May 24, 2008

Well, it's cold up there anyway...

Congressman Jim Walsh has reversed his position and now favors drilling in the Artic Wildlife Refuge. Dale Sweetland and David Gay agree with his new decision. Dan Maffei is against. With apologies to Mr. Gay, I'm most definitely siding with Dan on this one. First of all I'm not sure I'd in anyway agree that having wildlife refuges would be against the bill of rights. Seems to me wildlife refuges have been a good idea. But basically I've yet to see how drilling in pristine wilderness is going to help with more than a few pennies at the pump. As our own gas tax cap showed, there's never a guarantee of any savings when it comes to dealing with oil companies. Not to mention that whatever amount of oil we get out of there is going to be like nothing compared to the amount we depend on every day from the Middle East. If we could throw some sort of guarantee in there, I might consider it but still feel dirty afterwards. And the destruction of our environment will create all kinds of havoc in the long run.

If we really want to do something about the gas price, lets get the corn the hell out of there. Corn-based ethanol doesn't work people, because it produces like almost no energy. It works great in Brazil because they use sugar cane and can actually run their country entirely on cane-based ethanol, but all the corn is doing is putting a high demand on corn, thus making our gas cost even more.

May 19, 2008

Reading the newspaper so you don't have to

Sunday, Sunday... The Post-standard had a few interesting news items. A non-profit group called Home HeadQuarters is buying up a lot of land around Blodgett School. The theory is that they'll make improvements and try to revamp the neighborhood. The potential problem is they've spent so much of their money on property that they can't revamp all the houses right now. Apparently they look to look for more money and also market the houses as is or with some improvements. Let's hope it works, cause at least 2.25 mill came from Rep. James Walsh's Syracuse Neighborhood Initiative.

And then from the opinion page. The paper is angry at judges for letting the lack of a pay raise interfere with their duties. Some of the judges are refusing to hear cases involving law firms that involve state legislators, citing conflict of interest since there is now a suit involving judge's pay. So the paper wants judges to get back to work and I agree with that. But the paper also declares that "Judges certainly deserve a raise," and here is where I will piss off my lawyer friends. The argument used is that the sharpest legal minds will leave because they can make so much more in private practice. This is roughly akin to saying we should start paying college basketball players because they can make so more in the pros. The fact that some lawyers make insane amounts of money is not the taxpayers' fault. Well, it probably is the fault of some of the taxpayers, but not all of them.

Additionally, the paper complains that Democrats haven't come up with a candidate to run against Defrancisco or Barclay, and again I agree with the first part. Then it says this is not to disparage the great works of either. Ok, he's got some things to work on, but I'll grant you DeFran, but Barclay? Really?

Finally, school board elections. Once again, budgets are increasing by millions, and I don't know about your district, but in Bville not one candidate said anything to the Post-Standard about trying to keep this in check. At the very least they should look at administration costs, because I know Baker High has like 82 vice principles (this is called hyperbole, do not send emails correcting me). Everyone complains about property taxes, so I urge you to start doing something more than complaining. Write to your school board urging them to keep up education while still keeping taxes in check, it can be done! And stop voting in every incumbent and voting yes on every budget without seeing what's up first.

May 6, 2008

I suppose I should post...

Forgive me, I've been on vacation.

First of all, the sewage plant in Armory Square is completely nixed, and thank goodness.

Venturing to the things to be less thankful for, except maybe for humor value, the Post-standard reports that our man Dale is "on a roll." Assemblyman Bob Oaks withdrew from the race for Walsh's congressional seat. And Walsh endorsed Sweetland, which of course makes me like him even less. Walsh then asked David Gay and Mark-Paul Serafin to drop out, and they told him to suck it (I may be paraphrasing). David Gay, by the way, seems to have posted a response to this site. That, or someone posing as him. Either way, I'm happy. Dave, if you'd like to do a short post summing up your reasons for running, so that my reader(s) may know a thing or two about you, that would be alright. As for Sweetland, well, a Miss Carrie James, speaking for the Maffei campaign, seems to have summed it up nicely, calling Sweetland "a status quo politition (who) sat idly by and watched 20000 Central New Yorkers leave the region." Plus he really doesn't know how to campaign. So naturally he should run for Congress.

In an effort to get more readers, I did contact syracuse.com to try to get in their upstate blogs list. I was told they'd try and get me up in a week or so. This was more than a week ago.