Priorities

Four stories I read this week are very interesting when juxtaposed...

-North Country Public Radio is doing a series on New York’s crumbling infrastructure.

-School districts across the region are slashing teaching positions left and right.

-Districts in Glens Falls and Saranac Lake each closed an elementary school.

-President Obama ordered air strikes against Libya and our Hitler-of-the-month, with little objection from his fellow Democrats... thus illustrating that having a Nobel Peace Prize on your resumé seems to give you a free pass in launching wars. Mother Jones cites a CNN estimate that costs for the US to fully install a no-fly-zone over Libya could rise to some $800 million, and another $100 million a week to maintain it


We “can’t afford” badly needed improvements to our infrastructure.

We “can’t afford” to preserve teaching positions originally deemed important.

We “can’t afford” to keep community elementary schools open.

We “can afford” to wage wars against countries that pose no security threat to us.

Of course, the reality is the above questions are not at all about what we can and can’t afford. They are about what we choose to afford.

Our choices seem to indicate that destroying things abroad is more important use of our money than building things at home.

Electric rates in NY skyrocketing... with an exception

The New York State Public Service Commission, which regulates utilities, recently published information about the average monthly rates for each of the electric providers in the state from 2001-2010 (available here). I decided to do a little analysis. I compared the average monthly residential rates of the providers in 2005 and 2010. Every single provider saw at least a double digit percent increase in that five year period... except for one.

Central Hudson: 31.8% increase from 2005 to 2010
ConEd NYC: 14.9% increase
ConEd Westchester: 18.6% increase
National Grid: 21.5% increase
Orange and Rockland Electric: 26.7% increase
Rochester Gas and Electric: 17.2% increase
NYSEG: 15.9% DECREASE

This begs an important question. The industry tells us that rates are so high in New York because of the state's supposedly unfriendly regulatory environment. So how is it that NYSEG was able to offer its customers a significant decrease in rates in the last several years while every other electric provider was imposing significant increases?

The pointlessness of No Gas Day

It’s silly season again... that time when people boycott gas stations for a day and then pat themselves on the back thinking they’ve actually "made a statement." Of course, that statement is "Meaningless gestures are much easier than actually doing something."

(If you need a reminded on why such days is useless, read my earlier essay on the topic)

If you'd rather eschew empty symbolism, check out this piece from The Christian Science Monitor. It offers 10 suggestions on how to lower gas consumption. They may be small and *gasp* require effort, but they actually make a difference.

From the wisdom of Twitter

"The GOP says $250,000 annual income isn’t wealthy but $48,000 with good benefits is." -@AngryLiberal

Chris Hedges and The Death of the Liberal Class

"The system doesn’t work not because of Sarah Palin, the religious right or Glenn Beck. It doesn’t work because the liberal class failed to defend it, failed to find the moral fortitude to defend liberal values when under grievous assault. - Chris Hedges"


Last year, journalist Chris Hedges was at the Hudson Mohawk Independent Media Center in Troy last summer to speak about his book The Death of the Liberal Class. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend the talk but it was helpfully rebroadcast on Alternative Radio.

The speech was fascinating and I tried to take some notes about key points he made...

-He talked about the propaganda state of permanent war/fear and the liberal class' complicity with this. He cited liberal icon Woodrow Wilson as an early example.

-He spoke about Bill Clinton, the "greatest traitor to the working class ever produced by the Democratic Party" and how Clinton's strategy was to take corporate money and do corporate bidding because he knew that unions and liberals had nowhere else to go (or thought they did) and would support him anyway.

-He noted that Canada didn't have a banking crisis because they didn't have a Clinton signing off on reckless deregulation.

-"Democrats essentially codified the destruction of international law and rule of law implemented by the Bush administration."

-"The for-profit health insurance companies sponsored the (Democratic Primary) debates in Iowa and weren’t going to allow someone like Dennis Kucinich, let alone Ralph Nader, to participate.... and the the liberal class was complicit."

-"Dostoyevsky knew that when the pillars of the liberal class collapse, the result is moral nihilism. The system doesn’t work not because of Sarah Palin, the religious right or Glenn Beck. It doesn’t work because the liberal class failed to defend it, failed to find the moral fortitude to defend liberal values when under grievous assault."

-"The last truly liberal president of the United States was Richard Nixon, because he was scared of movements and he passed a number of liberal bills, [one of which] was written by Ralph Nader, by the way."

-Anyone who thinks that voting for the Democratic Party will bring about fundamental change "lives in a universe that’s as non-reality based as the Christian right."

-He pointed out that liberals allow themselves to question details but NEVER the fundamentals underpinning the injust system. Ditto the mainstream (corporate) media.

Adirondack Local Government Review Board overrides local governments

A few weeks ago, I published an essay about controversial attempts by the Adirondack Local Government Review Board to meddle in the New York state’s purchase of two tracts of land, which is not part of the LGRB’s taxpayer-funded mandate. The purchase was approved by every single one of the municipalities affected. Any one of them could’ve vetoed it and a few towns did, which forced the deal to be re-worked. The LGRB, without consulting the towns affected, wants to override the localities in question. The LGRB’s purpose is to represent local interests against top-down imposition from the state and yet top-down imposition is precisely what the LGRB wants in this case.

I’m not the only one who’s noticed this hypocrisy. In something else you’d never read in The Post-Star Duane Ricketson wrote a good essay in Adirondack Almanack explaining the recent history of state land purchase inside the Blue Line and brought some-much needed illumination of actual facts regarding the process. He also noted that LGRB executive director Fred Monroe is a member of a hunting club that would be displaced if the purchase went through.

You won’t read this in The Post-Star

The Post-Star has a pretty overt agenda against teachers unions. This manifests itself not only in local columns and editorials but in their selective reporting of facts and a slew of op-ed pieces which, shock of shocks, tilt one way on the issue... most recently, earlier this week. You’re more likely to be exposed to the perspective of the teachers unions on Fox News (sic) than in the Glens Falls daily. Their anti-labor position is not surprising since they took great pains some years ago to bust their own unions.

The paper has disproportionately targeted the Queensbury school district for alleged extravagant spending. This is inexplicable given the below facts, although it’s worth noting that the paper’s managing editor lives and pays taxes in Queensbury.

So I was pleased to read a good story on the district written in the independent Chronicle. Although the weekly’s editor Mark Frost is personally more vocally anti-union than Tingley in his columns, The Chronicle’s news article was much more nuanced and complete.

The weekly noted that In per pupil spending, Queensbury ranks as one of the lowest in the region and in the state, while ranking in the top 74 for academic test results in the state, [Superintendent Douglas] Huntley said. There’s “tremendous efficiency” in having all their buildings on one campus.”

It’s a key fact that I’ve also discussed here in this blog. And although I’ve mentioned it to them repeatedly, I’ve never seen this fact acknowledged, let alone addressed, by the corporate daily. Is it because it undermines their editorial line? I guess you can get away with that when you have a Pulitizer Prize.

Union-busting in Ohio

"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.

Earlier this week, the Ohio state senate voted 17-16 to strip public sector unions of collective bargaining rights. Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich offered the following criticism:

In order to understand how devastating this bill is to workers you have to be aware of provisions which take away the right to strike, open the door for replacement workers and set the stage for privatization of services. Wages and benefits will be cut. Inevitably state services will become a target for privatizers. The taxpayers will pay more and get less, while the ‘savings’ will end up in the pockets of corporate service-providers in terms of high profits. The passage of this bill is the just the beginning of a scheme to defraud both workers and the taxpayers.