Phase III of the Dutchess Rail-Trail, opened on May 26. The trail, which will eventually be 12 miles, follows the former Maybrook Rail corridor and a water transmission line runs beneath it. The third phase links the Towns of LaGrange, Wappinger, and East Fishkill and creates more than 8 miles of continuous trail.

Dutchess County Executive William Steinhaus, who received a PTNY Trail and Greenway Public Leadership Award in 2007, has been a champion of the project from day one.

View photos of the opening celebration.

source: Parks & Trail NY E-News

Filed under: Parks & Trails NY, Rail-trail Tagged: Dutchess County, East Fishkill, LaGrange, Wappinger

Rails to Trails: is this Springville NY’s own golden tourism opportunity?

Filed under: Buffalo, Rail-trail, Trail Building, Western NY Tagged: Erie Cattaraugus Rail Trail

Good Wednesday Morning!

A (Temporary) Victory on Sales Taxes

A special Thanks! goes out to everyone who contacted the County Legislature on Monday regarding the extension of the extra sales tax we pay here in Putnam County. Your efforts pulled the matter from the agenda from Monday to be reschedule for 2011 when it should be dealt with. Your work proves that a little democracy can go a long way. Mazel Tov!

What I learned from the experience is that our legislators were largely confused about this issue. For example, two Legislators thought this vote was for an extension for this budget year when it was really for the 2012 budget. Another insisted that draconian cuts would have to be made or a significant increase in property taxes take its place if the bill were not passed – this year. Several never bothered to respond to emails.

In County Executive Bondi’s budget address he said, [Emphasis mine.]

“We have slightly decreased from 2010 our sales tax revenue estimate, the chief revenue source in our County Budget, budgeting $47.45 million, for 2011. We are slightly behind (less than 2%) our sales tax revenue estimates in 2010, and right now we believe that this is a prudent estimate for 2011, given the economy and short term future forecasts. It is our duty to point out again that the sales tax authorization increase in the County share to 4% expires November 30, 2011. If the State Legislature fails to reauthorize this next year, the County share will fall to 3%. This will result in the loss of over $ 11 million to Putnam County and require double digit property tax increases, significant loss of services, or a combination of both. We hereby call upon State Senator Vincent Leibell, Assemblywoman Sandra Galef, and Assemblyman Greg Ball to enact a sales tax extension this year in 2010. This Legislation is too important to leave unaddressed until 2011. The next County Executive will have to submit a 2012 County Budget containing devastating service cuts and/or a massive property tax increase without this Legislation. Both he/she and the Putnam County Legislature need to know this year what the future sales tax rate will be in order to make intelligent decisions about the County Budget in a timely manner.”

A “double-digit” property tax increase could amount to $20 a month per property to maintain the full integrity of county services.

Moreover, we see Mr. Bondi encouraging that this be handled this year thinking it too important to wait until next in its proper time. But why? The “Why” are the politics of Albany.

Another legislator said that it was the lack of a commercial base that required the extension and that if places like Patterson Crossing would open that we’d not be in this fix. But I contest that assertion saying only, that in the case of Patterson Crossing where more than 3 million dollars worth of sales taxes are promised, the number requires that every dime be *new* dollars spent in the county and not a shifting of sales from say, the Home Depot to the Lowes. Until some brainiac big-wig economist says otherwise, I’m not buying the numbers from Patterson Crossing and I’d be very cautious regarding similar promises about Union Place.

Burning Questions About Burnwell

While we’re talking about double-digit increases, I get this letter last Friday or Saturday (November 4th or 5th) from Burnwell Propane dated September 30 with a new rate/fee schedule dated October 1. Bob Bondi has finally met his match in mucking up dates, making it too late for you to ever respond in time.

The Fee Schedule is outlined on a double-sided sheet and each entry uses the words, “may be” and “up to” so often that with each item you are never sure whether it will apply to you and if it does, how much so.

Honestly, not being a lawyer I have no idea if any of that is legal in the sense that as customers we were notified more than a full month after the new rates took effect and that we also do not know exactly how much we may be responsible for.

Before you write and say, “go find someone else”, I began to look around a bit last year and called Burnwell and asked them to pump the propane out of the tank and that I’d sell it back to them at the then current price of delivered propane. “No!” The woman said, we buy it back at the price you paid for delivery when it was delivered minus the delivery charge. Alright. It’s my gas but it’s in their tank and so we’re stuck on that point. And I couldn’t find another company who would pump that gas out and put it into a new tank.

But the new rate sheet has this:

Tank Removal Fee and Pump Out Fee – will be assessed when tank is removed….request to discontinue service for other reasons – Fee is $150.00 per removal of an above ground tank… If the tank contains gas the fee to pump out this gas may be up to $1.00 per gallon.”

So, as the expression goes, they’ve got you by short hairs.

