(News Briefs December 20, 2007)

Same Old…
The county legislature’s current Democratic Majority Leader Jeanette Provenzano and her supporters failed to succeed in their challenge to David Donaldson last Wednesday, December 12, for the post of the lawmaking body’s chairmanship over the coming year. Peter Kraft of District 3 made the nomination for her challenge. Gary Bischoff of Saugerties nominated Donaldson, of Kingston, noting that now was not the time fort shifts in leadership.
Donaldson asked for continued support from the Democrats during the two years of transition to a charter form of government and an elected county executive.
Provenzano emphasized harmony with the county’s minority party.
But after the results of the secret balloting were announced, it was a victorious Donaldson who spoke of unity.
“Let us work together, and say we can work together,” he said. “We can respectfully disagree, but we need to work as a team.”
Provenzano declined a nomination to continue as majority leader. Second-term legislator Brian Cahill takes over that role, defeating Hector Rodriguez. Robert Parete of District 3 will remain as majority whip.
The formal election of a chairman will come at the reorganization meeting January 2. Provenzano pledged to support the caucus choice.

Food Kitchens
Area food banks and soup kitchens are experiencing both a growing demand for emergency food and decreasing supplies. According to Mark Quandt, executive director of the Regional Food Bank of Northeastern New York, private donations aren’t the only thing suffering from an increase in oil, gas and other recent cost of living spikes; the numbers of people seeking help have also increased.
The Latham-based Regional Food Bank of Northeastern New York serves as a conduit between the federal and state governments, the food industry and local food pantries in 23 counties, including Ulster. On average, more than half of the food distributed through local food banks comes directly through the Regional Food Bank. As has been reported across the country, local numbers of those in need have also recently risen sharply.
“We’re seeing an increase in requests for food pretty substantially,” said Peter Quinlan, director of People’s Place, a food pantry and thrift store on Broadway in Kingston. “Earlier this fall, I compared our numbers with past years. The numbers [of those in need] are basically trending up, which isn’t a surprise considering the economy.”
In 2006, People’s Place served 1,556 people in 424 families during Thanksgiving. This year that number jumped to 1,801 people in 481 families.
But, while the numbers of people in need are rising, the ease of filling that need has been on a steady decline. According to Quandt, the Regional Food Bank is seeing a decrease in donations from two of its greatest suppliers, food retailers and manufacturers and the federal Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Bonus Commodity Program, which buys surplus goods from farmers and redistributes it through food banks across the country.
According to Quandt, food donated from retailers and manufacturers is often surplus goods, or usable food that can no longer be sold. He said modern inventory techniques are causing the number of surplus food items to dwindle.
Supplies from the USDA have also dropped, primarily because farmers are having a good year with less surplus items to sell at discount to the federal government. In 2006, federal supplies from the surplus program were valued at $67 million, down from $154.3 million in 2005, and $233 million in 2004.
On the good side, though, is an increase of $5 million in funding to the state’s Hunger Prevention and Nutrition Assistance Program announced by Gov. Elliott Spitzer’s office on Nov. 21 will help food banks, food pantries, soup kitchens and emergency shelters across New York during the holidays. Also, an increase in the federal Emergency Food Assistance Program from $140 million to $250 million approved by Congress for the 2008 budget is currently before the Senate and, if passed and signed into law, would also help right the ship over the next year. The federal program is responsible for the distribution of USDA commodities to state food banks.
Help if you can…

Bear Baiting
A hunter from Rockland County was recently arrested for killing a bear in the state’s southern hunting tier, which includes Ulster and Sullivan counties, using donuts as bait. The man was fined $1,502 and forfeited his hunting license for five years. The DEC said that in addition to donuts, other bait used – illegally – included molasses, bagels and fish.
The DEC has since noted that 2007 seems to have witnessed a greater number of complaints in the southern tier about illegal hunting. 21 violations have been handed out for activities such as baiting animals and “jacking” deer in the southern tier. (Jacking deer is a practice where a hunter hunting at night uses a bright spotlight to shine it in the deer’s eyes, causing the animal to freeze, making an easy target.)
Using baiting or bright lights to hunt animals, the DEC says said, gives the hunter an “unfair advantage and puts the animal at a disadvantage.”

