Happy New Year. It’s only the beginning of a new adventure in this art of living. As we have been told many times, Sept. 11 has changed our lives forever. If nothing else it has made us realize the importance of the fortunate circumstance that allowed us to be born and live in this wonderful country. We will seize life with both hands and do whatever is necessary to be done to protect, defend and preserve our freedoms forever.

Will wonders never cease! Hollywood now wants to help the war effort. Tinseltown deviates via a turn toward the middle from the far left and may even produce scripts with the triumph of good over evil and family type movies. The immoral trash and socialist propaganda up to now, have not changed the basic goodness in the hearts of most Americans in spite of the intense effort to do so. Now what is needed is to have the TV industry and the press to follow suit and cooperate in order to help our leaders defeat the forces of terrorism. This can be achieved without sacrificing our basic rights under the Constitution. The weak links in the chain are our public schools and many liberal colleges that fail to meet the fundamentals for good citizenship and the highest standards of true character development. Some local schools have even prevented our US service recruiters from talking to the students. What many do not seem to understand is that the present war we are engaged in is far different from any previous one. It may go on for years and we must be prepared to meet and beat all threats, both foreign and domestic. This means that sacrifices must be made for the common good such as the usual salary demands, excesses in unnecessary spending, do nothing jobs, excessive borrowing for non-essentials in all public activities including educational ones.

Our Rensselaer Co. legislators recently made the usual magnanimous gesture of voting to distribute 1.37 million dollars collected by the County this year from people who paid a mortgage tax on money borrowed to buy a home (new or used) or refinanced a piece of property. The tax is ½% of the amount borrowed, imposed for no special reason or purpose. It looked like a source of "easy revenue" to our officials and lawmakers. This mortgage tax money is to be distributed to 22 cities, towns and villages in the County. This is just another tax together with sales taxes, January taxes, school taxes, etc. The false notion that this is "found" money for which they are attempting to take credit is unfounded. The threat by some that they are holding the line by not raising another tax, Real Estate for instance, is an insult to the intelligence of the public. The old canard that "state aid" will hold down property taxes has outlived its usefulness. All taxes are paid by you, Mr. and Mrs. Taxpayer. Sorry, there is no Santa Claus that is going to take care of you. Even the lottery is a million to one shot and is basically a taker not a giver. All citizens know that they must support our government and our country. The problem is that excesses have been allowed to accumulate over the years through political chicanery, selfishness and greed to the point where they supercede the basic need.

Shark Tank:

Economics lesson: Lightning strikes a power transformer about 100 feet from the systems room for a large school district, reports this tech support pilot fish working there.

"There is no surge protection of any king on the line, so the bolt comes through and fries a couple of servers, disk drives, multiplexers and ancillary equipment, says the fish.

The whole system is very, very dead for more than a week until new hardware is installed. "No one in the school district could do accounting, payroll or student record data entry," fish says, "The actual cost of fixing it was enormous, but insurance picked up most of it."

With the new hardware up and running, district’s IT boss puts in a proposal for surge protection and UPSs to keep it that way.

And the school board, in its infinite wisdom says … no.

"It’ll save money if we just keep up the insurance policy and skip the cost of protection," board tells IT boss.

"What about the cost of the downtime?" IT boss asks.

Not to worry, says board. "Because we’re a school district, the taxpayers cover the cost of the labor, so that’s not an expense we need to worry about."

A Colorado Springs, Colo., school district says it did the right thing when it suspended 6 year old Seamus Morris under the school’s zero tolerance drug policy. The drug? Lemon drops. Taylor Elementary School administrators called an ambulance after a teacher saw the boy give another student some candy, which was a brand teachers didn’t recognize. "It was not something you would purchase in a grocery store," a district spokesman said. "It was from a health-food store." A spokesman for St. Claire’s Lemon Tarts, however, noted that the candy is indeed sold in Colorado’s largest grocery store chain. School officials were not impressed, and not only upheld the half-day suspension, but told the boy’s mother that a child who brings candy to school is comparable to a teen who take a gun to school.

We received this letter in response to an article in the November Taxpayer News. - Editor

Bob Hennigan
President, East Greenbush School Board
10 Matterhorn Drive
Wynantskill, NY 12198

Dear RCTA:

I’m writing to express my strong concerns with your article entitled "Let’s Skin a Cat" included in the November 2000 issue of the Taxpayer News. Specifically, I take issue with your inaccurate and misleading characterization of my comments regarding the cat dissection issue. You were either unaware of the facts or choose to deliberately misrepresent them. Either is unacceptable. For the record, the facts are as follows:

• I did receive 25 calls on the cat issue. What you neglect to mention is that: those calls were from one individual; that individual is not a constituent (they don’t live in the school district); and, most importantly, those calls were made to me at my place of employment (NYS Division of the Budget).

• Seven calls were made in one day and the caller harassed my secretary and continued to make repeated calls after being told to call the school office.

• As an organization that purports to represent the interests of taxpayers, I’m sure that you understand that I very strongly believe, as an employee of the State of New York (with my salary paid by the taxpayers), that it would be inappropriate to conduct personal business during work hours. In fact, I would consider such activity as equivalent as stealing from the taxpayers.