Last year when I was concerned about the amount of propane I seemed to be using I called Burnwell to run a series of tests for leaks. Several hundred dollars later they found nothing to report – the lines were tight. But interestingly, when the floor furnace was replaced last month the installer found a leak in the lines, one that had been there for years upon years and that the Burnwell technician should most certainly have found. In his words, “It’s a good thing you never turned this thing [the floor furnace] on!” I’ve saved the broken piece that was pulled from the lines and now all I need is a good lawyer. The way I figure it they owe me money – and possibly even my life.

If anyone out there knows a way to get around these outrageous fees and find a more responsible supplier please let me know. As it is now, the fee schedule Burnwell has set up means that even if my tank were full I’d still loose money selling them back the gas and removing the tank – a lot of money. There’s something inherently unfair about that and it should be illegal.

It’s become clear over the years that Burnwell has been ripping me off and there’s no way it’s just me. If they’re your company, write and tell me so we can exchange stories and perhaps begin a class action suit against these people.

News Notes:

So, this 5-year old boy decides he wants to dress up like a girl for Halloween and the entire globe has to get in on it. Was there something in that story I missed? I thought the whole point of dressing up for Halloween was *dressing up*.

The city of Fountain Hills, AZ had a mish-mash of garbage collection going on within the municipal lines and decided to go with a single trash hauler and at the same time to institute a curbside recycling plan, their first. In the end, everyone would save a little money and garbage collection in that fair city would be organized.

But there was a problem: Fountain Hills is home to two Tea Party groups and they both got in on the fight insisting that a unified garbage pickup plan and the recycling program were socialist and so launched a campaign against the city. They lost and sanity prevailed.

Councilwoman Ginny Dickey said, “It seems counterintuitive, but in order for this proposal to pass, I believe I had to downplay the benefits of recycling,” she said. “When ideology prevents rational discussion of a really pretty mundane topic, trash, there is no perspective. Everything is suspect, which paralyzes us.”

From the Town of Kent CAC:

Every winter the Town of Kent enjoys at least a few days of weather that is terrific for a cross-country ski outing. And Kent’s terrain is such that quite a few local hiking trails work well for the sport. For some time, the CAC has considered how to take advantage of this by sponsoring at least one cross-country ski outing each year. The problem, of course, is scheduling. Conditions here change so quickly and unpredictably that choosing a date in advance almost never pans out.

Since we can’t schedule an outing in advance, the CAC would like to see if people are interested getting together on short notice when great cross-country ski conditions are suddenly upon us — a sort of “Carpe Ski-em.” (Sorry, I couldn’t resist.) If there’s sufficient interest, we’ll keep our eyes on conditions and try to organize at least one outing this winter.

If you’re interested, please let me know. Just reply to this e-mail telling me your name and phone number. I’ll add you to the list of people to call. When the time comes, we’ll give everyone on the list a call – probably about a day ahead of time – and head out to the trail!

I hope you’ll join us!

P.S. If you have a favorite local cross-country trail you’d like to suggest we use, we’d love to hear about it. The ideal trail for our purposes is one that can be done in about two or three hours and is neither boring nor scary. We’d like to accommodate skiers of various skill levels and want everyone to have a great time.

Contact David Ehnebuske at webmaster@kentcac.info

Just so you know:

And now, The News:

• A (Temporary) Victory on Sales Taxes
  • Burning Questions About Burnwell
  • News Notes:
  • From the Town of Kent CAC:
  • Just so you know:
• New bottle deposit law proved a success
• Science says methane in PA water is from drilling, not natural causes
• Hydraulic Fracturing Expert Warns of What Lies Below
• Some judges chastise banks over foreclosure paperwork
• Acorn glut signals Lyme risks
• Dover Plains church gets historic designations
• New trailhead along O&W Rail Trail
• How Bankers Spy on You

New bottle deposit law proved a success

It’s been a year since the long-debated and much-compromised slightly bigger better bottle bill took effect in New York. Contrary to the beverage industry’s predictions, the sky hasn’t fallen. In fact, adding a 5-cent deposit to the estimated 2.5 billion water bottles sold statewide each year has helped address the state’s two biggest problems — jobs and cash.

Unclaimed deposits have generated $120 million in new state revenue, according to Laura Haight, senior environmental associate with the New York Public Interest Research Group, which marked the first anniversary of the expanded bottle bill law. New jobs have been created at the 142 redemption centers that have sprung up around the state since 2009 in order to process the bottle returns, Haight said.

Additionally, there are fewer water bottles littering the roadways, since Oct. 31, 2009, when the law went into effect. Andy Stewart, executive director of Keep Rockland Beautiful, which runs a roadside cleanup each spring with upward of 5,000 volunteers at more than 300 sites throughout the county, said he has noticed a change.

Read More

Science says methane in PA water is from drilling, not natural causes

by Abrahm Lustgarten, ProPublica

In its Sunday, Nov. 6, business feature, The New York Times wrote about concerns some residents across the country have about pollution in their water supplies from natural gas drilling. The paper traveled to northwestern Pennsylvania, where more than a dozen residents’ water has been fouled by the drilling process and the state is arranging to replace their drinking-water supply.

ProPublica has been reporting on the water concerns there, in the town of Dimock, since late 2008.

