May 16, 2008
I ♥ New Pork
Click here to check out the latest pork dished out in your county by your New York State senator or assembly member.
May 16, 2008
Paul Tonko Gets Dissed By His Homeboys
Tom DiMezza, Democratic supervisor for the Town of Amsterdam and John Duchessi, former Democratic mayor of the City of Amsterdam have both thrown their support behind Phil Steck for the next Congressman from New York State’s 21st Congressional District, rather than fellow Democratic Amsterdamian, Paul Tonko.
“Phil Steck is someone who will work for our community because he is not beholden to special interests,” said DiMezza. “Phil brought about real change in the Town of Colonie and will bring that same community-based approach to Washington as our Congressman.”
“I am very grateful for Tom DiMezza’s support and I look forward to campaigning with him in Montgomery County,” said Steck. “I am not surrounded by an army of lobbyists and my campaign is rooted in the community. People like Tom DiMezza, will make the difference in this campaign. If we want real change in Washington, we need a representative in DC with a community-based focus who will take on big oil to reduce the cost of gas, and work to create economic opportunities and create jobs.”
May 15, 2008
21st Congressional District’s First Democratic Debate
The first “debate” between Democratic candidates, including Paul Tonko, for Mike McNulty’s old seat was held last night.
ALBANY — With eight candidates vying for the microphone Wednesday night, it would seem that no one would get the floor long enough to make a pitch for Congress. But that wasn’t the case.
In what turned out to be an orderly event, all eight Democrats spoke their pieces in two-minute opening statements and in answers to eight meaty questions.
May 15, 2008
New York State NOW Urges Hillary Clinton To Stay In The Race
Here is a press release from New York State’s National Organization of Women (NOW).
ALBANY, NY (05/14/2008; 2110)(readMedia)– The media attention that Hillary Clinton has garnered for her win in West Virginia has been too much for the boys in DC to tolerate. So the Beltway boys are circling the wagons and trying to force Hillary Clinton out of the race. And the “no girls allowed” sign has been given a fresh coat of paint.
Today, NOW New York State stands firm in our support of Hillary Clinton. We strongly urge her to stay in the race until every vote is counted. Senator Clinton has shown brilliantly as a true American who stands strong and who insists that every vote be counted, and who demands that a nominee be chosen before anyone drops out. She is a democratic American who believes in the rights of all citizens to cast their votes. And Hillary Clinton is every bit as fit to hold office as is the cast of characters calling themselves patriotic, but clamoring that this perfectly viable and capable woman drop out before the votes are counted.
With the recent endorsement of Obama by John Edwards et.al, the race has become a test of wills among Democrats who should in fact be interested allies. Women will not stand idly by to watch their candidate be sidelined by the DC boys and their supporters who cannot deal with a woman who is the most qualified candidate to be the next President of the United States. And it’s no accident that these recent endorsements come on the heels of Senator Clinton’s exceptional win in West Virginia. She is expected to win the other upcoming primaries, and the drip of Obama endorsements is designed to take the attention away from Senator Clinton. And NARAL should be ashamed of itself for following this herd.
Hillary Clinton is the best candidate to beat John McCain in November. She has all of the states that any Democratic candidate needs to secure the White House. She has won the swing states. She has fifty-five percent of the women’s vote; and she enjoys the majority of the working class citizens’ vote, as proven over and over again. What more does the Democratic party want from a candidate?
Hey boys! Girls ARE allowed these days. And we of NOW New York State strongly support Hillary Clinton for President of the United States of America.
May 15, 2008
Education In Amsterdam Now Costs $13,927 Per Pupil
It’s almost time to vote for school budgets. As usual, most budgets have increases that are much higher than the Consumer Price Index. The Greater Amsterdam School District’s proposed budget has a 6.52% spending increase, even though the Consumer Price Index is currently 2.8%.
