Dear Mr. Assemblyman

by: davesnyd

Fri May 28, 2010 at 09:06:05 AM EDT

I'm not saying "for sure" I won't. But that's my inclination right now.

I'm frustrated with Albany and while I think you're a good guy, I also think you're part of Albany. It's hard for me to judge how much you're trying to fix things from within and how much you're part of the problem because you live in that culture.

There are some things that you can do to convince me to carry your petitions. I'll talk about them after the flip: but it really boils down to: what are you going to do to fix New York State?

President Obama visits Buffalo.

by: Adama D. Brown

Fri May 14, 2010 at 18:35:28 PM EDT

Whatever the reason, with only one previous POTUS visit to Buffalo in the last decade, President Obama's decision to make a short stop here caused quite a bit of stir, and brought out media from all sorts of outlets this side of the Finger Lakes.

Soundpolitic Sundays: Ready Aim Fired Edition

by: Soundpolitic

Sun Apr 25, 2010 at 15:13:20 PM EDT

And you've just met the boss.  He's exiting a boardroom, wearing athletic sweats.  You look at him, he looks at you, and you introduce yourself.  You express your thanks to be working in a fast-growing firm, your respect for the man who built up the business, and appreciation of the rewarding challenges thrown your way.  You extend your hand to shake his...

Now imagine your boss's response is to turn his back on you after asking you:

"You're not afraid of guns are you?  A lot of us carry guns around here."

In this weeks' edition of Soundpolitic Sundays, I'm telling this story for the last time as my excuse for missing last two weeks.  The rest of the story and its moral lies below the fold...

Republican candidates to address Tea Party rally?

by: simonstl

Sun Apr 18, 2010 at 08:59:21 AM EDT

At the end of a piece in the Daily Star about a the Norwich tax day protest, I find:

Later Thursday, Chuck Pinkey of Otego said another Tea Party Protest will be held at River Valley New Holland in Otego on Saturday, April 24.

Among those to speak that Saturday will be state Sen. James Seward, R-Milford, and two Republican congressional candidates, Richard Hanna of Barneveld and Christopher Gibson of Kinderhook, he said.

I'll be curious to see how this balancing act goes.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood Visits Rochester

by: Congresswoman Louise Slaughter

Fri Apr 09, 2010 at 17:02:57 PM EDT

High speed rail will revolutionize New York and our nation's transportation system. It has been a dream of mine for decades, and it was one of the very first things I worked on when I was first elected to Congress. Unfortunately, America has fallen behind countries in Europe and Asia that have developed high speed rail systems that dwarf our rail network in both coverage and speed.

Election, please?

by: simonstl

Wed Mar 31, 2010 at 22:56:57 PM EDT

I guess the Governor must be busy with something else. I know it's budget season, so he might be a little distracted, but CapCon reports that a "soon as possible" special election for the vacant 29th Congressional seat has turned into "no final decision has been made yet".

Why the delay? Well...

We have some serious concerns about the financial impact that a special election could have on the county level.

As WGRZ notes in a more comprehensive piece that explores the political landscape:

Paterson didn't raise those issues last year when he called special elections to fill vacancies in two other congressional districts.

I can't find any sign of counties worrying about the extra costs a special election would impose on them, but maybe they're communicating that privately to Paterson? Or not.

Perhaps it has something to do with Republicans actually having a candidate (not, in my opinion, an especially strong one, but at least not Randy Kuhl) while Democrats are still hunting? Or the fact that it was a minor miracle Massa won in this district?

Thank you Governor Paterson, for leaving me cynical once again about your motivations. I'm sure the voters of the 29th Congressional District will be even more eager to elect a Democratic representative if they're left with any empty seat by a Democratic Governor for a few extra months.

Some Stability for the Upstate Economy

by: simonstl

Tue Mar 30, 2010 at 21:50:03 PM EDT

Well, at least it's a contrast to the rest of the country and even Downstate. The New York Federal Reserve put out a report (569KB PDF) called "Bypassing the Bust: The Stability of Upstate New York's Housing Markets during the Recession".

It turns out that most of Upstate's metro areas avoided the bust, and a few - Ithaca, Albany, and Glens Falls - managed to have a boom without a bust. Downstate, and in much of Connecticut and New Jersey, the metro areas are all boom and bust. (We're not Michigan or Northeast Ohio, either, which is largely a sad no boom plus a bust.)

Their abstract will hopefully lead you to take a closer look at the report:

Over the past decade, the United States has seen real estate activity swing from boom to bust. But upstate New York has been largely insulated from this volatility, with metropolitan areas such as Buffalo, Rochester, and Syracuse even registering home price increases during the recession. An analysis of upstate housing markets over the most recent residential real estate cycle indicates that the region's relatively low incidence of nonprime mortgages and the better-than-average performance of these loans contributed to this stability.

Now if only someone would buy the amazingly renovated house next door to mine.

(Thanks to Mark Thoma for pointing to a Wall Street Journal piece on this. They both show the national map, which is worth exploring.)

