Hi all...
You're all cordially invited to join the one and only Phillippa & Art Weiland at their home at 1561 Hollow Road here in Clinton (at end of road near TSP) this Sunday July 26th 2-4 pm-- at a house party for me!...
[I'm going for a fourth term in our County Legislature; continuing to work hard for you researching and advocating best practices for Dutchess and various innovative ways to save tax dollars by protecting our environment and cleaning up county government-- http://www.DutchessDemocracy.blogspot.com ;
check out my blog for full list of 33 resolutions/initiatives I've gotten passed in Co. Leg. since Jan. 2008;
also http://www.100WinningProgressives.blogspot.com 92 @ http://www.PetitionOnline.com/KeepJoel .]
Important-- the more folks who come out Sunday-- the easier it will be to stoke up help here in Clinton to make sure County Comptroller Diane Jablonski get re-elected!...(see http://Diane-Jablonski.com )...
Fact: Obama won our town last November; Kirsten Gillibrand won Town of Clinton twice; so did Scott Murphy last year (I even carried the town in 2005, as did Diane Jablonski-- atop Dem ticket this year(!).
Can't make it to join us Sunday?...
Please-- send whatever you can to: "Keep Joel" 324 Browns Pond Road Staatsburg, NY 12580...
[feel free to fwd this far 'n wide to all u know!]
Joel
489-5479/876-2488 [Art/Phillippa: 266-3161]
joeltyner@earthlink.net
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Ten Ways to Save Dutchess County Tax Dollars-- Keep Me Working for You-- for These:
[scroll down through list below to see ten more ways besides these ten listed here; total of twenty; as always, feel free to take a moment to send letter to all 25 of us at countylegislators@co.dutchess.ny.us!]
1. I've been co-sponsoring legislation since last fall for county legislators to pay for at LEAST 15% (if not all!) of our health insurance-- sign on to my http://www.petitiononline.com/cutlgpay if you agree!
2. Canadian Rx option would save a million dollars a year-- http://www.PetitionOnline.com/SaveOnRx .
[offer county employees/retirees option-- as in Rensselaer, Schenectady, Albany, St. Lawrence, and Lewis co.'s; Schenectady Co. saves a million dollars a year there w/less employees/retirees than Du.!]
3. Bail loan fund would safely save a million dollars/year for taxpayers: http://www.OARTompkins.com .
[DC Jail's Dennis Lally informed us recently there are 62 inmates in jail with bail of $2000 or less; Tompkins County's program saves $300,000/year there with population one third size of Dutchess(!).]
4. Allow towns, cities, and villages to save tax dollars spent on health insurance costs for employees-- with optional buy-in program with new county Health Benefits Consortium (as in Tompkins County).
[see: http://www.tompkins-co.org/news/detail.aspx?ContentID=1111 ;
http://www.tompco.net/legislature/highlights/20090217.html ]
5. Save tax dollars spent on services for homeless by keeping families in homes (and not foreclosed)-- with a pre-foreclosure mediation program similar to the extremely successful Residential Mortgage Foreclosure Diversion program in Philadelphia (over 80% effective in keeping homeowners in houses).
[see: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/28/us/28philadelphia.html ]
6. Save tax dollars re: $40 million spent annually on health care for uninsured in county by Dutchess' three hospitals-- with plan here similar to Miami-Dade Blue or Healthy San Francisco.
[see: http://www.petitiononline.com/duhealth ; http://www.HealthySanFrancisco.org ;
http://www.miamiherald.com/living/health/costs/story/1141781.html ]
7. Campaign reform-- end county contracts for big donors, as Rockland County has done, and as the Poughkeepsie Journal has called for strongly twice in editorials.
[ http://www.petitiononline.com/cleangov ]
8. Cut welfare rolls w/real funding for microenterprise loan program: http://www.GetHudsonValley.org .
9. Save money spent on public health with neighbor notification for pesticide application (as in Ulster, Albany, Erie, Monroe, Nassau, Rockland, Suffolk, Tompkins, Westchester counties and NYC) and by
eliminating toxins from our county as much as possible (at least with warning information from DCDOH).
[join 115 other Dutchess residents signed on to http://www.petitiononline.com/neighbor ; also see
http://www.PetitionOnline.com/forCasey ;
http://www.sustainlane.com/reviews/ten-products-you-should-ban-from-your-home-forever/YSDLWL22O1U2SBV7D13YUD3KXWOR ]
10. Perhaps most importantly, millions of county tax dollars could be saved-- and many more green jobs could be created-- with a different approach to solid waste management at our county's Resource Recovery Agency-- join dozens of other Dutchess residents signed on to http://www.petitiononline.com/zeroyes (click on "view current signatures" to see names/comments).
Fact: Dutchess taxpayers spent $1,167,271 on incineration in 2006, $5,005,364 last year on this, and are to spend $6,330,612 on this in 2009-- if status quo holds.
Fact: "On a per-ton basis, sorting and processing recyclables alone sustain 10 times more jobs than landfilling or incineration," according to the Institute for Local Self-Reliance.
http://www.ilsr.org/recycling/recyclingmeansbusiness.html ]
Fact: More than two thirds of the materials we use are still burned or buried, despite fact we have technical capacity to cost-effectively recycle, reuse, or compost 90% of what we waste.
[see http://www.StopTrashingtheClimate.org ]
Recall the five great investigative exposé pieces below from Mary Beth Pfeiffer over the last few months:
May 10th: "Dutchess County Resource Recovery Agency: Inefficient, Expensive, and in Debt"
http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/article/20090510/NEWS01/905100344&referrer=FRONTPAGECAROUSEL
May 31st: "Resource Recovery Agency: Padded Budgets or Solid Plans? County Subsidy Total is $5.4 Million More Than Needed Since '03"
http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/artikkel?Dato=20090531&Kategori=NEWS01&Lopenr=107060002&Ref=AR
July 12th: "No Bid Deals Might Add to Agency's Financial Trouble"
http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/article/20090712/NEWS01/907120337
July 12th: "Entity Failed to File Reports to the State"
http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/article/20090712/NEWS01/907120336
July 16th" "Dutchess Burn Plant May Be Part of Sale"
http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/article/20090716/NEWS01/907160322/1006
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A Track Record of Results: Forty Resolutions Spearheaded Through County Legislature by Yours Truly
1. The fact is that the Democratic majority's proposed 2009 county budget cut spending by over five million dollars to keep the total property tax levy almost a million dollars below the 2008 levy-- and the County Executive's vetoes ended up adding nine million dollars to the 2009 tax levy. Recall-- the County Executive's original budget (which all G.O.P. legislators went along with, by the way) would have raised our sales taxes by $6.1 million countywide.
[ http://www.petitiononline.com/stopcuts ]
2. Created Independent Dutchess Energy Alliance: $1 billion in savings on electric bills over ten years.
[based on successful green jobs/retrofits example of Cambridge, MA-- see http://www.CambridgeEnergyAlliance.org ; also Town of Babylon's http://www.LIGreenHomes.com ; much thanks to Co. Leg.'s Tom Mansfield, Pete Wassell, Bill McCabe, and Marge Horton on this too]
3. For $153,000 added to 2009 county budget so ten Senior Friendship Centers could stay open five days a week.
[ http://www.co.dutchess.ny.us/Countygov/departments/aging/agindex.htm ]
4. For tens of thousands of dollars to be added to our county budget for 2005 for senior home care.
[ http://www.co.dutchess.ny.us/CountyGov/Departments/Aging/Srservdirectory.pdf ]
5. Led the fight to stop the Republican drive/proposal to end county-run senior home care in the county.
[ http://www.hca-nys.org/documents/NursingHomeWithoutWalls.pdf ]
6. For $100,000 added to county budget so homeless veterans/others not turned away from shelter.
[ http://www.HudsonRiverHousing.org ]
7. For Dutchess to keep using lever voting machines and state/federal gov.'t to make sure we can too.
[ http://nylevers.wordpress.com/ ]
8. For a zero-waste approach to resource recovery in our county: save money, create clean green jobs.
[join over 25 other Dutchess residents on board this-- at http://www.petitiononline.com/zeroyes ]
9. For cost-saving green roofs, rain gardens, wind turbines, composting toilets to be on county property.
[ http://www.GreenRoofs.com ; http://www.RainGardens.org ; http://bianys.com/node/418 ; http://www.petitiononline.com/goldpoop ; http://www.CompostingToilets.org ]
10. For solar panels on County Office Building/22 Market St./Poughkeepsie (then all county buildings).
[ http://www.osc.state.ny.us/press/releases/mar08/030608.htm ; http://www.HVCE.com ]
11. For free energy audits of all county bldg.'s done by company like Johnson Controls, Honeywell, etc.
[ http://www.JohnsonControls.com ; http://www.Trane.com ; http://www.Honeywell.com ]
12. For chronic Lyme disease sufferers to no longer be jerked around by HMO's and insurance industry.
[ http://www.ILADS.org ; http://www.UnderOurSkin.com ; http://www.assembly.state.ny.us/leg/?bn=A02100 ]
13. For Dutchess to save on power costs w/Municipal Electricity Gas Alliance (like Putnam, Ulster, Sullivan, and over a dozen other counties).
[ http://www.MEGAEnergy.org ]
14. For saving 30% on lighting bills in county bldg.'s switching fixtures from T-12's to T-8's/metal halides.
http://ezinearticles.com/?How-to-Replace-T8-Or-T12-Lights-With-New-Energy-Efficient-T5-Lighting&id=2117699
15. For new SuperLOOPer discount card at local stores and restaurants for frequent users of LOOP bus.
[ http://content.usatoday.com/topics/article/Tom+Malone/01Ur0if9hQ8Ic/1 ]
16. For Dutchess to hold Home Heating Summit re: home heating oil crisis (as in Ulster, Orange co.'s).
[ http://www.midhudsonnews.com/News/September08/10/DC_hm_heat-10Sep08.html ]
17. For Dutchess ESAN "Recommendations for Stream/Flood Management in Dutchess" to be followed.
[ http://www.dutchessemc.org/ESANRecomendations.pdf ]
18. For Green Map added to county website: list farmer's markets/green resources (as in Westchester).
[ http://greenmap.westchestergov.com/ ; http://www.GreenMap.org ]
19. For bike rental program in Dutchess at no cost to taxpayers (as is already in Washington, D.C.).
[ http://www.SmartBikeDC.com ]
20. For bulk-rate discount sale to county residents of rain barrels/compost bins (similar to Lake Co./Ill.).
[ http://www.rainbarrelsandmore.com/lakecountypromotion.htm ; http://www.RainBarrels.org ]
21. For Dutchess County to be part of Hudson Valley Community Preservation Act to save open space.
[ http://assembly.state.ny.us/mem/?ad=101&sh=story&story=23825 ]
22. For county's Health Department to publicly report on chloramines in public water supplies in county.
[ http://www.Chloramine.org ; http://www.VCE.org ]
23. For listing of restaurants using oils without trans fats to be on county's Health Department website.
[ http://www.midhudsonnews.com/News/October08/13/DCL_transfats-13Oct08.html ]
24. Led Dem Caucus in County Legislature in questioning of county's Empire Zone and call for audit.
[ http://www.petitiononline.com/statewar ]
25. Initiated Dutchess County Resource Recovery Agency taking back compact fluorescent light bulbs.
[ http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/24/business/24recycling.html ]
26. Initiated increased purchase of cost-saving hybrid vehicles for county fleet
[ http://www.petitiononline.com/hybrids ]
27. Initiated 30% discount on defibrillators for local residents from GE Pickering (see website for more).
[ http://www.GEPickering.com ]
28. Initiated move for Family Justice Center for victims of domestic violence (similar to Orange County).
[ http://SafeHomesOrangeCounty.org/FJC.aspx ]
29. For a link to CarbonRally.com carbon cutting competition to be added to official Dutchess website.
[ http://www.CarbonRally.com ]
30. For an at-store plastic bag recycling law (like Suffolk, Nassau, Rockland, and Westchester counties).
[ http://www.petitiononline.com/recybag ]
31. For recycling plastics #3, #5, #7/recycling bins being placed next to all trash containers in county.
[ http://www.petitiononline.com/zeroyes ]
32. For particulate matter air pollution to be measured in Dutchess County as it was until 2002.
[ http://www.ALANY.org ]
33. For Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies recommend.'s air pollution/quality standards to be followed.
[ http://www.ecostudies.org/threats_from_above.html ]
34. For wetlands (even small ones) in county to be saved from being paved over by developers.
[ http://www.eany.org/capitolwatch/memos%202009/21_WetlandsProtection.pdf ]
35. For cost-saving "Green House Project" nursing home in county-- proven to make seniors happier.
[ http://www.TheGreenHouseProject.org ]
36. For NYSDEC & EPA Enviromapper websites to be added prominently to Dutchess County website.
[see http://www.ToxicsTargeting.com for info/link that should have been added to county website tho!]
37. For NYS Legislature to pass Cahill's A.2759/S.385: HMO's/insurance co.'s finally fully cover autism.
[ http://www.assembly.state.ny.us/leg/?bn=A2759 ]
38. For real relief for Dutchess Co. property taxpayers-- Omnibus Property Tax Relief and Reform Act.
[ http://www.OmnibusTaxSolution.org ]
39. For greatly expanding current circuitbreaker for school property taxes (bipartisan Little/Galef bill).
[ http://www.petitiononline.com/taxcut ]
40. For ending secret market manipulations on Wall Street causing higher gas/home heating oil prices.
[see http://www.StopOilSpeculators.com Enron loophole closed; "dark markets" speculation continues!]
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Ten More Ways to Save Dutchess County Tax Dollars-- Keep Me Working for You-- for These:
1. Cost-saving housing-first approach for county homeless-- http://www.PetitionOnline.com/House1st .
2. Save tax dollars by investing in quality pre-kindergarten-- literally $17 for every $1 invested.
[see: http://www.fightcrime.org/ny/nyissue_earlyed.php , http://www.winningbeginningny.org ]
3. Save on institutionalization costs with home-based services for at-risk, disturbed, or autistic youth.
[see: http://www.fightcrime.org/ny/jjevent.php -- successful already in Orange and Rensselaer counties]
4. Save tax dollars to cut recidivism: job training, counseling, drug treatment Brooklyn, Lancaster, PA.
[ http://www.petitiononline.com/comalert http://www.petitiononline.com/jobcourt http://www.PYHIT.com ]
5. Save $ spent responding to floods/save 100-year floodplain: http://www.petitiononline.com/streams .
6. Save tax dollars spent on county vehicles with hybrids: http://www.petitiononline.com/hybrids .
7. Limit diesel engine idling (enacted by G.O.P. Rockland County Executive C. Scott Vanderhoef).
[see http://www.co.rockland.ny.us/Executive/ENews/06/10-12-06.htm ]
8. Phase out sale of new outdoor wood-burning furnaces (as in Hyde Park, Red Hook, V/Rhinebeck)
[see: http://www.BurningIssues.org ]
9. Phase out fertilizers with phosphates to protect drinking water; restrict otherwise (as in Westchester);
require nontoxic landscape maintenance on county-owned land (w/some waivers, as in Rockland).
[see: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/03/nyregion/westchester/03lawnwe.html ;
http://www.co.rockland.ny.us/Legislature/Local/08/LawNo3_2008.pdf ]
10. Incentivize eco-friendly mowers/cars w/revenue-neutral feebate; tax gas guzzlers, help fuel-efficient.
[see: http://www.petitionline.com/cleancar ; Rocky Mountain Institute et. al. proposes this for California; also http://www.neutonpower.com/ContentPages/CSTM_CM_Clean_Air_FAQs.aspx ;
http://www.dec.ny.gov/chemical/8554.html ; http://blog.epa.gov/blog/tag/mowing-the-lawn/ ]
Fact: Even in May (not even June, July, or August) the DEC issued an air quality health advisory for Thursday and Friday for Dutchess, Ulster, Columbia, and Greene counties.
[see: http://www.midhudsonnews.com/News/2009/May09/21/Air_quality-21May09.htm ]
Fact: Just last month Dutchess County's air quality was rated an "F" in a new American Lung Association of New York State "State of the Air" report.
[see: http://www.alany.org/site/c.kmKWJbNTJtF/b.5071049/k.926/State_of_the_Air_2009.htm ]
Fact: There are over 39,000 people in Dutchess with asthma, bronchitis, or emphysema; many of them on Medicaid (cleaning local air quality will save Medicaid tax $$$); see http://www.ALANY.org .
Fact: Dr. Gary Lovett of the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies pointed out publicly two years ago in Millbrook forum that vast majority of local ozone pollution problem is from transportation sources.
Fact: According to Clive Jones and Jillian Gregg of the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, ground-level ozone air pollution here in Dutchess County is worse than in NYC.
[see: http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/July03/ozone_trees.hrs.html ;
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/10/nyregion/city-trees-outgrow-rural-cousins-and-study-credits-urban-chemistry.html ; http://www.ecostudies.org/images/newsletter/07-08_2003.pdf ]
Friday, July 24, 2009
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Re: Zero-Waste for Dutchess-- Missed Opportunity or Seized Opportunity?...
Hi all...
Soon our county's Green Ribbon Solid Waste Management Committee (chaired by yours truly) is to release its report (in early August)...
[recall-- http://www.co.dutchess.ny.us/CountyGov/Departments/Legislature/16001_16329.htm ]
Have you seen our county's official "Solid Waste Management Plan" from a few decades ago?...
It's long on rhetoric re: recycling-- but words do not equal action...(in other words, just because "plan" is in place-- doesn't mean necessarily it's going to be followed-- as with master plans and comp plans)...
Curiously, some on our county's Green Ribbon Solid Waste Management Committee seem to want to water down and dilute as much as possible our recommendations for Dutchess County tho...(why?)...
[and why is it that so many members ignore/dismiss Institute for Local Self-Reliance's Neil Seldman?]
So-- join us if you can to stand with us unapologetically for Dutchess to move towards zero-waste asap:
press conference tomorrow 1 pm in front of County Office Building at 22 Market St. in Poughkeepsie...
[scroll down to see seven specific recommendations we're trying to get into report before Aug. release]
Can't make it?...send a message to all 25 of us at countylegislators@co.dutchess.ny.us-- pass it on!...
Joel
489-5479/876-2488
joeltyner@earthlink.net
[...you're also invited to next Green Ribbon mtg.-- Mon. 4 pm 6th floor of Co. Office Bldg. 22 Market Pok.;
note as well-- believe it or not, I've also been told I won't be compiling report-- tho I'm the chair...(?!?)...
o what a tangled web they weave when first they practice to deceive; they know no bounds...]
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Comments here from some signed on to http://www.petitiononline.com/zeroyes ...
[join us, sign on yourself!...(we'll need many, many more of you to sign on to get Dutchess zero-waste!)]
Michael West of Rhinebeck: "This has to happen."
Kathleen Everett of Rhinebeck: "Sensible and long overdue."
Alicia Lenhart of Rhinebeck: "Behind zero-waste all the way."
Fred Nagel of Rhinebeck: "Zero waste-- a way for Dutchess County to help save the planet."
Tom Baldino of Beacon: "We are polluting the planet. We must use all means to protect the planet. We need to shut down burn plants and landfills as a first big step."
Pat Lamanna of the Town of Poughkeepsie: "I'd like to see Dutchess County be a leader on this...after Berkeley, CA, of course, immortalized in the song on Pete Seeger's latest album."
Doris Kelly of Hyde Park: "It's about time we strive for zero waste."
Chris "Creek" Iversen of Wappinger: "Living sustainably is, by definition, the only future."
Julia Widdowson of Millbrook: "I endorse and support zero waste."
Josh Schlossberg of the City of Poughkeepsie: "Zero waste is a necessary goal."
Bill Lunt of the Town of Poughkeepsie: "Zero waste is good for the economy and good for the environment. It is a win-win solution."
Diane Sommer of LaGrange: "It's so important to support this... and let it begin in our own households."
Anthony Henry Smith: "Each of the important items in this petition merits its own separate petition."
Barbara Lindsey of the City of Poughkeepsie: "Yes to zero waste."
Karl Volk of the Town of Poughkeepsie: "Zero-waste now."
Ed Pell of Clinton: "I fully support this effort."
Bryan Kallen of Clinton: "I fully support this petition."
Ron Ray of Beacon: "I fully support this effort."
Dana Tompkins of LaGrange: "I fully support this effort."
Peter Conklin of Hyde Park: "This must be done."
Tim Kleeger of Hyde Park: "I support the Zero Waste plan."
Sally Luther of the City of Poughkeepsie: "I fully support this effort."
Joanna Dupee of Red Hook: "I endorse this petition. It is long over-due."
Patti Gordon of Red Hook: "Great idea."
Geoffrey Carter of Red Hook: "Necessary-- start planning immediately."
Cary Kittner of Red Hook: "This is very important for so many reasons."
Edward Hernandes of Beekman: "I am for the zero-waste program."
[again-- if you care-- join us by signing on to http://www.petitiononline.com/zeroyes yourself; pass it on!]
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Background Info Re: Rationale for Dutchess To Go Zero-Waste...
[scroll down just a bit more for seven specific recommendations for Green Ribbon Task Force]
Recall Friday's front page: "Local Unemployment Posts Another Rise: Dutchess Rate Hits 8.1 Percent":
http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/article/20090716/BUSINESS/90716016 ...
Perhaps most importantly, in the midst of our current deep economic recession, we have an opportunity in this report to recommend a zero-waste approach to create green jobs!...
