Column by Adrian Kuzminski for November 2, 2018 Gerrymandering Takes Away Our Right To Representation The most remarkable thing I’ve seen in this year’s midterm election campaigns is Chad McEvoy’s op-ed in the New York Times. The headline says it all: “If I win my district, I’ll get rid of it.” That’s the 101st Assembly District, a model of gerrymandering, which snakes in a narrow strip from New Hartford near Utica through part of Otsego county to the Hudson Valley.…
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Columns - Page 107
Column by Mike Zagata for November 2, 2018. Is Upstate Downbeat? Blame Slow Recovery According to a newly released report from the Empire Center for Public Policy, “New York’s Uneven Economic Recovery: A Tale of Two States,” those of us who live in Upstate New York escaped the real estate/housing bubble that led to the economic crash in 2008. Why? Because our economy was so bad that we didn’t experience a bubble like the rest of the country. How’s that…
Column by Mike Zagata for October 26, 2018. Science Can Be Political Tool, And Even Worse, Up For Sale I read with interest and admiration the article in last week’s paper about the different kinds of “truth.” Objective truth is the “truth” that is supported by fact. Subjective “truth” is what circumstances point toward or what we want, based on the information we have at our disposal, to believe. The Senate confirmation hearings for judge, now justice, Kavanaugh were used…
Column by Adrian Kuzminski for October 19, 2018 If We Can’t Agree On Basis Of Truth, Nation In Trouble In any war, as the saying goes, truth is the first casualty. That’s become the case, unfortunately, in the war of the sexes as well. It’s turned into a war because the abiding injustice women have suffered from men resists resolution through institutions mostly created and sustained by men. What counts as evidence, or sincerity, or credibility may have more to…
Column by Mike Zagata for October 12, 2018 Natural-Gas Issue Is A Ruse; Real Intention Is No Growth Apparently something happened to The Professor during her youth to cause her to come forward during the confirmation process for The Supreme Court Justice, but we’ll never know for sure exactly what happened, nor will we know who was responsible. That wasn’t the intended outcome of the public spectacle we’ve been subjected to. The intended outcome was to delay the confirmation process…
Column by Adrian Kuzminski, October 5, 2018. Natural Gas Is A Bad Investment It’s obvious we have to get off fossil fuels, yet we keep hearing that fossil fuels – natural gas in particular – are essential to local economic growth. While “solar and wind would be a viable source for electric,” Otsego Now CEO Jody Zakrevsky wrote in The Freemans Journal & Hometown Oneonta in the Aug. 30-31 editions, “it (the solar and wind source) does not currently provide…
Column by Mike Zagata, September 28, 2018 New York Not So Great Lately, Either ‘America was never that great.” That’s an amazing quote from a man who’s had nothing but opportunity his entire life. Yes, he’s made the most of it, but that’s not the point. The point is that, because America was great, he had the opportunity to succeed. Before moving to the point of this article, I thought it might be useful to look at the media via…
Column by Adrian Kuzminski, Friday, September 21, 2018 Let’s Build On Sustainable Assets, Not Unsustainable Liabilities Otsego County needs a new direction for energy and economic development. An important step to that end was taken last week when the county board’s Intergovernmental Affairs Committee endorsed the idea of setting up an energy and economic development task force. Kudos to them! A county-wide task force would give us two things we don’t have now: long-term economic planning and a wide range…
Column by Adrian Kuzminski, September 7, 2018 THE GOAL: ECONOMIC, POLITICAL FREEDOM Populism As American As Apple Pie Ever since the last presidential election the words “populist” and “populism” have been widely bandied about, mostly as pejorative terms. A populist politician, we often hear, is a demagogue who wins votes by inflaming the resentments and emotions of ordinary people at the expense of rational thought. Those who fall prey to populism are no more to be trusted, critics suggest, than…
Column by Mike Zagata, August 31, 2018 Rising To The Fly On Natural Gas One of the main reasons that local brook trout don’t get very big is that they tend to rise to and take the first dry fly that is drifted over them. During my professional career, I have avoided “rising to the fly,” but my fellow columnist, Adrian Kuzminski, in his Aug. 23-24, 2018 article, floated one that was just too tempting. He was commenting on my…