Stay classy, New York!

Here is a random example of why I never:

1) Go to a sporting event in metro NYC

2) Get out of my car in New Jersey

3) Set foot on Canada Street in the Village of Lake George during the summer

Stay classy, New York!

Craigslist post: real or fake?

Here's a current post on the Albany Craigslist site. Funny? Sad? Both?

==========================
Unmotivated 20-something seeking Personal Assistant/life coach

I'm looking for someone who will help me manage my meager finances, force me to get up and take walks, and basically just accompany me everywhere to ensure that I stay productive and on top of things; give me good, solid advice and keep me out of trouble. I'm not a criminal or anything, I just get easily distracted and always come up with horrible ideas that inevitably leave me broke and/or depressed. I don't have much money but I'll buy you food, coffee and cigarettes and give you $50/week in spending money. Sometimes my dad sends checks, when he does we can split the money. Hours are basically around the clock, you can sleep on the couch.

Applicants should be energetic, patient, creative and motivated with the ability to manage ~$300/week. The only bills i have are rent and my cell, you should keep my payments current by constantly reminding me of the due dates and making sure i don't blow bill money on pot. Applicants should also be able to think of interesting budgets and ways for me to save.

Hopefully we can become friends. I'm looking for a male because it would e too easy to ignore a girl trying to wake me up, but honestly anyone can apply.

Just write to me with your qualifications, a current resume and any questions you might have

This is a serious listing! Only serious applicants please!

==========================


Time for a vote, Nano-heads.

Real or fake??

Recyling food and the Liability myth

Dear EarthTalk: I work at a fast food place and I am appalled by the amount of unpurchased food we throw away. The boss says we can’t give it away for legal reasons. Where can I turn for help on this, so the food could instead go to people in need? (Ryan Jones)

Many restaurants, fast food or otherwise, are hesitant to donate unused food due to concerns about liability if people get sick after eating it—especially because once any such food is out of the restaurant’s hands, who knows how long it might be before it is served again. But whether these restaurants know it or not, they cannot be held liable for food donated to organizations, and sometimes all it might take to change company policy would be a little advocacy from concerned employees.

A 1995 survey found that over 80 percent of food businesses in the U.S. did not donate excess food due to liability concerns. In response, Congress passed the Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Act, which releases restaurants and other food organizations from liability associated with the donation of food waste to nonprofits assisting individuals in need. The Act protects donors in all 50 states from civil and criminal liability for good faith donations of “apparently wholesome food”—defined as meeting “all quality and labeling standards imposed by Federal, State and local laws and regulations even though the food may not be readily marketable due to appearance, age, freshness, grade, size, surplus or other condition.”

While homeless shelters, elder care organizations and boys and girls clubs are frequent beneficiaries of food donations, the most common recipients are food banks and food rescue programs. Food banks, according to California’s CalRecycle website, “collect food from a variety of sources, save the food in a warehouse, then distribute it to hungry families and individuals through local human service agencies.” They usually collect less perishable items like canned goods, which can be stored and used any time. In contrast, food rescue programs typically trade in perishable and prepared foods, distributing it to agencies that feed hungry people, usually later that same day. Mama’s Health, a leading health education website, maintains an extensive free database of food banks and food rescue programs state-by-state.

Unused or even partially eaten food waste can also be utilized even if it’s not edible by human standards. The U.S. Department of Agriculture approves of food businesses giving or selling food waste to local farmers for use in composting or as animal feed. If such food contains or has come into contact with meat, it should be boiled for 30 minutes to reduce the risk of bacterial infections in the animals that eat it. Many states have complementary laws on the books regulating the donation of food waste at the local level.

Many cities and town are now expanding curbside pickup programs to include kitchen scraps and yard waste and then diverting the food waste into profitable compost. Still, some 6.7 percent of the solid waste going into landfills consists of food discards, reports the North Carolina Division of Pollution Prevention and Environmental Assistance. Diverting food waste to feed hungry people or for animal feed or compost is a winning scenario for all concerned parties as it not only provides relief to overburdened landfills but also helps meet social welfare, agricultural and environmental needs. Also, those restaurants, grocery stores and other businesses that donate food will likely reap the additional reward of saving money on their actual waste removal bill as their trash bins and dumpsters won’t be filling up quite so fast.


