tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-95994222024-03-13T11:55:18.604-04:00SeeingGreeneNews & stuff about Greene County NYDick Mayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03485935634961545610noreply@blogger.comBlogger332125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9599422.post-49107409327091725252014-09-25T11:14:00.000-04:002014-09-25T11:14:16.890-04:00RIP Dick May<p style="margin: 0.5em 0.5em;">John Dickinson May, 81, passed away suddenly on Friday, May 9, 2014, at Albany Medical Center from a pulmonary embolism following surgery.<br />
</p><p style="margin: 0.5em 0.5em;">Dick was born in Los Angeles in 1932, and grew up in the Bay Area. He graduated from Dartmouth in 1954, and obtained his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. Dick taught political science at Yale and the University of Chicago before moving to Australia in 1972 to take a position at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, where he raised his family and played golf year round.<br />
</p><p style="margin: 0.5em 0.5em;">He settled in Catskill in 1998 where, since the golfing season is sadly truncated, he became actively involved in local affairs, writing the SeeingGreene blog regularly from 2004 through 2013.<br />
</p><p style="margin: 0.5em 0.5em;">Dick leaves his loving wife of 14 years, Lisa Fox Martin; three sons: Jason, Colin and Peter; six grandchildren: Jessica, Gabriel, Devin, Cassandra, Everett and Duncan; and two stepdaughters: Lexy Funk and Jenny Levy.<br />
</p><p style="margin: 0.5em 0.5em;">Donations in his name can be made to the Thomas Cole House, Catskill, NY.<br />
</p><p style="margin: 0.5em 0.5em;">In his memory, the SeeingGreene blog will remain online at this site in perpetuity.<br />
</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9599422.post-73738066756766919972013-03-07T16:55:00.000-05:002013-03-07T16:57:35.823-05:00Shooting Sophistry Last November, a columnist whose work appears regularly in mid-Hudson Valley newspapers shared with readers his take on the impending presidential election. “Unless you want to wake up in a house of horrors” on November 7, said Dick Nelson (“Outdoors”; 11/1/12), “you should” vote on November 6 for Mitt Romney. This would help to prevent an event that is “more frightening” than a Halloween encounter with a poltergeist, more dreadful than the vision of “Hurricane Sandy turning into another Irene”: re-election of Barack Obama. That would be terrifying on account of Obama’s record of “blatant disregard for the Bill of Rights—the Second Amendment in particular.”<br />
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<div class="MsoNormal">
Although President Obama has only advocated banning assault weapons, Nelson warned, that is just a decoy. “Banning <i>all</i> guns is one of his top priorities and he will do anything within his means to make it happen.” So, people, if you give Obama four more years you will “lose your right to keep and bear arms.” </div>
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This bit of electioneering demonstrates three traits of character:</div>
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*T<b>unnel vision</b>. The choice between presidential candidates allegedly hinges on just one issue: safeguarding our right to keep and bear (fire)arms.</div>
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*<b>Arrogance</b>. Nelson pretends to be a mind-reader. He pretends to reveal, and thus to know, not just what Obama has said on a selected topic, but what he actually, urgently, intends. </div>
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*<b>Contempt</b>. In his column Nelson offered not a single word in support of his opinions and accusations--that in the choice of presidential candidates, the gun issue trumps all others; that the President despises the Bill of Rights; that the President will do “anything” to ban all guns. Such omissions exhibit, to Dick Nelson’s readers and to his role as public commentator, blatant contempt.</div>
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(Instead of supporting those judgments, Nelson proceeded to name his preferred candidates for local elective offices; all were Republicans). </div>
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Soon after the election, anyhow, Nelson’s words earned an additional claim to attention. On December 14, in Newtown CT, a gun-wielding young man speedily slaughtered 20 children in a school, as well as six adults. That massacre gave fresh urgency to the subject of civilian gun usage. It triggered new demands for legal controls over gun ownership and use. And on January 18th, Dick Nelson took up a reader’s challenge to explain how “gunowners” can “make a strong argument against stricter gun control when so many innocent children have been killed or when a crazed gunman goes on a shooting spree” at a shopping mall or school or movie theater. Particularly, “What’s wrong with having a federal gun registration or making it tougher for anyone to own a gun?” Nelson’s response, his version of the required “strong argument,” proved to be remarkable for positions <i>not</i> taken. It went this way.<br />
<b>SUPERFLUITY</b>? “There are already more than 35,000 gun laws on the books,” said Nelson, and “most” of them “aren’t being enforced.” That factual claim (a bold bit of arithmetic creativity) could pave the way for contending plausibly that we don’t need stricter gun control laws because the present ones, if properly enforced, would suffice to meet the problems invoked by reform agitators. But Nelson did <i>not</i> voice that argument. He did <i>not</i> advocate enforcement, or stricter enforcement, of current gun control laws. Neither did he affirm or deny that the Sandy Hook massacre, or any other events, offers cause for concern about civilian uses in America of firearms.<br />
<b>FUTILITY</b>? If the opponent of a contemplated course of action contends that enactment <i>would not bring substantial progress</i> toward the goal(s) invoked by proponents, he lays the foundation for an appealing line of argument. He offers practical advice that pertains to the proponents’ way of gauging success. His advice earns further respect if the contemplated action would impose costs on affected persons (material costs, and/or violations of their sense of propriety). And his advice earns more respect to the extent that, by recalling the apparent results of similar measures applied to comparable communities, he invokes relevant experience. </div>
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Nelson did <i>not</i> take that road. He did not <i>say</i>, much less undertake to <i>show</i>, that the contemplated gun control measures would fail to reduce casualties inflicted on innocent civilians by gun-wielding psychopaths and other criminals. </div>
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And yet he did address the matter of effectiveness. He asserted that stricter laws on gun ownership and use would not, could not, stop <i>a</i> resolute assassin: “None of the proposed anti-gun legislation will deter any<i>one</i> hell-bent on killing the unarmed” (emphasis added). That kind of futility claim is question-begging. It ignores the crucial question of quantity—of the extent that proposed gun control measures would cut the <i>volume</i> of carnage inflicted on innocent victims by clumsy shooters, crime-bent thugs and psychopaths. It treats an <i>imperfect </i>deterrent<i> </i>as a<i> useless </i>deterrent.<br />
<b>VULNERABILITY</b>? In addition to contending that gun control laws cannot thwart <i>a </i>hell-bent assassin, while dodging the matter of success against a mob of assassins, Nelson suggested that such laws put citizens at the mercy of hell-bent governors. Thus, “Every national gun licensing and registration in history has <i>led to</i> confiscation…” and “history has repeatedly shown that gun registration <i>has led to</i> <i>disarming</i> its citizenry and the <i>extirpation</i> of millions of people.”</div>
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Nelson devoted more attention to this grim scenario than to any other gun control issue. He did not, however, make explicit the bearing of the alleged historical experience on the current American scene. Perhaps he meant to invoke his arbitrary claim that President Obama craves total civilian disarmament. Perhaps he meant to prophesy that any new regulations here on civilian gun ownership and use today would lead (by subtle insidious stages) to tighter regulations tomorrow, culminating in wholesale government-ordered extermination of domestic foes, who would be weaponless and not protected by soldiers, sailors, airmen, National Guardsmen, police or sheriff’s deputies.</div>
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At any rate, in ostensible support of his version of the lessons of history, Nelson cited nine putative cases. After Turkey, the Soviet Union, China, Nazi Germany, Cambodia, Guatemala and Uganda “established gun control” at times in modern history, masses of target group members (Armenians, political dissentients, Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, mental defectives, Malaysians, Christians), “unable to defend themselves,” were “rounded up and exterminated.” The victims of these government-inflicted massacres numbered, cumulatively, “55 million-plus people.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In no case, however, did Nelson <i>say</i>, much less undertake to <i>show</i>, that the unspecified gun controls that were established in those countries actually yielded a major roundup of guns (=confiscation) and then a roundup of now-defense-less victims. In no case, again, does Nelson <i>say</i> that, but for those gun control measures, the eventual purge victims would have been able to defend themselves.</div>
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Two of his cases, moreover, work against his implied version of cause and effect. In China, “gun control” allegedly was imposed in 1935 while the murderous roundup of dissentients (“<i>no longer</i> able to defend themselves”) began in 1948—which is to say, after the regime that had enacted gun control was overthrown by gun-toting Maoist revolutionaries. Similarly, the domestic Cambodian butchery that Nelson dates from 1975 was inflicted after gun-toting Khmer Rouge insurgents overthrew the regime that, 19 years earlier, had “established gun control.” </div>
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Dick Nelson’s rhetorical efforts, and those of his many National Rifle Association comrades, did not dampen the post-Sandy Hook clamor for fresh regulations of firearms. In New York State, strong pressure was added by top government officials. On January 10<sup>th</sup>, then, Nelson returned to the fray. </div>
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After sketching the terms of “anti-gun bills” that had just been submitted to the State legislature (eventually bundled into the SAFE Act), Nelson declared that “each will do little to curb crime or carnage.”</div>
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How little is little? </div>
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What cases show that each of the proposed measures would do no better than “little” to curb crime or carnage? </div>
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What would be the effect, on crime or carnage rates, of a <i>package</i> of those measures?</div>
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Nelson did not answer those questions. He did not <i>address</i> those questions. </div>
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Similarly, he opined that “all the gun control laws in the universe won’t stop the mentally ill from taking their psychotic behavior out on innocents.” But would such laws cut the <i>amount</i> of death and damage inflicted by psychotics, and by non-psychotics, on innocents? To that question Nelson addressed not a single word. </div>
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Those omissions are representative. Through all his fulminations against gun controls, early and late, Dick Nelson has ignored vital questions. He has not affirmed or denied that guns figure in a distressing number of deaths and injuries suffered by innocent American civilians. He has not affirmed or denied that gun-related casualty rates differ significantly in communities that differ in, among other things, firearms regulations.</div>
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The omissions (<i>cum</i> evasions) cannot be due to lack of opportunity. Thus, in his column attacking the prospective SAFE Act, Nelson chose to include contentions that the National Rifle Association is composed of “average Americans” who happen to “love guns and the Second Amendment”; that rifles have been involved in killing people less than have blunt objects and personal weapon (fists, kicks…); and that guns serve as defensive weapons. </div>
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Nelson also found time to commit another act of arrogance and contempt. Without making even a pretense of proof, he declared that the present gun control clamor is <i>not</i> aimed at getting guns, especially fast-firing guns, away from crowded places and from felons and fools and psychopaths. No sir. Don’t be naïve. Actually, it’s the “latest barrage of gunfire <i>aimed at separating law-abiding citizens from their firearms</i>.”</div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><br clear="ALL" style="mso-break-type: section-break; page-break-before: always;" /> </span><!--EndFragment-->Dick Mayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03485935634961545610noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9599422.post-47227351964636703602013-02-26T12:51:00.000-05:002013-02-26T12:51:21.246-05:00Greene Gunnery Thirteen
of Greene County’s 14 legislators lined up on Wednesday night (2/20/13) in
support of a memorable act of governance.
They voted for a resolution (12 Whereas clauses, four Therefore
Be It Resolveds), drafted and re-drafted over a few days (see <a href="http://www.greenegov.com/">www.greenegov.com</a>) that deserves to be
remembered for its rich clump of qualities:<br />
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>INCOHERENCE</b>. Although the resolution adopted by our 13 leaders
was billed as “calling for repeal of the enactment of the New York SAFE Act,”
its actual demand was for repeal of unspecified “sections” of that
newly-enacted State law.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>ATROCITIES</b>, or multiple assaults against the English
language. “[T[he right of the
people to keep and bear arms is guaranteed as an individual right…and <b><i>that</i></b> is <b><i>regarded</i></b><i> </i>as an inalienable right of the
people…”; “lawful ownership and use of firearms is…a valued tradition in Greene
County and <b><i>that</i></b>
the right to bear arms is exercised by many Greene Country residents <b><i>for
which</i></b> the County of
Greene derives…benefits from safe forms of recreation which <b><i>includes</i></b> hunting and target shooting”;
“our New York representatives could not and did not…receive the input of their
constituents regarding this matter <b><i>which is the standard by which</i></b> the Greene County Legislature <b><i>holds
itself to</i></b> when <b><i>it
comes</i></b> to the
enactment of such a controversial law and <b><i>is </i></b>a matter of simple due process”;
“the crafting of the…Act resulted in complex policy changes, many subject to
interpretation <b><i>and are confusing</i></b> to…officials who are required to enforce and explain
<b><i>them</i></b>”; “some <b><i>areas</i></b> of the legislation”; “there is
the potential <b><i>of</i></b> a significant financial impact on Greene County <b><i>which </i></b>will <b><i>result due to</i></b> sections of the Act which will
require additional manpower and computer systems, <b><i>as well as</i></b> the tax share our residents will
have to contribute if the proposed 2013-2014 budget spending of $36 million <b><i>dollars</i></b> for the implementation of
the…Act”; “…demand the
repeal of all sections of the…Act which we believe <b><i>infringes upon</i></b> the right of the people to keep
and bear arms<b><i>;</i></b> and <b><i>is</i></b> in our opinion unconstitutional….”<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>FATUITY</b>. In whereassing that “the only persons who will
comply with the new high-capacity magazine ban are law-abiding citizens,
leaving the same high-capacity magazines in the hands of those who choose not
to obey the law,” our 13 legislators declared forthrightly that people who
disobey a law are law-breakers.
Duh. (And they made it sound as if high-capacity magazines are jointly
owned). <o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>PREPOSTEROSITY</b>. In
similar fashion, the 13 stalwart solons joined hands in asserting that the SAFE
Act “effectively turns countless New York State law-abiding gun owners into
criminals.” Laws cannot do
that. Laws can prohibit what
previously was legal (or the obverse).
People who violate a law (new or old) turn themselves into criminals.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>EVASION</b>. While charging that the
SAFE Act “places increased burdens…on the backs of law-abiding citizens,”
“turns countless New York State law-abiding gun owners into criminals” and “fails to offer any meaningful
solutions,” the resolute 13
neglected to offer a single word on behalf of those important judgments.
<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>CONTRADICTION</b>. While maintaining that the SAFE Act “fails to
offer <i>any </i> meaningful
solutions to gun violence,” the intrepid 13 also opined that “there are some
areas of the legislation that the Greene County Legislature finds
encouraging….” (No “area” was
specified).<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>IMPOSSIBLE
DEMAND</b>. Whereas those 13 county governors demanded “repeal of all
the sections of the New York SAFE Act which we believe infringes [<i>sic</i>]
upon [<i>sic</i>] the right of the people to
keep and bear arms; and is [<i>sic</i>]
in our opinion unconstitutional under both the Federal and State Constitution [<i>sic</i>],” they did not identify those sections. They accordingly made it impossible for
the prospective repealers to comply. <o:p></o:p></div>
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` THE
OTHER VOICE<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The
one legislator who voted against that memorable anti-SAFE Act resolution was
Vincent Seeley of Catskill. He
contended that the resolution would do “nothing but put more walls around
Greene County’s relationship with Albany”; that some of the Act’s provisions
“make sense”; that the constitutionality issue belongs to the courts; that
“Instead of asking for a repeal, we need to work collaboratively to amend the
areas that don't work for us”; and instead of squandering time and resources on
this ill-conceived repeal campaign, Greene County’s legislators ought to be
concentrating on jobs and the economy.
<o:p></o:p></div>
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#<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<!--EndFragment-->Dick Mayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03485935634961545610noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9599422.post-75933733697262039052012-06-25T08:55:00.000-04:002012-06-25T09:12:44.108-04:00Politics 2012: The Primary<div class="MsoNormal">
Tomorrow is Federal primary election day in New York State. In terms of administrative cost per ballot cast, it will be an expensive exercise. The turnout rate among eligible voters will surely be low, and abstention in many cases makes sense. It makes sense so many decisions have already been made. Formally speaking, Democrats and Republicans will be nominating candidates for United States Senator and for U.S. Representative from each of the State's 31 congressional district.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But in the majority of cases, the decision has already been made. Thus, <b>Senator Kirsten Gillibrand </b>is assured of the Democratic Senatorial nomination, because nobody has filed a challenge. And in 14 of the 31 of the congressional districts, there is an intra-party nomination contest only on the Democratic or the Republican side, but not both. <br />
From the standpoint of GreeneLand Republican and Democratic voters, respectively, there is one intra-party contest to be decided at tomorrow's primary. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">THE SENATE RACE</span>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Three Republicans are vying for the opportunity to try to
oust Ms Gillibrand from the U.S. Senate. Ms Gilliband has held the seat since January 2009, first by
gubernatorial appointment (to replace <b>Hillary Clinton</b>, who resigned in order to
become President <b>Barak Obama</b>’s secretary of state), then by special election in
November 2010 (for the right to complete the Clinton term). Now she is uncontested for the
Democratic nomination <i>and</i> the Working
Families Party and Independence Party nominations, to win a full six-year
term. She has amassed a big war
chest, has not been obliged to spend any of it in primary election contests,
shines in opinion polls, and is running in a strongly Democratic
territory.<br />
<span style="background-color: white;"> Vying for the right to be Senator Gillibrand's Republican challenger are, in alphabetical order, </span><b style="background-color: white;">Wendy Long, George Maragos</b><span style="background-color: white;"> and </span><b style="background-color: white;">Bob
Turner</b><span style="background-color: white;">. </span><span style="background-color: white;">For information about those candidates, see biographical
information on Wikipedia. </span><span style="background-color: white;">For the way they choose to present themselves (and each
other, and the meaning of the 2012 election), see their campaign websites: </span><a href="http://www.wendylongfornewyork.com/" style="background-color: white;">www.wendylongfornewyork.com</a><span style="background-color: white;"> , </span><a href="http://www.maragos4ny.com/" style="background-color: white;">www.maragos4ny.com</a><span style="background-color: white;"> and </span><a href="http://www.turnerforny.com/" style="background-color: white;">www.turnerforny.com</a><span style="background-color: white;">.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
All three candidates profess to be “conservative” and all
eschew the labels “moderate” and “centrist” (among others). They differ, however, in what
they designate as priorities. Mr
Maragos and Mr Turner give primary attention, initially, to<b> </b>jobs and economic
recovery. That orientation (as
distinct from ObamaCare, illegal immigration, same-sex marriage, abortion,
socialism, left-wing radicalism, getting our country back, saving our national
soul) seems to be the basis for distinguishing candidates who are moderates
conservative from candidates who are “conservative.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Mr Maragos (accent on first syllable) is comptroller of
Nassau County, serving a second term after upsetting an incumbent. He offers the special attraction of
being an immigrant. He was born in
Greece, went to Canada with his family, graduated from McGill University, and
launched a career in business management and finance that brought him and his
family permanently to America. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Mr Turner is completing his first term as a member of the
U.S. House of Representatives.
After a rather illustrious career in advertising and television
programming, he won that office by way of a special election in a
preponderantly Democratic district in Queens. His previous career was in television programming and
advertising. He is subject to
suspicion of being a closeted moderate.
One piece of evidence: refusal to join most Republican House members in
signing the notorious <b>Grover Norquist</b> pledge to actively oppose, in all
circumstances, any and all tax increases.
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Ms Long qualifies to be ranked as the most “conservative”
contender for the Republican nomination.
She is the endorsed Conservative Party candidate (and thus will appear
on the ballot even if she does not get the Republican nomination). She is endorsed by putatively conservative icons <b>Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, John Bolton, </b>Norquist<b>
and Steve Forbes</b>. She opines (on
<i>National Review Online</i>) that the impending national election imposes a choice
“between two radically different paths.
The solvency of the federal government, the future of free enterprise,
the security of our people and the very character of out nation are all in the
balance….” Her interest in winning
public office can be viewed as a natural concomitant of her work as a lawyer,
as a judges’ law clerk, and then as founder of a pressure group, the Judicial
Confirmation Network (later the Judicial Crisis Network) that is devoted to
ensuring that authentic “conservatives” get appointed to high judicial
office. Supreme Court judge <b>Clarence
Thomas</b>, she declares, is one of America’s
“greatest living judges.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
From the standpoint of entertainment, a general election
battle between Ms Long and Senator Gillibrand might offer the liveliest spectacle best value. Those two candidates share not only a
gender, but also a similar background: both are lawyers with strong
accomplishments, both are poised and articulate speakers, and both graduated
from Dartmouth College (in 1982 for Stone, 1988 for Gillibrand).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
From the competitive Democratic standpoint, the ideal result
of Tuesday’s primary on the Republican side probably would be the nomination of Mr
Maragos or Mr Turner.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Ms Long would still appear on the general election ballot,
as the Conservative standard –bearer.
That arrangement would split the ranks of anti-Democratic,
anti-“liberal” voters. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">THE HOUSE RACE</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
For GreeneLand Democrats, Tuesday’s primary offers
a choice between two contestants for the right to be the party’s nominee for
election to the U.S. House of Representatives: <b>Julian Schreibman</b> of Ulster County and <b>Joel Tyner</b> of Dutchess
County. The winner of that contest
will be pitted in November against <b>Christopher Gibson</b>, the Republican (and
Independence Party) nominee (via the absence of an intra-party challenge) who
is the quasi-incumbent.
