Hayseeds No. 262

Monday, June 16, 2008

Health Insurer Executives Earn Healthy Pay. Think your paying too much for health insurance? It seems like a lot of that money is going to pay HMO CEOs for the work they do or don't do. P'Link

Governor Tries to Stop Court of Appeals Decision. Apparently many judges forgot or did not sentence felons to parole after a prison-term and now will be eligible upon release to get out without any kind of supervision. The governor is determined to stop this, possibly by changing the law. P'Link

56% of New Yorkers Approve of Paterson. That's what the Watertown Daily Times reports on the Quinnipiac Poll. P'Link

Taxes and Economy Top Worries in New York Poll. Those continue to be up top, with gas prices rising to people's concern. People also are generally becoming more favorable to gay marriage. P'Link

Bill Could Bring Relief. Sara Foss looks at the medical marijuana bill. P'Link

'Daisy Ad' Creator Tony Schwartz Dies. The man who brought us many great radio and television ads, including the great great daisy ad is dead.

P'Link

Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Property Tax-cap Ideas Don't Match Up in Albany. Voters really like the idea of limiting property taxes, but legislature is in no rush to pass it thanks to money and threats from big ed. P'Link

Gov. Paterson's Tax Cap Puts Joe Bruno in a Box. Bruno is stuck between a hard place and a rock with big ed saying he can't support a tax cap, while his constituents and conservatives saying he must do as such.

Bruno's solution: say he supports having the state take over school funding, and ignore the tax cap proposal. That keeps big ed happy, and appeals to overburdened taxpayers by making it sound like he's trying to do something. P'Link

Few Abusers Locked Up in Confinement Law's 1st Year. OMH is revising their figures down for expenditure, with only 38 predators civilly confined after their jail terms are up. P'Link

Producer Prices Rise 1.4% in May. More evidence that inflation is an increasing problem. P'Link

Newest Video from The Brave Nation. This weekend's video is quite an interesting watch. It's about Ava Lowery, a 18-year old activist from Alabama and Anthony Romero, the director of the ACLU.

P'Link

Bouncing Betty a Political Landmine. Betty Barnette is irrate that she got bumped off the petitions. P'Link

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Governor to Call Legislators Back to Deal with School Tax Cap. They apparently won't get off the hook by pretending that they have their own alternatives to a school tax cap that the governor is pushing. P'Link

Suburbanites Claim They Pay Too Much for Elections. The county divides election costs based on the ability to pay, and wealthy suburbanites are claiming that they are paying too much to run elections. P'Link

Obama Has Narrow Lead On McCain. That's what today's Rueters poll is noting. P'Link

Fixing School Funding Not Easy. That's what the Troy Record points out, noting that 3/4 of all money spent at schools goes to paying teachers and staff.

The average tenured teacher in the state makes with ten years experience and a masters degree makes about $55,670. Not exactly that much money for a professional, especially downstate, but the state benefits certainly make up for it.

School Superendents on the other hand are very well compensated for their work. They get an average of $158,883 a year plus all those other nice state perks. Some even get school cars to drive to work. That's a salary 3x that of a teacher, and far in excess of many of most other people.

Still paying supertendents just a teachers salary plus a $15,000-$20,000 lulu would be a lot fairer, plus bring superdents closer to the teachers who actually do the work. At least supertendents are not as well compensated as some executives making as much as 40x what workers make.

Cutting school supertendent salaries won't help the problem much though. They are such a small part of the budget compared to all the teachers needed to teach students. And most other expenses are tiny compared to increases in healthcare costs, and regular step increases, which average 4% a year for teachers.

Still, 4% increase in salary or even a 4% increase in healthcare coverage funding is more then most employees can expect in our state in the private sector. Experience teachers aren't starving, and the reality is a lot of non-teachers are struggling to pay their tax bills.

