The Hayseeds blog, No. 239 for the week starting January 12, 2008.
December 29, 2007
Hayseeds No. 238
January 12, 2008
Hayseeds No. 239
January 19, 2008
Hayseeds No. 239
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It looks like the US Supreme Court is going to look at the issue of requiring voters to have ID when registering to vote in some states and whether or not such provision is constitutional.
Knowing many disabled, elderly, and rural folks, I know that such laws disfranchise voters without question. If you don't have an ID then your out of luck for voting—and there are many folks that might not have one for one reason or another.
While it is true for many of us who ride planes, work for the state, visit certain secure facilities, or drive a car must have an ID card. But there are many that don't do that. To require people to go through the difficult process of obtaining ID when they've never had to do it in the past, would be a real hurdle.
Where is your birth certificate and social security card at this particular moment? Do you know how much it costs to get those documents?
I currently don't have any document except one utility bill that shows that I have moved to Elm Ave in Delmar. So if I was required to prove that I moved with some kind of formal document, it would be difficult.
That's what we can look forward to in Spitzer's State of State Address on Wednesday, where the Governor will delineate several policy ideas and options for the Empire State in the second year of his term.
Pataki will be getting a bone from Spitzer and be forever remember when the Hudson River Park, created under his administration in Manhattan, will be renamed to the George E. Pataki Park. This massive new park along the Manhattan waterfront will make the governor forever remembered, much like Nelson A. Rockefeller's name adorns the entrance to the plaza.
More importantly though, Spitzer will also propose capping property taxes like Massachusetts and California do. This is very popular with constituents who own houses, but very unpopular with teachers unions who believe it will deprive schools of needed resources. Pataki tried this in vein—it was stripped out of his budgets multiple times.
As the Citizens Budget Commission noted in a recent report, tax caps have also been criticized for being undemocratic and artificially limiting demand for public services.
A property tax cap, by encouraging a tightening of school budgets, would be certain to meet fierce resistance from the state teachers union, a powerful interest group outside of New York City, and skepticism from Senate Republicans.
In the city, however, a cap would have less of an impact because school budgets don't depend on property taxes.
It should be interesting to see what happens with it this time.
I tend to disagree with Citizens Budget Commission about tax caps being undemocratic—schools boards are far more undemocratic. How many people vote in school elections? How many truly representative citizens sit on school boards? Most are packed by relatives of teachers or of parents of kids in the schools and not taxpayers. It's unreasonable how much many schools ask homeowners to pay in taxes.
The real fix for our schools is to merge control of them to local governments. This is how it works already in the big cities. Make the Democrats and Republicans who are able to balance town budgets pay for the schools, and bring them under the same rules and regulations of town governance. When we start getting a more holistic budgeting methods, then we will get better policies.
Google Maps has a neat map of the counties in Iowa and how they voted in the Iowa caucus.
It's very interesting to see how the blocks played out. I wish I knew more about Iowa and their ideology to compare why some parts of the state voted Obama, and some for Clinton, and some for Edwards. The lines are pretty clear—suggesting that different parts of the state are more liberal and conservative.
It looks like the city is going to be increasing their rates for water in the city and beyond.
So my question is: Why do we are paying 5-10 people, 24 hours a day to guard the Alcove and Basic Reservoirs?
We don't actually know how money is being spent to guard the reservoirs at taxpayer expense, as the Albany Municipal Water Finance Authority's budget is not online. I could call, but I'm too lazy.
Guarding the Basic Reservoir is especially absurd—this time of year the city isn't pumping any water out there, and even if a terrorist blew up the low-stress dam up, it wouldn't hurt a single person down stream.
The biggest threat the Basic Reservoir faces is cows wadding through the Basic Creek on a farm just upstream from it, and run off from nearby farms and run off the former Town of Westerlo landfill.
Even with the Alcove Reservoir it would be pretty safe without guards. How do you poison 12 billion gallons with something potent enough that is not killed by chlorine or sun exposure?
There are no regular guards for the Tomhannock Reservoir, the primary source for water in Troy.
Okay, I can see Robert Cross' argument here. Terrorists are going to attack Albany, the Capitol City, assuming they don't get lost on the NYS Thruway, and not some silly city just up the River.
The Supreme Court refused to hear an argument on a case relating to a Canadian smelter company that dumped smelter waste in the Columbia River just outside of Washington State.
It turns out that the company was convicted in a lower district court, then lost their appeal in the appellate division. Now with the holding of the Supreme Court, they will have to pay for the mess they've left in the Columbia River.
The Thruway Authority will drive you over the Tappen Zee bridge if your one of those gephyrophobiacs who are truly afraid of bridges.
