(News Briefs 6/7/2007)

Dems Decide…
Ulster County Democrats handed their nomination for the District Attormey position opening up with the decision by incumbent Don Williams not to run again to Assistant Ulster County Public Defender Jonathan Sennett in an upset caucus vote Monday night at the Hillside Manor in Kingston. Vincent Bradley Jr., with three major endorsements before the event, had been considered the favorite going in to the party convention.
Sennett, who has a law practice in New Paltz, won on a second ballot by roughly 230 committee members attending the convention at the Hillside Manor. Sennett received 13,164 votes in the weighted count, followed by Bradley with 10,875.5.
State Assemblyman Kevin Cahill, D-Kingston, had urged Democrats to back Bradley, who came out on top in the first round of votes with 10,245.5 to Sennett’s 7,702.5 and 7,071.5 for Assistant District Attorney Julian Schriebman. However, a majority of the votes was required to win the nomination, requiring a second round between the two leading candidates.
Sennett said his nomination means “hopefully, that the Democratic Party and committee members took a look at the issues and merit of my experience and candidacy and got behind me in the end.”
He had been the first candidate to come forward in the district attorney race, before incumbent Republican Donald Williams announced he would step down.
One Republican - Holley Carnright - is running for the position.
Democrats also nominated 29 candidates for county Legislature, with the only controversy erupting in District 8 (Gardiner-New Paltz-Shawangunk), where first-term Legislator Peter Liepmann was denied renomination. Liepmann vowed a primary.
Overall, Democrats hold a 21-12 majority over Republicans (with non-enrolled Tracey Bartels in their caucus) but left open four slots.

Cassel Resigns
Dr. Laurie Cassel, principal of Bennett Elementary School for 14 years has resigned. She will be moving onto Ulster County BOCES as Deputy Superintendent in New Paltz and will work closely with Superintendent Martin Ruglis.
“It is sad and exciting at the same time, the feelings that are flooding through me.” Cassel a resident of Woodstock, is from New York City. She has her Phd in education from Fordham University, Masters in Special Education from Columbia University and an undergraduate in Psychology from Purchase.
She said working at Bennett has been a “blessing and a gift.”

Phoenicia Threats
Phoenicia resident Joseph Rainwater 42 of Woodland Clove Road, was arrested recently on charges of first-degree reckless endangerment, criminal possession of a loaded firearm, and criminal possession of marijuana, all felonies, and second-degree menacing, a misdemeanor. He was sent to Ulster County Jail in lieu of $10,000 bail.
According to Shandaken police, Rainwater swerved his vehicle into the path of another vehicle as if he was going to hit the other vehicle. The driver of that vehicle, whom authorities did not identify, drove around looking for Rainwater, ultimately finding Rainwater’s vehicle parked in the driveway of Rainwater’s Woodland Clove Road home. As the driver told Rainwater to stop harassing him, Rainwater produced a .223-caliber M-16-type assault rifle and pointed it at him. Police said the driver told them that as he started to drive away, Rainwater fired a shot at him. The driver reported the incident to police.
Authorities said Rainwater also called authorities to report harassment. He was arrested after admitting that he fired the weapon.
A search of Rainwater’s home, executed by the Shandaken town police and the Ulster County Sheriff’s Office, uncovered a “grow operation” and about two pounds of marijuana. Police also found three other semiautomatic rifles and hundreds of rounds of ammunition.
Mark Sklar, 55, Rainwater’s roommate, was also arrested and charged with second-degree criminal possession of marijuana, a felony, and unlawful growing of cannabis, a misdemeanor, police said. He was arraigned and released.

