okay, then, I'll take him

I read this: http://www.salon.com/2011/12/31/progressives_and_the_ron_paul_fallacies/singleton/ and decided I'm for Ron Paul, warts and all.

Ron Paul 2012.

2012 Columbia County

New year, government officials being sworn in today, and Columbia County is getting a new chair of the Board of Supervisors, new mayor in Hudson, some changes, nothing dramatic. While the new probable chair Grattan of Kinderhook seems to be a tremendous improvement in terms of integrity and intelligence over the hapless departing Roy Brown of Germantown, and we hope for good things in Hudson, the overall picture has not changed significantly.

Many elected officials in Columbia County do not understand our local economy. The state offers aid on the assumption that the local officials are in a better position to address local concerns than some state agency but this assumption is not borne out by experience. Some elected officials don't care about the economy. Petty patronage through the highway department, ginning up "us versus them" politics and making beautiful things ugly are fine to many of our leaders because actual economic growth, protection of natural resources and hospitality and openness to outsiders would undermine their own positions. I would offer the entire town board of the town of Stuyvesant, particularly the dishonest supervisor, Ron Knott, as examples of this kind of reactionary, close-minded and counter productive government.

We can think about the place we live, the time we live in, and come up with a plan that will be put into place by the existing institutions to create prosperity, protect open space, improve education, and reduce inter-tribal tension. I am offering such a plan in this post for 2012, as if people actually cared about those things, the environment and the economy, instead of just feathering their own nests at the expense of the public interest. We can pretend to have a functioning system of government and think about what this hypothetical government might do.

Agro-Tourism

Columbia County should be an agro-tourism destination. Wait: you can't sum up a whole county in one hyphenated word--"agro-tourism"--and be done, right? There has to be more to it than that.

Well, no. Agro-tourism is compatible with light industry, second home ownership, the arts, the environment, and will lead to economic growth while protecting the land. Agro-tourism is not compatible with heavy industry and sprawl. Saying Columbia County is a place for agro-tourism covers almost everything.

County Level

Towns are too small to be marketing units in New York City and other places. The idea of the "Hudson Valley" is too nebulous and there is no governmental authority capable of protecting and encouraging the brand. The brand can't just be a trick. It has to actually mean what it says: agro-tourism.

Roy Brown was pretty proud of his billboard in Times Square. That billboard was the equivalent of flushing the taxpayer's money down the drain. Second home owners are not going to buy in Columbia County because of a billboard but might go elsewhere when they see that stupid thing.

If you say you are an agro-tourism destination, then you make it true, then you can easily and truthfully market the county almost effortlessly. Putting up a poster with a horse on it was just stupid.

I could get into the specifics, how to make this work. It's clear to me all the pieces to make a coherent County-wide strategy to protect open space, grow the economy and create unimagined prosperity. It would work.

Unfortunately, we have a government all mucked up with people who don't care about prosperity or preserving natural resources.

12-28-11: manuscript in philmont, the price of bad governance

I'm in the paper.  I blogged the story yesterday.

Copying the bible by hand in Philmont.

Bad water in Stockport.

Darrow School in New Lebanon showed up in Google Alert.

This piece got me thinking, that post and the Stuyvesant Town meeting last night.

At the town meeting, various people praised the departing supervisor. I don't begrudge someone a good bye ceremony I guess...

But the town of Stuyvesant is totally mismanaged. We have tribal elections that lead to tribal government. There are more Kikuyu than Luo, so every president of Kenya has been Kikuyu and none Luo.

But we don't have tribes? How about factions? That's what James Madison wrote about in the 10th Federalist paper. One small town, but the dynamics are not that dissimilar nationally in some ways.

The result? The government can't actually respond to real problems and change. Then, when you add in endemic corruption, I don't think the future looks good for America.

Why do we fund our public schools with local property taxes and have school districts with elected school boards with no oversight beyond the local beauty contest? And no other school choice? Is this working?

