The Hayseeds blog, No. 158 for the week starting May 21, 2006.
May 7, 2006
Hayseeds No. 157
May 21, 2006
Hayseeds No. 158
May 28, 2006
Hayseeds No. 158
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One of the blogs I've been reading lately known as Northview Farm Diary from out around Amsterdam has an interesting link to a website called Best Food Nation that proports to give people some insight into the agriculture industry.
Of course, the site is super applogetic to all the tatics used by big business, including screwing farmers just because they can and it makes more money. Like it or not, agribusiness has become more consolidated over the years and there simply is some farmers who refuse to use best or at least reasonable pratices in their farming techniques.
Yet, don't dismiss it that easily. Read it carefully, and while one could wish for more details and balance, it's still something to ponder for a bit.
I really wanted to go but it looks like getting the two days off of work after memorial day simply isn't going to happen that I would need to attend the Young Dems convention that runs the same time as the Committee's convention. I will be at the 2008 Democratic Convetion come hell or high water, and I'm going to the YDRC one out in Jamestown next year (late May or June as it ain't a state election year) where it won't be as frigid at Itahca in March.
For those who are interested in the main show there, the Attorney General's race it looks almost certain that Cuomo will get the 50% and become the offical party candidate going into the primary in September. Mark Green or Denise O'Donnell could stil get 25%, but that's unlikely if you count county endorsements. For fans of Sean Patrick Maloney, if we want our guy on the ballot, we will have to do some walking and getting signatures.
It looks like somebody a few miles from the Columbia-Rensselear line hit a moose with his Volkswagon Jeta, fortunately surving only with injures, though the both the moose and the car were totaled. Very lucky, as moose are big animals and hitting them is sort of like hitting a Clysdale horse minus the strong legs.
It's good to see that we are now starting to see more moose around, though they are still pretty rare throughout New York. It is particularly surpising to see them this far south as most of them are up (a couple of hundred) in the Adirondacks.
At least that's the perspective that the paper has taken in an article on Sweeney's toughest battle against Kiristen Gillbrant whose going to win back another seat for Democrats.
The NY City Councilman from Asotria Queens, is talking about his resolution to have NYC succeed from the rest of the state citing the belief that it would save the city money that he claims is being spend upstate.
But Vallone says the split would be good for the city's economy. He blames Albany for what he calls the city's "bad financial condition," and he cites the three-and-a half billion dollars in taxes the city pays to Albany but isn't returned in funding.
No, it doesn't have a chance of even passing in New York City, much less in the state legislature and the US Congress.
That blog links to some interesting resources on wind farms, one from wacko Nina Pierpont's We Oppose Windfarms Website, and another one at Daily KOs that purty through on things.
Dennis Aprill takes a look at two different proposals in the state legislature, one more desirable then the other.
They are the AB 1815 / SB 1536 which would allow 14 and 15 year olds to participate in the big game gun season with adult supervison and AB 1835 which allows counties to regulate trapping.
Fourteen- and 15-year-olds would have to have junior big-games licenses; currently, according to the council, "New York state is the only state that does not allow 14- and 15-year-olds to have junior big-game licenses. There are 26 states that have no minimum age for big-game hunting."
Sounds like a good way to stem the decline of hunting in New York and the out of control deer population that's killing people and destroying cars left and right in collisions, and farmers who are having their crops increasingly destroyed by booming deer populations.
There is a disturbing political move going on, also in the State Legislature. Assemblyman Alexander Peter Grannis (D-NYC) has introduced a bill that permits county governments to regulate trapping, and not the DEC. This is apparently a back-door way to get trapping banned in some counties. There are problems with this. First, DEC has professional wildlife biologists who know more about animal control than most, if not all, county politicians.
County legislators are scary people and they work largely behind the backs of their consituents. As Aprill states, most county legislators don't know dirt about conservation. And can you just imagine the mess this will make for trappers and ECOs who are suppost to be enforcing all these county laws?
I tend to think AB 1835 is a joke that doesn't have a chance of passage. Yet, we have to always be on guard for similiar legislation being slipped through that will do similiar things.
AB 11283 would elimate the statue of limitation on Class B Felony Rape along with a similar statue of limitation in the civil law. Unless the Assembly keeps the statue of limitations on the tort, the Senate won't even consider giving victims the right to procecute the offenders years later.
You think about it, victims need the money more then they need vegence over some old sex crime. People who commit crimes should be punished, but they first and foremost should make resitution to the victim. Locking up an old sex offender probably won't do that much to protect the public, but the private benifit from a tort action can be great.
The reality of it all is that it is an election year, and sex offenders get a certain group of right-wing Republicans a certain feeling in the pants (when they aren't having fun in the barnyard).
