The Hayseeds blog, No. 127 for the week starting August 8, 2005.
Monday
Jeanine Pirro to Run Against Hillary
How Many People Are Ran off the South Mall Ramp?
Alamont Warns People of Granet Curbs
Biased Towards Shelly and EZ-Waste?
New Paltz Talks About Legalizing Junk Cars
Tuesday
They Start Digging Dirt for New Champlain Crossing
So How Do You Get Restitution from Crime in NYS?
What State Agencies Are Gaining or Losing?
Albany County Wants to Raise Taxes Again
Wednesday
Jeanine Pirro Tries to Make Her Self Into a Right Wing Candidate
St Lawerence's Ag-Bag Recycling Program.
Another Day, Another Air Quality Alert
Thursday
Still Judge Without Law License
Enviros Think About Counter-Stragity to Burning Tires at LaFarge
Pataki Delusional About the Meth Problem?
Now NY Winemakers Can Send Wine Out of State
Friday
Outdoor Wood Furance Issue Surfaces to Front
Gas Prices Exceed $250 in Many Places.
Property Rights Foundation Has a Field Day with the APA
Sign of the Tree Getting the Boot
Boondocks is about farms, rural life, and power toys.
Energy looks at high energy prices and our future.
Enviroman looks at man and the environment.
Individual looks at myself and how I'm changing
Outblog is all about my outdoor experiences.
Transit looks at the changing ways we get around.
Truck gives you stories and trips in my Ford Ranger.
Jeanine Pirro to Run Against Hillary. It looks like Piro, whose husband spent some time in club fed for evading taxes on a return signed by Jeanine, is going to be running against Hillary. She's made it offical, and it looks like she's more then willing to be out of a job as DA or anything else, for the chance to run against an almost unbeatable Hillary.
Lots of people hate Hillary, but Jeane Pierro, the tough DA from Westchester county is a joke in comparision. DA's don't typically have much in the way of legislative accomplishments nor can they bring home any bacon to their district. Hillary is aloof and sometimes distant from the people she speaks to, but she's seen a hell of a lot more of upstate NY then Pierro. It's called delusions of granduer. Many people suffer from that diesease in Albany.
P'LinkPirro Has the Richest Driver? Now, there is this story about how lavish a lifestyle Pirro's driver is making off of county coffers. Her driver, O'Donnell making more then the Westchester County Executive, more then the Governor, most legislators, and many judges in the state. Wonder if I can drive the DA around in Westchester County? I want a state job where I get paid $248,000 a year.
P'LinkHow Many People Are Ran off the South Mall Ramp? We may never know, but certainly many others are claiming to be victims of the ramp. Just some didn't make such a big deal of the accident.
P'LinkAlamont Warns People of Granet Curbs. But it looks like one man's suit against Riffenberg was unsuccessful. Everybody knows that Riffenberg is a machine contractor with Albany, so it's not surpising that they where able to ensure that they were right. We might not have gotten justice in this case, but the warning signs should make people drive a bit more careful on the deadly (at least to tires) redesigned Altamont streets. Gotta love progress.
P'LinkPrivization and the State. Gotta love those contract employees that work for the state, and come and go after a few months of underpaid labor to the state. Some say all the extra expense is worth it, as it gives the state more flexibilty then labor contracts and unions, but it seems that they are spending a hell of a lot of extra money for little benifits.
A typical contractor bills the state for twice the going rate of a real employee's wages. While the cost isn't twice what a real civil servant gets paid, when you figure out benifit costs, it does mean a lot of third party contractors are making money that should be going into the pockets of employees.
P'LinkRape or Just Sex? The TU noted on Sunday on how different states choose to define rape differently, such as when consentual sex is consentual with a minor and when it's not. As the article points out, states like Vermont and New York can have vastly different definations, and as such can make a world of difference in individual's lives.
State can choose whatever laws they want to pass. If New York thinks people over 17 shouldn't have sex with people who are 17 years of age, then so be it. If Vermont disagrees, then so be it. So if you want to engage in that kind of activity, then move to Vermont. The same thing applies to Gay Marraige and Civil Unions: some states want it, others don't. That's their choice.
