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Putnam County Executive Bob Bondi is holding a public hearing at 2PM on Wednesday (tomorrow) afternoon in the County Executive's office (Room 300) to discuss the Legislature's recently passed Domestic Partners Registry bill. When I spoke to his office yesterday I asked who was notified of the meeting and the woman I spoke with mentioned that Mr. Bondi had sent direct mail to churches and religious organizations enticing their attendance at the meeting. Did he notify any civil rights groups? Did you get a notice? Did I? A note for comment sent yesterday to the Log Cabin Republicans has gone unanswered.
The Domestic Partners Registry bill passed the County Legislature with a 7-0-1 majority, the one being an abstention and the missing vote was Dan Birmingham's who was out of county at the time of this critical vote.
Facing a certain a override if Mr. Bondi should attempt a veto, it makes sense for him to call out the troops on his side of the issue, i.e., those who would stand against it, then veto the bill placing pressure on the County Legislature to change their votes and keep Putnam County in the social dark ages.
This is not a religious issue, it is not a gay marriage issue. It is a fiscal and civil rights issue. His office says he's just 'seeking comments' yet this list, you who are on it and those who attended the hearings held by the Legislature have all shown that without prodding and without directly requesting 'comments' from those certain to condemn, Putnam County desires to join the modern age.
I urge each and every one of you who supports equal rights to do what you can to come to the meeting on Wednesday afternoon at 2PM and let your voice be heard. We've come this far, let's not falter now.
The Really Really Big News of the day is that Senator Joe Bruno has decided to call it quits. Odds are he'll hang around until the end of the year so there'll still be nothing of substance coming out of Albany until after that. But someone really ought to take a very close look at his bank account and travel records.
The Patterson Planning Board has accepted the FEIS (Final Environmental Impact Statement) for Patterson Crossing as complete. You can download this huge document from the town's website here. It should make for a good read.
TREND NY, an upstate tax advocacy group just completed a poll of 516 respondents on the question of property tax relief. This question, one of 4 asked, should raise eyebrows in Albany and underscores my position on the return to a graduated income tax:
Right now, New Yorkers making 45 thousand dollars a year and those making 45 million dollars a year both pay the same state income tax rate of 6.85%. Would you support changing the rate on those making more than a million dollars a year to 7.7% to help fund additional property tax relief?
Yes
| 400
| 84%
| No
| 55
| 11%
| Not Sure
| 23
| 5%
| For you Barack Obama supporters out there just a note: Last week the Senator recorded a radio spot for a pro-war Democrat and this week he reneged on his promise to filibuster the FISA bill's telecom immunity package. Where does this leaves progressives in US politics? In the exact same place Al Gore and John "I'm Not Bush Lite!" Kerry did... somewhere between Jupiter and Mars. In the meantime John McCain is still insisting he's not George Bush and that his campaign will not benefit from a terrorist attack on US soil.
Sometimes being out between Jupiter and Mars seems like a nice, quiet place to be.
How much do you know about solar energy? Find out at the UK Guardian's website.
Under pressure from Stat AG Andy Cuomo, several telecom giants are dropping the "alt." hierarchy from their Usenet servers. What is Usenet? Usenet is the real internet where the most information can be found. Point your browser to http://groups.google.com/ and poke around. Anything you could ever want to know about anything that ever was is buried in there somewhere. There are, at some counts, more than 100,000 different Usenet groups chock full of information.
Usenet is broken down into subdivisions by interest so that, for example, groups about computers are listed with the prefix "comp." Those of interest to people living in Boulder, Colorado begin with "boulder." and those who are interested in images and sound files, (i.e., binary files) begin with "binaries." Following the " . " is a more specific tag. So, "binaries.music.mp3" would be a discussion group about mp3 (music) files. Even under that you may find, "binaries.music.mp3.barry.manilow" making the description of what's in the discussion group quite clear.
During a recent investigation the AG found 88 groups (out of the more than 100,000 which exist) that had at least one image considered to be child pornography and so he's pressured the telecoms into dropping the entire "alt." hierarchy, reached a "deal" with them which includes fines, with the ultimate result being that an entire portion of Usenet will largely disappear from the internet. Some of the telecoms are so frazzled that they are dropping Usenet completely from their servers thus shattering the internet as we know it. If you own a jeep, you're going to have to discuss your vehicle somewhere else since alt.auto.jeeps is now gone. If you're into social work and have been exchanging information globally with other social workers, alt.social.therapy is now gone.
What's in the alt.hierarchy: alt.internet.wireless, alt.abraham.lincoln, alt.student.affairs, alt.home.repair and alt.auto.subaru are just a few groups that will largely disappear from the 'net. To be sure, there's also alt.binaries.lolita but let the telecoms drop that last group and those like it but for chrissakes not the entirety of Usenet! The expression, "One bad apple don't spoil the whole bunch" comes into play here.