Fact: Recycling/composting (zero-waste approach) creates ten times more jobs than incineration and landfilling.
[see: http://www.uos.harvard.edu/fmo/recycling/myths.shtml ;
http://www.stoptheburn.com/recycling.html ;
http://www.ilsr.org/recycling/recyclingmeansbusiness.html ]
As the Institute of Local Self-Reliance has noted-- "Recycling is an economic development tool as well as an environmental tool. On a per-ton basis, sorting and processing recyclables alone sustain 10 times more jobs than landfilling or incineration. For example, in North Carolina, recycling industries employ over 8,700 people. The job gains in recycling in this state far outnumber the jobs lost in other industries. For every 100 recycling jobs created, just 10 jobs were lost in the waste hauling and disposal industry, and 3 jobs were lost in the timber harvesting industry."
[see: http://www.ilsr.org/recycling/recyclingmeansbusiness.html ]
Fact: More than two thirds of the materials we use are still burned or buried, despite fact we have technical capacity to cost-effectively recycle, reuse, or compost 90% of what we waste.
[see http://www.StopTrashingtheClimate.org ]
Fact: "Significantly decreasing waste disposed in incinerators and landfills will reduce greenhouse gas emissions the equivalent to closing 21% of U.S. coal-fired power plants. This is comparable to leading climate protection proposals such as improving national vehicle fuel efficiency. Indeed, preventing waste and expanding reuse, recycling, and composting are essential to put us on the path to climate stability." [ http://www.StopTrashingtheClimate.org ]
[see http://www.350.org if you're not sure about how real threat of global warming/climate change is!]
Fact: Ithaca, Portland, Seattle, Boulder, Cambridge, and communities across Vermont, North Carolina, Minnesota, Michigan, California have smartly moved towards zero waste with food-waste composting
[ http://www.cool2012.com/community/collection/ http://www.jgpress.com/archives/_free/000525.html ;
http://www.recycletompkins.org/editorstree/view/177 ; http://ccetompkins.org/compost/index.html ; the
county incinerator doesn't want food waste, as it's highly inefficient to burn (85% water Cool2012.com)]
Fact: Dutchess taxpayers spent $1,167,271 on "Solid Waste" (incineration) in 2006, $5,005,364 last year on this as well (in 2008), and are to spend $6,330,612 on this in 2009-- if status quo holds on this.
Dutchess County's current Solid Waste Management Plan will expire in 2010, and its NYS Solid Waste Permit to operate the county incinerator will also expire in 2011; DEC requires adoption of new environmental Dutchess Solid Waste Management Plan; contract with burn plant is done in 2014.
[see: http://www.dec.ny.gov/docs/materials_minerals_pdf/nysaroct08.pdf ]
Recall the five great investigative exposé pieces below from Mary Beth Pfeiffer over the last few months:
May 10th: "Dutchess County Resource Recovery Agency: Inefficient, Expensive, and in Debt"
http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/article/20090510/NEWS01/905100344&referrer=FRONTPAGECAROUSEL
May 31st: "Resource Recovery Agency: Padded Budgets or Solid Plans? County Subsidy Total is $5.4 Million More Than Needed Since '03"
http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/artikkel?Dato=20090531&Kategori=NEWS01&Lopenr=107060002&Ref=AR
July 12th: "No Bid Deals Might Add to Agency's Financial Trouble"
http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/article/20090712/NEWS01/907120337
July 12th: "Entity Failed to File Reports to the State"
http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/article/20090712/NEWS01/907120336
July 16th" "Dutchess Burn Plant May Be Part of Sale"
http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/article/20090716/NEWS01/907160322/1006
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Seven Specific Zero-Waste Recommendations the Green Ribbon Task Force Could and Should Make:
1. Once zero-waste pilot/demo projects in various parts of county are in place and infrastructure is available (as Shabazz Jackson has suggested we recommend), Dutchess County should seriously consider ban organics from being accepted as trash at our county incinerator, transfer stations, or by waste haulers, as in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Hawaii, and Nova Scotia-- and mandate that food waste be collected separately by waste haulers and by municipalities/transfer stations-- including at supermarkets, as in Pennsylvania (and curbside in villages/cities-- as in Onondaga and Tompkins counties, Seattle, Boulder, Cambridge, San Francisco). [more and more folks in Rhinebeck interested!]
[ http://www.cool2012.com/community/collection/ http://www.jgpress.com/archives/_free/000525.html ;
http://www.recycletompkins.org/editorstree/view/177 ; http://ccetompkins.org/compost/index.html ;
http://www.pfma.org/main_gr-pop.html?iss=&rid=73 ; http://greenwayny.com/beta/about/?id=bio ;
http://www.westhawaiitoday.com/articles/2008/11/18/local/local03.txt ; http://www.OCCRA.org ;
http://www.faqs.org/abstracts/Environmental-services-industry/Landfill-ban-stimulates-composting-programs-in-Nova-Scotia-Environment-and-economy-win-in-Nova-Scoti.html ]
2. As Institute for Self-Reliance President Neil Seldman has suggested, the county should help facilitate the creation of an eco-industrial resource recovery park to create jobs recycling current resources that are disposed of-- food waste, fats, oils, greases, glass, electronic scrap, mattresses, and construction and demolition debris (as Alachua County in Florida and Hawaii County have smartly moved to do).
[note-- beautiful thing about this suggestion is that folks at the incinerator don't even want these types of materials being sent to them-- so that-- aside from questions re: burn plant, we should move on these; even a G.O.P. county legislator has indicated to us he's real excited about this possibility for Dutchess!]
[again-- don't forget-- let's not think of all this as just so much "garbage"-- or "MSW" (municipal solid waste)-- let's talk about resources...resource recovery-- and truly making that phrase real in Dutchess...
I frankly wouldn't be surprised if our county's "resource stream" ("waste stream") turned out to be: paper (25%), plant debris (25%), wood (10%), plastics (7%), reusable goods (5%), ceramics (5%), putrescibles (fats/oils/greases/animal/fruit/vegetable debris: 5%), glass (5%), metals (5%), soils (3%), textiles (3%), chemicals (2%); see:
http://www.grrn.org/zerowaste/twelve_categories.html ; http://www.HVME.com ;
http://fourstory.org/features/story/investing-in-zero-waste-some-lessons-for-la/ ;
http://www.ciwmb.ca.gov/LgLibrary/Innovations/RecoveryPark/CaseStudies1.htm ;
http://www.richardanthonyassociates.com/presentations/zwc_sd_2007.ppt ]
3. L.A. and San Francisco have formally set goals of 70% recycling rate by 2012 and a 90% recycling rate by 2025-- why can't Dutchess County set goals of 70% recycling rate by 2020 (at least)-- and 90% by 2025?....Oakland has cut the amount of trash it sends to landfills by 60% since 1990...
[see: http://www.ilsr.org/recycling/index.html ; http://www.GaryLiss.com ; http://www.GRRN.org ;
http://www.No-Burn.org ; http://www.Ecocycle.org ; http://www.Biocycle.net ; http://www.ZeroWaste.org ;
http://www.ZWIA.org ; http://metrotimes.com/editorial/story.asp?id=12748 ; http://www.CVSWMD.org ]
[Nantucket, MA has an 86% waste diversion rate (highest in the U.S.)-- scroll down to bottom for more]
4. Dutchess County could and should invest about $20,000 or so(out of a $400 million annual county budget and/or from new federal stimulus funding) in putting out an RFP for a ZERO-WASTE expert (like
Gary Liss, Richard Anthony, Jim Frey, Michael Huls, Jeffrey Morris-- all top U.S. zero-waste consultants that ILSR's Neil Seldman can connect us with; Seldman himself has taken ILSR out of pic on this)...I'm not so sure, frankly, that Seldman is 100% blowing smoke when he states that "a new approach to solid waste management could save $10 million annually for government, households and businesses in Dutchess County-- that new approach being resource management, which focus on recovering valuable materials for processing and resale to industry and agriculture-- this new system to be in place within 3-5 years generating jobs, new small businesses and expanded tax base for Dutchess":
[see: http://www.ilsr.org/recycling/index.html ]
5. Dutchess County should send a strong message to all towns, cities, and villages (and businesses) in the county that recycling bins be placed next to all trash receptacles asap (as already at local train stations, colleges, in some county buildings, and in Santa Barbara County).
[ http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=502419 ; http://www.dailynexus.com/article.php?a=5852 ]
6. Dutchess County should formally ban electronic waste from being accepted as trash at transfer stations and across the county-- as already in New York City, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Maine, Oregon, North Carolina, Minnesota, North Carolina, and Arkansas-- and enforce a ban on recyclable construction demolition and debris from incineration and landfilling (as Massachusetts proposed in 2001 in its Solid Waste Management Plan)..(recall recent front-page Times)
[see: http://www.newrules.org/environment/rules/recycling-and-solid-waste ;
http://www.e-takeback.org/docs%20open/Toolkit_Legislators/state%20legislation/disposal%20bans.htm ]
[note-- just a week or two again I personally confirmed here in my Town of Clinton transfer station that TV's, computers, stereos can just be piled into back of garbage truck-- then hauled off to the incinerator!]
7. Dutchess County should mandate that all waste haulers and municipalities/transfer stations implement a pay-as-you-throw policy and incentivize recycling and composting instead of incineration and landfilling (as in San Francisco and over 7000 other communities across the U.S.).
[see: http://www.epa.gov/epawaste/conserve/tools/payt/index.htm ; http://www.epa.gov/payt/.
http://www.sunsetscavenger.com/residential/composting.php?t=r ; great contacts for businesses here:
http://www.epa.gov/osw/partnerships/wastewise/wrr/rm.htm ]
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Re: above-- recall-- I recently received this pertinent letter below from ILSR President Neil Seldman:
[Gary Liss, Richard Anthony, Jim Frey, Michael Huls, Jeffrey Morris are top U.S. zero-waste consultants]
From: Neil Seldman
To: Joel Tyner
Cc: Michael Huls, Jeffrey Morris ,
Richard Anthony, Gary Liss , Jim Frey
To; Joel Tyner, Chair, Environment Committee, Dutchess County, NY Legislature
From: Neil Seldman, ILSR
Re; Response to Comments
Date 7 June 2009
After my presentation at the meeting of the Committee, I was asked what might be the fastest way to raise the funds needed for a 'best practices' or 'recycling and economic development' analysis which I outlined in my talk.
One possibility is a temporary surcharge of $1 per ton on all waste delivered to the incinerator. Within four months you will have such a study. This will be essential for good decision making. The Legislature could also apply for stimulus funds as outlined in the DEC letter distributed in the meeting. Note the June due date for applications. The two sources can be combined, as the surcharge funds can be used to leverage stimulus and other federal and state funds. I suggest that the surcharge be sunset after the funds for the study are obtained. Of course, such a surcharge could be one of the tools suggested by the recycling and economic development analysis.
The Legislature could put an RFP immediately after establishing the surcharge funding mechanism. I suggest that the following companies be contacted with regard to an RFP:
Huls Environmental
Sound Resource Management
Liss and Associates
Anthony and Associates
Resource Recycling Systems
See CCs for contact information.
ILSR would not respond to such an RFP as we prefer to be independent advisers to you and the Environment Committee.
--
Neil Seldman
President
Institute for Local Self-Reliance
927 15th Street, 4th Floor
Washington, DC 20005
202 898 1610 X 210
nseldman@ilsr.org
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From DEC Region 3 Regional Recycling Specialist Terry Laibach (tllaibac@gw.dec.state.ny.us)...
Subject: SMART/PAYT
Binghamton, Utica and Ithaca are the curbside SMART/PAYT (Save Money
and Reduce Trash/Pay-As-You-Throw) programs in New York that Dutchess
might want to take a look at:
In Utica, non-recycled MSW materials must be placed in City of Utica
blue bags. A single family home is allowed to set out a maximum of 10
city blue bags each week. Each multiple family home and each business
is allowed to set out up to 20 city blue bags per week.
Some information here: http://www.ohswa.org/resident/municipal_programs/utica.php
In the City of Binghamton, garbage bag program or Pay as You Throw
began in 1991. The price of City Garbage Bags has not changed since 1991. The price of
Binghamton’s bags is currently 0.63 for the 16 gallon size and 1.17
for the 32 gallon size. The bag system replaced a user fee system that
was based on assessed value of property to generate solid waste fees.
Revenue generated from the sale of bags goes into a refuse fund to pay
the tipping fee at the County Landfill, to pay the yardwaste tipping fee
and to fund all areas of the Solid Waste Program including labor. The
program reportedly resulted in a recycling rate of 40.8% in Binghamton.
Recently, the City has convened a Commission on Sanitation with a goal
to develop a strategy to balance the costs of City waste collection with
the program’s revenue stream.
In Ithaca, a “trash tag” system is used. Residents purchase tags
at City Hall or at any of the local grocery stores. There are two sizes
of trash tags:
Half Tags are for 20 pounds of trash; during 2008, 6 tags cost $15.00.
Full Tags are for 35 pounds of trash; during 2008, 6 tags cost $24.00.
One tag is needed for each can or each bag of trash that is placed at
the curb. If more than one bag of trash is put in a can, the total
weight of all the bags does not exceed the weight on the tag.
Trash cans may be tagged per City instructions.
There is no fee or tag needed for yard waste or recycling collection
For examples outside of New York State, here’s the EPA resource page:
http://www.epa.gov/epawaste/conserve/tools/payt/tools/index.htm
and the success stories they came up with
http://www.epa.gov/epawaste/conserve/tools/payt/tools/index.htm
Also, I'm told Kristen Brown is always looking for ways to increase the
reach of PAYT (for a small fee, though). See her presentation and
contact info at the New York Solid Waste Associations Federation
website: http://www.nyfederation.org/pdf2008/10BrownK.pdf
Last and certainly not least, Dutchess needs to look at other programs
in other places in trying to determine how to best move forward with
solid waste. Ultimately, the county should be speaking with one voice
in deciding the direction.
As I come across things of interest I will be sure to bring them to
your attention as requested.
Terry.
Terry Laibach
Regional Recycling Specialist
NYSDEC Region 3 Solid Waste
21 South Putt Corners Rd.
New Paltz, NY 12561
845-256-3141 (voice)
845-255-3414 (fax)
tllaibac@gw.dec.state.ny.us
Every Day is Earth Day.
Please print responsibly.
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From: Brenda Platt (bplatt@ilsr.org), Co-Director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance...
San Francisco, which has a 75% diversion goal by 2010 and a zero waste goal by 2020, is reporting 72% diversion of MSW for last year. This is an amazing accomplishment for a diverse city of almost 1 million residents.
Nantucket has the highest diversion that I know of -- 86%. Both these communities -- from small to large -- compost food scraps. I believe the key to high diversion levels is including mixed paper in recycling along with composting (or anaerobically digesting) food scraps and other organics. Toronto recently added food scraps to weekly collection and has seen its diversion levels skyrocket as a result. It anaerobically digests the kitchen waste. Interestingly, it also went to a pay-as-you-throw system for trash and reduced trash collection to once every other week, while food scrap collection is every week!
The diversion goal used in Stop Trashing the Climate is 90% but that goal is to be achieved by the year 2030. If we were to start on the zero waste path by adding food scraps, other organics, and a wide range of recyclables combined with pay-as-you-throw trash fees, we could reach 75% and even 80% diversion fairly quickly. The other 10-15% will come with extended producer responsibility regs and product redesign, product bans, etc. We can get there, but we have to start on that path now. Building incinerators to deal with our garbage woes is like loosening our belt to control obesity. It does not deal with the route cause of the problem.
As an anecdote, consider single-use styrofoam food service ware. A number of communities, including San Fran, have passed some sort of ban on use of styrofoam for food service ware in favor of alternatives that are reusable, recyclable, or compostable. Communities with incinerators are not concerned with this as they need the styrofoam to feed their incinerator. When communities embrace zero waste planning they target parts of their waste stream that cannot be reused, recycled, or composted. Incinerators require waste. At least landfills do not. The more we reduce, reuse, recycle, and compost, the longer our landfills will last.
Hope this is helpful. Feel free of course to forward.
Cheers,
Brenda
--
Brenda Platt
Institute for Local Self-Reliance
927 15th Street, NW, 4th Fl
Washington, DC 20005
202-898-1610 ext. 230
www.ilsr.org
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Recall http://www.midhudsonnews.com/News/2009/February09/20/recyc_selfrel-20Feb09.html ...
[sadly, Poughkeepsie Journal ignoring, for all intents and purposes, info from Neil Seldman-- why?]
Feb. 20th: Self reliance expert promotes recycling, waste reduction over landfilling [incineration]
POUGHKEEPSIE – The president of the non-profit Institute for Local Self Reliance told audiences in Poughkeepsie and Newburgh Thursday that the way to bring down the use of landfills is to expand recycling, waste reduction, building deconstruction and related fields. Neil Seldman of Washington, DC spoke to audiences at Vassar College and Newburgh Free Library and said federal stimulus money could help grow this technology, create new jobs and increase recycling. “We think if the federal government matches local spending with about $10-$20 billion, the transition from our current of recycling, which is 33-34 percent nationally can be increased to 75 percent within three to five years,” he said. Seldman met with Dutchess legislators Joel Tyner, Barbara Jeter-Jackson and James Doxsey who agreed that if more jobs could be created and recycling increased, it would be a win-win for the economy and society.
Thanks again to all who turned out for Neil Seldman's Feb. 19th and 27th Poughkeepsie talks organized by yours truly with Vassar Sustainability Committee folks Lucy Johnson and Jeff Walker-- Rockland County Environmental Committee Chair Connie Coker, Jonathan Smith, Laurie Husted of Bard's Environmental Program, David Dell of Sustainable Hudson Valley, Manna Jo Greene of Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, Allison Morrill Chatrchyan of Cornell Cooperative Extension's Environmental Program, Patricia Zolnik of the Cary Institute for Ecosystem Studies, Michelle Leggett of the Ulster County Resource Recovery Agency, Co. Leg. Jim Doxsey (and Co. Leg. Barbara Jeter-Jackson earlier), Rhinebeck Village Boardmembers Barbara Kraft and Svend Beecher, Dave Petrovits of Recycling Crushing Technology, Vassar Economics Professor Bill Lunt, environmentalists extraordinaire Marie Caruso, Nancy Swanson, and Tom Baldino, Richard Dennison, Fred and Alice Bunnell, and Cary Kittner, Vassar students Katherine Straus, Anna Weisberg, Nadine Souto, and Susan Unver, and Damon and Stephanie Lewis, Mary Schmalz, Margaret Slomin, Chris Wimmers, Patrick and Liz Noonan, Amanda Adams, Caitlin Zinsley, Peter Prunty, Chris Eufemia, Allie Chipkin, Jamie Roderick, Sarah Womer, Frank Haggerty, Frankie Mancini, et. al.
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Fact: "Over 30 tons of waste is produced for every ton of product that reaches the consumer, and then 98% of those products are thrown away within six months. The US generates more waste per capita each year, while available landfill capacity diminishes. American consumers dispose of approximately 133,000 computers every day." (from Steve Attinger: "Extended Producer Responsibility")
[see: http://www.greenbiz.com/news/pointer2.cfm?NewsID=34241 ]
Fact: "The following companies have saved through using Zero Waste strategies to reduce waste and improve efficiency-- Interface, Inc. in Atlanta has eliminated over $165M in waste-- Xerox Corporation in Rochester has had a Waste-Free Factory environmental performance goal since the early 1990's (criteria including reductions in solid and hazardous waste, emissions, energy consumption and increase recycling; this program resulted in a savings of $45M in 1998)-- Hewlett Packard in Roseville, CA reduced its waste by 95% and saved $870,564 in 1998-- and Epson in Portland, OR has reduced its waste to zero and has saved $300,000."
[ http://www.ZeroWaste.org ]
Fact: Over 2,800 businesses in Japan have adopted Zero Waste as a goal, and 99% of them have already achieved Zero Waste to landfill. All the Zero Waste Businesses that we have documented have
saved money, reduced their liability, increased their operating efficiency, and reduced carbon footprint.
[ http://www.GaryLiss.com ; http://www.grrn.org/zerowaste/business/profiles.php ]
Fact: The Institute for Local Self-Reliance/Teamsters goal of a national recycling rate of 75% would create two million jobs and save millions of tax dollars, as already more Americans work in the recycling industry than in auto industry, and Americans already pay $40 billion to $70 billion a year handling solid waste. [see http://www.ILSR.org ]
Fact: Dutchess County could create a track for good-paying union jobs as well in deconstruction-- as Neil Seldman and the Institute for Local Self-Reliance has successfully done in Hartford and other cities across the U.S., working with AFSCME, Laborers International, Sheetmetal Workers, and Teamsters.
[see http://www.ilsr.org/recycling/rebuildeconhartford.html ]
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From: Tracy Frisch
To: nyzerowastealliance@googlegroups.com
Subject: Single Stream Recycling
Before folks endorse single stream as a solution locally, consider the controversy about how good a job single stream recycling does at recovering recyclables. Here's the scenario I am familiar with:
A truck collects and crushes all the recyclables together -- glass, plastic containers, paper, cardboard, different metals etc. Then it gets sent down a processing line to be sorted. The glass and plastic may be crushed, mashed together, and broken. Residual liquids are on paper. The result can be pretty poor quality and lower value.
Some say that the single stream system (single stream material recovery facilities or MRFs) has been used by the mega waste corporations as a strategy to consolidate their control. It's enticing because it is easier for consumers and for collection. But is it the way we should be going?
