The Hayseeds blog, No. 164 for the week starting July 2, 2006.
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Hayseeds No. 164
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It looks like AARP lobbyists (mean old people :) took a S-10 pickup truck and filled it up with pill cases and parked it next to the LOB last week. They hauled all those bottles to Silver and Bruno later in the afternoon.
That's probably one of the better uses for pill bottles that aren't taken for recycling locally as they are made out of polyproplene no. 5 plastic. I know some people use from BB gun targets, and they certainly get well pecked up from them, though also causing some rickshaying of bbs. At least they aren't vinyl so if burnt they won't likely kill cows grazing nearby.
At any rate, SB 696 and AB 5574 didn't pass this session, so it looks like bulk purchasing is dead for this year. It sounds like a good idea, but the drug companies hate it and will do anything in their power to kill it.
It has been rumored that GM is working on a hybrid the can be plugged in to ensure batteries are charged and cut down on the time you have to run the engine.
Sounds like a good idea, though we have no idea how much battery time we get, what kind of vechicle it would go into. The only major downside is electricty ain't free and the generation of power is often dirtier (with all of the loss energy) then power provided by a gasoline engine.
It looks like the Supreme Court overwhelming felt that Vermont's tough limits on campaign spending clearly limited canidate's ability to communicate a message.
What will be the impact of the Capital Region getting a chip fab? Everybody keeps pointing to Austin for an example, but we should look closer to home in Burlington, Vermont.
Why Burlington? Burlington region is area is about half the population of the Albany area, but is similiar demographically and politically. Both are heavily democratic voting and liberal cities surrounded by more conservative countryside. It also has several colleges, progressive political organizations like Democracy for America, a beautiful lakefront with views of the Adirondacks. And the University of Vermont has research facilities similar to UAlbany for nano-technology.
When IBM Burlington opened in the mid-1950s it rapidly became a major employeer of the area. It provided 10,000 jobs in Burlington-suburb Essex Junction (in 1950 that was roughly 30,000) or roughly one job for every 3 people living in the greater Burlington area. Some IBM workers lived in Plattsburgh and took the ferry to commute over.
It also spurned several other businesses in the area to spring up. IBM was good to it's employees, and many former chip-fab people I know in Plattsburgh got their education paid through IBM. It was a really big thing for Burlington, and it was a big loss for Plattsburgh that was competiting for the chip fab.
Yet, that was 1950s not today. Things aren't as rosey in IBM Burlington today. Three years ago they laid of 2,000 employees continuing it's decline. They recently hired 165 people back, but many of the sub-contractors for IBM closed down. So things aren't as good as they once did.
Burlington's strength is in it's diversity and many things. IBM Burlington helped the area out greatly, and AMD Malta will do similiarly, but we have to balance it and ensure that we develop the Capital Region. Don't expect a sprawling Malta like we saw down in Austin, Texas. Expect a few more jobs in Albany (1,200 to be exact—far less then Burlington IBM), but mostly the staus quo.
See Burlington Free Press on IBM Burlington 50 years later.
The Sentencing Project, a far left organization that focuses on how criminal justice screws black people, has a report on how methapetamine use has been blown out of proportion in the media. They point out that the facts show that it is relatively few people use meth and it effects to urban and suburban communities are relatively minor.
The big problem with meth isn't that it makes people crazy and violent or that meth users rot out their teeth. There are plenty of urban schizophrenics with those problems, along with effects of more common street drugs like crack and cocaine that have similiar effects.
The real problem with meth is the unregulated use of dangerous chemicals by crazy people that can cause big explosions, release toxic fumes, and burn people pretty badly. It's also that meth users are breaking into people's farms and stealing anhyrdous amonium and putting it into poorly cooled and poorly pressurized containers, causing accidents on farm.
Randy Dickinson of the Father's Rights Coalition, those people who oppose the tyranncy of family court judges, got the ire of Shelly's counsel and the state police who were rather upset about a news story passed around about shooting a Family Court judges with the JFK quote of "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."
I'm sure that wins over a lot of friends of legislators, particularly those who already are unfriendly to Father's Rights. So he got a knock by the state police, which later applogized for their harrassment over a silly email:
Another officer showed up at 10 a.m. the next day and interviewed him. The officer, Dickinson said, found no crime had been committed, and told him "it was a little absurd for him to have even been instructed to look into the matter." Dickinson said he believes the case was closed.
