Sunday Snow

The Bushkill Creek as seen from my yard on Sunday, Jan. 20

My house. The snow was about six inches deep.

Went for a walk on Moon Haw Road. A cabin that belongs to one of my neighbors.

The view from Moon Haw as I walk back home. My house is at the foot of the small mountain ahead.

Engage Mid-Hudson: Bad for You, Bad for Me

 I sent this email to David Church, Orange County (New York) commissioner of planning, and Thomas Madden, planner for the Town of Greenburgh.  Church and Madden led an Agenda-21-inspired regional planning charade called "Engage Mid-Hudson." The plan is packed with lies and superstition.  Church and Madden are front men for Andrew Cuomo and Barack Obama, who are pushing for regional plans that aim to destroy Americans' living standards through ill-considered environmental regulation.  Cutting carbon emissions by some predetermined amount is based on ignorant, junk science advocated in places like The New York Times by badly educated "environmental scientists" who are ill equipped to evaluate the limits of their own training.  Ms. Muller is the public relations officer for the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, which funded 10 regional organizations with $10 million each to draft half-baked regional environmental plans. The Engage Mid-Hudson plan is here.

Dear Messrs. Church and Madden and Ms. Muller:

I am writing an article for The Lincoln Eagle, an 18,000-circulation monthly paper in Kingston, NY, concerning Engage Mid-Hudson’s regional green plan (executive summary attached) that was released in May.  I have a few questions for you.  Please address these concerns either in writing or by telephone:

(1)    “(The plan) was developed through a consensus-building process. “  At the initial meeting there were a number of protestors who voiced concerns about the plan. The plan does not address their concerns. At one point in the initial meeting you threatened to evict those who were disagreeing, although you rescinded that threat.  You did not appoint any who disagreed to officer positions, reserving your organization’s formal appointments  for connected retired IBM employees like Herb Oringel and other corporate-and-government insiders.  Although you ultimately were cordial in the initial meeting, the plan is misleading because it does not mention the sharp disagreement that was made evident to you and that you have failed to address.  This is also evident on your group’s website, which asks for reactions to the plan but does not permit a negative reaction. 

There is no consensus, and your plan’s claim that there is is a falsehood.  In particular Lynn Teger’s group Citizens for the Protection of Property Rights in the Mid Hudson Region was excluded from the process. If you wish to contact Ms. Teger, she can be reached at teger.lynn@gmail.com . If you do not wish to contact her for her group’s input, I would appreciate an explanation as to your selective choices as to who got to be invited to your charade.  IBMers, yes. Property rights activists, no.  There is no consensus because major opponents of your “non-binding”  plan were excluded.

(2)    You claim that carbon emissions cause global warming.  Yet, here is a graph of 5 million years of climate change, and current temperatures are well below those of five million years ago, when there were no human carbon emissions.  How is it possible that the climate is now cooler than it was before humans existed if climate warming  is anthropogenic?  If you do not know the answer, please explain why you claim to know the sources of climate change in your report, but really you, your consulting firm, Francis Murray, Andrew Cuomo,  climate scientists, and the environmental movement are ignorant about it.

(3)    You make the claim that you aim to “reduce the region’s overall contribution to climate change.” Please produce empirical evidence of any kind that specifically shows that the Catskills and Hudson Valley region make any significant contribution to climate change.  On what factual evidence other than hearsay from your consulting firm and the ignorant parties previously noted do you base this claim?

(4)    How much did you pay Ecology and Environment, Inc. to frame this plan?  The plan is a knock-off of other ICLEI-and-Agenda 21-based plans; a monkey could have copied it off other plans for free.  Please explain why 300 people who supposedly participated in this planning process came up with a model that already exists in hundreds of plans around the world.
 

(5)    In the 1930s, there were the dust bowl storms, which were worse than any storms occurring now.  Please provide me with evidence of this claim: “Critically, climate change can impact the frequency and severity of extreme weather events. The Mid-Hudson Region is already challenged by extreme weather events, particularly flooding, as evidenced in the recent hurricanes Irene and Sandy. “  Was Sandy the first hurricane or storm to affect the region? I think not.  In 1821 a hurricane made landfall in New York, flooding Manhattan to Canal Street. 

