The Hayseeds blog, No. 16 for the week starting June 8, 2003.
May 25, 2003
Hayseeds No. 15
June 8, 2003
Hayseeds No. 16
June 15, 2003
Hayseeds No. 16
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Yeah.
Maybe I'm going to go out and go for a drive/hike/whatever this afternoon. I'm taking a wait and see approach.
I do have to call some employeers today, about the continuing job search. :(
It was sunny for a bit on Saturday morning. But it rained all morning yesterday, and wasn't much nicer on Saturday evening.
I know rain is good. But why on weekend when I was suppost to go camping? Good question. Rain is good for the crops, and firebans suck. It's not so great for hiking, and for outdoor activities.
I spent a while, studying some C++ and playing with stuff on my computer. I also did a bunch of reading.
The state's 4% sale tax is now 4.25%, effectively raising Albany and Greene County sales tax to 8.25%.
Which means for every $10 you spend, you'll shell out another 2.5¢ for the State of New York. Or maybe about 3-4¢ for a gas fill up, if you drive a small car like the Plymouth Sundance.
And the clothing sales tax is back—at least for now. The legislature plans to suspend it from time to time. At least the legislature didn't have to force schools to hike the hell out property tax.
At any rate its all in The Record.
School budget votes are on Tuesday.
Yes, and guess what kids, high schools around the state still want to milk the population dry. Some schools are still planning on hiking taxes to increbilous amounts, even though the legislature reappropiated funs to them.
Well, according to the state mandated 'quick budget fact' post card, the consumer price index increased by 1.62% over the past year (ie. the average price that a typical urban consumer spends on the most common 300 things.
Greenville has proposed a budget that would raise property tax by something like 4.25%, or about 3 times the rate of inflation (which is similar to the consumer price index).
Tax hikes are great ideas in recessions. After all, we want to take more money out of the economy, so to encourage it to continue to sour. Recessions are bad times, everybody should suffer equally (I guess).
A lot of the blame goes to Unfunded Mandates, that our State and Federal government loves to impose on schools. Let's help a few 'weaker' minority/handicapped students instead of the majority. Or for frivalous mandates that do nothing to improve safety, like wasteful bomb drills.
Schools should be forced to cut back and live life in the lean times. Hell, it might even be good for the environment—with cut backs, there would be less wasteful Xerox copies, more stuff done double sided, scantrons reused, etc.
But on the other hand, it would mean cutting back programs. More efficent resources is hard to do—it's far easier to layoff teachers and cut programs the public loves. Cut out my heart, bastards, and continue to waste, waste, waste.
Some notable quotes from the Daily Gazette on Sunday:
Jason Brooks, a researcher at the Foundation for Education Reform and Accountability, said the Legislature's intention failed."The intention of the Legislature in increasing funding was to keep down local property taxes," Brooks said. "Regardless, the spending increases that are proposed are just astronomical."
Matthew Maguire, a spokesman for the Business Council, said that in the end, the school districts got the better of the governor, by using his proposed state aid cut to scare the public into accepting the smaller, but still irresponsibly high, tax hikes that will appear on ballots this Tuesday.
At least 20% of schools aren't planning to hike taxes greater then the 1.6% inflation rate. But most of them are in wealthy suburbs that can afford to pay higher taxes.
We all know the state's school funding formula is serious screwed up, and nobody wants to mess with it. I think Pataki's plan for school funding was better, but he should have demanded that schools not hike taxes more then 2x the inflation rate. Unfunded mandates need to be cut.
Once again proving that I've gotten to the point where I don't really like the democratic party anymore.
It seems like the dems brought the same old rethoric and rehashed it, at least thats the spin I'm getting from the TU.
While I'm not a big friend of the Newt 'big-mean' rhetoric of some of the Republicans, I certainly lean more and more to them on many issues. Yeah, probably blame it on my pyromania and AB 5884.
In my experience the Republicans are nicer in Albany then the Democrats. Then again, I tend to be around more of the Assembly Republicans then the Senate Republicans, and people in power, tend to be less nice.
I just can't face being part of a party lead by people like Al Sharpton, Al Gore, Hillary & Co., and others. Liberalism just seems too soft for me, and too full of billshit.
I knew Newsday was a liberal rag, but I didn't think they sink this low.
Don Hassig as some of you know, is one of those nutty St. Lawerence Green Party organizers, who has all those wonderful webpages such as Cancer Action NY and of course Burn Barrel.org.
He's shunned the political proccess, and some how he expects some credibility. Well, I guess hes gotten some. He tries to ignore personal health factors with cancer, and emphasizes environmental ones in a recent Newsday article:
"The cancer prevention evidence supports tobacco avoidance, limited use of alcohol, good nutrition, weight management and age-appropriate physical activity," the plan says. That's all true, said Don Hassig of Ogdensburg, head of the group, Cancer Action. But he said environmental factors are being increasingly recognized as another significant cause of cancers. Even where fatty foods are indicated as increasing cancer risks, Hassig said that could be as much from chemical contaminants that settle in fatty animal tissue than from ingesting the fat itself.
