Standing at Champlain Park on Monday, U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand joined by Bill Howland, Director of the Lake Champlain Basin Program, and Staff Scientist Mike Winslow, announced a new push to ban plastic microbeads in personal care products. Senator Gillibrand has introduced the Microbead-Free Waters Act of 2015, legislation to federally ban cosmetics containing synthetic plastic microbeads.
An April 2015 report released by Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman’s office found that microbeads were present in 74 percent of water samples taken from 34 municipal and private treatment plants across New York State. » Continue Reading.
After eight years of wars, terror warnings, environmental destruction, corporate and political corruption, and general cultural excess ending in a systematic collapse of the country’s financial system, 2009 opened on more than a few notes of remorse, albeit with unmistakable chords of optimism and hope for new beginnings and a new president. His list was long. (click the cartoons for larger images.)
The first order of business for the Obama administration was to continue flooding the wrecked economy with massive stimulus programs courtesy of generations yet unborn. Some of the stimulus money eventually trickled to the north country via Albany.
Politically, it was a year of cascading dominoes, initiated in Washington and winding up inside the blue line. After Hillary Clinton upgraded her senate seat for first class in the State Department, Governor Paterson chose Kirsten Gillibrand from the 20th congressional district as New York’s junior senator. That move set off a battle for the once-reliable GOP house seat in a race between a conservative Democrat from Glens Falls, New York’s Assembly Minority Leader (visiting from a neighboring district), and a third party candidate. On April Fools’ Day—the morning after the election—the narrowest of margins for Democrat Scott Murphy triggered a recount battle that carried through Tax Day, past Passover, beyond Easter to the end of April when Republican James Tedisco finally conceded.
By the time Murphy took the oath of office, much of the stimulus pork was gone, replaced by swine flu.
Following the special election in the 20th, A similar chain reaction was prompted in NY’s 23rd CD after moderate Republican Congressman John McHugh was promoted to Army Secretary.
GOP leaders, eager to avoid a repeat of mistakes which led to defeat in the 20th, opted against importing a high-profile male candidate from a neighboring district, in favor of a home-grown moderate female candidate. Conservatives in the party (and Glenn Beck) had other plans, ultimately replacing Republican Dede Scozzafava with a high-profile male candidate from a neighboring district. With predictable results.
Still, for a region at the receiving end of impending federal and state budget cuts, the warmth of the national media spotlight was a memory to cherish.
Check back at 10:00 AM today for the second half of the 2009 Adirondack year in cartoons.
Senator Kirsten Gillibrand joined the rooftop highway road crew this summer, requesting $150 million for the proposed four-lane divided highway north of the Adirondack Park — newly renamed I-98 by supporters who argue that it will prevent the mass migration of jobs and humans away from the region. Environmentalists counter that it will cut off north-south migration routes in and out of the Adirondacks for many other species.
According to a report released this week, the New York counties with the highest percentage of overweight or obese adults are Jefferson, Lewis and St. Lawrence Counties at 67.7 percent. Hamilton County has 62.9 percent, Herkimer 62 percent, Warren 60.2 percent, and Clinton, Essex and Franklin have 56.7 percent. Manhattan was rated the state’s skinniest region, even with 42 percent of its adult population overweight. New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand mined the data from federal Centers for Disease Control body-mass index statistics and released it Tuesday. The proliferation of overweight people “costs the U.S. over $100 billion in health care costs every year,” the report states. Over the past 30 years obesity rates have doubled among children and tripled among teenagers, the CDC says.
Gillibrand called on parents and schools to serve healthier foods and encourage exercise. She is drafting bills to ban trans-fats in schools and to increase the USDA’s authority to regulate school snacks. She also wants to increase funding for school lunches and community-based programs that encourage exercise.
New York’s heaviest counties are in line with CDC’s national average of 67 percent overweight; the state as a whole is below average at 60 percent. At 62 percent, the North Country has the highest obesity rate in New York. Gillibrand, a Democrat, represented much of this region as a member of the House for two years until she was appointed in Janary to a vacant Senate seat to represent the entire state.