Jail Probe
The investigation into cost overruns and construction delays at the new Ulster County Law Enforcement Center will include an examination of how the project received its initial approval and will allow people to call a hotline to provide information about any phase of the work. The review will last 16 weeks and cost $90,200. Among other things, it plans to look into the events leading up to the hiring of construction manager Bovis Lend Lease, which was done without a vote by the county Legislature.
Bovis was paid $3.5 million for work it did on the project before being fired by the county Legislature in March 2006.
The committee will use its authority to issue subpoenas, if necessary, though it has been noted that court cases involving payments to contractors already have provided substantial documentation. The investigative committee also expects to determine whether 10 previous oversight committees functioned correctly and whether relationships between contractors and county officials were proper.
Votes by the Republican-run county Legislature in July 2002 increased the estimated $53 million cost of the project to $71,838,195, once all contracts were awarded and legal fees were added. The total had risen to $84.39 million by the time the Democrats became the Legislature’s majority party at the beginning of 2006. The amount since has climbed to $95.2 million and is expected to top $100 million once outstanding claims by contractors are settled.

Watershed Study
A total of $30 million to study and implement improvements to the and Upper Delaware River Watershed and Susquehanna River was included in the congressional Water Resources Development Act of 2007 recently. WRDA, which was recently passed in the Senate and the bill will now go to a House and Senate Conference Committee to resolve differences between the House and Senate versions of the bill, authorizes the Army Corps of Engineers civil works projects, including flood mitigation, navigation, ecosystem restoration and shoreline protection projects. Under the authorizations, the Corps partners with local sponsors to conduct the projects. A project authorization in WRDA is a necessary first step towards securing funding in an appropriations bill at a later date.
The Upper Delaware River and Susquehanna provision in WRDA will authorize the Corps to work with New York State and local governments to develop a watershed management plan for the Upper Delaware River and Susquehanna watersheds and to carry out flood mitigation and ecosystem restoration projects that are consistent with the plan. The types of projects that can be carried out under the provision include bank stabilization, wetland restoration, soil and water conservation, and flood damage reduction. The provision authorizes $30 million for these purposes, with a 65/35 cost share between the Corps and non-federal sponsors.
The provision streamlines the process by which the Corps studies and conducts flood mitigation projects. After developing a watershed management plan, the Corps will be able to move forward on projects without a new authorization from Congress—a step that is usually required, and which often adds years to the time it takes to complete projects.
Local government watchers are now anticipating similar moves for flood mitigation in the Hudson-side of the watershed in the coming years.

Autism Lawsuit
More than 4,800 claims have been filed against the federal government during the past six years alleging that a child contracted autism as a result of a vaccine. The first test case from among those claims will be the subject of an impending hearing in a little-known “People’s Court” - the U.S. Court of Federal Claims.
For the parents filing a claim, there is the potential for vindication, and for financial redress.
The test case addresses the theory that the cause of autism is the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine in combination with other vaccines containing the preservative thimerosal. That preservative, which contains a form of mercury, is no longer in routine childhood vaccines. However, it is used in influenza vaccines.
One of the parents who has filed a claim against the federal government and has great interest in the case is Scott Bono of Durham, N.C. His son, Jackson, 18, has autism. While acknowledging the findings of the IOM’s study, Bono believes those findings were preordained by the federal government.
He said that parents of children with autism have been marginalized, but they see specific outcomes in their children that are consistent with exposure to mercury. And those outcomes did not present themselves until after they received their vaccinations. In short, the children tell the story better than the numbers, he said.
In July 1999, the U.S. government asked vaccine manufacturers to eliminate or reduce, as expeditiously as possible, the mercury content of their vaccines to avoid any possibility of infants who receive vaccines being exposed to more mercury than is recommended by federal guidelines.
Autism is characterized by impaired social interaction. Those affected often have trouble communicating, and they exhibit unusual or severely limited activities and interests. Meanwhile, classic symptoms of mercury poisoning include anxiety, fatigue and abnormal irritation, as well as cognitive and motor dysfunction.
The report from the Institute of Medicine pointed to five large studies, here and abroad, that tracked thousands of children since 2001 and found no association between autism and vaccines containing the preservative thimerosal.
Members of the National Autism Association see drug manufacturers and the federal government as working too closely together to the point that the federal government is working to protect the industry from liability. The association says its mission is to raise awareness of environmental toxins as causing neurological damage that often results in an autism or related diagnosis.
Bono, a member of the association, said he doesn’t believe his son was intentionally poisoned.
“I just want someone to step up and say, ‘You’re right, this did happen,”’ he said.
During the hearing, lawyers for the parents were expected to present their expert testimony during the first week. Then lawyers representing the federal government were expected to present their case. The hearing was to be open to the public. Officials planned to post transcripts on the court’s Web site about 24 hours after each day’s proceedings.