In the 2002-2003 school year, it cost $9,680 to educate each student in the Greater Amsterdam School District. If the proposed budget passes, it will now cost $13,927 per pupil.
School budget votes are one of the few opportunities we have to say no to excessive government spending. Unfortunately, the turnout is often light.
Click here to see what it cost per pupil to educate students in your school District. Figures are from 2002-2003.
May 14, 2008
No Solar Panels On Paul Tonko’s House And No Hybrid Car In His Driveway
This post was originally written on May 7, 2008 and updated on May 14, 2008.
I couldn’t help but notice that there are no solar panels on Paul Tonko’s house. Since Tonko is former head of NYSERDA, New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, and an expert on energy, including alternate energy, I thought I might find solar panels or other evidence of alternate energy use at Tonko’s house, but as you can see from the photo above, I was wrong.
Yesterday, Capitol Confidential reported that Paul Tonko is still driving with his New York State Assembly license plates, even though it has been more than a year since he was an assemblyman. Surprisingly, or maybe not, what Capitol Confidential failed to point out is that Paul Tonko drives a Lincoln.
Again, one would think that the former head of NYSERDA, who was responsible for purchasing hybrid cars for several state agencies, would drive a hybrid vehicle himself.
WVTL News today states that one of the issues Paul Tonko is most interested in as a candidate for New York State’s 21st Congressional District is energy. One wonders if he might get farther with that issue if he led by example.
May 13, 2008
The Amsterdam Star: The Little Newspaper That Couldn’t
I came across this newspaper box the other day. It must be the last remaining Amsterdam Morning Star box. The Amsterdam Star was a shortlived paper, produced back in the mid 1990s by former Amsterdam Recorder employees, Steve Picciocca and Dave Dalfonso. It was a decent newspaper. In fact it was better than the Amsterdam Recorder.
As we all know, it is difficult to go up against an established newspaper, even if it is not a very good one. I believe that the Amsterdam Star would have been successful if it had remained a weekly, instead of attempting to become a daily.
After the Amsterdam Star folded, Steve Picciocca ran another shortlived monthly called The Buzz. It was eventually purchased by Joey Isabel and then folded. Dave Dalfonso has been very successful with his monthly advertising newspaper, The Sacandaga Monthly.
Former editor of the Amsterdam Recorder, Tony Benjamin, with the help of Theresa Cuda also attempted an alternative to the Amsterdam Recorder, called the Mohawk Valley Free Press. It too was shortlived.
The Amsterdam Recorder has never been the quality newspaper it was when Tony Benjamin was editor, which explains why I subscribe to the Daily Gazette.
May 12, 2008
Price of Paul Tonko Website Dropped To $207
I reported a few days ago that the website paultonko.com was up for sale for $457. The price has now been dropped to $207. I am really surprised that Paul Tonko, or one of the many other contenders in New York State’s 21st congressional district race, has not purchased this site.
May 12, 2008
It’s Time To Get Serious About People Who Make False Child Abuse Claims
Here is a column of mine that appeared in yesterday’s Sunday Gazette.
The removal of more than 400 children from the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints (FLDS) compound in Texas made front-page news for several days in April. However, a follow-up Associated Press story revealing that the phone call that initiated the raid was a hoax got short shrift.
Rozita Swinton, who has been arrested and charged with misdemeanors more than once for making false phone calls about child abuse, has been questioned by Texas Rangers and may be the person who made the phone call.
May 9, 2008
Paul Tonko’s website, PaulTonko.Com, Up For Sale.
PaulTonko.com has expired and is up for sale.
It was not up for sale when I last checked, which I believe was yesterday. You can buy Paul Tonko’s website for $457, but you better jump on it before Tracey Brooks buys it. Google searches for Paul Tonko for Congress already have sponsored links to Tracey Brooks’ website.
Update: As of 5:00pm today, May 9, 2008, Tracey Brooks sponsored ads are no longer showing up when you google Paul Tonko for Congress. They had been appearing for the past few weeks. However, when you google Tonko for Congress, the sponsored ads are still showing up.
