The Hayseeds blog, No. 283 for the week starting November 15, 2008.
November 2, 2008
Hayseeds No. 282
November 15, 2008
Hayseeds No. 283
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Hayseeds No. 283
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They have healthy food choices and healthy people in this vibrant city on Lake Champlain.
What's the healthiest city in America? It appears to be Burlington, Vt.
Vermont's largest city is tops among U.S. metropolitan areas by having the largest proportion of people - 92 percent - who say they are in good or great health.
It's also among the best in exercise and among the lowest in obesity, diabetes and other measures of ill health, according to a recent report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Great.
The nasty man may be considering a run for governor against David Paterson in 2010.
Rudy Giuliani said Sunday he will consider running for governor of New York and isn't ruling out a second attempt at the U.S. presidency.
A one-time presidential front-runner and former mayor of New York City, Giuliani dropped out of the race for Republican nominee in January after losing the primary in Florida, where he had poured the bulk of his campaign resources."No one knows whether you'll do something again until you come to the point of: 'Is it possible to do it again? Would you have a chance of winning?'" he said of a second White House bid following a speech in Dubai. "I mean those are just things you can't evaluate right now."
It would be interesting to see if he did decide to run, especially as it seems like right now Governor Paterson isn't making many friends in Albany.
It's getting cheaper to live at least if you have a job.
The cost of living in the U.S. probably fell in October by the most in almost sixty years, while manufacturing and homebuilding sank deeper into a recession, economists said before reports this week.
Consumer prices probably dropped 0.8 percent last month, the most since 1949, according to the median estimate in a Bloomberg News survey. Builders broke ground on the fewest houses in at least a half century and factory output weakened further, other reports may show.
It's probably not good news for the economy though, but it's great for consumers like you and I.
So if your interested in seeing President Barack Obama be sworn in, you can try to get in to the raffle of the 350 tickets.
The Times Union looks at the likely replacement for Hillary should she take a cabinet level post in the Obama administration.
This is a good argument made in the New York Daily News yesterday.
The financial crisis now enters a dark, perilous phase, when a wrong step by federal officials could turn a bad situation into a complete catastrophe. Sadly, that is just what seems to be happening.
At statehouses all across America, governors and legislatures are preparing to begin slashing services and laying off workers - exactly the opposite of what they ought to be doing at the start of a major recession.
New York City is the epicenter of the trend. Job losses are mounting and both Mayor Bloomberg and Gov. Paterson are preparing deep cuts.
That will hurt real people - your friends, your neighbors, the people who ride the subway with you every day.
Who could disagree with that? The feds need to step in and stop the bleeding in the economy.
That's what Newsday is reporting.
The Times Union looks at the State Senate power fight of 1965, and who is likely to come out ahead, and all of the rules in play.
Has a new sense and desire for liberalism over taken our country? It's quite possible, although I think the new liberalism will be much like the liberalism of the past—one that avoids social issues as much as possible, with many socially conservative politicians, who on the side stick in liberal judges that over turn overly restrictive laws on gays, and abortion.
Things are proceeding slowly on budget cuts.
Bad news for progress in Iraq when you see that the government has fired their anti-corruption crusaders, who have been successful in finding billions in corrupt practices.
He will not appoint himself, but would rather govern until he runs for office in 2010.
CapCon says it's kind of like negotiations to end the Vietnam war. I am not surprised nothing really happened today.
That’s what if feels like at the Capitol this morning, as Gov. Paterson is preparing for a 12:30 leaders meeting to try and get his budget cuts through.
Today’s meeting was hastily arranged and announced last night after Republican Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos said he would let the governor’s proposal to cut $2 billion from this year’s budget come to the floor but that he would vote it down.
The Assembly as of last night hadn’t even decided if they would vote at all.
“We’re going to have a meeting about whether we are going to have a negotiation,” Paterson just said during an interview on Talk-1300 radio.
So they will be back in January to make amends. At least they didn't cut any of the much needed programs that our state provides.
Big time drug bust on the Adirondack Northway. I guess it's good that we are getting potentially dangerous drivers off the road, hauling a compound that would otherwise do much damage to society.
So it would seem. I am not surprised, and sometimes it's just better to bury the ax, and just make it clear that sword could cut him down quickly if he chooses to act out under a Obama administration.
It appears that she is quite conflicted on whether or not she should take the position. It's a big give up for her to give up the Senator position in New York State, which she is guaranteed to have until 2012.
