Month: November 2009

November 30, 2009

A warm weather Sunday visit to remind everybody that our nation is built upon Liberal values and that winter will not last forever

Now that the weather is finally getting cold, I want to tell you about a trip The Wife and I made this past September to Fort Ticonderoga.  This was back when the days were full of sunshine and happiness. Ticonderoga is about a two hour drive from Albany, up the Northway to Exit 28 and another 20 miles straight east to the Vermont border.  The fort sits on the three and a half mile La Chute River, the waterway that connects Lake George to Lake Champlain.

If you’ve never been to Fort Ticonderoga, I’ll go so far as to say that if you presume to call yourself a patriotic American then you need to go up there.  In these late days of our rapidly declining republic, we fat lazy ignorant descendants of the real patriots desperately need to be reminded why we still have some of the rights and freedoms that are laid out for all to see in the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights, rights that we are happily allowing to be taken away from us.

Fort Ticonderoga is the site of the very first victory by the rebels in the American Revolution.  This little local action was initiated by the local people without authorization by distant command, yet it led to several victories that put the Revolution on solid ground, which in turn led to our freedom from foreign nations and from their corporations. 

Approaching Fort Ticonderoga, Note The Roof Above The Wall

The Fort Ticonderoga that The Wife and I visited is a reproduction of the original, except for a few foundation stones the old fort is long gone.  It seems that the original fort was badly built and poorly designed, and fell apart long ago.  When I first heard this I felt cheated, why the hell were we wasting time looking at a cheap knockoff of a mistake?  But after I learned about the fort’s history, I realized that the mistakes in construction and the attempts to rebuild it are all very much a part of Ticonderoga’s significance.

The fort was begun in 1755 by the French.  The British and the French fought over it and the two world empires exchanged control of the fort several times before the British took control of most of North America after the Treaty of Utrecht in 1763.  Later in the 1770s the fort was captured twice by the American revolutionaries, both times without serious fighting.  But both captures were very central to the success of the revolution.

After the Revolutionary War the fort lost it’s military significance and was allowed to fall into ruin.  The harsh weather of the area, the freezing and thawing rapidly tore apart the stone and masonry.  Actually, the original masonry and construction techniques were considered substandard back even in the 1700s.  The guys who built and designed the fort were punished for their incompetence. This makes accurate historical reproduction a frustrating continuation of original error.  

Ruins Of Fort Ticonderoga In The 1800s, Photographed Off The Wall

The ruination was assisted by local farmers who regularly helped themselves to what they saw as ready building materials.  By the 1820s the fort had become a romantic rubble beloved of the Hudson River school of art.  About this time, fortunately for us today, the land around the fort fell to a private owner who sought to preserve the remains as a tourist destination.  Finally in the early 20th Century work was begun to restore the fort as authentically as possible according to extensive surviving records, a century’s worth of effort that is only approaching completion today.

After the battles of Lexington and Concord in 1775 the revolutionaries laid siege to the British army in Boston.  The only communication the British had with the outside world was by water. (Follow me here, this is important.) Word of the siege quickly spread inland to the free farmers of Vermont.  Without hesitation the great and glorious hero Ethan Allen led these Vermont farmers, who called themselves the Green Mountain Boys, on an expedition to capture Fort Ticonderoga.

At The Entrance, Bottom Rounded
Stones Are Original, Square Stones
At Top Are New

Ah, Ethan Allen.  Many people know that during the Revolution he led Vermont as an independent republic.  But few folks know that as a nation Vermont militarily invaded New York, conquering a 90 mile strip running north from the Massachusetts border including part of Rensselaer County.  At the same time Vermont forcibly annexed the east bank of the Connecticut River from New Hampshire  Both conquests were enthusiastically supported by the local populations of the occupied territories.

The elite feudal Patroons of Albany sent an army composed mostly of poor tenant farmers to repel the invaders from New York and conquer Vermont, which they claimed as their own personal possession.  The two armies exchanged shots across the Hoosick River, the ‘battle’ produced no serious casualties. After this exchange the tenant farmers of New York refused to fight anymore and returned to Albany, leaving the occupied land to the invaders. 

George Washington himself negotiated a withdrawal from the occupied territories, in exchange he promised to do all he could to allow Vermont to become a state in the new union.  But General Washington could not counter the influence of the Albany Patroons in the Continental Congress and his efforts failed.  Despite providing an important contingent to the Continental Army throughout the Revolution, Vermont was not admitted as the 14th state until 1793 after the Albany Patroons grudgingly gave up their claims.