Representative Gibson presently holds the seat that is identified as the
State’s 20<sup>th</sup> congressional district. He won that seat in November 2010, unseating the one-term
Democratic incumbent, <b>Scott Murphy,</b>who had succeeded the one-term
representative, Kirsten Gillibrand, who had wrested the seat from a previously
entrenched Republican). After the
2010 election, however, the boundaries of all congressional districts in New
York were redrawn (by the State Assembly, in keeping with legal
requirement). Greene County had been
part of the 20<sup>th</sup> district. Now it is part of the 19<sup>th</sup>. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Participation by Democrats in Tuesday’s 19<sup>th</sup>
district primary election makes sense, as a practical matter, if the choice
between prospective challengers to Mr Gibson is competitively consequential. The choice is consequential if the seat
can be deemed winnable, and if one would-be nominee stands a better chance of
winning.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
On the former question, the most solid basis for a positive
estimate is the fact that the new 19<sup>th</sup> district contains a bigger
proportion of Democrats than the old 20<sup>th</sup> district. Encompassing the new district are six
counties and portions of three other counties. <span style="background-color: white;">One of those counties--not part of the old 20</span><sup style="background-color: white;">th</sup><span style="background-color: white;">
district--is Ulster.</span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><span style="background-color: white;">Democrats
there out-number Republicans, and independents have joined them in giving strong support to </span><span style="background-color: white;">long-serving Democratic Representative <b>Maurice
Hinchey</b> (who is retiring).</span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><span style="background-color: white;">In the
old 20</span><sup style="background-color: white;">th</sup><span style="background-color: white;"> district, registered Republicans out-numbered Democrats by
a margin of 50,033.</span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><span style="background-color: white;">In the new 19</span><sup style="background-color: white;">th</sup><span style="background-color: white;">
district, thanks largely to the inclusion of Ulster County, the Republican
numerical edge is only 5634 (153,492 to 147,858).</span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><span style="background-color: white;">Meanwhile, as reported by the State’s Board of Elections,
26,591 residents of the 19</span><sup style="background-color: white;">th</sup><span style="background-color: white;"> district are registered as Independence
Party adherents, 11,330 as Conservatives, 2308 as Working Families Party
members, 1670 as Greens, and 121,380 (!) as un-partisans.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Those enrollment figures provided one of two considerations
prompting the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in Washington to add
New York’s 19<sup>th</sup> district to its roster of Republican-held seats that
could be rated plausibly as prospects, with appropriate infusion of resources,
for Democratic takeover. The other consideration that prompted that “Red to
Blue” judgment was the availability of a seemingly viable candidate: Julian
Schreibman. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
On the matter of viability, Mr Schreibman presented to the
DCCC, and later to the public, evidence of strong local support (financial and
otherwise), of past involvement in Democratic campaigns, and of an attractive
personal history. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As recounted in news stories and in his campaign web site ( <a href="http://www.julianforny.com/">www.julianforny.com</a>),</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Mr Schreibman, 39, is the son of a couple who ran a small
Kingston business, He was
first in his family to go to college, thanks to loans and part-time work. His college, and his subsequent law
school, was Yale. His professional
career includes stints as a Federal Government lawyer (for the Central
Intelligence Agency), as Special Assistant to the district attorney of Ulster
County, and as partner in a private law firm. Politically, he has been active
in Democratic campaigns and won election as chairman of Ulster County’s
Democratic committee.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
By way of contrast, Mr Tyner, 42, says nothing on his web site (<a href="http://www.joelforcongress.org/">www.joelforcongress.org</a> )</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
about family
origins. He lives with his
mother. He graduated from
Rhinecliffe High School and then from SUNY New Paltz. He works intermittently as a substitute teacher. Politically, he has won four terms as a
Dutchess County legislator from a Republican-leaning district. That electoral record is all the more
remarkable in view of the fact that Mr Tyner presents himself as a staunch
“progressive.” His roadside signs
proclaim allegiance to the so-called Occupy movement (“We are the 99%”), as
well as giving special prominence to condemning hydrofracking. His activities, however, have not
attracted strong support from fellow Dutchess co-partisans. The county’s Democratic committee has
endorsed Mr Schreibman. So have
the party organizations in Greene, Columbia, Sullivan, Rensselaer and Ulster
counties, along with numerous other organizations and noteworthy individuals,
including the revered Representative Hinchey.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Mr Schreibman’s success in picking up endorsements around
the 19<sup>th</sup> district stems in no small measure from showing up. By way of contrast, again, Mr Tyner has made few appearances away from home. There have been no campaign mailings
from Mr Tyner to 19<sup>th</sup> district Democrats. From Mr Schreibman there have been five. Some of them dwell on what he promises
to do, or to better than the Republican incumbent, namely,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;">*Protect Medicare and Social Security<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;"> *Help
small businesses and family farms.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;"> *Invest
in infrastructure and rural broadband<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;"> *Work to
protect our air and water<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;"> * Stand
up to the Republican extremists who are slashing funding for women’s health.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;"> *Fight to
end the giveaways to Big Oil and to make our tax laws more fair so that
millionaires pay their fair share. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This disparity in campaign activity can be ascribed partly
to the disparity in resources. Mr Tyner’s campaign visibility has consisted
largely of those roadside “We are the 99%” signs. His camp also put out an anonymous automated opinion survey,
asking respondents whether they prefer a “legislator and progressive activist”
over a “C.I.A. lawyer and party boss.” And folk singer <b>Pete</b> <b>Seeger</b> recorded an endorsement. Then there was last week’s colloquy in New Paltz
between the candidates—their only direct encounter. According to Press reports, differences in policy stands did
not come to the fore, but the two speakers differed in “tone.” Mr Tyner made “sharp attacks” on Mr
Schreibman and on the moderator.
This contributed to the warmer applause bestowed on Mr Schreibman. It
also prompted Mr Tyner’s treasurer, next day, to quit his campaign, and to do so in a
dramatic way. In statements to the
Press, <b>Mischa Fredericks</b> accused Mr
Tyner of failing persistently to record outlays properly. And she finally took that step, she
said, because of Mr Tyner’s “atrocious,” “horrendous” conduct during the New
Paltz encounter. To that blast Mr
Tyner responded that Ms Fredericks must be an enemy “plant.” He also accused her of sexual
harassment.<br />
P.S. Contrary to rumor, the two candidates do not disagree on "fracking." Both are opposed. Mr Schreibman voiced his opposition clearly at the New Paltz encounter and at a recent Catskill gathering. In his words, "bad for the environment; bad for the economy." </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>Dick Mayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03485935634961545610noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9599422.post-60847664537360955032012-06-17T11:46:00.000-04:002012-06-17T11:46:22.929-04:00Politics 2012: GOP Soundings<br />
<div class="Section1">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 22.5pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;">Dear Fellow American, <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 22.5pt; text-indent: .25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;">What issues do you want our
Republican presidential campaign to focus on in 2012 as we fight to make Barack
Obama a ONE-TERM president?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 13.5pt;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt;">So
begins a circular letter (6/7/12) from <b>Reince Priebus</b></span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">, chairman of the Republican National Committee. Among its recent recipients (6/7/12) is
a GreeneLander who was “selected” from among “thousands of activists in our
database” to “<u>represent voters</u> in your area in the <b><i><u>OFFICIAL</u></i></b></span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> <b>2012 Presidential Platform Survey</b></span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">.” Mr
Priebus letter invites the recipient to fill out a questionnaire which is
“REGISTERED to your name and address, identifying you as THE DESIGNATED
REPRESENTATIVE of VOTERS residing in your district.” Accordingly, “The answers of selected and screened
participants like you will represent the views and opinions of thousands of
other grassroots conservatives [<i>sic</i></span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">]
in your area.” “Your answers will shape and guide our ongoing, official
national campaign to elect Mitt Romney….and other Republican candidates….” They
will indicate “how to weight serious issues in our 2012 Republican campaign
efforts.” “That’s why you should be very proud to be among the select group of
Republicans [<i>sic</i></span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">] chosen to
participate….” Particularly:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 13.5pt; text-indent: 13.5pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;">Do you support Republican efforts to
reform entitlements, cut spending and put our nation on track to a balanced
federal budget without raising taxes?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 13.5pt; text-indent: 13.5pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;">Do you support a full repeal of the
ObamaCare healthcare legislation that [key Democrats] passed without revealing
its full details, ever-rising costs and negative effects on quality, access and
affordability?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 13.5pt; text-indent: 13.5pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;">[Do you share with Obama and the
Democrats the belief] that higher tax rates and more federal spending are the
keys to spurring economic growth?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 13.5pt; text-indent: 13.5pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;">Do you believe President Obama has
done enough to strengthen and improve border security? Do you support expanding
offshore drilling and increasing exploration for domestic oil and gas reserves
to lessen our dependence on imported fuels?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 13.5pt; text-indent: 13.5pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 13.5pt;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt;">Those
questions function rhetorically as advocacy as well as inquiry. While prepare the respondent for
inquiries to come, they advocate a version of what ought to be regarded as the
impending election’s main issues. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 13.5pt;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt;">Recipients
of Mr Priebus’s four-page, single-spaced letter are urged to complete the
Platform Survey and “return it to me,” along with “an election year
contribution of $35, $50…or even $500,” “within the next 7 days.” The suggested urgency, however,
may be disingenuous. The letter is
a revised version of mailings that date back at least to last April. So is the
questionnaire (whose text is still posted on the Republican National
Committee’s web site). The changes
are illuminating. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 13.5pt;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt;">In
earlier mailings, no assumption was made about who would be the Republican
nominee for President. Prominence
was given then to the task of candidate-selection, and Mr Priebus took a clear
stand on the matter of candidate-preference: “With your input and support, we can let our Republican
candidates know in no uncertain terms that folks like your WANT and EXPECT them
to <u>fight for our conservative</u> <u>values</u> and principles….” (That
sentence appears in the latest Priebus letter in a postscript).</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 13.5pt;">
<span style="font-size: large; text-indent: 13.5pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 13.5pt;">
<span style="font-size: large; text-indent: 13.5pt;">THEN AND NOW</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 13.5pt;">
The current Republican Platform
Survey opens with some standard demographic queries (age group, education…)
plus “Do you plan on volunteering for your local Republican Victory Center in
the 2012 Presidential Election?”
It closes with another query about intended participation in the
campaign to extinguish the “radical liberalism, reckless spending and embarrassing
foreign policy” of <b>Barack Obama</b>. In between, 30 questions appear under
five headings: “Presidential Performance and Issues” plus “economic,” “national
security,” “health care,” “values” issues, as well as “Entitlement Spending”
and “The 2012 Campaign.” The
choice of questions marks a contrast with the earlier menu. Thus: </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
OMITTED</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 13.5pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9pt;">Do you believe Congress should block
President Obama’s efforts to raise the federal debt ceiling for borrowing and
demand real cuts to federal spending?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 13.5pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9pt;">Would you support another federal bailout of the automobile
industry or large banks?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 13.5pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 9pt;">Do you support reforming the
way the government pays for Medicare for future retirees – while preserving the
existing program and options for those who now utilize it?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 13.5pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 9pt;">Do you agree that it is time to
withdraw our troops from Afghanistan?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 13.5pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 9pt;">Do you believe medical
malpractice reform to stop frivolous lawsuits and ever-increasing </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 9pt;">insurance premiums should be a
priority of healthcare reform legislation?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 13.5pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 9pt;">“The ObamaCare mandate forcing
religious medical institutions to provide services which go against their
beliefs is a direct attack on Americans’ constitutionally guaranteed 1st Amendment right to freedom of
religion.” </span><span style="font-size: 9pt;">[Agree/Disagree]</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
ADDED</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 13.5pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9pt;">“President Obama inherited an economy losing 800,000 jobs a
month and averte a averted a worst economic mess while passing healthcare
reform, saving the auto Industry, killing Osama bin Laden, and winding down the
war in Iraq. He has done a good
job and deserves to be re-elected.” </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9pt;">[Agree/Disagree/strongly/somewhat]</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 13.5pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 9pt;">Do you believe that President
Obama’s policies have helped make the economy better, had no impact, or made
the economy, worse?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 13.5pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 9pt;">Do you support ID laws that
require individuals to show a government issued picture ID when they go to the
polls to vote?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 11pt;">Two of those new questions
are distinctive in the survey as opportunities for respondents to voice esteem
for the Obama record and policies.
They function as weed-outs, enabling the survey’s processors to spot
respondents whose presence in the National Committee's data base is an error--respondents who are not Republican activists and conservatives.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">THE BIG ISSUES:
RIVAL IMAGES</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 11pt;">Question 3 in
Republican Survey invites judgments about the relative importance of cited
“issues.”</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">It also conveys
suggestions about what matters qualify, and do not qualify, as contemporary
political issues.</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">In this
case, illumination can be gained by means of comparison, not with an earlier
Republican menu, but with a competing alternative.</span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 11pt;"> As it happens, <b>Debbie
Wasserman-Schultz</b></span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">, Mr
Priebus’s countepart as chair of the Democratic National Committee, has
circulated on line a questionnaire (aimed at Democrats but accessible to all)
soliciting opinions on, among other things, the relative importance of cited
“issues.” Thus, the rival
party leaders offer an illuminating contrast between versions of potentially
important issues, namely:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt;">REPUBLICAN ‘ISSUES’</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 13.5pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9pt;">Strengthening border security<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 13.5pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9pt;">Reducing federal spending<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 13.5pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9pt;">Keeping taxes low<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 13.5pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9pt;">Exposing Obama’s radical left-wing policies<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 13.5pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9pt;">Repealing ObamaCare<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 13.5pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9pt;">Expanding domestic exploration for oil and gas<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 13.5pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9pt;">Stimulating job creation in the private sector<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 13.5pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9pt;">Reining in government employees’ unions<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 13.5pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9pt;">Demanding free and open trade to get U.S.
manufacturing growing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt;">DEMOCRATIC ‘ISSUES’</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 13.5pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9pt;">Job Creation and Strengthening the economy<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 13.5pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9pt;">Health Insurance Reform<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 13.5pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9pt;">Clean Energy<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 13.5pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9pt;">Education Reform <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 13.5pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9pt;">Wall Street Reform<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 13.5pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9pt;">Immigration Reform<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 9.0pt; margin-right: 2.0pt; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">(In the
Republican case, respondents are asked not how important they rate the cited
issues, but “how important it is to voters in your state to give attention” to
those issues.</span><span style="font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">That inquiry may be
a hangover from the days of battles, national and local, for Republican
nominations.</span><span style="font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">In the Democratic
case, respondents are invited not only to rate the importance of each cited
issue, but also to rank-order the issues in degree of urgency).</span><span style="font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">KEY TERMS AS
CLUE</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 13.5pt;">Reinforcing the sense of contrast that is imparted by the
inter-party contrast in Issue menus can be an appreciation of words that do <i>not</i></span><span style="font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 13.5pt;"> appear in the Priebus message(s). </span><span style="text-indent: 13.5pt;"> </span><span style="text-indent: 13.5pt;">Reflecting on political events and
controversies that have attracted news media coverage in recent months, one
might expect to encounter, in a party platform survey, references to</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 81.0pt; text-indent: 13.5pt;">
Environment Climate change Women /women’s
rights</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 81.0pt; text-indent: 13.5pt;">
Poverty Recession Alternative
fuels</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 81.0pt; text-indent: 13.5pt;">
Equality Inequality Democracy</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 81.0pt; text-indent: 13.5pt;">
Civil Rights Civil liberties Immigrants</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 81.0pt; text-indent: 13.5pt;">
Citizenship Terrorists Guantanamo</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 81.0pt; text-indent: 13.5pt;">
Indefinite
detention</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Those terms do not appear in Priebus letter or in the
Republican Platform Survey.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">POSSIBLE PLANKS</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="text-indent: 13.5pt;">Some questions in that survey
pertain to prospective legislation, or what could be planks in a campaign platform.</span><span style="text-indent: 13.5pt;"> </span><span style="text-indent: 13.5pt;">They invite respondents to vote Yes or
No on</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 13.5pt;">
*“a federal Balanced Budget
Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to stop deficit spending in
Washington.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 13.5pt;">
*“a phased-in increase in the
retirement/eligibility age for Social Security benefits….” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 13.5pt;">
*exempting retirees “from
property tax increases on their residences.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 13.5pt;">
(There’s a new one!)</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 13.5pt;">
*”allowng individuals under the
age of 50 to opt to put a portion of their Social Security withholdings into
private accounts that they control, but cannot access without penalty until
their retirement.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 13.5pt;">
*“immediate and total repeal of
the ObamaCare health care legislation.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 13.5pt;">
*the Supreme Court overturning
Roe <i>v</i>. Wade </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 13.5pt;">
*“…allowing parents to use
government vouchers to send their children to the school of their choice be it
public, parochial or private” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 13.5pt;">
*“voter ID law that require
individuals to show a government-issued picture ID when they go to the polls to
vote”? </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 13.5pt;">
*allowing federal funds to “be
provided to non-profit organizations whose primary function is conducting
abortions?” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">LABEL-MONGERING</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 13.5pt;">Strewn through the Priebus letter and the questionnaire are
ideological labels. Barack Obama
& Co. are characterized (qua accused) of perpetrating </span><span style="text-indent: 13.5pt;">”creeping
socialism, massive accumulation of federal debt and economic stagnation”; of an
“unrelenting “ campaign to enact policies that are “radical left-wing” and
“liberal”, of committing</span><span style="text-indent: 13.5pt;"> </span><span style="text-indent: 13.5pt;">“radical
liberalism, reckless spending and [an] embarrassing foreign policy.”</span><span style="text-indent: 13.5pt;"> </span><span style="text-indent: 13.5pt;">No effort is made to define the key
political terms.</span><span style="text-indent: 13.5pt;"> </span><span style="text-indent: 13.5pt;">But Priebus & Co. may offer clarification by way of imputing to Obama a malign “strategy of
treating all countries as equal to the United States,” and determination “to
increase taxes on individuals and families he considers to be ‘wealthy’,’’ to
impose on the people a ‘single- payer’ government-run health insurance and
health care system,” and to get rid of the Defense of Marriage Act.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 13.5pt;">
Meanwhile, the Priebus message is
noteworthy for allegiance to the term “conservative.” Recipents are assumed to be Republican activists <i>and</i> champions of “conservative” values. Thus, for Republicans who style
themselves as “moderates,” “centrists,” or “progressives,” no
hospitality is offered.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">SOURCES</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="text-indent: 13.5pt;">For texts of the surveys, and for
comments on the questions and related matters, see </span><a href="http://www.gop.com/PlatformSurvey" style="text-indent: 13.5pt;">www.gop.com/PlatformSurvey</a><span style="text-indent: 13.5pt;"> ; </span><a href="http://manfrommodesto.hubpages.com/" style="text-indent: 13.5pt;">http://manfrommodesto.hubpages.com</a><span style="text-indent: 13.5pt;">
; </span><a href="http://curlyandburly.ventspot.blogspot.com/" style="text-indent: 13.5pt;">http://Curlyandburly.ventspot.blogspot.com</a><span style="text-indent: 13.5pt;">;</span><span style="text-indent: 13.5pt;"> </span><a href="http://thegamingatheist.wordpress.com/" style="text-indent: 13.5pt;">http://thegamingatheist.wordpress.com</a><span style="text-indent: 13.5pt;">
</span><a href="http://davefactor.blogspot.com/" style="text-indent: 13.5pt;">http://davefactor.blogspot.com</a><span style="text-indent: 13.5pt;">
;</span><span style="text-indent: 13.5pt;"> </span><a href="http://awgarrett.blogspot.com/2102/06/2012" style="text-indent: 13.5pt;">http://awgarrett.blogspot.com/2102/06/2012</a><span style="text-indent: 13.5pt;">;</span><span style="text-indent: 13.5pt;"> </span><span style="text-indent: 13.5pt;">A Curmudgeon’s Notebook (</span><a href="http://www.curntbk.blogspot.com/2012/03/rnc" style="text-indent: 13.5pt;">www.curntbk.blogspot.com/2012/03/rnc</a><span style="text-indent: 13.5pt;">
).</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">BTW</span></div>
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<span style="text-indent: 13.5pt;">The GreeneLander who received the
Priebus message(s), correctly named and addressed, is not a Republican
activist. Or a GOP-style conservative. Or a Republican.</span></div>
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<br /></div>Dick Mayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03485935634961545610noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9599422.post-12046436726514610692012-06-08T13:20:00.000-04:002012-06-08T13:20:46.490-04:00Special Saturday In GreeneLand, in the course of a single day, June 2, residents and visitors took part not only in the routines of shopping, ball games, gardening, televiewing, loafing, cleaning, eating, but also in a rare assortment of special events.<br />
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Some of them looked over this year’s cleverly made cat figures, displayed on Main Street and elsewhere in Catskill Village. Some made a tour of the Rip Van Winkle figures that were scattered among the mountain towns. And around 10,000 fans of bluegrass and rock music gathered at Hunter Mountain for the Mountain Jam. They were entertained on separate stages by 50 bands. Saturday’s rain-dampened offerings concluded with a tribute ramble for the late <b>Levon Helm</b>.</div>
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In East Durham, motorcyclists gathered in and around Weldon House for a conclave hosted by the Troy-based chapter of Hells Angels. Attendees were offered, we understand, food, beer, tattoos, bike games, music and midget tossing, along with dictum to arrive with “no bad attitudes.”<br />
Nearby, in the Town of Durham, including the hamlets of Cornwallville and Oak Hill, Greene County Historical Society members hosted their 37<sup>th</sup> annual tour of historic homes. Under cloudy skies and occasional drizzles, some 200 visitors were given a special reason to get acquainted with some of our most picturesque, bucolic territory. They journeyed from the former Lyman Tremain opera house (now the cozy Yellow Deli, run by adherents of the Twelve Tribes) to, among other stops, an old homestead with general store, a Federal-style brick home with adjacent barns and gardens, a venerable farmhouse with a panoramic valley view, an Arts & Crafts home, a restored church, a school house dating from 1840. They also were invited to visit the Durham Center Museum. Thanks to those tourists’ purchases of tickets (with maps and guidebooks), plus sponsorships and a grant (from Nick Nahas), the 2012 tour of historic homes (and other buildings) brought to the Historical Society—for its acquisitions, cataloguing, storing, lending, publishing, restoring, conserving--an increment of $6200.</div>
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Up in New Baltimore, meanwhile, the Van Etten farm’s 22<sup>nd</sup> annual Antique Machinery and Agriculture Festival (qua Ag Fest) offered hundreds of Saturday visitors a taste of earlier days, what with hayrides, an antique tractor pull and a look at old farm implements, along with a silent auction, vendors’ products and entertainers. </div>
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In Catskill, Saturday’s special events began with Spring Rush. That test of fitness, started seven years ago by school teacher <b>Patrick Hernandez</b>, and subsequently managed by high school students, drew hundreds of triathletes for its challenging mix of 2.5-mile run, 10-mile bicycle pedal, and mile-long kayak paddle. </div>
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Going by the clock, Catskill’s special Saturday concluded at the Freightmasters building at Catskill Point, where 510 revelers converged, in fancy dress, for the 24<sup>th</sup> annual Columbia Memorial Hospital Ball. Specially honored on the occasion was <b>Jane Ehrlich</b>, the hospital’s president and chief executive who, said host <b>Marlene Brody</b>, “in only 18 years…transformed a sleepy country hospital into a state-of-the-art facility.” Thanks to sponsors ($1000 to $25,000), to contributors ($500), and $500 ticket buyers, as well as regular ticket buyers ($375), plus journal advertising (40 pages) and donated beverages (Hudson Wine Merchants, Chatham Wine & Liquor, Fairview Wine & Spirits, Kinderhook Wine & Spirits)—and after the costs of valet parking, decorations, fine food, attentive table service, tent rentals, invitation and journal design and printing, and <b>Stan Rubin</b>’s 15-piece Dance Orchestra--netted about $400,000.</div>
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Most important of Saturday’s special events, however, was the mid-afternoon program at the Thomas Cole National Historic Site. Celebrated there, and at four other places outside of GreeneLand, in conjunction with National Trails Day, was the opening of the greatly expanded Hudson River School Art Trail. That project opened first in 2005, with eight developed trails leading visitors (with maps and explanations) to country scenes where <b>Thomas Cole, Frederic Church, Jasper Cropsey, Asher B. Durand, Sanford Gifford </b>and other painters created pictures—now collectors’ items of immense value—that came to be known collectively as works of the Hudson River School. To the original eight sites, all in Greene and Columbia counties, nine have now been added. They are in New Hampshire, Wyoming and Massachusetts as well as New York. Installed at each site is a reproduction of the painting that resulted from the originating artist’s presence there. What is more, each Trail site is depicted vivdly, and its place in art history is adumbrated, in a video that was created with substantial help from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The results of that work are accessible at <a href="http://thomascole.org/trail">http//thomascole.org/trail</a> or <a href="http://www.hudsonriverschool.org/">www.hudsonriverschool.org</a>. Saturday’s celebrations at the various kick-off sites attracted lavish news media coverage. For creation of the Trails, for their expansion, and for the richly informative videos, to quote <i>The Almanac Weekly</i>, Catskill’s Cole Site was “the epicenter.”</div>
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<br /></div>Dick Mayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03485935634961545610noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9599422.post-23020699834215803272012-05-27T15:50:00.001-04:002012-05-29T08:10:33.545-04:00Dark Greene<span style="background-color: #6aa84f;">WRONG MOVE?</span>
Back in 2005, when Fr. <b>John J. Murphy</b> was obliged to retire as pastor of
St Patrick’s Church in Catskill, at age 76, after 34 years, the parish
experienced some turmoil. A satisfactory, durable successor to Fr Murphy proved
to be unobtainable. Archbishop Howard Hubbard assigned administrative duties to a nun, Sr <b>Mary Mazza</b>, who already was managing St Patrick's church business in Athens. Then a collapsed ceiling made the Catskill church unsafe for services,
which were conducted thereafter in a basement chapel. These developments troubled some parishioners, who
responded by joining other churches.