Da New Judge!
Gov. Eliot Spitzer announced this week his recommendation of 52 year old law clerk Christopher E. Cahill of Ulster to fill the shoe’s of his former boss, the late Justice Vincent G. Bradley, on the state Supreme Court after sifting through a field of 11 Ulster County attorneys who applied for the appointment in January. The Governor’s nomination, one of four around the state, is expected to be taken up by the state Senate before its scheduled adjournment on June 21. Senate confirmation is necessary for appointment.
Cahill, who said he will be a candidate in November for a full 14-year term, still faces nomination at a Third District judicial convention to be held in Albany in early September. The seven-county Third Judicial District includes Albany, Rensselaer, Greene, Columbia, Sullivan, Schoharie and Ulster counties. There are three openings for Supreme Court justice.
Cahill, a Rochester native, is a graduate of Hamilton College and SUNY Buffalo School of Law. He and his wife, Kimberlee, a special education teacher in the Saugerties school district, are the parents of two sons, one a junior at Union College, the other a junior at Kingston High School.
The post of state Supreme Court justice pays $136,500 per year. Cahill’s current position, which he retained after Bradley’s death, pays $122,000 a year.

Trespass Rights?
A local effort to have the state Department of Health decide access rules for New York City watershed property have been delayed by the censure of state Supreme Court Justice Cathryn Doyle, resulting in a new judge on the case. The decision to censure was issued Feb. 26 by the state Commission on Judicial Conduct, which found Doyle had provided “inconsistent, misleading and evasive” information during the investigation on her role in a campaign trust for state Supreme Court Justice Thomas J. Spargo.
But Hunter Town Supervisor Dennis Lucas said lawyers for the town and New York City have been told that a decision in the access case will be made based on arguments made before Doyle was removed.
Hunter town officials filed the case last year after New York City filed charges against a man for trespassing onto watershed land adjacent to private rental property. Lucas said the watershed memorandum of agreement terms require city officials to get state Department of Health approval for rules dealing with access to watershed lands.
“These policy makers within the Department of Health are directly accountable to the people of the town of Hunter whereas those within New York City’s Department of Environmental Protection are not,” he said.
Lucas added that rules about hiking on New York City property without a permit were harmful to the local tourism industry.
City officials did not comment on the change in judges for the case, but Department of Environmental Protection spokeswoman Natalie Millner previously responded that “these rules were carefully developed over an extended period and in close consultation with watershed stakeholders. They were legally and properly adopted.”
The trespass case that spurred the town of Hunter suit was ultimately dismissed after a ruling in Hunter Town Court that proper signs were not posted.

Playfair Auditions
The Shandaken Theatrical Society in Phoenicia is holding auditions for Play Fair 2007, a festival of short plays by local playwrights. Actors aged 14 and up are needed for a wide range of parts in fun pieces without the huge time commitment of a major production. Auditions will be held Tuesday, June 19, and Wednesday, June 20, at 7:00 p.m. at the STS Playhouse, Church Street, Phoenicia. Actors will read from scripts provided. Performances will be August 24, 25, 26, 31, and September 1 and 2. For further information, call Violet at 688-2916.

