Local political thoughts

If you support a progressive agenda, then support a progressive candidate.

It's been said that a gaffe is when a politician accidentally says what he really thinks. Local Republican Congressional candidate Sandy Treadwell made such a gaffe recently. At a campaign rally, he reportedly said, "I'm all about grass-roots politics. That's the way it began 23 months ago...."

That might seem innocuous until you do a little math.

23 months ago was December 2006.

December 2006 was a month BEFORE Treadwell's opponent, Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand, had even been sworn in as a Congresswoman.

So that means that even before Gillibrand had started her job, Treadwell had decided she was going to be so bad at that he had to replace her. He didn't even give her a chance to be a bad representative for a single day to determine that she was going to be a bad representative.

I realize that Treadwell is hardly the only politician who puts personal political ambitions before anything else, but most are smart enough to couch in it some thin veneer of public service.

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Queensbury is probably the most establishment Republican town in this area. Not the most conservative, but certainly the one most in bed with developers who want to pave over or put a housing complex on every square inch of the place. It is also the town most hostile to both non-automobilists and civic participation in government.

I wrote earlier about the miraculous appearance of actual sidewalks on the town's portion of US Route 9, though a reader corrected my mistaken impression that the town had built them. It was actually the state.

People who speak at town board meetings are treated as troublemaking interlopers, especially by the town's belligerent supervisor Dan Stec. Stec is the heir apparent to the area's late congressman Jerry Solomon, another loudmouth contemptuous of real public discussion who served as Queensbury supervisor.

But Stec is not the only powerful Queensbury official contemptuous of residents.

A group called Citizens for Queensbury is pushing for a sidewalk or multi-use bicycle-pedestrian path on Aviation Road adjacent to the Aviation Mall. Of the many places in Queensbury where it's suicidal to be a pedestrian, this location is near the top of the list.

However, town planning board chair Chris Hunsinger thumbed his nose at the group, dismissing Citizens for Queensbury as 'an ad hoc group of like-minded people putting forward their own agenda '

So what?

Isn't that what we need in this country? Wouldn't it be better if more people got off their butts and tried to make their community a better place? A government not controlled by developers should welcome civic participation. Such a government should welcome input from people who will actually be affected by their decisions. Or at the very least, such people shouldn't be spat upon by people like Hunsinger.

No wonder Americans are increasingly apathetic about the state of our democracy. Whenever they actually try to be active citizens, they're treated like a bunch of barbarians crashing at the gate of the castle where only the know-it-all government officials are permitted.

What Chairman Hunsinger should learn is that the people who comprise Citizens for Queensbury are residents of the town just like him, they pay taxes just like him and their voices deserve to be heard just like him.

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One of the most interesting local political blogs out there is The Ballot Box by North Country Public Radio's Brian Mann. The primary focus of Mann's reporting and blogging is the dynamics of rural politics.

A recent entry reveals a lot about the largely unseen hand of corporate media conglomerates.

The Saranac Lake-based Adirondack Daily Enterprise is the only daily newspaper published in the Adirondack Park. I check out the paper's website most days. What makes it interesting to me is that, like NCPR, the Enterprise's content and focus is resolutely local. It's not a generic media outlet that tries to be everything to every body. It's an Adirondacks' media outlet reporting on Adirondacks' issues.

At least that's what it usually does.

But an editorial run in the paper endorsing John McCain calls that into question.

The reason?

Because the paper did NOT actually endorse McCain.

The Enterprise's managing editor explained that daily's editorial board could not come to a consensus on which presidential candidate to support so it endorsed none of them.

Yet an editorial ran in the paper encouraging voters in 'our area' to support the Arizona Republican.

The editorial was written by the daily's corporate owners... based in West Virginia.

A small byline indicated that it was written by 'Ogden Newspapers Inc.' But it was still labeled an editorial, not an opinion, thus giving readers the false impression that the local daily agreed with this position.

The Enterprise's editorial line is typically middle of the road. I wonder how the paper's editorial board feels about having endorsements shoved down its throat by distant corporate masters claiming the local region as their own.