Scott Harrington Interviews Langbert and Marnell

Lincoln Eagle publisher Mike Marnell and I appeared on Scott Harrington's Speak Out show on WKNY in Kingston, NY.  It aired on March 29, 2014. The discussion concerned education and politics.  Scott's a great guy, and we had a ball.

The Science Is Settled: What's Interesting about the American Media Is What It Doesn't Talk About

I was privileged this past Saturday to join Lincoln Eagle publisher Mike Marnell on Scott Harrington's Speak Out show on WKNY, Kingston, NY.  We discussed education and politics; I posted the interview here.  WKNY is a great local music station that plays close-to-nonstop soft rock.  Since they had me on the air, I've been listening to their programming. The soft-classic rock format is great, but the station is an affiliate of ABC News.  As a result, I've inadvertently heard a few of the ABC newscasts, which breaks one of my personal moral rules: Do not listen to the media.  Most of what ABC discusses is irrelevant.  What caught my attention was their blaring claim: "The debate is settled: There is global warming." Well, that's all well and good because there has been a global warming for the past 10,000 years, since the last Ice Age, as the chart below shows.

As I mentioned on the radio show, the useful information to be gained from listening to the media is to learn what it doesn't talk about.

Saratoga Says No to Environmental Extremism

I submitted this piece to the Lincoln Eagle this morning. 

Saratoga Says No to Environmental Extremism

Mitchell Langbert

David Chew, a Saratoga freedom fighter, has flung himself into the Agenda 21 maelstrom, and he aims to show Kingston citizens how to resist Mayor Gallo's assaults on your freedom, which include Gallo's Block by Blockheads program and his comprehensive plan now discussed in City Hall under the chairmanship of Alderman at Large James Noble.  

Chew says that, like Saratoga's comprehensive plans, Gallo's comprehensive plan links with Gov. Andrew Cuomo's Cleaner Greener Communities regionalization scheme.  Gov. Cuomo's scheme, which he has funded through the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority to the tune of $100 million, aims to force you to drive a smaller car and live in a smaller home.  It aims to end the American tradition of electing the officials who govern you, replacing local democracy with regional soviets.  

Chew believes that Saratoga County is a microcosm of what is happening nationally, including in Kingston.  With just under 27,000 in population, Saratoga Springs is about the same size as Kingston.  Just as, under Alderman Noble's leadership, Kingston is discussing adoption of a comprehensive plan linked to the Cleaner Greener Communities program, so has Saratoga Springs adopted one, and Saratoga County is following with its own.   

Chew says that Saratoga Springs has commissioned a 15-member comprehensive planning committee to review and update the city’s present plan.  The Saratoga Springs Comprehensive Planning Committee is stacked with insiders with extremist environmentalist agendas.  A third of the planning committee seats have gone to members of a radical environmental organization, Sustainable Saratoga.   “Sustainable Saratoga submitted an 11-page position paper that contained extreme ideas that are receiving undue attention from the paid consulting firm and the CPC members," Chew says. 

Chew says that another organization, Saratoga Preserving Land and Nature (PLAN), has had undue influence in the comprehensive planning process.  Saratoga PLAN is the local affiliate of the national Land Trust Alliance, and it has an organization member sitting on the comprehensive plan committee. The land trust is in the business of working with federal agencies offering grants and land restriction programs tied to crippling conservation easement contracts, sale of private property development rights, and the acquisition of lands for land-use-management purposes.  The land trusts' stock-in-trade is environmental extremism.   

Alderman Noble's son, Steve Noble, is chair of the Kingston Land Trust, which is listed as a local land trust on the website of the national Land Trust Alliance, the same national organization to which Saratoga Springs PLAN belongs.  As well, Julie Noble is on the comprehensive planning board along with Alderman Noble.  Julie bills herself as an environmental educator.  The Lincoln Eagle has called Alderman Noble for comment.

