August 25, 2007

Plans, plans, plans, and windmills

Joanie Mahoney posted her economic plan. To sum up, it lists 91 agencies in CNY that work with economic development issues. She wants to appoint a "point person" that would make sure the groups all work together. Basically she wants to make it so a small business owner can call in and get referred to all the appropriate agencies. Dale claims plagiarism. Bill Magnarelli says this is good but wants to do it through the existing county Economic Development Office. Ed Ryan's comments are mysteriously absent from the post-standard article. My take? As someone who often refers people to services in my job, I think the one thing that's often missing is an office that truly understands what everyone does and the many services that are available. I'm sure there are many helpful services I'm missing, so I'm quite sure most small business owners aren't aware of all 91 agencies, or what they all do, so this sounds like a good idea. And no I don't think she stole it from Dale. As for Bill, other than the words economic development office I'm not sure of the difference on this issue, but I'm for the plan so that's not really bad.

Meanwhile Ed Ryan wants us to go green. He wants to switch all county vehicles to biodiesel and encourage other local governments to do the same and enjoy the tax breaks. He also proposed working with ESF to reduce energy consumption and developing an environmental business council. Responses? Basically everyone agrees that we should take the lead in environmental businesses. Bill touted his own sizable list of accomplishments in this field. Joanie, like Ed, also mentioned working with ESF and taking the lead, but kind of simply stated her leadership would be better without too many specifics mentioned. Dale wants us to put "architectural" windmills on county buildings. Really. Alright, he said some more, in fact he beat Ryan's 6 point plan with his own 13 point plan, in his continual race to have the most number of points, but one of the things that was mentioned was the windmills. I work in a county building, and really have no desire to see windmills all over it. I'm betting companies and people considering moving to the area might have disagreements with this too.

August 15, 2007

Well, yeah, I'm behind in blogs

So it took some finagling of schedules, but I finally managed to meet with Deb Moynihan. Two days ago in fact. Yeah, read the title of the post. But it was a good meeting. We had an interesting conversation about the assigned council program, a topic which I deal with daily, as I work with the courts. I was uncertain on this issue before, as I've had the opportunity to see that there are some lawyers out there who take those assigned cases and defend the heck out of them, but sadly mostly what I see are lawyers that don't return phone calls. On the other hand, a public defenders office is typically expensive and overworked and I'm not sure if it solves any problems.

Deb pointed out that in most public defenders' offices, anyone any good either leaves for more money, or tries to get promoted, in which case they don't end up handling the large number of cases. Also, she cited statistics in Maryland, a state she viewed as similar to NY due to it also having one large city with several smaller cities around it. There they found that places with a public defender typically had longer sentences for defendants. She started college as a math major folks. I have no doubt she'll study the issues and look particularly at the numbers before making decisions.

So anyway, she convinced me, although I was leaning slightly in that direction anyway, even though there are a few assigned council I'd like to slap around (metaphorically of course). And she said if I had any questions I could email her. Which got me thinking. What if I emailed her opponent as well. And other candidates and their opponents. We could have an email debate. Not a real debate where the candidates actually get to ask questions of each other and have true back and forth, but that kind of thing hasn't really been done since prehistoric times, when it would often end with one side clubbing the other unconscious. It would make this blog a forum. Now if I could just get some decent time online. I'm out of town this weekend, maybe after that.

August 6, 2007

Words of wisdom are found everywhere...sorta

Written on the men's room stall at Barnes and Nobles: "Kucinich/Gravel '08." I don't know which is stranger, that someone who would write on a bathroom stall pays enough attention to things to know why this would form such an unlikely campaign duo, or the fact that I'm glad to see this person paying some attention.

More interesting stuff out of our new Gov lately. I voted for the man, but sometimes he's just a pure politician to be sure. First, the strange one, while talking about about the recent trooper investigation into Bruno for which he's taking flak, he commented that mixing politics and law enforcement is like mixing politics and religion or some such. This only makes any sense if he means that in both you're not supposed to do it but everyone does it anyway. As a criminal justice major and professional, I'd say all law enforcement groups are political, and I'd ask if the governor had ever worked in such a field except of course that he was attorney general just last year. Also, I didn't like that his "apology" started, "we made mistakes." Maybe "we" did, but do what's right and say "I" made a mistake.

The second issue comes from today's post-standard. They had a ask the governor feature, and the first question started off asking when he was going to address the issue of the death penalty for cop killers (since NY's death penalty law needs a fixing, being as it was ruled unconstitutional). The reader then went on to state the governor opposed the death penalty, and Mr Spitzer responded by saying that he wanted to correct that, that in certain cases such as terrorists acts and cop killings, he was for it. Only he never answered the question in the first sentence, just corrected the man and stated he was for cops getting all the protection they need or something. I may have to email the governor and ask for a further response. Or get someone else to do so and give me the response..., hmmm.

August 3, 2007

posts to return soon

Had lasik done. Typing this without glasses, yay!