P'LinkBiased Towards Shelly and EZ-Waste? It looks like many people are unhappy in state government. The NY-NJ Port Authority wants PEF to stop tarnishing their EZ-Pass name in ads. Their case seems pretty week, as it's a clear parody. Joe is unhappy with Shelly getting all the press, and everybody forgetting about him as he struggles to stay afloat in a Democratic state.
P'LinkNew Paltz Talks About Legalizing Junk Cars. New Paltz, like some other New York Cities ran by suburban brats, has a law that prohibits the possession of unregistered cars on village property. Some like Jason West have come to their senses and say its time for a repeal of the law, and allow people to have spare parts to fix up there cars. These kind of laws always smack of classism, just like cities that ban the possession of cloth lines.
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Tired on a Tuesday. I need another weekend to tire me out even more. Maybe in three days. In the mean time, lets focus on today.
Yesterday, did I lit drop for Peter Cappacara, the candidate that everybody should support for the 11th Ward in the big city of Albany. Worked the 6th election district in that ward, lots of streets to do. Pretty hot out there yesterday evening my bandana got some good use. The rotting garbage next to some houses and out on the street didnt make it a particularly nice experience, but it still was fun. Think I prefer the smell of burning plastic to people stock-piling garbage for a week. City life is terrible.
So whats going on out there in the woods and the world?
P'LinkThey Start Digging Dirt for New Champlain Crossing. For those wanting to head north, or come back to the US of A, there is some good news for those in a bit of a rush. They have officially started work on the new border crossing, which will inevitably be a boon for the North Country.
And Schumer was up there, taking notes on what people want up there, from affordable housing in the Adirondacks, to keeping the border relatively open, to controlling taxes by getting Medicaid somewhat under control, to unfunded mandates on schools.
P'LinkSo How Do You Get Restitution from Crime in NYS? Thats an interesting question. In general you dont, though in some rare cases a judge can mandate it if a victim claims expenses prior to sentencing in a criminal case, or the state can pay you. The second seems particularly odorous, as taxpayers shouldnt be subsidizing crime. Criminals should have to pay for their own prosecution and treatment, and not the state. Public protection is a public service, but it should not extend to private matters except where specifically paid for a by private individual.
P'LinkWhat State Agencies Are Gaining or Losing? The Times Union has a nice excel sheet of what agencies are losing and gaining in NY. The big losers are: OGS, Office of Mental Health, the DOT, and Office of Temp Assistance. The only gainers are education and public protection.
P'LinkAlbany County Wants to Raise Taxes Again. Well, not right now, but our fine legislature unanimously (nobody wants to be called a SEX OFFENDER supporter) wants to charge taxpayers with GPS monitoring of SEX OFFENDERs. Its based on plain fear of the mentally ill, who should be getting treatment in state prison, and those who dont watch their kids carefully. After all, anybody whose going to commit a sex offense, is not going to care if the monitor goes off you can rape a person pretty fast. The $50,000 or $100,000 could mean a better surface to county roads, or an open space grant, rather then monitoring the mentally ill by GPS.
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103 Square Miles per Week? That's how much land is eaten up every week by sprawl. That's a lot of land. A pretty scary number where I come from, though I guess in the perspective of how much land there in our country (just drive from Albany to Syracuse on Route 20), it's not that much.
A flip side of the argument is that in 100 years we will go through that much space for landfills in our country. I guess thatfs not that much land, when things are all said and done, but still thatfs a lot of place to put the garbage. Then again, suburbs are rarely much better. Moving right along...
P'LinkJeanine Pirro Tries to Make Her Self Into a Right Wing Candidate. Speaking of suburban garbage dumps, it looks like Pirro, the laughable opposition to Hillary is going to try to go right and claim she's anti-abortion, despite her record. She's try to woo over conservatives, but that's going to come at a step cost when you alienate liberals in a liberal state.
P'LinkEmpire Farm Days? If you were looking for something to do the past day or so, and happened to be out in Auburn, you could have had some fun at Empire Farm Days. The price was right: $5 per car. Lots of farmer people there, lots of tractors to look and gloat over, and lots of good safety information. Sounds like fun. Maybe next year if I can get the time off from work.