At the end of its article, the Times used a quote that raised questions about whether gas drilling is responsible for the contamination, or whether the problem has been made up or overhyped.

The quote came from Martha Locey, a 78-year-old resident of the nearby town of Montrose, Pa., who said she’s had methane in the water of her family farm for decades — long before the drilling started.

“My father dug our well in 1945, and we knew it had lots of iron in it, and we thought it had something else, but we weren’t sure, because it had lots of bubbles in it,” Mrs. Locey said. “So my nephew took it to school in the ’60s, and the science teacher lit it, and it burned, so he said, ‘It’s methane.’”

Mrs. Locey may be right. It’s quite likely that her nephew did in fact light his water on fire almost 50 years ago — and that the water contained gas. It just wasn’t the same type of gas that is causing problems in Dimock.

Read More

Hydraulic Fracturing Expert Warns of What Lies Below

by Wes Skillings for the Rocket-Courier

If gas wells were required by law to be as safe from accidents as bridges and commercial airplanes, says Cornell University professor and expert in the field of hydraulic fracturing, Dr. Tony Ingraffea, he, for one, would consider the risks acceptable.

As it now stands, Dr. Ingraffea informed local residents at a town meeting in Browntown recently, the industry claims a success rate of 98.5 percent, which is essentially at least one accident waiting to happen for about every 150 wells drilled. That, he told interested residents at an informational meeting on natural gas drilling at the Calvary Chapel Church, “is totally unacceptable from an engineering standpoint.”

“The industry does not yet have a standard operating procedure for developing unconventional gas wells on the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania,” said Dr. Ingraffea, who has worked on projects and research for the industry on fracture mechanics and is Co-Editor-in-Chief of Engineering Fracture Mechanics. “They’re still experimenting as they are going along.”

Read More

Some judges chastise banks over foreclosure paperwork

By Ariana Eunjung Cha

EAST PATCHOGUE, N.Y. – A year ago, Long Island Judge Jeffrey Spinner concluded that a mortgage company’s paperwork in a foreclosure case was so flawed and its behavior in negotiations with the borrower so “repugnant” that he erased the family’s $292,500 debt and gave the house back for free.

The judgment in favor of the homeowner, Diane Yano-Horoski, which is being appealed, has alarmed the nation’s biggest lenders, who say it could establish a dramatic new legal precedent and roil the nation’s foreclosure system.

It is not the only case that has big banks worried. Spinner and some of colleagues in the New York City area estimate they are dismissing 20 to 50 percent of foreclosure cases on the basis of sloppy or fraudulent paperwork filed by lenders.

Their decisions illustrate the central role lower court judges will have in resolving the country’s foreclosure debacle. The mess came to light after lawsuits and media reports showed lenders were routinely filing shoddy or fraudulent papers to seize the homes of borrowers who had missed payments.

Read More

Acorn glut signals Lyme risks

Richard S. Ostfeld and Charles D. Canham for the Poughkeepsie Journal

This fall, some of you might have noticed it’s difficult to walk on sidewalks or hilly trails near oak trees. The acorns underfoot — nature’s ball bearings — are so numerous that even sturdy shoes are no match. In our research sites at the Cary Institute and throughout the Hudson Valley, we are seeing acorn production of unprecedented proportions.

Oak trees, like many hardwoods, tend to drop few or no seeds in most years. Then episodically, they produce a bumper crop of acorns, known as a “mast year.”

Each tree species has its own rhythm, so it’s rare to see multiple species masting together. This year, though, our four most common oak species — red oak, black oak, white oak and chestnut oak —are all producing acorns at the same time. In the 20 years we’ve been monitoring tree seed production, this is the first time we’ve seen such an acorn glut.

Read More

Dover Plains church gets historic designations

Jackie DiMarzo • For the Poughkeepsie Journal • November 9, 2010

DOVER PLAINS — The congregation of Second Baptist Church has plenty to celebrate, as it was recently named to the New York State Register of Historic Places and the National Register of Historic Places. The church is at 29 Mill St.

Church Treasurer Donna Reimer started applying for historic status after members agreed the church had a good chance of being named to the state registry.

“There was a discussion … that we seem to fit the profile to be a landmark. We didn’t know what the actual requirements were, but we just said, ‘Well, let’s try,’ ” Reimer said. “We thought we had a pretty good chance because it’s old and everything’s original.”

They were right. In a state press release, the Second Baptist Church of Dover was described as the oldest religious building in the Dover Plains hamlet and an outstanding example of early 19th century Protestant meeting-house design.

Read More

New trailhead along O&W Rail Trail

Midhudsonnews.com

WOODRIDGE – A new trailhead is open on the O&W Rail Trail at River Road and Avon Lodge Road near the Neversink River just outside the Village of Woodridge. The trail ends at the gazebo in downtown Woodridge.

With a grant from Sullivan Renaissance, Town of Fallsburg crews cleared and graded the trailhead, laid down wood chips and created a picnic area. Woodridge Renaissance volunteers handled the installation of a new trailhead sign and planter.