Rebel Soldier In Action, One Of The Realistic Figures On Display
At The Museum

All that came later.  In May of 1775 Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys (with a fuming and furious Benedict Arnold in tow) approached Fort Ticonderoga.  They found the isolated fort already half in ruins from the weather, which has been hard on the substandard construction throughout the fort’s history.  Most of the 48 British manning the fort were ‘invalides,’ old or disabled soldiers assigned to light duty.  The fort had lost it’s strategic importance after 1763, that spring its commander had not yet heard about the outbreak of revolution in Boston.

It’s hard for us moderns with our instantaneous communication techniques to understand how the occupants of Ticonderoga, at little more than 200 miles away, could not have heard about the Earth shaking popular uprising in Boston.  

You see, the British had lost control of the American countryside, the same way centuries later first the British then the Soviets and now the US lost control of the rebellious countryside of Afghanistan.  To send word to Ticonderoga, the British commander in Boston, General Gage, had to send a ship to Canada that carried specific orders to fortify the isolated outpost at Ticonderoga.  This communiqué arrived in Quebec several weeks after the wilderness outpost down south had fallen to the rebel farmers.

The Wife With A Mortar

It was this long standing problem of ineffective misrule from an absurd distance that had originally caused the American ‘colonists’ to chafe under British domination. As a matter of strict policy the English monarchy had no intention of granting the Colonies any sort of local autonomy.  This was because the English considered the Colonies nothing more than a source of raw materials, thus they refused to cede any control that might cut into their apparent profits.

London’s attempted solution to this problem was to award local control of the Colonies to the East India Company, a monopolistic international corporation structured very much like the corporations we all chafe under today.  Like all modern transnational corporations East India existed for one purpose and one purpose only: to secure a profit for itself and it’s shareholders by any means necessary.  Almost all of these shareholders were upper class elite nobility, London’s equivalent of Albany’s elite Patroons.

The British government granted the East India Company effective control of commerce in North America along with the power to enforce this control anyway it saw fit.  It was the further attempts by London to transfer the power of taxation to the East India Company that sparked the Boston Tea Party and the riots against the Stamp Act.  Attempts by the government to enforce the corporate decrees ultimately led to armed resistance, which after much fighting and deprivation led to freedom from corporate power.

A Stylized Painting Of Ethan Allen Demanding The Fort’s Surrender

Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys barged into Fort Ticonderoga and captured it without causing any casualties or even firing a shot.  It really wasn’t much of a battle, but then, Ethan Allen was known for achieving victory with little or no bloodshed.  With drawn sword he personally rousted out the sleeping British commander from his quarters.  Official accounts have Allen calling for the Captain to surrender ‘In the name of the great Jehovah and the Continental Congress’ which has a real nice ring to it.  But the more likely account is that he hollered through the door, ‘Come out you damned old rat!’

What made this apparent comical scene an event of world changing importance was an idea floated a few months later by a former bookstore clerk in his twenties named Henry Knox.  Impressed with his knowledge of artillery, George Washington had made Knox a Colonel in the Continental Army.  After Washington took command of the siege of Boston, Colonel Knox suggested bringing the captured cannons from Ticonderoga to Boston.  As Wikipedia put it:

Knox was eventually given the assignment to transport weapons from Ticonderoga to Cambridge. Knox went to Ticonderoga in November 1775, and, over the course of 3 winter months, moved 60 tons of cannons and other armaments by boat, horse and ox-drawn sledges, and manpower, along poor-quality roads, across two semi-frozen rivers, and through the forests and swamps of the lightly-inhabited Berkshires to the Boston area. Historian Victor Brooks has called Knox’s feat "one of the most stupendous feats of logistics" of the entire war. 

November 15, 2009

The US Postal Corporation wants to shut down our urban post office stations . . . because they aren’t located in the suburbs

What a rude, arrogant bunch of clowns. I’m talking about the collection of Albany Postal Service officials and bureaucrats who conducted a required public hearing at 4 PM on a Thursday with only minimal public notice. Despite their best efforts to keep us away, at least 120 of us showed up at the Elks Club Hall at 25 S. Allen St.reet last November 4. We came out to support the Delaware Avenue PO and the Pine Hills PO, both of which are marked for extinction by the US Postal Corporation.

And the politicians showed up. Observers were sent from the offices of Congressional Representatives Paul Tonko and Kirsten Gillibrand. City of Albany Mayor Jerry Jennings Himself showed up vowing to fight the closures, a politically safe commitment for Him. We had several Common Council members, both current and elect. And more. I’ll bet the politicians who didn’t show up are kicking themselves for missing this show.