(6)    Your report lacks evidence of an understanding of cost-benefit tradeoffs.  Even if windstorms increase by 50%, is that a rationale to curtail living standards by 50%? Please clarify how you calculated the tradeoffs in the report’s many far-fetched, extreme claims, such as that there is a need to reduce automobile use or to force people in rural settings to move to urban ones.

(7)    You write that the region needs to “become radically less energy and fossil fuel intensive while strengthening the regional economy.” Please provide data or empirical evidence that the region needs to become less energy and fuel intensive.   There is no evidence that the regional economy can become stronger without fossil fuels. You implicitly make the claim that it is possible, but there is no empirical evidence that it is.  Please provide some.  You wild, unverified claims amount to superstition, not intelligent policy making.

(8)    The reduction in available farmland was caused by a massive building binge that was funded through sub-prime mortgage lending.  Earlier, the Federal Reserve Bank expanded the money supply over a century, in part to fund energy-intensive centralized agriculture, suburban development, and the automobile industry.  Could you please mention that Andrew Cuomo in 1993 had proposed expansion of home building to include sub-prime borrowers, which led to increased use of farmland for home building and ultimately harmed the financial industry? First, Cuomo advocated massive expansion of private home ownership.  Now he is attacking private home ownership.  Can you please reconcile these wild vacillations in the direction of Mr. Cuomo’s maelstrom?

(9)     You write that you aim to “foster economic development” and “make all growth smart growth.”  The term “smart growth" is vacuous and nonsensical.  Historically, economic growth occurs in the absence of government regulation.  I do not believe that you or your crew of IBM bureaucrats have the slightest idea as to how to foster economic growth.

The best way for New York to grow is to abolish Engage Mid-Hudson and fire three quarters of New York’s vampire government.  Would you please explain your track record in fostering economic development in a state that has lagged the national economic performance for decades? To be precise: What do you know about economic development?  Is Orange County successful in developing economically compared to North Dakota or other carbon energy-developing states?

(10) You make the claim that tourism can strengthen the area’s economy. Do you have any evidence that you know how to develop tourism?  You remind me of the film Roger and Me in which Flint, Michigan attempts to turn itself into a tourist mecca. They succeeded in further damaging their blighted economy--which was not as blighted as New York’s.

(11) Engage Mid-Hudson has no authority to pass legislation or regulation, yet you write in terms of targets. How can you implement targets if you have no authority?

Hurricane Irene: Stream Conditions at My House

So far the Bushkill Creek near Maltby Hollow is not as high as it was earlier this week, but the rain is coming down hard.  The state has a meter across the stream and it's still in the 2+ feet range. With one day, 4 inches rain I'll bet it goes over 3 feet by tomorrow.  Flooding here would require something over 9 feet, so there's nothing to worry about for us from this storm.  But wind is always a scare with all the trees around here. So far there hasn't been much wind, but I assume that will change by tomorrow morning.

Ang Lee's Taking Woodstock

I just saw Ang Lee's Taking Woodstock at the Tinker Street Cinema in Woodstock, NY. The concert, as the movie makes clear, was not in Woodstock but rather in White Lake, which is about 30 miles away. In real life Michael Lang, the then-young promoter of the Woodstock concert and often on horseback in the film, works out once in a while at the same gym I do, in the Emerson Inn and Spa. The film notes that its protagonist, Elliot Teichberg (aka Elliot Tiber), and Lang both grew up in Brooklyn not very far from my employer, Brooklyn College. I live about midway between Woodstock and where the concert actually was. During the summer of 1969 Jimi Hendrix lived about 4 miles away in Boiceville. He must have driven past my house, which was a small cabin then, when he drove to White Lake. I spent that summer as a janitor in a summer camp near Woodstock. I was only 15 years old and did not have the guts to ditch out and go to the concert. Even then I disliked crowds.