SEND YOUR ENVIRONMENTAL QUESTIONS TO: EarthTalk®, c/o E – The Environmental Magazine, P.O. Box 5098, Westport, CT 06881; earthtalk@emagazine.com. E is a nonprofit publication. Subscribe: www.emagazine.com/subscribe; Request a Free Trial Issue: www.emagazine.com/trial.

Reprinted with permission
Image courtest of "Brand X Pictures."

Mercy, mercy me

This song --- recognized as the musical Call to Reason for the Green movement -- came to mind as I was driving home after a tour of a toxic brownfield site today. Any given industrial neighborhood in the Far East today could act as the backdrop for the video.

Two other things hit me:

1. Wouldn't it be nice if old school soul like this could somehow knock hip hop and rap (two other toxic poisons) off the map?

2. To think, the composer and performer of this masterpiece was killed at a young age by a handgun -- fired by his father.

Marvin Gaye, taking us into the weekend...

Post-election riffs and raffs

Palin's cooked; the GOP breathes a sigh .... Fact: Big Media = the GOP's P/R Dep't .... Upcoming game plans for the two parties .... Hint: it ain't gonna be pretty (or smell nice) .... Statewide and local election briefs



General

If we lived in rational times, the US would be experiencing a left-wing communist insurgency. After all, the logical reaction to a crippled economy caused by 30 years of conservative political and economic rule should be a counter-pull from the opposite side of the spectrum, right?.

But here we are in just such a spot in 2010, but instead of Marx-quoting leftists ruling the airwaves and soap boxes, we're bombarded with the bombastic shouts of the New American Right, a shitshow mashup of good ole boys, libertarians-on-acid, amateur economists and semi-literate cartoon characters parading around as the intellectual descendants of the Founding Brothers. As if that isn't bizarre enough; there are actually people out there that buy into it. The unfortunate part is that they vote.

Such an observation certainly isn't meant as a call for communism, mind you; after all, there aren't a whole lot of Best Practice case studies out there which would support such a position, are there? But then again, such black-white / red-blue / fascism-communism dichotomies are the current standard for debate, with the more legitimate shades of gray perspective being WAY too much to comprehend for today's nano sized attention span. Hence an analysis of a China, with its legacy of central decision-making still the status quo, running wild in the global marketplace is one that can't possibly gain traction with an audience that approaches politics in the same way it does Sunday's football game: “We're wearing green, getting 3 points and are gonna kick your ass!”

Another way to look at it is this: re-read my first paragraph. An innocent enough observation on political dynamics, it would seem. Now jump into the future and pretend I was running for high political office. There's no doubt in my mind that this very post would one day become the center of attention, as my opponent's attack team would feel like they struck gold with a nugget that has them screaming: “look, this guy says that communism is the rational alternative for America!” The right wing media would be all over me, the nonsense would spew and the dumbing-down of the nation continues. To think, 18 out of the world's top 20 universities are located between our shores, yet the most popular source of political information is Fox News.

Which lead us to the greatest modern day American myth: that of the existence of a 'liberal' (or Democratic leaning) media. I've dragged enough times on that very subject in this column to refrain from feeling a need to repeat it here, but I will repeat a single observation that I simultaneously admire (for its execution) and which scares the hell out of me (because of its consequences). It is this: the conservative / right wing voice not only dominates the traditional broadcast news mediums (TV; radio, newspapers), but at the same time it has succeeded in convincing most Americans that just the opposite is the reality. Again: scary, just plain scary.



National Elections

One under-reported (see the previous point) aspect of last week's elections is the fact that the so-called Tea Party got beat up pretty good in the key US Senate elections. Where many thought that body was up for grabs, the result is that it is still in Democratic hands. This tells us that people vote differently on local elections (which includes one's local House rep) than they do for statewide and national elections. This can act as a glimmer of hope for Obama going into 2012.