Among those new affiliations was Sacred Heart in Cairo. There the departed Catskillians came
under the priestly supervision of <b>Jeremiah Nunan</b>.<br />
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That prelate, after graduating from a seminary in his native
Ireland, had joined the Albany diocese in 1963. He had served at St Henry’s church in Averill Park, at St Mary’s in
Little Falls, at Assumption perish in Lathan, at St Mary’s in Hudson, and as
chaplain for the Columbia Memorial Hospital’s school of nursing, before being
transferred by Archbishop Hubbard to the Cairo parish (and to Our Lady of Knock
mission in East Durham) in 2007.
His arrival there came in the aftermath of what appeared to be a scandal.<o:p></o:p></div>
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In 2006 a California-based priest, <b>Mark Jaufmann</b>, went public
with street demonstrations claiming that, while he was an altar boy at St Mary’s, and later as well, he
had been abused sexually by Fr Nunan.
Jaufmann’s accusations prompted an official church investigation, during
which Nunan was placed on administrative leave (no officiating at a Mass or
other sacrament; no presenting self as a priest). The review board reported in January 2007 that it could not
find reasonable support for the accusation. Fr Nunan was restored to pastoral duty and transferred to
the Cairo/Durham posts. (Fr
Jaufmann died in March 2008). </div>
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Last month (on 4/14) the diocese announced that
Fr Nunan had been placed on leave again, pending the outcome of an
investigation that was triggered by a lawsuit accusing him anew of molesting a
minor. The news attracted abundant
Press coverage (<i>TimesUnion</i>; <i>Daily
Freeman</i>; Associated Press; <i>Daily Mail</i>), from which much of this account is
taken. This time the priest (now
74 years old) is accused of criminally molesting in Hudson two former altar
boys who were under his supervision:
<b>Ivan Morales Jr.</b> and his brother <b>Martin</b>. As evidence (in the civil suit aimed at the priest, the
parish, and the archdiocese) the plaintiffs cite large sums of money given by
Nunan to Ivan--in the form of checks drawn from parish funds. They also blame the priest for Ivan’s
troubled passage into young adulthood.</div>
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Will the departed Catskillians be
returning?<br />
<span style="background-color: #6aa84f;">REVOLTING</span>. According to a Greene County Republican
leader, <b>Barack Obama</b> is a “political socialist ideologue” who is “unlike anything world
history has ever witnessed,” and if he wins re-election in November, then
American patriots “shall not have any coarse [<i>sic</i>] but armed revolution.” Thus spake <b>Ponch McPhee</b>, in <i>The
Constitutional Conservative</i>, newsletter of
the Republican Party of Greene County, VIRGINIA. His party’s
county chairman repudiated that declaration. (<a href="http://www.gcrcgop.com/">www.gcrcgop.com</a>) (<a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/">www.rightwingwatch.org</a>)<br />
<span style="background-color: #6aa84f;">BILKED</span>. <b>Maurice Latimer</b> of Catskill is named in a
<i>TimesUnion</i> report (B. J. Lyons; 5/21/12) as one of hundreds of victims of
a Ponzi-like racket conducted, prosecutors say, by Albany stock brokers <b>Timothy
McGinn </b>and <b>David J. Smith</b>. The
partners have been indicted by a grand jury on charges of fraud, conspiracy and
tax evasion, and they are targets of a civil suit brought by the Securities
& Exchange Commission.
Estimates of the victims’ total losses exceed $100 million. Mr Latimer, however, put his dollar
loss in the hundreds. He is
identified in the <i>TU</i> story as an insurance claims adjuster, but he is better
known around the county courthouse as the dapper guardian of
jurors.<br />
<span style="background-color: #6aa84f;">JOBS</span>. The GreeneLand situation, as gauged by State Department of
Labor data collectors, is still dismal.
Although the rate of unemployment did drop a bit from March (9.6%) to
April, it still is worse than in April of 2011, and it still is one of the
highest—meaning worst--at 9.4 per cent, in the State. (Worst, at 12% is Bronx County; best, at 5.7%, is Tompkins
County). It is worse than the
nation-wide rate (7.7%), the State rate (8.1%) and the Columbia County rate
(7.2%). </div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">AND LIGHTER GREENE</span><br />
<span style="background-color: #93c47d;">RISING STARS.</span>
Included in the <i>Business Review’s</i>
new “40 Under 40” roster of promising young Capital Region business people are
two GreeneLanders: <b>Elena D’Agnese</b>, 33, of East Durham, and <b>Alexander Betke</b>, 35,
of Coxsackie. Ms Agnese is
director of marketing and communications for the Albany-based Center For
Economic Growth (<a href="http://www.ceg.org/">www.ceg.org</a>), which touts
early-stage, high-growth companies to prospective investors. Mr Betke is a partner in the law firm
of Wilson Elser Moskowitz Edelman & Dicker, is Coxsackie’s elected town
supervisor, is lawyer for Catskill (village) and for Saugerties <i>and
</i>is an active, baseball-coaching father of
4.<br />
<span style="background-color: #93c47d;">INDUCTED</span> into the Blues Hall of Fame (1989 incarnation) last Sunday (5/20/12), at
a New York ceremony and jam session, was GreeneLand drummer (and
Windham disc jockey) <b>Cliff Anshanshin</b>, better known as <b>Sonny Rock</b>. Not<br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-BQP2YsO0BGM/T8S78cHXWqI/AAAAAAAAAXQ/zYGj1b5LuLY/s1600/Untitled6.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-BQP2YsO0BGM/T8S78cHXWqI/AAAAAAAAAXQ/zYGj1b5LuLY/s320/Untitled6.png" width="265" /></a>bad for a guy
who almost died of severe burns at age 3 and has needed periodic surgical
treatments ever since.</div>
<span style="background-color: #93c47d;">SCHOOL FINANCE</span>.
Among events that did NOT happen on Tuesday, May 15,
contrary to apprehensions, was voter rejection of proposed GreeneLand school district
budgets. As reported in <i>The Daily
Mail</i>, majorities of voters in all six districts (of the voters who turned out,
that is) gave approval to planned outlays totaling $135 million. Margins of support, with one exception,
were substantial: Catskill, 547-302; Cairo-Durham, 632-353; Coxsackie-Athens,
722-599; Greenville, 778-354; Windham-Ashland-Jewett, 193-30. The exception was
Hunter-Tannersville: 277 Yea, 212 Nay.<br />
<span style="background-color: #93c47d; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px;">SPROUTS</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px;">, the free arts program for children (3-7) will happen again this summer, during July-August, at six GreeneLand locations. It’s an art/music or theatre/dance program with five daily session led by professionals who are assisted by teen volunteers. <b>Ruth Leonard</b> (6344 2289) directs it for the county Arts Council (943-3400). Registration fills quickly.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: #93c47d;">MEMORIAL DAY</span> was observed at GreeneLand’s Juniper Woods Campground by way of a “Red, White & Blue” picnic. Uniforms, among other garments, were optional.</div>
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<br /></div>Dick Mayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03485935634961545610noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9599422.post-53083567089138297622012-05-19T08:29:00.001-04:002012-05-19T13:19:42.026-04:00Greene Goodies<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: #b6d7a8;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="background-color: #b6d7a8;">ACHIEVERS</span>. <b>Carly, Kassadi, Tyler, Jordan </b>and<b> </b><b style="font-weight: bold;">Seth </b>are first names of children who share at least three traits. They attend Catskill public schools (Middle and High). They scored top academic honors during the latest school term. And their last name is<b style="font-weight: bold;"> <b>Bulich</b>.</b><br />
<span style="background-color: #b6d7a8;"> LAGGARDS</span>. The latest scores on local school kids' academic achievements confirmed, with one exception, a familiar pattern: male retardation. Although boys make up about half of the student population, they do not provide half of the good students. At Coxsackie-Athens High School, 27 of the 45 seniors who achieved top academic honors in the latest term are girls. At Catskill High School, in grade 9, 15 girls and only four boys achieved top honors. In grade 10, the ratio was 16 to 4. In grade 11, among the 16 High Honors achievers, only five boys were included. But the grade 12 results provided a radical departure from the gender norm: 4 girls, 10 boys (including two Buliches).<br />
<span style="background-color: #93c47d;">COOKING</span><span style="background-color: #6aa84f;">!</span> "O'Sullivan
Stew," the musical which was first presented in Catskill 2010, based on a
book by GreeneLand’s <b>Hudson Talbott</b>, on songs composed by GreeneLand’s <b>Frank
Cuthbert</b>, on staging by GreeneLand’s <b>Casey Biggs</b>, was performed dozens of times
over the last year by Urban Stages, a New York City theater group that
presents plays and musicals to libraries and charter schools. "O'Sullivan Stew" also is one of five plays, out of 177 entries, that won
selection for performance at a new works festival recently at Bowling Greene
University in Ohio. What is more more, “The
Last Pine Tree on Eagle Mountain,” another original work by Mr Cuthbert (story <i>and</i> music <i>and</i>
lyrics) was produced for Earth Day 2012 performance in the New York City Public
Library.<br />
<span style="background-color: #b6d7a8;">CULTURE BOOSTS</span>. Ten GreeneLand non-profits will be receiving grants of county money, in amounts ranging from $500 to $3000, to help with the costs of programs to be offered during the year. The money, totaling $18,000 (scaled down from $62,475 in requests), comes from the county legislature’s Initiative Program, with recipients and their allocations decided by a panel of county Arts Council selectors. The program dates from 1983, and it has long been distinctive for geographic diversity. This year’s winning applicants include the county Historical Society’s Bronck Museum ($2200), the Catskill Mountain Foundation ($3000), free103point9 Wave Radio ($1200), Horton By the Stream theater company ($1000), Inter-Cities Performing Arts (concerts and a play; $500), the Grazhda music and folk arts center in Jewett ($2350), Planet Arts (jazz; $1650), the Thomas Cole National Historic Site ($2400), the Windham Chamber Music company ($2500), and the Zadock Pratt museum ($1200). Other arts-boosting grants, to groups and individuals, may eventuate. The State Council on the Arts has earmarked $22,000 for “re-grants” allocated by GreeneLand's arts council. (See <a href="http://www.greenearts.org/">www.greenearts.org</a> )</div>
<span style="background-color: #b6d7a8;">IDEAS</span>. In response to our question (<i>Seeing Greene</i>, 5/5/12) about salutary uses of the Union Mills (ex-Oren’s Furniture) property on Main Street and on Water Street in Catskill, we have received two suggestions. One is to transfer to that site the headquarters of the aforementioned Council on the Arts. That move would allow for expansion, and could enable the Council to serve as a kind of magnet for independent arts-related projects, under the same roof.<br />
The second idea is to establish in that commodious space a branch of the institution that is known officially as the Columbia-Greene Community College although physically it only exists on the Columbia side of the Hudson. So: put some C-GCC courses in Union Mills building. There's plenty of room for classes. Offer courses that are particularly popular with Greene County students and would be particularly convenient for GreeneLand high school kids who are doing Advanced Placement work (or who would do that work if the classroom were closer to home).<br />
Those two ideas, BTW, are not mutually exclusive.<br />
Moreover, there has been abundant talk about building dormitories to house C-GCC students. Must those dormitories be right on the current campus? What about adapting the residential section of the Union Mills lofts?<br />
<span style="background-color: #93c47d;">BANK SHOTS</span>. Good things have happened lately for GreeneLand’s foremost local bank:<br />
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*Profits. In its latest quarter, Greene County Bancorp, parent of the Bank of Greene County, scored record earnings. As reported by company president <b>Donald Gibson</b>, net income from the start of the current fiscal year (July 1, 2011 to June 30, 2012) grew by 15 per cent, and the pace of increase in the latest quarter (January 1 to March 31) was faster than in the previous quarter. Moreover, net income relative to number of company shares also went up. The bank's assets now total almost $580 million, a gain of around $25 million since this time last year. That increase was recorded even while the dollar tally of outstanding loans that are classed as “non-performing”—likely defaults—has reached $6.8 million. Anyhow, the bank’s good fortune is due largely to a nice combination: more borrowers, plus an increase in the spread between rates of interest payable to the bank by its borrowers and rates payable by the bank to its lenders.<br />
*Recognition. Exceptional fiscal feats won for Greene County Bancorp elevation by an investment bank, Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, to an “honor roll” of “most profitable [U.S.] banks over the past decade.” That recognition—bestowed by KBW on 45 out of a population of 400 banks--was based on meeting three tests: no yearly loss over the past decade; yearly net income per share of stock that is at least the highest posted over the past decade; and consecutive net income increases, before extraordinary items, since 2009. In size of deposits, Greene County Bancorp was the smallest newcomer to KBW’s 2012 honor roll. And that fact won for the bank special attention in an <i>American Banker</i> magazine story. There, Mr Gibson is credited with making the point that his company “sticks to the traditional formula of collecting local deposits, making loans in the deposit area and shunning risky bond purchases.” Accordingly “’We’re just trying to do the basics, making all the layups and the foul shots’.”</div>
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(Incidentally, the biggest bank included in KBW’s 2012 “honor roll” is JP Morgan Chase, whose inclusion pre-dated the revelation that the Chase incurred, in the space of about six weeks, losses totaling $2 billion. The losses came from the practice that is called Proprietary Trading and is a prime example of <i>not</i> sticking to the basics of banking). </div>
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*Innovation. Late in 2011, Greene County Bancorp formed a real estate investment trust, Greene Property Holdings Ltd. To that subsidiary, with 20 per cent of preferred shares owned by “certain employees of the bank,” went all the mortgages held by the bank. The change, we understand, yielded immediate tax advantage and thus promises to boost profits in coming quarters.</div>
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*Infusion. According to a report in <i>The Register-Star</i>, the BOGC is about to receive a multi-million dollar deposit. And for the use of that money, as a way to earn money as a lender, the bank will pay a pittance: 0.75 per cent. The infusion will come from Columbia County government funds, transferred from the Bank of America. The transfer is the result of a bidding contest. For the privilege of holding Columbia County deposits, the BOA was willing to pay interest at the rate of just one-fifth of one per cent. The BOGC topped that offer, and other banks’ offers, with an 0.75 per cent bid. It thus acquires a big pool of money that can be loaned to mortgagees at a considerably higher rate of interest.</div>
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<span style="background-color: #b6d7a8;">FAST ACTION</span>. The girl in that picture actually is an adult, a mother, a
part-time Athenian, and a budding mogul.
<b>Lexy Funk</b> is president of Brooklyn Industries, which <i>Crain’s New York
Business</i> calls the “hipster clothing chain.” The picture illustrated a May 13th story about “fast
fashion,” or turning to local manufacturers in order to get designs to the
market in a more timely, well, fashion.
Six weeks instead of (for things made in China) six months. </div>
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(Full disclosure: we are related to that mogul)</div>
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<br /></div>Dick Mayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03485935634961545610noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9599422.post-58828473648763431892012-05-06T17:55:00.001-04:002012-05-06T18:21:13.701-04:00Downtown Undoings As foreshadowed here on August 7<sup style="text-indent: 0.5in;">th</sup><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">, downtown Catskill now has
yet another empty building.</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">In
this case it is one of Catskill’s biggest and finest: 355 Main Street (corner
of Bridge), which housesd an HSBC bank branch.</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Its emptiness is a consequence of a big deal whereby HSBC
(advertised as “the world’s local bank”) sold all its local New York State
operations (184 branches) to First Niagara.</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">That paved the way for closings wherever branches of the two
thrifts have been near-neighbors. Around the State, consequently, 35 branches have
been closed or are slated for closing, including 11 in the Capital region.</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">HSBC’s Catskill customers will be
accommodated right next door at First Niagara.</span>
<br />
<span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> That HSBC exit augments an already-abundant stock of vacant commercial
properties:</span>
<br />
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*Idle cement plant sites up and down the Hudson. Future boating and golf resorts? Dream
on. </div>
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*The former Dunns Builders (and then Herrington’s) complex just below
the Uncle Sam Bridge. </div>
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*The former Irving Elementary School building, now partly and elegantly
converted into apartments. </div>
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*The former Agway branch on West Bridge, with its four buildings plus a
big strip of street frontage. </div>
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*The former St Patrick’s Academy, with its classrooms, offices,
gymnasium, playing fields, Hudson River view. </div>
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*Two big former automotive dealerships. </div>
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*Departed downtown restaurants-- Fire House; MOD; 355; Bells--and galleries,
plus Imagine That! </div>
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*The former Orens Furniture store on Main Street, with its huge
creek-side warehouse that is partly and elegantly converted into potential creek-side condominums. Last Wednesday it was offered at auction, again, apparently fruitlessly, by the foreclosing Buffalo bank, in one two-unit parcel (69,600 square feet) or two parcels. The assessed value of the respective units was $195,000 and $290,000, with
full market value being pegged officially at $324,000 and $464,000. <i>But the auction may not have been in vain</i>. <b>Aaron Flach</b>, the Coxsackie-based champion of restorations and conversions, has expressed to the bank a more-than-casual interest. While no deal is imminent, he told <i>Seeing Greene, </i>he is seriously interested, and is eager to collect ideas about how best to adapt the two buildings in a financially viable way that contributes to the social and cultural well-being of the community. (flachdvlp@aol.com)<br />
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Looking for more words of comfort? Well,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
*the residential housing market is picking up. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
*Catskill’s public library is offering more programs and
services than ever before, and drawing record volume of patronage. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
*The Bank of Greene County has continued to grow and
prosper, notwithstanding our ‘down’ economy. (More on that anon). </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
*the venerable Pollaces Resort in Catskill was hailed
recently by the TripAdvisor organization as one of this country’s top 25 “small
hotels and motels for families.”
That designation was not a product of inspections by visiting
agents. It was a reflection of the
persistently warm terms of voluntary reviews posted to the TripAdvisor web
site by Pollace visitors. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
*Also winning rave notices from guests is Catskill’s new Bed & Breakfast: the Post Cottage on Spring Street. Guests persistently give it the top (five stars) TripAdvisor
rating on all five tests of merit.
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b> *Community Action of Greene</b> <b>County</b> had a festive
opening on Saturday at its new, spacious, accessible headquarters: the former Sawyer
Motors used car dealership at 7856 Route 9W. Turnout, and participation in multiple activities for kids,
was HUGE. A terrific start. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
*The Thomas Cole National Historic Site has reopened (as of last
Sunday, 4/29) for the new season, with a fresh collection of Hudson River
School art. The featured artist
for 2012 is <b>Louis Remy Mignot</b> (1831-70), a Charlestonian of French origins
whose glowing landscapes (European and South American, as well as upstate New
York) draw upon the leadership of <b>Thomas Cole</b> and of Cole’s pupil,
<b>Frederic Church</b>. The opening started with an illuminating, illustrated
lecture by <b>Katherine Manthorne</b>, professor of art history at the City University
of New York’s graduate center. Mignot, she said, was an “enigmatic” and “multi-faceted” artist, who belonged to "the inner circles of “polar opposites," Church and <b>James
Whistler</b>. The fresh
opening marked the ninth year of exhibitions that have been mounted since the
restoration of the house and grounds in Catskill where Cole lived for
most of his extraordinary career as founder of the first distinctly American
school of art. Attendance at
the opening was abundant, with many coming from out of town, as they did for
monthly pre-season lectures. The
attendance, along with the substantial growth in staff and in volunteers, bodes
well for the final great project of restoration at Cedar Grove: resurrecting
Cole’s New Studio, the structure that he designed and used in the final years
of his life. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
*The second stage of the latest Masters on Main Street art-appreciation project, “Wall Street to Main Street,” commenced in Catskill. To the store window exhibits and
installations that have been on display since March 17<sup>th</sup> will be
added, as organizer <b>Fawn Potash</b> (of Council on the Arts) says, “skill-sharing
workshops, demonstrations, discussions, panels, tours and more.” Those activities are designed “to
encourage democratic art and free speech,” providing “a window into the ideas,
dreams and inspirations” that have arisen from the ongoing global “Occupy”
movement.<br />
*At Catskill Point, a splendidly refurbished <i>Port of Call</i> restaurant has just reopened. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
*Downtown Catskill has been enhanced in the past year by the
additions of <b>Bryan Hunter</b>'s bicycle shop (Catskill Cycles), a chocolate shop (Sweet
Sensations), a local produce outlet (<b>Chuck Solberg</b>’s Catskill Country Store) and a restaurant (Casa
Latina; tasty and cozy). </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
*And Kirwan’s Game Store, now fully stocked and furnished to attract the post-Dungeons & Dragons generation, is proving to be a big <i>regional
</i>draw.
