Year: 1970

I continue to remain steadfast that I continue to offer an important public service by my media sourced database which is the ONLY publicly available listing of incident by incident of such gun crime in our City. I will review your paper but I can only wish that you would have acknowledged the importance of this data collection. I think you may have actually directly or indirectly by noting how the "establishment" (Mayor, Chief etc) are feeling threatended by my advocacy.

May 8 , 2008

April 6 , 2008

March 22 , 2008

Now With Comments! As promised for way too long!
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Now With Comments! As promised for way too long!
Check the bottom of the page and try them out.

October 29 , 2007

October 23 , 2007

*EXCLUSIVE BREAKING NEWS* Dominick Calsolaro (who else?) has a serious plan. Read Dom’s letter to Governor Eliot Spitzer on how the City can use the Convention Center money to renovate vacant buildings and create housing.

The paucity of pedestrian safety data may be also explained by documented intersections being located where little pedestrian activity occurs. Furthermore, unconventional intersections like roundabouts do not have easily identifiable categories in accident reports. Hence, what data that may exist cannot be identified in US accident databases.

A Plague Upon The Hearst Rag

Frankly, for many of the last 9 months it’s felt more like an ordeal I had to get through. There was a point where I actually felt sick every time I passed [by] the transmitter, even when I wasn’t going to the station… Many of the community members, I’d venture to say most of them, report the same loss of pleasure.

* * * UPDATE * * * The lake continues to be kept overfilled, and the Batchellerville Bridge Action Committee tells the Daily Gazette what is the real problem here.

Jayne is living proof that you don’t have to be young, lean, super-fit or otherwise exceptionally talented to have fun in triathlon and other endurance sports.

There are 135,000 American service personnel within the range of Saddam’s missiles right now. And what is most disturbing of all, Mr. Speaker, is Saddam’s efforts to obtain nuclear weapons. Most of the experts up until recently have been saying that he is 2 to 5 years away from a nuclear capability. Now several are saying it is less than a year.

…Mr. Speaker, this is the bottom line. Saddam Hussein can never be allowed to possess a nuclear capability. This bipartisan resolution emphasizes international cooperation, working with the United Nations, and exhausting all other options before we go to a military option. It ensures that military force will be used only as a last resort.

I think that there is a national significance to what is going on, and it’s a theory of mine that I’ve been developing now as I report on it and analyze the situation in urban America — is that increasingly, especially now that we’ve reached a peak oil crisis, there is a concerted move to move the middle class and the upper classes, that moved out to the suburbs back in the ‘60s and the ‘50s and the ‘70s, back into the cities, that there are many people who are living in the exurbs who don’t want to have to drive one-and-a-half hours to work every day in the city… to spend so much more money on gas.

We have been told that a meeting is taking place this evening, Tuesday, March 28, involving the town leaders and city ward leaders of the Albany County Democratic Committee. This meeting is reportedly to discuss creating a separate city committee from the county committee. Stay tuned for more information. We will be updating this on our website forum as we gain more information.

‘Earlier this year, Environmental Advocates (EA), along with several other groups, issued a well documented "report card" on Governor Pataki’s environmental record. As in most areas of his failed administration, his environmental conduct was poor, rating bad in 59 of 78 areas surveyed, and good in only nine. Although the report was relegated to the back pages of the press, it was politically devastating .

‘In response, Pataki, during one of his rare visits to Albany, called the executive director of EA into his office and threw a tantrum in her presence, yelling at her and making vague threats. He ended this extraordinary scene by insisting that as retaliation he would never speak to any of them ever again.

‘Six weeks later, in response to this report, to intense public criticism, and pressure from Republican Party bosses that he "appear more green," Pataki presented the state with a hastily drafted Bond Act, and has been forced to consult with EA and other environmental groups. Mr. Jones feels that, in the end, issuing the report was very much worth all of the ruckus it caused. "I learned," he said, "that you should always tell the truth."’