No. American public education is largely not working. Are we changing it? No.

Look at health care. We spend tons on health care but our people are not healthy. We spend on education but our people are not well educated.

Compare the US to Sweden. Now, Sweden is a small country, but we can also compare Sweden to some state in America or a city if we wanted to. In Sweden, they have socialized medicine and free market education. They addressed these issues. When Sweden had a banking crisis, the government took control of the banks, then sold them off. The free market is alive and well in Sweden.

Sweden is a leftist country? Even as they have put into effect the Republican think-tank education solution?

Sweden is a well run country. You can actually talk about changing things and actually make it happen.

Not that Sweden is paradise: the principle holds even with the imperfections in Sweden and occasional good idea in America, a good idea that actually made it into law, which almost never happens.

12-17-11: sec. state in cc, the abode at harvard

The Secretary of State of New York will hold a second event in Columbia County on Wednesday December 21st to announce the upstate recipients of the CSBG Workforce Development grants.

This picture was taken in Columbia County, New York, not that you can tell.

The Abode in Harvard Magazine.

Funny business in the town court in New Lebanon?

A town here getting rid of some equipment.

Want to invest in a local bank?

County budget. Hold you nose and read about it?

Nice pool, good swimmers.

12-5-11: art and development, study, other news

Here is an article on the relationship between art and development. If this is true, Hudson may be in better shape than we might otherwise suspect.

Here at the survivalist website we see that some people in our area are turning to subsistence?

Open space preserved. Good.

Election results, if you want the gory details.

Update on murder investigation. Annoying ad on that page.

Local business mentioned in the Daily News. Far Fetched Acres.

Cool house. Tagkanic.

1933 house. This kind of picture seems rare to me: in 1933 people did not take pictures like this too often and you can learn quite a bit from something like this.

Public notice. Chatham.

Occupy LA and the LAPD has a local link. Tyson's sister lives in Chatham.

Free Journalist Tyson Heder Now

In advance of someone saying Tyson should have done this or done that to avoid this outcome, I would like to offer an analogy.

You are walking down the street somewhere in Los Angeles (imagine that you are actually walking in Los Angeles). There you are on Rodeo Drive and you meet a tiger. You climb a tree (palm tree). This was stupid: tigers can climb trees and so, you get eaten. You should have found a door with a doorknob and ran behind it. Tigers cannot turn doorknobs. So you see, you brought this on yourself.

Why was the tiger wandering around? That's just the way it is in Los Angeles.

Now, of course, we're not talking about tigers. We're talking about the police. So, since that's the way it is, visitors to Los Angeles should get a pamphlet when they land at the airport.

Welcome to Los Angeles. In order to make your stay as injury-free as possible, the city has prepared this manual on how to avoid getting your ass kicked and getting locked up on false charges by our police.

If you see a police man, avoid looking in his eyes. If you have a smart phone, be sure to familiarize yourself with both the video and audio record functions. Practice turning the audio record on without removing the phone from your pocket. If you find this difficult, you might want to invest in a separate audio recorder with a one touch record feature.

If you are the victim of a crime, be sure to video and audio record all you interactions with the police as you attempt to report the crime.

If you want to exercise your constitutional rights, you should have the contact information for attorneys who specialize in federal and state law. One attorney is not going to be enough: Los Angeles has a two attorney minimum for those of you interested in exercising any rights.

We hope this brochure helps you to enjoy Los Angeles without getting your ass kicked by our corrupt and violent thuggish out of control lawless police. Like earthquakes, there is nothing we can do about that problem.

Sincerely, the mayor


Obituaries.

glencadia Photojournalist Tyson Zoltan Heder beaten and detained by LAPD at Occupy Los Angeles youtube.com/watch?v=yInFCS…
less than a minute ago

Tyson Heder

http://blogs.laweekly.com/informer/2011/12/tyson_heder_lapd_occupy.php Tyson Heder: his sister lives in Chatham. Outrageous police abuse.