Despite the fact that almost all of the nuttiest of the wingnuts (the Witch, Sharon Angle, Wilson, etc) were defeated, the single most dangerous, Rand Paul, did make it into the Senate. In addition, the new cast of incoming Congressional victors includes a fair amount of out-there types.

The rubber now hits the road for these people, in that their lofty ambitions of historic possibilities will now give way to the real world of constitutional facts and the complexities of rule making. In other words, most will soon realize they have gotten themselves into something way over their head, and will crawl into the faceless trenches of constituent service. Even Mr Paul is already starting Act One of his “ya know, I was really kidding about lot of what I said,” today pledging to bring home the bacon (via those previously dissed earmarks) to his Kentucky.



2012

The national Republican Party is in a pickle – but they know it – and will bear watching as the most important long-form story of the next two years. Last Tuesday did give them the fortunate and unexpected gift of essentially pushing Sarah Palin off the map as being a serious contender for the party's presidential nomination, and for that they should (and likely are) very thankful. She will now fall into a comfortable role, along with many of the new wingnuts like Paul, of keeping that base in GOTV (Get Out The Vote) mode come November '12. For that service, she will make many trips to the bank at her going rate of $50K per stop.

But what of the rest of the GOP? Who will emerge as the front runner for the nod to take on the sitting president and how will he (yes, I seems to be just he's at this point) get there? The tactic is easy to predict: go right during the primaries, and go back to the center after one gets the nomination.

This won't be pretty, mind you. Just yesterday, we saw Texas Gov Rick Perry popping a gasket with John Stewart, rambling on about how the dawn of the Progressive Era in the early 1900's basically doomed this nation into a permanent period of stagnation and incompetence.

Apparently, Mr Perry is not aware of the fact that such a movement was championed by a member of his own party (Teddy R) and that in the interim this nation a) won two World Wars; b) defeated both European fascism and Soviet communism; c) became the model for world democracy and free markets; among countless other accomplishments. But those are mere details. Now, if Perry is talking like this, what do you think we're in for when Huckabee and Gingrich get warmed up?

The Democrats are in less of a pickle, but are more in need of a legitimate plan. Their biggest shortcoming is painfully obvious: an inability to get it message and narrative across to John Q Public. That needs to get fixed, pronto. Indeed, that will not be easy: we know that the GOP's major financial backers now own the mass media microphones and plan on continuing their successful disinformation propaganda campaign on their behalf into the future. A countering message can be done, but it must start early.

Early predictions? Obama has to be considered the morning line favorite, believe or or not. Recent history tell us that a new president's first Congressional election results don't predict the big race two years later – see Reagan and Clinton's ass-whipping followed by easy victories of their own. Plus, there is an outside chance that the Republicans go into civil war, and the Tea Party puts up its own candidate in 2101. That would siphon 5-10% of the vote from the GOP and clinch it for Obama. Don't rule that possibility out.

There are some other interesting under-the-radar dynamic at play as well. First is the (again) unreported observation that two Republican big tent constituencies have suddenly lost influence within the party. First up are the neocons of the Dubya, Cheney and Rove regime. Three years ago, they ruled the globe, today they can't even get a seat at the little kids' table. Second is the decline of the religious right. Granted, they are still there spitting their vitriol, but one can't help but notice that many of the newly empowered libertarian types don't even bother paying lip service to the born again crowd. So ½ of both GW Bush's and Ronald bases are now feeling like they are on the outside looking in.

But Obama couldn't possibly tap into this ostracism for his won political benefit, could he? Well keep in mind that the original neocon (before the more vicious Bush variety arose) was a guy named David P Moynihan, a Nixon administration wonk who fled the party (for the Dems) when Dutch Reagan hit the scene, talking scary talk. Politics can make strange bedfellows, so don't rule it out.

