| News That Matters
Brought to you by PlanPutnam.Org "We do not support government bailouts of private institutions. Government interference in the markets exacerbates problems in the marketplace and causes the free market to take longer to correct itself. We believe in the free market as the best tool to sustained prosperity and opportunity for all." - 2008 Republican Platform
Good Thursday Morning,
Only 11 of you voted in yesterday's poll? What's up with that? I though my readers were more involved, up-to-date and active? Vote!
The Putnam Valley Business Association cordially invites the Community to its “Business Expo” today, Thursday, Sept.25th from 1-6pm at Sinapi Ceola Manor in Jefferson Valley . FREE Admission, FREE Food, Free Prizes and Giveaways! Grand Prize is a vacation in Chenay Bay, St. Croix. Free Seminars including: Learning to sell on eBay, Communication skills training, internet banking, Preventing heart disease. Register for Seminars on www.PVBA.org Support Your Colons! Though we missed it, yesterday was National Punctuation Day, a yearly celebration on September 24, to bring awareness to the proper use of punctuation marks. Based on what I read (and too often on how I write) every day should be National Punctuation Day! Learn more here.
So, you think you're paying the highest property taxes in the known universe? If you're listening to Paul Camarda, Bob Bondi or Greg Ball you need a lobotomy. Sorry, wrong article.
So, you think you're paying the highest property taxes in the known universe? If you're listening to Paul Camarda, Bob Bondi or Greg Ball you might think you are. But the NYJN reports that Putnam falls outside the top 10 counties in property taxes with a median tax bill of $6,860. Westchesterites shell out a median $8,422 to top the nation - so now you know why they're all moving up here! Here's the Top 20 list:
1) Westchester, N.Y.: $8,422, 2) Hunterdon, N.J.: $8,224, 3) Nassau, N.Y.: $8,153
4) Bergen, N.J.: $7,797, 5) Somerset, N.J.: $7,597, 6) Rockland, N.Y.: $7,535
7) Essex, N.J.: $7,535, 8) Morris, N.J.: $7,281, 9) Union, N.J.: $7,007
10) Passaic, N.J.: $6,928, 11) Putnam, N.Y.: $6,860, 12) Suffolk, N.Y.: $6,763
13) Monmouth, N.J.: $6,494, 14) Lake, Ill.: $6,089, 15) Hudson, N.J.: $6,007
16) Fairfield, Conn.: $5,962, 17) Middlesex, N.J.: $5,861, 18) Sussex, N.J.: $5,803
19) Mercer, N.J.: $5,734, 20) Warren, N.J.: $5,673
McCain Supports Bailing Out of Debate
Urges Comprehensive Debate Bailout Package.
Saying that "desperate times call for desperate measures," GOP presidential nominee John McCain announced today that he would personally bail out of Friday's scheduled presidential debate.
"As of today, I am officially bailing out of the debate," Sen. McCain told reporters in Washington today. "And I invite Sen. Obama to join me in this bailout effort."
Sen. McCain said he would be putting together what he called "a comprehensive debate bailout package," which could include bailing out of the other two scheduled debates as well.
When asked what motivated his dramatic bailout proposal, Sen. McCain said, "When I woke up this morning and I saw those terrible numbers, I knew that a bailout was necessary to keep those numbers from getting worse."
Mr. McCain refused to answer a reporter's question about whether he was talking about economic numbers or poll numbers, saying, "I am bailing out of any response to that question." ...
Comedian Andy Borowitz
| John McCain says he's suspending his campaign for President so he can grandstand from his desk in Washington, D.C. during this "historic" bailout of his friends and allies. Barack Obama, being a black man, does not have the same friends on Wall Street. He can't hardly even join their country clubs. In order to seem more Presidential McCain is also canceling the debate scheduled for tomorrow night apparently to avoid answering any economic questions.
Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin was in New York this week to meet her first foreign dignitaries. While she can see Russia from her house, which according to her makes her foreign policy experience essential, she has yet to actually speak to anyone from another country... unless you count the Lower 48 as another country. Many Alaskans, including the Palin family, do. Yesterday Congress passed the "Credit Cardholders' Bill of Rights", the first congressional legislation that targets consumers as opposed to the credit card industry. Just a few years ago MBNA (now out of business) wrote the new bankruptcy laws and other banks and financial institutions wrote the new credit card laws, once which allow companies to pretty much charge what they want on whatever terms they desire without telling you. It's nice to be in charge! The "Credit Cardholders' Bill of Rights" passed on a vote of 312-112 with one Democrat and 111 Republicans voting NO. The list of those who voted NO is here. US consumers hold nearly $1 TRILLION in credit card debt and in 2007 the industry earned $18.1 billion in profits based on fees alone. Kudos to John Hall for co-sponsoring, one of 155 to do so.