After the Postal Clowns displayed their arrogance for several minutes the audience lost all semblance of respect for them. The more they tried to manipulate us and feed us horsecrap the angrier we got. Openly defiant of procedure, at least 70 people stood up in turn to speak, every comment intelligent and almost everything said either building upon earlier comments or bringing up new points. By the end of the hearing the Postal Clowns, including the Acting Postmaster of Albany who hardly said a word, looked dazed, exhausted and somewhat terrorized. That’s a sure sign of a successful public hearing.

Delaware Avenue PO

Overall they were a very clumsy bunch of horsecrappers, most of their misleading statements were so transparent to us as to be laughable. But during the hearing there was one very seriously untrue statement that went right by us. It cannot be called anything but an apparent lie. For liability reasons I do not use that word lightly. They apparently lied to us about their recent financial losses.

Starting with their stupid powerpoint, backed up with graphs, they repeatedly stated that last fiscal year the USPS lost $7 billion. But their own official published financial statement says they lost $2.8 billion. (To put this in perspective their total revenue was $75 billion.) Pardon me, perhaps that’s not exactly a lie, shall we call it an exaggeration? A fib? An enhancement of the facts programmed to amplify a decision? And how did they come about this official much smaller figure of $2.8 billion, does it represent real losses due to lower volume of mail, or are these losses . . . apparent?

Like most lies, apparent or otherwise, this one backfired into their faces. Right from the very first comment the audience pointed out repeatedly that if the USPS can lose that much money in a year perhaps they have demonstrated an inability to make intelligent business decisions. Perhaps they are not qualified to decide on the closure of our neighborhood post offices, facilities which we claim as ours, not theirs.

Shawn Morris

I was stunned when the third speaker, Common Council President Shawn Morris forthrightly declared that these closures were discriminatory decisions made by uncomprehending people who did not have any conception of why we have walkable neighborhood post offices in an urban environment. Much applause to that. She said approximately half of what I’d been planning to say, but it turned out that she was saying out loud and eloquently what most everyone in the audience was thinking. If she’d done more speaking like that this past year she’d surely be mayor-elect today.

One recurring line of questioning centered on the Postal Service’s methodology for arriving at this decision, or what little of it that they would reveal to us. “Um, we’ll have to ask first to see if you can look at the report,” they said, and that’s when the audience came close to turning into a lynch mob. Several analysis experts in the audience left the Postal Clowns speechless, and Auditor-Elect Leif Engstrom gestured belligerently and shouted as he accused them of skewing their data.

Brian Levine

Some particularly cogent comments came from Albany Library Trustee Brian Levine. “In the original library facilities plan,” Brian told them, “ the library board wanted to consolidate the Albany Library system ‘suburban style’ the same way the Postal Service is trying to consolidate. But the community wanted neighborhood branches of the library kept open, and we listened.” Voters approved the library bond issue by a two to one margin, he said, showing that they are willing to pay more for improved services.

Brian also suggested that the Postal Service might look hard at cutting energy expenditures like the library did, which resulted in substantial savings. A good place to start would be to cut back on the use of postal vehicles by localizing transfer points for mail, an idea which I’m sure went right over their suburbanite heads. “It’s important to not hurt local businesses by cutting services,” he added, and the best way to do that and to increase revenue for the Postal Service “is to make post offices more visible and more usable.”

Afterwards I overheard the representative from Paul Tonko’s office tell 1st ward Common Council member Dominick Calsolaro that the local postal districts have been told by Washington DC to cut back, which confirms what everyone at the hearing already knew. He was a young kid dressed in a fancy suit. “They’re making money in the suburbs,” the kid said, implying that this alleged fact was all that mattered, much to Dom’s apparent exasperation.

One of the final comments from the 2 and a half hour session (which was only supposed to last an hour) came from a lady of very advanced age who rose unsteadily to her feet and spoke in a quavering voice. She addressed the unreasonable suggestion that from now on we should patronize suburban post offices such as Stuyvesant Plaza and Karner Road. It takes her, she told us, three hours by bus to go to one of these places. “I don’t have three hours,” she said, “I don’t have that much time left to spare.”

Pine Hills PO

The Postal Service was required to take written comments from the public as part of their “Consolidation Study.” We were given a strict time limit of ten days after the public hearing to submit them, but later I discovered that the guy who is collecting the comments was about to go on vacation starting the very next day (the 5th) until the 18th of November.

So who knows if our written comments will become part of the official record. Not that anything we say matters to these Postal Clowns. So for your amusement, here are my own written comments for you to read. And I should add that if anybody else has posted online their interesting or amusing submitted comments for either Delaware Avenue or Pine Hills I will be glad to provide a link through this article.