P'LinkSt. Lawerence's Ag-Bag Recycling Program. It looks like St. Lawerence County which happens to have some enviro-types like our special favorite, Chris Norte, have gotten the county to take people's plastic silage wrap and recycle it for free for a limited time. Previously, people could dispose of it at the landfill for $91/ton, and few farmers had that kind of money to waste on it.
So it's good news. Certainly recycling all this plastic is probably better then burning it or dumping it in the back 40 like so many do. The biggest problem with recycling Ag-Bags is that they tend to be containated by sitting in dirt and manure, and the sun degrades the plastic. So most it doesn't get to that point. It's likely that any product made from Ag-Bags are of a very low grade of plastic.
P'LinkAnother Day, Another Air Quality Alert. It looks like for another hot day this summer, that air quality will be crappy from all that ozone produced by the nitrous oxides and other chemicals from tailpipes and smokestacks all over, that are cooked by the heat of the weather. It's particularly bad for those in the big cities that are particularly hot and have lots of pollution.
Like usual, those who have to be concerned by ozone are the frail—namely the elderly and asthmatic that find it hard to breathe. For most of us, it just means the air is a bit more stale and toxic in the city to breathe, and just really hot everywhere else. The DEC suggests that people cut down on air pollution to help on the problem with the following ideas:
Of course, doing those things won't do anything at all unless all New Yorkers do them. I don't expect that to happen, even with the warnings. So the best thing is for those who are sick, not to work so hard in the hot weather, try to get inside where the ozone might be less (despite the air blowing in the window or AC), and just realize that ozone is part of having big cities and lots of cars around.
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Still Judge Without Law License. To be a town justice in NY, you only have to take a short course on being a judge in NY and not have a license. That also means in the case of Colonie, you can have your license suspended and still be a judge, unless you decide to step down or the commission on judical conduct kicks you out.
P'LinkEnviros Think About Counter-Stragity to Burning Tires at LaFarge. It seems like they are somewhat stymied at what their argument is going to be, though it might have to do somewhat with the possiblity of a misfunction or a slight raise in things like Cadium and Lead in emissions, with a cut in mercury emissions.
I'm going to the public hearing on Thursday August 25, and it should very interesting to watch. Not sure if I'm going to testify at that hearing, but I might just go for the learning experience.
P'LinkPataki Delusional About the Meth Problem? He certainly believes that the new law regarding the pocession of meth-making materials will fix all the ills regarding to meth:
"Today's signing closes all the loopholes," Pataki said. "It will give law enforcement officials the tools they need to fight this rural New York phenomena."
It's great to think that it's going to happen, but I have my doubts. If anything it's just going to push meth dealers more underground. The real solution would be to pump more money into studying how to make anhydrous ammonia harder to become an ingrediant in meth. It's simply not a good thing when people are going around, breaking into farms and stealing a relatively hazardous material.
P'LinkLots of Lobbyists in Albany. The TU looks at the 3,842 registered lobbyists in NY, which puts us right about where we should be per capita, but at about 18 lobbyists per legislator.
That seems high, but there is a lot of different interest groups, and some are more powerful then others. Moreover, most groups have many lobbyists, and many of those lobbyists are unpaid political activists who simply want to support their adgenda. Many big lobby groups rely extensively on unpaid volunteers, including NYSUT and the AARP to push for their agendas—and most register their members to avoid any possibility of getting in trouble of lobbying without being registered.
P'LinkNow NY Winemakers Can Send Wine Out of State. Today, August 11th, the new law goes in effect that allows out of state wine shipments, direct to consumers assuming another state doesn't prohibit that. NYers still can't buy wine through the mail though. The Elmire Star-Gazette has a good FAQ on the matter.
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Outdoor Wood Furance Issue Surfaces to Front. Spitizer has decided to make a big deal about his anti-outdoor wood furance (OWF) issue. See also this story on his urging of federal regulators to do something.
Spitizer's numbers just don't add up when you look at them. The EPA's study of two wood furnances shows emissions of hourly particulate at 19.6-12.0/g in high heat mode and 16.6-9.35/g in low heat mode. That is slightly higher then the newest certified wood stoves (less then 7.5/g—typically 5/g-6/g), but far lower then pre-1990 stoves that most people have that put out 40-60/g of smoke. It should not be difficult to improve efficency through catalytic converters or adding a second combustion chamber, as done with modern wood use.
