Gambling Gamble
Sullivan County leaders have endorsed a plan by Gov. George Pataki that would bring five Indian-run casinos to the Catskills as part of land claim settlements. The 6-3 vote does not assure the casinos will be built, only that the matter now will be considered by state and federal lawmakers, who must approve the plan before casino gambling can come to the region.
State Sen. John Bonacic has said he plans to introduce just such a bill in Albany later this month. Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno has said hearings will let the Senate decide how to act on Pataki’s proposal.
The recent vote came after months of debate between casino advocates, who say the gaming halls will mean new jobs and a renaissance for the county, and critics, who argue that most of the new jobs will go to outsiders and the casinos will create social ills.
The vote supported Pataki’s recently announced plan to allow five casinos in Sullivan, rather than three. The governor said the extra casinos are needed to satisfy all outstanding land claims by Indian tribes.
The plan needs state and congressional approval, and some legislators said they wouldn’t move forward without local support for the casinos. State Senate hearings on the casino plan have been scheduled for Feb. 28 in Albany and March 3 in Monticello.
Hudson Valley Building Trades Council President Todd Diorio said the Catskill Casino Coalition, a group made up largely of construction-related trade groups and unions, is ready to muster its forces and go to Albany.
Bruno said he wants to wrap up the review process swiftly. The Senate’s move follows an announcement by Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver that his chamber will hold hearings on the legislation. The Assembly has not scheduled the hearings yet, but Silver said he wants a thorough review of all aspects of the bill, including Pataki’s limited success in settling sales tax issues with the tribes.
Meanwhile, town board members in the Route 209 corridor town of Rochester are considering whether a resolution should be written that would reflect concern about the impact proposed casinos would have in the community. Gambling opponents have reported rumors of proposed casino locations near Kingston, Ellenville, New Paltz and even Highmount should concern Town Board members.
And Pataki’s plan is also bumping into problems in Washington and would be prohibited altogether under a bill being drafted by Sen. John McCain, the new chairman of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, who has just called for hearings on all aspects of Indian gaming. Rep. Richard Pombo is simultaneously expected to introduce legislation this month that would ban out-of-state tribes from gaining land in another state for gambling operations. Proving a connection to the Catskills would be difficult
for several of the tribes planning casinos there.
Pataki’s bill includes five tribes seeking to end claims tied to New York’s improper taking of Indian reservation land 200 years ago. The tribes would build large casinos that would share slot machine revenue with the state. The Pataki measure, which must be passed in Congress and by the state Legislature, would end land claims with the Mohawks, the Oneida, the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohicans, the Seneca-Cayuga Tribe of Oklahoma and the Cayuga Nation of New York.
All are simultaneously fighting among themselves, and with outside-the-state tribes, over the governor’s controversial plans.
Stay tuned…

Work Together!
“The City of New York’s not going anywhere and neither are the watershed towns so you better work together.”
That’s what Lynette Stark, acting commissioner of the State Department of Environmental Conservation, told leaders of the Coalition of Watershed Towns and top brass from the New York City Department of Environmental Protection on Friday at a summit conference in Newburgh. The meeting was called at the request of the Coalition to iron out differences between the two.
According to Alan Rosa, a complete briefing on the summit will happen on Monday February 21st at 6PM in the headquarters of the Catskill Watershed Corporation on Main Street in Margaretville.
Rosa, the executive Director of the CWC, attended the summit and said that while no conclusions were reached, “we now have a good framework to work from.”
That was not the case two months ago when Coalition officials demanded the sit down because they said the City refused to listen.
“Things went fairly well,” Rosa said.
Rosa was pleased that acting DEP commish David Tweedy seemed sincerely interested in hearing what the coalition had to say, and was also glad that Stark, who has been around watershed affairs since the get go in the 1990’s, was at the helm.
“She knows what’s going on,” Rosa said.