Green Ulster!
An Open Space Plan, the object of 15 months of work,and several months of public input sessions, was given final approval by the Ulster County legislature at its final meeting of the year last week, after some last minute debate over whether all aspects of the issue had been covered, including complaints from hunting groups that they had not been heard… per Republicans’ complaints. In the end, the issue passed on a party-line vote with the minority Republicans opposed to adopting the plan in its present form.
“It doesn’t say that there shouldn’t be any growth, said Democrat Brian Shapiro, chairman of the Environmental Committee, of the new plan. “What it does is allow specific areas to grow within. Doing that protects not only our environment, but our economy as well. It’s been shown that areas that properly plan for growth do succeed economically, as opposed to those who do not.”
The legislature also approved a detailed local law prohibiting illicit discharge activities and connections to the county’s storm sewer system.

Onteora Skiing
The Onteora High alpine ski team is expecting trouble continuing its streak of Section 9 titles when their season starts Hanuary 8 since both their boys and girls teams lost three of four top skiers from last year and will be looking to untested talent to continue their local dominance of the sport. Last season, the Indians boys won their 10th straight sectional title, while the girls captured their sixth straight on their way to a first-ever New York State championship.
“We’ve had a good run and this year will be a huge test for us,” said Onteora coach Herb Cytyrn. “For the boys, (two-time state champion) Tyler Bailey and Doug Clark both graduated and Kevin Van Blarcum is studying overseas in Germany this year. On the girls team, Jessica Tar (third in the state) graduated and Katie Haggerty and Giorgia Nagle are both at ski academies in Lake Placid.”
Buddy Thompson, second in the Section 9 championships last year and 34th at the state meet, takes over as captain for the Indians boys team with Brad Clark, who was out last season with a broken leg, as the team’s potential No. 2 man. Joe Vanacore, Austin Reiss, Rob Cattey, Andrew Wilsey and Jake Vanacore are the other returnees.
Cytyrn is expecting eighth-grader Jacob Coombe and seventh-grader Kealey Viglielmo to contribute as well.
Marlise Coombe, who placed 16th at the state meet last year, takes over as captain on an extremely youthful girls team. New York State alternate Claire Wilsey moves up to the No. 2 spot, while five youngsters including eighth-graders Rachel Castellano and Isabel LaMotte, along with Emily Vanacore, Lena Guendel and Morgan Burgess, will battle to be part of the scoring group.
“We are going to be pushed in sectionals this year, but both teams are very dedicated and want to succeed,” Cytyrn added.
The current schedule has Onteora opening its season with a Giant Slalom at Holiday Mountain beginning at 4:30 p.m. on January 8; Slalom at Holiday Mountain on January 10; Giant Slalom at Belleayre Mountain at 10 a.m on January 14; Slalom at Holiday Mountain on January 15.; Slalom at Holiday Mountain on January 17; a Girls race at Belleayre Mountain the morning of January 28; Slalom at Holiday Mountain on January 29; a Boys race at Belleayre Mountain the morning of January 30; Giant Slalom at Belleayre Mountain on February 4; Section IX Championships at Belleayre Mountain the morning of February 12.; and the New York State Championships at Lake Placid on February 26.
Go, go, go!

Mortgage Front
As the era of quick and easy home credit comes to a crashing halt with a full blown lending crisis, an increasing number of local families are faced with the real possibility of losing their homes to foreclosure. Rural Ulster Preservation Corp. is trying to stem the tide with programs to help homeowners avoid default, bankruptcy and financial ruin.
In April, RUPCO was added to a list of agencies qualified to offer financial counseling to homeowners in danger of foreclosure and began receiving referrals from a nationwide hotline set up by the federal department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Since then, RUPCO Home Ownership Director Kathy Germain said the number of calls has risen from one or two per week to five or six per day. The only silver lining Germaine said, is that the growing awareness of the financial risks of adjustable rate or “subprime” mortgages is impelling homeowners to seek out advice earlier.
“Six month ago we were getting calls from people six months or a year behind on their mortgage and when they’re that far behind it’s really hard to help,” said Germain. “Now we’re finding people are coming to us much earlier. They’re coming in one or two months behind or they’ll say ‘I can pay my mortgage now, but in six months my rates will reset and I’ll be in trouble.’”
But Germain added that the wave of troubled homeowners seeking advice and assistance was overwhelming her counseling operation, which consists of her and one part-time counselor. One reason for the backlog, Germain said, was that the counseling process was complex and multi-layered, involving everything from fiscal detective work to personal counseling. An estimated 15 to 20 hours of work goes into analyzing documents and family finances before the first one-on-one counseling session.
Germain said most foreclosures are caused by a combination of a risky mortgage and a life event like job loss or health problems. Others though are the result of deception or outright fraud on the part of lenders.
Meanwhile, Yulitza Franklin, director of Community Outreach for the New York State Banking Department explained some tactics, like flyers posted around the neighborhood, door-to-door solicitation, or offers of “rescue” from eminent foreclosure, used by unscrupulous lenders to prey on desperate or financially unsophisticated homeowners. Franklin warned that, in lending, the devil is in the details. She advised anyone taking out a mortgage or refinancing one to have a lawyer review the paperwork or at least to read every document carefully and not be rushed into a loan by an aggressive salesperson. Franklin said homeowners in danger of foreclosure were especially vulnerable to predatory lending or home equity theft schemes.
RUPCO’s Germain said the prospects of homeowners caught up in the foreclosure process are less than rosy. She said just 10 percent of her counseling clients end up retaining their homes. With no “rescue funds” available, often the most she can do is help clients limit credit damage and avoid additional debt. Germain, however offered hope to homeowners who can hang on long enough - new federal legislation that could allow bankruptcy courts to restructure mortgages and other government aid to those facing foreclosure.
“Our tools are limited but there may be more tools coming down the pike,” she said.
Keep your fingers crossed… and your checkbooks balanced!