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From p. 6 of Northern Dutchess News (came out first week of July):
"Food Waste Composting Elicits Discussion in Rhinebeck"
by Greg Lucid
At a meeting held the evening of June 24 at Rhinebeck Town Hall, a presentation was given to 12 local citizens by Greenway Environmental Services on ways to protect the climate by food waste composting, also known as a zero-waste approach.
County Legislator Joel Tyner, D-Rhinebeck-Clinton, originally publicized the meeting as a taxpayers' forum to discuss ways the county could save tax dollars. One of the proposed initiatives, included on a press release distributed by Tyner prior to the meeting, was a zero-waste approach to resource recovery, which the legislator suggested could save millions of tax dollars.
While Tyner touched on some of the other ways the county could save money, most of the meeting was devoted to learning about composting from Greenway officials Shabazz Jackson and Josephine Papagni. A discussion followed a video and PowerPoint presentation on the work Greenway does locally.
Answers.com defines compost as "a mixture of decaying organic matter, as from leaves and manure, used to improve soil structure and provide nutrients." Notably compost can also contain certain foods. Composting most people are familiar with on a smaller scale is typically done in gardens.
According to reports, everything in Dutchess County that is not recycled is incinerated. [note-- this is false-- as tens of thousands of tons of our county's municipal solid waste are driven annually many miles upstate to landfills there] Food waste requires a lot of energy to incinerate because it is 95 percent water. [note-- a more accurate statement here would be that food waste is over 70 percent water] Each ton of food waste recovered saves two tons of carbon dioxide.
Jackson and Papagni know first-hand about getting their hands dirty by composting and educating communities on zero-waste, better alternatives they believe for protecting the environment.
"We process tens of thousands of tons of organic waste [each year]," Jackson said. Greenway, based in Newburgh, is one of the largest producers of organic topsoils and mulches, he said.
Jackson underscored Greenway's community involvement.
"We work with the students (including local high school students). And we donate 10 percent of our time to environmental education activities," he said, also noting a partnership Greenway has established "formally" for the past seven years with Vassar College. Vassar students are involved with Greenway through work-study and senior projects. Greenway also works with Marist College and SUNY New Paltz student volunteers. Marist has been active with Greenway since 2007, while New Paltz has just started working with Greenway this year, he added.
Hopewell Junction-based Royal Carting Service Co. has been servicing Greenway projects for more than 30 years, Jackson said. That relationship helped Royal make the investment into food waste, he added. Jackson noted one service Royal provides is shipment of selected waste materials to Greenway from across the Hudson Valley region.
Greenway's Solution to Pollution
For the past few years, citizens in Rhinebeck have been exchanging ideas with one another on better resource management.
"One of the things that has happened in the past two, two-and-a-half years: For the first time, the village, town, Rhinebeck Central School District and the fairgrounds have developed a cooperative initiative...it's the first time these entities have discussed how to all work together to better use our resources to share with one another," said Laurie A. Rich, coordinator of the Dutchess County Fairgrounds Green Initiative. Rich, one of 12 individuals at the meeting, is a member of the Rhinebeck Central School District Board of Education.
Some believe Dutchess County Fairgrounds could even serve as an ideal site for a food waste compost pilot project.
Papagni said Rhinebeck is an ideal location to work in because it contains an existing organic waste dump. "With a little bit of remediation work," she said, "You could have a very efficient system that could serve the whole community."
Tyner also plans on reaching out to the Town of Clinton for participation.
So where does Greenway go from here?
"We want to set up at the Beacon Transfer Station to do training, put together places where people will work," Jackson said. He noted that to get the process up and running, from obtaining local and state permits to having a site plan done among other tasks, it could take about a year before moving forward with waste collection and composting at new sites.
Meanwhile at the government level, the county is following Greenway's lead.
"In March, a resolution was passed [unanimously] by the County Legislature to try to draw down federal stimulus funds to move toward zero waste," Tyner said.
Tyner, the chairman of the County Legislature's Environment Committee, said he has introduced ways to save money and protect the environment. He said he attended a zero-waste conference held in Albany last November, at which time he decided to seriously take action toward zero waste.
Soon our county's Green Ribbon Solid Waste Management Committee (chaired by yours truly) is to release its report (in early August)...
[recall-- http://www.co.dutchess.ny.us/CountyGov/Departments/Legislature/16001_16329.htm ]
Have you seen our county's official "Solid Waste Management Plan" from a few decades ago?...
It's long on rhetoric re: recycling-- but words do not equal action...(in other words, just because "plan" is in place-- doesn't mean necessarily it's going to be followed-- as with master plans and comp plans)...
Curiously, some on our county's Green Ribbon Solid Waste Management Committee seem to want to water down and dilute as much as possible our recommendations for Dutchess County tho...(why?)...
[and why is it that so many members ignore/dismiss Institute for Local Self-Reliance's Neil Seldman?]
So-- join us if you can to stand with us unapologetically for Dutchess to move towards zero-waste asap:
press conference tomorrow 1 pm in front of County Office Building at 22 Market St. in Poughkeepsie...
[scroll down to see seven specific recommendations we're trying to get into report before Aug. release]
Can't make it?...send a message to all 25 of us at countylegislators@co.dutchess.ny.us-- pass it on!...
Joel
489-5479/876-2488
joeltyner@earthlink.net
[...you're also invited to next Green Ribbon mtg.-- Mon. 4 pm 6th floor of Co. Office Bldg. 22 Market Pok.;
note as well-- believe it or not, I've also been told I won't be compiling report-- tho I'm the chair...(?!?)...
o what a tangled web they weave when first they practice to deceive; they know no bounds...]
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Comments here from some signed on to http://www.petitiononline.com/zeroyes ...
[join us, sign on yourself!...(we'll need many, many more of you to sign on to get Dutchess zero-waste!)]
Michael West of Rhinebeck: "This has to happen."
Kathleen Everett of Rhinebeck: "Sensible and long overdue."
Alicia Lenhart of Rhinebeck: "Behind zero-waste all the way."
Fred Nagel of Rhinebeck: "Zero waste-- a way for Dutchess County to help save the planet."
Tom Baldino of Beacon: "We are polluting the planet. We must use all means to protect the planet. We need to shut down burn plants and landfills as a first big step."
Pat Lamanna of the Town of Poughkeepsie: "I'd like to see Dutchess County be a leader on this...after Berkeley, CA, of course, immortalized in the song on Pete Seeger's latest album."
Doris Kelly of Hyde Park: "It's about time we strive for zero waste."
Chris "Creek" Iversen of Wappinger: "Living sustainably is, by definition, the only future."
Julia Widdowson of Millbrook: "I endorse and support zero waste."
Josh Schlossberg of the City of Poughkeepsie: "Zero waste is a necessary goal."
Bill Lunt of the Town of Poughkeepsie: "Zero waste is good for the economy and good for the environment. It is a win-win solution."
Diane Sommer of LaGrange: "It's so important to support this... and let it begin in our own households."
Anthony Henry Smith: "Each of the important items in this petition merits its own separate petition."
Barbara Lindsey of the City of Poughkeepsie: "Yes to zero waste."
Karl Volk of the Town of Poughkeepsie: "Zero-waste now."
Ed Pell of Clinton: "I fully support this effort."
Bryan Kallen of Clinton: "I fully support this petition."
Ron Ray of Beacon: "I fully support this effort."
Dana Tompkins of LaGrange: "I fully support this effort."
Peter Conklin of Hyde Park: "This must be done."
Tim Kleeger of Hyde Park: "I support the Zero Waste plan."
Sally Luther of the City of Poughkeepsie: "I fully support this effort."
Joanna Dupee of Red Hook: "I endorse this petition. It is long over-due."
Patti Gordon of Red Hook: "Great idea."
Geoffrey Carter of Red Hook: "Necessary-- start planning immediately."
Cary Kittner of Red Hook: "This is very important for so many reasons."
Edward Hernandes of Beekman: "I am for the zero-waste program."
[again-- if you care-- join us by signing on to http://www.petitiononline.com/zeroyes yourself; pass it on!]
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Background Info Re: Rationale for Dutchess To Go Zero-Waste...
[scroll down just a bit more for seven specific recommendations for Green Ribbon Task Force]
Recall Friday's front page: "Local Unemployment Posts Another Rise: Dutchess Rate Hits 8.1 Percent":
http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/article/20090716/BUSINESS/90716016 ...
Perhaps most importantly, in the midst of our current deep economic recession, we have an opportunity in this report to recommend a zero-waste approach to create green jobs!...
Fact: Recycling/composting (zero-waste approach) creates ten times more jobs than incineration and landfilling.
[see: http://www.uos.harvard.edu/fmo/recycling/myths.shtml ;
http://www.stoptheburn.com/recycling.html ;
http://www.ilsr.org/recycling/recyclingmeansbusiness.html ]
As the Institute of Local Self-Reliance has noted-- "Recycling is an economic development tool as well as an environmental tool. On a per-ton basis, sorting and processing recyclables alone sustain 10 times more jobs than landfilling or incineration. For example, in North Carolina, recycling industries employ over 8,700 people. The job gains in recycling in this state far outnumber the jobs lost in other industries. For every 100 recycling jobs created, just 10 jobs were lost in the waste hauling and disposal industry, and 3 jobs were lost in the timber harvesting industry."
[see: http://www.ilsr.org/recycling/recyclingmeansbusiness.html ]
Fact: More than two thirds of the materials we use are still burned or buried, despite fact we have technical capacity to cost-effectively recycle, reuse, or compost 90% of what we waste.
[see http://www.StopTrashingtheClimate.org ]
Fact: "Significantly decreasing waste disposed in incinerators and landfills will reduce greenhouse gas emissions the equivalent to closing 21% of U.S. coal-fired power plants. This is comparable to leading climate protection proposals such as improving national vehicle fuel efficiency. Indeed, preventing waste and expanding reuse, recycling, and composting are essential to put us on the path to climate stability." [ http://www.StopTrashingtheClimate.org ]
[see http://www.350.org if you're not sure about how real threat of global warming/climate change is!]
Fact: Ithaca, Portland, Seattle, Boulder, Cambridge, and communities across Vermont, North Carolina, Minnesota, Michigan, California have smartly moved towards zero waste with food-waste composting
[ http://www.cool2012.com/community/collection/ http://www.jgpress.com/archives/_free/000525.html ;
http://www.recycletompkins.org/editorstree/view/177 ; http://ccetompkins.org/compost/index.html ; the
county incinerator doesn't want food waste, as it's highly inefficient to burn (85% water Cool2012.com)]
Fact: Dutchess taxpayers spent $1,167,271 on "Solid Waste" (incineration) in 2006, $5,005,364 last year on this as well (in 2008), and are to spend $6,330,612 on this in 2009-- if status quo holds on this.
Dutchess County's current Solid Waste Management Plan will expire in 2010, and its NYS Solid Waste Permit to operate the county incinerator will also expire in 2011; DEC requires adoption of new environmental Dutchess Solid Waste Management Plan; contract with burn plant is done in 2014.
[see: http://www.dec.ny.gov/docs/materials_minerals_pdf/nysaroct08.pdf ]
Recall the five great investigative exposé pieces below from Mary Beth Pfeiffer over the last few months:
May 10th: "Dutchess County Resource Recovery Agency: Inefficient, Expensive, and in Debt"
http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/article/20090510/NEWS01/905100344&referrer=FRONTPAGECAROUSEL
May 31st: "Resource Recovery Agency: Padded Budgets or Solid Plans? County Subsidy Total is $5.4 Million More Than Needed Since '03"
http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/artikkel?Dato=20090531&Kategori=NEWS01&Lopenr=107060002&Ref=AR
July 12th: "No Bid Deals Might Add to Agency's Financial Trouble"
http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/article/20090712/NEWS01/907120337
July 12th: "Entity Failed to File Reports to the State"
http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/article/20090712/NEWS01/907120336
July 16th" "Dutchess Burn Plant May Be Part of Sale"
http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/article/20090716/NEWS01/907160322/1006
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Seven Specific Zero-Waste Recommendations the Green Ribbon Task Force Could and Should Make:
1. Once zero-waste pilot/demo projects in various parts of county are in place and infrastructure is available (as Shabazz Jackson has suggested we recommend), Dutchess County should seriously consider ban organics from being accepted as trash at our county incinerator, transfer stations, or by waste haulers, as in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Hawaii, and Nova Scotia-- and mandate that food waste be collected separately by waste haulers and by municipalities/transfer stations-- including at supermarkets, as in Pennsylvania (and curbside in villages/cities-- as in Onondaga and Tompkins counties, Seattle, Boulder, Cambridge, San Francisco). [more and more folks in Rhinebeck interested!]
[ http://www.cool2012.com/community/collection/ http://www.jgpress.com/archives/_free/000525.html ;
http://www.recycletompkins.org/editorstree/view/177 ; http://ccetompkins.org/compost/index.html ;
http://www.pfma.org/main_gr-pop.html?iss=&rid=73 ; http://greenwayny.com/beta/about/?id=bio ;
http://www.westhawaiitoday.com/articles/2008/11/18/local/local03.txt ; http://www.OCCRA.org ;
http://www.faqs.org/abstracts/Environmental-services-industry/Landfill-ban-stimulates-composting-programs-in-Nova-Scotia-Environment-and-economy-win-in-Nova-Scoti.html ]
2. As Institute for Self-Reliance President Neil Seldman has suggested, the county should help facilitate the creation of an eco-industrial resource recovery park to create jobs recycling current resources that are disposed of-- food waste, fats, oils, greases, glass, electronic scrap, mattresses, and construction and demolition debris (as Alachua County in Florida and Hawaii County have smartly moved to do).
[note-- beautiful thing about this suggestion is that folks at the incinerator don't even want these types of materials being sent to them-- so that-- aside from questions re: burn plant, we should move on these; even a G.O.P. county legislator has indicated to us he's real excited about this possibility for Dutchess!]
[again-- don't forget-- let's not think of all this as just so much "garbage"-- or "MSW" (municipal solid waste)-- let's talk about resources...resource recovery-- and truly making that phrase real in Dutchess...
I frankly wouldn't be surprised if our county's "resource stream" ("waste stream") turned out to be: paper (25%), plant debris (25%), wood (10%), plastics (7%), reusable goods (5%), ceramics (5%), putrescibles (fats/oils/greases/animal/fruit/vegetable debris: 5%), glass (5%), metals (5%), soils (3%), textiles (3%), chemicals (2%); see:
http://www.grrn.org/zerowaste/twelve_categories.html ; http://www.HVME.com ;
http://fourstory.org/features/story/investing-in-zero-waste-some-lessons-for-la/ ;
http://www.ciwmb.ca.gov/LgLibrary/Innovations/RecoveryPark/CaseStudies1.htm ;
http://www.richardanthonyassociates.com/presentations/zwc_sd_2007.ppt ]
3. L.A. and San Francisco have formally set goals of 70% recycling rate by 2012 and a 90% recycling rate by 2025-- why can't Dutchess County set goals of 70% recycling rate by 2020 (at least)-- and 90% by 2025?....Oakland has cut the amount of trash it sends to landfills by 60% since 1990...
[see: http://www.ilsr.org/recycling/index.html ; http://www.GaryLiss.com ; http://www.GRRN.org ;
http://www.No-Burn.org ; http://www.Ecocycle.org ; http://www.Biocycle.net ; http://www.ZeroWaste.org ;
http://www.ZWIA.org ; http://metrotimes.com/editorial/story.asp?id=12748 ; http://www.CVSWMD.org ]
[Nantucket, MA has an 86% waste diversion rate (highest in the U.S.)-- scroll down to bottom for more]
4. Dutchess County could and should invest about $20,000 or so(out of a $400 million annual county budget and/or from new federal stimulus funding) in putting out an RFP for a ZERO-WASTE expert (like
Gary Liss, Richard Anthony, Jim Frey, Michael Huls, Jeffrey Morris-- all top U.S. zero-waste consultants that ILSR's Neil Seldman can connect us with; Seldman himself has taken ILSR out of pic on this)...I'm not so sure, frankly, that Seldman is 100% blowing smoke when he states that "a new approach to solid waste management could save $10 million annually for government, households and businesses in Dutchess County-- that new approach being resource management, which focus on recovering valuable materials for processing and resale to industry and agriculture-- this new system to be in place within 3-5 years generating jobs, new small businesses and expanded tax base for Dutchess":
[see: http://www.ilsr.org/recycling/index.html ]
5. Dutchess County should send a strong message to all towns, cities, and villages (and businesses) in the county that recycling bins be placed next to all trash receptacles asap (as already at local train stations, colleges, in some county buildings, and in Santa Barbara County).
[ http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=502419 ; http://www.dailynexus.com/article.php?a=5852 ]
6. Dutchess County should formally ban electronic waste from being accepted as trash at transfer stations and across the county-- as already in New York City, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Maine, Oregon, North Carolina, Minnesota, North Carolina, and Arkansas-- and enforce a ban on recyclable construction demolition and debris from incineration and landfilling (as Massachusetts proposed in 2001 in its Solid Waste Management Plan)..(recall recent front-page Times)
[see: http://www.newrules.org/environment/rules/recycling-and-solid-waste ;
http://www.e-takeback.org/docs%20open/Toolkit_Legislators/state%20legislation/disposal%20bans.htm ]
[note-- just a week or two again I personally confirmed here in my Town of Clinton transfer station that TV's, computers, stereos can just be piled into back of garbage truck-- then hauled off to the incinerator!]
7. Dutchess County should mandate that all waste haulers and municipalities/transfer stations implement a pay-as-you-throw policy and incentivize recycling and composting instead of incineration and landfilling (as in San Francisco and over 7000 other communities across the U.S.).
[see: http://www.epa.gov/epawaste/conserve/tools/payt/index.htm ; http://www.epa.gov/payt/.
http://www.sunsetscavenger.com/residential/composting.php?t=r ; great contacts for businesses here:
http://www.epa.gov/osw/partnerships/wastewise/wrr/rm.htm ]
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Re: above-- recall-- I recently received this pertinent letter below from ILSR President Neil Seldman:
[Gary Liss, Richard Anthony, Jim Frey, Michael Huls, Jeffrey Morris are top U.S. zero-waste consultants]
From: Neil Seldman
To: Joel Tyner
Cc: Michael Huls
Richard Anthony
To; Joel Tyner, Chair, Environment Committee, Dutchess County, NY Legislature
From: Neil Seldman, ILSR
Re; Response to Comments
Date 7 June 2009
After my presentation at the meeting of the Committee, I was asked what might be the fastest way to raise the funds needed for a 'best practices' or 'recycling and economic development' analysis which I outlined in my talk.
One possibility is a temporary surcharge of $1 per ton on all waste delivered to the incinerator. Within four months you will have such a study. This will be essential for good decision making. The Legislature could also apply for stimulus funds as outlined in the DEC letter distributed in the meeting. Note the June due date for applications. The two sources can be combined, as the surcharge funds can be used to leverage stimulus and other federal and state funds. I suggest that the surcharge be sunset after the funds for the study are obtained. Of course, such a surcharge could be one of the tools suggested by the recycling and economic development analysis.
The Legislature could put an RFP immediately after establishing the surcharge funding mechanism. I suggest that the following companies be contacted with regard to an RFP:
Huls Environmental
Sound Resource Management
Liss and Associates
Anthony and Associates
Resource Recycling Systems
See CCs for contact information.
ILSR would not respond to such an RFP as we prefer to be independent advisers to you and the Environment Committee.
--
Neil Seldman
President
Institute for Local Self-Reliance
927 15th Street, 4th Floor
Washington, DC 20005
202 898 1610 X 210
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From DEC Region 3 Regional Recycling Specialist Terry Laibach (tllaibac@gw.dec.state.ny.us)...
Subject: SMART/PAYT
Binghamton, Utica and Ithaca are the curbside SMART/PAYT (Save Money
and Reduce Trash/Pay-As-You-Throw) programs in New York that Dutchess
might want to take a look at:
In Utica, non-recycled MSW materials must be placed in City of Utica
blue bags. A single family home is allowed to set out a maximum of 10
city blue bags each week. Each multiple family home and each business
is allowed to set out up to 20 city blue bags per week.
Some information here: http://www.ohswa.org/resident/municipal_programs/utica.php
In the City of Binghamton, garbage bag program or Pay as You Throw
began in 1991. The price of City Garbage Bags has not changed since 1991. The price of
Binghamton’s bags is currently 0.63 for the 16 gallon size and 1.17
for the 32 gallon size. The bag system replaced a user fee system that
was based on assessed value of property to generate solid waste fees.
Revenue generated from the sale of bags goes into a refuse fund to pay
the tipping fee at the County Landfill, to pay the yardwaste tipping fee
and to fund all areas of the Solid Waste Program including labor. The
program reportedly resulted in a recycling rate of 40.8% in Binghamton.
Recently, the City has convened a Commission on Sanitation with a goal
to develop a strategy to balance the costs of City waste collection with
the program’s revenue stream.
In Ithaca, a “trash tag” system is used. Residents purchase tags
at City Hall or at any of the local grocery stores. There are two sizes
of trash tags:
Half Tags are for 20 pounds of trash; during 2008, 6 tags cost $15.00.
Full Tags are for 35 pounds of trash; during 2008, 6 tags cost $24.00.
One tag is needed for each can or each bag of trash that is placed at
the curb. If more than one bag of trash is put in a can, the total
weight of all the bags does not exceed the weight on the tag.
Trash cans may be tagged per City instructions.