Chew points out that Saratoga's politicians are increasingly overt about transfer of home rule and local power to regional authorities.  In our region the regional soviet to whom Gov. Cuomo and Mayor Gallo aim to transfer political power is Engage Mid-Hudson; in the Capital Region Cuomo's soviet is called the Sustainable Capital Region. Both key off Agenda 21.  In the Capital Region, "The politicians, including 23 town supervisors, are talking openly of transferring power. The corruption is overt; the message has been reiterated in their minds for many years," says Chew.   

On July 11 and July 15 Chew led two groups of local freedom fighters to comprehensive planning meetings.  On July 11, 25 to 30 local freedom fighters showed up at the comprehensive plan meeting, overwhelming the mere dozen of green insiders.  On July 15 four local freedom fighters appeared, but given that ten green insiders were again present, the freedom fighters constituted nearly a third of those present.  

John Anthony has proposed a sustainable freedom pledge that he suggests all city planners and members of comprehensive plan committees sign.  To make a sustainable freedom pledge, elected officials make a public commitment to maintaining private property rights--the source of your standard of living.  Is Mayor Gallo willing to defend your right to live in your home? 

Some of the members of the Kingston Comprehensive Plan Committee who should sign a sustainable freedom oath are as follows:  James Noble, Julie Noble, Suzanne Cahill, Kyla Haber, Alderwoman Deborah Brown, Alderwoman Mary Ann Mills, Dennis Doyle, Kevin Gilfeather, Toni Roser, Ralph Swenson, Michael Schupp, and Judith Hansen.

Robin Yess to Ulster County Legislature: Why No Action on Golden Hill?

TO: Ulster County Legislators

Good evening. Sorry to say – it’s me again.

While I am aware that many of you were not members of the Legislature when the attached report was presented, a fair share of you were. Whether you were or you weren’t, I suggest that you read the attached report and meeting minutes.

In the spring of 2007, Chairman of the Legislature Dave Donaldson authorized the formation of the Blue Ribbon Health Care Services Advisory Panel to address the issues surrounding Golden Hill Health Care Center, a county-run nursing home.  A group of volunteer citizens including Steve Kelley, Anthony Marmo, Francoise Dunefsky, and Peter Roberts spent more than a year researching the solutions for Golden Hill Health Care Center and submitted a written report in July 2008 and formally presented it to the Health Services committee in September 2008. Their findings after more than a year of work suggested first that “The Committee recommends transfer of the 280 nursing home beds at Golden Hill from County ownership to private ownership.”

Also in the Executive Summary of the report dated July 2008 – “Timely consideration by the Legislature will ensure an orderly transition from an outdated facility in need of major costly repair and requiring annual taxpayer subsidies, to new state of the art facilities with the same total bed component, providing better geographic access, without additional cost to taxpayers.”

So I must ask what did the Democrat-controlled Legislature do with this report that took a year of meetings and volunteer time to pull together? Could it be that because the report recommended privatization that Chairman Donaldson and Health Services Committee Chair Rob Parete decided the best course of action is no action at all because too many union jobs exist at Golden Hill? From July 2008 when the report was released until the end of the Legislative session in December of 2009 no action at all was taken.

So now here we are more than three years after this report was submitted and more than four years after the Committee first met and we are no further ahead. You have made no decisions, made no plan for repairs, and made no plan for reducing the taxpayer subsidy.

I would like to ask every Legislator who was serving during the 2008/2009 term and who continues to serve today and all current Legislators  – what do you intend to do to address the problems outlined in this report and the subsequent report from November 2010 titled the Ulster County Golden Hill Special Task Force Report?

What are you going to do now besides vote on a nonsense resolution (#197) that makes only a statement about keeping Golden Hill, but does nothing to address any of the problems?

Read the reports and please, make some decisions that result in taking action!

Robin Vaccai Yess, CFP

CERTIFIED DIVORCE FINANCIAL ANALYST

Fee-Only Financial Consulting

181 Church Street, Suite 101

Poughkeepsie NY 12601

(845) 471-0764

www.robinyess.com

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Coprolite: A Good Vocabulary Word to Describe Congressman Maurice Hinchey

I found a good vocabulary word to describe Congressman Maurice Hinchey.

cop·ro·lite

   [kop-ruh-lahyt] 

–noun

a stony mass consisting of fossilized fecal matter of animals.