 

Consolidation Study – Consumer Affairs
Re: The Imminent Closure of the Delaware Avenue PO
30 Karner Road
Albany NY 12288-9631

Attn. David H. Desrosiers, etc.

I realize that your decision to shut down the Delaware Avenue Post Office in Albany NY is a done deal, so this letter will make no difference. Spelling out common sense is wasted on corporate minded suburban fools who are hell bent on destroying our urban community. So I will take this opportunity to explain what any citizen of Albany understands, simple obvious things that you suburbanite corporatists are apparently unable to grasp. And of course, this comment will also be published and archived for all to read.

The US Postal Service is, first and foremost, a communication network. What good is a communication network without access points? Without a telephone I cannot make phone calls, without a computer I cannot use the internet. How can I access the US Postal Service without a Post Office?

Your answer to that question, given during the recent angry and well-attended public hearing that you held on November 4, 2009 here in Albany, was that those of us who live in or near the Delaware Avenue neighborhood [and in the Pine Hills neighborhood] are from now on expected to greatly inconvenience ourselves by using difficult to find and difficult to use access points to your communication network located somewhere in your automobile slum suburbs.

From now on if we want to mail a package we will be required to drive an automobile out to one of your suburban malls. This is pure anti-urban discrimination, which I fully understand comes easily and naturally to you people. I suspect that you were greatly shocked by the unanimous reaction at the Nov. 4 hearing to your suburbanist assault on our community.

This past Columbus Day (Oct.12) which for most people other than Italian nationalists is a bogus holiday devoted to shopping, the post offices were as usual closed. For me, a small business person, this was a work day. Unfortunately, I had a time expedite matter, a letter which needed to be postmarked that day. Since you people have never seen fit to upgrade or update the Delaware Avenue PO with 24 hour automated service, my only option was to take time out of my work day and drive an excessive distance to your Karner Road facility.

Karner Road

This was one hour and thirty five minutes of sheer hell. Suburban traffic is always bad on a weekday due to the poor planning of your suburbs, with your deliberately choked trunk highways which are the only way to get to your stupid curvilinear dead end streets. This day your suburban traffic was excessively bad. Once again I sat stuck in one of your traffic jams and wondered to myself, How can these people choose to live like this? If the Delaware PO had been open, this errand would have taken less than ten minutes and could have been pleasantly combined with several other minor tasks.

It appears that one of your goals in closing the Delaware Avenue PO is to force us to waste time. How dare you impose upon us this massive reduction in quality of life! You suburbanites can’t buy a quart of milk or mail a letter without driving your automobiles an absurd distance. Well, that’s your poor choice of lifestyle, although I must add that I am tired of subsidizing your unsustainable suburban sprawl.

It is plain to see that your drive to exterminate our urban post offices is based upon the assumption that the middle and upper classes will continue to exit the City of Albany for the foreseeable future. This assumption is wrong. The trend is reversing as you read this, a significant number of suburbanites have already begun to develop common sense and have been moving back into Albany. This is in defiance of a City government that is still doing everything it can to drive taxpayers out of the City.

Inside The Delaware Avenue PO

I see this clearly in my own business, which is owning and renting apartments in downtown Albany. Fifteen or so years ago demand was poor, a renter’s market. Starting about ten years ago it became easier and easier for me to rent my apartments. Today the demand is so great that I usually rent my apartments in one day, with one showing.

Why? There are a myriad of reasons, but the most obvious is the rising price of gasoline, which has spiked ever higher these last few years or so. Right now the price of gasoline is depressed, but nobody except delusional persons believe that this is going to last. Certainly the independent experts agree, in the long run the massive government subsidies that keep the price of gas low will not make up for the undeniable fact that the supplies of inexpensive oil are running out.

What this means is that more and more middle class consumers will find it unreasonable to part with a greater and greater portion of their incomes simply to buy a quart of milk or mail a letter. One by one they are coming to realize that there is a better alternative.

Let me spell out what this means. You are closing the Delaware PO at the exact moment when demand for the services at this station are beginning to rise.

So let’s talk environment. I own a vehicle that does not get very good gas mileage, yet I only need to fill the tank every six to eight weeks. I drive it almost every day, yet I don’t believe I take it to the gas station more than eight times a year. How can that be? I live and work in the City, I access shops and services that are local, and I only occasionally venture out of town. I don’t need a “hybrid,” I don’t need to brew ethanol or biodeisel in a barrel in my backyard.

Battery Powered EV Minivan Acquired By USPS This Year

By trying to force me to drive to your malls, you people are trying to force me to consume more gasoline, create more exhaust, put more wear and tear on my vehicle and add me to your constantly backed-up traffic. Why are you doing this to me? What’s in it for you?

