Making downtown Glens Falls a gated community

"When I give food to the poor, I'm called a saint. When I ask why they are poor, I'm called a communist." -Archbishop Dom Helder Camara.


So I was reading an article on PostStar.com. It reported on the brilliant idea some downtown Glens Falls merchants have of making people spend money for the glorious privilege of spending money at their stories. 


I made the mistake of reading a few of the comments. The stereotype many have is that the only comments on the PS website are from uneducated rednecks. This is not entirely true. 


Here's one rant: As an educated professional (whatever that's worth), here's my take on Downtown Glens Falls... note to Business owners and Diamond, you don't have a clean or respectable downtown yet. Sorry, but I don't wanna see welfare Tammy and abusive Tyrone with 6 kids smoking cigarettes and arguing in downtown. Out of thousands of dollars I've spent on food and entertainment in recent years, Downtown GF is lucky to have gotten 40 of that. 


That some judgmental rhymes with witch who describes human beings like pieces of trash to be 'cleaned up' doesn't shop here is no loss to the city. Screw her. How does her 'educated' self propose to 'clean up' downtown of these pieces of human refuse? Put a cordon around downtown where you have to show proof of a minimum $35,000 a year income before being issued a laminated snob card and then granted the privilege of entering?

Rep. Murphy will pay for the vote he hasn't cast yet on the bill that's nowhere close to being finalized

A look at today's letters to the editor in The Post-Star (unavailable online except to people willing to pay extra for their pdf version) gives a good hint about why it's so hard to be an elected official today. There were several letters excoriating local Congressman Scott Murphy for supporting the health insurance bill that recently passed Congress, all from the right. That's to be expected.

It was a poor bill, one that did a little good and a lot of bad. And much like the Wall St. bailout, the health insurance bill DID represent socialism, just not in the way that the Tea Party types mean. The bill was a giant giveaway to health insurance conglomerates, which is why I refer to it as the health insurance bill not the health care bill. It is also why that industry supported the bill. The health insurance bill represents corporatism, which is corporate socialism. Maybe the Tea Party types will realize that the fundamental problem crippling our democracy isn't progressives supporting gay marriage but a government run on behalf of corporations and a Supreme Court validating this perverse notion... though I'm not holding my breath.

Criticisms of Murphy's vote on the health insurance bill are legitimate, if a bit misguided. But what's really infuriating is that at least three of the letters criticized Murphy for votes HE HADN'T EVEN TAKEN YET. They criticized him for the climate bill. They criticized him for cap and trade. They criticized him for citizenship for illegal immigrants. I don't believe he's taken firm positions on these issues and he absolutely hasn't voted one way or the other on them.

Fury and paranoia at living under a corporate Democratic administration (who replaced the corporate Republican administration) has made some people so unhinged that they'll attack a politician for things he hasn't done or even talked about doing yet. It shows how debased, how completely insane our political culture has become.

But at least he wears an American flag lapel pin so it must be all good

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

To say that President Bush is astoundingly arrogant and elitist to point of complete cluelessness would be to state blindingly obvious.

But he seems committed to rubbing people's noses on a daily basis in his complete detachment from the reality of the decent, ordinary Americans he's shipping into the hellhole that is 'liberated' Iraq.

Last week, The Decider bragged about how he was selflessly showing solidarity with the young soldiers dodging roadside bombs in 120 degree heat. His munificient sacrifice? He gave up golf.

Suffice it to say, many families of troops killed in Iraq were irate at the president's contemptuous mockery of their relatives who made a real sacrifice, the utlimate one, in the name of Bush's destructive war of aggression.

Comments like this are something you'd expect from The Colbert Report. That this is judgment and perspective of a real human being who has complete control over the lives of well-intentioned young Americans is a terrifying prospect.