Think of it: Catskill as geek
destination. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
#</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
FIRST IN LINE. For Catskill Village’s annual Clean Sweep Day
on Saturday morning (volunteers, supplied with gloves and sacks, cleaning up downtown
and creek-side public sites) who was the helper to sign in? A Schoharie County
resident, Assemblyman <b>Pete Lopez</b>. <span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
REST IN PEACE: <b>Jack Guterman</b>.<br />
<br />
REST IN PEACE: <b>Nanette (Nette) Margolius.</b></div>Dick Mayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03485935634961545610noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9599422.post-47904004702455211742012-04-24T21:46:00.000-04:002012-04-24T21:46:02.792-04:00Greene Mischief Although <i>Seeing Greene</i> hibernated during the late long winter, staff minions did gather some items
that could be deemed blog-worthy. In the category of Greene Mischief, accordingly, could be recorded or alleged cases of welfare
fraud, of home invasion (two of them, with weapons; against acquaintances), of daylight burglary (by women), of
counterfeiting (with five-dollar bills being “alerted” to look like fifties,
per <i>The Daily Mail</i>), of the priest who
has been suspended from duties after being sued in civil court for alleged
sexual abuse, of statutory rape in “a suspicious vehicle,” of the would-be
property developer in Hunter who flouted DEH regulations and court orders, and of the seven store clerks who evidently did, and the 21 who did not, get caught in a sting operation, mounted by Sheriff Greg Seeley and the State Liquor Authority, that was aimed at curbing sales of alcoholic beverages to minors. <br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Now for some more
interesting, or entertaining, cases.
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: #93c47d;">*GRIFTER GAME.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .6in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><b>Sad Moment..(I
Need Your Help).. <o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .6in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;">Hello,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .6in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;">I'm
writing this with tears in my eyes, my family and I came down here to Manila, Philippine
for a short vacation and we were mugged at gun point last night at the park of
the hotel where we lodged, all cash and credit card were stolen off us but
luckily for us we still have our passports with us...<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .6in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .6in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;">We've been to the Embassy and the Police here, but they're
not helping issues at all they asked us to wait for 3 weeks but we can't wait
till then and our flight leaves in few hours from now but we're having problems
settling the hotel bills and the hotel manager won't let us leave until we settle
the hotel bills, we are freaked out at the moment...Well I really need your
financially assistance...Please let me know if you can help us out. Write me
back so I can tell you how to get it to me.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .6in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That e-mailed plea for help went to scores of GreeneLanders. It went to people who were included in a list belonging to the ostensible sender: none
other than this county’s official historian, <b>David Dorpfeld</b>. It
was a hoax. The actual Dorpfelds
are safe and well. And solvent. And
literate.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: #6aa84f;">*CENSURE CENSURED</span>. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
GreeneLand’s Board of Ethics has been convicted of unethical
conduct. According to State
Supreme Court judge <b>Richard Platkin</b> (as
reported in <i>The Daily Mail, </i>2/16/12), when the Board inflicted
censure on New Baltimore town councilman <b>Art Byas</b> it “failed to abide by its own rules and regulations.”<br />
The case originated with a compound complaint made in 2011 by town
employees, who accused Mr Byas of failing to heed, promptly, a call to return
or destroy his copy of a file of confidential personnel information that had
been distributed inadvertently to several local officials, late in 2010, by
Town Supervisor <b>Susan O’Rorke</b>. Mr Byas did not heed the call immediately,
but by December, according to the town attorney, all recipients had done
so.<br />
The ethics panel--<b>Michael G. Avella</b>, chairman; <b>Rosemarie Webb; Joseph
Konopka</b>—adjudged that when Mr Byas did not heed the call,
immediately, he violated a provision of New Baltimore’s ethics code,
prohibiting municipal officers from disclosing confidential information
acquired during performance of official duties.<br />
<span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> No recipient of disclosure was ever
named.</span><br />
<span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> Mr Byas challenged the board’s
ruling, along with the aura of validity that Ms O’Rorke and some other town
council members had bestowed on it.</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">He accused the Board of Ethics of making its judgment on the basis of an
inaccurate news article and without “making direct contact with me, or
attempting to subpoena me.”</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">(Ms
O’Rorke claimed that Mr Byas “ignored” several chances to explain his actions
to the ethics panel).</span><br />
<span style="text-align: justify;"> Judge
Platkin ruled that the ethics board’s censure, being “devoid of legally
sufficient proof,” and marked by “respondent’s failure to according petitioner
the protections to which he is entitled by law,” is “vacated, annulled, and
declared of no legal focus or effect.”
(In the </span><i style="text-align: justify;">Daily Mail</i><span style="text-align: justify;"> account, the
last quoted word was </span><i style="text-align: justify;">affect</i><span style="text-align: justify;">).</span><br />
<span style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;"> The Board of Ethics reportedly
issued a statement averring that the judge “misunderstood the facts and
erroneously applied the law.”</span><span style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;">But
no such statement, or any link to the county’s Board of Ethics, exists on the
Greene County Government web site.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: #6aa84f;">*NEGLIGENCE?</span> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That web site offers, among other things, a list of
Departments, each with its e-mail address. Click the address for Treasurer and you get an
invitation to send an internet message to, ahem, <b>Willis Vermilyea</b>. Click
for Sheriff and, after being told that <b>Gregory Seeley</b> is the sheriff, you click what is identified as his
email address, you get a prospective mailing to <b>Richard Hussey</b>. With
regard to Mental Health, where <b>Margaret Graham</b> is listed as director, clicking her nominated
e-mail address yields a call to <b>pkconrad</b>. In the case of the
Industrial Development Agency, <b>Sandy Mathes</b> is identified as executive director; and clicking
on the link to his email address yields a prospective note to that
gentleman. But Mr Mathes left the
I.D.A. nine months ago. Mr Hussey
has not been sheriff since 2008. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Meanwhile, the county government’s link to “Press Releases” produces—and
has produced for several years—the message “No new releases.” So who, pray tell, is minding
GreeneLand’s official web site?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: #6aa84f;">*STIEFEL STIFFS STAFF?</span><br />
<span style="background-color: #6aa84f;"><br /></span><br />
<b>Charles
Stiefel</b>, former head of the multi-national
Stiefel Laboratories (skin care products, with a production plant here in
GreeneLand), is being accused by the federal Securities & Exchange
Commission of defrauding company employees. In an action filed in Florida, the Commission contends that Stiefel and his sons kept employees in
the dark about the imminent sale of the company to the pharmaceutical giant,
GlaxoSmithKline. Before that deal
was known to be in prospect, they offered to buy back private company shares
that were owned by employees.
According to the Commission, the Stiefels gave “misleading valuations”
of those shares, buying back the units at about a third of what GSK soon afterward
paid for them as part of a $2.9 billion purchase. The deception, according to the SEC, short-changed the
employees to the extent of $110 million. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In addition to the SEC’s legal
action, the former chief financial officer of Stiefel Labs, along with three
other former company officers, is suing the Stiefels on grounds resembling
those cited in the SEC action for fraud.
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
At the time of the sale to
GSK, about 200 employees operated the Stiefel plant in Oak Hill. Among them, and since retired, was
Cairo town councilman <b>William Carr Jr.</b>
In response to a call from <i>Seeing Greene</i>, he identified himself as one of “many dozens” of former
shareholders who have a stake in the outcome (in 2013, perhaps) of the SEC’s
lawsuit. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>P.S.</i> Charles Stiefel was honored by
accountants Ernst & Young back in 1996 as Florida Enterpriser of the Year.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>P.P.S.</i> When the GSK takeover took place in
2009, closure of the Oak Hill Stiefel plant was announced. But a rescue operation that was led by
<b>Sandy Mathes</b>, who at the time was executive director of the county’s Industrial
Development Agency, induced the new owners to stay in Oak Hill, albeit with a
shift from making skin care products to making toothpaste. The inducements--tax
breaks, low-interest loans, cash grants--amounted to about $2 million. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
(For more coverage of the Stiefel matter, see Scott Thrum, “SEC Sees Bitter Pill
at Drug Maker,” <i>Wall Street Journal</i>,
1/24/12).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>Dick Mayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03485935634961545610noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9599422.post-8045005993290622662011-12-10T18:57:00.000-05:002011-12-10T18:57:31.732-05:00December DropletsBESTOWED by the Greene County Historical Society, at a
Saturday ceremony in the Haines Falls Free Library, on an eminent devotee of
GreeneLand history: the first-of-its-kind <b>Jessie Van Vechten</b> Award. Recipient <b>Justine Hommel</b><span style="font-weight: normal;"> is a founder of the Mountain Top Historical Society
and has been its leader for 30 years, in addition to being the chief public
librarian during 1957-88. As
reported in the <i>Daily Mail</i></span> (12/6) by <b>Jim Planck</b><span style="font-weight: normal;">—himself no mean historian--the award bears
the name of a founder of the county historical society “who is probably best
known for stopping the NYS Department of Transportation in the 19030s from
destroying the eighteenth century stone bridge in Leeds.” With that feat in mind, the Jessie is
represented tangibly in the form of a ceramic plaque bearing a likeness of the
bridge. The plaque was commissioned by the county historical society
from </span><b>Frank Giorgini</b><span style="font-weight: normal;"> of Freehold,
master designer and fabricator of handmade commemorative tiles. It calls attention to achievement of
historic preservation of <i>objects</i></span> as well as of records. With that in mind, <b>Robert Hallock</b><span style="font-weight: normal;">, president of the county historical society,
recalled at the award ceremony that Ms Hommel succeeded back in the 1980’s in dissuading
the Department of Transportation from ruining the historic and esthetic
character of Kaaterskill Clove by using corrugating steel instead of rocks to
replace aging stonework, as well as in acquiring the long-abandoned Ulster
& Delaware Railroad station in Haines Falls and restoring it for use as the
Mountain Top Historical Society’s headquarters. In addition, Ms Hommel created a film, “The Valleys, The
Mountains, and the Clove,” and she has shared her knowledge of the old-time
tourism industry, and of the Hudson River School of Art, with the Smithsonian
Museum, <i>National Geographic</i></span> magazine, <i>The New York Times</i><span style="font-style: normal;">, and public television figures.</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
COLE CASH. A
tiny, crude, 170-year-old pencil sketch by a 19<sup>th</sup> century artist
went up for auction last week in Philadelphia. The drawing of an ancient Roman “Arch of Nero” occupied just
15 square inches on a 32-square-inch sheet of paper. Experts in the art trade guessed that, in view of the
artist’s fame in his own time, the recent revival of interest in the artist’s
work, and the known habits of collectors, this scrap of art history could fetch
as much as $2000. In fact it sold
for $7500. Another picture, "attributed" to the same artist, sold for $3275. A third picture, a fully realized, full-sized oil painting made by the same artist, did not reach the six-figure reserve price Which serves to
indicate what has come to be the market value of works by <b>Thomas Cole</b><span style="font-weight: normal;"> (1801-48), of Catskill NY.</span><br />
<br />
BETTER DAYS.
The jobs picture,
nationally and locally, has shown signs lately of improvement. As widely reported in the news media,
the national rate of unemployment dipped in November to 8.6 per cent, the
lowest (=best) since March 2009.
Part of the improvement, to be sure, is due to departures from the ranks
of people who are counted as belonging to the work force. But 120,000 jobs were added, even while
20,000 government jobs were cut. And
those gains coincided with upturns in rates of factory output, construction, retail sales,
and small business returns.</div>
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Consistent with the national trend, moreover, is the jobs
picture in our section of the country. The November figures have not been released yet by the State’s
Labor Department, but the positive trend is evident:. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
10/11 9/11 10/10</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
NYS 7.7% 7.8% 8.0% </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Albany Co. 6.5 6.9 6.9</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Ulster Co
7.4
7.8
7.8</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Dutchess
6.8 7.0
7.2</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Columbia
6.8
7.0 7.0</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Sullivan 8.1 8.3
8.5</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Delaware 7.6 8.4</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Orange
7.2
7.7</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
GREENE 7.8 8.3 7.9</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Bronx* 12.4
12.4
12.3 </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Saratoga** 5.9 6.0
6.3</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
*Worst
in State</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
**Third
best in State</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Those figures also serve to confirm a persistent economic fact: in GreeneLand, it's harder than in neighboring counties to find work.<br />
<br />
NO SPICE. The
substance known colloquially as “spice” (and as K2, Spice Gold, Spice Silver
and K3), as well as synthetic marijuana, has been outlawed by Greene County’s
legislators. This happened even
before the stuff, the cannaboids, had been tested by the Food & Drug
Administration to learn whether the emitted smoke affects bystanders
adversely. That action was taken
by the legislators of Greene County, Indiana.</div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<span class="messagebody"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: normal;">SHAGGY DOG STORY.<span>
</span>“I was at WalMart buying a bag of Purina dog chow for my dog ,” recalls
GreeneLander <b>Eugenia Brennan Heslin </b>(on Facebook), ”when a woman behind me in
the check-out line asked if I had a dog. Why else
would I be buying dog chow, RIGHT? So on impulse I told her that no, I didn't
have a dog, I was starting the Purina Diet again, and that I probably
shouldn't, because I ended up in the hospital last time, but that I'd lost 50
pounds before I awakened in intensiv</span></span><span class="textexposedshow"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: normal;">e
care, with tubes coming out of most of my orifices and IVs in both arms. I told
her that it was essentially a Perfect Diet and all you do is load your pockets
with Purina Nuggets and simply eat one or two every time you feel hungry. The
food is nutritionally complete so it works well and I was going to try it again.... Horrified, she asked if I ended up in intensive care because
the dog food poisoned me. I told her no, I stepped off a curb to sniff a
poodle's butt and a car hit me. I thought the guy behind her was going to have
a heart attack he was laughing so hard. Better watch what you ask me and be
prepared for my answer. I have all the time in the world to think of crazy
things to say….</span></span><span class="textexposedshow"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><br />
<span class="textexposedshow"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: normal;"> “Now that you've read this I have to confess, I copied it
from someone else."</span></span><br />
<br />
DAILY MAUL. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
--“The
plan, which is a department level plan, has been aoporived through the
commissioners level after several levels of review, outside of the public review.”
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
--“The
two underpinning reasons…was to help inform the public on how DEC manages deer
and wanted to lay out specific strategies to improve the plan for the future.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
--“He
said he viewed the deer management plan as pushing for quality for a well
balanced deer heard, allowing for the proper amount of bucks to the proper
amount of does.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
--“For
2012, the budget decreases in revenues and expenditures, no cost of living
raises, and hours cut for certain departments’ personal services where revenues
have declined.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
--“Total
amount to be raised by taxes in 2012 have been figured at $1,490,345….”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
--“Bringing
up the rear was Santa Claus and one of his helpers in the bucket…”</div>Dick Mayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03485935634961545610noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9599422.post-10090101336804010222011-11-28T18:20:00.002-05:002011-11-29T07:52:12.620-05:00Greene Gobbling<style>
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EULOGIZED as lawyers’ lawyer, devoted husband (of <b>Patricia
Ann Murphy</b>, for 53 years), mountaineer (Kilimanjaro; Everest), runner (of
marathons), builder (of a family chapel near home), chef, conversationalist,
friend to many, staunch family man (six kids, 22 grandkids), polymath
(engineering, law, theology), dutiful citizen, campaigner
(folksy door to door bid for election as District Attorney), eternal energetic
optimist,“class act”…; by Greene County’s legislators (unanimous resolution,
9/21/11), and by a procession of lawyers and judges, addressing a plenitude of
lawyers and court functionaries and kinfolk, in a Greene County Court session
last Wednesday (11/25): <b>Charles J. Brown</b><span style="font-weight: normal;">
(1933-2011), late attorney for Greene County. As recounted by witnesses, after graduating from Notre Dame
University (1955) and from Fordham Law School (1962), Mr Brown worked in New
York City as a specialist in intellectual property issues. Two experiences with </span><span style="font-weight: normal;">Lower East Side</span><span style="font-weight: normal;"> street muggings impelled him to move with his family up-State, to Ashland,
in 1971. Starting with a solo
practice in Windham, he subsequently partnered what became the foremost law
firm in GreeneLand. At the same
time he worked as an assistant county attorney and then (from 1996), as County
Attorney, retiring from that office in 2002. He continued to practice privately, and to play
energetically, until the onset of an 18-month battle against cancer, ending on
September 14. </span><br />
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DISREGARDED by prospective bidders: the recent (11/17) foreclosure
auction on November 17<sup>th</sup> , on a downtown Catskill sidewalk, of the extraordinary,
almost-completed Union Mills Lofts development. Turnout for the announced sale consisted
of two spectators. <b>Michael Whartenby</b>, attorney for the plaintiff, M & T
Bank of Buffalo, said his client’s bid as creditor would have been $935,000. Which means that a solvent buyer could
have acquired the complex for a few dollars more. And which also could mean that a solvent buyer, by saving the bank
the expenses of agent-hiring, taxes, maintenance and other holding costs could acquire the
property now for something like $800,000.
Which could be a bargain, since the defaulting debtors originally bought
the complex for $2 million and then pumped big sums into rehabilitation and
conversion. The part of the
property that formerly was Orens Furniture is by far the most capacious retail
space in downtown Catskill. The
part that formerly was Oren’s venerable, solid brick warehouse, fronting on
Catskill Creek, is far along in being converted into nine gracious condominums, with an elevator. But the cost of completion depends in
some measure on the scale of damage inflicted by September’s flooding on the warehouse’s
basement (and the wiring, etc.)--an area that once housed a night club. The lawyer and the referee who appeared
for the auction did not have a key to the place. That is why the whole thing was conducted on the sidewalk. And a subsequent query from <i>Seeing
Greene</i>, about how one can get inside, did not attract an answer. That silence fortifies, in some measure,
an accusation made by the defaulting borrowers, namely, that the M & T bank
“malevolently” sought to shrink the imputed value of the Union Mills project so
as to make it ripe for plucking by “prized customers.” </div>
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OFFERED IN ACRA tomorrow: a workshop on how to “lower your energy
bills this winter and make your home feel more comfortable in the
process.” The EmPower New York event,
from 6 to 8pm, sponsored by the New York Energy Research & Development
Authority, will be conducted by Cornell Co-operative Extension’s educator, is free, and includes a light supper, a door prize, and even an energy
kit (weatherstripping, shrink window insulation, outlet and light switch gaskets...). The deadline for registration has
passed, but a telephone call to the Agroforestry Resource Center (518 828 3346) could disclose that space is still
available. Otherwise, there will
be a repeat workshop on December 8. </div>
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ON OR ABOUT THANKSGIVING DAY a century ago, republican
revolutionaries in China were besieging defenders of the imperial Manchu
Dynasty, European powers were entangled in conflicts that would soon trigger
what came to be known as The Great War, warfare between Turkey and Syria
produced the first use as an airplane as an offensive military weapon,
politicians in Washington were preoccupied with anti-trust issues, and (via <i>N.Y. Times</i> reports): </div>
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<b>Thomas Edison</b> passed word along that he would not accept a
Nobel Prize for physics, since he believed that such awards should go to
financially struggling scientists.
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The daughter and son-in-law of <b>Karl Marx</b> committed suicide, leaving a
note predicting “with supreme joy” that glorious future awaits the cause of
“international Socialism.” </div>
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White Star Lines commenced construction of a 1000-foot-long
luxury liner, The Gigantic, sister of HMS Titanic.</div>
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Explorer <b>Ronald Amundsen</b> reached the South Pole.</div>
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A fire in New York City’s Triangle Shirtwaist Company killed
148 people. </div>
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For discovering radium and polonium, <b>Marie Curie</b> received
(and accepted) a Nobel Prize.</div>
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Suffragette <b>Emmeline Pankhurst</b> was barred by Harvard University’s
overseers from giving an on-campus talk
about “Votes for Women.” </div>
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Hunters residing in the Tarrytown NY area complained that
foxes, raccoons and other animals were all taking refuge in <b>John D. Rockefeller</b>’s
6000-acre property in the Buttermilk Hill area, where no hunting is allowed, leaving the remaining woods empty of game.</div>
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Dr <b>Julia Sears</b>, head of Boston’s New Thought School,
estimated that “There are enough people on the planet to-day who remember one of
more of their incarnations to make it a certainty that reincarnation is a
positive fact.” She herself recalled having been a Chinaman.
Many dreams and intuitions, she
affirmed, really are memories of previous lives. “And that strange feeling that you have been somewhere
before, or known some one you meet, is but an evidence that you have lived
before.” Members of her 112-strong audience recalled having been Italian minstrels,
German monks, and a decapitated/guillotined French noble. </div>
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<span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></div>
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<br /></div>Dick Mayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03485935634961545610noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9599422.post-66391642518454147602011-11-18T11:07:00.003-05:002011-11-18T12:54:23.565-05:00Hot Coles<br />
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<b>MARRIED</b> on Tuesday, November 22, 1836, by Rev. <b>Joseph M.
Phillips</b><span style="font-weight: normal;">, at the ‘Cedar Grove’ estate/farm
in Catskill, New York: </span><b>Maria Bartow</b><span style="font-weight: normal;">,
to </span><b>Thomas Cole</b><span style="font-weight: normal;">. The bride-to-be was the daughter of the
late <b>Stephen</b> and <b>Mary (Thompson) Bartow</b>, and the niece of </span><b>Alexander
Thompson</b><span style="font-weight: normal;">, proprietor of Cedar Grove. The prospective bridegroom was the
seventh child of </span><b>James </b><span style="font-weight: normal;">and </span><b>Mary
Cole</b><span style="font-weight: normal;">, who immigrated from Lancashire,
England, to the United States in 1818, when Thomas was 17 years old. For a few years prior to the
betrothal, Mr Cole lived in New York City and, part of the time, in a Cedar
Grove cottage where he created a body of work, and achieved a growing
reputation, as a landscape artist.</span></div>
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That event’s 175<sup>th</sup> anniversary will be re-enacted
tomorrow (11/19), at the place--lately restored by local efforts--where it
actually occurred. Professional
actors will play the principal parts, dressed in period-evoking clothing, and
drawing on passages from actual letters exchanged by Thomas and Maria. The ceremony will be based on the
Episcopal Book of Common Prayer, and the groom’s vows will be based on Thomas
Cole’s own poetry, including a passage wherein Cole rejoices in the fulfillment
of his “fondest hope,” finding “that loving spirit,” “the congenial one” who
“would mingle soul with my soul—mind with mind,” whereby, “like two fountains
forming one deep stream whose waters clear should be divided never….”</div>
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On display beside in the bridal chamber, loaned for the
occasion by the Greene County Historical Society, will be the bride’s actual
wedding gown.</div>
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The re-enactment is open to the public, at no charge. Welcoming refreshments (thanks to
Crossroads Brewery of Athens) will be served at 6pm, the ceremony will start at
6:30, and a reception with wedding cake (based on a vintage recipe) will
commence at 7. Guests are invited
to don “top hats and ruffles” for the occasion. Some period clothing will be
available on site.<a href="http://www.thomascole.org/">www.thomascole.org. </a></div>
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<b>CROSSED WIRES</b></div>
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Lamentably, the timing of
the Cole House re-enactment coincides with that of another extraordinarily
attractive local event: a concert (Schubert, Debussy, Brenet, Rameau) by the
distinguished pianist Raj Bhimani, performed at BRIK Gallery (473 Main St, Catskill),
from 7pm on Saturday, as a benefit for the Greene County Council on the Arts.