Stressed Out?
Mothers of young children who feel they lack emotional support or help in caring for their children have more than three-times the risk of mental health problems compared to their peers who feel adequately supported, a new study shows.
More than one third of the 1,747 mothers participating in the study reported at least one parenting stressor that boosted their risk of mental health problems, Dr. Ritesh Mistry of the University of California, Los Angeles and colleagues note in the American Journal of Public Health. “If parenting stressors such as those examined here are to be addressed, changes may be required in community support systems, and improvements in relevant social policies may be needed,” they conclude.
Mothers of small children are known to face a substantial risk of mental health problems and their mental health has a “strong influence” on their child’s health and development, the researchers note.
Mistry and associates conducted the study to determine how certain parenting-related stressors might affect mothers’ mental health and whether these stressors were related to financial and social factors.
The mothers of children 4 to 35 months old completed a five-item questionnaire to assess their general mental health. Women who reported feeling a lack of emotional support (they had no one to rely on for day-to-day emotional help with parenting) represented nearly 14 percent of the total sample and were 3.4 times more likely to report being in poor mental health, the researchers found.
Roughly 12 percent of mothers who said they lacked functional support in caring for their children (they had no one to care for their children when they needed a break) had a 2.2-times greater risk of poor mental health.
When asked about time spent with their child, 37.2 percent of mothers said they spent too little, 11.2 percent said they spent too much, and 51.6 percent said the amount of time they spent with their child was just right. While mothers who said they spent too little time with their children had a slightly increased risk of poor mental health, those who said they spent too much time had a 3.5-times greater risk of mental health problems.
Overall, mothers who reported having one parenting-related stressor had triple the risk of poor mental health, while having two or more stressors increased risk nearly 12-fold.
Improving family leave policies and making high quality child care more “affordable and accessible” could help ease the stresses on parents identified in the current study, they add. They conclude by calling for further research to investigate how such stresses affect fathers’ mental health.

Health Aide Hell
A home health aide was arrested May 23 after she made purchases exceeding $30,000 by using the identity of an elderly client in Shandaken, town police said. Barbara Marie McClinton, 44, of Kingston, was charged with aggravated identity theft, access device fraud, mail fraud and bank fraud, all federal felony charges after being arrested on a federal warrant from the U.S. Postal Service. Shandaken town police said they received a complaint in December 2006 from a 77-year-old woman who said numerous collection agencies had been contacting her with regard to purchases she said she had never made. An investigation determined that the woman’s identity had been stolen and used by her former home health aide to open credit card accounts and make purchases. The investigation was a joint operation with state police at Ulster, the U.S. Postal Inspector’s Service and the Office of Investigations of the Social Security Administration.
McClinton was arrested at her home and taken to Albany, where she was arraigned in U.S. District Court and released on her own recognizance.

Caging Politics
As more information comes out in congressional hearings, some things about the firing of U.S. attorneys become murkier and others clearer. So far, testimony and documents from congressional hearings reveal that the Justice Department under Alberto Gonzales, with prodding from White House political adviser Karl Rove and others, targeted “battleground” states with closely contested 2006 elections - among them Missouri, Wisconsin, New Mexico, Nevada and Washington - as “hot spots” for voter fraud investigations. The Justice Department apparently also fired U.S. attorneys who refused to go forward with baseless investigations and prosecutions in these states.
Meanwhile, investigative journalist Greg Palast, who spoke about his research at SUNY New Paltz in recent weeks, has met with Congress about his evidence. Almost simultaneously, one of the attorneys in the mess – former Karl Rove aide Tim Griffin of Arkansas – resigned from his controversial US Attorney post.
Palast has charged that Griffin and others picked by Gonzalez at Rove’s urging had been working at”caging voters, a term GOP operatives came up with for keeping portions of the electorate who would otherwise vote Democratic away from polls.
Palast has obtained a series of confidential emails dating from the 2004 presidential election, in which Griffin transmitted so-called “caging lists” of voters to state party leaders. Experts have concluded the caging lists were designed for a mass challenge of voters’ right to cast ballots. The caging lists were heavily weighted with minority voters, including African-American homeless men, students and soldiers sent overseas.
Conyers, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee investigating the firing of US attorneys, stated that, despite Griffin’s resignation, “We’re not through with him by any means” and indicated that he thought it unlikely that Griffin could carry out this massive caging operation without the knowledge of White House Deputy Chief of Staff Rove.
Palast first reported on the emails from Griffin containing vote caging lists for BBC’s “Newsnight,” prior to the 2004 presidential election.