Update: As of 6:00am today, May 10, 2008, Tracey Brooks sponsored ads are no longer showing up when you google Tonko for Congress. However, they are still showing up when you google Paul Tonko. They are also showing up when you google almost all of the other democratic candidates for the 21st congressional district seat, including Phil Steck and Darius Shahinfar. Apparently, Arthur Welser is not considered much of a threat because Tracey Brooks’ ads don’t show up when you google his name.
Update: As of 5:00am May 17, 2008, Tracey Brooks’ ads are no longer showing up on any Paul Tonko google searches. However, Arthur Welser ads now show up when you google Paul Tonko.
May 9, 2008
New York’s 21st Congressional District Race: Candidates’ Websites
Below are links to websites of the many candidates running in New York State’s 21st Congressional District. More links will be added as soon as the other candidates create websites.
Republican Candidates
Democratic Candidates
May 7, 2008
Find Cheapest Gas Prices In The Mohawk Valley
Update: I went to buy gas for my lawnmower today, and at the last minute remembered that you shouldn’t use gas with ethanol in it for small engines. It burns hotter and can damage small engines. So I pulled into the Sunoco station next to Amsterdam Memorial Hospital, guessing that there would not be ethanol in the gas, and I was right. I paid a little more, but it’s not worth damaging your lawnmower to save a few pennies. Just make sure you don’t pay for your gas with a bad check at the Country Feed Store, where I stopped to get some Sunoco gas. If you do, the owners will make sure they put your name in lights.
To find the cheapest gas prices in your Mohawk Valley community, click on one of the links below. Due to the rapidly changing price of gas, the prices you encounter on these links may not be up to date. In fact, Stewarts on Market Street has the cheapest gas in Amsterdam this morning, at $3.699 per gallon, but Motor Trend says that Fastrac on Market Street does.
May 5, 2008
The God Couple: Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Rev. Dean Snyder
As we all know from the recent furor over remarks made by Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama’s pastor, it’s amazing what you can dig up when you root around in the musty archives of preachers’ sermons.
Last Friday, I was looking through sermons by Reverend Dean Snyder, who pastors the Foundry United Methodist Church in Washington D. C. when I came across a sermon in which he blames the war in Iraq, not on radical Muslims, but on Americans, specifically Christian Americans, and even more specifically Methodist Americans.
In his sermon, How To Pray About Iraq, which he preached on June 6, 2004, Reverend Snyder said:
“All war is the consequence of the sin and failure of God’s people. The war with Iraq began a long time ago when the Christian Church, for the most part, turned its back on our Moslem brothers and sisters. The war with Iraq began when United Methodists began giving less and less to global mission and spending more and more on ourselves at the local church level. It began when we cutback on building schools and clinics and hospitals around the world and sending out Americans to be teachers and nurses and doctors there.”
May 3, 2008
Gazette Reader Challenges Barbara N. Dolan, Judge’s Wife, To Live On 18k A Year
The following post was originally written on May 1 and updated on May 2 and May 3.
Douglas Kipp, a retired Verizon worker, responded in a letter to the editor today to Barbara N. Dolan’s column in last Sunday’s Gazette (which in turn was a response to a column I wrote against pay raises for New York State’s 1300 judges).
Barbara N. Dolan is the wife of Thomas J. Dolan, county court judge in Dutchess County.
“I should have some idea, since I retired from Verizon in ’92 with a pension that hasn’t been increased since, and possibly never will. But then I can collect on my Social Security, which I contributed to for over 45 years, bringing my total yearly income to a whopping $18,000 a year! Try living on that, lady.”
Update: On May 2, the Daily Gazette published a letter from Francesca Lotito of Schenectady suggesting that pay raises for judges should be based on merit.