You can get out and vote today for or against your school budget, and for board members today. Conservatives have been raddling around with the question: does your vote really count?
As relatively few people vote in school elections, it seems your vote could throw the election either way. Yet, that ignores all of the state mandates on local school districts that give board members little power or control over spending. Too often school budgets become little more then referendums on funding for music and sports programs that build character and prevent crime and juveline delequency.
The reality is the difference from austerty to voting up the budget only works out to a couple of dollars a year. Still, people are now regularly voting down budgets in New York, as school taxes are unaffordable and students parent's are having to pay more and more for extra-curricular activities, hurting those the most who can afford to pay for it less.
We need better unfunded mandate control from the legislature. There are so many good causes out there, but they need to use more restraint. It is great that the state gave schools record funds this year, but schools shouldn't have to drive people off their lands.
The Blue Line regulating district is cracking down on those who worked in cohorts with Dan Fitts on their little picture trading ring up in Ray Brook, NY.
"Last summer, I violated the Adirondack Park Agency's computer policy when I used an agency computer to forward one e-mail that I received from an individual who does not work for the agency, which contained inappropriate images," McKeever said.
"I take full responsibility for this sophomoric action. Working for the Adirondack Park Agency is a dream come true for me. I sincerely apologize for my lapse in judgment and any negativity it has caused the Adirondack community.
"This experience taught me a very valuable lesson, and moving forward it is my intention to commit my full effort to the betterment of the park."
Everybody—collective sob.
Well now this mess is over, and hopefully the Adirondack Park Agency can work on pulling it's reputation out of the gutter. The people over that the Property Rights Foundation had a real field day, as did everybody else up in the park who find the APA regulation extreme (despite the neccessity to protect the park).
The great people over at Save the Pine Bush are having their great monthly lassana dinner. The topic of the year is garbage and expanding it into the more desirable part of the Pine Bush where the last half a dozen Blue Karners sill live.
The speaker tonight will be Bill Bruce, head of Albany Department General Services and Jennings hack. He claims to like visting garbage dumps on his city-paid junkets or vacations as he likes to call them. He's pretty devoted to the topic of garbage.
So if you want to have some awsome lassana, and want the scoop on what happens to your garbage after you drop it off at the transfer station in Albany County, then stop by. More information on activistresource.org.
First off, I want to congradulate Brian Levine on his victory in the Albany City Library Board. All of his volunters worked pretty hard to get him elected. He will be a progressive offical who will do much to make our libraries a better place to go, across our county.
A lot of school budgets passed and a few failed. Record state aid meant that every budget in the North County passed, while a few of the biggest spenders in our area failed. That's impressive with all the new costs our schools face—from diesel fuel and heating oil through mandated step increases for teachers through sufficently funding pensions.
The morals of yesterday is that while more state aid helps, schools need to use restraint. Only the state has control over unfunded mandates, and more importantly broad-based taxes. The state should be paying for everything it mandates, and ultimately the budget should only be a resolution on what is to be spent above and beyond mandates.
Property taxes should only go up when voters choose to add programs, not just because somebody in the Education Department (in coherts with Assembly and Senate Education) decided that it's best for the kids of New York. There is some talk of all these things from people like Assembly Cahill, but will there be reform—that is unclear.
Another possible, but unlikely reform is to change how schools budget things. Aren't voters smart enough to vote on an (relatively) itemized school budget? Why must sports financing be on the line as teachers salaries and bus maintaince? There are some cases where we do get to choose specific things where they involve borrowing (like buying new buses or building expansions to schools), but hey are too infrequent.
It looks like Pataki in cohorts with the state legislature have a new record in state spending increases.
Once limited to exotic people and a few state agencies like the DEC's building in downtown Albany, it seems that many of the new Battery Park City apartments will be either LEEDS gold or platium. Neat, very neat.
Those Industrial Development Authorities being set up across the state have given out well over $400 million dollars with little oversight, often to businesses that later fail or lay off employees.
Sounds like were giving alcohol and a sports car to teenagers. Tax breaks are good as is developing business, but there needs to be some kind of accountability—though we can't make it too hard for businesses to participate. Otherwise businesses will just go to other states where it isn't so hard to get tax breaks.
Take a look at two bills that would reform things: SB 7391 / AB 10787.
And the driver goes through the windshield. Our friend Jeff Hoffman from the YDA Rural Caucus and the 80-55 Partnership sent over the story on a lot of young rural males in their pickups don't use their safety belts.