It looks like somebody just needed a story...
I'd figure I'd post a lenghty update, as I have lots to talk about.
Yesterday, I did the Statewatch thing. Attended a lot of committee meetings. A lot of hellish stuff happened yesterday, but I'll spare you the details, and jump into politics. ;)
Is now law. It will actually be probably significantly more then that, for a lot of us.
Before you know it, the total school tax will probably more then my parents paid for the first year of the mortage on my house in 1978 (?). ;)
According to the Times Union, the actual tax increase in the Greenville budget is 8.8%, not around 4.5% as previously stated. This is quite out of whack, compared to other nearby districts (with a few exceptions).
This says something about the efficency of my dear old high school, when it omes to money. Alas, their tax base is sucky, but it can't be much worst then Cairo-Durham or others.
Fred Lebrun wonders why there aren't more taxpayer revolts.
In the negative.
They support the new law that would threaten access rights to ATVers.
So many of these opponets are quick to point out the ruts that ATVs create and some kind of mutterance about the pollution, but one has to question that logic.
Are ruts and mud puddles a serious environmental problem? Maybe they are rough on the undercarages of cars and to the shocks and struts in your car, but I think the environmentalist argument is week. Ruts and mud puddles aren't exactly killing animals or posioning our water supply, in some state forest in middle of nowhere.
Nor is the beautification argument much stronger. The 4 wheeler tracks aren't everywhere, they usually follow some kind of order. You can't go through the woods with a machine, without some kind of trail.
Not to mention, I like hiking along ATV trails—they are easy to follow. Too many hiking-only trails are hard to follow (the grass grows up fast, leaves cover previous tracks).
Air quality seems to be a null point to. Yes, most recreational vechicles stink—especially compared to cars. I'm not sure about smog in Western Albany county per se, or even breathing levels of ozone so thick they burn your lungs. I'm sure this is especially true, when you get out in Tug Hill or the Southern Tier.
I haven't heard of any actions being taken on this bill in either Senate Rules (SB 5703) or Assembly EnCon (AB 5480). I wouldn't be surpised if the Senate bill gets held or dies somehow else.
And thanks to the inguienty of our State Legislature, there will probably be even more beer cans littering our state forests.
It looks like the price will be going up for kegs of beer, and the new registration requirements will go under effect—as the keg bill has bi-partsian support.
So when those two things happen, people will just stop buying kegs of beer, and just getting cans of beer—which envitably will lead to more litter around, and more half-burnt beer cans in firepits that high school and college drinking parties left.
I call this the dumb, dumb, dumb bill. And I see that Joe is going to let us down again. But I guess they say politics is the business of compromise, so if they do this, and solidify their support (and keep my favorite bill down), it's all good.
Can you say 'impoundment?'
From the Times Union on Monday:
Approximately $358,000 in Consolidated Highway Improvement Program (CHIPS) program money, approved by the state Legislature but opposed by Gov. George Pataki, is a particularly large question mark, said county Public Works Commissioner George Nealon.
Well, as the article goes on to mention, Delmar and Voorheesville are a mess with construction. Okay, they weren't so negative. They haven't spent over 40 minutes total sitting in construction around those areas.
Word of advice: if you want to go to Elsmere, go over 335, not Delware Avenue. Expect long delays that way. If you want to go out Route 85/New Scotland Avenue, be patient. Just avoid Cherry Avenue all together. Oh, also avoid Route 140 in Delmar. Also avoid the Route 85A/155 intersection.
Just stay away from Delmar there, if you don't want to be stuck waiting for construction. Or go when they aren't doing construction, between 6 PM and 9 AM Monday-Saturday and all day Sunday.
In slightly nicer words in the Times Union op-ed today.
Face it, MTBE is nasty stuff, and should be banned ASAP. In NY, that means Jan 2004. The Times Union doesn't want that to happen, it's obvious that the editiors like polluted ground water.
Gas stations leak gasoline. This shouldn't be some kind of surpise. But MTBE rapidly posioning ground water is a serious problem, that needs to be disposed of.
So if we have to use ethanol in the gas, instead of MTBE, and it will cost us an extra 20¢ a gallon (or $2.50 a Sundance fillup) or so, at least for now. Well, corn farmers will be happy. Demand for corn should skyrocket.
The best solution, is to remove the Clean Air requirement, that requires oxygents to be in gasoline. Car engines haven't needed them for almost 20 years now, modern engines supply the neccessary oxygen for clean combustion.
So the editiorial wasn't completely wrong...
If you continue to riot around these parts, we are going to send you to prison or use deadly force.