Rental Market
Ulster County’s rental market is being hurt by a combination of high prices and scarce availability, according to officials at the Rural Ulster Preservation Co., which is currently proposing several affordable housing projects around the county to help change the climate. The average rent for non-subsidized studio apartments in the county was $491 in 2003, with one-bedroom apartments bringing an average rent of $675, two-bedroom units bringing $810 on average, and three-bedroom units averaging $941, according to the survey. In 2004, the average rent for studio apartments climbed to $512, one-bedroom units brought $700, two-bedrooms units, $838, and three-bedroom units, $994.
RUPCO closed its waiting list for subsidized housing in October 2003, with 1,900 families in need of affordable housing.

More Jail…
Despite pledges to speed construction at Ulster County’s new law enforcement center, there is still such disarray on the project that the roofing crew did not even show up on a warm workday last week that was ideal for their task. Their absenteeism can be seen as symbolic of the troubled project, which, it now appears, is beginning to publicly pit Ulster County against its project manager, Bovis Lend Lease. And the threat of legal action may now join the cost overruns and long delays on the list of impediments plaguing the largest capital project ever undertaken by Ulster County.
The new county jail is a combination 402-bed jail and administrative headquarters for the county sheriff. Eighteen months behind schedule, it is now projected to cost more than $91 million to complete. County legislative leaders who approved the project say they will recoup some of those costs after legal action that could take years.
While the new law enforcement center is still officially slated for completion in late August, county officials now say they would have “to pay a premium” to meet that completion date, pushing the costs even higher. Construction mangers, county legislators and contractors privately say the actual date will be between October and December of this year, barring further problems. The original date for completing the jail was April 2004.
Democrats in the county legislature will try to pass a resolution to create a national search committee to find a replacement to Harvey Sleight, the commissioner of the Ulster County department of buildings and grounds for the last fifteen years. Sleight, 68, was not reappointed to his position at the end of 2004, and has not officially been reappointed to his post since December of 2000.
The county legislature is divided 17-16, with Republicans holding a one-vote edge. Majority leader Michael Stock said that despite the fact Sleight did not have enough support to get a permanent reappointment, he does not believe Republicans will support creation of a search committee to find his replacement. “I don’t think it will have any support on the Republican side of the aisle or a lot of support on the Democratic side of the aisle.”
Democratic leader David Donaldson said he does not know if there is enough support to pass the resolution. “But it’s time to move on. Let the Republicans say he’s doing the job he’s supposed to do and vote put him back in that position [commissioner] permanently. To have a commissioner of buildings and grounds working month to month is absurd. Either appoint him or don’t. So this pushes the issue.”


Warm Winter?
A weak El Nino and human-made greenhouse gases could make 2005 the warmest year since records started being kept in the late 1800s, NASA scientists recently said. While climate events like El Nino — when warm water spreads over much of the tropical Pacific Ocean — affect global temperatures, the increasing role of human-made pollutants plays a big part.
The warmest year on record was 1998, with 2002 and 2003 coming in second and third, respectively. Last year was the fourth-warmest recorded, with a global mean temperature of 57 degrees Fahrenheit (14 C), which was about 1.5 degrees warmer than the middle of the century, NASA scientist Drew Shindell said in an interview. Average temperatures taken from land and surfaces of the oceans showed 2004 was 0.86 degrees Fahrenheit (0.48 C) above the average temperature from 1951 to 1980, according to Hansen.
Meanwhile, 200 of the world’s leading climate scientists, meeting in England, recently issued the most urgent warning to date that dangerous climate change is taking place, and that time is running out. The biggest-ever study of climate change, based at Oxford University, reported that it could prove to be twice as catastrophic as the previous worst predictions… And an international task force concluded that we could reach “the point of no return” in a decade. Finally, the British head of the Shell Oil Company warned that unless governments take urgent action there “will be a disaster”. Professor Mike Schlesinger, of the University of Illinois, reported that the shutdown of the Gulf Stream, once seen as a “low probability event”, was now 45 per cent likely this century, and 70 per cent probable by 2200.