The Senate, however, was out to lunch and will probably not take up their side of the bill until all their campaign donations are in and counted for this reporting period.
On the other hand, Congressman Hall still refuses to cosponsor HR2060, the Internet Radio Equality Act which nullifies a ruling made by the Copyright Royalty Judges which, in effect, charges internet broadcasters the same rates as full blown commercial radio stations. The net effect has been the loss of thousands of small, independent radio stations since the summer of 2007 when the Copyright board issued the new rules. By the way, there are 150 co-sponsors of that bill so it's not like Congressman Hall would be alone. Write John Hall and tell him to co-sponsor this important legislation.
According to Kieran Lalor's streetside campaign signs, his sole claim to higher office seems to be that he's an IRAQ VET. Those two words have popped up on virtually all his signs but I find it rather ironic. Here's a guy running for Congress against the one Congressman who has worked hardest to clean up the Veteran's Administration, to institute programs to assist soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan (and Pakistan and Iran...) in ways that even Sue Kelly couldn't accomplish. It's even more ironic that Congressman Hall has had to work against the President and Republicans in Congress in order to achieve these victories. In other words, Mr. Lalor's signs should read, "IRAQ VET THANKS JOHN HALL" for Mr. Lalor surely benefits from Mr. Hall's work on his behalf.
Wait! It gets better. It's been a bad week for Mr. Lalor. Not only did he withdraw his "Energy Whatever" party line due to too many legal problems to count, but he's also been touting his endorsement by the Veterans of Foreign Wars. The only problem is, they didn't endorse him. He did receive an endorsement from the VFW PAC which, though the name sounds similar, is an entirely different organization and legally separate and apart. Didn't we hear something similar from Greg Ball about an NRA endorsement that never was?
It's like deja vu all over again.
Setting Mr. Lalor's comedy aside for just a moment, here's something that is sure to scare the bejeezus out of you:
The Town of Dover Planning Board has received an application from Wind Rose Dutchess, LLC (the “Applicant”) to construct a 230- to 260-unit residential membership club with recreational amenities including a golf course and clubhouse, equestrian center, riding and hiking trails, tennis courts, pool areas, spa, fitness area, helicopter landing pad, and a kid’s camp on 1,145 acres (the “Proposed Project”) in the Towns of Dover and Pawling, Dutchess County, NY. The Project Site comprises eight tax parcels. Two of these parcels, totaling 653.99 acres, are located in the Town of Dover. Six of the parcels, totaling 490.80 acres, are located in the Town of Pawling.
- Wind Rose - Draft Scoping Document
How's that for scale? The project, called Wind Rose, is proposed for a lightly trafficked rural road and abuts the Appalachian Trail. Can you imagine the impact, not just on America's most historic scenic hiking trail but on the Great Swamp? A draft scoping document is circulating. You can get more information from the Coalition for the Responsible Growth of Dover. If I were you, I'd write to Beth Coursen, Supervisor of Pawling and Ryan Courtein, Supervisor of Dover and tell them it's a stupid, stupid idea.
"I know, it's tough not to feel a little shaken, unnerved, openly disgusted. A $700 billion bailout ... by an already nearly bankrupt U.S. Treasury? Two trillion for a failed war in Iraq? Ten trillion in national debt and a $480 billion budget deficit (not counting the $700B for the bailout and it could be much more) and a record trade deficit, with all those numbers nearly double (if not far more) of what they were in 2001?" - Mark Moford
And now, the News:
- Legislature gives raises to 6 in 2009 budget, boosts library funding
- Southeast highway chief pleads guilty to misconduct
- Legislators urge sales-tax reserve fund
- 700 billion fluffy nothings
- Open Space Institute Releases New Report
- Tests ordered on Delaware River Basin (Before Gas Drilling Starts)
- Expand Mountain Biking Trails in the Bluestone Wild Forest
- Solar Panels Are Vanishing, Only to Reappear on the Internet
- A Building That Blooms and Grows, Balancing Nature and Civilization
- Abdication by Palin (Anchorage speaks)
- A Nobel Prize for Pete
Legislature gives raises to 6 in 2009 budget,
boosts library funding Susan Elan
The Journal News
CARMEL - The Putnam County Legislature last night restored funding to libraries and arts and historical organizations that County Executive Robert Bondi had cut in his $136.3 million proposed county budget for 2009.
The Legislature also put back the salary line for one of four jobs - an auto mechanic position - eliminated in the Highways and Facilities Department in 2009 while granting hefty salary increases to a half-dozen county employees.
