The Hayseeds blog, No. 166 for the week starting July 16, 2006.
July 2, 2006
Hayseeds No. 165
July 16, 2006
Hayseeds No. 166
July 23, 2006
Hayseeds No. 166
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That's in case your a Republican in denial or live somewheres under a rock far outside of Gillibrand's (future) district. That's great news for all of us who don't particularly like Representive Kickass.
Kirsten's people seem to be far more careful about how they are spending their money, focusing on high-value media markets and not on frivlous parties for volunteers or massive campaign advisors. People respect Kirsten and they give because they think she's a good candidate.
Yup, Kirsten gets some big checks from good friends of the family or support the work done by her high powered lobbyists. She also gets a lot of small donations, and less from the kind of interests (which we in many cases don't like) that donate heavily to Republicans.
Will this mean she wins? It's hard to tell as it's such a heavily Republican district (2-1 Republicans), but if it going to happen then this will be the year. Remember, many people who are registered Republicans aren't so die hard that they won't go for a reasonable Democrat like Kirsten.
It looks like Ken Runion, Town Super of Guilderland won't have anything to do with Albany's proposed landfill expansion into the Pine Bush, with Altamont and New Scotland also charming in with similiar sentiments.
Why this all matters is:
Ken Runion was blunt about the city's motives:
Runion also questioned the city's commitment to the environmentally sensitive Pine Bush, saying Jennings is more focused on getting new dump space so the city can continue collecting millions in dumping fees.
And the city acts like they don't really give a damn:
Pulling out as a customer of ANSWERS would put a dent in those millions, but Runion said the mayor's office was silent after the town's refusal to sign the lobbying letter. "There hasn't been any reaction at all," he said.
It's interesting to watch the politics here. We have Guilderland and it's village Altamont bucking out both partly suburban and partly rural towns (but big enough to play tough with the big city). Guilderland's supervisor is Democrat and New Scotland's supervisor is a Republican. Bethlehem is with the city, despite it so-called progressivity.
The much healther and trimmer John Faso beat Eliot Spitzer yesterday at the Boilermaker Race in Utica, probably one of the few races that Spitzer will be losing in this year. It's great to see that Faso is in such good shape to beat Spitzer who runs every day.
It looks like Jonathan Tsansi has enough signatures to get on the ballot to challlenge Hillary's claim to the Democratic nomination. While we all know Hillary's going to challenge those signatures and will ultimately win in the primary, it's good to see the issue of the war being brought up.
The fwalling liberal Republican running against both conservative Republican John Spencer and ultimately Hillary Clinton should she win the primary, held a really expensive fundraiser for all her rich friends. We now know where the real roots of the Republican party lay and where most of the money comes from.
It looks like he's on the ballot, though not with the support that Andy Cuomo got 4 years ago in his failed bid.
Daghlian said Suozzi filed 33 “volumes” worth of signatures, with 4,811 pages that each have room for 10 signatures. So, at most, he has 48,110 names. But that’s nowhere near official, since it’s not yet certain whether each page is fully filled out.
For the sake of contrast: Andrew Cuomo filed petitions that included more than 100,000 signatures back in 2002 to force a primary with former state Comptroller H. Carl McCall (which he then quit one week before primary day).
Suozzi needs a minimum of 15,000 valid signatures from enrolled Democrats to force a primary with frontrunner Eliot Spitzer, with at least 100 names from each of 15 of the state’s 29 congressional districts.
So we will be hearing about Tom Suozzi and Fixing Albany for a least a few more days.
We are increasing general fund spending nearly 30% over last year, over the 15% general fund revenue increases they project for this year. Overall when you consider items outside of the general funds, the whole budget increases spending 10% or 3 times the rate of inflation.
Debt continues to increase. The Supplemental Budget added $1.8 billion in new debt, bringing the total amount of new debt authorized in 2006-07 to $16.5 billion. The State is directly responsible for $11.8 billion of this amount. With this additional $1.8 billion, outstanding debt could increase to nearly $65 billion, or 33.9 percent, by 2010-11.
See the TU Blog on this subject.
Patricia DeAngelis said "so if you live in Melrose, you have an emergency, your child is in danger, and a Level 3 sex offender responds to your home to help your child, there's nothing you can do but to refuse emergency care for your child. This is the law."