Dickinson explained the policy memo as:
Dickinson said he was just trying to make a point the group has communicated in the past to legislative leaders, that "they cannot continue to ignore our issues and refuse to provide any relief or accommodation, without encouraging violence from those more inclined to express their frustration and anger in that manner."
Well, that kids is an example of a lobbyist stepping into a sticky cow patty and getting it on his shoes. You have to wonder how he could be so dumb, though I guess people get purty passonate about their politics.
It looks like higher corn prices are having negative effects on cattlemen who depend on buying cheap corn to keep their cows fed. This is a problem that almost anybody can forsee with the greater use of corn.
Something like 90% of the corn produced in our country is being fed to cattle and similiar livestock right now. We also seem to have more corn then in many cases then we know what to do with thanks to subsidies keeping corn artifically low.
Ethanol is starting to take a lot of corn out of the market or at least threatening to do so. We need oodles of ethanol to meet oxygent requirements with ETBE after MTBE. Some people are able to get cheaper gasoline with E85 blends. But it's only a drop in the bucket compared to all that corn feeding people's cows.
Hopefully soon we will find alternative sources of ethanol like woody brush and encourage more people to get into the corn growing field. Too much farm land is not being used and is undervalued. And I don't know about it nationally at the big feed lots, but around here most people don't use just the corn on the cobs ground up for their cows, but give them chopped sillage (whole plant) in the winter and fresh hay in the summer.
It looks like Ford is doing the right thing with the next generation Ford Ranger we've been waiting to see for a long, long time. Previous Ranger updates since the 1980s have mostly been style-related, but now the new Ranger gets a new power plant and a slightly larger frame.
The good news is Ford is not going for the mid-size pickup truck market, keeping the Ranger compact while modern and competitive to the bigger mid-size trucks. A smaller truck is easier for off-roading and will use less fuel. Many of us want bigger trucks, but certainly not all of us. Smaller truck constantly sell well, although certainly as well as full-size.
See this PR from Ford on Ranger in Thiland and this Overview of the New Ranger.
Maybe. That's what the shocking news from National Academy of Science, who is suppost to know what's happening, despite all the pressure from the Bush administration to do the contrary.
Although that fact might be alarming (some dispute them of course), the predicted growth of CO2 in the atmosphere over upcoming decades is even more alarming—many are talking about doubling carbon dioxide emissions within a decade or two. We need a lot more electricity theorically over the next few years, and that means more big coal plants (unfortunately!). We don't really know what all the effects of higher CO2 in the atmosphere, though warming and a change of plants that grow in higher CO2 levels.
We have to be careful what we do to address CO2 emissions.
We have to keep them in perspective with far more hazardous air emissions from our massive factories and automobiles that zip around massive cities. Acid rain eating our buildings and killing our fish, ozone eating our lungs, and chemicals causing cancer being spewed out in massive amounts. We still dump a lot of raw sewage in our waterways, and massive hazardous waste dumps not cleaned up .
The other danager is we will do the wrong things to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Nuclear power produces a whole bunch of nuclear trash that we don't know much what to do with. Dumping CO2 in the ground from burning coal doesn't fix the problem, it only causes us to continue consuming energy and tearing up more of the earth to get it.
We can make a difference by careful and meaningful conservation. We should seek increases fleet wide for our autos, not particularly picking on pickup trucks and other large vechicles—they should see no more of a precentage increase then more efficent ones. We should work to find ways to build compact communities, mass transit, and the alike. Remember, the reason we use so much fuel is not because some people have big trucks or leave the lights on in the barn, it's because we have a society so dependent on cars to commute to work and go to the store.
It looks like the US Supreme Court will be deciding weather or not the EPA can regulate global warming, possibly one of the important decisions of the next term.
It looks like Tom Suozzi is pretty critical of those Democrats who are embracing religous voters. He makes some good points about Democrats being distracted by acid-ammesty-abortion and ignoring the core issues:
Suozzi's explanation of precisely how Democrats had lost their way boiled down to a general lack of focus on "values," and what he called excessive discussion in both parties of moral issues such as gay marriage, abortion and the death penalty.
He said Democrats should focus on "common sense," values-driven issues such as jobs, education and taxes.
I tend to agree with him fully on this issue. Most of us aren't ever going to have to deal with getting an abortion, being executed, or getting a gay marriage, at least unless we choose to do so. We should ignore other people's business, and focus on real issues that hurt us every day.
This year will mark the 50th anniversy of the biggest and safest high-speed highway system in the world, the Interstate System. Thursday is 50 years from when Eisenhower signed the Interstate Highway Act into law.