The improvement was part of an inter-municipal effort along the O&W Rail Trail that brought together four community groups and the Town of Fallsburg. In addition to the trailhead, work included landscaping at the visitors center in Mountaindale by volunteers from the Mountaindale Action Committee and Sullivan Striders.

Read More

How Bankers Spy on You

Big Banker is watching you—more closely than ever.

With lenders still skittish about making new loans, credit bureaus and others are hawking services that help banks probe deeply into your financial closet. The new offerings include ways to look at your rent and utility payments, figure out your income, gauge your home’s value and even rate your banking habits based on details like whether your direct deposits have stopped.

All of this could influence your financial freedom—not to mention the number of junk-mail solicitations you receive.

Ken Lin, CEO of Credit Karma, a credit-score information website, knew he had a good credit score. But when he recently applied for a new credit card, he was rejected: The lender had flagged him as a higher credit risk because the value of his California home had declined and his mortgage principal wasn’t declining—giving away that he has an interest-only mortgage.

“It’s a lot more than just your credit score today,” he says.

Read More

• Today is Bastille Day
• Tax or Fee? You Decide
• This is your Assembly District on Drugs
• In other news:
• Rail trail funding approved for southern Westchester
• Paradise for Fishermen Becomes One for Scientists
• Kucinich Pushes To End Tax Subsidies For Junk Food Advertising
• Jews, Arabs Work Together to Save Hevron’s Olive Trees
• Automated Debt-Collection Lawsuits Engulf Courts
• Monkeys trained as battlefield killers in Afghanistan

Good Wednesday Morning,

It rained. Finally. Too late for the berry crop but it rained and for that I am thankful.

Wow! The top news at the online edition of the NYJN is that Bobby Kennedy has filed for divorce. In the meantime, home foreclosures are rocking our communities and destroying families, unemployment benefits are running out for millions, millions more have no health insurance, there’s a little oil gusher in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico that is being felt over thousands of miles of coastline, local governments are corrupt and ineffectual, we’re fighting wars against enemies we’ve created out of thin air…. and the list goes on. But set all that aside so we can focus on the private life of a guy who has done good works for our communities and the river that binds us all together. Yeah, that’s journalism in 2010.

Today is Bastille Day

It was on July 14th 1789 that residents took up arms against the monarch and stormed the Bastille, a prison in Paris. The aim wasn’t to free those inside as much as it was a direct challenge to what had become a regime immune to pleas from the people for meaningful assistance and change. Those involved got their ideas from their brethren on this continent and modeled both their movement and their constitution on what our founding fathers had created a few years earlier. The French version, adopted in August of that year, was called the “Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen and led to the establishment of the First Republic.

Tax or Fee? You Decide

I was told the other day that the $250 bribe, er, tax, er, fee, er, whatever… that contractors must pay to Putnam County for the right to work is not a tax but a fee and I should quit my bitching about it because yes, we contractors are provided a service by the county. What that service is may be hard to define but if everyone from the Code Enforcement officer to the county Legislature tells me I’m getting something other than my entry into the protection racket, I don’t know what that is.

So I decided to find out what a tax is and what a fee is: Form the Wiki:

Tax: To tax (from the Latin taxo; “I estimate”, which in turn is from tangō; “I touch”) is to impose a financial charge or other levy upon a taxpayer (an individual or legal entity) by a state or the functional equivalent of a state such that failure to pay is punishable by law. (emphasis, mine)

Fee: A fee is the price one pays as remuneration for services. Fees usually allow for overhead, wages, costs, and markup.

From Websters:

Tax: noun
1. a sum of money demanded by a government for its support or for specific facilities or services, levied upon incomes, property, sales, etc.

Fee:
1. a charge or payment for professional services: a doctor’s fee

So, though the county insists that it’s only a fee failure to comply comes with a legal punishment, thus it is a tax.

This is your Assembly District on Drugs

Check out this map of AD22 in Brooklyn:

And this is New York’s 51st Senate District:

In other news:

• In case you have forgotten, there’s still tens of thousands of barrels of oil pouring into the Gulf of Mexico each and every day. Yes, I know you’ve forgotten. When the new BP stations open in Carmel feel free to buy your cigarettes there as NYS needs your tax dollars, but please buy your gasoline elsewhere. Thanks.

• While New Jersey lawmakers instituted a 2% cap on yearly property tax increases, New York lawmakers were at the Yankees away game – on Mars.

• Gary Harper didn’t have the $500 he needed to get a DNA test to prove that the boy his long-ago ex girlfriend claimed he was the father of wasn’t his but the State of Michigan decided he was the father anyway and billed him for $22,500 in back child support. But he did finally get the test and as he expected he is not the fatherbut the state still wants him to pay the money because under the law you have a narrow window to prove paternity – or not – and Mr. Harper missed that window.