Apparently they do this about half a dozen times a year for those who are scared to death of driving themselves. It's cheaper then having a major collision.
This is good to know if you have dreams about this at night.
I couldn't believe what I saw when I opened the Times Union today:
CLIFTON PARK—Former Congressman John Sweeney had another brush with law enforcement after a local taxi company recently claimed Sweeney walked out on an $80 fare.
Sweeney, who received a ride home the morning of Dec. 27 from Double Vision, a strip club on Route 9 in Halfmoon, was never charged with a crime. He paid the bill to Capitaland Taxi after he was informed of the disagreement, his attorney, E. Stewart Jones, said.
Read the rest of the story.
Senator Joesph Bruno's wife died at age 77 after many years struggling with Alzheimer's disease. It has to be a personal tragedy for him after many years with this disease.
Alzheimer's disease literally dries up peoples memories, individuality, and ability to recognize people. You have to feel for Senator Bruno and all the trouble he has to go through in his personal life—and at the same time managed to keep entirely out of the publics eye.
It's also a stark reminder of how old Bruno really is, at age 79, despite his youthful looks.
Here are several catch-words and phrases you will hear in the speech. Put them Persectus Bingo Card Generator and you can play the State of the State Address Bingo game with friends or colliegaues.
Enjoy.
Apparently Spitzer will today propose leasing the New York lottery for a big one-time-shot of cash to help pay for needed improvements to the SUNY system without raising tution on the back of students.
Some of his critics don't like the idea of mortgaging the lottery for a big check right now, or that it will end up costing K-12 education to pay for higher ed. But it's certianly an interesting idea.
"I thought it was a joke when I first heard it," said Assembly Minority Leader James Tedisco, R-Schenectady. "First of all you shouldn't gamble with the Lottery; only New York state can operate a lottery." He also said Spitzer seems to be pitting higher education money against K-12 funding and "skimming" dollars that should go toward lowering school district costs and the burden on property taxpayers.
The Triborough Bridge in New York City that goes to the JFK airport and connects Bronx and upstate to will be renamed to the Robert F. Kennedy bridge under a proposal by Spitzer.
Jobs and economic development will like be a big thing of discussion this morning.
From the Rockland Jorunal-News a rundown of the major points of the State of State address:
—Property-tax cap: He’s expected to announce the formation of a commission on whether the state should put a cap on property taxes. So he apparently will stop short of actually calling for a cap.
—Upstate economy: He’s planning to call for a $1 billion Upstate Revitalization Fund, which will be targeted to help cities and spur investment and new jobs in the struggling upstate economy.
—Doctors: He’s planning to offer a program that would pay off the student loans of doctors if they locate in rural and urban parts of the state that have a dearth of doctors.
—SUNY: He’s expected to call for a SUNY/CUNY endowment fund to help bolster the state’s college and university system. He also expects to also call for 2,000 more professors.
—Subprime mortgages: He’s going to propose that lenders be required to tell homeowners 60 days in advance if they’re in danger of defaulting, among other steps.
I'm waiting to hear more about what Governor Spitzer has promised for the environment next year. There haven't been much in the ways of rumors on that except for the George E. Pataki park re-dedication.
Or get a ticket. He's had tickets on the windshield of his car for the past two days, for not paying the meter in front of the Capitol:
Honestly, Jay Jacowitz is ignorant when he thinks the Attorney General won't get a ticket for parking his car without time in meter. They'll ticket even god's car in Albany, much less any car that has any kind of police identification (they hit those first thing every day).
I've seen the Erie County District Attorney's car ticketed too, among many other big time politicos. I'm surprised Andy Cuomo didn't have it parked under the Million Dollar Staircase, where the really important people park.
Jacowitz goes on to say that Cuomo wasn't driving it today, so it's not really his fault.
In case your hanging around Albany wanting to know what those license plates you see on official cars, here's a brief description of the numbers:
License Plates: Without Any Other Text
This system was set up by the legislature in 1959 in response to Governor Rockefeller who insisted in having a car with the #1 on his plate, to show his prestige. After all, he was a Rockefeller.
The legislature shortly there after created their own system of allocating license plates. They every 2 years give out license plates—two series, one series for NYS Assembly and one series for NYS Senate based on seniority.
Assemblyman Gottfried of the 75th Assembly District, for example has a license plate that reads: NYS Assembly 1 as he's the most senior member of the Assembly this 2007-2008 session.
Second cars can have license plates such as NYS Assembly 22A. At the end each members' term, he must return the plate to the DMV, and if they where re-elected in about a month they will get a plate with a number reflecting their new senority.
Some people over at the Brad Blog have a rather strange conspiracy theory claiming that electronic voting machines where rigged to favor Hillary Clinton over Obama.