Upstate needs reponsibility

by: simonstl

Sun Mar 28, 2010 at 17:00:52 PM EDT

[I've been working on this for a long while, but NYCO's brilliant Why there will always be an Upstate provoked me into finally posting it.]

When Republican lawmakers propose Upstate secession, they're usually arguing that it's for the cause of freedom, to get Upstate out from under the heel of those dreadful Downstate progressives. I've sympathized with the need for separation, but come at it from a very different angle.

Upstate needs reponsibility. It's way too easy today for Upstate politicians - the very people who push these secession bills - to point their fingers Downstate and say that the City is the problem. The scary part here, of course, is that granting that responsibility would give power to the folks who've been dodging responsibility all these years, but...

We are - Upstate is - a declining place. Our demographic trends have not been kind, as industry and opportunity left a place whose geography was no longer special. We are stuck in a strange world of hoping that Wall Street bonuses will be big this year so we don't have to cut 10% of our teachers, but have only limited abilities to find alternate approaches. We need to simplify, but are trapped in a place that still thinks of itself as the Empire State. All that remains of that imperial dream, really, is a still-triumphant Empire City.

Why there will always be an Upstate

by: NYCO

Sun Mar 28, 2010 at 13:48:08 PM EDT

Also today in the NY Times is a series of editorials on "Can New York (State) Be Saved?"  Upstaters' hackles may rise at this particular response, but in truth we've seen this attitude before, and I'd rather spend this diary considering the real "truth about Upstate" as it relates to "The City."

NY-28: Rep. Slaughter's Office Vandalized in Lead-up to HCR Vote

by: Soundpolitic

Mon Mar 22, 2010 at 13:27:27 PM EDT

Brick thrown through window in Slaughter's Falls office

NIAGARA FALLS - The "Slaughter Solution" on health care isn't the only thing that has come under attack in U.S. Rep. Louise M. Slaughter's world this week. Sometime early this morning, someone threw a brick through the front window of her Pine Avenue office.
::
The brick put a hole in the outer-most window at the office at 1910 Pine Ave., but did not damage a second interior window, police reported. A piece of broken brick believed to have caused the damage was found at the scene.

It was right-wing talk radio hosts who distorted her role by framing reconciliation as the "Slaugher Solution" as the vote approached.  The same hosts who many Tea Partiers cite as the inspiration for their movement.  It was a Tea Party listener, I guarantee who did this.

I fear this is only the beginning.  Vandalism is violence...I expect this will get worse.

I hope I'm wrong.

On Selling Paranoia, Or, Conservative Emails, Examined

by: fake consultant

Sat Mar 20, 2010 at 01:32:08 AM EDT

That's a handy thing if the "Covert Alarm Locator Apparatus" in your Isaac Daniel® Compass Global 1000 GPS sneakers should happen to fail and you need to find your way back to where the rest of us are; sadly, not all voters are equipped with such a helpful worldview.

Luckily for them, there are lots of conservative "mouth organs" ready to fill the "information gap".

They send out lots of emails every day, spreading their Word, and as a public service I receive several of them; this to help keep track of just what's out there, exactly.

If you ever wondered why otherwise normal people believe some of the craziest things about "Obama's Secret Death Care And National Virgin Sacrifice Program", have a look at some of the things I get every single day, and it might all make a bit more sense.  

Erie County Homegrown

by: Nb41

Thu Mar 11, 2010 at 12:18:08 PM EST

After all, there are lots of "homegrown" things - and as we move on into the future, making as much of the energy needed for us to live as close to where we live will become increasingly important. That's just one of the consequences of "Peak Oil" and "Peak Oil Exports" - more and more people will be bidding on stagnant or decreasing supplies, forcing prices up, and requiring a lot more blood, sweat and/or tears to pay for oil and oil products, like gasoline, diesel and kerosene (jet fuel). And as for electricity...well, exporting money to import electricity, or fuels to make that electricity may also be a huge burden to our economy, for similar reasons. And as most know, it tends to get cold (not as much so as in the past due to Global Warming, but cold enough to freeze to death); staying sufficiently warm is not only life or death, but also a matter of quality of life.

State Parks: As Bad As It Seems, It's Likely To Get Worse

by: Norbrook

Sat Feb 27, 2010 at 18:56:51 PM EST

The fine print says this list "assumes $4 million in park and historic site fee increases that will be identified at a later date, and the use of $5 million in funds from the Environmental Protection Fund. ..."

What this means is that the current list of closures  is a preliminary one. It assumes money will be available that right now isn't available.  That means that the closure list could grow.  As I pointed out in an earlier diary, that's not the entire story.    The Department of Environmental Conservation runs a system that would be called a major park system in any other state.  The division that operates and maintains that system is slated for an 18% budget cut, and will have 80% of the slated personnel cuts for the Department.  

Not only is the parks situation worse than you may have thought, there's a chance it could be even worse.   Even though some parks may be saved, the overall picture for state parks still does not look good.  The future for many of them is a bleak one.  