Taking Ideology out of Your Child's Education

The following article "Taking Ideology Out of Your Child's Education" appears in the Memorial Day issue of the Lincoln Eagle, a Kingston, NY penny saver.  Mike Marnell, the Eagle's crusading editor, does an excellent job in putting it together. It is the only freedom oriented paper in the area, as far as I know.  It does not have a website but it reaches at least several thousand people. 

Taking Ideology Out of Your Child’s Education

Mitchell Langbert, Ph.D.*

When I attended high school in New York City, my class was required to read Karl Marx's "Communist Manifesto."  But we were not assigned to read any alternative view, such as Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations or Friedrich A. Hayek’s Road to Serfdom.  Communism was extolled, freedom disparaged.  I was recently speaking to a friend whose son graduated from a high school in this region and she told me that the emphasis on Marxism has not changed one bit.  Her son had not been assigned any book that describes free market economics or how and why free markets work better than government-controlled ones.  However, he had been assigned to read Marx and his teacher repeatedly preached in favor of socialism. 

The debate between people who believe in government control and those who believe in freedom is not new.  However, there are many myths not only about the subject but about its history.  The myths come from relentless efforts by advocates of government control to spin the debate. This has led to a takeover of the educational system by left-wing ideologues.  Thus, what students learn in public schools is often socialist propaganda and more often than not ignorant nonsense.

For example, the claim that adding layers of government or regulation is "progressive" is not historically true.  Yet, the students are told that it is.  In fact, the Roman Empire was based on a state-controlled, mixed economy like that advocated by today’s "progressives." What happened to Rome?   

In modern times, the idea of free markets originated out of a debate that had been initiated by advocates of government authority and regulation.  The mercantilists, such as Lord Shaftesbury and David Hume, advocated the use of government force to open markets, print money and regulate trade. Adam Smith responded to the mercantilists' "progressive", state-based ideas later in the 18th century.  Free markets are progressive, not socialism.  Advocates of monetary expansion to stimulate growth, such as David Hume, wrote before the advocates of the gold standard and zero inflation.

This was true in American history.  The first socialist in the history of US government was the first man to conceive of our Constitution, Alexander Hamilton.  Hamilton favored the use of paper money to expand the economy; government owned manufacturing; a central bank, the ancestor to today's Federal Reserve Bank; the use of subsidies to stimulate shipping; and taxes to fund government debt.  The problem with Hamilton's ideas was in part that they had led to hyper-inflation during the earlier Revolutionary War.  The central bank led to the earliest examples of corrupt speculation, and the stock of Hamilton's First Bank was the object of among the earliest financial bubbles in American history.  The government owned manufacturing firm he tried to start was associated with the corrupt bank stock speculation.  Hamilton’s Keynesian ideas (140 years before Keynes) failed.

In reaction to Hamilton's big government, "progressive" ideas, Jefferson, winning Hamilton's former ally, James Madison, formed the Democratic Republican Party.   The response to the big government ideas of Hamilton and his Federalist Party was to emphasize freedom.  This reached a crescendo in the 1830s, when Andrew Jackson founded the Democratic Party and abolished central banking, putting the US on a gold standard.  The most rapid growth in American history occurred during the 80 years that there was no central bank and money was based on the bi-metallic and then the gold standard.  Establishment of the Federal Reserve Bank in the 20^th century has led to slowed growth and stagnant real hourly wages.  You are poorer as a result of increasing government involvement in the economy. Much poorer.

The problem with government intervention is that it didn't work. But that’s not what students are taught in school.  