"Since the county executive presented his budget several weeks ago, banks have gone out of business, the stock market has lost 1,000 points, the feds are planning a massive bailout (of Wall Street) and people are losing their jobs and homes," said Legislature Chairman Tony Hay, R-Southeast, who voted against every increase proposed at the Budget and Finance Committee meeting last night.
Read More
Southeast highway chief pleads guilty to misconduct Marcela Rojas
The Journal News
Southeast Highway Superintendent Mike Fila pleaded guilty to official misconduct, a misdemeanor, in Town Court this afternoon.
Fila, 38, who was brought into court in handcuffs, resigned from his $81,000-a-year, elected position under a plea agreement reached with the Putnam County District Attorney's Office. He declined to comment and directed questions to his lawyer Harry Kutner of Mineola, Long Island.
"It's an unfortunate episode for Mr. Fila," Kutner said. "He's a good person who didn't think through what he was going to do."
Town Justice Richard Vercollone sentenced him to a one-year conditional discharge that, along with the resignation, includes paying restitution to the town of up to $1,000. An exact figure will be determined by Fila's attorney and the D.A.'s Office within 30 days.
Read More
Legislators urge sales-tax reserve fund Susan Elan
The Journal News
CARMEL - Most Putnam County legislators want to establish a new reserve fund in which to deposit excess sales-tax revenue to be used solely to reduce county property taxes.
The tax-stabilization reserve fund would be applied to the county's 2010 budget and would ensure that sales tax dollars benefit property owners directly instead of being used to initiate new county programs, said Putnam Legislator Dan Birmingham, R-Brewster, who proposed the fund.
Plan opponent and Legislature Chairman Tony Hay, R-Southeast, said any surplus the county received would be needed to make up the shortfall in state funding that Putnam can expect as Wall Street unravels.
Even before the Wall Street debacle, state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli warned in mid-July that the increasing reliance by counties on sales taxes during the past decade has left them more vulnerable to an economic downturn.
For the first eight months of the year, Putnam is ahead $5.2 million in sales-tax receipts versus the same period last year, said Birmingham, who wants $1 million in sales tax to go into the new fund in 2009.
Read More
700 billion fluffy nothings Staggering bailouts? Body counts? Global warming stats? They're just numbers, silly
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Relax, people, it's just a number.
It's just a bunch of zeroes. It's merely 700,000,000,000, and if you look closely and blur your eyes just right and then hit yourself in the face with a brick, you'll soon see that each and every one of those cute little circles is filled with goodness and candy and the sweet sighs of puppies and pie.
Really, what could such a ginormous number possibly mean to everyday hard-workin' plebes like you and me? What does all that wild speculation about imminent recessions and the total collapse of the U.S. economy and "the end of Wall Street" actually mean for us all on a day-to-day basis? In a word, nothing. In five more: happy safe terrorist-free nothing. After all, "the fundamentals of our economy are sound." And besides, we're all just "a nation of whiners." There now. Better?
Don't you already know? If eight miserable years of Bush have taught us anything, it's that numbers like these don't actually mean anything, or have any real effect or significance, be they astronomical bailouts, soldier body counts, the costs of a lost war, evidence of global warming, insane oil profits, you name it.
Read More
OSI Releases a New Report Forestland For Sale:Challenges and Opportunities for Conservation over the Next 10 Years
New York, NY - September 17, 2008 - The Connecticut Lakes Headwaters Forest, a 146,000-acre parcel in northern New Hampshire that makes up 4 percent of the state and was purchased by a private investor in 2002, is up for sale again.
A forestland sale this size would normally be cause for great concern within the conservation community. This time, however, it isn’t, as its owner has placed a strong conservation easement on the forest, preventing future development and requiring that its buyer manage it in an environmentally sensitive manner.
Read More
Tests ordered on Delaware River Basin By HILARY BENTMAN
Bucks County Courier Times
Officials will spend $25,000 to have parts of the Delaware River Basin tested before gas drilling begins in Upper Bucks, a move they say is needed to provide comparison data should drilling contaminate the waterways.
The Lower Delaware River Wild and Scenic Management Committee, a group of governmental representatives from Pennsylvania and New Jersey, voted Monday to conduct random samplings of streams, creeks and aquifers around the river.
Officials call the testing a protective measure. If the waterways were to become contaminated, they argue, this baseline, pre-drilling data could be used to make the case that drilling was the cause.
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Expand Mountain Biking Trails in the Bluestone Wild Forest Open Space Institute and New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC)
New York, NY - September 1, 2008 - Combining land conservation, recreational and economic development goals for the Catskills, the Open Space Institute (OSI) and New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) announced recently the acquisition of nearly 20 acres of prime recreation land at the southeastern gateway to the 300,000-acre Catskill Forest Preserve.