Diverse Gods
The Religion Program at Bard College is presenting a public seminar “Mapping the World Religions in the Hudson Valley,” on Friday, December 21. The free program will be held from 9:30 a.m. to noon in Preston Hall.
Some of the locations chosen for discussion include Buddhist monasteries Kagyu Thubten Choling in Wappingers Falls, Karma Triyana Dharmachakra in Woodstock, and Blue Cliff Monastery in Pine Bush; the Hindu temple Hindu Samaj in Wappingers Falls; the Islamic center Masjid al Ikhlas in Newburgh; the Religious Society of Friends (Quaker) Old Chatham Monthly Meeting in Old Chatham, Bull’s Head Monthly Meeting in Clinton Corners; and nondenominational Christian groups the River Church in Poughkeepsie, Woodcrest Bruderhof in Rifton, and Northern Dutchess Bible Church in Red Hook.
The presentations are modeled on a template engineered by the Pluralism Project (headquartered at Harvard University), a decade-long research project to engage students in studying the new religious diversity in the United States.
For further information, call Kristin Scheible, assistant professor of religion at Bard, at 845-758-7207 or e-mail scheible@bard.edu.

Got Milk?
Too little milk, sunshine and exercise: It’s an anti-bone trifecta. And for some kids, shockingly, it’s leading to rickets, the soft-bone scourge of the 19th century.
But cases of full-blown rickets are just the red flag: Bone specialists say possibly millions of seemingly healthy children aren’t building as much strong bone as they should - a gap that may leave them more vulnerable to bone-cracking osteoporosis later in life than their grandparents are.
“This potentially is a time-bomb,” says Dr. Laura Tosi, bone health chief at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington.
Now scientists are taking the first steps to track kids’ bone quality and learn just how big a problem the anti-bone trio is causing, thanks to new research that finally shows just what “normal” bone density is for children of different ages.
Almost half of peak bone mass develops during adolescence, and the concern is that missing out on the strongest possible bones in childhood could haunt people decades later. By the 30s, bone is broken down faster than it’s rebuilt. Then it’s a race to maintain bone and avoid the thin bones of osteoporosis in old age.
Already there’s evidence that U.S. children break their arms more often today than four decades ago - girls 56 percent more, and boys 32 percent more, according to a Mayo Clinic study. And last year, government researchers found overweight children were more likely to suffer a fracture, even though theoretically their bones should be hardier from carrying more weight.
Doctors have long known that less than a quarter of adolescents get enough calcium. But strong bones require more than calcium alone. Exercise is at least as important. Consider: The dominant arm of a tennis player has 35 percent more bone than the non-dominant arm.

