-killing farce at us. Undoubtedly, they've thought ahead: when it's voted down, they will still have sufficient money to continue their primary mission: to employ adults for the ruination of the education of the youth of this city. This budget, at over $17,000 per student per year, is even higher than the worst of the other Adult Employment Districts in this State.

People sometimes forget that taxpayer money is often hard earned money. When we spend so much money, with such lackluster results, we should be at least serious re-evaluating where that money is going before we add more money to a failed school district.

See The Tragedy of Albany's Schools. P'Link

More People Unhappy With America's Direction. Then ever before or at least since the early 1990s when they started polling with this question.

Americans are more dissatisfied with the country’s direction than at any time since the New York Times/CBS News poll began asking about the subject in the early 1990s, according to the latest poll.Skip to next paragraph

In the poll, 81 percent of respondents said they believed “things have pretty seriously gotten off on the wrong track,” up from 69 percent a year ago and 35 percent in early 2002.

Although the public mood has been darkening since the early days of the war in Iraq, it has taken a new turn for the worse in the last few months, as the economy has seemed to slip into recession. There is now nearly a national consensus that the country faces significant problems.

It's pretty much depressing news for us, but a chance for leaders to make new choices, and start to take us in the right direction. But it won't be an easy thing to do.

The complete results are also on the Times website.

See 81% in Poll Say Nation Is on the Wrong Track in the New York Times. P'Link

Voodoo Health Economics. Krugman has the folowing to say today in the Times:

Elizabeth Edwards has cancer. John McCain has had cancer in the past. Last weekend, Mrs. Edwards bluntly pointed out that neither of them would be able to get insurance under Mr. McCain’s health care plan.

It’s about time someone said that and, more generally, made the case that Mr. McCain’s approach to health care is based on voodoo economics — not the supply-side voodoo that claims that cutting taxes increases revenues (though Mr. McCain says that, too), but the equally foolish claim, refuted by all available evidence, that the magic of the marketplace can produce cheap health care for everyone.

Read Voodoo Health Economics in the New York Times. P'Link

Forty Years Ago: April 4, 1968. That was the day that Martin Luther King passed away. It was such a great loss to our country.

Last night I was listening to WRPI last night and heard the speech, Beyond Vietnam—A Time to Break Silence and was saddened to see how true his words still ring true today.

Click the play button below to hear that speech.

Also you should listen to one of the beautiful reminders of the tragedy of this man, along with the deaths of Abraham, Martin, and John. That song is Dion's Abraham, Martin, and John:

Robert Kennedy would announce the death of Martin Luther King, on April 4th, in what is probably one of the most articulate unprepared speech—ever—in Indianapolis.

My favorite poem, my — my favorite poet was Aeschylus, and he once wrote:

Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget
falls drop by drop upon the heart,
until, in our own despair,
against our will,
comes wisdom
through the awful grace of God.

It would be two months later or 62 days after the assassination of Martin Luther King, that Robert F. Kennedy would die by the bullet of yet another killer on June 5, 1968.

This all happened a decade and a half before I was born. But it's still a very sad day for all Americans, regardless of race or creed. P'Link