Affordability...
Mid-Hudson Pattern for Progress is tackling an issue that affects us all – affordable housing for our communities. A conference on the issue will be held on June 12th at the SUNY New Paltz campus. The conference is designed to help Hudson Valley decision makers, community leaders, government officials, corporate and not-for-profit administrators understand the housing crisis troubling the region and how to best address it.
Any municipal legislative, planning, or zoning member is invited to attend the conference at the reduced rate of $30. Westchester, Ulster, Dutchess, and Orange Counties have endorsed the conference for 2 hours of credit towards the state mandated requirements. For further information please visit Pattern’s website at www.pfprogress.org.

Not Winning
The man who commanded US-led coalition forces during the first year of the Iraq war says the United States can forget about winning the war.
“I think if we do the right things politically and economically with the right Iraqi leadership we could still salvage at least a stalemate, if you will - not a stalemate but at least stave off defeat,” retired Army Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, the highest-ranking former military leader yet to suggest the Bush administration has fallen short in Iraq. said in a recent interview.
“I am absolutely convinced that America has a crisis in leadership at this time,” Sanchez told Armed Forces Press after a recent speech in San Antonio, Texas. “We’ve got to do whatever we can to help the next generation of leaders do better than we have done over the past five years, better than what this cohort of political and military leaders have done,” adding that he was “referring to our national political leadership in its entirety” - not just President George W. Bush.
Sanchez called the situation in Iraq bleak, which he blamed on “the abysmal performance in the early stages and the transition of sovereignty.”
Sanchez took command in the summer of 2003 and oversaw the occupation force amid an insurgency that has sparked a low-grade civil war in Iraq. He was in the middle of some of the most momentous events of the war, among them the dissolution of the Iraqi army and barring millions of Baath Party members from government jobs: two actions seen as triggering the rebellion among Sunni Muslims, who fell from power with Saddam.
The US ambassador in Baghdad, Ryan Crocker, reacted on Sunday to Sanchez’s comments by insisting: “It’s just way premature to be talking in terms of victory or defeat.”

Men’s Sweat?
For women, apparently there’s nothing like the smell of a man’s sweat. Researchers at the University of California at Berkeley said women who sniffed a chemical found in male sweat experienced elevated levels of an important hormone, along with higher sexual arousal, faster heart rate and other effects. They said the study, published in the Journal of Neuroscience, represents the first direct evidence that people secrete a scent that influences the hormones of the opposite sex.
The study focused on androstadienone, considered a male chemical signal. Previous research had established that a whiff of it affected women’s mood, sexual and physiological arousal and brain activation. Its impact on hormones was less clear. A derivative of testosterone, it is found in male sweat as well as in saliva and semen. It smells somewhat musky.
The researchers measured levels of the hormone cortisol in the saliva of 48 female undergraduates at Berkeley, average age of about 21, after the women took 20 sniffs from a jar of androstadienone. Cortisol is secreted by the body to help maintain proper arousal and sense of well-being, respond to stress and other functions.
Cortisol levels in the women who smelled androstadienone shot up within roughly 15 minutes and stayed elevated for up to an hour. Consistent with previous research, the women also reported improved mood, higher sexual arousal, and had increased blood pressure, heart rate and breathing.
For comparison’s sake, women also smelled baking yeast, which did not trigger the same effects. The researchers used only heterosexual women in the study out of concern that homosexual women may respond differently to this male chemical.