Another WTF Moment from Massa

by: Roatti

Fri Feb 19, 2010 at 15:50:44 PM EST

"Eric Massa, elected to the Congress in 2008 for the first time from a rural district in Western New York State, has become one of the foremost advocates for single payer national health care this year. Together with John Conyers and Dennis Kucinich, he was present to lead every event organized by Physicians for a National Health Program and the Leadership Conference for Guaranteed Health Care. And, when it came time for the Congress to vote, Eric Massa was one of just two progressive Democrats - the stalwart Dennis Kucinich was the other - to vote against the House health care bill because it failed to provide real reform of our crumbling health care system

I can only think of two motivations for Massa to vote against the HCR bill.  The first is, as he claims, the desire for purity.  Sure, we'd all like a single-payer system.  But that just ain't gonna happen right now.  To vote against the fairly progressive house bill is just stupidity because if we pass HCR with a strong public option, it sets the stage for single-payer the next time we revisit the issue.

The second motivation is one Massa would never admit- that he was elected in a squeaker last time and he is scared to vote for the huge Democratic agenda (also see his vote on the energy bill).  This may be the case, but we'll never know.  

But the point is that both of these motivations are stupid.  Even giving him the benefit of the doubt- that his motivation is purity- shows he has a sad detachment from the reality of governing.  For both Healthcare and Energy, we replaced Randy Kulh in congress to get Randy Kuhl's voting record on the Democrats' agenda.  Not cool.  And using your opposition to the Democrats' agenda to raise money?  Perhaps it's time to start looking for a primary challenger for Massa.  

Throwing Our State Parks Off A Cliff

by: Soundpolitic

Wed Feb 17, 2010 at 17:53:59 PM EST

It appears that in order to "save money," Governor Paterson has, behind closed doors, slated a slew of State Parks for closure.  Not to diminish the effects of these proposed shut-downs across the state, but rather to illustrate how each closure affects each individual New Yorker, one of these knifings stabbed right at my heart.  Albany Times Union columnist Fred LeBrun brought this to my attention this past Sunday in a piece entitled State Parks Make Hit List:

Two lists of possible state park and historic site closures made necessary by Gov. David Paterson's proposed 2010-11 state budget finally have been prepared by senior staff at the Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation and the governor's office.

::

Say goodbye to the venerable John Boyd Thacher State Park in the Helderbergs, for example, as bizarre as that sounds. At this point, it will take extraordinary measures to save it. Once closed, who knows when it reopens?

Emphasis by me -SP

For more on how this hits home for me personally - and therefore, how this is important to everyone in our State - click "There's more..."

The APA - A hint of collusion, and out of control?

by: Norbrook

Thu Feb 11, 2010 at 14:42:40 PM EST

Last month the Glens Falls Post-Star had a series on some of the problems, which show why this attitude exists.

We love parks - as long as we don't have to pay for them

by: Norbrook

Fri Feb 05, 2010 at 07:43:44 AM EST

Gov. David Paterson's proposed state budget calls for $29 million in spending cuts at New York's 35 historic sites and 135 state parks, including Moreau Lake State Park and Saratoga Spa State Park in Saratoga Springs.

This is just the latest in a series of cuts.  Over the past 18 months, the parks budget has been cut by 40%.  In addition to the cuts to the Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historical Preservation (OPRHP), the Department of Environmental Conservation is also looking at more cuts.  

$151 Million in Federal High-Speed Rail Funds are a Victory for New York

by: Congresswoman Louise Slaughter

Thu Jan 28, 2010 at 12:05:14 PM EST

I worked very hard during the last year to convince the Obama Administration that making high speed rail investments in Western New York was smart. So I was excited this week to learn that President Obama will direct $151 million dollars for New York as a down-payment on a larger project to connect cities across the country with new modern rail.

This announcement in high-speed rail funding is a huge victory for New York. High-speed rail will bring thousands of new jobs to New York and it will connect Upstate to New York to Cleveland and Chicago to the west, to Toronto and Montreal to the north and make travel across the state much easier. In short this is good for New York's businesses, workers, universities, partners in trade, and it's good for the environment.

"Be A Leader" or "A funny thing happened to me on the way to my Town Committee meeting last night"

by: davesnyd

Tue Dec 15, 2009 at 08:34:03 AM EST

No, I don't think I particularly want to name them. What I said to them is more or less mostly appropriate to say to pretty much every member (or at least every Upstate member) of the Legislature from both parties.

I've thought about what I said-- mostly, while I had been thinking of these issues for a while, the comments themselves were more or less impromptu.

I have a good friend who joined the Bureau a couple years ago. One of the things he says to his kids when they start misbehaving is "Be A Leader". If I had to sum up what I feel our Legislators and Governor need to do right now, that's it: Be A Leader.

On The Futility Of War, Part Two, Or, Twelve Times The Charm?

by: fake consultant

Tue Dec 15, 2009 at 03:56:40 AM EST

Just like in a Cecil B. DeMille movie, we have a cast of millions, we have epic scenery, and we have made acquaintance with someone who will go on to perform a heroic act.

Unlike your typical Hollywood production, however, this movie is not going to have a happy ending-in fact, you could make the argument that it's not over yet.

So wrap yourself up in something comfortable, grab something to drink...and when you're ready, we're packing up and heading to the Alps.