As for the religious bloc, there is little prospect for the hard core right segment jumping ship any decade soon. But, that group is not the only of-faith variety out there, even within the Christian community. Many of the nation's soup kitchens, shelters and community good organizations are manned by these God-fearing individuals, and the prospect of axe-cutting conservatives eying their own individual aid programs can not be a comforting thought. Yes, the moderate Christian vote might be up for grabs.

Barring an economic calamity, there is also one single tactical move that Obama can make that will almost certainly clinch the deal for his reelection. It will only require his stepping up to a mic in the Oval office and saying these seven words: “Hillary Clinton will be my vice president.” Check? Check mate. Sorry, Joe. But he'd make a decent Sec of State, anyways!



Local Elections

No surprises in the statewide races, given the Crazy Carl Paladino factor. Our own Nanoburgh? Poll had Wilson gaining like Zenyatta in the Comptroller's race, and we think he would have taken it if it were a week later.

Like Cuomo, both Gillibrand and Schumer were blessed by weak opposition in their US Senate races. Ms G is quite the story: two years ago she was labeled good as dead for her seat, with the chance of a primary being almost a given. Fast forward to now, and we are looking at a rising star in the party.

We are on record here as being both fans of Scott Murphy and not-so-impressed by Chris Gibson. Gibson's views on energy, the environment and local economic development deeply disturb us, and his having yesterday appointed a former VP from the Associated General Contractors of New York State as his Chief of Staff already has him in our pup tent. Let's hope he 'grows' into the office.

The NYS Senate 43rd District race between incumbent Roy McDonald and Saratoga Supervisor Joanne Yepsen had an equally disappointing result, for political and personal reasons as we have been involved in previous efforts, initiatives and campaigns with the challenger here at Nanoburgh? This race could/should have been tighter, but Mrs Yepsen's effort was characterized by a series of missteps, mistakes and an absence of messaging and candidate branding. It was tough to watch as an interested outsider. That's too bad, for this is a candidate that could have done some good.

The local (Saratoga) focus will now turn to City Council races in 2011. We know from the past three versions that this will certainly be entertaining.



The Nanoburgh? Poll

Yes, it is a real deal. Yes, we appreciate the kind words.

In a nutshell: this is a project attempting to 're-write the ground rules' on election forecasting. How? By using data mining techniques and methodologies that have been used in the consumer market for a few years — and applying them to individual elections in the political realm. Frankly, we're surpised to be one fo the first doing this. More to come.

If this is an area of interest, feel free to inquire for an Inside Baseball look.

Mahavishnu memories

It was your typical high school road trip. Four of us piled into Mullie Mulligan's convertible and hit the southbound Northway lane from Saratoga, bound for that dangersous (to us sheltered types, at least) rat cave known as Troy. Our mission? The still under-the-radar J Geils Band was in town, fresh off their early Full House release. It was time to boogy.

Of course, the two great Unwritten Rules of the day were in effect:

1) If more than three kids were in each others' company at any given moment, it required the lighting-up of funny looking cigarettes;

and

2) If that event involved an automobile, and the expected travel time was in excess of ten minutes, cheap beer would be served.

Not ones to break established protocol, we were in full compliance. Upon arrival at the old RPI Armory, we walked into this warmup act (see video below):

Being too young, drunk and stupid to quite get it, we shrugged them off, wandering around to check out the girls in the room. After all, we were there to rock and roll. This clip is of the original lineup; the same five who played in Troy on that very night. Rest assured, however, that I got caught up to the Mahavishnu Orchestra a few years later.

After the show (which also included the newly solo Peter Frampton, believe it or not, we somehow ended up at Charlies's Hot Dogs for a round of killing off the munchies. There, we ran into a wild eyed dude who HAD gotten the whole Mahavishnu thing, and was rambling on and on and on about the experience. My only reaction to him was simply: "how many of those hot dogs do you get for a dollar?"

I had an Art History major pal of mine later on in college. He caught a later version of the band during summer break (Central Park in NYC), and came back declaring they were the "most creative expression of humanity -- ever." Now that's quite the review, eh? He soon thereafter quit school and emabarked on a musical career of his own.