National Debt
Like a ticking time bomb, the national debt is an explosion waiting to happen. It’s expanding by about $1.4 billion a day - or nearly $1 million a minute. It is currently $9.13 trillion, or about $30,000 for every person in the U.S. The total is worrisome to many because interest payments on the debt strain government resources — and things could get worse if the economy slows down, as some economists predict. And like homeowners who took out adjustable-rate mortgages, the government faces the prospect of seeing this debt - now at relatively low interest rates - rolling over to higher rates, multiplying the financial pain.
So long as somebody is willing to keep loaning the U.S. government money, the debt is largely out of sight, out of mind. But the interest payments keep compounding, and could in time squeeze out most other government spending - leading to sharply higher taxes or a cut in basic services like Social Security and other government benefit programs. Or all of the above.
The amount, representing the total accumulation of annual budget deficits, is up from $5.7 trillion when President Bush took office in January 2001 and it will top $10 trillion sometime right before or right after he leaves in January 2009. And despite vows in both parties to restrain federal spending, the national debt as a percentage of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product has grown from about 35 percent in 1975 to around 65 percent today. By historical standards, it’s not proportionately as high as during World War II - when it briefly rose to 120 percent of GDP, but it’s a big chunk of liability.
“The problem is going forward,” said David Wyss, chief economist at Standard and Poors, a major credit-rating agency. “Our estimate is that the national debt will hit 350 percent of the GDP by 2050 under unchanged policy. Something has to change, because if you look at what’s going to happen to expenditures for entitlement programs after us baby boomers start to retire, at the current tax rates, it doesn’t work.”
Who is loaning Washington all this money?
Ordinary investors who buy Treasury bills, notes and U.S. savings bonds, for one. Also it is banks, pension funds, mutual fund companies and state, local and increasingly foreign governments. This accounts for about $5.1 trillion of the total and is called the “publicly held” debt. The remaining $4 trillion is owed to Social Security and other government accounts, according to the Treasury Department, which keeps figures on the national debt down to the penny on its Web site.
Some economists liken the government’s plight to consumers who spent like there was no tomorrow - only to find themselves maxed out on credit cards and having a hard time keeping up with rising interest payments.
Much of the recent borrowing has been accomplished through the selling of shorter-term Treasury bills. If these loans roll over to higher rates, interest payments on the national debt could soar. Furthermore, the decline of the dollar against other major currencies is making Treasury securities less attractive to foreigners - even if they remain one of the world’s safest investments.
For now, large U.S. trade deficits with much of the rest of the world work in favor of continued foreign investment in Treasuries and dollar-denominated securities. After all, the vast sums Americans pay - in dollars - for imported goods has to go somewhere. But that dynamic could change.
“The first day the Chinese or the Japanese or the Saudis say, `we’ve bought enough of your paper,’ then the debt - whatever level it is at that point - becomes unmanageable,” said Wyss.
A recent comment by a Chinese lawmaker suggesting the country should buy more euros instead of dollars helped send the Dow Jones plunging more than 300 points.
The dollar is down about 35 percent since the end of 2001 against a basket of major currencies.

Night Cancer
It was once scientific heresy to suggest that smoking contributed to lung cancer. Now, another idea initially dismissed as nutty is gaining acceptance: the graveyard shift might increase your cancer risk.
Next month, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, the cancer arm of the World Health Organization, will classify shift work as a “probable” carcinogen. And if the shift work theory proves correct, millions of people worldwide could be affected. Experts estimate that nearly 20 percent of the working population in developed countries work night shifts.
It is a surprising twist for an idea that scientists first described as “wacky,” said Richard Stevens, a cancer epidemiologist and professor at the University of Connecticut Health Center. In 1987, Stevens published a paper suggesting a link between light at night and breast cancer. Back then, he was trying to figure out why breast cancer incidence suddenly shot up starting in the 1930s in industrialized societies, where nighttime work was considered a hallmark of progress. Most scientists were bewildered by his proposal. But in recent years, several studies have found that women working at night for many years are indeed more prone to breast cancer, and that animals who have their light-dark schedules switched grow more cancerous tumors and die quicker. Some research has also shown that men working at night may have a higher rate of prostate cancer.
Scientists suspect that shift work is dangerous because it disrupts the circadian rhythm, the body’s biological clock. The hormone melatonin, which can suppress tumor development, is normally produced at night. Light shuts down melatonin production, so people working in artificial light at night may have lower melatonin levels, which scientists think can raise their chances of developing cancer.
Sleep deprivation may also be a factor. People who work at night are not usually able to completely reverse their day and night cycles. Not getting enough sleep makes your immune system vulnerable to attack, and less able to fight off potentially cancerous cells. Confusing your body’s natural rhythm can also lead to a breakdown of other essential tasks.
The American Cancer Society said it would most likely add shift work to its list of “known and probable carcinogens” when the IARC makes its reclassification. Up to now, the society has labeled it an “uncertain, controversial or unproven effect.”