“Virtuosic, heartfelt and eloquent,” as a New York Times reviewer of Mr
Bhimani’s keyboard work. <a href="http://www.greenearts.org/">www.greenearts.org</a>.</div>
</div>
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<b>THOMAS WHO?</b></div>
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“There was no
larger force in American Art than Thomas Cole. Born in England, the artist
immigrated to America in 1818 and was a successful landscape painter in the
Catskills by 1825…. His paintings are featured in the collections of almost
every major museum, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian
American Art Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the National Gallery of
Art, and the Musée du Louvre.” <i>ArtInfo</i><span style="font-style: normal;">,
11/15/10.</span> </div>
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<b>COMING HOME:</b> an original oil sketch, on wood pulp paperboard, by <b>Thomas Cole</b>.
It’s a modest thing, small (11 inches by 8), drawn (in pre-photography
days) to capture a scene for later use in the studio composition of a fully
realized landscape painting. In
this case, the scene evidently was drawn from a corner of Cole’s buckwheat
field. </div>
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The sketch is coming home as a gift from the Seattle Art
Museum. In the judgment of <b>Patricia Junker</b><span style="font-weight: normal;">,
curator of American Art at that museum (and a 2010 speaker at Cole House), the
sketch was made two or three years before Cole died in 1848. It was given by the Cole family to </span><b>Charles
G. Coffin</b><span style="font-weight: normal;"> (1857-1910), who lived on Spring
Street, just across from Cole’s place at Cedar Grove. It later found its way to Montclair NJ and thence to the
Seattle museum.</span></div>
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The acquisition becomes one of the few original Coles that
belong to Cole House. Other originals displayed there are loans, of indefinite
duration, from the Greene County Historical Society, the Catskill Public
Library, and <b>Richard Sharp</b> and <b>Henry Martin</b>, private collectors. </div>
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<b>GONE HOME</b>, at substantial expense (shipping; insurance) to
owners in Cincinnati, Mitchelleville MD, Chattanooga, Springfield OH,
Washington DC, Silver Spring MD, Fort Thomas KY and New York City; from Thomas
Cole House, after the close of its 2011 exhibition season: 16 paintings by
<b>Robert S. Duncanson</b> (1821-72 ), the African-American artist who was directly
inspired by Thomas Cole paintings and who in his lifetime was hailed as “the
best landscape painter in the West.” According to an article in <i>The
Smithsonian</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> (Lucinda Moore; 10/19/11), the
rediscovery of Duncanson as a great artist, after decades of obscurity, began
in 1972 with an exhibition in Cincinnati, his home town, then gained momentum
by way of several books and articles, and culminated with the Cole House
exhibit entitled “Robert S.
Duncanson: The Spiritual Striving of the Freedmen’s Sons.”</span></div>
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That exhibit came on the heels of the 2010 season’s show
that brought overdue recognition to female exemplars
of the Hudson River School of
landscape painting. </div>
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For the 2012 season, as announced in the forthcoming Cole House newsletter, the special exhibit will feature <b>Louis Remy Mignot</b> (1831-70)<b> </b>the American Creole who "began his professional career in the fold of the Hudson River School
(specifically, in the Tenth Street Studio Building), painted in the
Andes alongside Frederic Church, and experimented with European
aestheticism toward the end of his life." (<a href="http://questroyalfineartr.com/rtist/louis-remy-mignot">http://questroyalfineart.com/artist/louis-remy-mignot</a>)</div>
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<b>OPENING TOMORROW</b> at the Columbia (SC) Museum of Art: “Nature
and the Grand American Vision: Masterpieces of the Hudson River School
Painters,” an exhibit sponsored by the New-York Historical Society and
starring, of course, Thomas Cole.
The collection’s 45 paintings already have made lengthy stops at museums
in Texas and Massachusetts, and next May they will occupy the new Crystal
Bridges Museum in Bentonville, Arkansas, where they will share space with
“Kindred Spirits,” the <b>Asher B. Durand</b> picture, with Thomas Cole in the
foreground, that <b>Alice Walton </b>bought for $35 million. According to a preview for the Columbus
SC showing, <a href="http://www.thestate.com/living/index.html">www.thestate.com/living/index.html</a>
the Hudson River paintings “represent the best of a 19th-century New York art
movement. That movement’s coterie of artists…gave voice to the American
landscape…. The paintings of a newly established country helped establish a
cultural identity.” Indeed, they were “the beginning of American art,
documenting a land of so much promise and so much untapped beauty.” <a href="http://www.nyhistory.org/exhibitions">www.nyhistory.org/exhibitions </a><br />
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<b>TOURING </b>since September, to libraries and other sites around the country is "Wild Land: Thomas Cole and the Birth of American Landscape Painting," a multi-media exhibition sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities. "<span style="color: #2f2f2f;">Based on scholarship from </span><span style="color: #2f2f2f; font-family: Tahoma;"><a href="http://www.thomascole.org/"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Cedar Grove, The Thomas Cole National
Historic Site</span></a></span><span style="color: #2f2f2f;">, says the web site
</span><span style="color: #2f2f2f; font-family: Tahoma;"><a href="http://www.nehontheroad.org/"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">www.nehontheroad.org</span></a></span><span style="color: #2f2f2f;">, “this emmersive [sic] and interactive exhibit
will take the visitor both into the studio and into the woods.”</span> </div>
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<b>OPENING</b> on January 13 in the Louvre--yes, that place in Paris, France--will be a special exhibit of paintings by <b>Thomas Cole </b>and by his contemporary, <b>Asher B. Durand</b>. And joined with the exhibit will be screenings of "Thomas Cole: Painter of the American Landscape," the film that was made in 2009, at various GreeneLand sites, by Cole House staff members. </div>
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<b>JUST OPENED</b>.<br />
<div style="margin-left: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-family: Courier;">CAMDEN NJ--The works of iconic American landscape artist Thomas Cole are on display at the
Stedman Gallery at the </span><span class="link-external"><a href="http://rcca.camden.rutgers.edu/"><span style="font-family: Courier;">Rutgers–Camden
Center for the Arts</span></a></span><span style="font-family: Courier;"> through
Jan. 7. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Courier;"> “Wild Land:
Thomas Cole and the Birth of American Landscape Painting” explores the works of
the 19th-century artist whose visionary ideas on the natural world heralded the
sense of American identity that prevails today.<i> </i>The exhibition, which
is free of charge and open to the public, takes visitors “into the woods” and
through Cole’s studio, revealing the ways in which he, and other artists of his
time, pioneered cultural conversations that shaped our national
landscape—intellectually, physically, and visually. </span></div>
<div style="margin-left: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-family: Courier;"> Through a
combination of large-scale banner graphics, immersive environments, media
features, and other interactive elements, “Wild Land” takes audiences on a
journey with Cole through the story of his creative process. From an itinerant
portrait artist to the founder of the Hudson River School, Cole transformed
landscape sketches into a new vision of the American wilderness.</span></div>
<div style="margin-left: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-family: Courier;"> The
Rutgers–Camden exhibition also examines how the meaning of nature has changed
over time into a source for creative and intellectual inspiration. Visitors
will be invited to explore the concept of preservation and how societies come
to value and live in balance with natural resources, as well as Cole’s in
forging America’s identity as a nation inextricably tied to nature.</span></div>
<div style="margin-left: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-family: Courier;"> The exhibition
includes works by such contemporary American landscape painters as<b> Michael
Bartmann,Diane Burko,Daniel Chard, Randall Exon,Ann Lofquist</b>,and <b>Kyle
Stevenson</b>.</span></div>
--News Bulletin (11/17/11)
from Rutgers University<br />
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><b>FORMING:</b> a national council of authorities on
American art, especially pre-modern American art, who will serve
as friends of the Thomas Cole National Historic Site. A
round of telephone calls to luminaries who have previously lectured at or
otherwise taken part in Cole House projects yielded, in every case, a positive
response: “With pleasure,” “delighted to,” “I’d be honored....” This from curators and directors of the
nation’s foremost museums and from professors of art at the most distinguished
universities…. The recruits will
be named in the upcoming Cole House newsletter. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><b>SCENERY</b> “is a subject that to every American
ought to be of surpassing interest; for, whether he beholds the Hudson mingling
waters with the Atlantic — explores the central wilds of this vast continent,
or stands on the margin of the distant Oregon, he is still in the midst of
American scenery — it is his own land; its beauty, its magnificence, its
sublimity — are all his; and how undeserving of such a birthright, if he can
turn towards it an unobserving eye, an unaffected heart.” </span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"> --Thomas Cole, 1835.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span>Dick Mayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03485935634961545610noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9599422.post-45374856852644127962011-11-11T11:38:00.001-05:002011-11-11T14:58:44.532-05:00Elections &<br />
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Last Tuesday, 7963 GreeneLanders took part actively in a
uniquely American exercise. They
voted in popular elections that would determine not only who would be their
town-level law-makers, but also who would occupy a rich variety of
extra-legislative public offices: State Supreme Court judge, district attorney,
county clerk, county coroner (!), town judge, town clerk, town tax collector
and town highway superintendent. </div>
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Prior to last Tuesday, moreover, 891 GreeneLanders applied
to the county elections commission for absentee ballots covering all those
offices, and about 700 of them actually posted those ballots (still to be
counted, and potentially decisive in a couple of races).</div>
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Those voters comprised a fraction of the
eligible population. Registered to vote in GreeneLand, and classed as
“active,” are 28,542 names. In
addition, 2702 names are listed as “inactive” voters (persons who are
registered but failed to vote on previous occasions). On this showing, about one out of four eligible
GreeneLanders actually took part in the elections. </div>
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Their participation, however, was uneven. Incomplete. Selective?
Ballots in which a vote was cast at every opportunity occasion may have been
the exception rather than the norm.
Many of the voters chose, with regard to lots of office-filling
exercises, to be non-voters. And
they did so for eminently cogent reasons: felt ignorance regarding the
candidates; consciousness of the stupidity of filling such offices as clerk and
coroner by popular election; and awareness of the futility of voting when—as
was so often the case—there is only one listed candidate.</div>
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Anyhow, among the most remarkable results of Tuesday’s
elections--apart from the crazy dollar cost, per vote, of the exercise--were these:</div>
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*An incumbent town supervisor was out-polled by a political
rookie. That happened in Cairo,
where <b>John Coyne </b>(Republican) lost to <b>Ted Banta </b>(Democrat) by a margin of 823
to 628. And at the same time, the
two incumbents who sought re-election to the town council went down to
defeat. One of them, <b>Richard
Lorenz</b>, was an endorsed Democrat.
The other, <b>Janet Schwartzenneger</b>, a registered Republican, ran on the
Independence and Reform Cairo party lines, after failing to win local
Republican Party endorsement. They
were out-polled by <b>Dan Joyce</b> and <b>Tony Puorro</b>, the official Republican
candidates. But another incumbent
office-holder who had been dumped by local Republicans—<b>Tara Rumph</b>, town
clerk, listed on the Conservative and Reform Cairo party lines--won re-election.</div>
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*A write-in candidate won an office. That was in flood-ravaged Prattsville,
where the incumbent town supervisor, Kory O’Hara, received 140 votes while <b>Alan
Huggins</b>, a former supervisor, received 155—all by painstaking write-ins at the
bottom of the ballot.</div>
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(Here and elsewhere, we are citing figures published in the Press and posted at <a href="http://www.greenegovernment.com/">www.greenegovernment.com</a>) </div>
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Other candidates who waged active write-in campaigns were
unsuccessful. Specifically, in New Baltimore’s contest for two town council
seats, <b>Christine Walsh</b> garnered 244 write-in votes but that put her far down in
fourth place, with victorious incumbents <b>Chris Norris </b>and <b>Lisa Benway</b> reaping
636 and 588 votes. Similarly, <b>Gary
Maher</b>’s 208 write-in votes for highway superintendent for New Baltimore fell
short of incumbent <b>Denis Jordan</b>’s 751 regular votes. </div>
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Also, in Athens, <b>Ray Brooks</b>, former county legislator and
avid Republican, mounted a late-stage challenge to incumbent town supervisor
(and Democrat) <b>Leallen Palmateer</b>, but was swamped by 356 votes to 91.</div>
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(The Brooks effort was the closest thing to electoral
contestation that occurred in Athens.
That fact evidently inspired a <i>Daily Freeman</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> scrivener to opine (11/10) in connection with the multi-office
elections, that “The outcome…were [sic] largely not surprising….”)</span><style>
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THE WEEKEND.
Main GreeneLand attractions:</div>
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*Chilly
Willy Winter’s Eve tours, with early local history recalled, at Greene County
Historical Society’s Bronck Museum in Coxsackie. Costumed guides, Dutch and Swedish treats, recollections of
life here going back to the late 1600s.
Saturday and Sunday, at two-hour intervals from 11am. <a href="http://www.gchistory.org/">www.gchistory.org</a></div>
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*Group
art show & sale (works of 16 artists) opening, from 5pm Saturday, upstairs
at Ruby’s Hotel in Freehold.
634-7790</div>
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*Festival of Trees, the Fortnightly Club’s annual, lavish display and
sale of Christmas decorations plus Santa Claus plus munchies. At Anthony’s banquet hall, Leeds,
Saturday and Sunday, following opening gala (reservations) on Friday at Elks
Lodge. </div>
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<a href="http://welcometocatskill.com/Fortnightly">http://welcometocatskill.com/Fortnightly</a>
or <a href="http://greatnortherncatskills.com/events">http://greatnortherncatskills.com/events</a></div>
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*Rip (Van Winkle) awards and sale.
Carved, dressed figures designed for the summer promotion in Hunter go
up for auction on Saturday (viewing from 4pm, auction from 6pm) at Windham
Mountain. <a href="http://greatnortherncatskills.com/events">http://greatnortherncatskills.com/events</a> </div>
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</div>Dick Mayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03485935634961545610noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9599422.post-43383421374268330872011-11-06T12:42:00.004-05:002011-11-07T16:44:15.533-05:00Doggy Days<style>
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<span style="background-color: #93c47d;">BOCKER T. LABRADOODLE</span>, actor, model, therapist and pawthor (<i>Chasing Bocker's Tale</i>) now resides up here, on Superstitious (<i>sic</i>) Drive in the Sleepy Hollow Lake development. Bocker is not an actual bocker (=beagle/cocker spaniel crossbreed). Neither is he descended from a once-popular trouser or from an old Dutch settler (knickerbocker). But this labrador/poodle performer is manifestly bocker (=especially cute, per <i>The Urban Dictionary</i>), which helps to account (along with astute management by mothering <b>Marie</b>) for a flourishing career in show business. See <a href="http://www.bocker.tv/">www.bocker.tv</a> (especially the Press kit) as well as Facebook and Twitter sites.<br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ZHWcSTWoA7k/TrRCUHA0DyI/AAAAAAAAAXI/a2iu6zp6TBM/s1600/bockertux.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ZHWcSTWoA7k/TrRCUHA0DyI/AAAAAAAAAXI/a2iu6zp6TBM/s320/bockertux.png" width="252" /></a> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: #93c47d;">COMING TUESDAY,</span> to a polling station near you: county and
town elections, whose most conspicuous feature is a dearth of candidates. Each GreeneLand voter who goes to
the polls will be offered a ballot (to be processed electronically) enabling
her/him/ them to participate in electing two State Supreme Court judge (for
Judicial District 3), a district attorney, a sheriff, and two (!) county
coroners. The listed choices
include four candidates for the two judgeships, two candidates for the two
coronerships, and one candidate each for district attorney and for sheriff. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In addition, each voter will be offered chances to vote on candidates for election to various town offices:
supervisor, council member, judge, clerk, highway superintendent, tax
collector. The total of offices
that are subject to election on Tuesday in GreeneLand is 84. If each one were contested, then, there
would be at least 168 candidates. But in fact there are 115 (plus about three
avowed, active, write-in candidates).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
On the printed ballots for Ashland, Athens, Durham, Halcott,
Jewett and Windham, voters will find precisely one candidate for each
elective office. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In contrast, lively competitive action abounds in
Cairo, with two contestants for supervisor, five for two council seats (one of
them an incumbent who was refused re-nomination by her fellow Republicans), two
for town clerk (the 12-year incumbent was not re-nominated by fellow
Republicans, and neither was her husband, the outgoing highway superintendent),
two for highway superintendent, and two even for tax collector. Also loaded with actual choices this
year is the New Baltimore ballot, presenting rival candidates for town
supervisor, justice, council member (three candidates for two seats) and
highway superintendent. At
the same time, a third candidate for highway superintendent has mounted a
write-in campaign, as has a fourth candidate for town council. (New Baltimore has been the scene over
the past few years of extraordinary wrangling among as well as between
co-partisans).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Meanwhile, in
Catskill, Tuesday’s ballot names two candidates for town supervisor (both
former town councilmen running for a currently vacant seat), three for two
council seats, and two for highway superintendent. </div>
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</div>
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<span style="background-color: #93c47d;">ELSEWHERE</span>. The
paucity of contestants for elective offices in GreeneLand marks a contrast with
the electoral picture in nearby counties. Ulster County is experiencing a hot
fight for the office of district attorney, plus contests in 18 of its 23 legislative
districts. Kingston city voters
will encounter active choices between candidates for mayor and for most of the
common council seats. In
Saugerties, voters get to choose between rival candidates for supervisor, for
governing board and for highway superintendent. In Dutchess County, voters are being stimulated to turn out
on Tuesday by, among other contests, an intense battle for the office of county
executive. On the other
hand, they will encounter just one choice for district attorney, sheriff, and
county clerk. Over in Columbia
County, voters are being treated to the unusual spectacle of contests—not
altogether peaceable contests—for district attorney, county treasurer, county
judge and even coroner. And Hudson
City residents have been entertained, to an unusual extent, by the
mayoral
contest between <b>Bill Hallenbeck</b>, the Republican nominee, and <b>Nick
Haddad</b>, the erstwhile nominal Republican who is the
Democratic nominee and is supported more ardently by active Democrats
than was
his ‘regular’ Democratic predecessor.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: #93c47d;">BTW</span>. In the words of a <i>Register-Star</i>
reporter--to use that noun loosely--it was the sight of “a need in his
community” that drove a new candidate “to enter the political spectrum”).
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: #93c47d;">ENDORSEMENTS</span> of candidates for elective office
used to be a standard, and influential, thing for newspapers. That was then. To be sure, the Albany-based <i>TimesUnion</i> did endorse candidates in competitive races for State Supreme Court Justice in two districts, along with a candidate for sheriff in one county, for mayor in one city, and for supervisor in two towns. The Kingston-based
<i>Daily Freeman</i> did bless three candidates--the incumbent Ulster County district attorney, a candidate for Dutchess County Executive and, half-heartedly, one of the four candidates for mayor of Kingston--but
it offered no word on any other contest in its three-county area. As for <i>The Daily Mail </i>and<i> </i>its sister paper, the Hudson-based <i>Register-Star, </i>their<i> </i>Saturday-Sunday (11/5-6) editorial enjoins us to “Take Diabetes Seriously” and their next editorial advocates voting. <br />
(A
<i>Daily Mail</i> scrivener did opine, on 11/4/11, in the guise of doing
straight news, that “Since Coyne’s election” as Cairo town supervisor, “by most
measures, the town has moved forward.”). </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>Seeing Greene</i> also is devoid of endorsements. But we do salute a
proposal voiced by one candidate. In
a letter to <i>The Daily Mail</i> (10/27), <b>Rick Hanse</b>, would-be town
councilman for Coxsackie, not only espouses the idea of greater
transparency of governmental deliberations, but also
advocates specific steps to that end:
agenda of pending Council meeting to be posted on the town's web
site in advance, so people
know what topics will come up; agenda of Planning and Zoning
board meetings also to be posted on line; tentative minutes meetings also posted,
so as to allow for challenges or correction prior to formal adoption. Mr Hanse also
affirms, perhaps too hopefully, that the best thing for “positive direction” for a
town is having “the greatest possible participation” of residents. </div>
<span style="background-color: #93c47d;">BUT ALSO</span>, let's have a burst of write-in votes, at appropriate places, for Bocker T. Labradoodle.<br />
<br /></div>Dick Mayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03485935634961545610noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9599422.post-59703492077053563902011-10-26T18:06:00.000-04:002011-10-26T18:06:28.793-04:00Politics 2012<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
“STEPHEN SALAND, YOU’RE NEXT.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That’s the promise that is currently trumpeted on, among
other places, a Route 9 billboard on the north side of Catskill. Sponsored by the National
Organization for Marriage (<a href="http://www.nationformarriage.com/">www.nationformarriage.com</a>)
and pointing to the web site <a href="http://www.letthepeoplevote.com/">www.letthepeoplevote.com</a>,
the message is aimed at a State Senator who on June 24 voted Yes on the
Marriage Equality bill, legalizing marriage between same-sex partners. The “You’re Next” threat refers to the
fate of the Democrat who in September lost a by-election contest in a heavily
Democratic district in New York City. N.O.M. chieftain <b>Brian Brown</b><span style="font-weight: normal;"> claims that the upset was due largely to his
organization’s success in mobilizing anti-same-sex voters to back the
Republican candidate, </span><b>Bob Turner</b><span style="font-weight: normal;">.
(That interpretation has not appeared in any regular news outlet). </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Stephen Saland</b><span style="font-weight: normal;"> is
one of four Republican State Senators who, along with all the Democrats in the
upper house, passed the Marriage Equality act. All four are targets of N.O.M. retaliation, along with one
Democrat (Sen. </span><b>Shirley Huntley</b><span style="font-weight: normal;">
of New York City, who voted Yes this time after voting No, along with all
Republican senators, in 2009). </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The threat is hollow.
Although Mr Brown talks about spending $2 million to defeat those
candidates, his cash intake so far has been small as compared with campaign funds
already raised by active, organized, affluent supporters of the Marriage Equality
Act. Anyhow, if the Brown forces
did recruit strong challengers to the targeted incumbents, they would produce a
split that puts more pro-marriage equality Democrats in office. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What is more, the retaliation campaign evidently would be
waged clumsily. The “You’re Next”
billboard on Route 9W, erected in October 2011, refers to a senator whose
re-election date is November 2012. The billboard also is misplaced: here in Greene County, which is not
part of Senator Saland’s district. Greene County’s senator is <b>James
Seward</b><span style="font-weight: normal;">. He voted against the Marriage Equality bill. That fact is
not acknowledged, much less explained, on his web site. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As for the “Let the People Vote” part of the N.O.M.
campaign, it is a call for a popular referendum on the marriage equality
question. And it is
wrong-headed call. Its exponents tout a call "to let the people decide on the definition of marriage."<span style="font-style: normal;"> But legislation, whether
enacted by popular vote or by elected representatives, is not an exercise in
definition. The Marriage Equality
Bill (A8354-2011) does not </span><i>define</i><span style="font-style: normal;">,
re-define, or mis-define marriage.