Another long lost buddy was seeking a private instructor for bass lessons years later, and dialed up a number he found in the Village Voiceclassifieds. It was Rick Laird, from the Mahavishnu.

The Mahavishnu Orchestra, taking us into the weekend...

Election Day, from a youngster's POV

A 6yo's view of the day

Plus: hearing stories of an earlier Tea Party

I recall being a little kid, maybe six or seven years old, on an Election Day many years ago. My mother took me along as she headed down to City Hall. We trudged up the steep stairs to an upper floor, and walked into a room that I still remember as being messy and filled with papers and old books. These were no doubt the registration records. People were milling about and moving back and forth.

In all this confusion, I was surprised to suddenly be facing my Grandmother, from the other side of the family, sitting at a table in the center of all this noise. She was a poll watcher, and bragged to me afterwords about her long-running streak in playing that role locally. I think she also mentioned a remuneration of something like $2 for her efforts, when I inquired. My mother left me in her care as she herself disappeared for a minute, which turns out the amount of time it takes to pull a couple levers on the other side of the room.

My Grandfather would take the effort to dress up in his best suit on Election Day, grab his Stetson hat and head down to Broadway to perform his duty. After, he would retire to Rocco's (now the Parting Glass) a block and a half down the hill, where he joined other gentlemen dressed in the same manner. An hour or two later, he was back home, putting the suit back into the closet and later dialing in to the in-town radio station to hear the results.

For whatever reasons, I was into politics at a very early age. My Grandfather was an old school, Al Smith styled New Deal Democrat. But he told me that his favorite guy of all was Adalai Stevenson, the party's presidential nominee in both 52 and 56 (vs Eisenhower).

Stevenson later became the UN Ambassador under that young upstart JFK. On a visit to Dallas, he was heckled and pysically roughed up by right-wing nationalists. The Dallas Times Herald, on its front page the next day, stated that "Dallas has been disgraced. There is no other way to view the storm-trooper actions of last night's frightening attack on Adlai Stevenson."

This was just one month before Mr Kennedy would run into similar problems down in the Big D himself, but with much more severe consequences.

When asked if he wished to press charges against his assailants, Stevensoon replied:

"I don't want to send them to jail. I want to send them to school."

Now isn't that a timely thought?

The NANOBURGH? 2010 Election Poll

The final Nanoburgh? Poll:

NYS Governor: Cuomo (D) vs Paladino (R)
Winner: Cuomo
Winner's %: 62

NYS Attorney General: Schneiderman (D) vs Donovan (R)
Winner: Schneiderman
Winner's %: 53

NYS Comptroller: DiNapoli(D) vs Wilson (R)
Winner: Wilson
Winner's %: 53

US Senator from NY: Gillibrand (D) vs DioGuiardi (R)
Winner: Gillibrand
Winner's %: 59

US Senator from NY: Schumer (D) vs Townsend (R)
Winner: Schumer
Winner's %: 57

US Congress District 20: Murphy (D) vs Gibson (R)
Winner: Gibson
Winner's %: 52

US Congress District 21: Tonko (D) vs Danz (R)
Winner: Tonko
Winner's %: 52

NYS Senate District 43: Yepsen vs McDonald (R)
Winner: McDonald
Winner's %: 55

NYS Senate District 44: Savage (D) vs Farley (R)
Winner: Farley
Winner's %: 57

NYS Assembly District 110: Keramati (D) vs Tedisco (R)
Winner: Tedisco
Winner's %: 57


The Nanoburgh? Poll utilizes a unique and proprietary research methodology which distinguishes it from traditional phone-based polling.

Archive: our pre-election poll on the 2009 Saratoga Springs local elections

Post-election reality check

Here is Wednesday's reality check, two days early:

Democrats: opportunity can arise in places you least expect it. Sit back and enjoy the Hatfields and McCoys go at it over the next two years. You win, they lose.

Republicans: you've slept with the mangey mutt; now what are you gonna do about those fleas?.

Tea Party: just being pissed can't sustain a movement; otherwise you continue to be used as a tool for the GOP.