The examples of government failure get worse, though, when you fast forward in time to the early twentieth century.  The hyper-expansion of communism in Russia, China, Cuba, North Korea and elsewhere led to economic retardation and mass murder.  State-dominated economies were utter failures, and repeatedly so.  They failed so frequently and so thoroughly that one would think that anyone seriously studying them in universities would have tried to understand why they failed.  Yet, university professors throughout the communist era, until the 1980s, uniformly claimed that the performance of the Soviet economy exceeded that of the United States.  In other words, virtually 100% of university economic and social science departments ignored reality; preached ideological propaganda in favor of socialism; and excluded anyone who disagreed. 

When the Soviet Union fell in the late 1980s for the very reasons that the critics of socialism such as Ludwig von Mises and Frierich von Hayek had predicted in the 1920s to 1940s, you might think that university social scientists might have reconsidered their dogmatic, religious commitment to socialism. But that is not so.  The intolerance of anyone who disagrees with now obviously failed socialist and big government dogma has become even more extreme in universities.  Any academic who disagrees with the left is slandered and drummed out of universities.

Thus, it is not surprising that the local high schools are purveyors of ideological dogma. Having been educated by ignorant ideologues in universities, the teachers have been trained to be ideologues.

Parents have serious reason to be concerned about their children’s’ education.  The schools today are preaching socialism more aggressively than ever, even though historically socialist policies have repeatedly failed.  In order to counteract this tendency parents might consider taking the following steps:

1. Tell your school board that if the students are reading Karl Marx, they should also be reading Adam Smith.  If they are not reading Karl Marx, they should be reading Adam Smith anyway.

2. Ask you children for feedback about the claims being made by social studies teachers.  If the teachers are advocating socialism, they are incompetent.  If the school is encouraging the teachers to do so, the school board needs to be replaced.

3. Read your children’s social studies text books.  One parent told me that their child’s textbook’s discussion of the Second World War consisted of five pages on the internment of the Japanese (a terrible misdeed) and only one page on the war itself.  That is propaganda. It is not education.

Are your children being told of the advantages of freedom, or are they being propagandized as to the advantages of socialism?  I have worked in higher education for nearly twenty years.  I have repeatedly seen students who have been indoctrinated into failed, socialistic ideas in their primary educations.  I can undo some of the damage done by elementary and high school teachers, who in turn have been brainwashed by ideologues in universities.  You can undo some as well.

*Mitchell Langbert, Ph.D. is a member of the Town of Olive Republican Committee and is associate professor of business at Brooklyn College, CUNY.  He blogs at http://www.mitchell-langbert.blogspot.com.

Kingston New York Tea Party Meeting

Monday January 11. The Kingston, New York Tea Party organization headed by Tom Santopietro met to exchange ideas this evening. I had attended a previous meeting in December but was unable to stay for more than a few minutes. The meeting was productive. It was held in the Town of Ulster Town Hall in Lake Katrine, two short left turns off Route 209.

Overall, I would call the meeting a marked success. Between thirty and fifty people were present. For a cold Hudson Valley January evening that is an achievement. I drove there from the Town of Olive, about 25 miles away.

The initiatives of the Tea Party are worthwhile. Several demonstrations in Washington and elsewhere were discussed, and there was discussion of George Phillips's announcement-of-candidacy for Congress meeting this Thursday. Phillips will be initiating a second candidacy against knucklehead-incumbent Maurice Hinchey.

My chief concern about the Tea Party movement is the likelihood of its cooptation by (a) Progressive or Rockefeller Republican types and/or (b) Democratic Party infiltrators. The Republican Party in New York has so far ignored the Tea Party. In appointing Edward F. Cox chair of the state committee the party has confirmed its self-destructive commitment to the Wall Street Republicanism of Newt Gingrich, Theodore Roosevelt and Nelson Rockefeller. I have several times contacted Cox without any kind of response to my inquiries.

I would like to encourage the Tea Party movement to begin to think about concerted infiltration of the Republican Committees at the town, county and state levels. This takes time but it would seem the best way to overthrow the current commitment to special interest corruption, to the failed education system and to big government.

One of the most interesting points of the evening was the discussion of a committee to try to influence public education in a more productive direction. This is a subject of importance to me and I offered a few suggestions.

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.