It provides that</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;">A marriage that is otherwise valid shall be valid regardless
of whether the parties to the marriage are of the same sex or different
sex. No government treatment or
legal status, effect, right, benefit, privilege, protection or responsibility
relating to marriage, whether deriving from statute, administrative or court
rule, public policy or common law or any other source of law, shall differ
based on the parties being or having been of the same sex or different
sex. When necessary to implement
the rights and responsibilities of spouses under the law, all gender-specific
language or terms shall be construed in a gender-neutral manner is all such
sources of law. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
ROMNEY RHETORIC</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Among contenders for the Republican nomination for
President at the November 2012 national election, in sample surveys and straw
polls, first or second place has generally gone to <b>Mitt Romney</b>. In a field of seven or eight
contestants, Mr Romney seems to be the preferred candidate of between 20 and 30
per cent of survey respondents.
Those respondents are self-styled Republicans or Republican
activists. Other
contenders—<b>Michelle Bachman</b>, then <b>Rick Perry,</b> then <b>Herman Cain</b>—have soared in
popularity within that special population, and then lost ground. So why has Mr Romney not picked up what
those candidates left behind? Why
hasn’t he gained momentum?
Observers—some of them impartial—ascribe the problem to a feeling of
distrust. The feeling is related
vaguely to Mr Romney’s Mormon faith, or his flip-flopping on hot-button issues,
or positions and evasions that could betoken a slippery, impure sort of
conservatism. (“His whole campaign has centered around tapioca,” says
crypto-conservative blogger <b>Erick Erickson</b><span style="font-weight: normal;">).</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">That
feeling can be fortified by a due appreciation of rhetorical tricks to which Mr
Romney is disposed to resort.
Thus:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-weight: normal;"> *Back in 2008, in a speech on
the floor of the </span>Republican national convention, Mr Romney undertook to identify key differences between “liberal” (bad; Democratic) and “conservative” (good; Republican). And his first item was this: </div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;">…what do you think Washington is right now, liberal or conservative? Is a Supreme Court liberal or conservative that awards Guantanamo terrorists with constitutional rights? It’s liberal!</span></div>
</blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Mr Romney was alluding to (and damning) recent action by the Supreme Court. He also was falsifying that action. He did so
by mischaracterizing the inmates of the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay. Those inmates were being detained
indefinitely, without the usual business of being charged, being arraigned, and
in due course being brought to trial. They were detained as terrorist
SUSPECTS. It was prisoners SUSPECTED
by U.S. authorities of perpetrating terrorist acts who, the Supreme Court held,
are entitled to “constitutional rights.”
Mr Romney put the “liberal” stigma on a Supreme Court ruling that had
not taken place. He did so in a
way that could be construed as disdain for commonly accepted principles of due
process of law. (The distinction between terrorist and terrorist suspect was
expressed during the Republican “debate” in Nevada on October 18. It was voiced by <b>Ron Paul</b>). </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
*Mr Romney followed his “Guantanamo
terrorists” item with another purported contrast between liberal and
conservative:</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;">Is a government liberal or conservative that puts the
interests of the teachers union ahead of the needs of our children? It’s
liberal!</span></div>
</blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
The context of that utterance conveys the suggestion that Mr
Romney was alluding (as he did with regard to the Supreme Court) to a recent,
substantive event. But there’s the
trick. Instead of citing a
specific event (a proposal, a governmental action), he conjured up a
predisposition (a bias). He
delivered an arbitrary INTERPRETATION of the thrust of an unnamed measure and
of the motivations of its sponsor.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
*At
the Republican “debate” in Orlando FL on September 21, Rick Perry defended his
decision, as governor of Texas, to allow young illegal immigrants
who gain admission to public Texas colleges to pay tuition at the in-State
rather than the much higher out-of-State rate. “If you say that we should not educate children who
have come into our state for no other reason…than they’ve been brought here by
no fault of their own,” said Mr Perry, “I don’t think you have a heart.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
At the next day’s resumption of
that “debate,” Mr Romney picked up on Mr Perry’s “have a heart”
expression. He responded in these
words: </div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-indent: 12pt;">
<span style="font-size: 10pt;">My friend Governor Perry said that
if you don't agree with his position on giving that in-state tuition to illegals, then
you don't have a heart. I think if you're opposed to illegal immigration, it
doesn't mean that you don't have a heart; it means that you have a heart and a
brain.</span></div>
</blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Noteworthy about that statement, for connoisseurs of
sophistry, is avoidance of the point at issue. Mr Romney picked up on Perry’s “have a heart” expression but
did not voice a position on the matter addressed by Mr Perry: the propriety of
in-State tuition rates for resident illegal immigrants. Rhetorically speaking, he pretended that the immediate issue
was opposition (or not) to illegal immigration. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
GIBSON ATREMBLE?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
U.S. Representative <b>Chris Gibson </b>apparently will be
challenged for re-election next year in this (the 20<sup>th</sup>)
district. <b>Joel Tyner</b>, a Dutchess
County legislator, has announced a bid to win the Democratic nomination for the
seat that Mr Gibson won in November 2010.
(He out-polled the incumbent, <b>Scott Murphy</b>, who had won the seat in a
March 2009 special election contest to succeed <b>Kirsten Gillibrand</b>, who had been
elevated to the U.S. Senate by gubernatorial appointment). In launching his campaign,
Mr Tyner declared (as reported in <i>The Daily Freeman</i><span style="font-style: normal;">, 8/13) that “People are sick and tired of
politicians that are all about Wall Street and not Main Street,” and that Mr
Gibson favors corporations over individuals and the wealthy over the middle
class. On his web site <a href="http://www.joelforcongress.org/">www.joelforcongress.org</a> he voices
opposition to hydrofracking and to cuts in Medicaid and Social Security, and he
classifies himself as a “progressive.” His background includes stints as a teacher in mid-Hudson
schools and campaigns for elective offices </span>since the 1990’s.
After winning election to the Dutchess County legislature in 2003, from
a heavily Republican and affluent district, Mr Tyner won successive two-year
terms and now, for the impending (November 8) election, is unchallenged. Last year he attracted news media
attention with an effort to force Andrew Cuomo into a primary election for the
Democratic gubernatorial nomination.
That effort failed for lack of sufficient petition signatures.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Mr Tyner must be just right for the 20<sup>th</sup>
congressional district’s urbane, hip, cosmopolitan, progressive inhabitants.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But seriously, the Democrat-dominated re-districting process
could make the 10-county, 20<sup>th</sup> congressional district a bit less
safe for Mr Gibson. It might even
prompt him to </div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt;">back his professed concern for the job
shortage with a bit more thought than the vapid, vacuous formula (<a href="http://www.chrisgibsonforcongress.com/">www.chrisgibsonforcongress.com</a>)
“get the government out of the way.” </span>
</div>Dick Mayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03485935634961545610noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9599422.post-19981712114076897742011-10-24T09:31:00.001-04:002011-10-24T18:57:14.177-04:00Good News Doses<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: #6aa84f;">SHOWING COLE</span>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
The fame of <b>Thomas Cole</b><span style="font-weight: normal;">, the
Catskillian who is sometimes hailed as founder of the first distinctively American school of art, and who is often hailed as founder of what came to be known in the 19<sup>th</sup>
century as the Hudson River school of landscape painting, is spreading. September 1 was the starting date, and
the Brazos Valley Museum in Bryan, Texas, was the starting place, for a
traveling exhibit whose title is “Wild Land: Thomas Cole and the Birth of
American Landscape Painting.” The
exhibit, sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities, will go from
museum to American museum for the next five years. “<span style="color: #2f2f2f;">Based on
scholarship from </span></span><span style="color: #2f2f2f; font-family: Tahoma;"><a href="http://www.thomascole.org/"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Cedar
Grove, The Thomas Cole National Historic Site</span></a></span><span style="color: #2f2f2f;">, says the web site </span><span style="color: #2f2f2f; font-family: Tahoma;"><a href="http://www.nehontheroad.org/"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">www.nehontheroad.org</span></a></span><span style="color: #2f2f2f;"> , “this emmersive [<i>sic</i>] and interactive exhibit
will take the visitor both into the studio and into the woods.” And perhaps it will impel visitors
to enrich their experience by means of a trip to Cedar Grove, Cole's home and workplace, here in Catskill.</span>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Another
exhibit could serve to bring in other visitors. Those visitors would come in from the east. They would be inspired by a special show, opening January 13, of paintings by
Cole and by his contemporary, <b>Asher B. Durand</b>, in the Louvre. Yes; that place in Paris, France. And with it, sub-titled in French, will be screenings of “Thomas Cole: Painting the American Landscape," the film made by Cedar Grove staff.<br />
BTW: the National Gallery of Art, in Washington DC, exhibits Cole's 1841-42 set of <i>Voyage of Life</i> paintings, distributes a leaflet saying, among other things, that "Upon his death in Rome at the age of forty-seven, Cole was universally mourned." (wwww/mga/gov). Actually, he died at home in Catskill.<br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: #6aa84f;">WIN-WIN STORY</span><br />
Official members of
GreeneLand’s Democratic Party gathered on a recent Monday night in Cairo, at
Gallaghers banquet hall, for their biennial reorganization conference. And they took part in transforming a
potentially bruising contest into a happy event.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The hundred or so Democratic
activists from the county’s sixteen municipalities were expecting to be obliged
to take sides in a contest over the office of county chairman. They were expecting to be obliged to choose
between <b>Tom Poelker</b> of Windham, the incumbent, and <b>Doreen Davis</b>, party treasurer
and leader of the Catskill Democrats. Both of those leaders had circulated
letters soliciting support. The
choice between them had nothing to do with ideology or current issues—nothing
like the much-publicized strains in many States and towns between Tea Party Republicans
and regular or established Republicans.
The need to choose between them did, however, bear prospective
consequences for relations between mountain Democrats of GreeneLand and lowland
Democrats. Those relations are
always a bit sensitive, as are relations between north county Democrats and
south county Democrats. Many of
the conferees did not want to choose between those esteemed candidates. Some planned to cast blank
ballots. Some couples among the
conferees planned to split their votes.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What happened, instead of a clash,
was an accommodation. Before the
meeting, Mr Poelker approached Ms Davis in confidence. He offered a proposal: he would make a “lateral shift” into an
appointive office called “executive director” of the county’s Democratic Party,
and would continue to serve as its representative on the governing board of the
New York State Democratic Party, while she would take over the county chairmanship. Ms Davis readily concurred. Then, at the meeting in Cairo, before
the election of new officers, Mr Poelker was called upon to deliver his annual
report. After reviewing the
activities and the fortunes of Democrats in GreeneLand in the past few years,
and after saying that he <i>had</i> aimed to serve as chairman for one more term, he
sprang the surprise. He described
the arrangement that he and Ms Davis had worked out, called it a “win-win”
deal, and nominated Ms Davis for the office of Greene County Democratic Party
Chairperson.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The vote was unanimous.<br />
<span style="background-color: #6aa84f;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="background-color: #6aa84f;">Wrong </span><i style="background-color: #6aa84f;">Times</i></div>
<span style="font-style: normal;"> A bit of GreeneLand political history was
recalled in a recent (Sunday, 10/9/11) </span><i>New York Times</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> story, incorrectly. The story’s immediate focus was trickery in a pending recall
election in Arizona. The recall
sponsors’ target was a <b>Russell Pearce</b></span>, president of the State
Senate and author and staunch champion of harsh anti-immigrant
legislation. The trick, performed
by the Pearce’s allies, consisted of recruiting a sham candidate whose Hispanic
name offered a chance of siphoning away votes that would otherwise go to
Pearce’s other (as in real) challenger. When the case went to court, according
to reporter <b>Mark Lacey</b><span style="font-weight: normal;">, </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt;">The judge said the Cortes case was distinct from others in
which sham candidates were put forward, including a dispute from upstate New
York in which opponents of Linda H. Overbaugh, a candidate for the Greene
County Legislature, circulated petitions on behalf of Linda L. Overbaugh, who
had not given her consent to run.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When I read that passage, I
recognized what I took to be an error—by the judge? by the reporter?--that
deserved to be corrected, even if nobody noticed the item. To that end, I sent e-mail messages to <b>Linda
Haines Overbaugh</b><span style="font-weight: normal;"> and to the <i>Times</i></span>’s
Corrections Desk. In the latter I
claimed that back in 2009, Linda <i>H</i><span style="font-style: normal;">.
Overbaugh was endorsed by GreeneLand’s Republican committee for election to the
legislature, but her </span><i>supporters</i><span style="font-style: normal;">
mistakenly circulated petitions on behalf of <b>Linda </b></span><b><i>L</i></b><span style="font-style: normal;"><b>. Overbaugh</b>, who is a real person (and kinswoman),
who resides in the same electoral district as Linda H., whose correct home
address was stated, and who disclaimed any interest in being a candidate. When the error was spotted (after the
filing deadline), the validity of those petitions as support for Linda </span><i>H</i><span style="font-style: normal;">. Overbaugh was questioned, and a State Supreme Court
judge ruled against allowing either Overbaugh to appear on the ballot on the
Republican line. To verify this
version of events, I suggested, check with Linda </span><i>H</i><span style="font-style: normal;">. and with Elections Commissioner <b>Thomas Burke</b></span>
(contact numbers provided). </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My
messages went out at mid-morning on a Monday. On Tuesday morning,
a <i>Times</i> staffer called Mrs Overbaugh (Linda H., that is), who confirmed the gist of my
recollection. By Tuesday evening a
Correction had been broadcast on line, and it was published in the Wednesday <i>Time</i><span style="font-style: normal;">s: </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.2in;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10pt;"><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/09/us/politics/judge-finds-manipulation-in-recall-vote-in-arizona.html">An
article on Sunday</a> about a judge’s finding that supporters of Arizona State
Senate President Russell Pearce recruited a candidate to siphon votes from his
opponent in a recall election referred incorrectly to a 2009 New York race for
Greene County Legislature, in which petitions were circulated on behalf of a
candidate who had not given her consent. In that race, supporters, not
opponents, of Linda H. Overbaugh mistakenly put the name of another woman,
Linda L. Overbaugh, on the petitions, resulting in their disqualification. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The
<i>New York Times</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> is a great news
organization.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: normal;"> <span style="background-color: #6aa84f;">BANK NOTES</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The
economy is stagnant. Jobs are
scarce. Housing prices are
down. Loans are not being repaid.
Big banks, national and international, are sorely troubled. But many of the smaller, community banks are still healthy. And in
the case of GreeneLand’s main community bank, “healthy” is an
understatement. For the fifth
straight year, the Bank of Greene County’s assets, loans receivable, deposits, and net income have gone up: to $547million from $326million; to $301million from $207million; to $470million from $284million; to $5.3million from $2.3million.<br />
As
bank president <b>Donald Gibson</b> says in the parent company’s annual report, these
gains are all the more noteworthy in light of the “national economic crisis” of
2008 and subsequent events whereby “many banks struggled, and even
failed.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As
compared with the previous fiscal year (July 1, 2009 to June 30, 2010), the
bank achieved gains in of 8.2 per cent in net income, 10.5% in assets, 11.4% in
deposits.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Among
its other “gains,” however, were unwelcome ones, such as “non-performing” loans
(when promised payments don’t come in).
These increased not only in dollar size but also as segments of total
loans: to 2.1% of all outstanding loans, as compared with 1.33% and 1.01% in
the previous two years.
Similarly, non-performing assets, evaluated at $6.7million as compared
with just $3.9 million in fiscal 2010) were pegged as of the end of the last
fiscal year at 1.23% of total assets, as compared with just 0.79% and 0.64% in
the previous two fiscal years.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Mr
Gibson reports too that demand for residential loans has slowed during recent
months. Moreover, property loans
totaling $3 million are now in foreclosure, the number of loans that are in the
process of foreclosure has “grown substantially,” and more would have reached
foreclosure status but for the fact that, in consequence of recently adopted
regulations, the process in New York takes two years to complete. (One property that has gone through all the foreclosure steps, and will go up for auction on November 16, is Lange's Groveside resort in Acra). </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
By
comparison with other banks, the BOGC is in a flourishing state. It can readily cover its dividend yield
of about 3.8% (especially since the parent company, Greene County Bancorp,
owner of a majority of shares, waives its right to dividends). </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Among
the laggards is the Buffalo-based M&T Bank, a regional giant (nine States,
13,000 employees, 750 branches, $79 billion in assets) touting (on its web
site) “a tradition of careful, conservative and consistent management.” That institution reported losses in
earnings, rate of return and net income; and its share price recently hit a
52-week low. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We mention that particular bank because it is plaintiff in a
foreclosure action against defaulting borrowers who bought the former Orens
Furniture store and warehouse in Catskill, undertook to transform the warehouse
into up-scale condominium apartments (Union Mills Lofts) then pulled the
plug. The State Supreme Court
judgment of foreclosure puts the amount owing as $1,120,381.44 “plus interest,
costs and disbursements, attorney’s fees and other amounts….” </div>
</div>Dick Mayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03485935634961545610noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9599422.post-71018678204996149402011-10-18T15:56:00.002-04:002011-10-19T18:46:49.494-04:00Watermarks<style>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: #6aa84f;">THE INSTALLATION</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Four
moving vans arrived the other day at the former Elco electric boat factory in
Athens. Their drivers, and a lot
of helpers, proceeded to load, piece by piece, section by section, a single work of art. The vanloads were driven down to New York City, where they were unloaded at 212 West 83<sup>rd</sup>
Street, home of the Childrens Museum of Manhattan. There, in a 3000 square foot space,
they are now being reassembled.
When that job is completed, visitors will undergo a unique esthetic and
educational experience. The theme
of the whole installation is “Eat Sleep Play.” Under a ceiling dotted with Smallagtites, visitors will make
their way through a series of interaction-sparking stations, or chambers, that
are dedicated to cultivating appreciation for, and practical knowledge about,
healthy living. There will be a
Decision Center that is in the form of a giant brain, which responds to
questions about the consequences of various patterns of behavior. A walk-in stomach. A seven-foot tall heart. A chamber for every internal organ,
including, yes, the bowels. A
Consequences chamber, that promotes learning about such matters as the costs of
clogged arteries. A Play
station, where visitors can do various kinds of exercises, such a pedaling a
stationary bike, and see readings of how much energy they are burning per
minute. Twenty-five chambers,
culminating in the Forterium. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This
comprehensive installation, this constellation of forms, is the masterwork of two Athens-based artists: <b>Carol May</b> (to whom I am not related) and her husband <b>Tim
Watkins</b>. It is not their
first effort. They won the
commission, amid stiff competition, on the strength of a plenitude of previous
works: interactive, compound,
permanent exhibitions for
children’s museums in Calvary and in Brooklyn, plus large-scale, moving (as in
wriggling, waving, spinning, dancing) creations in Maine and Oregon and Florida and
elsewhere. You can get a sense of
their artistic feats by dialing their website: <a href="http://www.maywatkinsdesign.com/">www.maywatkinsdesign.com</a> And for a bit more information about
the Manhattan project, the web site is <a href="http://www.cmom.org/">www.cmom.org</a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: #6aa84f;">RESCUERS</span> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
Delivery
of the latest May-Watkins creation to its new Manhattan habitation, in time for
re-assembly ahead of the November opening date, took place only because people
showed up to offer help. Hurricane
Irene lifted the Hudson River, among so many other watercourses, to a new
height. The Elco plant was swamped
to the extent of two feet. The
legs and other parts of “Eat Sleep Play” were soaked and bent. Completion of some chambers was
stalled. The task seemed to be
unmanageable. But then friends
(Tina, Doug, Joe…) showed up, unbidden, to lend a hand. So did strangers.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
That
phenomenon—the turnout of volunteer helpers—occurred in place after
storm-ravaged place. Cumulatively,
it’s the great GreeneLand story of 2011.
We know only fragments of cases:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
*When
flooding on Windham’s main street knocked out all the food retailers (cafes,
restaurants), much to the consternation of locals and restaurant workers, <b>Erica Reagan</b> and some of her friends took the initiative of
setting up a canteen in the town’s cultural center, the former church. Mustering what they could find in the
way of foodstuffs, they dispensed more than a thousand sandwiches in one day.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
*Scores
of mountaintop residents who were driven from their homes found lodging, food and hospitality at
Catskill’s Community Life Church (formerly called the First Baptist Church). <br />
*Devastation in Windham from late
August through early September placed in jeopardy the town’s traditional Autumn
A-Fair, scheduled for the weekend of October 8-9. But when scores of volunteers turned out to help with the
restoration of stores and other buildings (as pointed out by <b>Bryan Walsh</b> in the
<i>TimesUnion</i>, 10/10/11), the show did go on.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
*In an effort to raise emergency
funds to aid flood victims, <b>M.A. Tarpinian</b> and <b>Sonny Rock</b> (aka <b>Clifton
Anshanslin</b>) organized, at the Michael J. Quill Cultural Centre, an October 1-2
“Concert for the Catskills.” It
was hard to get the word out in time.
Attendance and receipts were disappointing. But Sonny’s call to fellow musicians yielded a turnout of
some 35 bands, whose members paid their own way, played for no pay, and gave to
Community Action half of what they took in from sales of CDs and other
souvenirs. (See <b>D.T. Antrim</b> in 10/6/11 <i>Daily Mail</i>).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
*A
van load of sub-teen girls arrived at the devastated site of Cone-E-Island in Catskill.
They set to work cleaning away mud. Didn’t even ask permission. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
*On
October 8, a hurricane relief benefit dinner and auction, sponsored by the
Windham Mountain company, brought in, according to <i>The Daily Mail</i> (10/11),
$171,000. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
*The downpour and the flooding
washed away a 30-acre chunk of Windham Country Club’s golf course. It also washed away the club’s
maintenance machinery. And it evoked help from owners of other GreeneLand
courses—help, <i>gratis</i>, in the form of men
and machinery. In addition,
members of the Windham club were made honorary members, for the remainder of the season, of most of the county’s other
(“rival”) clubs. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
*Last Friday (11/14), according to <i>Daily Mail</i>person <b>Melanie Lekocevic</b>, members
of Coxsackie’s Hose 3 firefighting troop sold 400 pasta dinners, plus
t-shirts and 50/50 raffle tickets, at a benefit for mountaintop flood
relief. That’s a riverside troop, far away from the mountaintop.<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt;">*There is a man in Columbia
County who, according to <b>Brad Poster </b>(the United Way director), is “a real
hero.”<span> </span>In addition to contributing
his truck and his labor to the task of salvaging Pratt Museum and Prattsville
town hall pieces, for storage and restoration at the Columbia Ice plant in
Hudson, <b>Jeff Johnson</b> “contacted me after hearing conflicting reports of
peoples’ needs.”<span> </span>Working “under
the radar” from the first week of the disaster in Prattsville and Windham,
dodging the complications and delays of applications, programs, he “tirelessly
on his own and at his own expense” collected and delivered “relief materials.”<span> </span>He would visit families personally, learned
what they needed, and would return “with almost everything that has been
requested.” <span> </span><b>Jeff Johnson</b> <span> </span>“gives everything and asks nothing in
return.”<span> [This item added 10/19, after original 10/18 post. Ed.] </span></span>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
*The
volume of food, clothing, and supplies that GreeneLanders and other donors
contributed to the recovery effort reached, and surpassed, the point of
saturation. Further donations of
clothing were politely declined.