• From Media Matters: With the death of legendary New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner today, [Rush] Limbaugh had what he must have thought was the perfect opportunity to open his show with a little good old-fashioned race-baiting, saying that Steinbrenner — “that cracker,” as Limbaugh called him — “made a lot of African-American millionaires.” Limbaugh later stated that Steinbrenner “knew when to die,” because there is currently no estate tax. He went on to read a couple of Washington Post stories about bad news for President Obama and declare that the newspaper needs “a suicide watch” in its newsroom. Eventually, Limbaugh got around to explaining how liberals were just like “Muslim extremists” — liberals apparently “want to be told how to live,” too.

• In over 500 stories about the “peace flotilla” the Reuters news agency has not once mentioned that passengers aboard the Mavi Marmara were members of the Turkish group, the IHH, which has been banned from operating in Germany and other European countries because of their terrorist ties to Hamas which includes direct cash payments.

• Remember the other day when we were talking about Iran? Religious police in the northern Iranian city of Tabriz, raped and killed 26 year old Elnaz Babazadeh for not following proper dress code. Were you also aware that Iran sits on the UN Commission of Women’s Rights? How’s that for, well, don’t even get me going…

Rail trail funding approved for southern Westchester

WHITE PLAINS – The Westchester County Board of Legislators Monday night approved $3.25 million in bonding for construction of the final link in Yonkers of the South County Trailway.

The trail, which will run on the former Putnam Division of the New York Central Railroad right of way, will travel 2 ½ miles Eastview to the Yonkers-New York City line.

The new link will make, with the exception of a half mile section in the Village of Elmsford, a continuous 36 mile corridor from the Putnam County border to the Yonkers-New York line.

Read More

Paradise for Fishermen Becomes One for Scientists

Just off New York City lies the Hudson Canyon, a deep gash in the seabed that runs for hundreds of miles. Charter boats and commercial fishermen have long known that the canyon’s headwaters swarm with tuna, swordfish, monkfish, tilefish, red crabs and other sea life.

Now, scientists have discovered a surprising potential reason for at least part of the canyon’s riches — methane bubbling up from the seabed.

A team from Rutgers University and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has made three trips to the canyon since 2007 and is preparing another voyage next month. It has already found high levels of methane in the waters and, tracking chemical and geologic clues, now sees the natural gas, which is associated with oil deposits, as a possible first meal in a long food chain.

On the coming expedition, the team plans to use a robotic submersible equipped with a camera to photograph areas of the floor and sides of the canyon for the first time. The scientists hope to gather evidence of deep creatures that live directly and indirectly on the methane, perhaps including clams and crabs, mussels and tube worms.

Read More

Kucinich Pushes To End Tax Subsidies For Junk Food Advertising

As First Lady Michelle Obama spoke to the NAACP convention in Kansas City about childhood obesity Monday, Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) continued his work behind the scenes to stem junk food advertising to kids. A new bill introduced by Kucinich could raise billions of dollars in revenue to fund child nutrition and anti-obesity initiatives by preventing companies from writing off advertising of junk food targeted at kids.

Taxpayers are effectively subsidizing the spread of the obesity epidemic, Kucinich says, since under current federal law marketing expenses for the junk- and fast-food industries are tax-deductible. The legislation offers an easy win for increasingly hysterical deficit hawks, and would provide much-needed funds for Democrats looking to pass more aid programs, such as renewed unemployment benefits for the long-term jobless.

“I commend the First Lady for her dedication to stopping the epidemic of childhood obesity and for shedding light on the problem of food marketing to children,” Kucinich wrote in a letter to colleagues. His measure, HR 4310, would prohibit any company from claiming a tax deduction for expenses derived from advertising to children any fast food or food of limited nutritional value. He cites a study suggesting that eliminating the federal subsidies of food advertising directed at youth could significantly reduce obesity rates.

Read More

Jews, Arabs Work Together to Save Hevron’s Olive Trees

by Maayana Miskin

Residents of the Hevron area are concluding a weeks-long battle to save ancient olive trees next to the city. The project brought together Jews and Arabs from Hevron.

The ancient trees of Tel Hevron – some of them up to 2,000 years old – were endangered by a parasitic plant known as divkon hazayit. The plant was first discovered growing on the trees last year, and quickly multiplied, threatening to devastate the area.

The danger was spotted by Noam Arnon, spokesman for Hevron’s Jewish community, who noticed the invasive species taking root while hiking through the area. He contacted the Ministry of Agriculture and the IDF Civil Administration to warn them.

Ministry of Agriculture workers were sent to the region and confirmed that without treatment, many trees could die. They created a plan of action to save the trees.

Over the course of several weeks, volunteers from both the Jewish and Arab communities of Hevron went from tree to tree and pruned off the invasive species. Olive tree branches found to be infected were cut off and burnt.

Read More

Automated Debt-Collection Lawsuits Engulf Courts

As millions of Americans have fallen behind on paying their bills, debt collection law firms have been clogging courtrooms with lawsuits seeking repayment.

Few have been as prolific as Cohen & Slamowitz, a Woodbury, N.Y., firm that has specialized in debt collection for nearly two decades. The firm has been filing roughly 80,000 lawsuits a year.

With just 14 lawyers on staff, that works out to more than 5,700 cases per lawyer.

How is that possible?