The 19.52-acre Frazer property was purchased by the Open Space Conservancy, OSI’s land acquisition affiliate, for $146,920. It will be conveyed to DEC and managed as part of the Catskill Forest Preserve. Funding for this phase of the acquisition came from the Lila Acheson and DeWitt Wallace Endowment, a permanent fund that was transferred to the Open Space Conservancy in 2001. State acquisition will be funded by the Environmental Protection Fund.
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Solar Panels Are Vanishing, Only to Reappear on the Internet By KATE GALBRAITH
DESERT HOT SPRINGS, Calif. — Solar power, with its promise of emissions-free renewable energy, boasts a growing number of fans. Some of them, it turns out, are thieves.
Just ask Glenda Hoffman, whose fury has not abated since 16 solar panels vanished from her roof in this sun-baked town in three separate burglaries in May, sometimes as she slept. She is ready if the criminals turn up again.
“I have a shotgun right next to the bed and a .22 under my pillow,” Ms. Hoffman said.
Police departments in California — the biggest market for solar power, with more than 33,000 installations — are seeing a rash of such burglaries, though nobody compiles overall statistics.
Investigators do not believe the thieves are acting out of concern for their carbon footprints. Rather, authorities assume that many panels make their way to unwitting homeowners, sometimes via the Internet.
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A Building That Blooms and Grows,
Balancing Nature and Civilization By NICOLAI OUROUSSOFF
SAN FRANCISCO — Not all architects embrace the idea of evolution. Some, fixated on the 20th-century notion of the avant-garde, view their work as a divine revelation, as if history began with them. Others pine for the Middle Ages.
But if you want reaffirmation that human history is an upward spiral rather than a descent into darkness, head to the new California Academy of Sciences, in Golden Gate Park, which opens on Saturday. Designed by the Italian architect Renzo Piano on the site of the academy’s demolished home, the building has a steel frame that rests amid the verdant flora like a delicate piece of fine embroidery. Capped by a stupendous floating green roof of undulating mounds of plants, it embodies the academy’s philosophy that humanity is only one part of an endlessly complex universal system.
This building’s greatness as architecture, however, is rooted in a cultural history that stretches back through Modernism to Classical Greece. It is a comforting reminder of the civilizing function of great art in a barbaric age.
The academy building is the last in a series of ambitious projects to be conceived in and around the park’s Music Concourse since the devastating 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. Herzog & de Meuron’s mesmerizing de Young Museum, enclosed in perforated copper, opened three years ago. Scaffolding is to come down at the concourse’s neo-Classical band shell this week after a loving restoration.
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Abdication by Palin  When did the McCain campaign take over the governor's office?
Gov. Sarah Palin has surrendered important gubernatorial duties to the Republican presidential campaign. McCain staff are handling public and press questions about actions she has taken as governor. The governor who said, "Hold me accountable," is hiding behind the hired guns of the McCain campaign to avoid accountability.
Is it too much to ask that Alaska's governor speak for herself, directly to Alaskans, about her actions as Alaska's governor?
A press conference Thursday showed how skewed Alaska's relationship with its own governor has become.
McCain-Palin campaign spokesman Ed O'Callaghan announced that Todd Palin will not comply with a subpoena to testify about his role in Troopergate, the Legislature's investigation into whether Palin abused her power in forcing out former public safety commissioner Walt Monegan.
O'Callaghan also announced that Alaska's governor is "unlikely" to cooperate with the investigation by the Alaska Legislature about questionable conduct by Alaska's chief executive.
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A Nobel Prize for Pete Thanks for your help in the grassroots effort to get the Nobel Peace Prize for Pete Seeger. This is our first newsletter. As we promised, we have not bothered you with emails or given your name to other causes, no matter how worthy. So far news has spread by word of mouth and emails among friends and between organizations. Please check out our new web site http://www.nobelprize4pete.org and use the resources, pictures, sponsors and stories to help promote this campaign. You can also sign the petition by clicking on the "Sign the Petition" link. Who would have thought when I started this petition just about one year ago that it would have been so heartily supported?
By this time you probably want to hear news of the progress of this campaign. The bad news is that our petition was off line due to some sort of "technical difficulties" for almost a month, and I'm sure we lost some signers and confused many people. The good news is that it is up again and has nearly twenty thousand (20,000) signatures!
Now we need your help. Our most urgent goal is to get Pete nominated before February 2009, the Nobel committee's deadline. Do you know anyone who works at an organization that might be officially able to nominate Pete? In order to do this, we urgently need help finding a person or agency that will pledge to nominate him. The American Friends Service Committee was interested but gave us no assurance that they would present his name. Qualified nominators include some elected representatives, university professors, and previous Nobel Peace Prizewinners. Please help us find a nominator! Spreading the word is critical.
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