In the end, this constitutes censorship by the government and sets a very, very bad precedent and will most certainly come under a court challenge, as it should.
 We've become a nation of absolutes and 88 bad apples out of 100,000 does, in our political climate, constitute a ruination of the whole bunch and all of us are the poorer for it. I await the day when common sense prevails and wonder if, at 50, I'll live that long.
Lastly, Reuters reports today that China's financial hub of Shanghai has sent notices to dissidents, petitioners and other "controlled" people banning them leaving the city during the Olympics to ensure security. According to a human rights group, they are also not allowed to give their political opinions to the foreign media or leave the country. That's the Made in China Olympic spirit!
...The things you learn about in the News That Matters!
- Sharing the road (A NYJN Editorial)
- Watershed movement (Preserving the Quaker Brook)
- News from Arts on the Lake
- Fired highway worker sues to get job back (Shenanigans in Carmel...)
- Gay marriage poses no threat (NYJN Letter)
- Working Families and Republicans
- Hands On Biodiesel Workshop (An important event!)
Sharing the road There are more cyclists on the streets these days using the warm weather as an opportunity to reduce their carbon footprint, save on gas and burn a few extra calories. Those are all good reasons to ditch four wheels for two, but as a series of accidents in the Lower Hudson Valley in recent days makes clear, having more cyclists on the roads is not without risk. Whether caused by drivers who refuse to share the roads with bicycles, or cyclists who don't obey traffic laws, or just a second's misjudgment from the otherwise cautious, when car and bicycle collide, the results are often tragic for the cyclist.
On Saturday, a 43-year-old New York City man was seriously injured when his bicycle collided with a car at the entrance to Rockland Lake State Park, in Valley Cottage. He had to be airlifted to Westchester Medical Center and treated for serious head wounds and internal injuries.
On Thursday, 15-year-old White Plains High School sophomore David Lewis was struck by a van as he biked home from school, police said. Four cars were involved in the accident at the intersection of Bryant Avenue and North Street, and none of the drivers was hurt. Lewis, however, remains hospitalized.
Read More
Watershed movement New Fairfield internist leads effort to save Quaker Brook
By Robert Miller
STAFF WRITER
Article Last Updated: 06/22/2008 02:13:23 AM EDT
If you track the circling path of Quaker Brook, it can take you past Route 37 as it heads north through New Fairfield and Sherman.
But it can also take you through the woods and through a huge swamp up in the hills along the border of New York and Connecticut.
"It's a stunner," Tim Abbott of the Connecticut Council of the Highlands Coalition said about the beautiful wetland.
And finally, the brook ends up running through Haviland Hollow in New York to the Great Swamp, the 6,000 acre wetland that borders the New York/Connecticut state line.
The water running into the swamp in Quaker Brook/Haviland Hollow is still so clean it's used as the benchmark by New York City when it takes samples of the water that feeds its Croton reservoir.
"It's not pristine," said Edie Kaesbey, one of the founders of Friends of Great Swamp. "But it is the cleanest of them all."
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News from Arts on the Lake This Friday (6/27) is our second Members Party, called End-of- Month Renewal Party, from 8 to 10 pm at the Art Center in the Lake Carmel Cultural Center, 640 Route 52, Kent Lakes, NY. There will be a short program of theatre, music and art, followed by short presentations of things we have planned, additional ways of organizing volunteers, and an opportunity to socialize. It is free to members and those who wish to become members may do so at the door. If you plan to attend, please rsvp@artsonthelake.org.
The next day, Saturday, is our first Open Studio Tour of established and emerging artists in their working environment. A map for the self-guided tour of studios in the Carmel-Kent-Brewster area may be picked up at the Lake Carmel Cultural Center starting at 10 am (and ‘till about 3 pm). The donation is $12 for AotL members and $15 for others. Children accompanied by adults are free. The artists scheduled to participate are: Ed Dabronski, Harvey Ehrlich, Pal Gyomai, Dina Herrmann, Bruce Iacono, Michael Keropian, Deb Lecce, Bill Ullman and Roy Volpe.
Hope to see you at the Center soon.
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Fired highway worker sues to get job back Susan Elan
The Journal News
A Putnam County highway worker charged with "intimidation and threats of physical violence against co-workers" and using sexist and anti-Semitic slurs on the job, plans to sue in federal court to get his job back.
William Terry, a $78,621-a-year master mechanic and electrician, was fired after he was accused of threatening Deputy Highway Commissioner Emma Kounine and supervisor Michael Rosensweig by saying he was going to "kill the bow-legged (expletive referring to the female anatomy) and shoot the Jew next to her too." Terry reportedly went so far as to ask another field supervisor if he carried a gun.