As you may know, Hillary beat Obama 39% to 36%. Less then statistical significance in polling—they basically tied. While pre-election polls showed Obama pulling way ahead of Clinton right before the election, there are a lot of good reasons to think the pre-election polls and even exit polls where wrong, and the DRE machines that many voters used where totally correct.
Clinton supporters may just be less open about their support then Obama and Edwards supporters? Nobody is required to reveal their votes if they don't want to. That's what right to a private ballot in a primary is all about. Otherwise, New Hampshire would just have a caucus. At any rate, the difference between Clinton and Obama New Hampshire was within the margin of error of exit polling—around 3-5% error is statistically insignificant in most polling.
Sometimes, I think states should peruse a new policy on elections. If the election is within 5% points, the winner should be selected by the toss of a coin. That would be more democratic then splitting hairs over very close votes and fighting over tiny flaws in the system. When an election is this close, it's clear that whoever is elected will represent the wishes of the absolute majority of people or a very significant portion of the people.
I have a hard time believing any grand conspiracy about DRE voting machines. Sometimes DRE will fail or be inaccurate, but there is little evidence that they are any more unreliable then any other voting technology. Paper ballots have been known to get lost as have ballot boxes misplaced, even with the best chain of custody procedures, done in a bipartisan fashion. We all know how Democrats stole several town seat boards in Colonie simply by improperly programming lever machines.
Voting is only as good as the people running the election—often 75 year old election inspectors who are less then aware of what's going on around them.
The reality is that in any election, except maybe for a few local elections, there are so many voting machines and interested parties with eye balls on them that hacking them is nearly impossible. Trust me, Democrats don't want to give votes to Republicans, and Republicans don't want Democrats to get votes. Particularly in our super-heated partisan world, people really care about the accuracy of voting machines one way or another.
Regardless, I tend to think optical scan machines are better for our county. They are mechanically simpler, more durable, and less prone to failure. Optical scan machines are likely to last for generations, unlike touch screen voting machinesthat are likely to be tossed within a decade. Long-term costs should be studied more—and that would prove scantron voting is the best way to go.
People have more confidence in paper, even though you can certainly make paper ballots disappear or change the marks on them. I'm sure that people will find ways to steal close elections on paper too. But those occasions will be very rare, and not representative of the whole American system which is one of good accountability.
There has never been a major election in the United States in recent history, where it has been proven that more then 5% of the votes where outright stolen. And remember, if it wasn't for some questionable vote counting in Chicago in 1960 and quite possibility in some districts in Texas, John F. Kennedy would have never been president.
Election stealing is a proud American tradition. It's just more fun when your guy steals the election.
It looks as though Barack Obama has picked up the endorsement of the previous contender for the President by Senator John Kerry.
I think that's great for him. I'm really starting to warm up to Obama, even though I tend to think that John Edwards would have been a far better candidate President had voters in early states gave him more consideration.
Without question, Obama is a truly inspiring person. He has many interesting positions on the issue, and as time goes on he has gotten a much more progressive tone. I'm thinking about supporting him when it comes to the New York Primary, or I may stay with Edwards just as a protest vote.
It's not that Hillary is also a great candidate. It's just that I'm far more inspired by Obama then I am of Hillary—bar all the previously nasty things I said about him, being a coal and nuclear boy from Illinois.
At the end of the year, the UN's mandate for the US to be in Iraq will expire and there is some thought that this will mean the US will move more into a peace-keeping function rather then a fighting-function against terrorists.
Stephen Biddle, an informal adviser to Gen. David Petraeus, spoke at the conservative Heritage Foundation this week. Up until just a few months ago, Biddle was deeply pessimistic about the prospects for success in Iraq. But he now says Iraq is at a turning point.
"If current trends continue and if the U.S. government continues to play its cards right, I think we could be within reach in the next 12 months of something that looks like a reasonable approximation of a nationwide cease-fire," Biddle says
I sure hope that we can reach a peace in Iraq. Nobody wants to see even another one of our boys dying tin this war, although realistically it's going to happen. Let's minimize the destruction of our rural (and urban communities) by this seemingly unending war that continues to kill and destroy with little reason.
Maybe 2009 will be a year of world peace. I pray to go every night, that we can find peace.
It looks like within the next six years, all people born after 1964 will be required to get Real ID cards that will ensure that their ID cards are legitimate and that they are who they claim to be.
We will see how much of a burden this will be to the average person. It's good they are excluding the elderly, as we don't want to deny them the right to drive just because they are older. I think most states already have most of the steps in place for real ID to make it relatively easy for most Americans.
Of course the civil libertarians are concerns. My attitude is more wait and see, and find out what the actual result of such a policy will be in the future.