Widening Gaps
With the number of nonwhite Americans above 100 million for the first time, demographers are identifying an emerging racial generation gap. That development may portend a nation split between an older, whiter electorate and a younger overall population that is more Hispanic, black and Asian and that presses sometimes competing agendas and priorities.
“The new demographic divide has broader implications for social programs and education spending for youth,” said Mark Mather, deputy director of domestic programs for the Population Reference Bureau, a nonpartisan research group. “There’s a fairly large homogenous population 60 and older that may not be sympathetic to the needs of a diverse youthful population.”.
The Census Bureau estimated that from July 1, 2005, to July 1, 2006, the nation’s minority population grew to 100.7 million from 98.3 million; that is about one in three of all Americans. The new figures also suggest that many states are growing more diverse as minorities disperse.
As a result of immigration and higher birthrates among many newcomers, the number of Hispanics grew by 3.4 percent nationwide and Asians by 3.2 percent. Meanwhile, the black population rose by 1.3 percent, and that of non-Hispanic whites by 0.3 percent. More than 20 percent of children in the United States either are foreign-born or have a parent who was born abroad. Nearly half the children under age 5 are Hispanic, black or Asian.
Over all, the median age of Americans reached 36.6 years, another record high. It ranged from 27.4 among Hispanics to 40.5 among non-Hispanic whites. The census counted more than 73,000 centenarians (about 14,000 men and 59,000 women) and also 78 million baby boomers (those born from 1946 to 1964), who, as they turn 60, are helping to drive the racial generation gap.
And while growth rates fluctuated, many states are becoming more racially and ethnically diverse. The changes have potential implications for national politics.
In Nevada, where the share of whites has declined to 59 percent from 66 percent since 2000, the voting-age population has soared 25 percent, with minorities accounting for 63 percent of that increase. Arkansas, Georgia and Tennessee have recorded the greatest percentage gains in their Hispanic population since 2000, with the biggest numerical gains, predictably, registered by California, Texas and Florida. The biggest percentage increases in black residents were registered by Maine, South Dakota, New Hampshire and Idaho, and in Asian residents by Nevada, Arizona and New Hampshire.
In New York and Maryland, the departure of non-Hispanic whites has accelerated since 2005. (California has lost nearly 100,000, more than any other state). In the same period, New York and Michigan have recorded a loss in black residents. (Louisiana, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, recorded losses across the board.)
According to the latest figures, 80 percent of Americans over age 60 are non-Hispanic whites, compared with only 60 percent among those in their 20s and 30s, and 58 percent among people younger than 20.
Dr. Mather said the widest racial generation gaps were found in California, Texas, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico and Texas. In Arizona, minorities account for more than half the people under the age of 20, but only one in six who are 60 and older.
The smallest gaps were found in Hawaii, Kentucky, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and West Virginia. He also noted that the three most homogeneous states — Maine, Vermont and West Virginia — spent the highest proportion of their gross state product on public education.
“There does seem to be a correlation,” he said.

Film Shoot…
Have you ever wondered what it would look like if all the things you produce and consume in your lifetime were piled up outside your door? All your clothes, all your electrical goods, all your worldly goods laid out before you? The impact each and every human has on the planet in an average lifetime will be told in a documentary, The Human Footprint, set to shoot during June and July in Ulster and surrounding counties.
For more information call Laurent Rejto at 845-810-0131.

Army Oil!
A new study ordered by the Pentagon warns that the rising cost and dwindling supply of oil - the lifeblood of fighter jets, warships, and tanks - will make the US military’s ability to respond to hot spots around the world “unsustainable in the long term.” The study, produced by a defense consulting firm, concludes that all four branches of the military must “fundamentally transform” their assumptions about energy, including taking immediate steps toward fielding weapons systems and aircraft that run on alternative and renewable fuels. It is “imperative” that the Department of Defense “apply new energy technologies that address alternative supply sources and efficient consumption across all aspects of military operations,” according to the report.
Weaning the military from fossil fuels quickly, however, would be a herculean task - especially because the bulk of the US arsenal, the world’s most advanced, is dependent on fossil fuels and many of those military systems have been designed to remain in service for at least several decades.
Moving to alternative energy sources on a large scale would “challenge some of the department’s most deeply held assumptions, interests, and processes,” the report acknowledges.

In Ellenville?
Village officials are trying to speed the process to have smaller businesses locate in Ellenville by removing certain impediments in the review process. Code Enforcement Officer Brian Schug said during a public hearing Tuesday that some potential business owners have been reluctant to go through the lengthy process and the stringent Planning Board review.
The change in the law would allow designated members of the village administration to decide issues involving parking and traffic flow, which Schug said are clearly defined in local codes. These decisions could be made without approval from the Planning Board. Mayor Jeff Kaplan said the village initially had very loose code definitions on who needed review, and a few inappropriate decisions were made. Codes were "tightened up" accordingly, he said.
A public hearing on the matter is set for June 11. Talk about precedent...