There is no fee or tag needed for yard waste or recycling collection
For examples outside of New York State, here’s the EPA resource page:
http://www.epa.gov/epawaste/conserve/tools/payt/tools/index.htm
and the success stories they came up with
http://www.epa.gov/epawaste/conserve/tools/payt/tools/index.htm
Also, I'm told Kristen Brown is always looking for ways to increase the
reach of PAYT (for a small fee, though). See her presentation and
contact info at the New York Solid Waste Associations Federation
website: http://www.nyfederation.org/pdf2008/10BrownK.pdf
Last and certainly not least, Dutchess needs to look at other programs
in other places in trying to determine how to best move forward with
solid waste. Ultimately, the county should be speaking with one voice
in deciding the direction.
As I come across things of interest I will be sure to bring them to
your attention as requested.
Terry.
Terry Laibach
Regional Recycling Specialist
NYSDEC Region 3 Solid Waste
21 South Putt Corners Rd.
New Paltz, NY 12561
845-256-3141 (voice)
845-255-3414 (fax)
tllaibac@gw.dec.state.ny.us
Every Day is Earth Day.
Please print responsibly.
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From: Brenda Platt (bplatt@ilsr.org), Co-Director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance...
San Francisco, which has a 75% diversion goal by 2010 and a zero waste goal by 2020, is reporting 72% diversion of MSW for last year. This is an amazing accomplishment for a diverse city of almost 1 million residents.
Nantucket has the highest diversion that I know of -- 86%. Both these communities -- from small to large -- compost food scraps. I believe the key to high diversion levels is including mixed paper in recycling along with composting (or anaerobically digesting) food scraps and other organics. Toronto recently added food scraps to weekly collection and has seen its diversion levels skyrocket as a result. It anaerobically digests the kitchen waste. Interestingly, it also went to a pay-as-you-throw system for trash and reduced trash collection to once every other week, while food scrap collection is every week!
The diversion goal used in Stop Trashing the Climate is 90% but that goal is to be achieved by the year 2030. If we were to start on the zero waste path by adding food scraps, other organics, and a wide range of recyclables combined with pay-as-you-throw trash fees, we could reach 75% and even 80% diversion fairly quickly. The other 10-15% will come with extended producer responsibility regs and product redesign, product bans, etc. We can get there, but we have to start on that path now. Building incinerators to deal with our garbage woes is like loosening our belt to control obesity. It does not deal with the route cause of the problem.
As an anecdote, consider single-use styrofoam food service ware. A number of communities, including San Fran, have passed some sort of ban on use of styrofoam for food service ware in favor of alternatives that are reusable, recyclable, or compostable. Communities with incinerators are not concerned with this as they need the styrofoam to feed their incinerator. When communities embrace zero waste planning they target parts of their waste stream that cannot be reused, recycled, or composted. Incinerators require waste. At least landfills do not. The more we reduce, reuse, recycle, and compost, the longer our landfills will last.
Hope this is helpful. Feel free of course to forward.
Cheers,
Brenda
--
Brenda Platt
Institute for Local Self-Reliance
927 15th Street, NW, 4th Fl
Washington, DC 20005
202-898-1610 ext. 230
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Recall http://www.midhudsonnews.com/News/2009/February09/20/recyc_selfrel-20Feb09.html ...
[sadly, Poughkeepsie Journal ignoring, for all intents and purposes, info from Neil Seldman-- why?]
Feb. 20th: Self reliance expert promotes recycling, waste reduction over landfilling [incineration]
POUGHKEEPSIE – The president of the non-profit Institute for Local Self Reliance told audiences in Poughkeepsie and Newburgh Thursday that the way to bring down the use of landfills is to expand recycling, waste reduction, building deconstruction and related fields. Neil Seldman of Washington, DC spoke to audiences at Vassar College and Newburgh Free Library and said federal stimulus money could help grow this technology, create new jobs and increase recycling. “We think if the federal government matches local spending with about $10-$20 billion, the transition from our current of recycling, which is 33-34 percent nationally can be increased to 75 percent within three to five years,” he said. Seldman met with Dutchess legislators Joel Tyner, Barbara Jeter-Jackson and James Doxsey who agreed that if more jobs could be created and recycling increased, it would be a win-win for the economy and society.
Thanks again to all who turned out for Neil Seldman's Feb. 19th and 27th Poughkeepsie talks organized by yours truly with Vassar Sustainability Committee folks Lucy Johnson and Jeff Walker-- Rockland County Environmental Committee Chair Connie Coker, Jonathan Smith, Laurie Husted of Bard's Environmental Program, David Dell of Sustainable Hudson Valley, Manna Jo Greene of Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, Allison Morrill Chatrchyan of Cornell Cooperative Extension's Environmental Program, Patricia Zolnik of the Cary Institute for Ecosystem Studies, Michelle Leggett of the Ulster County Resource Recovery Agency, Co. Leg. Jim Doxsey (and Co. Leg. Barbara Jeter-Jackson earlier), Rhinebeck Village Boardmembers Barbara Kraft and Svend Beecher, Dave Petrovits of Recycling Crushing Technology, Vassar Economics Professor Bill Lunt, environmentalists extraordinaire Marie Caruso, Nancy Swanson, and Tom Baldino, Richard Dennison, Fred and Alice Bunnell, and Cary Kittner, Vassar students Katherine Straus, Anna Weisberg, Nadine Souto, and Susan Unver, and Damon and Stephanie Lewis, Mary Schmalz, Margaret Slomin, Chris Wimmers, Patrick and Liz Noonan, Amanda Adams, Caitlin Zinsley, Peter Prunty, Chris Eufemia, Allie Chipkin, Jamie Roderick, Sarah Womer, Frank Haggerty, Frankie Mancini, et. al.
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Fact: "Over 30 tons of waste is produced for every ton of product that reaches the consumer, and then 98% of those products are thrown away within six months. The US generates more waste per capita each year, while available landfill capacity diminishes. American consumers dispose of approximately 133,000 computers every day." (from Steve Attinger: "Extended Producer Responsibility")
[see: http://www.greenbiz.com/news/pointer2.cfm?NewsID=34241 ]
Fact: "The following companies have saved through using Zero Waste strategies to reduce waste and improve efficiency-- Interface, Inc. in Atlanta has eliminated over $165M in waste-- Xerox Corporation in Rochester has had a Waste-Free Factory environmental performance goal since the early 1990's (criteria including reductions in solid and hazardous waste, emissions, energy consumption and increase recycling; this program resulted in a savings of $45M in 1998)-- Hewlett Packard in Roseville, CA reduced its waste by 95% and saved $870,564 in 1998-- and Epson in Portland, OR has reduced its waste to zero and has saved $300,000."
[ http://www.ZeroWaste.org ]
Fact: Over 2,800 businesses in Japan have adopted Zero Waste as a goal, and 99% of them have already achieved Zero Waste to landfill. All the Zero Waste Businesses that we have documented have
saved money, reduced their liability, increased their operating efficiency, and reduced carbon footprint.
[ http://www.GaryLiss.com ; http://www.grrn.org/zerowaste/business/profiles.php ]
Fact: The Institute for Local Self-Reliance/Teamsters goal of a national recycling rate of 75% would create two million jobs and save millions of tax dollars, as already more Americans work in the recycling industry than in auto industry, and Americans already pay $40 billion to $70 billion a year handling solid waste. [see http://www.ILSR.org ]
Fact: Dutchess County could create a track for good-paying union jobs as well in deconstruction-- as Neil Seldman and the Institute for Local Self-Reliance has successfully done in Hartford and other cities across the U.S., working with AFSCME, Laborers International, Sheetmetal Workers, and Teamsters.
[see http://www.ilsr.org/recycling/rebuildeconhartford.html ]
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From: Tracy Frisch
To: nyzerowastealliance@googlegroups.com
Subject: Single Stream Recycling
Before folks endorse single stream as a solution locally, consider the controversy about how good a job single stream recycling does at recovering recyclables. Here's the scenario I am familiar with:
A truck collects and crushes all the recyclables together -- glass, plastic containers, paper, cardboard, different metals etc. Then it gets sent down a processing line to be sorted. The glass and plastic may be crushed, mashed together, and broken. Residual liquids are on paper. The result can be pretty poor quality and lower value.
Some say that the single stream system (single stream material recovery facilities or MRFs) has been used by the mega waste corporations as a strategy to consolidate their control. It's enticing because it is easier for consumers and for collection. But is it the way we should be going?
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From p. 6 of Northern Dutchess News (came out first week of July):
"Food Waste Composting Elicits Discussion in Rhinebeck"
by Greg Lucid
At a meeting held the evening of June 24 at Rhinebeck Town Hall, a presentation was given to 12 local citizens by Greenway Environmental Services on ways to protect the climate by food waste composting, also known as a zero-waste approach.
County Legislator Joel Tyner, D-Rhinebeck-Clinton, originally publicized the meeting as a taxpayers' forum to discuss ways the county could save tax dollars. One of the proposed initiatives, included on a press release distributed by Tyner prior to the meeting, was a zero-waste approach to resource recovery, which the legislator suggested could save millions of tax dollars.
While Tyner touched on some of the other ways the county could save money, most of the meeting was devoted to learning about composting from Greenway officials Shabazz Jackson and Josephine Papagni. A discussion followed a video and PowerPoint presentation on the work Greenway does locally.
Answers.com defines compost as "a mixture of decaying organic matter, as from leaves and manure, used to improve soil structure and provide nutrients." Notably compost can also contain certain foods. Composting most people are familiar with on a smaller scale is typically done in gardens.
According to reports, everything in Dutchess County that is not recycled is incinerated. [note-- this is false-- as tens of thousands of tons of our county's municipal solid waste are driven annually many miles upstate to landfills there] Food waste requires a lot of energy to incinerate because it is 95 percent water. [note-- a more accurate statement here would be that food waste is over 70 percent water] Each ton of food waste recovered saves two tons of carbon dioxide.
Jackson and Papagni know first-hand about getting their hands dirty by composting and educating communities on zero-waste, better alternatives they believe for protecting the environment.
"We process tens of thousands of tons of organic waste [each year]," Jackson said. Greenway, based in Newburgh, is one of the largest producers of organic topsoils and mulches, he said.
Jackson underscored Greenway's community involvement.
"We work with the students (including local high school students). And we donate 10 percent of our time to environmental education activities," he said, also noting a partnership Greenway has established "formally" for the past seven years with Vassar College. Vassar students are involved with Greenway through work-study and senior projects. Greenway also works with Marist College and SUNY New Paltz student volunteers. Marist has been active with Greenway since 2007, while New Paltz has just started working with Greenway this year, he added.
Hopewell Junction-based Royal Carting Service Co. has been servicing Greenway projects for more than 30 years, Jackson said. That relationship helped Royal make the investment into food waste, he added. Jackson noted one service Royal provides is shipment of selected waste materials to Greenway from across the Hudson Valley region.
Greenway's Solution to Pollution
For the past few years, citizens in Rhinebeck have been exchanging ideas with one another on better resource management.
"One of the things that has happened in the past two, two-and-a-half years: For the first time, the village, town, Rhinebeck Central School District and the fairgrounds have developed a cooperative initiative...it's the first time these entities have discussed how to all work together to better use our resources to share with one another," said Laurie A. Rich, coordinator of the Dutchess County Fairgrounds Green Initiative. Rich, one of 12 individuals at the meeting, is a member of the Rhinebeck Central School District Board of Education.
Some believe Dutchess County Fairgrounds could even serve as an ideal site for a food waste compost pilot project.
Papagni said Rhinebeck is an ideal location to work in because it contains an existing organic waste dump. "With a little bit of remediation work," she said, "You could have a very efficient system that could serve the whole community."
Tyner also plans on reaching out to the Town of Clinton for participation.
So where does Greenway go from here?
"We want to set up at the Beacon Transfer Station to do training, put together places where people will work," Jackson said. He noted that to get the process up and running, from obtaining local and state permits to having a site plan done among other tasks, it could take about a year before moving forward with waste collection and composting at new sites.
Meanwhile at the government level, the county is following Greenway's lead.
"In March, a resolution was passed [unanimously] by the County Legislature to try to draw down federal stimulus funds to move toward zero waste," Tyner said.
Tyner, the chairman of the County Legislature's Environment Committee, said he has introduced ways to save money and protect the environment. He said he attended a zero-waste conference held in Albany last November, at which time he decided to seriously take action toward zero waste.
WFP alert-- lobby local Congressional Dems backsliding on tax fairness for real health reform!...
Hi all...
What happened to "change we can believe in"?...(see Working Families Party alert just below on this)...
[thanx to Hall and Hinchey for standing tall on this (why Murphy so quickly capitulating to right wing?)...
recall "Opposition Builds to Health Care Tax Plan" by Brian Tumulty in Poughkeepsie Journal July 18th:
http://www.lohud.com/article/20090718/NEWS01/907180342/0/NEWS/Opposition-builds-to-health-care-tax-plan ]
At least front-page article in today's Times points out Obama OK with taxing millionaires for health care:
http://www.mercurynews.com/news/ci_12895491?source=rss&nclick_check=1
Call Murphy, Schumer, Gillibrand, Hall, Hinchey today-- at (800) 828-0498!...
Check out these three crucial must-reads on this as well:
"Why Obama's Public Option Is Defective, and Why We Need Single-Payer" by Dr.'s Steffie Woolhandler and David Himmelstein
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/07/22-9
"Real Competition Can Stop Health Insurance Gouging" by Jim Hightower
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/07/22-3
"Spinning Healthcare: A Bad Case of Vertigo" by Norman Solomon
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/07/23-4
[pass it on!]
Joel
489-5479/876-2488
joeltyner@earthlink.net
p.s. You can also call (800) 578-4171 to send a message directly to Obama: Medicare for all!...
[see much more on this @ http://www.Health-Justice.org and http://www.1Payer.net ; for single-payer:
http://www.SinglePayerAction.org ; http://www.PNHP.org ; http://www.HealthCare-Now.org ; pass it on]
[info below < Art Richter: analysis of cost savings possible for Putnam and Ulster co.'s w/single-payer!]
[obviously same savings would be possible here in Dutchess County if single-payer implemented]
#####################################################
From: "Dan Cantor, WFP"
Date: Thu, 23 Jul 2009 10:53:36 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Urgent: 5 Democrats block healthcare
Nita Lowey (18th-Rock./ West.)
Dan Maffei (25th-Central NY)
Eric Massa (29th-Western NY)
Mike McMahon (13th-S.I.)
Scott Murphy (20th-Cap. Region)
Five Democratic Members of Congress from New York are slowing down Obama's push for healthcare reform.
Tell them healthcare for all can't wait.
Dear Joel,
We have to act fast. Five Democratic Members of Congress from New York are putting the brakes on President Obama's historic campaign to reform our broken healthcare system.
Legislation that would expand healthcare coverage for tens of millions of Americans is gaining steam in Congress. But these five New York Representatives are stalling the bill because it pays for reform with a modest tax on the rich.1
This is our best chance for healthcare reform in a generation, but now these five Democratic Members of Congress are putting real reform in jeopardy - even though less than 1% of all New Yorkers would be affected by the tax.
Healthcare is too important to sit on sidelines.The WFP has started a petition pressuring the Representatives to do the right thing.
Our goal: 5,000 signatures from New Yorkers across the state calling on Reps. Scott Murphy, Nita Lowey, Mike McMahon, Eric Massa, and Dan Maffei to put real healthcare reform over protecting the rich.
http://action.workingfamiliesparty.org/t/3865/petition.jsp?petition_KEY=631
President Obama said on Tuesday: "some will try to delay action until the special interests can kill it."2
He's right. The President has brought us closer to universal healthcare than this country has ever been. We can't afford to waste this chance for real reform.
But without proper funding, providing quality, affordable healthcare for everyone is impossible. The simplest, fairest way to achieve that goal is by asking those who enjoyed billions in tax cuts during the Bush years to pay their fair share.
Republicans smear Obama's healthcare campaign every day, but with a big Democratic majority in the House and 60 Democrats in the Senate, it's Democratic opposition that could really derail healthcare reform.
This is what the Working Families Party was made for - holding politicians accountable when the big fights are on the line. And nothing could be bigger than the President's drive for real healthcare reform.
Sign the petition, and help us reach our goal of 5,000 signatures calling on these five representatives to do the right thing.
http://action.workingfamiliesparty.org/t/3865/petition.jsp?petition_KEY=631
Dan Cantor
WFP Executive Director
1. "Health tax draws fire from Dems", Press & Sun Bulletin, July 20, 2009
http://www.pressconnects.com/article/20090720/NEWS01/907200333/Health+tax+draws+fire+from+Dems
2. "Dems at odds on how to turn tide on health", The Hill, July 21, 2009
http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/dems-at-odds-on-how-to-turn-tide-on-health-2009-07-21.html
Help Working Families: We can't count on Wall Street. We rely on contributions from ordinary people like you to keep the WFP going. If you'd like to support our work, visit:http://www.workingfamiliesparty.org/contribute.php
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10 yrs ago my stepfather died heart attack no health insurance http://www.PetitionOnline.com/forPiggy ;
this email dedicated to memory of Bob Malstrom-- one of 18,000 Americans who die every year because they have no health insurance-- he died of a heart attack in 1999 after working 20 years for IBM; had no health insurance; see: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/03/12-8 ; also see: "Single-Payer: Good For Business"/Morton Mintz-- http://www.thenation.com/doc/20041115/mintz ...
Recall this one from the Times June 21st:
"In Poll, Wide Support for Government-Run Health" by Kevin Sack and Marjorie Connelly
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/21/health/policy/21poll.html
[also see: "Wide Support for Government Health Plan: Poll" (Reuters):
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/latestnews/index.php?id=14093 ]
Fact: "The U.S. spends twice as much as other industrialized nations on health care, $7,129 per capita. Yet our system performs poorly in comparison and still leaves 47 million without health coverage and millions more inadequately covered. This is because private insurance bureaucracy and paperwork consume one-third (31 percent) of every health care dollar. Streamlining payment through a single nonprofit payer would save more than $350 billion per year, enough to provide comprehensive, high-quality coverage for all Americans."
(4 sentences from http://www.PNHP.org -- why Rep.'s Hinchey, Conyers, Tonko, et. al. for single-payer]
Barack Obama himself speaking to Illinois AFL-CIO June 30, 2003...
"I happen to be a proponent of a single payer universal health care program." (applause) "I see no reason why the United States of America, the wealthiest country in the history of the world, spending 14 percent of its Gross National Product on health care cannot provide basic health insurance to everybody. And that's what Jim is talking about when he says everybody in, nobody out. A single payer health care plan, a universal health care plan. And that's what I'd like to see. But as all of you know, we may not get there immediately. Because first we have to take back the White House, we have to take back the Senate, and we have to take back the House."
[click here for YouTube link of this speech from Obama on this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpAyan1fXCE&eurl=http://www.pnhp.org/news/2008/june/barack_obama_on_sing.php ; also see: http://www.pnhp.org/news/2008/june/barack_obama_on_sing.php ]
And did you know that three years ago the entire Dem caucus of our County Legislature here in Dutchess stood up strongly and proudly, co-sponsoring a resolution (see below) for single-payer?...
[Ulster, Rensselaer, Albany, Cortland, Livingston, Schuyler, and Tompkins County Legislatures have all passed resolutions in support of single-payer health care-- why Dutchess holding back?]
[see much more on this @ http://old.healthcare-now.org/win.html and http://www.HealthCare-Now.org ]
This is from Rep. Maurice Hinchey himself (from http://www.house.gov/hinchey/issues/health.shtml )...
"A single-payer health care system would not only be the smart and humane thing to do, it would save money in the long run. Today, almost 30 percent of the money spent on health care in America -- billions of dollars -- is spent on administration, advertising and overhead by health insurance companies. That's more than enough to cover the cost of providing insurance to people who don't have coverage now. By contrast, the administrative costs of Medicare, our universal health care system for seniors, make up only two percent of the program's spending. I am deeply concerned about the cost of health care and its accessibility to a large segment of the population. I strongly support the establishment of a national health care system. It is the best way that we can ensure that every single American has affordable, quality health care. More than 46 million Americans have no health insurance today, and millions more have inadequate insurance. Employers who have long provided quality coverage for their employees are cutting back benefits and raising workers' out-of-pocket expenses to deal with the rising cost of health premiums."
[from http://www.PNHP.org -- single-payer health care system would save $350 billion a year for U.S.!]
Fact is also that poll after poll for many years now has shown that vast majority of Americans strongly support single-payer...
[see: http://www.healthcare-now.org/2009/02/another-poll-shows-majority-support-for-single-payer/ ;
http://www.davidsirota.com/2006/03/news-flash-america-wants-single-payer.html .
[...click on http://www.petitiononline.com/onepayer to see comments from over 70 regional folks for single-payer health care; fact is that for many years David Paterson was a strong supporter of state-level single-payer legislation in NYS, as Kevin Cahill still is...]