Could it be, possibly, maybe, the US Postal Service Corporation wants to bring more business to the big suburban shopping malls? Before we dismiss that thought as far-fetched, consider this. I understand that your corporation pays $250,000 a year on rent for the PO facility at Colonie Center Mall. Hell, I didn’t even know there was a PO at Colonie Center! And consider that the three suburban POs that you people recommended that we go to, Karner Road, Colonie Center and Stuyvesant Plaza are all within a mile of each other. Except none of these pits are accessible to pedestrians or bicyclists, and they are accessible only in the most limited sense of the word by bus.

Meanwhile, you OWN the building that houses the Delaware PO. Tell you what… why don’t you shut down the redundant Colonie Center PO and use the money to pay bills on Delaware Avenue, the Pine Hills PO and on the other local urban POs that you are destroying? That hasn’t occurred to you? I’m starting to see why your corporation lost seven billion dollars last year. [Or actually… oh never mind.]

I could not help but notice that at the public hearing you were careful to not suggest that that the most accessible suburban PO to Delaware Avenue in Albany is actually in Delmar, right on Delaware Avenue as a matter of fact. Over the years you have put a lot of money into upgrading the Delmar facility, indeed it looks mighty nice and has multiple services that we don’t have in our neglected PO in the City. Our Delaware Avenue PO looks the same way it did 50 years ago. In all that time I don’t think you people have invested any money into our PO except to paint the interior once and to add the required handicap ramp.

Delmar PO, A Ten Minute Drive From My House In Light Traffic

That neglect, plus your careful refusal to direct us to Delmar, convincingly reveals your snide suburban anti-urban bias. You have decided without any basis that we who live in Albany are undesirable customers, while those who live in automobile slums and waste time at shopping malls are desirable. Why? Are we not white enough for your taste? Is that the problem?

Then there’s your decision making process, which you did your best to hide from the angry crowd last Thursday. You sure didn’t expect to be dealing with so many people who were intimate with cost analysis and demographic surveys, huh? C’mon, this is a state capital full of universities, what did you expect? We noticed right away that you skewed your data by lumping Albany in with larger Cities, such as that big one at the other end of the Hudson River.

And how about revenue that you will lose by closing the Delaware station and denying postal access to the neighborhood? You go on about how usage has declined, claiming that you factored in the recession and the ongoing reconstruction of Delaware Avenue, which blocks ready access. Pardon me for disbelieving you, but your refusal to provide us with your actual analysis casts grave doubt on your assertion that you considered these factors. But by your puzzled faces it is all too clear that it did not even occur to you that your corporation will be losing revenue from those of us who have been continuing to patronize Delaware PO despite the impediments in our path.

From what you people reluctantly revealed of your methodology, it is clear that your decision making process was conducted very much like how the Cheney – Bush administration started the War Against Iraq. They decided they wanted to conquer the Middle East, and then they manufactured “facts” to back up their decision. Typical corporate mindset.

Try considering this analysis of usage at the Delaware Avenue PO: Unless I catch the right times on the right days, I expect to stand waiting in a line that goes right out to the door. Perhaps this problem could be alleviated by assigning a second clerk to serve the customers. But no, you aren’t going to do that, are you now?

New "Green Roof" On The USPS Main Building In NY City

You’ve been starving our PO to death for years, hoping we would stop using it and go away. Your plan didn’t work very well, did it? While you literally poured money into the suburban POs we continued to use our half starved urban PO because it is convenient. It is accessible. We don’t have to waste half our day driving around in your god forsaken automobile slums just to buy a roll of stamps or mail a package.

But wait, you told us with smirks on your faces, the other option is to do your postal business online, through the internet via your computer! Right. I do not know one single person who has a happy satisfied story about dealing with the US Postal Corporation online. But really, does that make sense? This reminds me of how the Western Union telegraph corporation tried to stay alive by abandoning their own technology and using the telephone.

That brings us to the heart of the matter. It is very evident to me that you people at the US Postal Corporation have decided that your own communication network is outmoded, about to be superseded by newer technology. I say that’s a load of horsecrap. Did the telephone put you out of business? I have yet to observe a single instance of my desktop computer transmitting a package or a paper document. Sure, I can order a package and someone much like yourselves will carry it to my door. But I have yet to figure out how to send a package through my keyboard.

Can Your Mobile Device Send A Package?

I suggest that you learn a lesson from the movie industry. For several decades the proliferation of television sent movies into a slow steady decline. Then in the 1970s VCRs were legalized, which the movie industry fought bitterly. Suddenly accessibility to movies increased massively, anyone could park their butts on their living room couches and become authorities on film. As a result, today there are more movies being made and more movie houses operating than ever before.