No Pay Phones
AT&T Inc., the nation’s largest phone carrier, said last week that it is getting out of the 129-year-old pay-phone business. They said that the company’s pay phones will be phased out over the next year. A company spokeswoman declined to say how much revenue its pay-phone business generated, but the number is small and declining. Although AT&T is exiting the pay-phone market, not every major phone company has done so. Verizon Communications Inc. still operates them in the Northeast, particularly in busy urban markets such as New York and Boston.
The first public pay-telephone station was set up in 1878, just two years after Alexander Graham Bell invented the talking device. The first coin-operated pay phone was installed in Hartford, Conn., in 1889. For decades after the pay phone’s invention, many Americans relied on them because of the expense and difficulty in obtaining reliable home service. Only after World War II did the telephone become a household necessity.
Since 1998, however, the number of pay phones in service has shrunk from 2.6 million to about 1 million, according to AT&T. The main reason has been the proliferation of cellular phones, which were invented in the 1970s. By late 2007, there were almost 251 million wireless customers nationwide among a U.S. population of 301 million, the CTIA industry trade group estimates. AT&T alone caters to almost 66 million mobile subscribers.
By contrast, AT&T operates just 65,000 pay phones in the 13 states formerly served by the local-phone company SBC Communications, which acquired the old Ma Bell in 2005 and then took its name.
AT&T said that it will continue to sell wholesale pay-phone service to independent operators, and it expects them to pick up some of its business.

Plame Again…
A government watchdog group now says ten to twenty million White House emails, which may contain information about the leak of Valerie Plame Wilson’s covert CIA status, have been destroyed by the Bush administration.
In a report from April, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) detailed a massive hole in the White House email records. The report, titled “Without a Trace: The Missing White House Emails and the Violations of the Presidential Records Act,” accused the Bush administration of destroying “more than 5 million” emails and failing to attempt to recover them.
According to CREW, their sources now tell them the number of missing emails is probably between ten and twenty million.
Anne Weisman, CREW’s chief counsel said the revised estimate “highlights that this is a very serious and systematic problem at the White House.” Currently CREW, along with The National Security Archives are suing the Bush administration in an attempt to force the administration to restore the missing documents from backup tapes.
The missing email were discovered in the fall of 2005 when staff at the White House Office of Administration were attempting to respond to a subpoena from Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald for any White House records relating to the leak of Plame Wilson’s identity.
The CREW report includes a letter from Fitzgerald that shows his investigation was hampered by problems with the White House email archiving system. “... we have learned that not all email of the office of the Vice President and the Executive Office of the President for certain time periods in 2003 was preserved through the normal archiving process on the White House computer system,” Fitzgerald wrote in his letter to I. Lewis Libby’s attorneys.
The report detailed two separate possible violations of the Presidential Records Act (PRA), a law passed in the wake of the Watergate scandal that requires the preservation of all presidential documents for the historical record. The first violation was the use of unofficial email accounts by White House staff to conduct official business. The second potential violation was the destruction of internal emails at the White House. According to CREW, two independent White House insiders have confirmed a massive systematic failure occurred that wiped out “hundreds of days” of email records between March 2003 and October 2005.

Winter Camp…
Frost Valley YMCA in Claryville is again gearing up for Winter Camp in the Catskill Mountains. Winter Camp is offered for children ages 7-16 and runs from Dec. 27-30 and is an exciting program for outdoor winter adventure. Activity choices include: cross-country skiing, arts and crafts, ice skating, broomball, a Slide Mountain Winter Expedition, history preserved “Winter Olympix,” snow tubing, high ropes extreme adventure climbing and more. There is also an optional downhill ski trip to
nearby Belleayre Mountain in Highmount.
For more information or to register for Winter Camp, please call (845) 985-2291, ext. 203, e-mail: rmcnamara@frostvalley.org or visit: www.frostvalley.org to register online.

Honey Cure
A teaspoon of honey before bed seems to calm children’s coughs and help them sleep better, according to a new study that relied on parents’ reports of their children’s symptoms. The folk remedy did better than cough medicine or no treatment in a three-way comparison. Honey may work by coating and soothing an irritated throat, the study authors said.
Federal health advisers have recently warned that over-the-counter cough and cold medicines shouldn’t be used in children younger than 6, and manufacturers are taking some products for babies off the market.

Grammy Man!
Henry "Hank" Sapoznik of Olive Bridge has just been nominated for a 2008 Grammy Award for his 3 CD reissue anthology "People Take Warning! Murder Ballads and Disaster Songs 1913-1938" produced with Chris King and co-written with Tom Waits for the Tompkins Square label. This is Sapoznik's fifth Grammy nomination. Way to go, Hank...