Some non-perishable foodstuffs that had been trucked up the mountain
were returned to established food pantries in our flatland communities.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: #6aa84f;">CRISIS AS OPPORTUNITY</span><br />
From the threatened devastation
wrought by those rainstorms in Palenville, Highway Superintendent <b>Alfie Beers</b>
extracted a benefit. Utilizing special authority that he was granted so
as to cope with the emergency, he was able to cut through a maze of permit
requirements and rush in crews and heavy machinery to the widen and deepen a
bed on Kaaterskill Creek, thereby saving a couple of bridges from getting
washed away—as had happened in the past, under milder conditions. The long-targeted project had been
stalled by permitting procedures.
(Other GreeneLand repair and improvement projects still are snarled in the
regulatory maze).<br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: #6aa84f;">WATER TALLY</span> </div>
Geologist <b>Robert Titus</b> says
rainfall this year is about 40% above normal here. He said that last Spring.<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
<br /></div>
<span style="background-color: #6aa84f;">THE PROSPECT</span>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
“The worst, however, has apparently gotten
more bad.” (<i>Daily Maul</i>, 10/15/11).</div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt;"></span>Dick Mayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03485935634961545610noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9599422.post-16689118496739721032011-08-26T11:20:00.001-04:002011-08-29T21:14:52.595-04:00Greene Grime<span style="background-color: #6aa84f;">GONE</span><br />
Another
local enterprise has left downtown Catskill. As of Wednesday (8/24) the door
closed permanently on Café 355.
Operator <b>Jeffrey Meyers</b> (C.I.A. ‘96) reached the conclusion, after three
years of trying, that “I can’t afford to stay open.” He has taken a job in Albany. He is vacating a place whose décor is far above ordinary and
whose history, as the Mayflower Café under <b>Manny Cominos</b> and then under <b>Doug</b>
and <b>Regina Doebler</b>, is rich.
Other local ventures, including coffee shops, are imperiled.<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: #6aa84f;">MISCREANTS FILE</span> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A woman attracted police attention the other day in the
Wal-Mart parking lot, as she successively opened fresh bottles of mineral water
and poured their contents down a drain.
She was working from a trolley stacked with cases of that liquid, cases
that she had bought with food stamps.
She was dumping the contents, she explained, so as to accumulate a
supply of returnable bottles. With
enough refunds, at a nickel per bottle, she would then be able to buy a packet
of cigarettes. “And it’s all
legal,” she said; “I’ve
checked."</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That story comes second-hand from a probably reliable
source. We have not obtained
official confirmation. We would
love to print the woman’s name. We
would love to include her, by name, in the ranks of locally suspected</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
*WELFARE CHEATS.
Our local newspapers have reported that charges related to welfare fraud
have lately been lodged against <b>Stephen</b> and <b>Kathleen Salluce</b> of Athens
(fraudulently obtaining food stamp benefits, Medicaid benefits, and home energy
benefits, to the extent of about $6650); <b>Leanne Smith</b>, of Palenville (theft
from Department of Social Services, hence from taxpayers, of $1365 in Medicaid
benefits); <b>Vanessa Weiss</b> of Catskill ($605 in Temporary Assistance benefits,
$167 in food stamps); <b>Eva Brodsky</b> of Jefferson Heights ($7,149, from the
Columbia County welfare office); and <b>Marina Cancell</b> of Catskill and <b>Ronald
Thorne </b>of Athens $3547). </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Among other cases that have led to formal charges lately in
GreeneLand:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
*BREAK-INS.
<b>Christopher O’Reilly</b>, 18, of Cairo, and a 17-year old compaion (not
identified because of his minor status) face charges on suspicion of breaking
into 30 cars at the Earlton Hill Campsites. According to the police report, they are suspected of taking
GPS units, cell phones, satellite radios, and money from the cars to their own
campsite. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
*MENACING.
<b>Jeremy B. Lee</b> of Tollhouse Road, Catskill, was arrested on
reckless-endangerment charges after by sheriff’s deputies responded to a 911
call relating to a domestic dispute.
Deputies reported that Lee fired shots through his front door, refused
to come out, eventually did emerge, and appeared to be drunk.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
*POT. <b>Justin
Reynolds</b><span style="font-weight: normal;"> of Kornell Drive, Haines Falls,
was arrested and jailed on several charges </span><span style="font-weight: normal;"> after police officers, responding to a call about a domestic dispute,
found a yard and house loaded with marijuana plants, along with cultivation
gear. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
*BURGLARY.
<b>Matthew Altena</b>u, 23, of Catskill, was charged along with a Saugerties
man (<b>Roger Justus III</b>, 28) with burglary of storage units on Route 9W. Police reported recovering more than
$10,000 worth of stolen items. Several lockers were raided during June. And <b>Steven D. Shultis</b>, 29, of Cairo faces burglary charges
arising from police suspicion that he broke into an abandoned Cementon building
and sought to take items, including a mirror and copper pipes. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
*RECKLESS PILOTING.
<b>Matthew Devlin</b> of Catskill, pilot of the tugboat Caribbean Sea, pleaded
guilty of the offense of mis-operating a maritime vessel, with fatal
consequences, after a fatal collision last July on the Delaware River near
Philadelphia. The barge he had
been pushing crashed into an amphibious duck boat that was loaded with
tourists. Thirty-seven passengers
were flung into the river, and two of them, students from Hungary, were
killed. According to the
Associated Press report (<i>Daily Mail</i>, 8/6/11), Devlin said he was distracted by news
of a medical emergency incurred by his 5-year old son. The news drew him into telephone calls
from and to his wife Corinne, and into web surfing in quest of information. He turned off the tug’s radios to talk
on the phone, and thus did not receive distress calls sent from the stalled,
threatened tourist boat. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The charge against Devlin is the equivalent on land of
involuntary manslaughter. Under
Federal guidelines, this would bring a sentence of 37 to 46 month in
prison. Meanwhile, the families of
the dead visitors, who were taking part in a church exchange program, have
filed wrongful-death lawsuits. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The Devlins’ son, following a prolonged period of oxygen
deprivation during eye surgery, has recovered. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
*ANIMAL ABUSE.
<b>Robin A. Kelly</b> of Catskill was charged with failing to provide proper
nourishment for horses residing in her Bogart Road stable. According to the police report, as
recounted in the local Press, passing motorists noticed the condition of some
of the animals and notified Ron Perez, who is president of the Columbia-Greene
Humane Society. That alert, said Mr Perez, prompted a series of visits to the
stable in quest of improvement. Unsatisfactory response led to a raid in which
five of the horses were removed, placed in foster care, and put up for
adoption. For inquiries: (518)
828-6044.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
*MOONLIGHTING. <b>Edward
Pebler</b><span style="font-weight: normal;">, the prison correctional officer
who also was working as code enforcement officer for the town of Coxsackie, was
arrested 11 months ago on felony charges involving falsified time sheets and
unauthorized outside work.
Thanks to a plea deal that was not announced until long after the fact,
District Attorney </span><b>Terry Wilhelm</b><span style="font-weight: normal;">
reduced the offenses to a misdemeanor and minor cash penalties. Peculiar behind-the-scenes aspects of the
case were chronicled by <i>Daily Mail</i></span>man <b>Doron Tyler Antrim</b><span style="font-weight: normal;">.
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
*DRUNK DRIVING.
<b>Jason M. St. Deni</b>s, 24, of Cairo achieved the rare distinction of being
arrested twice within a 90-minute interval. According to a Daily Freeman account of official reports, a
State trooper stopped St. Denis on State Route 32 in Catskill, booked him for
drunk driving, released him to a third party, and told him not to drive while
still drunk. But 70 minutes later,
again on Route 32, Denis again was nabbed on suspicion of driving while drunk,
was released again to the care of a third party and told to stay away from the
driver’s seat. Again.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: #6aa84f;">INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENTS?</span> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Two troubling stories about GreeneLand’s Industrial
Development Agency have earned Press coverage. Most recently, the <i>Daily Freeman</i>’s <b>Ariel Zangla</b> reported
(8/25) on the contents of a confidential agreement relating to remuneration for
the I.D.A.’s former executive director, <b>Sandy Mathes</b>. Mr Mathes, who had held that office since 2002 resigned in
May, under pressure from the county legislature, in the wake of controversy
over bonuses paid to him by authority of the agency’s board of directors. Disclosed in the <i>Freeman</i> report were
terms of a deal whereby, under agreed conditions, Mr Mathes would be paid $2500
per week, and would receive medical insurance benefits, for six months
following his effective date of departure (6/28). The <i>Freeman</i> story was in the nature of a scoop. <i>Daily Mail</i>man <b>Jeff Alexander </b>played
catch-up to the extent of reporting that the existence of that deal was a
surprise to <b>Wayne Speenburg</b>h, the chairman of the county legislature, and that
<b>Eric Hogland</b>, chairman of the I.D.A.’s board, said the severance deal was
carefully worked out, with “plenty of drafts” written and all board members
participating. [Note: as posted on Friday, the account of Sandy Mathes's post-resignation salary said $2500 "per month." That was wrong]</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Which brings us to the second troubling I.D.A. story. Mr Mathes’s departure was followed soon
after by the resignations of three heavyweight board members: <b>Hugh Quigley</b>,
<b>Robert Snyde</b>r (the chairman) and <b>Martin Smith</b>. That left a bare majority of four directors. The task of finding replacements fell,
by law, to the county’s legislators.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It is an important task, since the legislators have no
direct power over the agency’s operations—no authority over its site
development projects, its tax exemption deals, its compacts with prospective
resident enterprises. And yet the
responsibility for finding suitable replacement prospects was not assigned by
common consent to a search committee or to an individual. Instead, the names of two nominees
eventually appeared on the legislature’s agenda. The nominations were not accompanied by notes about
backgrounds or qualifications.
Opportunity for closed-door discussion was not provided. And when two legislators raised a
question about one nominee, a question based on a previous conflict-of-interest
situation, they were accused by Chairman Speenburgh of smearing a good man.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Another seat on the Agency’s board is vacant, and still
another will soon be vacant. Perhaps
the search for suitable appointees will be conducted this time in a manner that
is methodical and inclusive.
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Dick Mayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03485935634961545610noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9599422.post-21512812721125198262011-08-07T09:35:00.000-04:002011-08-07T09:35:30.841-04:00Greene Goners<style>
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
The Village of Catskill is losing its head. <b>Vincent Seeley</b>, president of its governing board of trustees for the
past six years, the most industrious and involved president in memory, is
moving away. What with the death last year of both parents, and perhaps with a
sense of exhaustion, Vinnie is moving, with his wife Gwen and their two
daughters, to Minnesota. There the
Seeleys will be close to the headquarters of his employer, Optum Health, and to
Gwen’s kinfolk. They will be
leaving a community that he tried, with extraordinary dedication and an
insomniac’s endurance, and in the face of harsh economic realities, to deserve
the billing he gave it on the web site he instigated/instituted: “the
ever-improving village of Catskill.”
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There will be no real successor. The current vice-president, <b>Jim Chewens</b>, is limited in
availability for Village work by his job as a prison correctional officer. The other three incumbent trustees are
similarly constrained. And no
fresh candidates for the five-member governing board have surfaced so far. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
STREET TALK.
The imminent departure of Vinnie, along with the scarcity of revnues and
of prospective candidates for trustee, has revived local interest in a
Village-Town merger. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Soon to depart from Catskill, and from GreeneLand, is the
giant HSBC bank. Its local branch
is one of 183 up-State offices that, by the end of this year if not sooner, on
the basis of a billion-dollar deal that was announced recently, will become
properties of First Niagara
Bank. Since First Niagara already
has a branch right next door to HSBC’s, at 341 Main St, Catskill, the present
HSBC branch surely will be vacated.
An exceptionally imposing building, rich in history, will be added to
our abundant stock of vacant commercial properties.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In global
terms, London-based HSBC is closing hundreds of retail branches, including half
of its United States outlets. Its
program already has involved the elimination 5000 jobs and is expected to
eliminate 25,000 more by 2013. The
announced rationale is concentration on corporate finance, international
connections, and growth markets. During the first half of this year, HSBC’s
corporate parent made a 3 per cent, $11.5 billion, gain in pretax profits. </div>
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Not announced so far is abandonment of the company slogan,
“the world’s local bank.” </div>
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The GreeneLand HSBC branch began life back in 1803, as
Catskill National Bank & Trust Company. It was sold in 1971 to Marine Midland Bank East and then to
HSBC. </div>
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In recent months, or years, the place has been almost a
hollow shell. Although it is open on weekdays, it cannot be reached by
telephone. </div>
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<br /></div>
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Retiring from part-time public office in GreeneLand is <b>Jack
Van Loan</b>, head since December 2003 of GreeneLand’s veterans’ service agency. He
will be replaced by appointment by <b>Michelle Romalin Black</b> of Greenville. She is a GreeneLand
native, an Air Force veteran and, according to County Administrator Groden and to key county legislators, she did very
well on a rigorous accreditation test.
</div>
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<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt;">Another retirement has paved the way for departmental consolidation. With
the departure of <b>Thomas</b> <b>Yandeau</b> as head of the county’s Department of the
Aging, County Executive <b>Shaun Groden</b>, with the hearty approval of the elected
legislators, has placed that office under the guidance of <b>Therese McGee Ward</b>,
head of the Youth Bureau. The
merger will produce more job cuts. </span><br />
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<span class="style4"><span style="font-family: Times;"></span></span></div>
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<span class="style4"><span style="font-family: Times;">Soon to
be leaving the Cairo-Durham school system, after a long local career, is
Superintendent <b>Sally Sharkey</b>.<span> </span>As
reported in the <i>Daily Mail</i>, the school district’s trustees decided back in May
to give Ms Sharkey a one-year notice of termination, and then decided, by a
vote of 5 to 4, at a stormy public meeting on June 30, to uphold that
notice.<span> </span>Ms Sharkey was a music
teacher in the district before she acquired an administrative degree and then
was appointed in 2005 as superintendent, followed in 2007 by a five-year
contract extension.<span> </span>Demands to
give reasons for the termination were declined by the trustees.<span> </span>One of the protestors, <b>Adrienne Gatti</b>,
said (<i>Daily Mail</i>, 7/14) that Ms Sharkey is “the lowest-paid superintendent”
in “surrounding counties” and “has not taken a pay raise for two years.”<span> </span>According to State Department of
Education figures, however (see <a href="http://www.p12.nysed.gov/mgtserv/admincomp">www.p12.nysed.gov/mgtserv/admincomp</a>),
her salary of $135,523 plus a benefits package valued at $41,127) is
second-lowest among GreeneLand school superintendents.<span> </span>The lowest salary goes to the
superintendent in the smallest (in population) district: Hunter-Tannersville,
at $126,838 plus a benefits package valued at $42,244.<span> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="style4"><span style="font-family: Times;">The other
figures are $138,030 plus $59,760 (Windham-Ashland-Jewett—and that benefits packages
is the fattest of the six); $140,057 plus $34,316 (Greenville); $143,000 plus
$10,940 (Coxsackie-Athens, and a remarkably small benefits package); and
$162,081 plus $44,729 (Catskill).<span> </span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><br />
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Then we have the case of GreeneLand’s semi-governmental
Industrial Development Agency. The
abrupt departure of veteran Executive Director <b>Alexander Mathes</b> was followed
soon after, not coincidentally, by the resignations of three veteran directors:
<b>Robert Snyder</b>, the president; <b>Hugh Quigley</b>, an I.D.A. founder and leader during
the past 20 years; and board secretary <b>Martin Smith</b>, who is chairman of the
board of the Bank of Greene County.
Although <b>Rene Van Schaak</b> has been moved up to the post of interim
executive director, and although four governing directors remain (<b>Dan Frank</b>, former county executive; <b>Eric Hoglund</b>; <b>Sy DeLucia</b>; and <b>Willis Vermilyea</b>, retired county treasurer) and although office manager <b>April Ernst</b> is
still on the job, the I.D.A. is in a state of limbo. No minutes of meetings (<a href="http://www.greencountyida.com/">www.greencountyida.com</a>) since
May. The agency was crippled by
controversy last year over the $175,000big bonus that the directors gave to Mr
Mathes in 2009. It has been
hurt too by a report from the office of the State Controller. The report imputes a lack of
transparency to many local agencies.
More broadly, it voices concern about results, in terms of jobs created
relative to the scale of tax exemptions granted. </div>
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<br /></div>
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Already gone from GreeneLand, happily, is <b>Nicholas
Barcomb</b>. He came over the Rip Van
Winkle bridge from Hudson last January and, wielding a knife, stole $729 from
Tori G’s restaurant. According to District Attorney Terry Wilhelm, Barcomb was
nabbed by police, charged with felonious armed robbery, and housed in the
county jail, entered a plea of guilty, and was sentenced by Judge Pulver Jr to
a ten-year stretch in State prison. </div>
<br />Dick Mayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03485935634961545610noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9599422.post-71707712929150876042011-08-02T13:35:00.001-04:002011-08-02T15:34:38.847-04:00Marriage Equality II: The Rhetoric [Part I is just <i>below</i> this post]<br />
Although the Marriage Equality Act was a sore subject in the
senate of New York, statements about the pros and cons of that
measure—statements about relevant principles, rights and wrong—were conspicuously
scarce. Outside the chamber,
however, marriage equality was a hot topic. The controversy continues. Some of it supplies fresh
material for our Seeing Sophistry files.
<br />
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*<span style="font-size: small;"><b>CATEGORY ERROR.</b></span><span style="font-weight: normal;"> Proponents of the Marriage Equality Act
relied primarily on an equal rights pitch. The honor and the benefits of marital status, they argued,
should be available to consenting same-sex adults just as they are for
consenting opposite-sex couples.
To that thesis, whose cogency and conclusiveness are far from being
self-evident, opponents of the bill offer no direct response. Their paramount line of argument is
that in passing the so-called Marriage Equality Act, the legislators performed
a false, and pernicious, act of <i>re-definition</i></span>. Thus, <b>Ruben Diaz
</b>of New York City, the only Democratic senator who voted No, stigmatized the
bill as a move “to <i>redefine</i> our <i>definition</i> of marriage from [sic] one man and
one woman” (press releases of 7/7 and 7/11). Similarly, here in GreeneLand, <b>Chuck Kaiser</b><span style="font-weight: normal;"> lamented (<i>Daily Mail</i></span>, 7/ 27) that the
33 assenting senators, scorning the Biblical definition of marriage as “a holy
union between one man and woman” (citation not supplied), presumptuously “took
it upon themselves to <i>redefine</i><span style="font-style: normal;">
marriage.” </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That version of events is categorically wrong-headed. Defining is not what lawmakers do. In this case, legislators performed an
act not of definition but rather of legitimization. Together with a majority of
State Assembly members and with Gov. Andrew Cuomo, the 33 assenting senators made
it legal for same-sex couples to procure government licenses and to undergo
civil ceremonies whereby they could legally call themselves, and could be
called by others, <i>married</i><span style="font-style: normal;">. </span></div>
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That action does not threaten anybody who believes, and
asserts, that the same-sex couples who utilize their new legal right are not
“really” married. Thus, advocates
of a popular “referendum” on a
“State Constitutional Amendment <i>defining</i><span style="font-style: normal;">
Marriage in New York as a union between one man and one woman” (Mr Kaiser’s
words) miss the point.</span></div>
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*<b>EXTRANEOUS ADVICE</b><span style="font-weight: normal;">. “Marital bliss,” says Pastor <b>Johann
Christoph Arnold </b>of Rifton NY (in letters to many newspapers), “can be attained
only when God’s order—that is, marriage between one man and one woman—is
adhered to.” That functional
appraisal could work as a warning to same-sex couples who hope for bliss
through marriage. It does not work as rational grounds for deploring a measure
has no bearing on the quests of
opposite-sex couples for marital bliss.</span></div>
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*<b>HEALTH HAZARD.</b><span style="font-weight: normal;"> The 33 senators who passed the Marriage
Equality Act, Mr Kaiser affirms, “advocated for” an “unhealthy lifestyle.” In support of that contention, Mr
Kaiser testifies that “the morbidity and mortality rates of practicing
homosexuals is [<i>sic</i>] far greater than any other segment of our population.”
That line of argument could be cogent (without being conclusive) if it were
backed by evidence that legalizing same-sex marriage would enlarge the
population of practicing homosexuals.
Meanwhile, one can speculate that new law may reduce rates of morbidity
and mortality in the gay population, by prompting a decrease in rates of
promiscuity.</span></div>
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*<b>MIS-DESCRIPTION</b><span style="font-weight: normal;">. In
addition to mis-classifying the new Marriage Equality Act, Mr Kaiser falsified
its immediate terms. He averred
(I’m not making this up), that New York “took a giant leap down the slippery
slope of moral degradation when it <i>officially sanctioned sodomy</i></span>
under the guise of ‘marriage equality’.”
But it is difficult indeed to legalize a practice (anal intercourse)
that already is legal. <br /></div>
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*<b>EXTRAVAGANT ALARM.</b><span style="font-weight: normal;"> Because the State legislature and
Governor have given legal sanction to so-called marriages of same-sex
couples, says Pastor Arnold, “civilization as we know it is now doomed.” That fate looms “because what was foundational
is being destroyed and”—ahem—“redefined”; we are “declaring God’s laws as
irrelevant.” Since he voices those
sentiments in response to one legislative act, he makes it seems as though
salvation is readily attainable: repeal that one legislative blunder. Too easy. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
*<b>PHONY NOSTALGIA</b><span style="font-weight: normal;">. “Let us return,” pleads Pastor Arnold,
“to the time when our nation put its full trust in God.” Would that be the time until June 24,
2011? Anyhow, nations are not people who trust and distrust. And the proposition that this “nation”
until recently did “put its full trust in God” is a bold, novel one.</span></div>
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<br /></div>Dick Mayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03485935634961545610noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9599422.post-49663726305025050462011-08-02T12:44:00.001-04:002011-08-02T12:45:44.114-04:00Marriage Equality, Part I<br />
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The
past week has set a record in New York State for weddings. According to news media reports, 46
couples were united in marriage at a joint ceremony at Niagara Falls last
Sunday. About 100 other couples did the same last
Monday at Long Island’s Bethpage State Park. Town clerks all around the State have been busily engaged in
processing applications for marriage licenses.</div>
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The rush of marital business was
triggered by a change in State law.