A Great Day For Terrorism

September 28 , 2007

September 14 , 2007

September 2 , 2007

Daniel,

First and foremost, thank you for your blog.

Diva de Loayza

I’ve been wanting to write a Times Union Letter to the Editor addressing the media surrounding Diva’s death and negligence of the police, but as one of Diva’s close friends, I am filled to the brim with grief and haven’t managed to put pen to paper yet.

I agree with you 100%. The police and the media have pointed fingers at Diva saying she ran a red light and wasn’t wearing a bike helmet, therefore, she had it coming. If Diva had been a mother walking down the street with her baby in a stroller or the driver had been a 16 year old, the media would have spun this story very differently.

The driver of the minivan should have been brought up on manslaughter charges without question. Whether or not the motorist had the right of way, he/she was responsible to be aware of cyclists and pedestrians. Any person who gets behind the wheel of a car is undertaking that responsibility; it’s huge obligation and too often taken for granted. Why isn’t the City of Albany protecting victims like Diva? Our local media is a disgrace. Not a single journalist from the TU or any of the TV stations conducted the investigative research you did at the scene of the crime. It’s so much easier to blame the woman who died for not wearing a bike helmet.

With much gratitude,
Amanda Grieco

Section 1146. Drivers to exercise due care. Notwithstanding the provisions of any other law to the contrary, every driver of a vehicle shall exercise due care to avoid colliding with any bicyclist, pedestrian or domestic animal upon any roadway and shall give warning by sounding the horn when necessary.

I wanted to get someone with a blog on the panel, I was looking more for a "public opinion" blog – and I came across yours.

I see that your new blog post includes a photo of one of my favorite traffic signs — at the confluence of the Hudson and Mohawk. Attached is a closer-up view that I took on 7/13/02. It appears from the color of the sign in your photo that the sign has been replaced or refurbished in the 10 years since I took my photo from the northern shore of Peebles Island (where, by the way, the NYS Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation has a large facility in one of the old shirt factories that provides preservation and restoration services for items from NYS historic sites).

Feel free to post the attached photo (and the above comment) if you like.

Leo

A Patriotic Pendant (circa 1570) From The Dutch Revolution. The left side says "Better Turk than Pope" and on the right side "Despite The Mass," in other words, better to miss the Christian sacraments and burn in Hell than submit to the Spanish.

**Update** Mark Mishler of the Albany PTA is circulating this petition in support of our public schools to be presented to the Governor. He needs them soon, so download it as a pdf using your download manager or print from the web page and contact him at msmishler@yahoo.com.

To be sure, we need some outside money and some big developers, but in my view it’s the little guys who will be here a decade from now, weaving things together. So I view Recapitalize Albany as a positive thing for two reasons. One, obviously we need the capital, human and otherwise. And two, I think the fact that people from outside the city are willing to invest their energies and talents on behalf of Albany should be applauded.

The Division of Planning is responsible for the administration and procedural requirements of the development approval process.

David Soares And The Old Boys

Are you planning to run for mayor in 2013? Or are you planning to run for re-election for President? Inquiring minds want to know.

Now With Comments! As promised for way too long!
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UPDATE: Welcome to visitors from Counterpunch, which chose this article as the Website of the Day for Oct. 26! Earlier articles on the persecution of Yassin Aref here and here.

UPDATE: 4/17/09 Welcome listeners from Democracy Now! Two more articles on Yassin Aref here and here.

October 14 , 2007

Febrary 28, 2015

Or, how to get rid of all those stupid bags without
sending them to the dump

Within the last few years the supermarkets within the City of Albany have been undergoing a great deal of turbulence, what with the arrival of a new grocery chain not too long ago and the current, almost frantic remodeling of one of the oldest and most established supermarkets. For most of the past 50 years we’ve seen grocery outlets, particularly the ones located downtown, close or pack up and move to the suburbs. But that trend has reversed itself, it appears that the big chains in particular are scrambling to catch the steadily increasing food dollars of the City of Albany consumer.