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From Kingston's Art Richter (arichter@hvc.rr.com)-- savings possible w/single-payer for local taxpayers:
Ulster County Government
Payroll / Benefits History and Estimate
$ $
Payroll (000) Health Ins. (000)
2001 Actual 60,250 10,758
2002 Actual 61,208 12,833
2003 Actual 69,224 14,230
2004 Actual 79.100 16,285
2005 Actual 80,149 18,212
2006 Actual 83,178 19,006
2007 Actual 85,964 18,392
2008 Estimate 89,345 19,006
2008 Payroll estimate $ 89,345,091
HR676 FICA increase 4.5%
---------------
2008 Health Ins $19,005,668 vs $ 4,020,529
$14,985,139 reduction in Tax Levy
2008 Tax Levy $72,410,702 minus
$14,985,139 Health cost reduction provides for a
Potential Tax Levy Reduction for Ulster County --- 20.7%
There were 2071 County Employees at year end 2007
Putnam County 2008 Budget (select summaries)
Hospital, Medical, Dental, Optical insurance
(codes 8006, 8008, 8009) $7,562,193
(code 8061 legacy HMDO insurance) 3,753,956
--------------
Total HMDO insurance budget $11,316,149
Personnel
(codes 1000, 1093, 1094) $44,616, 461
Employer FICA increase x .045
---------------
$2,011,341
---------------
Net reduction with HR676 HMDO ins. $9,304,808
Total Putnam County Budget $130,127,740
Putnam County tax levy $ 34,272,168
27.1% tax levy saving
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From http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/07/22-9 ...
Published on Wednesday, July 22, 2009 by The Progressive
Why Obama's Public Option Is Defective, and Why We Need Single-Payer
by Drs. Steffie Woolhandler and David Himmelstein
Once Congress finishes mandating that we all buy private health insurance, it can move on to requiring Americans to purchase other defective products.
A Ford Pinto in every garage?
Lead-painted toys for every child?
Melamine-laced chow for every puppy?
Private health insurance doesn't work.
Even middle-class families with supposedly good coverage are just one serious illness away from financial ruin.
Illness and medical bills contribute to 62 percent of personal bankruptcies - a 50 percent increase since 2001. And three-quarters of the medically bankrupt had insurance, at least when they first got sick.
Coverage that families bought in good faith failed to protect them. Some were bankrupted by co-payments, deductibles, and loopholes. Others got too sick to work, leaving them unemployed and uninsured.
Now Congress plans to make it a federal offence not to purchase such faulty insurance.
On top of that, it's threatening to tax workers' health benefits to meet the costs of simultaneously covering the poor and keeping private insurers in business.
President Obama's plan would finance reform by draining funds from hospitals that serve the neediest patients. His other funding plans aren't harmful, just illusory. He's gotten unenforceable pledges from hospitals, insurers and the American Medical Association to rein in costs, a replay of promises they made (and broke) to Presidents Nixon and Carter. And Obama trumpets savings from computerized medical records and better care management, savings the Congressional Budget Office has dismissed as wishful thinking.
The president's health plan can't make universal, comprehensive coverage affordable.
Only single-payer health reform - Medicare for All - can achieve that goal.
Single-payer national health care could realize about $400 billion in savings annually - enough to cover the uninsured and to upgrade coverage for all Americans. But the vast majority of these savings aren't available unless we go all the way to single payer.
A public plan option might cut into private insurers' profits. That's why they hate it. But their profits - roughly $10 billion annually - are dwarfed by the money they waste in search of profit. They spend vast sums for marketing (to attract the healthy); demarketing (to avoid the sick); billing their ever-shifting roster of enrollees; fighting with providers over bills; and lobbying politicians. And doctors and hospitals spend billions more meeting insurers' demands for documentation.
A single-payer plan would eliminate most insurance overhead, as well as these other paperwork expenses. Hospitals could be paid like a fire department, receiving a single monthly check for their entire budget. Physicians' billing could be similarly simplified.
With a public insurance option, by contrast, hospitals and doctors would still need elaborate billing and cost-tracking systems. And overhead for even the most efficient competitive public option would be far higher than for traditional Medicare, which is efficient precisely because it doesn't compete. It automatically enrolls seniors at 65 and deducts their premiums through the social security system, contracts with any willing provider, and does no marketing.
Health insurers compete by NOT paying for care: by seeking out the healthy and avoiding the sick; by denying payment and shifting costs onto patients; and by lobbying for unfair public subsidies (as under the Medicare HMO program). A kinder, gentler public plan that failed to emulate these behaviors would soon be saddled with the sickest, costliest patients and the highest payouts, driving premiums to uncompetitive levels. To compete successfully, a public plan would have to copy private plans.
Decades of experience teach that private insurers cannot control costs or provide families with the coverage they need. And a government-run clone of private insurers cannot fix these flaws.
© 2009 The Progressive
Drs. Steffie Woolhandler and David Himmelstein are associate professors at Harvard Medical School. They co-founded Physicians for a National Health Program, a nonprofit research and education organization of 16,000 physicians, medical students, and health professionals who support single-payer national health insurance. For more about the group, go to www.pnhp.org. This piece was distributed by the Progressive Media Project, an affiliate of The Progressive magazine. To subscribe to The Progressive, for only $14.97, click here.
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From http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/07/22-3 ...
Published on Wednesday, July 22, 2009 by Creators Syndicate
Real Competition Can Stop Health Insurance Gouging
by Jim Hightower
Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama is all for the congressional effort to produce health-care reform - as long as the legislation we end up with doesn't contain any actual reform.
Indeed, the senator gets fainting spells at the mere mention of Barack Obama's proposed reforms, gasping that they add up to socialized health care. He recently stammered that the president's plan would destroy "the best health care system the world has ever known."
Huh? This guy puts the "dumb" in dumbfounding. Maybe by "finest" he meant the most expensive, for it surely is that. But the best? Hardly. The quality of our care ranks 37th in the world - only one notch better than Slovenia!
But perhaps it's not Shelby's fault that he's so out of touch with the unpleasant reality that most Americans face when they're sick and have to cope with the costly, bureaucratic, uncaring system now run by a handful of insurance corporations. After all, he's been in Congress for 30 years, so he and his family have long been receiving platinum-level coverage courtesy of us taxpayers. Maybe he assumes everyone gets the same. You see, since Shelby already gets excellent socialized health care, of course he thinks it's the finest.
Obama's proposed reform is not so bold as to offer you and me the same sweet deal that our congress-critters get, but it does include one provision to help us escape the untender mercies of insurance profiteers. Called the "public option," it creates a publicly run insurance plan as an alternative to the costly, mingy, inscrutable policies shoved at us by the big, monopolistic insurers.
The beauty of this option is that it gives everyone a real choice. Since the public insurance plan doesn't rake off a profit, doesn't need a massive marketing budget, won't pay multimillion-dollar executive salaries and won't have an army of backroom agents working to deny payment for treatments our doctors prescribe, it will offer better coverage at a cheaper price than the pampered private corporations presently offer.
This public policy would provide a competitive balance on the price and quality of coverage available to us consumers.
The choice is up to us, for the public option is - after all - optional. If you're happy to have an insurance corporation be your health-care broker, go with that. If not, you can consider purchasing the public policy.
This makes so much sense that the insurers, drug makers, hospitals, nursing homes and other big players in the health-care industry carefully pondered how the public option would be so beneficial to the people - then, in unison, the industry issued its measured response: "Shhrrriiieeekkk! Nooooooooo!! Yikes-Yikes-Yikes!!!"
Insurance executives have largely divvied up the national health-insurance market so they've been able to avoid competing against each other (the American Medical Association's 2008 study of health insurance markets in 314 U.S. cities found that 94 percent of them are "highly concentrated"). So they are apoplectic at the prospect of having a genuine price-and-quality competitor in every U.S. market.
Thus, the industry is going all-out to kill the public option - not by defeating it in the marketplace, but by unleashing its army of Washington lobbyists to get Congress to kill it. Instead of bullets, they're firing millions of dollars in campaign donations at our lawmakers. The question is whether the industry's political cash and lobbying clout will induce enough senators and representatives to vote against the American people - 72 percent of whom tell pollsters they want the public option included in the reform package.
To learn more and to support real consumer choice in health insurance, contact: democracyforamerica.com.
© 2009 Creators Syndicate Inc.
National radio commentator, writer, public speaker, and author of the book, Swim Against The Current: Even A Dead Fish Can Go With The Flow, Jim Hightower has spent three decades battling the Powers That Be on behalf of the Powers That Ought To Be - consumers, working families, environmentalists, small businesses, and just-plain-folks.
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From http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/07/23-4 ...
Published on Thursday, July 23, 2009 by CommonDreams.org
Spinning Healthcare: A Bad Case of Vertigo
by Norman Solomon
"I want to cover everybody," President Obama said at his news conference Wednesday night. "Now, the truth is that unless you have a -- what's called a single-payer system, in which everybody's automatically covered, then you're probably not going to reach every single individual. . ."
The same conventional wisdom keeping single payer off Washington's table has been spinning for various "reform" plans with such accelerated RPMs that at this point the nation's "healthcare debate" is suffering from a severe case of vertigo.
"The overwhelming majority of Americans want healthcare, but millions of them can't afford it," Obama told the assembled journalists. "So the plan that has been -- that I've put forward and that -- what we're seeing in Congress would cover, the estimates are, at least 97 to 98 percent of Americans. There might still be people left out there who, even though there's an individual mandate, even though they are required to purchase health insurance, might still not get it, or despite a lot of subsidies, are still in such dire straits that it's still hard for them to afford it. And we may end up giving them some sort of hardship exemption."
That may sound good. But it's in the service of an agenda for "healthcare reform" that's seriously flawed.
Days ago, buried in a chart under the headline "How the Health Care Bills Compare," the New York Times provided some cogent yet cryptic information in the category of "Public Plan."
A key Senate committee had just approved a bill with a public plan that would "compete with private insurers," the Times chart explained on July 18. The public plan "would provide 'only the essential health benefits,' as defined by the bill, 'except in states that offer additional benefits.'"
Meanwhile, the newspaper noted, "Democrats from three House committees are working on a single plan." Under that plan, "Different levels of coverage -- 'basic, enhanced and premium' -- can be offered through the public option."
Those few grainy sentences, quickly swept beneath the waves from oceans of media, referred to a disturbing aspect of "public plan" scenarios. If the ostensible goal is healthcare for all, then -- at best -- some of the "all" would end up being much more equal than others.
The Republican Party is coming from such a right-wing place that any government action to improve healthcare access is ideologically unacceptable. In contrast, the broad outlines of a Democratic "public plan" at least embrace the precept that the not-so-tender-mercies of the market are insufficient to fully provide for the population's medical needs.
But as a practical matter, a "public plan" coexisting with the private health insurance system -- generally touted by U.S. media as the pole of real options farthest from the Republican "free market" fixation -- is inherently reconciled to major inequality in access to healthcare.
Even while straining to put forward a "public option" as some sort of stunning government intervention to level the healthcare playing field, media coverage rarely comes to terms with the situation that would actually remain under such a scenario.
How does "healthcare apartheid" strike you?
For the government to offer the public a multi-tier set of options for health insurance -- in the words of the New York Times, "different levels of coverage" such as "basic, enhanced and premium" -- is to imitate the approach of the corporate healthcare establishment.
After all, isn't it implicit that the government plan's "different levels of coverage," offered to the public, would be based on ability to pay?
Missing from the dominant healthcare debate -- not only along Pennsylvania Avenue but also along media row -- is a principle that could be debated and should be debated.
In a few words: Healthcare is a human right.
And a human right should not be contingent on ability to pay. Nor should it be divided into "basic, enhanced and premium."
Media accounts keep telling us that the current political debate on healthcare is unprecedented and groundbreaking. But an article in the latest edition of the Columbia Journalism Review, by seasoned healthcare reporter Trudy Lieberman, makes a convincing case that little has changed within the frames of media parameters.
The press "has mostly passed along the pronouncements of politicians and the major stakeholders who have the most to lose from wholesale reform," Lieberman writes. "By not challenging the status quo, the press has so far foreclosed a vibrant discussion of the full range of options, and also has not dug deeply into the few that are being discussed, thereby leaving citizens largely uninformed about an issue that will affect us all."
What we're seeing now is a slightly freshened version of a timeworn tap dance that ranges across a constricted media stage. As Lieberman notes: "Absent from the debate are not only single-payer systems like the ones in England and Canada, but other systems with multiple payers, like ones in Germany and Japan -- or, for that matter, any discussion of why a system that relies on competition among private insurers in The Netherlands hasn't resulted in lower prices for consumers, as advocates claimed."
The variety of healthcare delivery systems abroad, in industrialized countries, spans a common assumption -- healthcare as a human right -- an assumption that doesn't cut the mass-media mustard in the United States. "What's common to all these systems," Lieberman points out, "is that everyone is entitled to healthcare and pays taxes to support the system, and medical costs are controlled by limits on spending. The specter of a system that takes a significant bite out of stakeholder profits in the U.S. is the real reason the debate is so restricted."
As Trudy Lieberman puts it, "Reform efforts have danced around this impasse for decades."
That helps to explain why so much media coverage of healthcare reform proposals is apt to be so baffling to most readers, listeners and viewers. When the big elephant (or, if you will, donkey) in the national newsroom is dependent on the insurance, pharmaceutical and hospital industries for financing, there's a distinct shortage of candor about the consequences of such ongoing intrusions. Newsgathering, media debate -- and, of course, healthcare -- suffer the consequences.
In the mid-1960s, Medicare became law with the stroke of a presidential pen. Lyndon Johnson was able to sign the measure despite a huge onslaught of opposition from right-wing politicians, their corporate backers and professional groups like the American Medical Association.
These days, the AMA may be somewhat more circumspect in its continuing opposition to progressive measures, but the overall balance of political power remains heavily tilted against healthcare for all.
"In the Senate," columnist Gail Collins noted in the July 23 New York Times, "everyone is waiting on Max Baucus of Montana. Nothing is going to happen on health care without the approval of Baucus," the chair of the Senate Finance Committee. As the Washington Post reported days ago, he "has emerged as a leading recipient of Senate campaign contributions from the hospitals, insurers and other medical interest groups hoping to shape the legislation to their advantage. Health-related companies and their employees gave Baucus's political committees nearly $1.5 million in 2007 and 2008."
Today, the kind of arguments heard during the early '60s against guaranteed healthcare for the elderly can now be heard against establishing a comprehensive single-payer system -- also known as Medicare for all. But now, the healthcare debate is trapped between a political establishment that doesn't want a single-payer system and news media that insist on ignoring its real potential.
Norman Solomon is a journalist, historian, and progressive activist. His book "War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death" has been adapted into a documentary film of the same name. His most recent book is "Made Love, Got War." He is a national co-chair of the Healthcare NOT Warfare campaign. In California, he is co-chair of the Commission on a Green New Deal for the North Bay; www.GreenNewDeal.info.
What happened to "change we can believe in"?...(see Working Families Party alert just below on this)...
[thanx to Hall and Hinchey for standing tall on this (why Murphy so quickly capitulating to right wing?)...
recall "Opposition Builds to Health Care Tax Plan" by Brian Tumulty in Poughkeepsie Journal July 18th:
http://www.lohud.com/article/20090718/NEWS01/907180342/0/NEWS/Opposition-builds-to-health-care-tax-plan ]
At least front-page article in today's Times points out Obama OK with taxing millionaires for health care:
http://www.mercurynews.com/news/ci_12895491?source=rss&nclick_check=1
Call Murphy, Schumer, Gillibrand, Hall, Hinchey today-- at (800) 828-0498!...
Check out these three crucial must-reads on this as well:
"Why Obama's Public Option Is Defective, and Why We Need Single-Payer" by Dr.'s Steffie Woolhandler and David Himmelstein
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/07/22-9
"Real Competition Can Stop Health Insurance Gouging" by Jim Hightower
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/07/22-3
"Spinning Healthcare: A Bad Case of Vertigo" by Norman Solomon
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/07/23-4
[pass it on!]
Joel
489-5479/876-2488
joeltyner@earthlink.net
p.s. You can also call (800) 578-4171 to send a message directly to Obama: Medicare for all!...
[see much more on this @ http://www.Health-Justice.org and http://www.1Payer.net ; for single-payer:
http://www.SinglePayerAction.org ; http://www.PNHP.org ; http://www.HealthCare-Now.org ; pass it on]
[info below < Art Richter: analysis of cost savings possible for Putnam and Ulster co.'s w/single-payer!]
[obviously same savings would be possible here in Dutchess County if single-payer implemented]
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From: "Dan Cantor, WFP"
Date: Thu, 23 Jul 2009 10:53:36 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Urgent: 5 Democrats block healthcare
Nita Lowey (18th-Rock./ West.)
Dan Maffei (25th-Central NY)
Eric Massa (29th-Western NY)
Mike McMahon (13th-S.I.)
Scott Murphy (20th-Cap. Region)
Five Democratic Members of Congress from New York are slowing down Obama's push for healthcare reform.
Tell them healthcare for all can't wait.
Dear Joel,
We have to act fast. Five Democratic Members of Congress from New York are putting the brakes on President Obama's historic campaign to reform our broken healthcare system.
Legislation that would expand healthcare coverage for tens of millions of Americans is gaining steam in Congress. But these five New York Representatives are stalling the bill because it pays for reform with a modest tax on the rich.1
This is our best chance for healthcare reform in a generation, but now these five Democratic Members of Congress are putting real reform in jeopardy - even though less than 1% of all New Yorkers would be affected by the tax.
Healthcare is too important to sit on sidelines.
Our goal: 5,000 signatures from New Yorkers across the state calling on Reps. Scott Murphy, Nita Lowey, Mike McMahon, Eric Massa, and Dan Maffei to put real healthcare reform over protecting the rich.
President Obama said on Tuesday: "some will try to delay action until the special interests can kill it."2
He's right. The President has brought us closer to universal healthcare than this country has ever been. We can't afford to waste this chance for real reform.
But without proper funding, providing quality, affordable healthcare for everyone is impossible. The simplest, fairest way to achieve that goal is by asking those who enjoyed billions in tax cuts during the Bush years to pay their fair share.
Republicans smear Obama's healthcare campaign every day, but with a big Democratic majority in the House and 60 Democrats in the Senate, it's Democratic opposition that could really derail healthcare reform.
This is what the Working Families Party was made for - holding politicians accountable when the big fights are on the line. And nothing could be bigger than the President's drive for real healthcare reform.
Sign the petition, and help us reach our goal of 5,000 signatures calling on these five representatives to do the right thing.
http://action.workingfamiliesparty.org/t/3865/petition.jsp?petition_KEY=631
Dan Cantor
WFP Executive Director
1. "Health tax draws fire from Dems", Press & Sun Bulletin, July 20, 2009
2. "Dems at odds on how to turn tide on health", The Hill, July 21, 2009
Help Working Families: We can't count on Wall Street. We rely on contributions from ordinary people like you to keep the WFP going. If you'd like to support our work, visit:
#####################################################
10 yrs ago my stepfather died heart attack no health insurance http://www.PetitionOnline.com/forPiggy ;
this email dedicated to memory of Bob Malstrom-- one of 18,000 Americans who die every year because they have no health insurance-- he died of a heart attack in 1999 after working 20 years for IBM; had no health insurance; see: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/03/12-8 ; also see: "Single-Payer: Good For Business"/Morton Mintz-- http://www.thenation.com/doc/20041115/mintz ...
Recall this one from the Times June 21st:
"In Poll, Wide Support for Government-Run Health" by Kevin Sack and Marjorie Connelly
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/21/health/policy/21poll.html
[also see: "Wide Support for Government Health Plan: Poll" (Reuters):
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/latestnews/index.php?id=14093 ]
Fact: "The U.S. spends twice as much as other industrialized nations on health care, $7,129 per capita. Yet our system performs poorly in comparison and still leaves 47 million without health coverage and millions more inadequately covered. This is because private insurance bureaucracy and paperwork consume one-third (31 percent) of every health care dollar. Streamlining payment through a single nonprofit payer would save more than $350 billion per year, enough to provide comprehensive, high-quality coverage for all Americans."
(4 sentences from http://www.PNHP.org -- why Rep.'s Hinchey, Conyers, Tonko, et. al. for single-payer]
Barack Obama himself speaking to Illinois AFL-CIO June 30, 2003...
"I happen to be a proponent of a single payer universal health care program." (applause) "I see no reason why the United States of America, the wealthiest country in the history of the world, spending 14 percent of its Gross National Product on health care cannot provide basic health insurance to everybody. And that's what Jim is talking about when he says everybody in, nobody out. A single payer health care plan, a universal health care plan. And that's what I'd like to see. But as all of you know, we may not get there immediately. Because first we have to take back the White House, we have to take back the Senate, and we have to take back the House."
[click here for YouTube link of this speech from Obama on this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpAyan1fXCE&eurl=http://www.pnhp.org/news/2008/june/barack_obama_on_sing.php ; also see: http://www.pnhp.org/news/2008/june/barack_obama_on_sing.php ]
And did you know that three years ago the entire Dem caucus of our County Legislature here in Dutchess stood up strongly and proudly, co-sponsoring a resolution (see below) for single-payer?...
[Ulster, Rensselaer, Albany, Cortland, Livingston, Schuyler, and Tompkins County Legislatures have all passed resolutions in support of single-payer health care-- why Dutchess holding back?]
[see much more on this @ http://old.healthcare-now.org/win.html and http://www.HealthCare-Now.org ]
This is from Rep. Maurice Hinchey himself (from http://www.house.gov/hinchey/issues/health.shtml )...
"A single-payer health care system would not only be the smart and humane thing to do, it would save money in the long run. Today, almost 30 percent of the money spent on health care in America -- billions of dollars -- is spent on administration, advertising and overhead by health insurance companies. That's more than enough to cover the cost of providing insurance to people who don't have coverage now. By contrast, the administrative costs of Medicare, our universal health care system for seniors, make up only two percent of the program's spending. I am deeply concerned about the cost of health care and its accessibility to a large segment of the population. I strongly support the establishment of a national health care system. It is the best way that we can ensure that every single American has affordable, quality health care. More than 46 million Americans have no health insurance today, and millions more have inadequate insurance. Employers who have long provided quality coverage for their employees are cutting back benefits and raising workers' out-of-pocket expenses to deal with the rising cost of health premiums."