Ag District?
In accordance with the NYS Ag & Markets Law Section 303-b, Ulster County will accept requests from March 1st to March 30th from landowners desiring to have their predominately viable agricultural lands to be included within a certified agricultural district. Landowners seeking inclusion into a certified ag district must submit a completed Ag District Review Worksheet, along with the tax map identification number, relevant portion of the tax map, and a description of the land within this thirty-day period to Lydia Reidy, Chair, Ulster County Agricultural Farmland Protection Board, 10 Westbrook Lane, Kingston, NY 12401. The Ag District Review Worksheet and a free brochure explaining ag districts are available through Cornell Cooperative Extension of Ulster County. To receive a worksheet, a brochure or more information about the review process, please contact Teresa Rusinek, Horticulture/Ag Issue Educator, 845-340-3990.
Ag districts were created by an act of the New York State Legislature in 1971 to protect and promote the availability of land for farming purposes. They are intended to counteract the impact that non-farm development has upon the continuation of farm businesses by providing a framework limiting unreasonable local regulation on farm practices. Ulster County has four certified agricultural districts containing over 72,000 acres of farmland.

Other Corridors
Officials of six towns and villages in the Rondout Valley/Route 209 corridor area have formed a cooperative partnership to better attract tourism and new business. The new Rondout Valley Corridor Coalition, which includes the towns of Wawarsing, Marbletown, Hurley, Rosendale and Rochester, and the village of Ellenville, will facilitate cooperation between the communities on a range of issues, problems, and opportunities and has met six times since its formation in September, and has already put in a request to the state Department of Transportation and the Ulster County Transportation Council to do a transportation and land use study of a 30-mile stretch of Route 209 from Hurley to the Ulster County border south of Ellenville. Another project under consideration is to bring together local historians and representatives of the various historic resources in the valley to explore ways collaboration may be beneficial to the area.
Meanwhile, a recent report from the Hudson River Valley Greenway is expected to help groups promoting state “scenic byways” designations in the region, and has listed over 50 possible roads for such designation in the region. The project is being funded by a federal transportation enhancement grant eith approximately $150,000 available to assist groups wanting to achieve Scenic Byway designation.
As defined by New York state, a scenic byway is a road corridor that is of regionally outstanding scenic, natural, cultural, historic or archaeological significance. A scenic byway corridor is actively managed to protect its outstanding character, and to encourage economic development through tourism and recreation. Through the state Department of Transportation’s Scenic Byways Program, more than 2,000 miles of roads have been designated as scenic byways in the state.
The Shawangunk Mountain Scenic Byway, which will likely be the first local effort to gain funding and recognition, will encompass some 82 miles of roads, cover 100,000 acres, and pass through 10 communities in Ulster and northern Orange Counties, in and around the Shawangunk Ridge as well in the Wallkill River and Rondout valleys.
The Hudson River Valley Scenic Byways Public Outreach Summary Report is on the Web at www.hudsongreenway.state.ny.us.

Stang Dangers
American ginseng, sister of the Asian wonder herb and a seasonal cash crop in the Catskills, as well as the entire Appalachian mountain chain, has two obstacles to long-term survival in the United States: man and deer. According to a new report in the journal Science, scientists now believe that natural, slow-growing ginseng could be extinct within 100 years if deer keep grazing continues at current rates. Scientists have further suggested reintroduce mountain lions, wolves or other natural predators as a means of aiding the medicinal plant’s survival.
Ginseng is protected under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, which calls for the federal government to certify each year that harvesting the root will not threaten its existence. The wild plant takes 18 months to germinate, then eight to 15 years to mature.
Commercial demand is huge for ginseng, touted as a cure-all for everything from headaches and insomnia to sexual dysfunction. Even beer and soda makers are now adding it to their drinks.