Lotito says:
“In response to Barbara Dolan’s April 27 op-ed on elected county court judges’ wage dilemma, I agree with Mrs. Dolan’s argument about the need to support and foster prime candidates for the county judiciary by implementing a policy to allow salary increases. I feel these county positions must be held by upstanding, highly educated and experienced players. However, I’m not convinced that simply implementing a policy to arbitrarily increase salary is the most effective process.
Our county judges bear great responsibility to uphold every aspect of justice on a daily basis. The process is mind-boggling! However, having had an unfortunate experience myself with one local Family Court judge, perhaps salary could be based on merit.”
Update: On May 3, 2008, the Daily Gazette published a third response to Barbara N. Dolan’s op-ed piece. In it, Matthew P. Rich of Schenectady says:
“So, please, spare us the tight budget you and your husband judge live on. Maybe you should stop taking advantage of those who pay your husband’s retirement, health and six-figure salary, and try living on $50,000 or less a year. And then, when he’s protecting the corporate world, along with those lawyers whom they make very rich, maybe you will see you don’t have it that bad.”
May 2, 2008
Murder in Amsterdam
I have little to add or little desire to add anything to what has already been reported about yesterday’s murder in Amsterdam, except for the above photograph and to mention my disappointment in finding that the Amsterdam Free Library had closed because of it.
Mark Robarge blogs about a murder in Amsterdam that he covered as a young reporter in 1987. I remember that murder also, although I think it was on Meadow Street. It was in the middle of winter and the frozen pool of blood stayed there for weeks.
May 1, 2008
If Hillary Clinton Can’t Find The Coffee Machine On Button, How Will She Ever Find The Nuclear Button?
Watch as Hillary Clinton, attempting to be a regular American, tries to figure out how to get coffee out of a coffee machine. The video was posted on youtube.
May 1, 2008
Planned Parenthood Expands Into Montgomery County, New York
In January, Planned Parenthood Mohawk Hudson, dedicated a brand new facility in Schenectady and invited clergy of the religious left to bless it. Now Planned Parenthood Mohawk Hudson has expanded its territory into Montgomery County.
Planned Parenthood Mohawk Hudson is planning to open a facility in the Town of Amsterdam. While the Amsterdam facility will not perform abortions, it will make abortion referrals. St. Mary’s Church in Amsterdam has produced a petition to the New York State Department of Health protesting the opening of the clinic.
Planned Parenthood has also been selected to teach sex education in the Fonda-Fulton School District. At least twenty parents have complained about the choice of Planned Parenthood as sex education provider.
April 30, 2008
Former Amsterdamian, Stephen Haven, Nominated For National Book Award For His New Memoir About Amsterdam
Alone, tonight, in Amsterdam, NY,
I walk past your old haunts: this shop, that yard.
You’re gone. You’ve left your morning wait behind
stacked pallets, where day-shift buzzers drill
the air, sing for measured lengths of wood,
of time, and thoughts of adolescent wives.
The dust from those worn saws will always float
across your corneas. I picked that scab too.
But yesterday, before you left, we rode
Suzukis through the Adirondack foothills.
Along those paths, our tires bit the green
of aging mountains breaking through the rock.
—from “For My Brother’s Decision to Join the Navy”
By Stephen Haven
In his last published piece of writing, the famous psychologist William James describes a visit to Amsterdam, New York to visit the mystic, Benjamin Paul Blood. Of the City of Amsterdam, James says, “Mr. Blood inhabits a city, otherwise, I imagine, quite unvisited by the Muses, the town called Amsterdam, situated on the New York Central Railroad.”
William James was not often wrong, but he was wrong about the muses not visiting Amsterdam. They have visited former Amsterdam resident, Stephen Haven, many times. Stephen Haven is the son of Robert Haven, former rector of St. Anne’s Episcopal Church in Amsterdam, and Dr. Sally Haven.