The answer to that question is at the heart of a growing debate over the increasing use of the nation’s legal system to collect on bad debts.

Like many other firms, Cohen & Slamowitz relies on computer software to help prepare its cases. While many of the cases represent legitimate claims, critics say the lawsuits are too often based on inaccurate or incomplete information about the debtor or the amount owed.

Read More

Monkeys trained as battlefield killers in Afghanistan

By People’s Daily Online

Afghanistan’s Taliban insurgents are training monkeys to use weapons to attack American troops, according to a recent report by a British-based media agency.

Reporters from the media agency spotted and took photos of a few “monkey soldiers” holding AK-47 rifles and Bren light machine guns in the Waziristan tribal region near the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. The report and photos have been widely spread by media agencies and Web sites across the world.

According to the report, American military experts call them “monkey terrorists.”

As a form of cruel political means, wars are launched to meet political goals through conquest, devastation, assaults and other means.

In a sense, the emergence of “monkey soldiers” is the result of asymmetrical warfare. The United States launched the war in Afghanistan using the world’s most advanced weapons such as highly-intelligent robots to detect bombs on roadsides and unmanned aerial vehicles to attack major Taliban targets. In response, the Taliban forces have tried any possible means and figured out a method to train monkeys as “replacement killers” against American troops.

Read More

A special welcome to our new readers and subscribers this morning.

We’re a little late this morning and it’s all Ted M’s fault. I was up well past midnight with the 8″ Dobsonian looking for the open cluster in Hercules and another open cluster known more popularly as M5. I found them both and it was cool.

It’s going to be another hot day today (~90 is the forecast) and the promise of rain last weekend never really materialized though there is a 60% chance of a thunderstorm tomorrow.

Over the past days we’ve had about 1/4 inch of rain out here in the Free State but places like Lake Carmel had a shower to the north and none in the south but nothing worthwhile and certainly not enough to green up fields and forests.

Lawns are drying up all over the place and gardens are suffering. The native berry crop has been devastated with blackberries and blueberries taking the biggest hit as the lack of rain hit just at the time when they were trying to ripen up. And, if I see you watering your lawn during the day…. grrrr…..! What’s with those people? It’s just a lawn. It’s grass. It will come back in time. During dry spells like this I applaud residents whose lawns are brown.

If you’re living in a crowded place such as our lake communities you need to think about your neighbors. If you’re pulling water from underground to water your lawn you’re also taking drinking water away from your neighbors. When you water during the day, so much of the water you’re pulling from underground for your lawn will find its way – not to where you want it, but being evaporated into the air to fall again somewhere else. For communities who traditionally go dry in late summer this is a real problem and so I ask you: please cut that out! Just because it comes from underground does not mean it will last forever. When it’s not raining the aquifers are not being replenished. It’s really that simple.

A Tree Grew in Putnam County

Until the county highway crew came along, that is.

Last week Vic Tiship, who lives out in the Free State of Western Kent, sent an email to folk alerting them to tree cutting that was going on along Peekskill Hollow Road. While NYSEG had crews out on Route 301 clearing trees from the power lines he insisted this was different, that this was the county doing the work and not so gently at that.

So I took a drive up Peekskill Hollow and he was right: the county was clearing every branch that hung over the road for no apparent reason other than to cut every branch that hung over the road.

When the crews for NYSEG cut trees back from the power lines they cut only branches and limbs that are in the way of the lines leaving all else in place and you can see that if you drive up Route 301 out here in the Free State. But the county was clearing on both sides of the road and leaving, as you can see in this not-all-that-great image, not all that much.

The fear is this: If you drive down Peekskill Hollow Road today you’ll be driving down a tree covered road  looking for all the world like a rural thoroughfare. It’s really quite beautiful and one of our county’s nicest lazy drives. And the speed limit set (at 40) is more than adequate for the drive from Route 301 to Oregon Corners taking right around 20, easy, restful minutes.

But the County has long sought to turn PHR into a major business and trucking highway with several aborted attempts to widen the road to near double its current width, increasing capacity and overall speed. The community along the road has fought hard to maintain the road in its current bucolic state while accepting important safety improvements along certain sections. But the maintenance of stone walls, older, magnificent trees and the like are essential to keeping beautiful and this tree cutting, as expansive as it is, must stop.

To that end, Vic sought out the help of his neighbors and ultimately County Legislator Vinnie Tamagna and at his request to the county highway department the cutting has apparently stopped. For now.

If you’re out on PHR and you see the county crew at work, please notify us here at News That Matters.

[Note: calls made to the County last week for comment were not returned by press time.]