Did you catch that? Finding a new and innovative way to increase access to movies caused a massive expansion of the movie industry. I would not presume to be able to tell you how to increase access to your own communications network. But I sure as shoot can tell you that cutting back access is a sure way to kill yourselves.

Or is that what you want? Is that the plan?

I reject your corporate mindset, I spit on your self destructive business model. I am perfectly aware of what college business textbooks teach, that a sure way to enhance the bottom line is to fire employees and cut back on services. That works great for money extraction outfits like Goldman Sachs. For them the customer is nothing but a source of revenue, the sole purpose of their corporation is to extract money from the customer units.

That does not work for you. Your ultimate purpose is to provide communication, your purpose is not to enhance your bottom line. Back in 1970 Tricky Dick Nixon, who resigned the presidency in disgrace, transformed your service into a corporation like Goldman Sachs. This has been an ideological experiment, one that we can see has failed miserably.

It is time to cast off the corporatist ideology that has turned the US Postal service into a financial failure. Don’t kill your communication network by denying access. Don’t close our Delaware Avenue Post Office, leave it alone. You’ll be glad you did. And so will we.

Sincerely,

Daniel W. Van Riper

November 12, 2009

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November 3, 2009

Mayor Jennings finally takes responsibility for the South End,
and slugs The Wife in the jaw

I went deep into the heart of the South End to attend one of those ceremonies at the start of a public project, this one at 19 Odell Street alongside Krank Park. Nothing big and exciting, just another very old abandoned house which is about to be rehabbed. Well, that was important enough for me, so I went down to watch and take pictures.

We only had two elected officials at this short, sweet event, Albany Mayor Jerry Jennings and Albany County Executive Mike Breslin. The crowd was composed mostly of City and nonprofit agency office workers glad to get out of their offices on a nice day, along with several curious neighbors. And the press, which happened to be me. I was The Media. What a weird feeling, I gotta tell you.

Those of us who follow these things understand that this little rehab on Odell Street may actually be the start of some big things… if everything goes right. Which it should. This is a test run, a science experiment if you will.

19 Odell Street, Setting Up For The Ceremony

Habitat for Humanity is in charge of carrying out this project. Executive Director Steve Haggerty told me this is the first rehab that Habitat has attempted in the Capital District since 2002. That surprised me, I’d thought that the last attempted rehab of a vacant building in the City by Habitat was in the 1990s nearby on Osborne Street, a very bad memory for everybody all around.

What makes this Odell Street rehab particularly interesting is that Mayor Jennings not only approves of bringing this vacant house back on line, He has allowed Albany Housing Authority (AHA) to assist with their time and resources. That’s not all. When it looked like the project was about to fall through for lack of cash, He directed Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) money to fill the gap, money that originates with the Feds.

The house is a plain, two story two family house probably built around 1870. This is fairly new for the older houses in this neighborhood, many of which were constructed before the Civil War. Over the years more than a few of these modest old treasures along Odell have fallen victim to urban removal and demolition by neglect, leaving plenty of gaps along the streetscape.

Habitat has been aggressively building in the neighborhood, four new houses finished, owned and occupied directly across the street, with three more planned in the empty lots next to number 19. They’ve built and are planning to build several more around the corner on Stephen Street.

These Habitat projects are near the amazing Jared Holt project, which is between Broad and Clinton Streets. All of this is being coordinated by the South End Action Committee (SEAC) which is a partnership between the City, nonprofit agencies and interested members of the community. This is the sensible way to do it, clustering all the new construction together where the rot is greatest and then building outward from the center. That way the neighborhood itself is transformed and made attractive to home buyers and investors.

Four Owner Occupied Habitat Houses
Across Odell Street From #19

Mr. Haggerty explained that this house was chosen not only because of it’s proximity to the new Habitat buildings but also because structurally it was in fair shape, having been empty of inhabitants for only 18 months. A similar plan of rehab under the same sort of conditions has worked for Habitat in other communities, there’s no reason why it couldn’t work here. I can only applaud the decision to save this existing building rather than tear it down, I hope the rehabbing experiment succeeds.

In answer to my question Mr. Haggerty with understandable reluctance told me that the projected cost of the project was around $100,000. “Of course that includes volunteer labor and donated materials,” he added. Yes, I recognized that estimate as very cheap. Keeping costs down is the sort of thing that Habitat does best.

Government sponsored rehab tends to be pricier than the private versions, there are several reasons for this. One is greater oversight every step of the way, some of it admittedly unnecessary but most of it unavoidable. Putting together funding packages, an art at which Steve Longo of AHA is a grandmaster, incurs legal and administrative costs.