Homeless Vets
Veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts are now showing up in the nation’s homeless shelters. While the numbers are still small, they’re steadily rising, and raising alarms in both the homeless and veterans’ communities. The concern is that these returning veterans - some of whom can’t find jobs after leaving the military, others of whom are still struggling psychologically with the war - may be just the beginning of an influx of new veterans in need. Currently, there are 150,000 troops in Iraq and 16,000 in Afghanistan. More than 130,000 have already served and returned home.
Part of the reason for these new veterans’ struggles is that housing costs have skyrocketed at the same time real wages have remained relatively stable, often putting rental prices out of reach. And for many, there is a gap of months, sometimes years, between when military benefits end and veterans benefits begin. Both the Veterans Administration and private veterans service organizations are already stretched, providing services for veterans of previous conflicts. For instance, while an estimated 500,000 veterans were homeless at some time during 2004, the VA had the resources to tend to only 100,000 of them.
A recent study published by the New England Journal of Medicine found that 15 to 17 percent of Iraq vets meet “the screening criteria for major depression, generalized anxiety, or PTSD.” Of those, only 23 to 40 percent are seeking help - in part because so many others fear the stigma of having a mental disorder.

Your New ID
Immigration legislation passed by the House would allow the federal government to force states to make sure they’re not granting driver’s licenses to illegal aliens, giving them three years to comply with the new federal standards dictating what features driver’s licenses must have. They could still issue special driving permits to illegal aliens, but those permits would not be recognized as identities for boarding airlines or allowing entry to federal buildings. Ten states now don’t require license applicants to prove they are citizens or legal residents: Hawaii, Maryland, Michigan, Montana, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, Washington, Wisconsin and Utah. Tennessee issues driving certificates to people who cannot prove they are legal residents.
Governors, state legislatures and motor vehicle departments have protested the bill, calling it a costly mandate that forces states to take on the role of immigration officers. The Congressional Budget Office estimated the bill would cost local, state and tribal governments $120 million over the next five years. A similar measure was rejected by Congress and the White House in December when it was part of a bill reorganizing intelligence agencies. It won the Bush administration’s support recently but still faces stiff opposition in the Senate.

Stopping Diabetes
Researchers in Boston have pinpointed a primary trigger for the most common form of diabetes and have uncovered evidence that simple, inexpensive aspirin-like drugs could keep the disease that affects millions in check. The researchers discovered a genetic ‘’master switch” in the liver that is turned on when people become obese. Obesity has long been linked to diabetes, but the reason, until now, has been unknown. Researchers found that once on, this switch produces low-level inflammation, which disrupts the body’s ability to process insulin, causing type 2 diabetes. But the researchers took the finding one step further. Reasoning that aspirin-like drugs are used to quell inflammation, they successfully used the drugs, called salicylates, to eliminate the symptoms of type 2 diabetes in mice. Human tests are already underway in Boston, though no results have been published.
‘’No one should go out and take these drugs,” said the report, though, noting it was better to lose weight, exercise, and eat healthy.
About 18 million Americans have diabetes, and most have type 2 diabetes. In type 2 diabetes, the body’s cells become resistant to insulin, which transports sugar from the bloodstream into cells, giving cells energy to function. In diabetes, this feeding is blocked, causing sugar to build up in blood. Those afflicted grow excessively thirsty, exhausted, and confused if the condition goes untreated, and are at high risk for heart disease, stroke, blindness, and amputations. About three-quarters of sufferers are obese or overweight.

Sex Results…
Abstinence-only programs like those promoted by the Bush administration don’t seem to be working on teenagers in the president’s home state, according to a state-sponsored study by Texas A&M University researchers. The ongoing study, the first evaluation of the abstinence programs across the state, found that students in almost all high school grades were more sexually active after undergoing abstinence education.
Researchers don’t believe the programs encouraged teenagers to have sex, only that the abstinence messages did not interfere with customary trends among adolescents.
The federal government will spend $131 million this year on various abstinence-only education programs - $30 million more than was spent in 2004. But many public health experts are concerned that no one really knows what the government is buying.
Among the findings in the Texas study: About 23 percent of the ninth-grade girls in the study already had sexual intercourse before they received any abstinence education, a figure below the national average. After taking an abstinence course, the number among those same girls rose to 28 percent, a level closer to that of their peers across the state. Among ninth-grade boys, the percentage who reported sexual intercourse before and after abstinence education remained relatively unchanged. In 10th grade, the percentage of boys who had ever had sexual intercourse jumped from 24 percent to 39 percent after participating in an abstinence program.
To be funded as abstinence education, programs cannot provide instruction in birth control, outside “factual information about contraceptive methods, such as the failure rates that are associated with the different methods,” according to documents from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Among other things, the law also dictates that an abstinence program must have “as its exclusive purpose, teaching the social, psychological, and health gains to be realized by abstaining from sexual activity.”