It's a lot like the great wall of China in the way it divides our communities into multiple areas, but it's far more significant in size and importance to out modern society.
| 1956 | Current | |
|---|---|---|
| U.S. Population: | 168,903,031 | 293,655,404 (2004) |
| Annual Vehicle Miles: | 627,843,000 | 2,829,336,000 (2002) |
| Federal Gas Tax: | 3 cents | 18.4 cents (last raised 4.3 cents in 1993) |
| Registered Vehicles: | 54,013,753 | 135,669,897 (2003) |
| Registered Trucks: | 10,678,612 | 94,943,551 (2003) |
Pretty impressive. The environmental impacts of the interstate have been massive in many ways both pro and con. These roads have cut emissions in urban areas and made cars move fast, but also allowed many more cars and trucks to get around. Interstates literally have divided whole communities in half, splitting fertile farm land and mountains into two.
It looks like WNY's largest employeer, GM and parts supplier Delphi are using early retirement and other downsizing methods to cut down the employement.
GM has had a lot of problems lately. Their trucks are their main market, and until recently they've kind of ignored the car business they way they should be doing. Towanda, I believe, makes Silverado engines so they still have a strong market, but their plant is relatively old and difficult to compete despite their goal of zero-waste they engaged in recently.
Bill Hammond in the Daily News had this to say about the massive taxpayer subsidy to the proposed AMD Malta:
On behalf of everyone here at AMD, one of the world's leading computer chip makers, I want to extend my heartfelt thanks to you, the people of New York, for your generous gift of $1.2 billion.
Gov. Pataki, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno gave me the great news last week - not long before they told you, I guess (oops!) - and I haven't been able to stop grinning since: You, the working stiffs of New York State, are going to help us, a wealthy mega-corporation, buy a shiny new factory.
If someone had said to me that average New Yorkers - the cab drivers, the home health aides, the bodega clerks - would chip in part of their hard-earned paychecks to help us millionaires get even richer, I never would have believed it.
Part of this feeling is by people in other parts of the state who feel like they aren't getting any of the benifit from the chip fab, but it certainly is a bit of a corporate giveaway to say the least. There is no real promise of getting anything back for all the money we are pooring into AMD.
The game of smoke stack chasing has gotten dirter over the years, with us giving out more money to companies (or the pratically equalivant of free money in the form of tax breaks). AMD is getting $500 million in raw cash, with the rest being subsidies like tax breaks and roads for a superwealthy corporation.
The new jobs are nice. They won't be as big of an effect as IBM Burlington, a far larger facility employing about 6x more people in a community of half as many people, but it will still be meaningful for a limited number of high tech people (many outsiders) and janitors in the Saratoga-region.
Let's hope they follow this all up by cleaning up the river, and making our quality of life better. High-tech only works if it's matched by a quality society as we see up in Burlington. That city is a real awsome place, in part because of IBM but also because of the lake and the outdoors mall, along with all culture. We need progressive politicans to do the right thing.
The first gay mayor in New York State, has offically resigned from his post over the City of Plattsburgh and is now encouraging the city council to act quickly to pick a new mayor.
With Democrats controlling the city council, they will probably choose one of their own guys, hopefully Democratic City Chair Kevin Duniho. There is no rush despite Stewart's wishes as if they appoint somebody after September 22nd, he has a whole year and a month to get in and change government before going before voters.
Before we all start pointing our fingers at that mega-retailer we all love at least in covert, there seems to be a hell of a lot of politics behind the death of the bill that would have required big stores and other non-industrial and non-agricultural businesses to pay for health insurance.
Despite what some say, I suspect it was the unholy alliance of people fearing the precedence that bill would create such as requiring small business, almost broke manufacturers, or farmers to provide insurance. Those fears might be irraional, but it certainly was convient for conservatives who generally don't like government regulating business excessively.
It looks like Joe Bruno and his closest 500 political friends are going to be having a big party to celebrate AMD coming to Malta. Ain't that nice?
This money won't be coming directly from taxpayers but from Bruno's campaign finances which certainly contain some AMD money that will be reimbursed by $1.2 billion New York Taxpayers are giving him.
I like food and BBQs. Maybe I should move to Saratoga County and become a Republican. After all, the Albany Democrats no longer have the County Pinic at the fairground. But, then I would miss the Democratic Rural Conference and the State Committee with all it's good food. Shrug.