But it’s important to understand that the real costs of government funded construction and rehab projects are always up front and visible. Almost all private construction takes advantage of government subsidies, many of which are in the form of services and infrastructure. To give one obvious example, future investors on Odell Street will be building on the back of today’s rehab and construction projects.

Habitat Executive Director Steve Haggarty At The Podium, From Left Albany Housing Authority Director Steve Longo, Mayor Jennings, Albany County Executive Mike Breslin, Habitat Board President Brian Osterhout

At the same time as this lovely little event was going on, one of the most notorious and reportedly the most violent street gangs in Albany were being rounded up en masse, many of them just a few blocks away. The Media tells us that they are known as the OGK or Original Gangsta Killas.

The imminent takedown of the OGK explains why there was a nervous cop with an SUV stationed at the end of Odell Street, who earlier had tried to shoo me away when I pulled up in my pickup truck. I almost never see cops posted at these kinds of events, and if they are assigned to stand guard they usually look bored. This guy looked like he was ready to discharge his weapons if I sneezed.

This big bust was very good news which I heard about later around supper time. I’d been hearing stories for the past few months about several ongoing stakeouts in the neighborhood so I knew something was going down. Still, it is not only surprising that we now have official recognition of the existence of gangs in Albany, but that the police and elected officials are suddenly willing to do something about the problem.

Vacant OGK Crackhouse At Fourth Ave. And Broad Street, Shut Down Last Month By The Fire Department

Consider this: The OGK gangsters appear to have been taken completely by surprise. Despite the recent building and renovation projects in the very center of their territory, the gangsters did not even suspect that the authorities would care enough about the South End to take them down.

This long standing official policy of refusing to acknowledge the existence of gangs in Albany has acted as a protective umbrella that encouraged the OGK to thrive in the South End. First and foremost the OGK was (is?) a money making operation, clever business people who have been taking advantage of the opportunities provided for them by the legal prohibition of a variety of drugs such as cocaine.

Operating their business in a totally unregulated marketplace, the OGK enforced monopolistic control of their territory the same way that corporations maintain control in third world markets. That is, by threats and by violence against the host population. This was Ayn Rand meets the real world, a neocon notion of paradise.

Going down the list of arrested OGK gangsters on the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) press release, it is immediately notable that only two of the 24 actually lived in the South End. At first glance that’s surprising, but it makes sense. One does not crap in one’s own nest. This firmly places the OGK in the same category as absentee slumlords, suburbanite land speculators and corporate interlopers like the Picotte Company, who planted the unwanted Walgreens on Holland Avenue.

Or, like that publicly financed and maintained “charter” school building that is now hovering over nearby Krank Park, crouching like a demon about to jump down from it’s mound and devour the neighborhood. The long term ideological purpose of “charter” schools is to destroy public education in America. Their short term purpose is more banal, to siphon up as much cash as quickly as possible from the community. In effect, the “charter” school plan resembles the OGK business model.

The Brighter Choice corporation, which thanks to The Mayor’s indulgence is the dominant “charter” school outfit in Albany, placed this demon on the mound. It would be nice to see the police drag Tom Carroll and his boy Chris Bender out of their lavish suburban mansions and haul their asses into court. But there’s a much simpler and less violent solution to this problem, all we have to do is cut off the taxpayer money and Brighter Choice will vanish instantly.

Taxpayer Funded Brighter Choice Corporation "Charter" School At Krank Park

Oh, am I being too harsh? I think not. For many decades the Albany City government has provided support and protection to a wide variety of exploiters who have grown rich and fat on the backs of City taxpayers. While money extraction outfits like Picotte make a huge profit by exploiting taxpayer funded infrastructures and subsidies, the OGK is in the same category as absentee slumlords and Brighter Choice who make their profit by exploiting the government sponsored decay and neglect of communities like the South End.

Interesting how the federal DEA had to be called in to take down the OGK gang, this appears to have been their operation all the way. Just about every police type agency in the area was given nominal credit in the DEA press release, from the Albany Police to the Rensselaer County DA to the NYS Department of Corrections. I take this comprehensive list of movie credits to mean that these local law enforcement outfits didn’t give the DEA any crap and provided whatever the DEA wanted when they wanted it without complaint.

Gee whiz, what have all these local cop outfits been doing all this time, why didn’t they go after the OGK? Like that suburbanite thug John Pikus, who is a member of that lawless gang holed up in that fortress on McCarty Avenue, the gang known as the FBI or Federal Bureau of Investigation. There he was in the DEA press release taking credit for the operation, where’s he been all this time? Guess Pikus and his fellow gangsters have been too busy cooking up entrapment schemes and “secret evidence” to do any thing useful for the community.