It marked the first week in which applicants could take advantage of the
newly adopted Marriage Equality Act. That measure removed a restriction on eligibility to
earn the status, and the benefits, of being, in the eyes of the law,
married. It conferred eligibility
to obtain marital legal status on couples who are of the same sex. It made New York the sixth State, and
the most populous one, to give legal sanction to same-sex marriage. (The other States are Massachusetts,
Connecticut, Iowa, New Hampshire and Vermont; plus the District of Columbia)
And it prompted hundreds of homosexual couples to seize the opportunity. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
First among the GreeneLand couples
were <b>Sam Aldi</b> and <b>Michael DeBenedictu</b>s.
On Sunday (7/31), in their sunlit Catskill garden, before scores of
friends and relatives, with Village Justice <b>William Wooton</b> presiding, they
sealed a bond whose durability had already been proved over the past 40
years. </div>
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The Marriage Equality Act won
adoption after strenuous controversy, especially in the State Senate. Its passage there, by a vote of 33 to
29, marked a reversal of fortune for a similar measure that went down to
defeat, 24 to 38, back in 2009. </div>
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Some features of the marriage
equality controversy deserve comment. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
MEDIA BIAS?
Devotees of the “liberal bias” thesis concerning our mainstream news
media can draw a mite of support from one aspect of how the Marriage Equality
drama was covered. While giving
prominence to the <span class="style4"><span style="font-family: Times;">pivotal
role played by the senators who reversed their previous opposition, the reports
did not immediately identify the ‘defectors.’ Neither did they do so when
reporting the prospect of an organized political retaliation against on the
defectors. Thus, in a long Associated Press story (published in the <i>Daily
Freeman</i></span></span><span class="style4"><span style="font-family: Times;">
under headline </span></span>“Gay marriage foes target 7 senators who flipped”)
readers are told that “The four Republicans and three Democrats who changed
their votes or positions were key in Friday’s 33-29 vote.” But in the course of 17 paragraphs,
only two of those ‘flippers’ were named.<span class="style4"><span style="font-family: Times;"> That
example is representative of what occurred in print and on screen. The omissions do not make sense
professionally. They can be cited
plausibly as evidence that the responsible journalists chose more less
consciously to give those defectors a bit of protection.</span></span></div>
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<span class="style4"><span style="font-family: Times;"> The
pivotal Republican senators were <b>Mark Grisanti </b>of Buffalo, <b>Roy J. McDonald</b> of
the Capital Region, <b>James Alesi</b> of Monroe County and <b>Stephen Saland</b> of Columbia
County (and other counties). The
switching Democrats were <b>Joseph Addabbo</b>, <b>Carl Kruger</b>, and <b>Shirley Huntley</b>, who
represent districts in New York City.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span class="style4"><span style="font-family: Times;"> </span></span>SILENT SENATORS.
In their dealings with the Marriage Equality Act, New York’s senators
differed not only in how they voted, but also in how they addressed the
subject. The main contrast here is
between something and nothing.
Senator Grisanti accompanied his affirmative vote with a speech
acknowledging his change of position, and he put a video of that event on his
official senatorial web site.
Senator McDonald gave a cryptic statement to <i>The Daily News</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> (“fuck it”; “trying to do the right thing”) but no
trace of that event appears on his web site. Similarly, the search word “marriage” yields nothing on
Senator Alesi’s web site, and yet, tucked next to his “Community Update” of
June 24 (distributed to all local papers) is a video in which he speaks at a
marriage equality rally, anticipates being (by alphabetical order) the first
Republican senator to vote on the
impending bill, rates his vote as “the most important thing I can do in my
20-year career as a legislator,” and anticipates the loss of “what I thought
were a lot of good friends.” As
for Senator Saland, the last of the Republican “turncoats,” he spoke on the
Senate floor and addressed the issue on his web site (while declining to be the
focus of national media interviews).
He spoke of the stress of clashing loyalties to the traditional conception
of marriage and to equality of rights. He also emphasized the “religious exemptions” that he and others had managed to include in the 2011 act, as distinct
from the 2009 version. <a href="http://www.nysenategov/senator/stephen-m-saland/marriageequality">www.nysenategov/senator/stephen-m-saland/marriageequality</a></span>.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
Senator
Saland’s territorial neighbors and fellow Republicans, <b>James Seward
</b>(representing GreeneLand, among other counties) and <b>John Bonacic</b> (Ulster and
other nearby counties) took a different course. While voting Nay on the Marriage Equality Act, they
refrained from addressing the subject. They kept mum. On their web sites, with sections devoted to Issues, with
all press releases and public statements listed, nothing about marriage
occurs. Both of those senators
(and many others) did post video statements evaluating the 2011 legislative
session. Both gave the session
high marks. “Good news,” says
Senator Seward; “Albany is functioning again,” and even “better” days for New
Yorkers can be expected, thanks to measures lately adopted by the
legislators. It’s been a “good
year,” says Senator Bonacic; and “things will get better and better.” Their readers would not know that the
legislative session ended with a bothersome, controversial, emotion-laden,
dramatic debate about marriage.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
Also mum on the subject were the
down-State Democrats who supported the Marriage Equality Act after opposing the
earlier version. They issued no statements, submitted to no interviews. In two cases, however—Senators Huntley
and Kruger--the search word “marriage” does yield material on official web sites. The material in
each case is a press release dating from December 2009. Each release explains the senator’s
vote <i>against </i><span style="font-style: normal;">the proposed Marriage
Equality Act. Each explanation
consists of affirming that the senator’s constituents clearly, firmly
oppose the granting of marriage rights to same-gender couples. </span></div>
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<br /></div>Dick Mayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03485935634961545610noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9599422.post-18112084865616963722011-07-26T14:46:00.001-04:002011-07-26T17:49:24.619-04:00Doing Business<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
GreeneLanders are hurting. Jobs are scarce,
sales are slow, tourist traffic is down, tax revenues have shrunk. (Fees from marriage licenses, however,
have hit record highs in the past couple of days). Our plight is illustrated by
commercial property transactions.
In Catskill’s business district, in the past three years, sales of
commercial properties have numbered just two. One was realtor <b>Gary diMauro</b><span style="font-weight: normal;">’s own purchase (for $167,500) of a building to house, among other
things, a sales office. The other
was--at the price ($1.2 million), for the announced purpose (video games), and
based on a financial windfall (the lottery)—a fantasy purchase. Meanwhile, many commercial buildings
remain empty, after months or years of being offered for sale. The immediate
outlook is dour. As Mr DiMauro
says, “the recent deadlock on raising the [Federal] debt ceiling and anemic job
growth numbers do not bode well for any serious recovery during the balance of
the year….” BUT:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #6aa84f;">PROMOTION</span> of GreeneLand as destination has been bolstered by
way of the Economic Development, Tourism and Planning Department’s much-improved web
site: <a href="http://www.greatnortherncatskills.com/">www.greatnortherncatskills.com</a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
On
the other hand, the <a href="http://www.welcometocatskill.com/">www.welcometocatskill.com</a>
site shows signs of neglect.
Clicking on the “Events” link yields only directions for driving to the
Village. And the Masters on Main
Street program that closed at the end of May is still touted, while the new
MOM program is not mentioned at all.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
(It’s
not a mess, however, like the official web site <a href="http://villageofcatskill.net/">http://villageofcatskill.net</a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
which tells us that the term of the current Village president
“expires March 2010”; that the term of the senior Village justice, <b>Charles
Adsit</b>, also expires in March 2010 (when in fact he held court until he retired
in May of his year); and that the term of the incumbent justice, <b>William Wooton</b>,
expires in “March 2011”). </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: #6aa84f;">FRUCK SOLD</span><span style="background-color: #6aa84f;">?</span> The
Ulster Savings Bank may have succeeded at last in unloading the Friar Tuck,
which in times past was touted as GreeneLand’s “foremost” resort. According to <b>Michael Shaughnessy</b><span style="font-weight: normal;">, the bank’s executive vice-president (as quoted in
a <i>Daily Freeman</i></span> report by Ariel Zengla, 7/22; see also <i>Daily
Mail</i><span style="font-style: normal;">, 7/23), a deal was closed Wednesday
evening (7/20) and the buyer, called L & H Resort Systems LP, paid or
promised to pay $2.425 million in cash.
That price is about one million dollars less than what the bank was owed
when it foreclosed on the property, with its 376 rooms, 52,000 square feet of
exhibition space, banquet facilities, conference rooms, indoor and outdoor
pools, debts and deterioration. Two previously announced sales of the Tuck failed. Realtors <b>Greg Berardi</b></span> and
<b>Win Morrison</b><span style="font-weight: normal;"> represented the new
buyers. They did not immediately
identify their client, apart from alluding to a “foreign” group of individuals.
The <i>Daily Mail</i></span>’s web search yielded an “L&H Property
Development” company, “a global real estate development corporation based in
Kuala Lumpur.” Our own Google
search yielded a web site for “H & L,” “point of sale solution providers in
the hospitality industry” in, mostly, Australia (<a href="http://www.hlaustralia.com.au/">www.hlaustralia.com.au</a>. No properties listed; latest “news”
item posted in February 2010).
When contacted by <i>Seeing Greene</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> (7/24), Mr Morrison said the buyers are mainland Chinese who are
specialists in entertainment, and “If they do what they say they plan to do,
the result will turn Ulster and Greene counties around considerably.” Mr
Berardi said that a major partner in the buyers’ team is based in the United
States, and that before making their bid, the buyers made a direct, close
inspection of the place, with a view to transforming it into a “luxury resort.” </span><br />
<span style="background-color: #6aa84f;">BANK BOOM</span>.<span> </span>The
Bank of Greene County (with branches spilling into Albany and Columbia
counties) evidently continues to thrive, or at least to survive comfortably,
amid hard times.<span> </span>Its quarterly
dividend, payable in mid-August, will be the same as it has been for many
quarters past: 17.5 cents per share.<span>
</span>To recipients, the yield is about 4 per cent per year, which is better
than the return on savings deposits.<span>
</span>Its availability is due not only to financial solidity but also, in no
small measure, to the fact that the bank’s parent, owner of 55 per cent of the
shares, foregoes dividends.
<span style="font-style: normal;">[This item was inserted three hours after the blog was first posted. DM]</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: #6aa84f;">NEW STAGE</span>. The
venerable Orpheum Theater in Tannersville has achieved juvenescence. (We’ve waited for years for a
chance to use that word). It has
been comprehensively, expensively renovated as a venue for live up-scale
entertainment, thanks to the efforts of <b>Peter Finn</b><span style="font-weight: normal;"> and other supporters of the Catskill Mountain
Foundation. Its recent soft
opening bodes well for the cultural life—and, incidentally, the economic
life--of GreeneLand. (<a href="http://catskillmtn.org/">http://catskillmtn.org</a>)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: #6aa84f;">NEW OWNER</span>. The Kingston-based <i>Daily Freeman</i><span style="font-style: normal;">, which offers news about some GreeneLand events (as
evidenced by citations in this blog), now is owned by a New York hedge
fund. Its immediate parent, the
Journal Register company, whose stable of publications includes newspapers in
Troy, Saratoga and Clifton Park, as well as in other communities (chiefly in
Connecticut and Pennsylvania) was bought by Alden Global Capital
Company which, surprisingly, has placed substantial bets on the viability of
several print-based media companies. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
(BTW. Another change of
ownership in local publishing will be announced soon). </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: #6aa84f;">SMART START</span>? Veteran journalist <b>Paul Smart</b><span style="font-weight: normal;"> has announced plans to launch a trio of
“independent community” newspapers. Adopting the editorial <i>we</i></span> in
a broadly circulated e-mail message, he says that “As seasoned newspaper folk,
we have tried working on blogs and other digital means, as well as radio. But
we miss the tactile qualities of print. So we're trying to do it from scratch,
without investment, believing that our local businesses also miss having direct
contact with their local communities and will support what we're doing.” In times
past Mr Smart edited <i>The</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> </span><i>Mountain
Eagle</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> and </span><i>The</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> </span><i>Phoenicia Times</i><span style="font-style: normal;">, as well as operating the Olive Press and, until this April, chairing
radio station WGXC’s news committee.
He envisions a September 8 launch for three bi-weeklies that are stuffed
with local news: </span><i>The Catskill Current, The Hudson Harpoon</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> and </span><i>The Mountaintop Meteor. </i></div>
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<span style="background-color: #6aa84f;">GLORY</span>. <b>Zach Hyer</b><span style="font-weight: normal;"> of
Tannersville, according to<i> DailyMail</i></span>man Jim Planck, has won an
Academy Award—yes, <i>that</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> academy—in the
2011 competition for film students.
For his short film “Correspondence” he scored a gold medal in the
animation category. Receipt of the award involved a free trip to Hollywood, a
tour of industry-related events, and attendance at the regular Academy Awards
presentation. His depiction (</span><i>via
</i><span style="font-style: normal;">the Flash and After Effects programs) of a
soldier delivering a message through a heavy combat area came out of a
storyboarding class in his first semester in the Master of Fine Arts program at
New York’s Pratt Institute, following graduation from SUNY New Paltz and, before
that, from Hunter-Tannersville High School. Hyer is the son of <b>Rosemary Hyer</b></span>
of Tannersville and <b>Mark Hyer</b><span style="font-weight: normal;"> of East
Jewett. For his acceptance speech,
click <a href="http://www.oscars.org/video/watch/38saa_animation_gold_hyer.html">http://www.oscars.org/video/watch/38saa_animation_gold_hyer.html</a>.
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<br /></div>Dick Mayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03485935634961545610noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9599422.post-50665314461551223282011-07-10T10:28:00.000-04:002011-07-10T10:28:30.712-04:00Happy July<style>
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<span style="background-color: #6aa84f;">4 WOOD</span> as musical instrument? We saw it and heard it at the Catskill Point warehouse,
during last Saturday’s (6/26) Bing Bang Boing Festival.
<b>Ken Butler</b><span style="font-weight: normal;"> also played a
electrified tennis racquet (electrified strings), a snow shovel and (with a violin
bow) an umbrella. Extracting sounds (music?) from other improvised, performance-based, sculptural instruments
were </span><b>Harry</b><span style="font-weight: normal;"> and </span><b>Josh
Matthews</b><span style="font-weight: normal;">, </span><b>Matt Bua</b><span style="font-weight: normal;">, </span><b>Ed Podokar</b><span style="font-weight: normal;">, </span><b>Peter Head</b><span style="font-weight: normal;">, and
cousins </span><b>Brian</b><span style="font-weight: normal;"> and </span><b>Leon
Dewan</b><span style="font-weight: normal;"> (creators of the now-famous
Dewanatron). Their experiments in
audibility were complemented in no small measure by the moving sculptures, the
graceful swaying gestures of GreeneLand’s own Wild Rose Belly Dancing
Troupe.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #6aa84f;">330</span>=number of revelers at Sunday’s glorious
fund-raiser for GreeneLand’s Thomas Cole National Historic Site. It rained in the morning. Rained again in the afternoon. Then the clouds passed, and people
converged on the designated Catskill party site. Welcomed by Cole volunteers, by suitable libations, by
photographer <b>Rob</b> <b>Shannon</b> (<a href="http://www.fotopic.com/">www.fotopic.com</a>)<br />
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and by soft music (the raucous stuff came later), they eventually
strolled down to a giant tent that had been erected just above the majestic
Hudson.</div>
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After (and while) dining,<br />
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they were jolted by the start of a spectacular fireworks show provided by <b>Rich</b>
(Misbehaven) <b>Pilatch</b>. </div>
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Then it was back
up hill to dancing (luscious <b>Lex Grey</b> and the Urban Pioneers), to a laser light
show that bathed trees and pool in dancing light (based on the ingenuity of the
late <b>Rudi Berkhout</b>), to more camaraderie.
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According
to hostess<b> Lisa Fox Martin</b>, who presides over the Thomas Cole House board
of trustees, the affair took in “a bit more than” $80,000. That was a gain over the take in
2010. The net return also was higher. That gain was due in no small measure to donations of items and time as well as
money. Cole House staff members and Fellows and volunteers handled multiple
assignments. Every table was
graced by potted flowers loaned by Story Farms. Welcoming libations were a gift from <b>Ed Domaney</b>
of Great Barrington (<a href="http://www.domaneys.com/">www.domaneys.com</a>). Memorable catering was provided by<b> Shawn
Hardy</b> (<a href="http://www.therentachef.com/">www.therentachef.com</a>). <b>Geoff Howell</b> (<a href="http://www.geoffhowellstudio.com/">www.geoffhowellstudio.com</a>) designed the background
for the photos taken by Mr Shannon (big white number 10, marking the tenth year
since the restored Cole House opened to the public). And Mr Howell and his helpers gave the
big tent the look that appears in our photo (by Shannon). Pivotal too were the party’s
sponsors. These people, 52 in
number this year, paid from $500 to $2500 for tickets they gave to chosen guests
(some of whom made independent contributions). Meanwhile, the other attendees paid $150 (as Cole House
members) or $175 (as non-members).</div>
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LAST YEAR'S Cole House benefit, as it happens, has been memorialized in the July-August
issue of <i>Country Living</i>, by way of a picture together with a note written by <b>Sarah Gray Miller</b>, editor
of that magazine and (with husband <b>Tony Stamolis</b>) an Athens resident. The family photo below was taken by <b>Rob Shannon</b> against another background designed by <b>Geoff Howell</b>. </div>
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<br />Dick Mayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03485935634961545610noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9599422.post-11557804224405534862011-06-22T17:00:00.001-04:002011-07-22T18:25:18.367-04:00Seeing Sophistry<b><i> If the government funds you, </i></b><br />
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<b><i>the government owns you.</i><i> </i></b></div>
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<b><i> </i></b>Those words are attributed by
GreeneLander James Varelas to Charles Krauthammer, the columnist and Fox News
commentator, and they are hailed by him as “a brilliant statement.” In nine subsequent paragraphs of a
letter to local papers (<i>Daily Mail</i><span style="font-style: normal;">,
6/9/11) Mr Varelas hammers the Obama Administration, but he does not undertake
to clarify the Krauthammer statement’s terms or to support his evaluation of
its thesis. I shall attempt here
to identify properties that generate its rhetorical glitter.</span><br />
<span style="font-style: normal;"> </span><b>Pithiness.</b><span style="font-weight: normal;"> The Krauthammer statement is a model of brevity and
rhythm. It seems to load a great deal of experience into a neat package.</span></div>
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<b>Gravity</b><span style="font-weight: normal;">.
Manifestly crucial to the Krauthammer proposition are the final words
“owns you.” Those words express
the idea of being a serf, a slave, a disposable piece of tangible
property. Thus, the consequence of
being funded by the government, as alleged in the “brilliant statement,” seems
portentous indeed.</span> </div>
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Taken at face value, that
proposition is false. Few if any
governments hold ownership papers on the people they fund. But taking the proposition literally or
legalistically would be imprudent and shallow. What is offered essentially is a
strong quantitative claim. It is a
claim about variations—big variations—in degrees of servitude. Thus we have the
still-portentous proposition that <i>If the government funds you, you occupy a
state of dependence and servitude that is far along in the direction of
serfdom. </i></div>
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<i> </i><b>Contrast.</b><span style="font-weight: normal;"> Basic
to such a proposition is a distinction between spheres of existence: government, also known as the public
sector, and non-government, or the private sector. Invited by <i>If the government funds you, the government
owns </i></span>you is the inference that if a <i>non</i><span style="font-style: normal;">-government agent funds you, he or she or it does </span><i>not</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> own you.
Accordingly, </span><i>If the government funds you, your state of
servitude is much more complete than if a company, foundation, union, client,
parent, church, bank, or paying customer funds you.</i><b> </b><br />
<b> Conglomeration</b><span style="font-weight: normal;">. Implicit in our “brilliant statement” too is
denial or belittlement of differences in the status of people who are funded by
different types of government. Denial is conveyed by the absence of
differentiating adjectives such as <i>despotic, autocratic, feudal, Fascist,
theocratic, Communist, strong, republican</i></span> or <i>democratic.</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> Denial is conveyed too by context: delivery to
subjects of governance by elected representatives. Respondents are invited thereby
to recognize that </span><i>if the government—any kind of government—funds you,
the government owns you; differences in degree of servitude under different
forms of government, are trivial. </i><span style="font-style: normal;">(This
leaves room for the possibility that, for occupants of the </span><i>private</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> sector, different forms of government do cause
variations in degree of servitude). </span></div>
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<b>Personation</b><span style="font-weight: normal;">.
Crucial to the power of the “brilliant statement” is treatment of <i>the
government</i></span> as a sentient, willful, demanding actor. “The government”
here is not an institution, a set of procedures, a mechanism. It is an agent who (<i>sic</i><span style="font-style: normal;">) can speak, think, pay, hire, fire, sell and boss
people (including “you”). </span></div>
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<b>Diversion</b><span style="font-weight: normal;">.
Thanks to its pithiness, its categorical distinction between government
and non-government, its inclusiveness with regard to forms of government, and
its treatment of government as a willful actor, our “brilliant statement”
serves to divert attention from everyday experience. As a routine matter we know people who are, so to speak,
government-funded. They are police
officers, soldiers, sailors, engineers, clerks, lawyers, judges, bailiffs,
mayors, pensioners, nurses, teachers, letter carriers. They also are manufacturers,
researchers, landscapers, and other private-sector workers who are funded by
way of contracts with government agencies. These people are <i>not</i></span> paid, however, by “the
government.” They are paid by
various public-sector employees, who are constrained by regulations. They are
supervised (<i>governed</i><span style="font-style: normal;">!) not by “the
government” but by various authority figures (</span><i>governors</i><span style="font-style: normal;">) whose power, again, is constrained by regulations
emanating from other authority figures.</span></div>
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A
common complaint about public employees in general is that they are too
secure. Rarely can they can be
fired or demoted or transferred without an elaborate hearing. Never can they be
auctioned off. They may be
redundant but, under established tenure rules, they cannot readily be
discarded. To think of them as government-owned
chattels is quite a stretch. Our
“brilliant statement” seems to be reducible to initials: b.s.<br />
[BTW. Mr Varelas's letter also was published in <i>The Daily Freeman </i>(7/21). And although Mr Varelas did respond by e-mail to the above critique, he declined an invitation to have it, or a revision,<br />
posted as a Comment here. 7/21/11]<br />
</div>Dick Mayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03485935634961545610noreply@blogger.com1