In Other News:

• A hearty Mazel Tov to Spain for winning the World Cup.
• A New York high school fired two female teachers who were found one recent evening allegedly drunk and at least partially naked in a classroom, officials said.
• Twenty-Four year old Derek Thomas, nephew of Supreme Court Justice Clarance Thomas was tased at West Jefferson Medical Center in New Orleans for not putting on a hospital gown. Derek, who also suffers from epilepsy, also suffered a fat lip from being punched and had a section of his hair pulled out.
• In a major setback for the recording industry, a federal judge in Boston today slashed a $675,000 damages award that a Boston University graduate student was ordered to pay four record labels for illegally downloading 30 songs and sharing them online.
• “You know, the Center for Science in the Public Interest, this wacko bunch of leftist kooks, statists, nannies — these are the people who banned coconut oil from your popcorn in movie theaters, have gotten rid of MSG, the flavoring in Chinese food. They wanted to ban Chinese food. These people want to get in your life and tell you what to eat. If you look at these people, you’d say, well, they’re barely alive. They’re skeletal; they’re miserable; they are unhappy; and they want to spread that misery to everybody else by having you eat basically nothing but tofu and cardboard, run around and eat miniature rocks and berries as you traverse the deserts of the world.” – Rush Limbaugh in his own words.
• Guatemala’s navy captured a makeshift submarine loaded with five metric tons of cocaine bound for the United States, the Guatemalan military said on Sunday.
• A dispute over the ownership of a frying pan led to third-degree burns for one South Bend man and 11 stitches for another, police reports said.
• Too many Republicans are falling victim to “demagoguery” led by Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin that will damage the party enormously says a GOP Congressman who lost a primary battle last month.
• The Swiss government declared renowned film director Roman Polanski a free man on Monday after rejecting a U.S. request to extradite him on a charge of having sex in 1977 with a 13-year-old girl.

Don’t Ask Don’t Tell Repeal

You have to hand it to the Pentagon for dealing with matters of civil rights in a way that the military has always dealt with them. If left to their own, dinosaurs will once again walk the earth before important changes are taken and that branch of government is up to speed. It took them almost 75 years to integrate black and white soldiers and women are still not exactly on the front lines, so why should the acceptance that gay men and women have been serving be any different? I mean it’s not like you guys haven’t taken showers with gays for a billion years – you have been – but you didn’t know… or you denied it, hoping that no one would talk about how tiny your peepee was or what a great ass you had.

Well, things are about to change and the Pentagon has sent an email survey(!) to hundreds of thousands of active duty soldiers asking them if they care if anyone notices. But in typical style they’re well behind the social times and the questionnaire is as biased as a FOXNews report and designed to do one thing: keep those dudes in the closet and the rest of you in denial.

Would it affect morale, they ask, if a fellow soldier were on patrol in high heels? Would you have a problem, they query, if while under attack your team leader was singing Judy Garland songs? What are your feelings about wearing white after Labor Day?

The Fast Food Explorer

When you head on down to Mickey D’s for breakfast and you order their “Deluxe Breakfast” to get a start on your day, you need to understand that you’re downing over 1100 calories with 530 of those coming directly from fats. At lunch time you stop in and get a couple Big Mac’s a large fries and a large shake and you’ve just consumed more calories and fat than half of sub Saharan Africa eats in a year. And McDonald’s is just the start…

You’re thinking, “heck, screw the burgers. I’m going with a nice, healthful salad!”, so you stop in at the Taco Bell and get their Fiesta Salad…. 840 calories, 400 of them pure fat, 48% of your total caloric intake for the day, 45% of you fat intake, 11% saturated fats, 65 grams of artery clogging cholesterol, 1,780 mg of sodium and only 15 grams of fibre. And if your head does not explode from the increase in your blood pressure… count yourself extremely lucky.

It’s a true an undeniable fact: America’s fast food industry is killing us one burger at a time.

If you’ve ever been truly curious what it is you’re putting directly into your gullet and how it’s affecting your health take a look at the Fast Food Explorer. But please, do so on an empty stomach. In the end, smoking a pack a day is actually healthier.

Let’s Get Stoned!

For those of you who are chest deep in traditional religion, here’s another way to keep the faith: stoning. That age-old practice outlined in the Old Testament but hardly ever used and outlawed for all practical purposes by early rabbis is back and in Iran one woman will be buried to just above her breasts and then a phalanx of men will stand around throwing rocks at her. The rocks are not large enough to kill, only enough to cause pain and bruising. The barrage of rocks will continue until she is dead. We have no idea how long that will take but videos available on you-tube are pretty gruesome.

The woman confessed to having sex out of wedlock after receiving 99 lashes with a bullwhip and done in front of her 17 year old son. The death sentence was handed down by a judge using his own “feelings” that she was guilty as there was no evidence other than her forced confession. And this is the country that wants an atomic bomb? The image above shows the results of the stoning of a man in Somalia in 2009.

While we’re talking about Iran, another catastrophe is in the making in southern Lebanon. With Syrian complicity and with United Nations troops powerless to stop it, Iran is arming roughly 20,000 Hezbollah fighters and has given them an estimated 40,000 short and medium range rockets and several hundred long range rockets more than capable of striking Israeli cities. And like Hamas does in Gaza, Hezbollah forces are digging in and setting up shop in residential homes, schools, hospitals and neighborhoods throughout the region. Palestinian human rights groups have condemned both Hamas and Hezbollah for this practice which always leads to many civilian deaths but the West and the political Left have been largely silent.