What irks people is not those numbers, but other misuses of OWF. One very common one is the use of short chimneys on OWFs. Most machines can be used with a short pipe for draft, but they are intended to be left a ways away from the house, and in area not near neighboors. That's not a problem for most farms, but more of a problem in residential neighboors. For those living in cloves and other tight valley areas, smoke tends to trapped on in from a temperature inversion. A chimney on a house typically is higher up, so we don't notice the smoke as much.
The other think that irks people about outdoor wood furances is they are seperate from houses, so people are less careful in what they feed their machines. Most of us wouldn't even think about tossing garbage in a woodstove, with fear of charred paper it going up the chimney and starting a chimney fire or plastic melting inside the chimney. We also wouldn't burn green wood as we don't want all that crecote in the chimney that could start a fire. Again, outside especially with a short stack, that is far less of a fear.
While there is little damage from burning green wood in an outdoor furnance, except for a general lack of heat and more smoke, burning trash in an OWF is a really stupid idea. The metal in many OWF are thinner then your burn barrel, and would be rapidly eaten away by the extra heat from the flash of burning paper and plastic, along with hydrocholoric acid and other chemicals from burning PVC and other plastics.
Hydrocholoric acid eats metal away pretty quickly, and you don't want that to happen on a $3,000 to $15,000 wood furance. While you don't get any heat value from burning trash in a $10 burn barrel, it certainly is a lot easier to toss one of them when they rot through. So that's a moot point—and OWF manufactures clearly warn you of this danger.
And the final issue is many people clamp down the draft on their OWF before going to bed to save wood. You wouldn't dare do this too much on a regular woodstove, for the danger of cercote and chimney fires. Again, this isn't the danger with these machines with their short metal chimneys outdoors. Combined with a nice morning temperature inversion, it really can make neighboors irate.
Conclusions: These OWF go through a lot of wood, but if you have the wood and don't mind stocking them regularly, then they are a good deal especially with high oil prices. Used incorrectly, they don't make very nice neighboors and can destroy the machine. See my previous article on these machines.
P'LinkGas Prices Exceed $2.50 in Many Places. AlbanyGasPrices tells us there is some cheap places out there still, at $2.37 a gallon. Not very cheap, but better then $2.59 a gallon like Mobil in Albany is charging. It's all a lot of money. Ten gallons will set you back about $25 now, and that's a lot for only about 200 or so miles of driving. To fill up my truck from pretty low (14.5 gallons) it will set me back $36.25. Ouch! The same amount when I got my truck in December $27.55.
P'LinkCDTA: Did They Ever Return? I totally agree with the sentiments of this letter in regards to what drivers and passengers have to go through. Not only do we often find ourselves riding on unsafe and hot buses this summer, but so do drivers who have to keep them on the road all day.
I would say that maybe 5% of all Voorheesville buses have air conditioning, and 30% of all regular city buses do. This is tough for drivers, although I do like the fact that my driver never charges when the A/C is broke. Last week, while passengers were boarding buses, the door-brake interlock system failed and the bus started rolling down the State Street hill. Regularly you can smell hot brakes on the buses. Not good. Not only is this a pain and a safety hazard for passengers, it's worst for drivers.
They need to hire more people in-shop with technical experience to fix air conditioning and other more mundance things like brakes and stop ropes (which also rarely work). Detriot Diesel might make sense for engine rebuilds, but they are too slow and expensive for most repairs. They also need more more buses, the newest ones are six years old in their fleet, many are closer to ten years old. Possibly they could go to using more Shuttle Buses for the more rural routes with fewer stops, but they can be difficult to get in an out for city streets.
P'LinkLots of Burning Hay. Speaking of burning things, it looks like one farmer in Plattsburgh has a real problem with a silo fire that won't go out, and has been burning for about two weeks. It's pretty hard to put out a pile of burning hay in a silo, that most likely started by some of it being green (bad!). To make matters worst, they can't knock down the silo as it close to buildings and would possibily set those buildings on fire. Right now, it's pretty contained, and probably will just smolder for a long while.
