Upstate NY shafted on rail and electric

So apparently New York, the third most populous state in the country, got a mere $151 million out of the Obama administration's $8 billion allocated for rail improvements. Planet Albany wonders if this is due to New York not being a swing state (Obama beat McCain in the state 62-36 pct) or due to the ineffectiveness of the state's Congressional delegation (29 of its 31 members belong to Obama's Democratic Party).

For its part, the Herkimer County Progressive places the blame on the state itself for not investing enough in rail. Presumably, this was seen by the feds as lack of interest in much needed upgrades to the mass transit system in upstate NY.

Lack of reliable public transit is one thing holding back economic development in upstate. Sky-high electricity costs are another. And it's only going to get worse.

The giant power monopoly National Grid wants to raise its electric rates by 20 percent. National Greed already has among the highest power rates in the nation, according to the Syracuse Post-Standard.

As I've written about several times before, the power monopoly regularly gouges customers with its nebulous "delivery charge." I personally have had several months where the "delivery" for my electricity cost at least twice as much as the actual power itself. Can you imagine if a pizza place charged you an extra $20 to deliver a $10 pizza? But apparently National Greed can get away with it, all with the collaboration of the state's dubiously named Public Service Commission.

At least you can say one thing about National Greed, the monopoly open about their intent. The Post-Standard article said Tom King, president of National Grid in the United States, said the company needs to make higher profits in order to attract money from shareholders.

The purpose of the military

So with the president promising in his State of the Union to end the Don't Ask Don't Tell fraud, the policy is not back in the headlines.

I hate to be blunt but this needs to be said.

The sole purpose of the military is (in theory at least) to defend national security.

Not social engineering. Not religiosity. Not about making people feel comfortable or accepted.

The military is being asked to do a lot of things supposedly to do with national security. If those things are as important as claimed, the military can not arbitrarily exclude able and capable people and still pursue that very complicated task. It does not need gay people. It does not need blacks. It does not need women. It needs human beings who can do a needed job and do it well. The rest doesn't matter.

The military does not exclude blacks and Hispanics and Asian-Americans just because their presence might make bigoted soldiers "uncomfortable."

It does not exclude women because it makes sexist soldiers "uncomfortable."

And it should not exclude gays because it might make homophobic soldiers "uncomfortable."

It may not be politically correct but it's the truth: all soldiers need to get over their personal preferences and biases and realize they are there to serve the greater good. Let's be serious. If a GI cried that he didn't want to go to Iraq because hot weather made him "uncomfortable," do you think the Army would cater to his whining?

If the bigots or anyone else want to let their personal biases preclude them from dealing with people they deem inferior, they should not join the military. Soldiering is a profession where dealing with people different than yourself and taking orders from them is an absolute requirement of the job. You know this going in. If you're too weak to handle it, find another job.

Update: Joint chiefs' chairman Adm. Mike Mullen explained to a Senate committee why he supports Don't Ask Don't Tell's repeal.

One less truth teller

Noted historian Howard Zinn has died at age 88. Zinn was both celebrated by some and reviled by others for the exact same reason: his accounts of American history took the unusual and politically incorrect path of trying to tell the whole truth, rather than the convenient, sanitized version. Needless to say, his voice will be missed.

Journalist continues to poke holes in questionable Post-Star anti-APA series

Another followup* on the controversial two-part series on the Adirondack Park Agency (APA) written by The Post-Star's Will Doolittle.

(Note: I've offered Doolittle the opportunity of a rebuttal to be published here but he's so far not done so.)

North Country Public Radio's Brian Mann has continued to fill in a lot of the holes that plagued Doolittle's pieces. Mann, a reporter without an open, long-standing contempt for the APA, has provided depth and context that was sorely lacking in the original piece. Mann asked questions where Doolittle accepted answers uncritically from anti-APA interviewees.

Mann's latest piece is definitely worth a read.

Maybe this is why I'm a paid member of NCPR but no longer subscribe to The Post-Star.

**

Update: When I questioned the wisdom of assigning Doolittle (who's well-known for his outspoken and regular criticism of the APA) to do this purportedly objective story about the APA, most people, including Brian Mann himself, dismissed my concerns. These concerns which were less about overt bias (at least at the time... now I'm starting to wonder) but about less conscious decision making based on the assumptions and preconceived notions of someone who's firmly established that he's one on side of the issue. I remember explicitly wondering if Doolittle had failed to ask follow up questions or pursue further, perhaps not consciously but because he assumed that any accusation against the APA was in and of itself credible, because of his own notions about the Agency and what it represents. The excellent follow up reporting done by Mann makes me feel completely vindicated in my concerns. I know self-appointed watchdogs generally bristle at anyone watching them, but I'm glad NCPR's Mann is performing that service to the public. It's just unfortunate that the excellent journalism in NCPR's blog will get only a fraction of the audience as the daily's piece.