Hezbollah and Hamas are bestest buddies and Israeli military intelligence expects that the attack will come on two fronts, from the Lebanon and from Gaza simultaneously. And when they finally launch their attack against Israel you know as well as I that if one Lebanese or Gazan civilian dies there will be cries of genocide regardless of how many Israelis are slaughtered.

• A Tree Grew in Putnam County
• In Other News:
• Don’t Ask Don’t Tell Repeal
• The Fast Food Explorer
• Let’s Get Stoned!
• Rail trail moves toward completion
• Smart Growth Act could fix state’s infrastructure
• Coyote response melodramatic, unfair
• End Of The Cheap ‘Made-In-China’ Era Sends Companies Scrambling For Options
• Walking Away From Million-Dollar Mortgages

Rail trail moves toward completion

HIGHLAND – The Hudson Valley Rail Trail’s expansion eastward and its connection to Walkway Over the Hudson continues at a good pace.

Town of Lloyd Supervisor Ray Costantino announced that the missing link pedestrian bridge over Vineyard Avenue is scheduled to be set on July 16.  “This is a major milestone in the construction of the Hudson Valley Rail Trail’s eastward connection to Walkway Over the Hudson and its current termination at Commercial Avenue Extension,” he said.

Another milestone is set to occur when the Mile Hill Road Bridge construction will be complete and the road will be re-opened to vehicular traffic in August. “This has been a major accomplishment that allows the trail to remain off the highways and allows it to travel through pristine countryside,” said Costantino.

With the construction of this 1.3 mile section, the Hudson Valley Rail Trail will extend from the Walkway Over the Hudson for approximately 3.8 miles terminating at Tony Williams Park on Riverside Road.

Read More

Smart Growth Act could fix state’s infrastructure

New York’s budget crisis is forcing government at all levels to re-evaluate how it allocates increasingly rare public dollars. As officials seek to identify and eliminate wasteful and unnecessary spending, they will find some of the waste is hiding in plain sight.

Travel to downtown Buffalo or to many of the state’s older suburbs and you’ll find decaying sidewalks, half-empty shopping centers, vacant lots and abandoned homes. Then travel a few more miles into what was until recently open countryside, and you’ll find big new homes sprouting from former farm fields. Meanwhile, the population of many counties and the state continues to decline.

This odd combination of declining population and accelerating sprawl is actually quite common across vast areas of New York. It’s the Upstate Paradox. And for the past two years, as I’ve crisscrossed the state seeking ideas for making our communities more economically and environmentally sustainable, no land use challenge, among the many in New York, seems more problematic.

Read More

Coyote response melodramatic, unfair

Right off the bat I would like to state that in no way does any child or person deserve to be attacked by any wild animal. However, the alarm that is being created over the recent coyote attacks in Westchester seems a bit on the dramatic side. I feel certain measures can be taken before the public feels the need to capture and destroy: a trait so very typical of the human species.

As a former animal control officer, I had to deal with just such issues. In a nutshell, humans have encroached on wildlife, not the other way around. They have learned to adapt and thrive among our encroachment and yet we punish them for having such an extraordinary capability. Attacks from a coyote can be the result of healthy as well as sick animals. More often than not, they are healthy animals hunting for food. Daytime sightings are common for animals that have become opportunistic feeders and have an incredible ability to adapt to their ever-changing surroundings. It makes sense for a wild animal to attempt to attack a small animal or child in an effort to feed themselves and, this time of year especially, their young.

Read More

End Of The Cheap ‘Made-In-China’ Era Sends Companies Scrambling For Options

SHANGHAI — Factory workers demanding better wages and working conditions are hastening the eventual end of an era of cheap costs that helped make southern coastal China the world’s factory floor.

A series of strikes over the past two months have been a rude wakeup call for the many foreign companies that depend on China’s low costs to compete overseas, from makers of Christmas trees to manufacturers of gadgets like the iPad.

Where once low-tech factories and scant wages were welcomed in a China eager to escape isolation and poverty, workers are now demanding a bigger share of the profits. The government, meanwhile, is pushing foreign companies to make investments in areas it believes will create greater wealth for China, like high technology.

Many companies are striving to stay profitable by shifting factories to cheaper areas farther inland or to other developing countries, and a few are even resuming production in the West.

Read More

Walking Away From Million-Dollar Mortgages

LOS ALTOS, Calif. — No need for tears, but the well-off are losing their master suites and saying goodbye to their wine cellars.
The housing bust that began among the working class in remote subdivisions and quickly progressed to the suburban middle class is striking the upper class in privileged enclaves like this one in Silicon Valley.

Whether it is their residence, a second home or a house bought as an investment, the rich have stopped paying the mortgage at a rate that greatly exceeds the rest of the population.

More than one in seven homeowners with loans in excess of a million dollars are seriously delinquent, according to data compiled for The New York Times by the real estate analytics firm CoreLogic.

By contrast, homeowners with less lavish housing are much more likely to keep writing checks to their lender. About one in 12 mortgages below the million-dollar mark is delinquent.

Read More