Umm... Yes. I always use my seat belt in my truck except when I don't. I always use it when off-roading, in snow, and in traffic as it provides a lot better control. On the other hand, I don't always use it at night or when I go out to Western Massachussets (with their secondary enforcement law), as I care more about not getting a ticket then worrying about driving off an empty road.
Two lanes and other rural roads are purty dangerous. Yet, seatbelts can be pretty annonying if your constantly getting out of your truck, but they can save your life. Then again, do you want to survive the impact of a crash at 55 MPH? Ouch.
At any rate, the feds are urging states to pick on pickup drivers who don't where their seatbelts.
So what does one do in Saint Lawerence County, besides complain about your neighboors burning trash? Well at least for students at Potsdam that means picking up arms and fighting for the Republicans.
That's good for them. Militancy certianly catches the public attention and raises the stakes on issues, and gets people involved in politics. Yeap, these are just a bunch of crazies with guns in the Northern Adirondacks, still it's great that people are doing political things in college and fighting for what they believe is right.
We will ignore Part 364 of the Education Law for now. And maybe they'll shoot Don Hassig and all the other yahoos at the rather delusional Cancer Action NY. Oh, did I say that outloud?
Does Albany want to adopt a model of mass-sprawl, deep poverty for thousands and thousands of people, and a community controlled by corporate aristocrats from other mega-cities? A study by the proponents of Tech Valley seems suggest that there are grave flaws in the Tech Valley model.
"We had tens of thousands of young people graduating from high school who studied all the wrong things and were never going to be candidates for those positions," said one person in the study.
So it's a whole lot jobs for already rich outsiders who want to invade our communities and tell us how to live our lives. Sounds like fun. Why can't we be the society of quality of life rather then big industry? We are already going that way, as long as we aren't derailed by some radical right-wingers like Joe Bruno.
It looks like the mega-retailer is in cohorts to use county government to condemn some people's farms to build a roads to a supercenter in Florida (ie. that warm sunny place known for it's flat land and big toxic dumps).
The GroovyGreen Blog from some people out in Ithaca has some interesting ads by the right-wing Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) that argues that CO2 is not a pollutant. Watch those ads, as they show what the far right in our country wants you believe—and laugh.
Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant like anything else is not a pollutant in excess. The same kind soot from woodstoves out in the country, released in the city from diesels and other vechicles dirties everything. Yet, it's not a problem out here. Hot water isn't a pollutant when in small quanties is dumped on the ground, but put in streams in large amounts it kills life, and so forth.
We all need carbon dioxide, but not in such great quanities that it's killing us. Carbon dioxide is essential for plant life, but we don't want so much that it's piling up in the atmosphere and trapping in the sun's rays.
I don't think Exxon-Mobile (the big back of CEI) has much to worry about this issue, as it seems that we won't be getting away from oil too much even as our awareness of energy consumption makes us reduce our usage. Not to mention as oil is coming harder to find, prices will continue to sky-rocket as will big oil profits.
Biofuels, hydrogen, wind and alternative energy are great to study and to roll out there use as much as possible. We need as much of that as possible, as soon as possible, but it seems that for quite a while the majority of our fuel to power our pickup trucks and four wheelers will continue to be oil from the ground. That's unfortunate, but that's the best our technology can do now—but we must push for change.
See also Working Families coverage on this.
It looks like our favorite Republican Assemblyman from the North Country is now out of the race, after getting a job from Pataki on the State Parole board. It's a pay raise and doens't involve running for election, but who on hell would want to deal with disgusting criminals everyday?
Well, the reason he took the job is that he knew he would lose in the primary to the much more conservative Clinton County Treasurer Janet Duprey, and in the general election to our guy, the young and intelligent Andy Brockaway. Certainly he must be happy not to be running against the incumbent who has done almost nothing for either Clinton or Franklin County.
Who do you think is better for the North Country? A man who has been a union construction worker, one who supports the creation of a real state ATV fund and the building of trails across the state, who is young, progressive, would be in the Assembly majority, and do great things for the North Country? Andy Brockaway. Or one who is a far right Republican whose only experience is County Treasurer? Janet Duprey.
Bernie Basset almost won against Ortloff, and his work will pay off this election. Andy Brockaway is our man, and he will win.
Well according to the TU's Capitol Blog, if you happen to be going to the convention or are a poor resident of Buffalo downtown, every dog-gone ad reminds you of Spitzer and his promise to bring some passion back to Albany
. Spitzer and his campaign committee is very, very rich to say the least. Who doesn't want to give the next governor money?
I so wish I could go to Buffalo, but I simply can not afford to miss two day of work after the long Memorial Day Week. It's going to be so cool. In 2008 I will be out there, but by then we will have Spitzer as governor, and things won't be the same.