It looks like the Democratic Governor of Monatana had some nice things to say about our governor, guns, and gun control. We might not have all the best people in our party, but we have some good ones.
It looks like at least for city residents, they can haul some of the more toxic materials to the city transfer station and divert a few of them from being dumped with garbage in the city dump.
Items that will be accepted include aerosols, antifreeze, pesticides, asbestos, driveway sealers, fire extinguishers, propane cylinders, gasoline, herbicides, swimming pool chemicals and computers and monitors. Syringes and needles will also be accepted, although those items must be placed in sealed metal cans.
Unacceptable items include explosives, ammunition, biological wastes, radioactive materials, pharmaceuticals, infectious waste and regulated hazardous waste.
It's a good idea, as many of those things could leache out as lechate into the aquifer that the dump sits on top, when the 60 ml poly cracks and the bentonte clay cracks and proves not be a waterproof as one first thought. We have to be particularly scared of things like monitors and television sets that are loaded with lead in dumps, mercury, and certain old pestides (although note the collection day specifically excludes all pestides including dioxin or predicates to dioxin).
The scary thing is the rest of the year, most people aren't going to be bothered to seperate those things out from their trash (and this all assumes Albany residents have cars to drive to Rapp Road). It might only be a small amount, but when 200,000 people put small amounts of toxins in their trash it quickly adds up.
A group like Swift Boat Veterans for Peace, formed by the same group of Republican interests now has a new group, Vets for Freedom. It's interesting to hear another perspective on the war, whether or not you agree with it. Certainly many of the right wing commentators agree with it.
That's my solution to putting the consitutional admendments on banning flag burning and gay marriage. You have to wonder why people are even bothering with these admendments except to distract certain select segments of the American public on the issue of the war and our terrible economy.
I don't see why anybody really cares about either of those two things. Some people burn flags, and while it might be offensive, so be it. That's their first admendment right. Not exactly a pressing concern, and plenty of people burn things far more noxious then cotton or polyproplene.
I'm more concerned with the President stopping all over the consitution and the flag with his recent actions. Much like the flag, the consitution is a hunk of paper that burns purty well, and is only as good as the people behind it holding it up with pride.
There is a really good editorial on ATVs and snowmobiles in national parks and the realization of a need for a balanced policy.
As the editorial notes, hikers do a lot of damage in senstive areas where their tracks in the mud dig deeper and deeper. Pickup trucks and 4-wheelers do damage a lot quicker, but the problem is the same. We have to make sure we don't chew up the most purty lands around, but also ensure that we don't get too upset about ruts in the woods.
Dan Weaver reminds us of our state's last attempt to bring industrial development to the Capital Region, the fiasco of getting SuperSteel and all of the failed promises that it involved.
Nobody is complaining that we got Supersteel to come and they are giving people good jobs in and around the Schenectady-area. It was in a sensible location, in a city and in an industrial park. The real problem was the bungled way the state funded it and how it overplayed what it was going to be:
Does anyone remember how Governor Pataki and Senator Farley said Super Steel was going to revolutionize the Mohawk Valley. It’s difficult to find information on how much was spent to get Super Steel of Milwaukee to build a factory in the Scotia-Glenville Industrial Park. The link to the press release in August of 1997 on Governor Pataki’s web site no longer works. No wonder. New York State’s relationship with Super Steel has been an embarrassment to both the State and Super Steel.
The State not only provided millions of dollars in loans, gifts and tax relief to Super Steel, it signed a 187 million dollar contract with Super Steel to refurbish high speed trains. The high speed train deal was a fiasco for the State, Amtrak and Super Steel. The State has a lawsuit against Amtrak for pulling out of the deal. But the State itself pulled out of the deal, paying Super Steel five and a half million dollars for doing so.
We should welcome AMD to our area. Yet, we have to be careful how we finance it and be reasonable on how many jobs will be created for local people. We also need to be critical about developing Luther Forest and how it will encoruage suburban sprawl. Just keep thinking of IBM Burlington in 2006 as the analogous to AMD Malta in 2006.
The man whose going after now-retiring Sherry Bolhert's seat got a big push when Hillary asked her big-time supporters to kick some money his way. Good for him, we need every additional Democrat back to take back Congress.
They ran an interesting editorial last week claiming that no good comes out of burn barrels and that the recent fires in Champlain show that people can't be trusted with matches and should find a few more bucks and time to haul trash off to the dump to be burried forever. Certainly that would make ol' Castella Waste Systems happy like they were able to force through the Vermont State legislature several years back.