• I did say that "I’m incredibly busy and don’t appreciate it." What I was referring to was that I was incredibly busy at work (that point was clearly made in my public comments) and didn’t appreciate the harassment of my secretary (that was also made clear in my public comments).

• I take my job for the people of New York State very seriously. At the time those calls were made my office was (and continues to be) "very busy" preparing the 2002-03 Executive Budget. In addition, during that period we were consumed with dealing with the many financial issues related to the response to and impact of the 9/11 disaster – literally on a daily basis.

• Le me assure you that I am never "too busy" to listen to my constituents. However, I do not do that during my hours as a taxpayer paid employee of New York State. In fact, I along with other board members and administrators recently met with a group of constituents on the cat dissection issue. I do not "label the concerns of the public a distraction" and have always been available after work hours to discuss any issues with my constituents.

In closing, I ask that you respond to this letter and print a clarification of the actual facts of my statements in the December issue of your newsletter – to correct the misleading and unfairly critical "spin" that was included in the November issue. It is simply the right thing to do.

As an elected official, I expect to be held accountable for my actions and decisions. I don’t expect cheap shots that question my commitment to those voters who have placed their trust in me. I look forward to your quick response.

Sincerely,

Bob Hennigan

RCTA response

Dear Mr. Hennigan:

We are in receipt of your letter (no date) concerning your strong concerns. It is immediately apparent that you sent the letter to the wrong publication as all the quotations used were taken from The Independent. The Taxpayer News merely used the quotations to point up the incredible naivete of the board members. The rest of the letter patting yourself on the back for your work ethic and stating the importance of your State job is irrelevant to the cat dissection issue.

The Editorial Board

An article in TU Dec 7, (Pearl Harbor day – of all days), says "New York Congressional Delegation had to fight to keep the Watervliet Arsenal afloat, bolstered by a $19 million allotment in the defense appropriations bill." This was attended by Senators Hillary Clinton and Charles Schumer. Back in 1991 among President Clinton’s first programs was his "economic package" which called for drastic cuts in defense spending which included the demise of the Watervliet Arsenal, the Plattsburgh Air Force Base, Brooklyn Naval Facilities, and the Rome, NY, air base. By contrast, the drastic plan called for generous increases in domestic spending for social grants, huge education expenditures of all kinds and more "help" for immigrants and those who had trouble with our English language. All this coupled with large tax increases. At the time many New Yorkers felt it unwise to use such draconian methods to reduce our defense facilities. As it turned out the conservatives including the RCTA were correct. Who do you think were among the first to promote and then vote for this sad legislation? None other than the same gang of left-wingers who now claim to be patriotic citizens. Ted "the swimmer" Kennedy, Charles Schumer, Mike McNulty, Barney Frank, and the whole tribe. If Hillary were able to, she would automatically join this crowd. They are now trying to revive the Arsenal with large appropriations. They got rid of skilled craftsmen and crippled the ability of the plant to be used effectively at short notice and perhaps never without a lot of money and effort. Critical time as been lost forever. These hypocrites were voted to represent us in Congress.

Our economic circumstances are becoming more serious as noted by those who "keep up" on things. Many large and small companies have had to reduce their work force; some have closed forever including Garden Way and several others.

Did it ever occur to those feeding at public largess that it is becoming more difficult for those productive people in private employment to make ends meet? It is amazing that some public "workers" are actually demanding and getting raises at this time. Do they read the papers? Do they consider themselves good citizens, particularly at this time of National stress and actual disaster?

Many good people in public service are to be commended as in the NYC tragedy. The pencil pushers and opportunists of the political stripe who see a job as merely an easy ride to retirement seem to have a preclusion from being part of the fiber and consciousness of true citizenship. It’s let George do it.

From the Washington Times, October 23, 2001

"New York City Firefighter Michael Moran said [yesterday] that Sen. Hillary [Rodham] Clinton was jeered and booed by thousands gathered at the Concert for New York because of the ‘claptrap that comes out of her mouth!’" Matt Drudge reports.

"The 13-year-veteran firefighter – whose brother, Battalion Chief John Moran, was one of 12 members of Ladder 3 lost in the World Trade Center disaster – spoke out on Rush Limbaugh’s radio program," Mr. Drudge wrote yesterday at his Web site, www.drudgereport.com.

"’She wants to spew her nonsense – she doesn’t believe the things she says,’ Moran said of the former first lady. ‘She says what she believes will work in the moment. I don’t think there has ever been a sincere word that has ever come out of her mouth.’"

Sen. Patrick Leahy, D - VT, winds up on the wrong side of every issue. He now opposes the nomination of Miguel Estrada for the US Court of Appeals for DC. He also objects to NYS for producing more maple syrup than Vermont.

Schodack Resident

Sen. Chuck Schumer is running around all over the place taking care of the helpless. He’s actually doing the work of two men – Laurel and Hardy.

Rensselaer Resident

In the vicinity of the East Greenbush Post Office some crows are starting to gather. In the meantime, Troy City officials are making arrangements to use non-lethal methods to scare away thousands of the useless critters away from downtown and the Green Island Bridge. I wonder where they’ll gather next.

East Greenbush Resident

RCTA
PO Box 145
East Greenbush, NY 12061

www.capitalpost.com/rc/rcta.html

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