Or something like that. As the bumper sticker says, buy a gun, stop a riot
.
Well, something on IRC got me interested in the history of the riot act. The orginal riot act dates back to British 1715 Riot Act, which as you might have guessed has made it into some form in US law.
Since the 1960s riot laws have gotten a lot stricter, and probably much more fascist. Some states have laws that absolve pigs from all responsibilities during a riot, and greatly increase penalities for a riot.
And you though most people escaped the horrors of learning a foreign language after high school.
Well, 50 people in the House of Representives (or at least their staffs), are taking up Spanish to be more appealing to Spanish voters.
The next really neat DARPA project.
Their LifeLog project attends to monitor people's habits, including what they see, what they watch, and what they hear.
It is a bit spooky, but it should be interesting to find out, how the human mind really works.
That's what your suppost to do with those blog things.
I could go into the usual rant, that this is my site, and I'll do whatever pleases me.
Sigh. Freedom is an illustation, political pressures are everywhere. But I'll try to be half of a straight shooter around these parts, even if I'm being facetious about 90% of the time.
God bless, m-w.com, for teaching me how to spell facetious!
Oh, and if your in Tennesse and on a motorcycle, make it left on red, and straight on red.
As some of us know, accutator plates don't exactly work well with things motorcycles and semis, because they are too high off the ground, or lack enough metal to set them off. Plus, motorcycles are small, and can quickly get through an intersection.
Motorcyclists in Tenneese will be able to make a turn in any direction, after stopping at a redlight, after July first, thanks to a new law. And the people from the 'safety' lobby, are already complaining.
See the Alanta Journal-Consitution for details.
If you love road and highway design shit like I do, then you'll have to check out a few things.
See my neighboorhood online, with Mapquest. God, that's a long url. You can zoom in on my house, if you want—it's the one near the clearly formed S in the Hannacroix Creek, with a U shaped driveway, and the shed and barn nearby. No, things aren't that red around here, that's the special film they use in making topographic maps. ;)
More important, is Iowa's first SPUI in Ames. See, they don't just have cows and corn there, they also have really cool interchanges.
Those who live under a rock, should read up about Single Point Urban Interchanges.
Yeap, Hillary and Barbra was terrorizing America at 7 PM on ABC.
Hillary Clinton is just so plastic, just like Barbra Walters. Totally fake, and giving liberalism a really bad name to boot.
Cartoonist Marquill took a look at Hillary Clinton's book the past week, in the form of a cartoon.
I'm not talking about Kennedy's book though.
The op-eds have been tough on Albany's legislature generated budget, noting the thumbs down it's gotten from fiscal watchdogs.
It's politics, and by there very nature it's gimmkcy, and poor solutions. When you have to get 19 million people (or at least their representives) to agree on something, the results aren't always perfect. Okay, yes, it's just government by the majority, so only 10.5 million people (and their representives) have to agree, but that means compromise.
The governor's budget didn't work. It would have increased local taxes just too darn much. More importantly, it cut all of the fat, and then some off the budget—the members items that makes things run smoothly. Member items supply many important services to communities, and more importantly, keep people in line.
Democracy sucks. It's a stupid game, but seems to work, even if its only running on two-cylnders, and creating tons of air pollution (more on this later). But we get stuff done, even if some of that stuff is pure evil.
Most of it is good though—our good highway system, public education, the SUNY system—not perfect—but good. The City of Albany (and all other cities), is a exclusion to this rule. Sorry, cheap dig.
The Times Union on Friday editorialized about evils of the authorities, those state run corporations, that aren't really accountable to the people.
We are giving lots of money to companies, but the people who created them, the legislator, lacks control over them. That's not a good thing. I agree with the editiorial, that all authorities should have publicly avalible budgets, and explain exactly what their user fees (NEEE TAXES) are going...
Oh no, Andrew might be slightly changing his position on a certain issue, that has made a core issue on this site.
Sounds like fun. I went for a walk this evening, down SR 32, I noted a smoldering burn barrel in one backyard, and in another backyard, kids dumping plastic bottles on to a fire.
Talk about smelly stuff. And don't these morons know about dangers of burning plastics, as burnbarrel.org, ever so proudly notes. And it's not far from my house—I can already see the cancer forming chemicals floating around the air.
Okay, maybe that's silly bullshit, I sometimes like to relgate it to around these parts. I've burned my share of plastic and misclaneous trash. And I still oppose AB 5884 and the alike, because New York State is a big state, and just isn't fair to farmers and a lot of other people.
Lobby local government to change things? I don't really think it's that big of an issue. But it stinks. Plus, is it really fair to impose my beliefs on somebody who can burn stuff, without effecting their neighboors much? I just live in to much of an urban area, or I've become another plastic 'safety' liberal. They must stink to burn.