As you might guess, volunteer firefighters don't like being called child molesters particularly when she was referring to one person who didn't even live in the Melrose fire department much less a member of any volunteer fire department in the county.
So we have to wonder what would happen should DeAngelis have a heart attack or had a house fire? Would the fire department / ems respond or would they be afraid of being called a child molester? Patricia DeAnglis is eventually going to do herself in with her cocky attitude far worst then the destruction she has already done.
See Page 1 and Page 2 of Dominic Passella's letter from Upstream.
While all the Republicans who like John Sweeney are claiming it's a sham, Mr. Brodsky is asking some interesting questions about funding and the conduct of some elected officals at their yearly junket in Lake Placid.
To be clear, it makes a lot of sense to promote Lake Placid and all the Northern Adirondacks offer to people with lots of money to come for a weekend or two. Too many people are choosing the warmer state of Florida over more traditonal vaction places. It also would be great to get the Olympics back another time.
Yet, we have to ensure we aren't using the event to be a fundraiser for Sweeney at taxpayer expense through questionable state agencies like the Power Authority underwriting the whole junket. Not to mention, it's awful convient for people like Broadsky to use it to tear down Sweeney and build up Gillibrand.
In our latest episode of extreme speeding, the husband of child-molestation obessed Jeane Pirro was pulled over going very fast on I-95 in New Rochelle.
You don't think the cops won't pull you over for going that fast anywheres downstate? You have to wonder why Jeane Pirro hasn't been able to do more to control her felon husband lately. At any rate, it looks like Al Pirro will get his license suspended for exceeding 40 MPH over the limit which was 55 MPH.
For those of you who live North of the big city of Albany and commute here everyday, really ought to check out the new commuter buses down into the city, and leave your truck home. The price is pretty reasonable when you figure the cost of gasoline, not to mention the additional years and fun you'll get out of your vechicle by not commuting.
Down south here, I only have to drive half the way to the big city then I take the Voorheesville Express about half of the time to the city. The only thing that's a bit tricky is it only leaves the city at 4:15 and 5:15—and I get out of work at 4:30 PM.
The reality is that this service is not particularly new, it's just that they've replaced the dirty old Upstate Transit Buses with some thing quite a bit nicer and are really promoting this service as an alternative to driving.
These kind of services promise to reduce our fuel consumption and help deal with the big global warming problem if people use them. After all—think about where you burn the most fuel in your truck. It's not going out and getting wood in the backfield or going to the supermarket to buy cheap beer.
While this ain't really news, the Nebraska Indepdent gives some rather sombering statistics, like that 88% of all farm income is earned off-farm and that the average farmer drives 31 miles each way from his farm to find work to pay for the farm (at $3/gallon for his truck).
"The reason they do that is because the farming business is not profitable to support a family unit," Hansen said. "The folks that grow the food and fiber for us, nationally on average, do not make enough to afford to buy the groceries to feed their own family."
So we are subsidizing food production through farmers working multiple jobs off-farm because we don't want to spend government money and we want our food ultra-cheap when we buy it at Walmart.
He said the divide between the wealthy and the poor is also evident in rural America, especially as more and more of production agriculture is falling into the hands of fewer and fewer people.
"There are people who can dip deep in what they have and others are wiring jobs together to cover living essentials," he said. "But we find that true across the country in both urban and non-urban areas."
More also in the University of Nebrasaka-Lincoln study.
According to Ron Canestari it looks like Jack McEneny will not be primary Jerry Jennings for the State Democratic Committee as Jennings has announced that he will not continue his re-election bid to the committee.
This is very fascinating, but shows how people can work out disputes beyond the scenes and get things done without a factionist primay. Politicans hate primaries and they don't like dissenting factions that could weaken our party.
On the other hand, as Assemblyman Bob Reilly notes we all generally agree on some principles, and when people work hard enough and build their base, they should have been given their ado. Sometimes the old don't want
It looks like part of the I-95 tunnel concerete ceiling panels started coming down on Monday, killing one driver and causing lots of problems for many others in Boston who depend on the now massive underground Mass-Pike to get from place to another place.