[from http://www.PNHP.org -- single-payer health care system would save $350 billion a year for U.S.!]
Fact is also that poll after poll for many years now has shown that vast majority of Americans strongly support single-payer...
[see: http://www.healthcare-now.org/2009/02/another-poll-shows-majority-support-for-single-payer/ ;
http://www.davidsirota.com/2006/03/news-flash-america-wants-single-payer.html .
[...click on http://www.petitiononline.com/onepayer to see comments from over 70 regional folks for single-payer health care; fact is that for many years David Paterson was a strong supporter of state-level single-payer legislation in NYS, as Kevin Cahill still is...]
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From Kingston's Art Richter (arichter@hvc.rr.com)-- savings possible w/single-payer for local taxpayers:
Ulster County Government
Payroll / Benefits History and Estimate
$ $
Payroll (000) Health Ins. (000)
2001 Actual 60,250 10,758
2002 Actual 61,208 12,833
2003 Actual 69,224 14,230
2004 Actual 79.100 16,285
2005 Actual 80,149 18,212
2006 Actual 83,178 19,006
2007 Actual 85,964 18,392
2008 Estimate 89,345 19,006
2008 Payroll estimate $ 89,345,091
HR676 FICA increase 4.5%
---------------
2008 Health Ins $19,005,668 vs $ 4,020,529
$14,985,139 reduction in Tax Levy
2008 Tax Levy $72,410,702 minus
$14,985,139 Health cost reduction provides for a
Potential Tax Levy Reduction for Ulster County --- 20.7%
There were 2071 County Employees at year end 2007
Putnam County 2008 Budget (select summaries)
Hospital, Medical, Dental, Optical insurance
(codes 8006, 8008, 8009) $7,562,193
(code 8061 legacy HMDO insurance) 3,753,956
--------------
Total HMDO insurance budget $11,316,149
Personnel
(codes 1000, 1093, 1094) $44,616, 461
Employer FICA increase x .045
---------------
$2,011,341
---------------
Net reduction with HR676 HMDO ins. $9,304,808
Total Putnam County Budget $130,127,740
Putnam County tax levy $ 34,272,168
27.1% tax levy saving
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From http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/07/22-9 ...
Published on Wednesday, July 22, 2009 by The Progressive
Why Obama's Public Option Is Defective, and Why We Need Single-Payer
by Drs. Steffie Woolhandler and David Himmelstein
Once Congress finishes mandating that we all buy private health insurance, it can move on to requiring Americans to purchase other defective products.
A Ford Pinto in every garage?
Lead-painted toys for every child?
Melamine-laced chow for every puppy?
Private health insurance doesn't work.
Even middle-class families with supposedly good coverage are just one serious illness away from financial ruin.
Illness and medical bills contribute to 62 percent of personal bankruptcies - a 50 percent increase since 2001. And three-quarters of the medically bankrupt had insurance, at least when they first got sick.
Coverage that families bought in good faith failed to protect them. Some were bankrupted by co-payments, deductibles, and loopholes. Others got too sick to work, leaving them unemployed and uninsured.
Now Congress plans to make it a federal offence not to purchase such faulty insurance.
On top of that, it's threatening to tax workers' health benefits to meet the costs of simultaneously covering the poor and keeping private insurers in business.
President Obama's plan would finance reform by draining funds from hospitals that serve the neediest patients. His other funding plans aren't harmful, just illusory. He's gotten unenforceable pledges from hospitals, insurers and the American Medical Association to rein in costs, a replay of promises they made (and broke) to Presidents Nixon and Carter. And Obama trumpets savings from computerized medical records and better care management, savings the Congressional Budget Office has dismissed as wishful thinking.
The president's health plan can't make universal, comprehensive coverage affordable.
Only single-payer health reform - Medicare for All - can achieve that goal.
Single-payer national health care could realize about $400 billion in savings annually - enough to cover the uninsured and to upgrade coverage for all Americans. But the vast majority of these savings aren't available unless we go all the way to single payer.
A public plan option might cut into private insurers' profits. That's why they hate it. But their profits - roughly $10 billion annually - are dwarfed by the money they waste in search of profit. They spend vast sums for marketing (to attract the healthy); demarketing (to avoid the sick); billing their ever-shifting roster of enrollees; fighting with providers over bills; and lobbying politicians. And doctors and hospitals spend billions more meeting insurers' demands for documentation.
A single-payer plan would eliminate most insurance overhead, as well as these other paperwork expenses. Hospitals could be paid like a fire department, receiving a single monthly check for their entire budget. Physicians' billing could be similarly simplified.
With a public insurance option, by contrast, hospitals and doctors would still need elaborate billing and cost-tracking systems. And overhead for even the most efficient competitive public option would be far higher than for traditional Medicare, which is efficient precisely because it doesn't compete. It automatically enrolls seniors at 65 and deducts their premiums through the social security system, contracts with any willing provider, and does no marketing.
Health insurers compete by NOT paying for care: by seeking out the healthy and avoiding the sick; by denying payment and shifting costs onto patients; and by lobbying for unfair public subsidies (as under the Medicare HMO program). A kinder, gentler public plan that failed to emulate these behaviors would soon be saddled with the sickest, costliest patients and the highest payouts, driving premiums to uncompetitive levels. To compete successfully, a public plan would have to copy private plans.
Decades of experience teach that private insurers cannot control costs or provide families with the coverage they need. And a government-run clone of private insurers cannot fix these flaws.
© 2009 The Progressive
Drs. Steffie Woolhandler and David Himmelstein are associate professors at Harvard Medical School. They co-founded Physicians for a National Health Program, a nonprofit research and education organization of 16,000 physicians, medical students, and health professionals who support single-payer national health insurance. For more about the group, go to www.pnhp.org. This piece was distributed by the Progressive Media Project, an affiliate of The Progressive magazine. To subscribe to The Progressive, for only $14.97, click here.
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From http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/07/22-3 ...
Published on Wednesday, July 22, 2009 by Creators Syndicate
Real Competition Can Stop Health Insurance Gouging
by Jim Hightower
Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama is all for the congressional effort to produce health-care reform - as long as the legislation we end up with doesn't contain any actual reform.
Indeed, the senator gets fainting spells at the mere mention of Barack Obama's proposed reforms, gasping that they add up to socialized health care. He recently stammered that the president's plan would destroy "the best health care system the world has ever known."
Huh? This guy puts the "dumb" in dumbfounding. Maybe by "finest" he meant the most expensive, for it surely is that. But the best? Hardly. The quality of our care ranks 37th in the world - only one notch better than Slovenia!
But perhaps it's not Shelby's fault that he's so out of touch with the unpleasant reality that most Americans face when they're sick and have to cope with the costly, bureaucratic, uncaring system now run by a handful of insurance corporations. After all, he's been in Congress for 30 years, so he and his family have long been receiving platinum-level coverage courtesy of us taxpayers. Maybe he assumes everyone gets the same. You see, since Shelby already gets excellent socialized health care, of course he thinks it's the finest.
Obama's proposed reform is not so bold as to offer you and me the same sweet deal that our congress-critters get, but it does include one provision to help us escape the untender mercies of insurance profiteers. Called the "public option," it creates a publicly run insurance plan as an alternative to the costly, mingy, inscrutable policies shoved at us by the big, monopolistic insurers.
The beauty of this option is that it gives everyone a real choice. Since the public insurance plan doesn't rake off a profit, doesn't need a massive marketing budget, won't pay multimillion-dollar executive salaries and won't have an army of backroom agents working to deny payment for treatments our doctors prescribe, it will offer better coverage at a cheaper price than the pampered private corporations presently offer.
This public policy would provide a competitive balance on the price and quality of coverage available to us consumers.
The choice is up to us, for the public option is - after all - optional. If you're happy to have an insurance corporation be your health-care broker, go with that. If not, you can consider purchasing the public policy.
This makes so much sense that the insurers, drug makers, hospitals, nursing homes and other big players in the health-care industry carefully pondered how the public option would be so beneficial to the people - then, in unison, the industry issued its measured response: "Shhrrriiieeekkk! Nooooooooo!! Yikes-Yikes-Yikes!!!"
Insurance executives have largely divvied up the national health-insurance market so they've been able to avoid competing against each other (the American Medical Association's 2008 study of health insurance markets in 314 U.S. cities found that 94 percent of them are "highly concentrated"). So they are apoplectic at the prospect of having a genuine price-and-quality competitor in every U.S. market.
Thus, the industry is going all-out to kill the public option - not by defeating it in the marketplace, but by unleashing its army of Washington lobbyists to get Congress to kill it. Instead of bullets, they're firing millions of dollars in campaign donations at our lawmakers. The question is whether the industry's political cash and lobbying clout will induce enough senators and representatives to vote against the American people - 72 percent of whom tell pollsters they want the public option included in the reform package.
To learn more and to support real consumer choice in health insurance, contact: democracyforamerica.com.
© 2009 Creators Syndicate Inc.
National radio commentator, writer, public speaker, and author of the book, Swim Against The Current: Even A Dead Fish Can Go With The Flow, Jim Hightower has spent three decades battling the Powers That Be on behalf of the Powers That Ought To Be - consumers, working families, environmentalists, small businesses, and just-plain-folks.
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From http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/07/23-4 ...
Published on Thursday, July 23, 2009 by CommonDreams.org
Spinning Healthcare: A Bad Case of Vertigo
by Norman Solomon
"I want to cover everybody," President Obama said at his news conference Wednesday night. "Now, the truth is that unless you have a -- what's called a single-payer system, in which everybody's automatically covered, then you're probably not going to reach every single individual. . ."
The same conventional wisdom keeping single payer off Washington's table has been spinning for various "reform" plans with such accelerated RPMs that at this point the nation's "healthcare debate" is suffering from a severe case of vertigo.
"The overwhelming majority of Americans want healthcare, but millions of them can't afford it," Obama told the assembled journalists. "So the plan that has been -- that I've put forward and that -- what we're seeing in Congress would cover, the estimates are, at least 97 to 98 percent of Americans. There might still be people left out there who, even though there's an individual mandate, even though they are required to purchase health insurance, might still not get it, or despite a lot of subsidies, are still in such dire straits that it's still hard for them to afford it. And we may end up giving them some sort of hardship exemption."
That may sound good. But it's in the service of an agenda for "healthcare reform" that's seriously flawed.
Days ago, buried in a chart under the headline "How the Health Care Bills Compare," the New York Times provided some cogent yet cryptic information in the category of "Public Plan."
A key Senate committee had just approved a bill with a public plan that would "compete with private insurers," the Times chart explained on July 18. The public plan "would provide 'only the essential health benefits,' as defined by the bill, 'except in states that offer additional benefits.'"
Meanwhile, the newspaper noted, "Democrats from three House committees are working on a single plan." Under that plan, "Different levels of coverage -- 'basic, enhanced and premium' -- can be offered through the public option."
Those few grainy sentences, quickly swept beneath the waves from oceans of media, referred to a disturbing aspect of "public plan" scenarios. If the ostensible goal is healthcare for all, then -- at best -- some of the "all" would end up being much more equal than others.
The Republican Party is coming from such a right-wing place that any government action to improve healthcare access is ideologically unacceptable. In contrast, the broad outlines of a Democratic "public plan" at least embrace the precept that the not-so-tender-mercies of the market are insufficient to fully provide for the population's medical needs.
But as a practical matter, a "public plan" coexisting with the private health insurance system -- generally touted by U.S. media as the pole of real options farthest from the Republican "free market" fixation -- is inherently reconciled to major inequality in access to healthcare.
Even while straining to put forward a "public option" as some sort of stunning government intervention to level the healthcare playing field, media coverage rarely comes to terms with the situation that would actually remain under such a scenario.
How does "healthcare apartheid" strike you?
For the government to offer the public a multi-tier set of options for health insurance -- in the words of the New York Times, "different levels of coverage" such as "basic, enhanced and premium" -- is to imitate the approach of the corporate healthcare establishment.
After all, isn't it implicit that the government plan's "different levels of coverage," offered to the public, would be based on ability to pay?
Missing from the dominant healthcare debate -- not only along Pennsylvania Avenue but also along media row -- is a principle that could be debated and should be debated.
In a few words: Healthcare is a human right.
And a human right should not be contingent on ability to pay. Nor should it be divided into "basic, enhanced and premium."
Media accounts keep telling us that the current political debate on healthcare is unprecedented and groundbreaking. But an article in the latest edition of the Columbia Journalism Review, by seasoned healthcare reporter Trudy Lieberman, makes a convincing case that little has changed within the frames of media parameters.
The press "has mostly passed along the pronouncements of politicians and the major stakeholders who have the most to lose from wholesale reform," Lieberman writes. "By not challenging the status quo, the press has so far foreclosed a vibrant discussion of the full range of options, and also has not dug deeply into the few that are being discussed, thereby leaving citizens largely uninformed about an issue that will affect us all."
What we're seeing now is a slightly freshened version of a timeworn tap dance that ranges across a constricted media stage. As Lieberman notes: "Absent from the debate are not only single-payer systems like the ones in England and Canada, but other systems with multiple payers, like ones in Germany and Japan -- or, for that matter, any discussion of why a system that relies on competition among private insurers in The Netherlands hasn't resulted in lower prices for consumers, as advocates claimed."
The variety of healthcare delivery systems abroad, in industrialized countries, spans a common assumption -- healthcare as a human right -- an assumption that doesn't cut the mass-media mustard in the United States. "What's common to all these systems," Lieberman points out, "is that everyone is entitled to healthcare and pays taxes to support the system, and medical costs are controlled by limits on spending. The specter of a system that takes a significant bite out of stakeholder profits in the U.S. is the real reason the debate is so restricted."
As Trudy Lieberman puts it, "Reform efforts have danced around this impasse for decades."
That helps to explain why so much media coverage of healthcare reform proposals is apt to be so baffling to most readers, listeners and viewers. When the big elephant (or, if you will, donkey) in the national newsroom is dependent on the insurance, pharmaceutical and hospital industries for financing, there's a distinct shortage of candor about the consequences of such ongoing intrusions. Newsgathering, media debate -- and, of course, healthcare -- suffer the consequences.
In the mid-1960s, Medicare became law with the stroke of a presidential pen. Lyndon Johnson was able to sign the measure despite a huge onslaught of opposition from right-wing politicians, their corporate backers and professional groups like the American Medical Association.
These days, the AMA may be somewhat more circumspect in its continuing opposition to progressive measures, but the overall balance of political power remains heavily tilted against healthcare for all.
"In the Senate," columnist Gail Collins noted in the July 23 New York Times, "everyone is waiting on Max Baucus of Montana. Nothing is going to happen on health care without the approval of Baucus," the chair of the Senate Finance Committee. As the Washington Post reported days ago, he "has emerged as a leading recipient of Senate campaign contributions from the hospitals, insurers and other medical interest groups hoping to shape the legislation to their advantage. Health-related companies and their employees gave Baucus's political committees nearly $1.5 million in 2007 and 2008."
Today, the kind of arguments heard during the early '60s against guaranteed healthcare for the elderly can now be heard against establishing a comprehensive single-payer system -- also known as Medicare for all. But now, the healthcare debate is trapped between a political establishment that doesn't want a single-payer system and news media that insist on ignoring its real potential.
Norman Solomon is a journalist, historian, and progressive activist. His book "War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death" has been adapted into a documentary film of the same name. His most recent book is "Made Love, Got War." He is a national co-chair of the Healthcare NOT Warfare campaign. In California, he is co-chair of the Commission on a Green New Deal for the North Bay; www.GreenNewDeal.info.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Re: Card Check/Majority Sign-Up-- Let's Stand and Fight from the Grass Roots to Keep It As Part of EFCA!...
re: card check/majority sign-up-- help us stand up and fight to
keep it as part of EFCA!...
"Employees shall have the right to...form...labor organizations...to bargain collectively...[and employers may not] interfere with...the exercise of...this right."
-- FDR signing National Labor Relations Act into law in 1935
"Loophole-ridden laws, paralyzing delays, and feeble enforcement have led to a culture of impunity in many areas of U.S. labor law and practice. Legal obstacles tilt the playing field so steeply against workers' freedom of association that the United States is in violation of international human rights standards for workers."
-- Ken Roth, Executive Director, Human Rights Watch
[ http://www.jwj.org/campaigns/workers/tools/humanrights.html ]
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Hi all...
Saw this below one today @ CommonDreams.org from Abby Zimet...[call Congress: (800) 828-0498!]...
Join me in signing on to http://action.seiu.org/page/s/majoritysignup to keep majority sign-up re: EFCA...
Friday's chilling Times article on this here: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/17/business/17union.html ; see all facts here-- http://www.aflcio.org/joinaunion/voiceatwork/efca/whyunion.cfm ;
http://www.aflcio.org/joinaunion/voiceatwork/efca/10keyfacts.cfm ;
http://www.aflcio.org/joinaunion/voiceatwork/efca/upload/No_Holds_Barred.pdf ...
Also-- sign http://www.petitiononline.com/yourback and join 14 other local folks in support of EFCA...
[Rich Dennison, Rich Carlson, I walked 18 miles four years ago for this < Fishkill Wal-Mart to FDR site]
[perhaps most importantly-- email 25 of us at countylegislators@co.dutchess.ny.us re: resolution below!]
From http://www.commondreams.org/further/2009/07/21-5 ...
07.21.09 - 7:56 PM
Ye Shall Inherit
by Abby Zimet
With the Senate considering dropping from the Employee Free Choice Act the key majority signup rule - whereby workers can choose to unionize with a majority in favor - the head of the 2.5-million-member Service Employees International Union (SEIU) has launched a petition drive urging Congress to support majority signup. The times, so indifferent or hostile to unions, make us nostalgic for Reuben Warshovsky, the organizer in the great, gritty 1979 film, "Norma Rae."
Reuben's speech to the textile workers:
"On October 8th, 1970, my grandfather, Isaac Abraham Warshovsky, age 87, died in his sleep in New York City. On the following Friday morning, his funeral was held. My mother and father attended. My two uncles from Brooklyn attended. And my aunt Minnie came up from Florida. Also present were 862 members of The Amalgamated Clothing Workers and the Cloth, Hat and Cap Makers Union of America -- also members of his family.
In death, as in life, they stood at his side. They had fought battles with him, had bound the wounds of battle with him, had earned bread together and had broken it together. And when they spoke, they spoke in one voice and they were heard. And they were black and they were white and they were Irish and they were Polish and they were Catholic and they were Jews -- and they were one. That's what a union is -- one.
Ladies and gentlemen, the textile industry in which you are spending your lives and your substance, and in which your children and their children will spend their lives and their substance, is the only industry in the whole length and breadth of these United States of America that is not unionized. Therefore, they are free to exploit you, to lie to you, to cheat you and to take away from you what is rightfully yours -- your health, a decent wage, a fit place to work.
I would urge you to stop them by coming over to Room 31 at the Golden Cherry Motel and pick up a union card and sign it.
Yes, it comes from the Bible, according to the tribes of your fathers: "Ye shall inherit." But it comes from Reuben Warshovsky: Not unless you make it happen.
Thank you."
So-- get Dutchess to be for EFCA/majority sign-up with emails to countylegislators@co.dutchess.ny.us:
"Borchert, Dale", "Cooper, Gary" , "Doxsey, James" , "Fettes, Margaret" , "Flesland, Angela" , "Forman, John" , "Goldberg,Sandra" , "Higgins, Roger" , "Horn, Suzanne" , "Horton, Marge" , "Hutchings,Gerald" , "Jeter-Jackson, Barbara" , "Keller-Coffey,Richard" , "Kelly, David" , "Kuffner, Dan" , "MacAvery, Alison E." , "Mansfield, Tom" , "McCabe, William" , "Miccio, James" , "Nash, Diane" , "Rolison, Robert" , "Tyner, Joel" , "Wassell, Peter" , "Weiss, Robert" , "White, Steve"
[pass it on!]
Joel
489-5479/876-2488
joeltyner@earthlink.net
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[new resolution here below just submitted by yours truly to Co. Leg. offices; your emails needed!]