P'LinkProperty Rights Foundation Has a Field Day with the APA. When your top officers get caught with dirty pics on their computers, it means that your opponents can really get the best of you:
Moments later, Carol LaGrasse, president of the Property Rights Foundation of America, said the Inspector Generals report "sheds light on the way the APA thinks." "The porn-minded APA couldnt care less about families," she said after a testy interruption by Whaley, who earlier had forbidden anyone to use the meetings public comment period to speak about the report and its aftermath. LaGrasse derided the agency as a statewide "laughingstock" and said it "should not only be embarrassed but ashamed."
That's probably true. Porn on office computers is a bad thing. As I previously noted, it's not surpising with the APA management's attitudes to the world. They are the boys of the woods. Yes, they are overbearing and often over-regulating, but that's largely the fault of the legislature who set up the rules to start out with.
Peter Bauer of the Resident's Committee to Protect the Adirondacks is rather concerned:
Peter Bauer, director of the Residents Committee to Protect the Adirondacks, said, "Its a huge black eye for the Adirondack Park Agency and its something advocates for the park are going to have to live with for the next 20 years. "The APAs been controversial in the park and this doesnt help at all. We need a strong Park Agency that is not distracted," he said. "Right now, we dont have that."
It seems that the APA needs to be revisted in depth, and figure out what it should be doing as an organization. It's often difficult to change organization cultures, but we should try to reform an organization that often seems monolithic and overbearing to local residents.
P'LinkThirsty? Try Green Island. The best water in the County apparently comes from Green Island, if you ever wanted to know. Second best is Latham's water. This study has some scientific bases: over 40 votes were cast.
P'LinkPRFA Press Releases. There is a great press-release on the Dan Fitts mess and one on the NYS anti-ATV policy on the PRFA website. From the anti-ATV policy press release.
Blocking roads and having them grow over and wash away by deliberately not maintaining them is one of the three keys to forcing people out of the Adirondacks. The other two are state land acquisition and extreme regulation. The DECS ATV plan, or, I should say, non-ATV plan, is a powerful surrogate for the overall goal of the wealthy environmental groups, APA and DEC to destroy the local culture and economy and depopulate the region...
...After passing the large boulders that DEC placed to block the road, this is what we viewed and experienced: Culverts lying uselessly in open stream channels while springs floods rushed around them on both sides. Sections of road gullied by new stream routes down the narrow trench worn by hikers. Open gullies and streams full of water over which we nervously hopped, stone by stone. Long stretches of ponding and mud, some with by-pass trails cut by hikers. Trees fallen across the road, sawn off just minimally enough to allow a narrow pass. Balsam fir thickets closing in from the edges of the road. Side roads to other settlements, once touted as hiking rails in a well-known guidebook, growing over and becoming indiscernible...
...DEC preaches that trails for ATVs will be developed on conservation easement land and ordinary private land. But they are again misleading the people, neglecting to point out the liability to private property owners. The General Obligation Law is often zero protection from liability, judging by numerous cases where property owners have been treated just the same as if the General Obligation Law did not exist. The real issue is keeping the old town roads open!
They have some really good points. Who by the way is running the DEC in these parts? Must be some porn lovers like good ol' Dan Fitts and his boys who can't keep their hands out of their pants.
P'LinkBlack River Turns Brown. If you need a way to throw up your lunch, then try watching this video. It's pretty nasty when 3 million gallons of cow dung from a mega-farm go flowing down the river after an accident.
Like the Wanooski River problems with anydronous ammonia, we have a big fish kill here, a probably growth of algea, lots of e-coli (though this time largely from the cow dung, and the fish to the lesser extent). Dumping anything nitrogen rich in a river is a bad thing. Let's hope somebody at Mark's Farms gets spanked for this one (they should have been ore careful).
The Elmira Gazette also has some interesting musing on mega-farms and the Tioga County Farm Sanctury. The system simply does not work for the vast majority of us, big to small, producer to consumer.
P'LinkSign of the Tree Getting the Boot. It looks like the relationship between OGS and LoPorto's has gone so downhill that they are being evicted by the state. It's a mess for all those politicans that get lunch there with lobbyists.
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Copyright ©1999-2008 Andy Arthur.
All mistakes are intentional or otherwise.
Mind where you step in a cow pasture or legal mindfield.