Expressing interest in whether one of his supervisors was armed is what tipped the scale against Terry after hearings in October and January in which other highway workers testified that Kounine was routinely referred to in such vulgar terms and that Rosensweig often called himself a "cheap Jew." Kounine, one of the few women in the highway department and one of very few women at that level of management in county government, refused to discuss the case, referring questions to county Personnel Director Paul Eldridge.
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Feds provide almost $500,000
Hinchey: Cash will help tout quadricentennial
By John Davis
Poughkeepsie Journal
HYDE PARK - Nearly $500,000 in federal funding will be used to promote interest in the upcoming combined celebration of the 400th anniversary of the Hudson and Champlain voyages on the river and lake that bear their names and 200th anniversary of the Fulton steamship trek up the Hudson.
U.S. Rep. Maurice Hinchey, D-Hurley, announced the $492,000 in funding for the Hudson-Fulton-Champlain Quadricentennial on Monday in Hyde Park.
Beneath threatening skies, Hinchey spoke to about 25 people gathered outside the Vanderbilt Mansion on the scenic bluff overlooking the Hudson River and Catskill Mountains in the distance. The listeners included representatives of national, state and local agencies participating in the quadricentennial celebration next year.
Hinchey stressed the need to educate the public about the 1609 voyages and discoveries of European explorers Henry Hudson and Samuel de Champlain and the first commercial steamship journey from New York City to Albany on the Hudson in 1807 by Robert Fulton.
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Gay marriage poses no threat Your Sunday article, "Religious groups plan gay-marriage fight," calls gay marriage a "threat to their religious freedom." We are two straight grandmothers, sisters and Methodists from a long line of Methodist clergy. Our religious freedom is not threatened, one iota, by gay marriage, and we find it astonishing that any rational person, of any religious persuasion, can make such a statement.
The God of whom we learned in a deeply spiritual household is apparently much more inclusive than the one that the evangelical group "New Yorkers for Constitutional Freedoms" (surely an oxymoron), seeks to impose legally, upon the people of New York state.
On the contrary, our religious freedom is in serious danger when any group attempts to codify into civil law their particular brand of belief. Congratulations to Gov. David Paterson for his courageous, principled and court-approved stand.
Ruth Kitchen
Jane Rainey
New Rochelle
Read the Original
Working Families and Republicans Mike Risinit You would think John Degnan, a Republican challenging state Assemblyman Greg Ball, R-Patterson, is the only Republican to ever receive the endorsement of the Working Families Party. But he isn’t.
If you missed it, the Republican Assembly Campaign Committee sent out a press release last week faulting Degnan for the WF endorsement. (If you can’t open the press release, right click on it and choose “Open in new window.”)
“The Working Families Party is to the far left of Barbara Streisand – they make San Francisco liberal Nancy Pelosi look like Newt Gingrich,” RACC spokesman Joshua Fitzpatrick said in the release.
However, if you go to the Working Families Web site and look through its list of 2008 endorsements, there are at least seven incumbent Republican Assembly lawmakers there, mostly from Long Island. The list includes Fred W. Thiele Jr., Joseph Saladino, Bob Barra and Dede Scozzafava.
No telling if Fitzpatrick’s statements aimed at Degnan also apply to those Assembly Republicans. Go to original
Hands On Biodiesel Workshop Saturday June 28th 10 AM to 3 PM Class limited to 20 people – You must sign up ahead of time Cost is $30 per person – HVBC Members Free Write to Jerry Robock for more information
Biodiesel fuel, which runs in any diesel engine and some heating equipment, can be made in your backyard or garage for under $1 a gallon with common ingredients, using very inexpensive equipment. Relatively little chemistry knowledge is needed to produce quality fuel that will run in any diesel engine, and thousands of people around the country have discovered home-brewing fuel to be an addictive hobby. Come learn what it takes to produce your own clean-burning biodiesel fuel, and to build the equipment to do so. This workshop is hands-on and fast-paced - you'll be making test batches of fuel, titrating and testing oil, and assessing quality of the finished product. This class gives you the hands on experience you need to start making your own high quality fuel. Topics Include: We will Demo & Practice · Basic Chemistry of Making Biodiesel · Oil Quality Testing - Free Fatty Acid Titration · Calculations for Methanol and Catalyst Use · Understanding trade-offs · Fuel Quality Testing For Conversion · Washing Techniques · Separating Fuel From Glycerol/By-Product Layer and Water · Processor Operation · Avoiding & Breaking Emulsion · Processor Design & Building Tips · Basic Safety Guidelines · Using Biodiesel in Your Diesel Vehicle This class combines lab, practical, theory and Q&A
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