Further update: I've refrained from using the phrase 'hit job' to describe the original piece, but some are less circumspect. One anonymous poster at NCPR's blog writes:

While I'd like to commend you on excellent investigative reporting on this post, the sad fact is that this contradiction to Douglas's claim should have been paragraph 2 in the original Post-Star story. And not so hard to dig up, at that.

What disturbed me all along about the series in the P-S was how thoroughly orchestrated it was: first the series, then the story about reaction to the series (with no reaction from the organization the original story had defamed); then the editorial; then the online poll: "Should the APA be disbanned (sic) ?" Even that peculiarly emasculated Don Coyote had something to say. So over-the-top, you half expected Mark Trail to chime in from the funnies page.

This was a crusade, pure and simple. It left me feeling like I'd been bludgeoned by a Pulitzer medallion.

Thanks for exposing the rot at the core.

Anonymous should be reminded that the paper's Pulitizer was not for journalism, but for editorial writing.

**


*-OTHER PIECES ON THIS BLOG ABOUT THE SAME SERIES
-My original critique of the series and the journalistic ethics involved;

-The piece in which the Nature Conservancy refuted accusations of criminal collusion in a letter to The Post-Star;

-Questioning why the daily's website has exceptionally failed to publish an online version of said letter.

Real sacrifice in "fake America"

You remember during the 2008 campaign when that loathsome Sarah Palin divisively talked about the south and midwest (bastions of GOP support) as the "real America"? It was part of the typical conservative strategy to act like the right alone owned and defined patriotism to manipulate toward its own belligerent ends.

ABC News points out that the greatest burden per capita of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars is borne by the state of Vermont, generally regarded as the most liberal state in the country and one which the arrogant Palin would smugly classify as being the anchor of "fake America."

Factoid of the week

Extrapolating from average figures, since 2002: approximately 328,000 Americans have died in car accidents, 160,000 have died because of the regular flu, 120,000 have been murdered by other Americans (from our "Christian nation") and 0 have been killed on American soil by Islamist terrorists.

Protecting the sanctity of marriage against threats until death (or my serial cheating) do us part

So I noticed that Republican Sen. John McCain's wife and daughter have appeared in photos opposing California's gay marriage ban. While anyone supporting equal rights is obviously a good thing, I've never been one to overly care what the family members of politicians think; I vote for or against the candidate, not his spouse or children. But in response to the story, the legislator's spokesman said, "Sen. McCain believes the sanctity of marriage is only defined as between one man and one woman."

That California's definition of marriage as one man and one woman was most aggressively pushed by Mormons is an irony to discuss another day.

But I suspect that loving, committed gay couples may wonder if a once-divorced man who reneged on his oath to love his first wife until death do them part really knew enough about the "sanctity of marriage" to deny their participation in it. As for the current Mrs. McCain, who's never been divorced, they might give a little more credibility to her views on the topic.

North Country Public Radio's excellent In Box blog had a piece on the topic in which it mentioned that one of the most prominent Republican mayors in the country, San Diego's Jerry Sanders, broadcast his own support for gay marriage, after discovering that his daughter is a lesbian in a committed relationship.

It made me remember how Joe Bruno changed his tune on equal rights for gays when he discovered he had a gay relative (a brother, I think). The then-majority leader helped pass the state's Sexual Orientation Non-Discrimination Act through a GOP-controlled state senate and has come out in favor of in favor of marriage equality. Even someone as normally opposed to human rights as Dick Cheney, who has a lesbian daughter, has never engaged in the sort of populist gay bashing designed to pander to the most, small-minded and hateful of his own party. It seems it's a lot easier to demonize gays when they are just some crude, generic stereotype, when they are The Other... but much harder when they are the kind, honorable son/daughter/brother/sister you've loved all your life.

Things that make you go hmmm....

A few days ago, I wrote about a letter published in The Post-Star written by the Nature Conservancy's Michael T. Carr regarding unsubstantiated allegations of collusion between the group and the Adirondack Park Agency made in an article written by the daily's Will Doolittle.

If you go on the Letters to the Editor page of their website, it lists every letter published in the print edition since Jan. 8... except the two published on Jan. 20 (one of which was Carr's and one of which criticized the paper's crusade against the residents of the Madden Hotel). A site search of 'Michael Carr' does not turn up the letter either.


Update: Carr's letter, published in print on Jan. 20, finally appeared online on Feb. 5, two weeks later. On Jan. 26, a TNC spokesperson told me that they were "working with the Post Star to get it posted online." No indication was given as to why the TNC had to lobby to get the same treatment as every other letter writer.