Taking Woodstock is a good movie. Ang Lee's direction, as usual, is crisp and sensitive. James Schamus's and Tiber's writing is excellent. All of the acting is very good. Demetri Martin as Elliot Teichberg is excellent as is Henry Goodman as Jake Teichberg. Imelda Staunton as Sonia Teichberg steals the show. She is great.

The film handles Teichberg's inner conflict about his homosexuality tastefully. But I thought that, like other recent movies about the Catskills such as Wendigo, it is unfair to the "locals". As the movie makes clear, there are at least two cultures in the Catskills. First, descendants of Dutch and Yankee settlers from the 18th and 19th centuries (for the most part the Catskills were settled almost as late as the American west because of a lengthy conflict and law suit about title to the Hardenburg patent, because the Livingstons' attempt to create a neo-feudal system by settling Scotch-Irish tenant farmers who were to sign three-generation leases failed, and because the Catskills are rocky, terrible farmland and have no natural resources except for their physical beauty, streams, wood and fish). Second, more recent immigrants from New York City and around the country.

An excellent book on Woodstock is the late Alf Evers' Woodstock: History of an American Town and his equally excellent Catskills: From Wilderness to Woodstock. The Catskills still has a remnant of true American individualism and there has always been an anti-establishment streak around here ever since the farmers used to dress as Indians and tar and feather the Livingstons' rent collectors. Ralph Radcliffe Whitehead and Hervey White selected Woodstock for an artists' colony in 1902 because of the area's physical beauty. Within a few years there was a division between the musicians, who moved to Maverick Road and the artists who remained at the original artists' colony on Byrdcliffe that is still there, where some of the earliest artists' lofts still exist. Of course, Woodstock is not White Lake, and the various cultures in Woodstock, the old artist culture which is still around, the weekenders, and descendants of the original townspeople have gotten along reasonably well, despite occasional resentments, and on occasion have married. The film depicts the people of White Lake as quick to exhibit prejudice, and although bigotry exists everywhere, I do not think that is a fair depiction of the Catskills culture, which I have loved for most of my life.

Declining Integrity Hurts Small Business

Alexandra, my wife's friend from Woodstock, just mentioned that many of the small businesses in the Hudson Valley/Catskills region are dishonest. In fact, it took me ten years to rehab my house in West Shokan in the Town of Olive, and almost as long to find honest craftsmen--an honest, competent plumber who knows how to design a heating system; a responsible electrician; a sober landscaper who does the work efficiently and intelligently; a mason who shows up and does a competent job quickly; a carpenter who finishes the job; a roofer who does not allow tar to spill over the side of the roof and knows that the problems are in the corners and details; and a snow plow guy who shows up punctually when it snows. Along the way I met a builder who took almost two years to re-work my bathroom (including an extension) and disappeared when I objected to the cost's becoming four times his original estimate; a landscaper who went way over budget and called me dishonest for objecting; another landscaper who left a new septic tank sitting on my front yard for almost a year; and a mason who never finished the job.

Without going into details excessively, I learned that requesting references chases away the worst perpetrators (several of them simply disappeared when I requested references) and to get all estimates in writing.

Although construction may be the worst venue, dishonesty seems to be common now. I have seen this in northern New York (Potsdam) as well, and I do not believe it to be a regional pattern. Rather, I suspect that ethics are on the decline.

That is unfortunate. Small business can offer a lot that big business cannot: good relationships, superior service, and understanding local needs. But the lure of the quick buck blinds too many of us from the traditional path of building a reputation through fair dealing. Unfortunately, big business has contributed to this moral climate. I do not believe that a business can become big by being dishonest. But once big, businesses too often utilize their market power in questionable ways. This should open up competitive avenues for small business. But instead of seeing the opportunity in quality, too many entrepreneurs see the opportunity in emulating corporate managers in seeking the quick buck.

The Catskills never seems to develop (which incidentally is fine with me now that my house is built and I have a good list of contractors). I think one reason is the failed moral attitude whereby money and short term gain are put before integrity. Show me an honest culture and I will show you a successful one.

Ashokan Farewell III

Here are some more photographs I took on January 14. It was 14 degrees F when I took them.