This is clearly a good sign, a positive indication of the City of Albany’s rising population and increasing economic vitality. The big supermarket chains are quite savvy about such things, their continued success depends upon guessing where the consumer money is located before their rivals do. And like retailers are fond of saying, location is everything. If the supermarket chains want to locate in Albany, they must have decided that Albany is the right place to make a profit.

Empty White Shelves At The Delaware Avenue Price Chopper Ready To Be Removed

So on a recent Saturday afternoon I drove around visiting supermarkets near downtown Albany during a light snowfall. My purpose was to look for plastic shopping bag recycling bins, to see which supermarkets had them and which did not. Also I was interested in how the supermarkets treated those bins, did they put them in accessible places, and perhaps find out if the supermarkets really did recycle plastic bags. Or did they just dump the barrels into the general trash destined for the Rapp Road “Landfill,” which is located in the Pine Bush in western Albany?

This is a matter of deep concern for me, I try to send as little household trash as possible to the dump. Every Sunday evening (the designated trash pickup day for our neighborhood) I put out on the curb in front of my house two blue recycling boxes which are usually full or mostly full of cans, bottles, papers and such. This is the bulk of our weekly waste, I’m proud of being able to do that.

Our Backyard Mulch Pile With Snow And Recent Additions

Sometime in the last decade I decided to start a mulch pile in our little backyard. This is nothing fancy, just a pile of household organic waste. By dumping banana peels and carrot shavings and those ghastly science projects sitting in the back of the refrigerator onto my pile, we’ve cut the amount of non-recyclable waste that we put on the curb by more than half. And hey, the squirrels gotta eat too, although they seem to prefer the neighborhood garbage cans to my pile.

As a result of this casual mulching, on Sunday night I normally put out only one very light partially filled garbage bag destined to be added to The Dump. It’s that bag which bothers me. It’s a bag mostly full of plastic shopping bags, wrappers and other filmy containers that are meant to be used exactly once but that the City will not take as recycling.

The Monday after my weekend tour of the supermarkets I asked Frank Zeoli, the Director of the City of Albany Department of General Services, why not. He assured me the City declined to pick up shopping bags not, as I have often heard, because the bags are too light and therefore unprofitable for the City’s recycling contractor, an outfit called Sierra Processing, to bother with. He explained:

The reason that we do not accept plastic bags is that the Single Stream Material Recovery Facility where we take our recyclables does not accept them. The plastic bags get wrapped around the various parts of their sorting equipment and cost them significant time and money to clear them away.

A: Workplace Equality: I will use my leadership to foster a diverse and inclusive workplace, emphasizing a non-discrimination policy. All City employees will receive written materials and in-house training to increase awareness of SONDA. I support the GENDA act.

Human Resources Functions: Albany’s HR dept. will be fully aware of the impact of the above mentioned laws with regard to the administration of benefits, as well as responsibility with regard to employees who posess a valid same sex marriage license from any jurisdiction.

Marriage Equality: I support marriage equality. I voted in support of a Common Council resolution that called upon the NYS Senate to enact Marriage Equality. I am in favor of the repeal of the federal Defense of Marriage Act.

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell: I support the repeal of this federal policy, I find it unfair and prejudicial to gay and lesbian members of the Armed Services.

Health Services: We need to ensure that our city residents have access to all medical services including treatment for HIV+ residents on a non-discriminatory basis.

Hate Speech: I am opposed to hate speech. I attended the rally at city hall opposing Rev, Phelps hate speech. I also support youth anti-bullying efforts. I frequently visited Albany High School, at the invitation of the principal, to talk to students in an effort to model good behavior.

*UPDATE* Tom Carroll replies to this article, and boy is he miffed! He says I make racist statements! He refuses to take responsibility for his own comments! He claims that his mother never disowned him! And, most important of all, he forgets to mention the most damning statements in this article! Read about it here!

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