Plame Games
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has stepped aside from the Justice Department investigation into the leak of undercover CIA officer Valerie Plame’s identity. Gonzales had been involved in the case as White House legal counsel, testifying before a federal grand jury and giving advice about it to White House personnel.
Investigators want to find out who leaked the identity of Plame, whose name was published in July 2003 by syndicated columnist Robert Novak. The investigation is being run by U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald of Chicago, who was appointed special counsel with broad decision-making latitude and reports to Deputy Attorney General James Comey.
Plame is married to former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who has said his wife’s name may have been revealed as retribution for a newspaper opinion piece he wrote criticizing President Bush’s claim that Iraq had sought uranium in Niger. Wilson was asked by the CIA to check out that claim.
Meanwhile, Democrats in Congress are pressing for investigations into how a Washington reporter who used a pseudonym managed to gain access to the White House and had access to classified documents that named Plame. Until resigning in recent weeks, James Guckert used the name Jeff Gannon and worked for TalonNews.com, a Web site operated by Robert Eberle, a Texas Republican. Democrats have asked how someone using a pseudonym was cleared to enter the White House daily press briefings as well as a presidential news conference.
Mr. Guckert resigned from Talon saying he had been “harassed by liberals” on the Internet. Bloggers grew suspicious of him after President Bush called on him at the news conference and the reporter suggested that Democrats had “divorced themselves from reality.”

Freedom, Huh?
The way many high school students see it, government censorship of newspapers may not be a bad thing, and flag burning is hardly protected free speech. According to a study of high school attitudes, more than one in three high school students said the First Amendment goes “too far” in the rights it guarantees. Only half of the students said newspapers should be allowed to publish freely without government approval of stories.
“These results are not only disturbing; they are dangerous,” said Hodding Carter III, president of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, which sponsored the $1 million study. “Ignorance about the basics of this free society is a danger to our nation’s future.”
The students are even more restrictive in their views than their elders, the study says. When asked whether people should be allowed to express unpopular views, 97 percent of teachers and 99 percent of school principals said yes. Only 83 percent of students did. Three in four students said flag burning is illegal. It’s not. About half the students said the government can restrict any indecent material on the Internet. It can’t.
The survey, conducted by researchers at the University of Connecticut, is billed as the largest of its kind. More than 100,000 students, nearly 8,000 teachers and more than 500 administrators at 544 public and private high schools took part in early 2004.

Science Changes
More than 200 scientists employed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service say they have been directed to alter official findings to lessen protections for plants and animals, says a new survey of the agency’s scientific staff of 1,400, which had a 30% response rate and was conducted jointly by the Union of Concerned Scientists and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. More than half of the biologists and other researchers who responded to the survey said they knew of cases in which commercial interests, including timber, grazing, development and energy companies, had applied political pressure to reverse scientific conclusions deemed harmful to their business.

Sinking Dollar
The U.S. trade deficit rose 24 percent to a record high of $618 billion last year as Americans indulged their appetite for foreign goods, from crude oil to computers and cars. And despite a substantially weaker dollar, which makes U.S. products cheaper overseas, a deficit emerged for the first time in farm goods after 50 years of surpluses, according to yesterday’s Commerce Department trade report. The U.S. edge in advanced technology products disappeared two years ago, and analysts forecast that at the current rate, many remaining U.S. strong points in trade — including banking and legal services — also soon will be toppled and succumb to the burgeoning deficit.
The widening trade deficit has worried financial markets since it started accelerating last year to 5.3 percent of U.S. economic output. Because the deficit must be financed entirely with borrowing from overseas, financial analysts consider the 5 percent threshold a danger point — one that few countries have exceeded without serious consequences to their economies.