West Shokan Icicles

West Shokan, New York 1-4-2009

Emerson Inn and Spa, Mount Pleasant, New York.

Bill and Hillary Clinton at the Emerson Resort and Spa

I exercise at an exclusive hotel in the Catskills, about 15 minutes from my home, called the Emerson Resort and Spa. Dean Gitter, a visionary entrepreneur who aims to turn the central Catskills into a gaming center, developed the hotel. It is truly a pleasure to be able to work out in a world class hotel, which boasts a beautiful spa as well as a first class gym. The pleasure is enhanced by the Emerson's generosity in extending reduced rates to the good people of the Woodstock-Pine Hill region in the east-central Catskill Mountains.

On Tuesday I was working out at about 5:00 pm and was the only one in the gym. This is part of the joy of being a professor in August. The door opened and I spied someone who looked like Hillary Clinton. The door opened further and Bill Clinton stuck his head in the door. I said "hi" and he did not really respond. About 1/2 hour later as I was nearing the end of my nautilus circuit a secret service agent came in and looked over the weights. About a dozen secret service agents were standing in the lobby when I left.

I did not blog about this until Thursday morning as I did not want to disturb the Emerson's confidentiality. The Catskills badly need exposure of this kind.

I did not get a chance to speak to Bill Clinton, and I have thought for two days what I would have said if I did. This is it. America's relationship with China has not been adequately managed. There will be a serious danger of a nuclear war in the 22nd century. I do not know this for certain, nor does anyone else know or not know. But it is more than a slim chance.

In 2007 Business Network (bnet) quoted former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger (Kissinger was Secretary of State under President Richard M. Nixon.):

''The center of gravity of the world is moving from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The key countries of the world are mostly located in Asia, or will be in the next 50 years,'' he said in a speech about future Sino-U.S. relations.

"When the center of gravity moves from one region to another and another country suddenly becomes very powerful, what history teaches us is that conflict is inevitable," he added.

The country Kissinger is describing is China. Because of today's important concerns about the Middle East and terrorism, the management of the Chinese relationship has been overlooked. The current Olympics highlights Chinese growth.

Kissinger adds concerning Chinese growth:

"There is nothing we can do about it, there is nothing we can do to prevent it, there is nothing we should do to prevent it."

I am fairly good at timing the stock market, and not too many people can say that. Dr. Kissinger has a point. I cannot prove it, but I do believe that there is a risk of nuclear war with China in the 22nd century IF we do not begin to manage the relationship with China more intelligently.

I would have urged President Clinton to make use of contact that he has with Chinese officials to educate them as to the advantage of the path of economic growth, free trade, and peace. The country that innovates fastest is the one that shows that it is best, not the country that displays the greatest military power. David Ricardo offers the Chinese a model that they have not contemplated sufficiently in their history.

President Clinton, please tell the Chinese leadership that a path of freedom, free trade and intellectual expression, as opposed to government control of "salt and iron" and military power, will prove Chinese excellence. I am certain that Mr. Clinton will have the opportunity to interact with high-level Chinese officials in the coming years. He can make an incalculable contribution to America's future by helping the Chinese to conceptualize the path to ascendancy.

Jobs for Ulster County

Lance Matteson is president of the Ulster County Development Corp. and his job is to find Ulster County jobs. Recently, County Legislature Minority Leader Glen Noonan called Matteson’s job oxymoronic. But sustainable economic development is achievable. To create jobs, Ulster County needs to break bad habits. Like New York State as a whole, too much of Ulster County’s jobs strategy has depended on large-scale government funding. These include the $117 million Woodland Pond development in New Paltz, the $1 million Kings Highway project and the $8 million Solar Energy Consortium that depends on federal and state funding. These are worthy projects. But a better and more sustainable approach would be a micro-jobs strategy. The entrepreneurial spirit of the County’s hard working and creative citizens could be supported through encouraging loans and tax breaks to entrepreneurial business start ups rather than to big developers.