Next week the Almanack will talk with North Country physicians about the report.
Graphic from Wiki Commons. From left to right, the “healthy” man has a 33 inch (84 cm) waist, the “overweight” man a 45 inch (114 cm) waist, and the “obese” man a 60 inch (152cm) waist.
Big political news this morning as an aide to Congresswoman Kirsten Gillibrand has told North Country Public Radio that she will be taking over the seat vacated by Hillary Clinton. Gillibrand beat john Sweeney for his seat in November 2006 and easily won re-election handily last year over Republican operative Sandy Treadwell. According to NCPR:
Gillibrand is a moderate who opposes same-sex marriage and gun control. Long Island Democrat, Carolyn McCarthy, says she’ll challenge Gillibrand in the primary next year. Gillibrand will be officially named today at noon at an event in Albany. She will likely face stiff opposition in a special election in 2010 and again in 2012. Possible Republican opponents include former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former Governor George Pataki. But Gillibrand has proved herself to be a ferocious campaigner and fundraiser.
Governor Paterson’s pick sets off a round of political musical chairs across the North Country. State Senator Betty Little, a Republican, is expected to make a bid for Gillibrand’s seat. Should she win, that would trigger another contest for her state Senate seat. Other likely candidates for Gillibrand’s seat include Sandy Treadwell, from Essex County, who ran in 2008.
Here is the articles in the New York Times and the Albany Times Union.
All the stories we’ve followed about Gillibrand can be found here.
On Monday Representative Kirsten Gillibrand became the first American to permanently retire carbon dioxide pollution allowances from a government-mandated carbon dioxide reduction program. She did it through the Cool Park/Healthy Planet Program [no web page that I could find!] created by the Adirondack Council to prevent thousands of tons of carbon dioxide from being emitted by power plants from Maine to Delaware. The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) is the first government-mandated carbon dioxide control program in the United States. It requires power plant emissions reductions in New York and nine other Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic States. Over a period of years, the 10 states will steadily reduce their power plant carbon emissions through a “cap-and-trade” program. » Continue Reading.
Here is a disturbing story from Glens Falls blogger (i am alive) who was arrested for trespassing after signing the register at the gatehouse at the Adirondack Mountain Reserve’s Lake Road entrance and attempting to hike to Dial and Nippletop mountains:
…we were approached by an armed man. other than his name tag, he was not dressed as a security officer, but he was carrying a silver pistol. he had a digital camera bag around his neck and had a small bleeding wound on his face. without explanation, he took out the camera and began taking pictures of us. as soon as he began speaking, we knew our hike was over… …he proceeded to escort us back to the gatehouse and detain us. he called in another security guard from the Ausable Club and summoned a state officer by radio. we sat being totally cooperative, providing identification and surrendering adam’s weapons (he had a leatherman and his new kershaw knife). inside my head i am thinking, “this is just to scare us, he can’t really arrest us….right?”…
…here we waited for over an hour until a NYS Department of Environmental Conservation Officer could arrive to deal with all of our lawlessness. i actually felt bad for the EnCon officer. seriously, did he need to come all that way to deal with us? we would have quietly left the property if mr. cowboy said that we really couldn’t have the dog and had to turn around. he never gave us that chance. so in his generosity, mr. cowboy decided only to “arrest” one of us. oh yeah, you guessed it…it was me.
Amazing. That should be good for regional economic development. I guess it’s not surprising, even their web page is off limits – that is, unless you want to serve them.
What does this say about Sandy Treadwell, who claims AuSable Club owner William Weld as his surrogate? Does Treadwell condone arresting his constituents for through-hiking?
UPDATE: Apparently this is not an uncommon experience. Check out what happened to Press Republican outdoors writer Dennis Aprill in June of this year here.
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Standing at Champlain Park on Monday, U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand joined by Bill Howland, Director of the Lake Champlain Basin Program, and Staff Scientist Mike Winslow, announced a new push to ban plastic microbeads in personal care products. Senator Gillibrand has introduced the Microbead-Free Waters Act of 2015, legislation to federally ban cosmetics containing synthetic plastic microbeads.
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