More Bad News
Flu shots may be limited again next season to people with the greatest health risks if efforts to bolster the vaccine supply fail, U.S. health officials say. The Food and Drug Administration is working with vaccine maker Chiron to resolve problems that led to the suspension in October of the company’s license to make flu shots at its plant in England. That meant Chiron could not deliver up to 48 million expected doses, precipitating a vaccine shortage in the USA. After Chiron’s suspension, only Aventis Pasteur, now Sanofi Pasteur, and MedImmune were licensed to sell flu vaccine in this country.
That could change by fall. At least two companies, GlaxoSmithKline and ID Biomedical, hope to be licensed in the next few months to sell their flu vaccines in the USA. MedImmune wants FDA approval of manufacturing changes that would allow it to make more doses of FluMist, a nasal spray flu vaccine; eliminate a requirement that doctors use a special freeze-box for storage; and permit the vaccine to be used by people up to age 64. Currently, FluMist is approved for healthy people ages 5 through 49.

Who Knew What?
It has been revealed that despite attacked on the United Nations for its oil for food deals with Iraq, the United States knew about, and even condoned, embargo-breaking oil sales by Saddam Hussein’s regime, and did so to shore up alliances with Iraq’s neighbors.
The oil trade with countries such as Turkey and Jordan appears to have been an open secret inside the U.S. government and the United Nations for years. This illicit revenue far exceeds the estimates of what Saddam pocketed through illegal surcharges on his U.N.-approved oil exports and illegal kickbacks on subsequent Iraqi purchases of food, medicine, and supplies — $1.7 billion to $4.4 billion — during the maligned seven-year U.N. oil-for-food program in Iraq. The Government Accountability Office estimated last July that Iraq earned $5.7 billion from smuggling oil out of the country, especially to Jordan, Turkey, and Syria between 1996 and 2002. A CIA-backed Iraq Survey Group report by former Iraq weapons inspector Charles Duelfer estimated last October that Saddam acquired $8 billion by smuggling oil to Jordan, Turkey, Syria, and Egypt through 2003, when oil for food ended with the toppling of Saddam.
The oil-for-food program is being investigated by U.S. congressional committees, the Justice Department, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and a special committee appointed by the United Nations and led by former Federal Reserve Bank Chairman Paul Volcker.
Rep. Robert Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat on the House International Relations Committee, one of five panels probing the oil-for-food program, told CNN the United States was “complicit in undermining” the U.N. sanctions on Iraq. “How is it that you stand on a moral footing to go after the U.N. when they’re responsible for 15 percent maybe of the ill-gotten gains, and we were part and complicit of him getting 85 percent of the money?” Menendez asked.

Sippy Sweet
A growing body of science is linking sweet drinks, natural or otherwise, to a host of child health concerns, everything from bulging bellies to tooth decay. Though healthy in moderation, juice essentially is water and sugar. In fact, a 12-ounce bottle of grape soda has 159 calories. The same amount of unsweetened grape juice packs 228 calories. The $10 billion juice industry maintains that a conclusive link between its products and obesity has yet to be established, but researchers say sugar is sugar, and sweet drinks of any kind must be consumed with care.
Overuse of juice is a relatively recent phenomenon. Before the rise of soda, juice and other sweetened drinks during the latter half of the 20th century, water and milk were children’s primary beverages. In a nation where nearly a third of children are either overweight or at risk of becoming overweight, health officials now say high-calorie beverages have little place in a young child’s diet.
In very young children, too much juice cuts the appetite for nutritionally superior breast milk or formula. In older children, it often supplements other foods, potentially adding hundreds of excess calories.