He says that until a rational policy for parking tickets is come up, that everybody will have to plead their case in front of the city clerk. He promptly then disappeared from public eye and made no comment.
Nobody could agree on anything, reports the AP, and everybody just went home after the leaders meeting ended. Hey, it's nice to go for a drive to Albany on state expense and not have to do any work.
Apparently when these no-fine tickets where issued, no data was transmitted to the city's computers on who or how many tickets where issued.
That's how they are describing yesterday's special session.
It looks like Alaska's Senate seat is going democratic for the first time in 30 years.
Suddenly it becomes affordable to live once again with energy prices and gas prices dropping so fast and so far.
The Consumer Price Index, a key measure of how much Americans spend on groceries, clothing, entertainment and other goods and services, fell by 1 percent in October compared with prices in the previous month, the Labor Department reported Wednesday morning. It was the steepest single-month drop in the 61-year history of the pricing survey.
Economists say this is really bad, but it sure makes all the employed people in the world very happy as long as they still have jobs.
Of course it's going to lose clout without it's president coming from that state. This story is great.
When President George W. Bush turns the Oval Office over to Barack Obama, he might as well dump the Lone Star of Texas into the bed of his pickup and haul it off with him.
The 28th state has loomed large over Washington for much of the past century — think the president, his father, Lyndon Johnson, Sam Rayburn, John Tower, Dick Armey and Tom DeLay.
But at noon on Jan. 20, Texas becomes — please don’t throw things — just another state.
I'm sure Texas will once have it's day in the lime light. It's a big state, and it's an important one, being the second most populous state in the nation and one of the biggest in size.
Is it time to oust Dingell from Congress? The Politico Arena looks at that question. It's a fascinating discussion.
The closing Wyeth plant will lay off 118 people but those people are promised some hope by the new owner of the plant, Arkimax which promises to re-hire many of them. That's good as there is little alternative for jobs in the region.
He's not happy that they are unwilling to bail out the states in this time of downturn.
I absolutely despise politicians who refuse to concede once they've clearly lost their race. But so it goes.
They suggest our next US Senator to replace Hillary should come from Upstate New York.
The levels of education debt locally is truly shocking.
A recent report by The Project on Student Debt found that nearly three of five members of the class of 2007 left school with debt. The average debt graduates carried that year was $20,098, a 6 percent increase over the previous year.
New York, where many attend private schools, ranks 16th among states in the amount of debt students carry upon graduation: $21,524. Sixty-three percent of students graduate with debt.
UAlbany students left school with an average debt burden of $13,842 in 2007. That compares with $12,700 at Siena College, $16,078 at Skidmore, $21,400 at Union College, and $24,920 at the College of Saint Rose.
Locally, RPI students appear to graduate with the largest average debt, $27,125.
I don't understand how people could agree to take on such debt or be able to pay it off. I'm not sure if education is really worth so much money.
She heard her last case before turning 70 years old, the required age of retirement for court of appeals justices to retire, to ensure that we have sharp people on the court. It's kind of sad, as she has been such an important leader in state politics go into retirement
I will remember when she spoke to my intern class so articulately. For everybody else, she will be remember for her mostly liberal viewpoints, and for begging the legislature for more money and threatening to sue them for more money.
The stock market continues to drop in continuing economic worries. It's a scary time we are all living in.
It might be getting harder to get college loans, and students might find themselves more in debt then ever before, but that doesn't stop the state from balancing the budget on the backs of college students.
Which means it will be longer before college students can afford houses, to say nothing of that product whose construction that employees 11,000 New Yorkers, the automobile industry.
The Times Union takes a look and concludes that it won't be easy for sure.
Not only are a lot of people losing their homes, but municipalities are finding it harder to fund services in our state.
More than 50,000 homeowners in New York face foreclosure this year, particularly in the Mid-Hudson Valley and western New York.
The rise in foreclosures due to the housing bust is also ominous for the finances of local governments, who rely on property taxes for 44 percent of their revenue, state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli warned.
He said property taxes could rise if the housing crisis accelerates in New York and causes home values to continue to fall.
"Property taxes are the foundation for local tax revenues, but that foundation is weakening," DiNapoli said.
Hopefully the bleeding will stop soon, before it gets much, much worst. Death of the auto industry could be just that straw that breaks the camel's back.