The plain truth is that for decades all of the local police have had the same attitude toward the South End of Albany as has City Hall. Our South End community is a dumpster and those of us who live here are garbage. That’s the way it’s been. But now something fundamental has changed.

Jerry Jennings Speaks

That fundamental something is not Jerry Jennings Himself, but His approach to dealing with the South End has changed profoundly. As always He is very much the guy in charge of the City. What has changed is that Jerry the politician is adapting to a new set of rules, a new way of staying afloat in a stormy sea, you might say.

As this decade of the new century has progressed, Jennings has had to listen to an ever widening and ever louder chorus of angry citizens asking questions He can’t answer. Why are gangs and other criminals tolerated? Where do the illegal guns come from? Why don’t the police respond when we call them?

Why won’t the City enforce building codes, and why does the City encourage the creation of vacant buildings? Why has basic maintenance and repair of our neighborhood infrastructure been suspended? Why does the City routinely make war upon small businesses, but lavishly support big corporate outfits that suck the community dry?

On and on, that’s for starters. The Mayor is getting tired of these valid criticisms that He’s hearing over and over. Politically He survives because He still controls most of the polling booths on election day. But more and more lately, He has to hear what people really think every time He marches down the steps of City Hall. He’s tough, but I know the constant criticism wears Him down.

That’s why The Mayor called in the DEA to get rid of the gangs in the South End. Or maybe former Police Chief James Tuffey used his own connections to bring in the feds, same thing. Either way, Jerry the politician has had no choice but to respond to the voices of the people.

Steve Longo And Mike Breslin Go Over The Numbers

While the big OGK roundup was going down nearby, where I was standing on Odell Street Jerry Jennings presided over the rebirth of number 19 without showing any concern or a hint of nervousness. He was as cool as a cucumber in a crisper drawer. I’ll say it again, whatever else you can say about The Mayor he’s a real pro at what He does.

For sure He knew about the imminent raid, He even had a statement ready for the DEA afternoon press release. Yet He didn’t see fit to cancel the little ceremony on Odell. I suppose that if He did that would have raised a lot of eyebrows and possibly tipped off the targets of the raid.

If the Odell event had been canceled at the last minute for sure The Media would have noticed. After all, these events are put on for the benefit of The Media, and the news crews and content providers were clearly expected. As it was, none of them bothered to show up, the innovative rebuilding of one South End house apparently is not newsworthy.

The only media they had was me. A sweet young thing walked around with an armload of press packets, I asked her if I could have one. “I’m sorry, these are for The Media,” she informed me with polite regret. “I’m a blogger,” I said, “does that count?” She looked around uncertainly and said, “I’ll go ask if you can have one.”

Eventually she handed me a packet, I could have had them all. Simply by showing up I had unintentionally assumed the designated role of The Media. One by one the various officials present walked up to me and exchanged a few words and let me ask a few questions. Most of them were aware that I am genuinely concerned about housing issues and the South End in general, but it still felt odd to be the focus of attention like that.

Checking Out The Plans For #19

The Mayor arrived in his big black chauffeur driven SUV and circulated among the fawning dignitaries. I watched Him for a bit and noticed that He was avoiding looking at me, which I expected. A moment later I was looking down fiddling with my camera and I heard His voice up close, “Dan.”

I started, then shook hands etcetera. He told me that it was important to try and save these houses “if we can. If this goes well I hope to see more like it.” And He wanted me to know that He understood the importance of clustering these projects together to have the maximum positive effect on the neighborhood. I agreed that this was essential and that I was glad that He saw it that way. And He tossed in something about the positive effect of the “charter” school hovering over Krank Park, to which I made no comment. Then He moved on.

See, like it or not I was The Media. And I was very polite, deferential even. This despite His having slugged my wife in the jaw the week before.

Okay, perhaps that’s a slight exaggeration. Earlier in the week The Wife and her co-conspirators had held a press conference on the steps of City Hall, announcing that Save the Pine Bush had the day before filed suit to stop the latest expansion of the Rapp Road “Landfill” in the Pine Bush. Oh yeah, she was in good form. Here’s some of her harangue, from the Hearst Times Union report by Brian Nearing:

The City needs to adopt a rational solid waste policy that does not include destroying 15 acres of rare Pine Bush ecosystem. The landfill causes multiple destructive impacts on rare habitat and species… Why is the DEC permitting more acres of Pine Bush to be destroyed in exchange for remediation of the Pine Bush? You don’t kill something in order to save it.