Today the Interstate Highway System turns 50 years old with the signature of President Eisenhower.
The Interstate Highway System is truly a superhighway system. It allows you to cross the country without a stop light, magically wisking you from place to place by massive high speed ramps on and off the highway. It has minimum safe design speeds of 75 MPH in urban areas and 85 MPH in rural areas in a modern high speed car of the 1950s—today's cars theorically could be even driven faster on superhighways.
The system is the safest highway system in the world. By hopping on an Interstate Highway you more then half your chances of being killed in an auto accident. It also was intended to replace all state (toll) superhighways, with a free highway built to interstate system standards. For many of us that is still a bit of a sore spot.
Interstates are standardized, and are prohibited by law from having resturants or anything beyond a few vending machines at rest stops with bathrooms. For everything else, you have to get off the interstate system. Old state superhighways were grandfathered in and are allowed to have more exotic foods.
There is a certain kind of sadness about the interstates. They cut grand gorges through the land and mountains, spliting towns, cities, farms, forests, and anything else in their way into two. They did a lot to make it easy for people to commute long ways to city, encouraging sprawl.
The interstate system is also lonely and boring. You bypass all the towns and never get to see the people or all the little farms that you would pass on the local roads. The Adirondack Northway is so beautiful but you really miss the Adirondacks when you got to Plattsburgh.
It looks like the Supreme court while striking down minority delusion of voters in the Texas Redistricting, also stated that state legislatures can redistrict when ever it's politically advantageous, as long as it more then every 10 years to reflect population differences and the redistricting reflects the political make up of the state legislature. That means that most likely the lower Texas courts will be drawing the redistricting lines for this year and then the next session will draw new lines.
Closer to home in another big state of New York, it should be interesting to watch. What would happen if the State Legislature went Democratic this year or in two years with Spitzer as governor? Would they have enough self-respect not to redraw the lines? Or would it just become standard pratice for redistricting to happen whenever power shifts in a legislature.
At any rate, as some of the justices state it now means that district lines will more accurately reflect the political will of the state as a whole. It also means that state legislatures have gotten more powerful and who you vote in to state office will have more of a national impact. If those Texans want to send Republicans to Washington so be it. Certainly my friends over at the Dallas Young Democrats might dispute that though.
They have a really good editorial in yesterday's paper on why it was a good thing for McEneny and Breslin to put the brakes on undedicating property from the preserve.
This op-ed is fairly balanced, noting that we really must take a serious look into what we are giving away before we do it. Yet, it's also about a week and a half late with the Daily Gazette beating the paper with a far more clear editorial on the facts of dumping garbage in prime Pine Bush.
I took a walk in that part of the preserve last Saturday, particularly on the city's parcel that they want to dump garbage on. It goes right up to the state parcel, and the land the city owns is still pretty nice Pine Bush despite the fact it hasn't been burnt in a long time.
Let's hope they do the right thing and make sure to keep on their toes 24-7 to make sure that happens.
Remember those comments I mentioned last week by the governor of Montana on our fine governor and gun control? I have found the interview by Democratic Montana Governor Sweitzer on how he sees gun control and the relationship to our party. Most interesting was his remarks about representing the interests of his district and his people over some other party interest.
Diversity is our party's greatest strength. As I've noted many times in the past, gun control in the boondocks is a bit different then in the big city. People tend to frown on people riding quads and sleds in the city, not to mention playing with fire. We are different people but with some common interests. The thing that bonds us together as Democrats is our committment to social justice, to doing the right thing, and helping out people across the whole great country whether or not they live in the city or in Rural America.
Read this interview. It is worth your time.
Fairly close to home it looks like the Pentagon may be spying on UAlbany students for their anti-war activties:
he list of activist groups monitored under a secret Pentagon program is growing. The Servicemembers Legal Defense Network says the Defense Department has admitted to spying on "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and anti-war protests at several universities: the State University of New York at Albany, William Paterson University in New Jersey, Southern Connecticut State University and the University of California at Berkeley.
De-classified documents show the government intercepted the students' e-mails and planted undercover agents at at least one protest. The government also refused to confirm or deny whether it had spied on activists in the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender community. The disclosure marks the latest case of known government spying under a secret domestic intelligence program, which has also targeted the Quaker movement and other anti-war groups.
Interesting. Talk about a waste of government resources and taxpayer harassing students for having political beliefs. There might be a terrorist planning to commit a horrific act right now, but all they have interest in some silly students.