Capitalizing on Ulster County’s cultural and natural treasures requires creativity that builds on institutional and human capital. Museums, resorts and support for the arts are some of the directions a jobs strategy might take that amplify the County’s strengths. We can all imagine arts centers, Catskill museums and new IBMs reappearing in Kingston. But big ideas are not enough. In corporate America, for every product idea that succeeds, seven fail. Why should Ulster County be different? Many small ideas offer a better and more sustainable strategy than a few big ones rigidly controlled. Why focus on home run sluggers when Ulster County can encourage many base hitters?

Of all of Ulster County’s wonderful assets, its most important is its hardworking, entrepreneurial and imaginative citizenry. The best jobs strategy would not only amplify their skills and human capital, but would build on their imagination through a technique known as micro finance. Micro finance is a way to rebalance the economy’s bias toward big developers, large corporations and big banks back to individuals. It is the individual that made America great, not big business. What we remember as the biggest firms, Standard Oil (Exxon), McDonald’s and Dell Computer, started as ideas that were funded through personal saving. Exxon was founded by John D. Rockefeller, who in three years as an accounting clerk was able to save one year’s salary and bought his first store in Cleveland. McDonald’s was started by the McDonald brothers who closed their hot dog stand to open the first scientific-management designed restaurant. Dell Computer was started by a college student named Michael Dell. But in the past six decades New York has sacrificed its entrepreneurial spirit to big developers and state eminent domain schemes. High taxes discourage private citizens from saving the capital they need. And the capital is transferred to big firms like Bear Stearns that often squander it. Howard Schultz, born in Brooklyn, moved to Seattle to make Starbucks a great firm.

For too long New York State has relied on government solutions to economic problems. The result has been a consistent pattern of economic decline. The reliance on big government development comes from the State’s early and ambitious adoption of the Progressive ideas of Theodore Roosevelt, Al Smith and Robert Moses. More than other states, New York has relied on private use eminent domain, high taxes and subsidies to big business. The Progressive model has failed.

New York State’s population has grown by a 30 percent over the past 40 years and since the 1970s much of that growth is due to immigration. In contrast, the US population has doubled, a growth rate three times that of New York’s. In the post-World War II period, New York has lead the nation in both the numbers of people leaving the state and in the number of private use eminent domain actions taken. Upstate New York has become a ghost land of deserted factories and impoverished but hard working citizens while New York has consistently ranked among the top three states in taxation.

The State has relied on a flawed model of urban renewal and economic development that involves public subsidies to large projects. The Progressive model that Al Smith and Robert Moses pioneered assumed that the chief problem confronting society was to replace individual initiative with government intervention. New York advocated higher taxes, greater degrees of regulation and greater government involvement in the economy.

Among the most important of the policies replacing individual initiative with large institutions have been those that inhibit individual capital formation, savings, by private individuals. But private savings is how most of the nation’s important businesses, from Standard Oil to Dell Computer, have been formed. A jobs formation strategy ought to focus on re-orienting banks and public policies away from taxation and toward financing entrepreneurial start ups. This would involve encouraging banks and other lenders to finance and support start ups within Ulster County.

Economic growth comes not from attracting large businesses into Ulster County, but from creating conditions whereby Ulster County’s entrepreneurial, academic, artistic and idealistic spirit can best express itself. This can be done by re-balancing access to credit from big developers to small business and start-up entrepreneurs.
Microfinance is the idea that financial institutions can be encouraged, supported or created to provide financial services to entrepreneurs that enhance their ability to start businesses. The recent fiasco in the national credit market suggests that financial insitutions have lacked competence in assessing the best credit risks. They have tended to exclude small borrowers and taken reckless gambles that have ended up requiring public support. The scorning of entrepreneurial start ups by the nation’s financial institutions has caused the inefficient allocation of financing away from entrepreneurs toward real estate, big box retail and hedge funds.

A meaningful jobs strategy would start with Ulster County’s development of a loan guarantee program, much like student loans, whereby banks would be encouraged to lend to entrepreneurs along with arrangement for tax abatements and refunds for individuals who start businesses.

Bushkill Creek--My Backyard--April 10, 2008

Home Sweet Home April 10, 2008

Town of Olive, Ulster County, NY, April 10, 2008