Our Favorite Two Weeks
It’s our favorite season… a brittle, cobwebs-clearing mix of brilliant leaf color, eerily fun Halloween preparations, frightened anticipation of late-night results come Election Day, and our local towns’ struggles to put together spending plans for the coming year, no matter the mysteries of next year’s revenue streams.
Oo-ee-oo, doth it not a shiver send up one’s spine?
To take local things first, we were all ready to take on our local governments for their budget proposals… in Shandaken, for seeming to have forgotten any public workshops on their spending plan for the coming year; in Olive, for having again raised salaries across the board without any perceived attempts to help taxpayers out a bit. But with the latter town having now brought their budget down at an October 14th session, and the former set for a workshop next week, we’re no longer as worried about anyone not taking their budgeting responsibilities lightly. Nor the public’s expectation that they somehow give everyone a sense of what to expect, revenue-wise, in the next 15 months.
We simply urge that town residents make themselves part of the process and attend all scheduled budget hearings… to help out, if they can. We’re at a point where any and all suggestions are seeming to be welcome. For a change.
And regarding the elections?
We like what Assemblyman Kevin Cahill and State Senator John Bonacic have been doing for us in Albany, by and large. They’re hard workers and thoughtful politicians and they champion local causes whenever they get the chance. They deserve the re-elections they’re about to get.
On the county level, we appreciate Accord businessman Len Bernardo’s spirited decision to try his hand at government by vying for the new County Executive’s position, just as we laud Allan Wikman for having given his long-shot race all he could, even now that he’s been relegated to a write in role. But we feel Mike Hein, for all his humorless elements, is the man for this position, having already done an admirable job as the county’s administrator in recent years. We can’t see any reason to try someone new out at this job when Hein seems the one to get it up and running. Save the partisan battles over how it SHOULD work for next time around… or at least some time down the road a bit further into the future. Similarly, we’ve been watching Elliot Auerbach’s activities helping revive Ellenville for some time now and feel he may be the perfect match for the county’s other new job as Comptroller, especially given that his GOP opponent, Jim Quigley, was the man who fought hard and mean to try and keep the position from being created in the first place. Why trust a would-be destroyer to create something new and lasting?
As for the big seat being filled down in Washington, we’re solidly for Obama. From the moment he stepped onto the national stage four years ago, he’s been extraordinary… even in his ordinary aspects. It doesn’t make sense to us to go backwards at this point; the idea of a president born after Vietnam and the culture wars of the sixties seems right for this century, for the challenges of the wider world we all live in now. McCain, in spite of his humor and background, is a relic of the past. Ever noticed how dated his references all are? Ronald Reagan left office 20 years ago. It’s time to move on.
Along that line, the past week’s attempts to make the socialist elements of modern democracy as frightening as a Scream mask on Halloween night seem silly to us, especially at a time when our government is bailing out banks and, on a local level, a new book has come out heralding this region’s Civilian Conservation Corps history from Roosevelt’s New Deal economic agenda 75 years ago. It’s supposed to be bad to be like Europe? Hey… we live in a society. From the start, democracies have been as much about shared social responsibilities as free market opportunities. Just as it should no longer be acceptable to smear folks for being liberal, activist, environmentally-conscious, or intellectual, it’s time we have to start talking straight about the ways in which all isms come together in a working republic.
As for the other candidate out there, Congressman Maurice Hinchey… what can we say but that he’s become a treasure, as reassuring as the melancholic beauty of autumn leaves.
Enjoy these two weeks… and see you with the local spin on all results, the tricks and treats, in our next edition November 6.
PS