Well, we've got even more today after getting it the previous days. That means more problems for farmers and loggers, along with some really bad flooding and tragities across New York.
Remember how last week Vermont and the counties on the other side of Lake Champlain in New York were all declared agricultural disaster areas, allowing some farmers to collect a couple of bucks in assistance from government? No or little corn planted by farmers means buying expensive feed from other areas.
It's a mess all over, particularly in Central New York. If you were watching the radar on Tuesday, you could see the rain just stuck over that area. Ithaca got soaked and some roads were washed out there particularly along the Sequahanna Valley, closing most of I-86 and parts of US 17.
Potentially more tragitic was what happened out in the Mohawk Valley that closed 117-miles of the Thruway and put Fort Plains and bueaitful Canajoharie under some water, along with doing some serious damage. 50 feet of I-88 collapsed leading to the tragic death of two trucker. It's a bit scary to think that any of us could have been then and there and just driven off the road.
Suppostly the Thruway will be open by middle of the day once the water is down enough and people can inspect things. I-88 and the damage to people's houses will take a lot longer to clean up, as will the mess on people's farms across New York and in Vermont.
Our friends over at Groovy Green take a look at how air conditioning change the population boom in our country.
John Faso is looking pretty trim these days. Good for him, as it's tough for all of us in politics to give up eating so much unhealthy food and finding time to do enough excerising.
NYCO's blog does a really good job at keeping up on the mess across the state, including some other good sources of info.
It looks like the AG's office has yet to respond to NYCLU's demand for an investigation, possibly because the future governor doesn't want to appear weak on terror.
For those of you with a real fascination of crime and trials, you can read about it almost gaval to gaval. I think it's a personal matter, and we the public should have no real interest in such a horrific crime, but it's still a bit intriguing.
Did Porco do it? Maybe. Should he be convicted? No. It seems that we don't have enough information and the DA's office should not have spent so much money procecuting him when they don't have proof beyond a reasonable doubt. He's not black and going to be coerced into a deal like some people.
Spitzer is quick to point out the many so-called failings of the state leigslature, that he hopes to fix. He doesn't really go into specifics, so it's a bit like his rhetoric on other issues.
The flaws of the session, according to Spitzer: no government reform, no full disclosure of pork-barrel funds, no new energy policy, no answer to the massive school-funding lawsuit and a questionable 9 percent growth in spending.
Still, regardless of his lack of taking hard positions, it's clear that he's going to be great improvement over 'taki, and things will be better in New York. He's a fresh face, and one who can do the badly needed work to shake things up just a little bit.
Our Lt. Governor has been found a job by George Pataki as yet another appointed federal judgeship by our President, subject to ratification by the US Senate controlled by Republicans.
Regardless of what we all think of New York City, you have to be purty impressed by the new top proposed on freedom tower, that gives it kind of an allusion to the statue of liberty. Very nice.
It looks like our fine President only has about five cattle to show for his big 1,500 acre ranch, showing that our President's ranch is all politics and not much about farming or ranching. I'm sure most of the farmers around here with far more then 5 cows would be more then happy to have a 1,500 acre ranch, even in relatively dry Texas to feed their cows.
That's a bit down from other years which averages at 6.5%, the lowest or second lowest of all state legislatures in the nation. It's amazing how many different ideas are looked at every year, and how many of them ultimately get tossed in the trash.
The TU blog has a nice picture of two carts full of paper garbage that was bills and their assorted memos of support and opposition, off to recycling probably down at Sierra Fibers then shipped to outside of Montreal for repulping.
The Assemblyman from Plattsburgh offically will step down from being an Assemblyman when swears into the Parole Board. That means the people of Plattsburgh won't have an Assemblyman until January 1st when Andy Brockaway is elected the next Assemblyman up there.
It doesn't matter much though to most consituents as he will still have an office staffed by the Republican conference, and session is pretty much over except for whatever comes back. It's not like he got much done, being in the minority. Starting in January 1st with Brockaway things will be totally different.
It looks like the people at the Press Connects say the NY Legislature overspends and is irresponsible. Nothing new here, but it begs you ask this question: what do you really want to cut? Waste to somebody is somebody's treasured program.
The two men who have lead their respective houses for more then a decade, and have more then 30 years of service under their belts have both announced that they will continue in their jobs for the forseeable future.
You have to wonder about Bruno and Shelly's long term future though. Bruno is 77 years old and is certainly ready for retirment. Shelly is 66 years old, and his future depends totally on his relationship with Governor Spitzer in future years.