A circut breaker would work well, if it was based on income and was aggressive enough. The problem is that would leave schools still coming up short on funds. That would force them to have to make cuts, or beg the state for more money. P'Link

Betty Barnette Complains About Being Removed from Petitions. She didn't want to be on Jack McEneny's petitions, so she lost out on being on county petitions for various elected offices. P'Link

Our Gilded Age. The Nation looks how the super rich live compared to every one else. Having been to parties at some of the McMansions in Delmar, I know how those people live. It's something else and pure insanity. P'Link

Vermont Lawmaker Floats Four Day Work Week. The idea is to reduce fuel costs for employees and energy costs for the state. P'Link

Quinnipiac University Poll Puts Obama Ahead in Key States. That's what they are reporting. P'Link

Dominick Calsolaro Eyes Mayoral Run. The only member of the Albany City Council with at least a shred of integrity, is seriously considering a run for mayor of the great City of Albany in 2009.

Councilman Corey Ellis is another possibility that I keep hearing about. He hasn't announced, but everybody knows he's interested. He would be a very impressive candidate, very charismatic, and the alike. Not as much fun as Calsolaro and probably not with nearly as much integrity or honest as Dominick.

People keep talking about Jack McEneny wanting to run for Mayor, since his failed 1997 bid to do just that. But McEneny is old now, I have doubts how much support he can get now. Still he might run—any Albany resident has the right to do so.

Officially, Jennings may run in 2009. But let's be honest. When your driving wide-open to the cliff that drops off farther then anybody can see, you don't want to be in the car when it's happens. Jerry will get out, but doesn't want to be a lame duck yet. P'Link

Why I'm Voting Republican. Some really great reasons:

P'Link

Thursday, June 19, 2008

E-Mail: To Encrypt Or Not to Encrypt? NPR looks at the pros and cons of encryption of email messages. P'Link

Obama Opts Out of Public Financing. It looks like that Barack Obama will not accept any public financing, the first presidential candidate since 1976, claiming that he has enough small money contributions to make up for it. P'Link

Charging by the Byte to Curb Internet Traffic. That's what some big internet service providers are proposing they do, facing massive demands for new bandwidth as people use more video and other data intensive things on the internet. P'Link

Lawmakers Close Deals. Several big new things were announced at the leaders meeting yesterday:

Starting next year, nurses won't be forced to work overtime. Small businesses, farms and nonprofits will be able to sell wind and solar power to utility companies. And lawmakers improved safeguards to better ensure that teachers convicted of sex offenses are removed from the classroom and that school administrators convicted of fraud will be out of their offices.

I'm excited particularly about the net-metering expansion. More details on this throughout the day. P'Link

Four 16-Year Olds Arrested for Distributing Child Pornography. Now that's not the kind of headline you see everyday.

Apparently a 15-year old girl sent his 16-year old boy friend a picture of her nude on her cellphone. He shared it with a few of his friends. Then it became a child porn ring.

Fantastically stupid!

The four boys, 16 and 17 years old, were charged with felony crimes of producing and possessing child pornography because the girl was under 16. A fifth boy, who was under the age of 16, was referred to Saratoga County Family Court...

He said production of child pornography is a class D felony and a conviction is punishable by up to 7 years in prison.

“The Legislature has created laws against child pornography, but they weren’t thinking about kids who are clueless about what they see as harmless pranks,” Murphy said. “It’s a case of technology being ahead of the law and I don’t see how the law can ever catch up.”

This shows what's wrong with state laws regarding pornography and sex offenders, and what an over-reaction can have on little children. I can't imagine sending little kids to jail for 7 years over a stupid picture transferred on a cellphone.

At worst, this is an example of sexual harassment. This should not be a crime necessarily, but clearly the kids should have been suspended from school, and possibly asked to go to counseling. It's clearly not a felony except in the minds of the legislature. P'Link

Subprime Deal in Albany. The legislature is going to take steps to avoid more home loan defaults. P'Link

Local, NY Jobless Rates Up. From the New York Times:

The Capital
egions unemployment rate rose to 4.8 percent in May, an increase from 3.6 percent for the same month a year ago, the state Department of Labor said today. Statewide, the unemployment rate in May was 4.9 percent, up from 4.2 percent a year ago.

Is Google Making Us Stupid? People are saying that the way internet is used makes people dumb. P'Link

Friday, June 20, 2008

Albany County Credit Rating Jumps. Apparently all that extra gas sales tax they've been getting has helped make county coffers flush and debtors happy. P'Link

Sierra Club and USW Endorse Obama. They think he's a clearly better candidate for their interests then that of what McCain provides. P'Link