[for four years now have been trying to get resolution similar to below passed]
WHEREAS, according to a recent report from the Economic Policy Institute, during unionization drives it is standard practice for workers to be subjected to threats, interrogation, harassment, surveillance, and retaliation for union activity; employers threatened to close the plant in 57% of National Labor Relations Board elections, discharged workers in 34%, and threatened to cut wages and benefits in 47% of elections; workers were forced to attend anti-union one-on-one sessions with a supervisor at least weekly in two-thirds of elections; in 63% of elections employers used supervisor one-on-one meetings to interrogate workers about who they or other workers supported, and in 54% used such sessions to threaten workers, and
WHEREAS, joining together in a union to bargain for health care, pensions, fair wages and better working conditions is the best opportunity working people have to get ahead; today, good jobs are vanishing and health care coverage and retirement security are slipping out of reach; only 38 percent of the public says their families are getting ahead financially and less than a quarter believes the next generation will be better off, and
WHEREAS, majority sign-up is a long-established way to form a union, dating back to the passage of the National Labor Relations Act; it is used today by major employers, such as AT&T and Harley-Davidson, as an important part of their successful high-road business plans, and
WHEREAS, workers who belong to unions earn 28 percent more than nonunion workers and are 52 percent more likely to have employer-provided health coverage and nearly three times more likely to have guaranteed pensions; all workers should have the freedom to decide for themselves whether to form unions to bargain for a better life, and
WHEREAS, no matter what else we do to turn around America's economy and rebuild the middle class, we will not have broadly shared prosperity until we restore workers' free choice to bargain with their companies for a better life-without corporate intimidation; the Employee Free Choice Act will do that;
America's workers want to form unions; research shows nearly 60 million would form a union tomorrow if given the chance, and
WHEREAS, too few workers are able to form unions and bargain because companies routinely block their efforts-and our current legal system is too broken and dominated by corporations to help them; a worker in an organizing campaign has a one in five chance of being fired for union activity, and
WHEREAS, CEOs wouldn't work a day without contracts to protect their outrageous pay and perks, but they routinely deny workers the same opportunity; although U.S. and international laws are supposed to protect workers' freedom to belong to unions and bargain, employees are on an uneven playing field from the first moment they begin exploring whether they want to form a union, and the will of the majority often is crushed by brutal management tactics, and
WHEREAS, the Employee Free Choice Act, H.R.1409/S.560, would allow workers, not corporations, to choose whether and how they want to form a union; it would give workers a fair chance to form unions to improve their lives by guaranteeing that if a majority of workers wants a union, they can have one, allowing them to form unions by signing cards authorizing union representation, providing mediation and arbitration for first contract disputes, and establishing stronger penalties for violation of employee rights when workers seek to form a union and during first contract negotiations, and
WHEREAS, the Employee Free Choice Act has widespread support, including bipartisan backing in Congress and President Obama's pledge to sign it into law; over seventy percent of Americans support the Employee Free Choice Act, and hundreds of respected religious, academic and business people and organizations have signed on in support as well, and therefore be it
RESOLVED, that the Dutchess County Legislature requests that Congress pass and our President sign into law the Employee Free Choice Act, H.R. 1409/S.560, with majority sign-up intact within the legislation, and be it further
RESOLVED, that a copy of this resolution be sent to President Barack Obama, Senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Chuck Schumer, and Representatives John Hall, Maurice Hinchey, and Scott Murphy.
keep it as part of EFCA!...
"Employees shall have the right to...form...labor organizations...to bargain collectively...[and employers may not] interfere with...the exercise of...this right."
-- FDR signing National Labor Relations Act into law in 1935
"Loophole-ridden laws, paralyzing delays, and feeble enforcement have led to a culture of impunity in many areas of U.S. labor law and practice. Legal obstacles tilt the playing field so steeply against workers' freedom of association that the United States is in violation of international human rights standards for workers."
-- Ken Roth, Executive Director, Human Rights Watch
[ http://www.jwj.org/campaigns/workers/tools/humanrights.html ]
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Hi all...
Saw this below one today @ CommonDreams.org from Abby Zimet...[call Congress: (800) 828-0498!]...
Join me in signing on to http://action.seiu.org/page/s/majoritysignup to keep majority sign-up re: EFCA...
Friday's chilling Times article on this here: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/17/business/17union.html ; see all facts here-- http://www.aflcio.org/joinaunion/voiceatwork/efca/whyunion.cfm ;
http://www.aflcio.org/joinaunion/voiceatwork/efca/10keyfacts.cfm ;
http://www.aflcio.org/joinaunion/voiceatwork/efca/upload/No_Holds_Barred.pdf ...
Also-- sign http://www.petitiononline.com/yourback and join 14 other local folks in support of EFCA...
[Rich Dennison, Rich Carlson, I walked 18 miles four years ago for this < Fishkill Wal-Mart to FDR site]
[perhaps most importantly-- email 25 of us at countylegislators@co.dutchess.ny.us re: resolution below!]
From http://www.commondreams.org/further/2009/07/21-5 ...
07.21.09 - 7:56 PM
Ye Shall Inherit
by Abby Zimet
With the Senate considering dropping from the Employee Free Choice Act the key majority signup rule - whereby workers can choose to unionize with a majority in favor - the head of the 2.5-million-member Service Employees International Union (SEIU) has launched a petition drive urging Congress to support majority signup. The times, so indifferent or hostile to unions, make us nostalgic for Reuben Warshovsky, the organizer in the great, gritty 1979 film, "Norma Rae."
Reuben's speech to the textile workers:
"On October 8th, 1970, my grandfather, Isaac Abraham Warshovsky, age 87, died in his sleep in New York City. On the following Friday morning, his funeral was held. My mother and father attended. My two uncles from Brooklyn attended. And my aunt Minnie came up from Florida. Also present were 862 members of The Amalgamated Clothing Workers and the Cloth, Hat and Cap Makers Union of America -- also members of his family.
In death, as in life, they stood at his side. They had fought battles with him, had bound the wounds of battle with him, had earned bread together and had broken it together. And when they spoke, they spoke in one voice and they were heard. And they were black and they were white and they were Irish and they were Polish and they were Catholic and they were Jews -- and they were one. That's what a union is -- one.
Ladies and gentlemen, the textile industry in which you are spending your lives and your substance, and in which your children and their children will spend their lives and their substance, is the only industry in the whole length and breadth of these United States of America that is not unionized. Therefore, they are free to exploit you, to lie to you, to cheat you and to take away from you what is rightfully yours -- your health, a decent wage, a fit place to work.
I would urge you to stop them by coming over to Room 31 at the Golden Cherry Motel and pick up a union card and sign it.
Yes, it comes from the Bible, according to the tribes of your fathers: "Ye shall inherit." But it comes from Reuben Warshovsky: Not unless you make it happen.
Thank you."
So-- get Dutchess to be for EFCA/majority sign-up with emails to countylegislators@co.dutchess.ny.us:
"Borchert, Dale"
[pass it on!]
Joel
489-5479/876-2488
joeltyner@earthlink.net
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[new resolution here below just submitted by yours truly to Co. Leg. offices; your emails needed!]
[for four years now have been trying to get resolution similar to below passed]
WHEREAS, according to a recent report from the Economic Policy Institute, during unionization drives it is standard practice for workers to be subjected to threats, interrogation, harassment, surveillance, and retaliation for union activity; employers threatened to close the plant in 57% of National Labor Relations Board elections, discharged workers in 34%, and threatened to cut wages and benefits in 47% of elections; workers were forced to attend anti-union one-on-one sessions with a supervisor at least weekly in two-thirds of elections; in 63% of elections employers used supervisor one-on-one meetings to interrogate workers about who they or other workers supported, and in 54% used such sessions to threaten workers, and
WHEREAS, joining together in a union to bargain for health care, pensions, fair wages and better working conditions is the best opportunity working people have to get ahead; today, good jobs are vanishing and health care coverage and retirement security are slipping out of reach; only 38 percent of the public says their families are getting ahead financially and less than a quarter believes the next generation will be better off, and
WHEREAS, majority sign-up is a long-established way to form a union, dating back to the passage of the National Labor Relations Act; it is used today by major employers, such as AT&T and Harley-Davidson, as an important part of their successful high-road business plans, and
WHEREAS, workers who belong to unions earn 28 percent more than nonunion workers and are 52 percent more likely to have employer-provided health coverage and nearly three times more likely to have guaranteed pensions; all workers should have the freedom to decide for themselves whether to form unions to bargain for a better life, and
WHEREAS, no matter what else we do to turn around America's economy and rebuild the middle class, we will not have broadly shared prosperity until we restore workers' free choice to bargain with their companies for a better life-without corporate intimidation; the Employee Free Choice Act will do that;
America's workers want to form unions; research shows nearly 60 million would form a union tomorrow if given the chance, and
WHEREAS, too few workers are able to form unions and bargain because companies routinely block their efforts-and our current legal system is too broken and dominated by corporations to help them; a worker in an organizing campaign has a one in five chance of being fired for union activity, and
WHEREAS, CEOs wouldn't work a day without contracts to protect their outrageous pay and perks, but they routinely deny workers the same opportunity; although U.S. and international laws are supposed to protect workers' freedom to belong to unions and bargain, employees are on an uneven playing field from the first moment they begin exploring whether they want to form a union, and the will of the majority often is crushed by brutal management tactics, and
WHEREAS, the Employee Free Choice Act, H.R.1409/S.560, would allow workers, not corporations, to choose whether and how they want to form a union; it would give workers a fair chance to form unions to improve their lives by guaranteeing that if a majority of workers wants a union, they can have one, allowing them to form unions by signing cards authorizing union representation, providing mediation and arbitration for first contract disputes, and establishing stronger penalties for violation of employee rights when workers seek to form a union and during first contract negotiations, and
WHEREAS, the Employee Free Choice Act has widespread support, including bipartisan backing in Congress and President Obama's pledge to sign it into law; over seventy percent of Americans support the Employee Free Choice Act, and hundreds of respected religious, academic and business people and organizations have signed on in support as well, and therefore be it
RESOLVED, that the Dutchess County Legislature requests that Congress pass and our President sign into law the Employee Free Choice Act, H.R. 1409/S.560, with majority sign-up intact within the legislation, and be it further
RESOLVED, that a copy of this resolution be sent to President Barack Obama, Senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Chuck Schumer, and Representatives John Hall, Maurice Hinchey, and Scott Murphy.
Help Andi Novick get NYSAC to pass resolution to keep lever voting machines!...
Hi all...
[scroll down a bit for a crucial update from Rhinebeck's Andi Novick on voting integrity-- and NYSAC!]
Again-- did you know that (after a year or so of pushing from yours truly, Andi Novick, Joanne Lukacher, Gary Kenton, et. al.) that our County Legislature here in Dutchess was the very first county in the state (this past Dec.) to pass a resolution to save and keep using NY's lever voting machines?...['tis true]...
[curiously, however, there has been little to no coverage of this in local papers-- yet in NYTimes!...see:
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/28/city-defies-state-on-voting-machine-program/ ;
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/10/a-love-affair-with-lever-voting-machines/ (local blackout)]
Since we started ball rolling on this, Columbia (just last month), Ulster, Chenango, Cortland, Essex, Fulton, Greene, Herkimer, Montgomery, Rensselaer, Schuyler, Sullivan, Tioga, Warren, Washington, and Wyoming County Legislatures (along with the NYS Association of Towns and InterCounty Legislative Committee of the Adirondacks) have all passed resolution to keep lever voting machines!...
[...and just last month the Westchester County Legislature voted to do the same as well!...recall:
http://www.midhudsonnews.com/News/2009/June09/13/lev_vote_WC-13Jun09.html ]
Also-- don't forget-- our resolution passed overwhelmingly at the March full board mtg. of our County Legislature asking for the state to amend the Election Reform and Modernization Act of 2005 to specifically authorize continued use of lever voting machines, for our local Congressional representatives to make clear that lever voting machines can still be used under the Help America Vote Act, and for our County Legislature to form a new bipartisan committee to consider joining the lawsuit being developed by the Election Transparency Coalition of New York (to keep lever voting machines)...
Note-- call our state legislators on this toll-free at (877) 255-9417-- and Congress at (800) 828-0498!...
Letters also needed to all 25 of us at countylegislators@co.dutchess.ny.us-- get new task force moving!
[the March resolution followed through on key Jan. 26th recommendations of the Voting Integrity Task Force presentation that night from Joanne Lukacher and Gary Kenton-- inspired by work of Andi Novick]
Sign on to http://www.electiondefensealliance.org/save_ny_levers if you haven't yet-- and pass it along!
[and check out Andi's and Joanne Lukacher's blog at http://www.re-mediaetc.blogspot.com for updates]
And-- check out Andi's new website too-- http://nylevers.wordpress.com/ !...
[pass it on]
Joel
489-5479/876-2488
joeltyner@earthlink.net
[see much, much more on this at http://www.MarkCrispinMiller.com ]
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So-- this just in to us from Rhinebeck's Andi Novick (andi@etcnys.org)-- re: http://www.NYSAC.org ...
[note-- you can reach NYSAC directly to support her on this-- with emails to info@nysac.org! (I emailed 'em today myself)]
[...and...you can call NYSCAC directly at (518) 465-1473 or fax them directly-- at (518) 465-0506 too...]
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 2009 12:47:48 -0400
Subject: NYSAC and the Counties Opposing Replacing Lever Voting Machines
To: kcrannell@nysac.org, ajenkins@nysac.org
Cc: abaer@govt.co.columbia.ny.us, ber00457@fairpoint.net,
bos@co.chenango.ny.us, jdaniels@cortland-co.org, lcornell@cortland-co.org,
john.meredith@co.delaware.ny.us, christa.schafer@co.delaware.ny.us,
countylegislature@co.dutchess.ny.us, joeltyner@earthlink.net,
rogerhig@optonline.net, duleg1423@aol.com, margehortondcleg@aol.com,
DNCtyLegDist4@aol.com, cmoses@schroon.net, fultbos@co.fulton.ny.us,
legislature@discovergreene.com, wspeenburgh@discovergreene.com,
dutch10@twcny.rr.com, missjeanie@aol.com, rloske@co.montgomery.ny.us,
cdiamond@nassaucountyny.gov, wwink@albaneselegal.com, nkelleher@rensco.com,
rcrist@rensco.com, Jonathan.Rouis@co.sullivan.ny.us,
William.Lindsay@suffolkcountyny.gov, lou.damaro@suffolkcountyny.gov,
westond@co.tioga.ny.us, ddon@co.ulster.ny.us, supervisors@co.washington.ny.us,
khayes@co.washington.ny.us, sadyj@co.warren.ny.us, SusanZimet@gmail.com,
g@gary4ulster.com, townofhoricon@yahoo.com, fmonroe@adkreviewboard.com,
ryan@westchesterlegislators.com, adberwanger@wyomingco.net
Dear Abbe,
I appreciate your getting back to me the other day. I understand the circumstances in Albany this year were particularly time consuming. Still, I am frustrated that almost two months after I met with Ken and you to discuss these issues you seem to have retreated, explaining that from your perspective elections and the ever-spiraling costs of electronic vote counting systems is not a huge area of interest to the counties. As per your request, you can find a list of the counties that have passed resolutions/endorsements in favor of retaining the lever voting machines at our site,
I am including officials from those counties which are in support of retaining the lever voting machines on this email because it occurred to me that if you don't know about all the counties who are opposed to replacing our lever system with a computerized vote counting system, they may not know about each other either.
What is very clear from the resolutions is the concern county governments have about the ongoing costs of computerized elections, which will continue to increase annually, draining millions of dollars in tax revenues from county budgets. To my understanding, NYSAC is only undertaking a review of the maldistribution of HAVA funds amongst the counties. This is of course a legitimate concern: the monies should be distributed fairly. However, the greater issue is the cost counties will be forced to pay as a result of the unnecessary and unconstitutional Election Reform and Modernization Act (ERMA) after the HAVA monies are distributed, whether evenly or unevenly.
As I said in my prior email, other states’ experience reveals that the counties become dependent on vendors who shamelessly exploit their lack of competition and drive the cost of conducting elections beyond affordability. While HAVA provides funds for equipment acquisition, the costs of running computerized elections are completely unfunded. This travesty is compounded by the obscene waste of money to replace all these computers in perhaps as soon as five to ten years: particularly when the levers could last another century!
On July 9, 2009 I joined State Elections Commissioner Kellner in a public forum in NYC. As I mentioned to you, I believe Commissioner Kellner believes in open government and has demonstrated his integrity in candidly discussing the issues surrounding the lever machines and the new software-based optical scanners. He had previously publicly admitted that NY's new method of voting is “not a transparent process.” At the forum he further acknowledged that even ‘certified’ optical scan machines could be undetectably manipulated, stating that therefore "The system in New York is not to rely on the machines, but to rely on the paper."
We are going to spend hundreds of millions of dollars for machines that the State admits are unreliable and then millions more to start hand counting paper ballots in an audit to try to compensate for the scanners' inadequacies, when we already own affordable machines that aren't so unstable that they require a hand count to try to verify the machine's results! That's irresponsible and these county resolutions, in resisting ERMA's mandate, are demonstrating leadership that deserves to be supported.
When I met with Ken and you we discussed the myriad bases for challenging ERMA on constitutional grounds. In a nutshell, the State Legislature has no authority to make voting more expensive and less safe. Commissioner Kellner has previously explained the difference between our secure lever machines and the unsafe computerized machines ERMA requires he now defend:
“Unlike e-voting machines, which have all of its inner-workings hidden away as code, the working parts of lever machines are exposed to the world. ,,,[A]ny tampering with a lever machine today would be plainly visible. ... Becoming aware of fraud on an e-voting machine would be much more difficult, because so much of their inner-workings are invisible to all but the software programmers.
Fighting fraud carried out by code is also particularly expensive. ...[T]o uncover whether fraud has occurred, or by whom and how, requires an army of programmers, a number of years, and millions of dollars. Even then, there is no guarantee that their examination will produce results.”
Commissioner Kellner is not alone. State Elections Commissioner Peterson spoke in favor of our lever voting machines when he stated, “If you have something that works and something that doesn’t work, I vote for the thing that works.” State Elections Commissioner Aquila has also stated she favors lever voting machines, but that that was her personal opinion and she, like her fellow commissioners, is restrained by ERMA. The counties, who alone will pay for this disastrous mistake, have passed resolutions resisting ERMA’s mandate.
I have provided you with a great deal of documentation regarding the exorbitant and unnecessary costs associated with computerized voting systems in addition to unrefuted evidence that these systems make our elections and our democracy less safe. There is more evidence available, which you have the same access to that I do or I can supply it to you. There are 19 counties that have passed resolutions/endorsements to date in addition to Nassau and Suffolk who I understand are also opposed to replacing our lever voting machines with software-based vote counting machines.
Now is the time for NYSAC to take a position on the longer term costs and the impact this legislation will have on the counties. The state is counting on you. If something still stands in your way of action, please tell me: what is the obstacle? I would also respectfully urge you to consider a resolution in support of retaining New York's lever voting system, as supplemented with accessible ballot marking devices in compliance with HAVA, on your upcoming conference's agenda.
Thank you,
Andi Novick
Election Transparency Coalition,
Andrea T. Novick, Esq.
Finder Novick Kerrigan LLP
Rhinebeck office
349 Ackert Hook Rd.
Rhinebeck, New York 12572
(telephone fax) 845 876 2359
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From http://nylevers.wordpress.com/ ...
Why advocate to keep New York’s lever system?
By 1926, every New York county had implemented lever machines for voting. New Yorkers had had enough of local Boss Tweeds running our towns and counties. Both Republicans and Democrats, even in New York City, were convinced that the new lever machines had curbed the election fraud running rampant in the paper ballot system. New York State now had secure, transparent elections that voters could trust.
New Yorkers have confidence in lever machines.
NY’s lever system is still working, secure, affordable, transparent, and when coupled with a ballot marking device in each polling place, complies with federal law.
However, there’s now a state law that will force counties to spend millions every year for a software based system that eviscerates New York State’s constitutional provisions for transparent elections and by its nature is vulnerable to errors and manipulation.
To stop this change, the law must be repealed or challenged in court.
Local governments — cities, towns, counties — are advocating to keep our lever voting system by passing resolutions requesting that the NYS legislature take action. Community organizations are joining in as well. And the list grows daily.
This site exists to document the widespread and growing support for the lever voting system and to provide resources for counties, cities, towns, as well as organizations and individuals that want to add their voice to this effort.
######################################################
[recall this from A. Novick July 4th]
Dear friends,
It's Independence Day again. We declare our right to liberty and other inalienable rights. "[T]o secure these rights, Governments are instituted ... deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." You can't consent to be governed if your government has exclusive control over key aspects of the process by which it re-elects itself. NYS is about to nullify our consent: denying us our constitutional right to transparency in our elections, which protects our right to self-government.
The face is that we New Yorkers have a constitutional right to vote-- and should stand up to the State and its usurpation of power, robbing us of our right to a transparent, safe vote counting process.
Did you know that New York's highest court has already found the method of vote counting as enacted by NY's new Election Reform and Modernization Act (ERMA) to be unconstitutional? In 1896 the legislature and the courts agreed that to permit an essential step of the electoral process to be within the exclusive control of the State, outside of public view, renders "voting a useless formality as it depends upon the will of the [state] as to who shall hold office, and not upon the vote of the people." ERMA returns us to that unconstitutional system discredited 113 years ago by mandating the replacement of our trustworthy levers with untrustworthy computers that will have been secretly programmed by vendors with the State's seal of approval (otherwise known as certification). In other words, according to the way NY's Constitution's been interpreted for over a century, ERMA will enable the State to subvert the will of the people.
ERMA permits yet another critical step of the vote counting process to be unconstitutionally outside of public view. As if the illegal software tally could possibly be redeemed, ERMA tries to put lipstick on that pig. ERMA requires a 3% hand count of the ballots after election night, creating the appearance of verification. History teaches that after election night, the risk of ballot tampering is so high we can't rely on those ballots. How do we know they haven't been tampered with once they've left the poll site and are in the exclusive control of the board of elections? It's not that we're accusing our election officials of being dishonest, it's just that in a constitutional democracy we are not permitted to trust. And besides, those ballots are required by law to be preserved "inviolate" for the people should they be needed in a judicial proceeding.
Independence Day 2009 is our last chance to defend this assault on our freedom. By Independence Day 2010, it will be too late.
