Hayseeds No. 219

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Should Kids Be Allowed To Watch Pornography? The Supreme Court and others have said that kids should not be prevented by the state from obtaining violent video games, but the state has a compelling interest in preventing kids from obtaining pornographic materials that might raise purtarian interests.

Why is that? A lot is our history, from the revolutionary war's violence to the beliefs of the pilligrams and purtains who were very concerned about poronography and sexuality. But that notion is religously based on not based on reality.

Sexuality is an enjoyable experience. Killing is not. Both are very much part of life. Our fear of giving kids improper thoughts on sexuality is absurd, particularly with our lack of fear of violence. Kids should be educated—as age appropiate—about both things.

Education should always be hands on. Television violence or sexuality is nothing like the real thing. A cow on a bull is much different then a sexuality explicit movie. Or for the matter, killing a deer and dragging it back is much different then a violent video game.

WAMC's roundtable with Helen Defosses this morning had a fascinating discussion of this. P'Link

Roger Stone and Troopergate. It seems that the Republicans and their consultants aren't much better then the Democrats and Spitzer's men when it comes to being generally uncivil in government.

Today's new development is the treatening phone call by Roger Stone to Eliot Spitzer's ever so wealthy dad. Basically he was trying to get the governor to back down, and conceed that he made a mistake with Troopergate.

It was stupid of him, particularly not to think his phone number would not be traced back or his voice recorded. Bernard Spitzer, the dad of Elliot is a multi-billionare, and has all the resources to find out who did the threatening call.

Boys—play nice. Remember we all are in this together in our state, even though we may vastly different views on the day to day policy choices. Do we have to threaten one and other and throw so much mud and muck at each other? P'Link

The Deutsche Bank Fire. The massive building that was being demolished nearly 6 years after it was seriously destroyed and contaminated by the collapse of the World Trade Center caught fire last weekend and killed two firefighters.

Firefighting in an building undergoing an asbestos abatement is a challenge in many ways. As is a building under construction, particularly a high-rise building. Having a little bit of incite into the asbestos removal industry, here is a few things to point out.

Firerfighting in an containment zone is dangerous. Asbestos removal as done in a building to remove insulation, floor tiles, floor mastic (glue), or other contaminated material is typically done by wet bagging. This involves spraying an area down with water and creating an area of negative air pressure.

A containment zone typically is separated off by 6-mil polypropylene, essentially the same thing used in silage wrap or construction grade trash bags. This is designed to limit where asbestos fibers go. It is combined with negative air, which is an air pump that sucks all air out of the containment zone, running it through a HEPA filter before discharge through a poly pipe running to the building about 20 feet away from the contained area.

Workers—often illegals—go into the zone wearing a full-body respirator, personal protection gear, water hoses, sholves, picks, and other equipment for tearing out asbestos or other toxin contaminated material. The wet down the material and tear it out. Once they are done for the day, they go into the showers, wash off any remaining asbestos or contaminate, and then change into their street clothes.

It's dirty and hard work. Normally is also seems unlikely to support a fire, but this might have been a strange case. Workers were likely smoking near the shower area. They probably tossed a butt on or near the six-mil poly, which smoldered and eventually caught it on fire. That in turn set the "hard" barriers made of plywood on fire, much like the interaction between paper and a trash bag in a burning barrel.

As soon as that happened, workers were evacuated out of the building. Firefighters, with maps of the building went up it. They had access to the water hoses from the abatement, but not from the standpipe, which was disconnected as part of the abatement/demolition. Most likely water from there was tapped for the abatement efforts. Yet, it wasn't sufficient.

Those abatement water connections lacked the water pressure of a standard standpipe, and probably weren't particularly useful at fighting a fire, fed by a breach of burning poly letting air being sucked through and out the negative air zone by the air pumps. Imagine burning melting poly all over, combined with thick toxic black smoke, fanned by negative air pressure and a lack of water pressure. That's a death trap.

It is a tragedy and probably could have been prevented by having a better account of people working around the job site—and not sending the firefighters in. A lot of the flammable office furnishings had probably already been removed, and it was a fire burning poly that would eventually burned itself out, particularly once the neg air pumps had been turned out. P'Link

Friday, August 24, 2007

That Bohunk Engineer. To add to our list of racial ephitats is bohunk, which got the great Senator Dale Volker in trouble after he calling an structure engineer of west African decent that word after questioning the safety of a bridge in his district.

A bohunk apparently is not a nice term to refer to an labrorer of eastern/central european decent. It's kind of like a different version of the N-word (nigger) that the Assembly spent a significant amount of resources to pass a symbolic banning of the word.

It amazes me that Dale Volker even knows that word—he's not as old as you might think at only 65 years of age. Still he's a forceful advocate for his causes and his region, even if you don't always agree with his ideology.

And at the end of the day, it's just a word. P'Link

John Burnell Gets In Trouble For Working Two Jobs. There is an archaic provision of New YorK State law that prohibits public officials from holding two offices at once. It looks like F-150 drivin' Clinton County County Democratic Elections Commissioner might have violated that provision by also holding a second elected position as Town of Altona Assessor.

My guess is he's probably guilty of that, as are many other Clinton County officials. Down in Westerlo, my fair hometown in Albany County, our supervisor Dick Rapp also got caught doing this as County Supertent of Highways and Town Supervisor, and had to switch his job title.

Much as the case of Dick Rapp, in Plattsburgh it would not have become an issue, except that some of the Committeemen on the County committee where unhappy that he fired Debra Bruno for her disloyality to the party and made it an issue.

And of course, County Sheriff Dave Favro, also a Democrat, felt it best to make as much of a scene as possible out of this and have him escorted out of the building, rather then just send him a notice of the possible conflict of interest and request his resignation of one of the two positions.

This is interparty squabling at it's worst—particularly in an election year when it's at least theortically possible that the Democrats could pick up two more seats in the County Legislature and control the legislature for the first time ever. Whether they could it is another problem.

My hat's off to Doug Brockway on all this. It's far easier to correal cats then the often feral politicans of Clinton County. There are some pretty strong personalities (and well connected abit without office people) in the North Country to say the least. I wouldn't even think of pissing around them to say the least. P'Link