Those of you who like John Stouffer, want to see a Democratic House, or just simply care about the environment and happen to work at the DEC or somewheres downtown and get to the parking lot under the bridge by the Corning Preserve Boat Launch ough to go and going Kirsten in getting the Sierra Club endorsement:
Kirsten Gillibrand, congressional candidate in NY-20,will be meeting with area representatives of the Sierra Club on thebanks of the Hudson for an important announcement. There will be abrief speaking program beginning at 12:00 pm that includes Q&A. TotalSierra Club membership statewide is 45,000 with 4,000 residing inupper Hudson River valley - national membership is 800,000.
I'd love to go but I'm going to Rachel Krester for City Criminal Court's campaign stragity meeting at that exact time. Still, it's geat to help out Gillibrand who will unseat Sweeney and we will have progressive leadership from Greene County through Essex County.
The League of Conservation Voters is doing a fairly generic letter writing campaign on the subject of Global Warming.
It's basically a feel good letter that wants: new energy technologies that create jobs and build our economy, more fuel-efficient vehicles that reduce our reliance on oil, cleaner power production that reduces greenhouse gas emissions, and caps on global warming pollution.
Global warming and the decline of fossil fuels is a concern, particularly as we are burning up more and more every year. We can make policy choices that regulates the biggest polluters without having that much of an impact on our everyday life. We can also build infrastructure that allows people to commute to cities without having to drive so darn far.
It means that only Gillibrand is left to take on Sweeney, meaning that there will be no primary and Kiristen can focus all her efforts on the all-important winning the 20th this November.
"Today I am announcing on behalf of myself and on behalf of MorrisGuller that we have jointly and individually decided to abstain fromfiling our required nominating petitions to run in the DemocraticPrimary for the U.S. House of Representatives in the 20thCongressional District in order to give our colleague, KirstenGillibrand, an unimpeded opportunity to be the Democratic nominee tochallenge and replace an incumbent who has, in our opinion, become theworse sample of representative government in the history of ourcongressional district and someone whose voting record has proven tobe counterproductive to the needs and desires of the citizen who livehere."
I'm glad that those men chose that, not that they would have enough signatures to have forced a primary.
Mayor Jennings last week came out with his latest grandous plan to turn around the Capital city's economy. It focuses on meeting the names of local but usually big businesses in the area, and how the city can better serve it's need. It also makes a token effort to include educational leaders but most of it is just businesses.
So the roughly 40 business presidents, a person from Harriman State office Campus Redevelopment, and 3 educational presidents make up the committee. It does not contain any government leaders despite the fact that it's the Capitol and government is the biggest employeer. There is one racial minority represented on the whole board.
It's not perfect, but it's mostly intended for the city to get information from big businesses and their relation to the city. It's not ment to be a community forum on the future development of the city, and we must vigrously oppose any attempt by the Mayor or others to take such powers out of people.
See Dan VanWripper who calls this just a plan to further suburbanization and ignoring our urban parts, DIA'S thoughts on the issue and also this other DIA article.
With Lithium Ion batteries it gets up to 120 miles range with a maximum speed of 85 MPH (faster then most of us would want to drive a pickup truck), is going to be converted over by Altair Nanotech Corporation-Beserhert Technologies partnership.
The price ain't cheap at $40k for a pretty basic Ranger truck that you can pick up for around $13k at your local dealership if you don't mind putting in a gallon of gasoline for every 25 miles or so you go.
It looks like the Westchester Assemblyman known for his committee on Corporations and Authorities couldn't give a kidney because he has a kidney problem of his own, but his son was lucky enough to get another one donated to him.
It's great for him and his family. It also highlights the need for people to donate their organs, making sure to check off the mark on their drivers licenses and telling their loved ones about their plans. You never know when your going to do something really stupid with a chainsaw or a tractor, and you could really do something good for somebody special. Pull out your driver license now.
It looks like the chiropracter Dr. Merrick who happens to live in Plattsburgh offically announced his plans to run for state senate. His district consists of most of the eastern North Country from Clinton and Franklin Counties down through Essex, Washington, Warren, and Hamilton County. It's the biggest Senate district in New York State.
Does he have a chance? Probably not with Little's very rural district and the fact that everybody loves Betty Little, but he seems like a nice person. You can find out more at VoteMerrick.com.