I first came across Haven’s works when I was working in the Post Office and he was a struggling poet. A package of poems was returned to Haven and had ripped open. It was my job to repair the package and put it back into the mail stream. But I must confess that I first read a poem about an incident where a man fell from a factory smokestack and died, leaving his boot in a rung on the stack. I was struck then by the power of Haven’s poetry.
Haven has published two books of poetry–The Long Silence of the Mohawk Carpet Smokestacks, published by West End Press in 2004 and Dust and Bread, a collection of poems published by Turning Point in 2008.
Haven’s newest book, The River Lock One Boy’s Life along the Mohawk, published in April by Syracuse University press, is a memoir of growing up in Amsterdam and has been nominated for a National Book Award. Syracuse University Press describes the book this way:
“Pulled between the disparate spheres of home life with a minister father he loves and respects, and the world of sex, drugs, and violence of his closest boyhood friends, author Stephen Haven relates his journey of self-discovery in this poignant memoir. After a fourteen-year absence from his home in Amsterdam, New York, Haven returns in the week before Easter, 2003, to the town that molded his character.
A true bildungsroman, The River Lock traces the forging of Haven’s identity from the clash of his youthful home life and the streets of his native mill town. Through memories of adolescence, Haven reveals how a growing understanding of art, culture, friendship, spirituality, family, and class melded to create a man able to live fully in two distinct worlds.”
Stephen Haven is currently Director of the Ashland University MFA Program and Professor of English at Ashland University in Ashland, Ohio.
Bob Cudmore also blogs about Stephen Haven and provides a link so you can listen to the interview he did with Haven on WVTL.
April 30, 2008
Is Judge Judith S. Kaye Telling The Whole Truth When She Says New York State Judges Haven’t Had A Pay Raise In Ten Years?
The answer is a simple no.
In 2007 New York State judges received a pay raise in the form of a $5,000 expense account to cover anything from uncovered medical costs to judicial robe purchases, according to Joel Stashenko in a New York Law Journal Article, published on November 2, 2007.
Stashenko goes onto say, “The 1,300 state judges also will get more vacation time, reimbursement for a third night of attending annual meetings of their judicial associations and a return to a statewide forum for their summer judicial seminars instead of a regional one.”
All judges with at least five years of service had their vacation time increased from twenty days a year to twenty-five.
As we all know, sometimes getting an increase in benefits is better than getting an increase in pay.
Many average New Yorkers would be happy to get the twenty days of vacation time that judges with less than five years of service get. And a $5,000 expense account is unheard of.
Several judges have taken to recusing themselves from cases, in part to protest the lack of a pay increase, according to Al Roney, morning talk show host at WGY. You can download and listen to a great show he did on the subject.
April 30, 2008
Book Review: Annals Of A Milltown In The Mohawk Valley by Hugh Donlon.
The review below of Annals Of A Milltown In The Mohawk Valley by Hugh Donlon was originally published in early 2002 in The Buzz, a shortlived Amsterdam weekly. The book is still available, sold exclusively through the Amsterdam Free Library. The library receives a small portion of each purchase.
“Amsterdam New York’s history has been publicized three different ways in the past year. Most recently, hundreds of Amsterdam residents turned out to see the “Amsterdam Oratorio,” written and produced by Maria Riccio Bryce. Earlier, Bob Cudmore’s documentary film “Historic Views of the Carpet City” aired on WMHT and then was released on video. A third and less heralded portrayal of Amsterdam’s history was the re-publication of Hugh P. Donlon’s AMSTERDAM NEW YORK: ANNALS OF A MILL TOWN IN THE MOHAWK VALLEY.”
Prior to the initial publication of Donlon’s book in 1980, Amsterdam had a history, but it was scattered in dozens of places. Donlon brought it all together in one place when he wrote and published ANNALS OF A MILL TOWN. ”
Other books by Hugh P. Donlon.
Amsterdam Memorial Hospital. A Record of the Founding, Development and Service to the Community. 1888-1968.
Montgomery County, 1772-1972.
The Story of Auriesville.