Here's three things you can do:
1) Donate to the Election Transparency Coalition (ETC) so we can continue the work to have ERMA declared unconstitutional. We need the money to keep going into the final stretch. 19 county resolutions so far, but the State won't repeal ERMA. We have to go to court. Please go to:http://ihcenter.org/groups/re-mediaetc and give what you can to make this happen.
2) Sign and circulate petition. Last year's voting rights version of the Declaration of Independence, which is ETC's petition in support of retaining the last transparent electoral system in the nation, is still waiting for your signature. We're getting ready to go to court and we'd like to show the court how many of you oppose an unconstitutional voting system that nullifies the consent of the governed, as planned for the 2010 election (2009 if you're unlucky enough to be one of the guinea pigs in the early roll out project). Please send to all New Yorkers you know.http://electiondefensealliance.org/save_ny_levers
3) Read the article: Nullifying the Consent of the Governedhttp://sites.google.com/site/remediaetc/home/documents/NullifyingConsent.pdf
Excerpt:
We don’t trust Venezuela’s post-election night manual audit of paper ballots, which confirmed the computerized tallies giving Hugo Chavez his victory in 2008. We don’t trust that the government of Iran’s recent post-election night partial recount verified the election results. And yet we are supposed to trust New York’s government first by relying on its assurance that “certified” voting computers are safe to vote on (contrary to all scientific evidence) and then relying on its word that the post-election night ballots being used to verify the concealed vote count, have been preserved inviolate.
Time to declare our rights again. If We the People don't stop the State from violating our constitutionally guaranteed rights, "It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation"* to say nothing of what we will leave to our children.
Thank you for your eternal vigilance.
Andi Novick
Election Transparency Coalition
For more information go to:
http://www.wheresthepaper.org/ny.html#WhyKeepLevers,
* "The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil Constitution, are worth defending at all hazards; and it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors: they purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood, and transmitted them to us with care and diligence. It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or to be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men." - Samuel Adams
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June 9th from http://www.midhudsonnews.com/News/2009/June09/13/lev_vote_WC-13Jun09.html ...
Westchester lawmakers call for state to retain lever voting machines
WHITE PLAINS – A majority of the members of the Westchester County Board of Legislators Friday called on the governor and legislative leaders to allow the county to continue using mechanical lever voting machines. The lawmakers said they are already using computerized machines for handicapped voters and that makes the county HAVA compliant. “The mechanical lever voting machines have long proven reliable, user-friendly and cost-effective,” said Legislator Thomas Abinanti. “We do not need to waste taxpayers’ money fixing a voting system that’s not broken. Mechanical lever voting machines have long proved reliable, user friendly and cost-effective,” he said. “Replacing them is very costly. In other places it has created voter confusion and it could actually result in using machines that could compromise the integrity of future elections.” Other county legislatures in the greater region, including Sullivan, [Dutchess, Columbia, Ulster, Schuyler, and Greene, along with the NYS Assocation of Towns] have formally voted to urge the retention of lever machines.
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From http://www.re-mediaetc.blogspot.com ...
Joanne Lukacher, Director (845) 337 4855, Joanne@re-mediaetc.org
Andrea Novick, Legal Counsel (845) 876- 2359, anovick@fnklaw.com
LEVER MACHINES SUCCEED WHERE SOFTWARE CAN'T
ο New York's lever voting machines provide reliable, observable evidence of the count at the election. Software voting machines do not.
ο Election officials and observers inspect each lever machine to visibly see the machines are properly programmed to count. Software machines are secretly programmed to count. Lever machines are immutable once locked against tampering. Software is undetectably mutable and can produce false results, regardless of locks.
ο Lever machines cannot switch, flip or add votes. Software machines can.
ο Lever machines are affordable, reliable and with proper maintenance can last another century. Software machines are expensive, unreliable and will have to be replaced in short order due to technological obsolescence or limited useful lives.
ο CIA cybersecurity expert says computerized elections vulnerable to rigging. Believes President Hugo Chavez's election was rigged and the post-election audit confirmed the false results. Venezuelan-owned voting machine company, Smartmatic, owns Intellectual Property rights to Sequoia.
ο Germany's Constitutional Court banned computerized vote counting machines last month, declaring them unconstitutional.
ο The Election Transparency Coalition NY has prepared litigation seeking to declare computerized vote counting machines unconstitutional. (link litigation synopsis)
ο Dutchess, Columbia, Ulster, Schuyler, Greene Counties and the Association of Towns have passed unanimous Resolutions to Save New York's lever voting machines.
ο Pennsylvania legislator introduced legislation to allow counties in Pennsylvania to return to the use of lever voting machines.
ο“[T]ampering with a lever machine today would be plainly visible to the volunteer preparing it for poll opening. Becoming aware of fraud on an e-voting machine would be much more difficult, because so much of their inner-workings are invisible to all but the software programmers.” - State Board of Elections Commissioner Douglas Kellner.
ο “If you have something that works and something that doesn't work, I vote for the thing that works. - State Board of Elections Commissioner Gregory Peterson, regarding lever voting machines.
[scroll down a bit for a crucial update from Rhinebeck's Andi Novick on voting integrity-- and NYSAC!]
Again-- did you know that (after a year or so of pushing from yours truly, Andi Novick, Joanne Lukacher, Gary Kenton, et. al.) that our County Legislature here in Dutchess was the very first county in the state (this past Dec.) to pass a resolution to save and keep using NY's lever voting machines?...['tis true]...
[curiously, however, there has been little to no coverage of this in local papers-- yet in NYTimes!...see:
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/28/city-defies-state-on-voting-machine-program/ ;
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/10/a-love-affair-with-lever-voting-machines/ (local blackout)]
Since we started ball rolling on this, Columbia (just last month), Ulster, Chenango, Cortland, Essex, Fulton, Greene, Herkimer, Montgomery, Rensselaer, Schuyler, Sullivan, Tioga, Warren, Washington, and Wyoming County Legislatures (along with the NYS Association of Towns and InterCounty Legislative Committee of the Adirondacks) have all passed resolution to keep lever voting machines!...
[...and just last month the Westchester County Legislature voted to do the same as well!...recall:
http://www.midhudsonnews.com/News/2009/June09/13/lev_vote_WC-13Jun09.html ]
Also-- don't forget-- our resolution passed overwhelmingly at the March full board mtg. of our County Legislature asking for the state to amend the Election Reform and Modernization Act of 2005 to specifically authorize continued use of lever voting machines, for our local Congressional representatives to make clear that lever voting machines can still be used under the Help America Vote Act, and for our County Legislature to form a new bipartisan committee to consider joining the lawsuit being developed by the Election Transparency Coalition of New York (to keep lever voting machines)...
Note-- call our state legislators on this toll-free at (877) 255-9417-- and Congress at (800) 828-0498!...
Letters also needed to all 25 of us at countylegislators@co.dutchess.ny.us-- get new task force moving!
[the March resolution followed through on key Jan. 26th recommendations of the Voting Integrity Task Force presentation that night from Joanne Lukacher and Gary Kenton-- inspired by work of Andi Novick]
Sign on to http://www.electiondefensealliance.org/save_ny_levers if you haven't yet-- and pass it along!
[and check out Andi's and Joanne Lukacher's blog at http://www.re-mediaetc.blogspot.com for updates]
And-- check out Andi's new website too-- http://nylevers.wordpress.com/ !...
[pass it on]
Joel
489-5479/876-2488
joeltyner@earthlink.net
[see much, much more on this at http://www.MarkCrispinMiller.com ]
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So-- this just in to us from Rhinebeck's Andi Novick (andi@etcnys.org)-- re: http://www.NYSAC.org ...
[note-- you can reach NYSAC directly to support her on this-- with emails to info@nysac.org! (I emailed 'em today myself)]
[...and...you can call NYSCAC directly at (518) 465-1473 or fax them directly-- at (518) 465-0506 too...]
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 2009 12:47:48 -0400
Subject: NYSAC and the Counties Opposing Replacing Lever Voting Machines
To: kcrannell@nysac.org, ajenkins@nysac.org
Cc: abaer@govt.co.columbia.ny.us, ber00457@fairpoint.net,
bos@co.chenango.ny.us, jdaniels@cortland-co.org, lcornell@cortland-co.org,
john.meredith@co.delaware.ny.us, christa.schafer@co.delaware.ny.us,
countylegislature@co.dutchess.ny.us, joeltyner@earthlink.net,
rogerhig@optonline.net, duleg1423@aol.com, margehortondcleg@aol.com,
DNCtyLegDist4@aol.com, cmoses@schroon.net, fultbos@co.fulton.ny.us,
legislature@discovergreene.com, wspeenburgh@discovergreene.com,
dutch10@twcny.rr.com, missjeanie@aol.com, rloske@co.montgomery.ny.us,
cdiamond@nassaucountyny.gov, wwink@albaneselegal.com, nkelleher@rensco.com,
rcrist@rensco.com, Jonathan.Rouis@co.sullivan.ny.us,
William.Lindsay@suffolkcountyny.gov, lou.damaro@suffolkcountyny.gov,
westond@co.tioga.ny.us, ddon@co.ulster.ny.us, supervisors@co.washington.ny.us,
khayes@co.washington.ny.us, sadyj@co.warren.ny.us, SusanZimet@gmail.com,
g@gary4ulster.com, townofhoricon@yahoo.com, fmonroe@adkreviewboard.com,
ryan@westchesterlegislators.com, adberwanger@wyomingco.net
Dear Abbe,
I appreciate your getting back to me the other day. I understand the circumstances in Albany this year were particularly time consuming. Still, I am frustrated that almost two months after I met with Ken and you to discuss these issues you seem to have retreated, explaining that from your perspective elections and the ever-spiraling costs of electronic vote counting systems is not a huge area of interest to the counties. As per your request, you can find a list of the counties that have passed resolutions/endorsements in favor of retaining the lever voting machines at our site,
I am including officials from those counties which are in support of retaining the lever voting machines on this email because it occurred to me that if you don't know about all the counties who are opposed to replacing our lever system with a computerized vote counting system, they may not know about each other either.
What is very clear from the resolutions is the concern county governments have about the ongoing costs of computerized elections, which will continue to increase annually, draining millions of dollars in tax revenues from county budgets. To my understanding, NYSAC is only undertaking a review of the maldistribution of HAVA funds amongst the counties. This is of course a legitimate concern: the monies should be distributed fairly. However, the greater issue is the cost counties will be forced to pay as a result of the unnecessary and unconstitutional Election Reform and Modernization Act (ERMA) after the HAVA monies are distributed, whether evenly or unevenly.
As I said in my prior email, other states’ experience reveals that the counties become dependent on vendors who shamelessly exploit their lack of competition and drive the cost of conducting elections beyond affordability. While HAVA provides funds for equipment acquisition, the costs of running computerized elections are completely unfunded. This travesty is compounded by the obscene waste of money to replace all these computers in perhaps as soon as five to ten years: particularly when the levers could last another century!
On July 9, 2009 I joined State Elections Commissioner Kellner in a public forum in NYC. As I mentioned to you, I believe Commissioner Kellner believes in open government and has demonstrated his integrity in candidly discussing the issues surrounding the lever machines and the new software-based optical scanners. He had previously publicly admitted that NY's new method of voting is “not a transparent process.” At the forum he further acknowledged that even ‘certified’ optical scan machines could be undetectably manipulated, stating that therefore "The system in New York is not to rely on the machines, but to rely on the paper."
We are going to spend hundreds of millions of dollars for machines that the State admits are unreliable and then millions more to start hand counting paper ballots in an audit to try to compensate for the scanners' inadequacies, when we already own affordable machines that aren't so unstable that they require a hand count to try to verify the machine's results! That's irresponsible and these county resolutions, in resisting ERMA's mandate, are demonstrating leadership that deserves to be supported.
When I met with Ken and you we discussed the myriad bases for challenging ERMA on constitutional grounds. In a nutshell, the State Legislature has no authority to make voting more expensive and less safe. Commissioner Kellner has previously explained the difference between our secure lever machines and the unsafe computerized machines ERMA requires he now defend:
“Unlike e-voting machines, which have all of its inner-workings hidden away as code, the working parts of lever machines are exposed to the world. ,,,[A]ny tampering with a lever machine today would be plainly visible. ... Becoming aware of fraud on an e-voting machine would be much more difficult, because so much of their inner-workings are invisible to all but the software programmers.
Fighting fraud carried out by code is also particularly expensive. ...[T]o uncover whether fraud has occurred, or by whom and how, requires an army of programmers, a number of years, and millions of dollars. Even then, there is no guarantee that their examination will produce results.”
Commissioner Kellner is not alone. State Elections Commissioner Peterson spoke in favor of our lever voting machines when he stated, “If you have something that works and something that doesn’t work, I vote for the thing that works.” State Elections Commissioner Aquila has also stated she favors lever voting machines, but that that was her personal opinion and she, like her fellow commissioners, is restrained by ERMA. The counties, who alone will pay for this disastrous mistake, have passed resolutions resisting ERMA’s mandate.
I have provided you with a great deal of documentation regarding the exorbitant and unnecessary costs associated with computerized voting systems in addition to unrefuted evidence that these systems make our elections and our democracy less safe. There is more evidence available, which you have the same access to that I do or I can supply it to you. There are 19 counties that have passed resolutions/endorsements to date in addition to Nassau and Suffolk who I understand are also opposed to replacing our lever voting machines with software-based vote counting machines.
Now is the time for NYSAC to take a position on the longer term costs and the impact this legislation will have on the counties. The state is counting on you. If something still stands in your way of action, please tell me: what is the obstacle? I would also respectfully urge you to consider a resolution in support of retaining New York's lever voting system, as supplemented with accessible ballot marking devices in compliance with HAVA, on your upcoming conference's agenda.
Thank you,
Andi Novick
Election Transparency Coalition,
Andrea T. Novick, Esq.
Finder Novick Kerrigan LLP
Rhinebeck office
349 Ackert Hook Rd.
Rhinebeck, New York 12572
(telephone fax) 845 876 2359
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From http://nylevers.wordpress.com/ ...
Why advocate to keep New York’s lever system?
By 1926, every New York county had implemented lever machines for voting. New Yorkers had had enough of local Boss Tweeds running our towns and counties. Both Republicans and Democrats, even in New York City, were convinced that the new lever machines had curbed the election fraud running rampant in the paper ballot system. New York State now had secure, transparent elections that voters could trust.
New Yorkers have confidence in lever machines.
NY’s lever system is still working, secure, affordable, transparent, and when coupled with a ballot marking device in each polling place, complies with federal law.
However, there’s now a state law that will force counties to spend millions every year for a software based system that eviscerates New York State’s constitutional provisions for transparent elections and by its nature is vulnerable to errors and manipulation.
To stop this change, the law must be repealed or challenged in court.
Local governments — cities, towns, counties — are advocating to keep our lever voting system by passing resolutions requesting that the NYS legislature take action. Community organizations are joining in as well. And the list grows daily.
This site exists to document the widespread and growing support for the lever voting system and to provide resources for counties, cities, towns, as well as organizations and individuals that want to add their voice to this effort.
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[recall this from A. Novick July 4th]
Dear friends,
It's Independence Day again. We declare our right to liberty and other inalienable rights. "[T]o secure these rights, Governments are instituted ... deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." You can't consent to be governed if your government has exclusive control over key aspects of the process by which it re-elects itself. NYS is about to nullify our consent: denying us our constitutional right to transparency in our elections, which protects our right to self-government.
The face is that we New Yorkers have a constitutional right to vote-- and should stand up to the State and its usurpation of power, robbing us of our right to a transparent, safe vote counting process.
Did you know that New York's highest court has already found the method of vote counting as enacted by NY's new Election Reform and Modernization Act (ERMA) to be unconstitutional? In 1896 the legislature and the courts agreed that to permit an essential step of the electoral process to be within the exclusive control of the State, outside of public view, renders "voting a useless formality as it depends upon the will of the [state] as to who shall hold office, and not upon the vote of the people." ERMA returns us to that unconstitutional system discredited 113 years ago by mandating the replacement of our trustworthy levers with untrustworthy computers that will have been secretly programmed by vendors with the State's seal of approval (otherwise known as certification). In other words, according to the way NY's Constitution's been interpreted for over a century, ERMA will enable the State to subvert the will of the people.
ERMA permits yet another critical step of the vote counting process to be unconstitutionally outside of public view. As if the illegal software tally could possibly be redeemed, ERMA tries to put lipstick on that pig. ERMA requires a 3% hand count of the ballots after election night, creating the appearance of verification. History teaches that after election night, the risk of ballot tampering is so high we can't rely on those ballots. How do we know they haven't been tampered with once they've left the poll site and are in the exclusive control of the board of elections? It's not that we're accusing our election officials of being dishonest, it's just that in a constitutional democracy we are not permitted to trust. And besides, those ballots are required by law to be preserved "inviolate" for the people should they be needed in a judicial proceeding.
Independence Day 2009 is our last chance to defend this assault on our freedom. By Independence Day 2010, it will be too late.
Here's three things you can do:
1) Donate to the Election Transparency Coalition (ETC) so we can continue the work to have ERMA declared unconstitutional. We need the money to keep going into the final stretch. 19 county resolutions so far, but the State won't repeal ERMA. We have to go to court. Please go to:
2) Sign and circulate petition. Last year's voting rights version of the Declaration of Independence, which is ETC's petition in support of retaining the last transparent electoral system in the nation, is still waiting for your signature. We're getting ready to go to court and we'd like to show the court how many of you oppose an unconstitutional voting system that nullifies the consent of the governed, as planned for the 2010 election (2009 if you're unlucky enough to be one of the guinea pigs in the early roll out project). Please send to all New Yorkers you know.
3) Read the article: Nullifying the Consent of the Governed
Excerpt:
We don’t trust Venezuela’s post-election night manual audit of paper ballots, which confirmed the computerized tallies giving Hugo Chavez his victory in 2008. We don’t trust that the government of Iran’s recent post-election night partial recount verified the election results. And yet we are supposed to trust New York’s government first by relying on its assurance that “certified” voting computers are safe to vote on (contrary to all scientific evidence) and then relying on its word that the post-election night ballots being used to verify the concealed vote count, have been preserved inviolate.
Time to declare our rights again. If We the People don't stop the State from violating our constitutionally guaranteed rights, "It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation"* to say nothing of what we will leave to our children.
Thank you for your eternal vigilance.
Andi Novick
Election Transparency Coalition
For more information go to:
* "The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil Constitution, are worth defending at all hazards; and it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors: they purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood, and transmitted them to us with care and diligence. It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or to be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men." - Samuel Adams
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June 9th from http://www.midhudsonnews.com/News/2009/June09/13/lev_vote_WC-13Jun09.html ...
Westchester lawmakers call for state to retain lever voting machines
WHITE PLAINS – A majority of the members of the Westchester County Board of Legislators Friday called on the governor and legislative leaders to allow the county to continue using mechanical lever voting machines. The lawmakers said they are already using computerized machines for handicapped voters and that makes the county HAVA compliant. “The mechanical lever voting machines have long proven reliable, user-friendly and cost-effective,” said Legislator Thomas Abinanti. “We do not need to waste taxpayers’ money fixing a voting system that’s not broken. Mechanical lever voting machines have long proved reliable, user friendly and cost-effective,” he said. “Replacing them is very costly. In other places it has created voter confusion and it could actually result in using machines that could compromise the integrity of future elections.” Other county legislatures in the greater region, including Sullivan, [Dutchess, Columbia, Ulster, Schuyler, and Greene, along with the NYS Assocation of Towns] have formally voted to urge the retention of lever machines.
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From http://www.re-mediaetc.blogspot.com ...
Joanne Lukacher, Director (845) 337 4855, Joanne@re-mediaetc.org
Andrea Novick, Legal Counsel (845) 876- 2359, anovick@fnklaw.com
LEVER MACHINES SUCCEED WHERE SOFTWARE CAN'T
ο New York's lever voting machines provide reliable, observable evidence of the count at the election. Software voting machines do not.
ο Election officials and observers inspect each lever machine to visibly see the machines are properly programmed to count. Software machines are secretly programmed to count. Lever machines are immutable once locked against tampering. Software is undetectably mutable and can produce false results, regardless of locks.
ο Lever machines cannot switch, flip or add votes. Software machines can.
ο Lever machines are affordable, reliable and with proper maintenance can last another century. Software machines are expensive, unreliable and will have to be replaced in short order due to technological obsolescence or limited useful lives.
ο CIA cybersecurity expert says computerized elections vulnerable to rigging. Believes President Hugo Chavez's election was rigged and the post-election audit confirmed the false results. Venezuelan-owned voting machine company, Smartmatic, owns Intellectual Property rights to Sequoia.
ο Germany's Constitutional Court banned computerized vote counting machines last month, declaring them unconstitutional.
ο The Election Transparency Coalition NY has prepared litigation seeking to declare computerized vote counting machines unconstitutional. (link litigation synopsis)
ο Dutchess, Columbia, Ulster, Schuyler, Greene Counties and the Association of Towns have passed unanimous Resolutions to Save New York's lever voting machines.
ο Pennsylvania legislator introduced legislation to allow counties in Pennsylvania to return to the use of lever voting machines.
ο“[T]ampering with a lever machine today would be plainly visible to the volunteer preparing it for poll opening. Becoming aware of fraud on an e-voting machine would be much more difficult, because so much of their inner-workings are invisible to all but the software programmers.” - State Board of Elections Commissioner Douglas Kellner.
ο “If you have something that works and something that doesn't work, I vote for the thing that works. - State Board of Elections Commissioner Gregory Peterson, regarding lever voting machines.
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