The Albany Times Union had a front page article today that should be mandatory reading for anyone who thinks we can get all the oil and gas we need if we just go drilling for it. As it happens, there's known deposits of natural gas in New York state waiting to be tapped - but the costs could be rather heavy from the side effects.

Upstate New York's looming natural gas nightmare
Regulators asleep as lawmakers attempt to declare vast acreage open to the energy industry's iffy underground fracturing technique

By ABRAHM LUSTGARTEN, ProPublica / Special to the Times Union
First published: Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Read the article, then be very afraid of what the oil and gas companies are doing to us while the President runs interference for them.

This country is fucking huge. Only that adjective will do. It's enormous. And even if my covered wagon is a new Saturn Vue, and I only drove 7 or 8 hours a day, and we took a leisurly 8 days from LA to upstate NY, it is still impressively large.

No wonder some people stopped in Ohio. Or Utah.

We loved Mount Rushmore and the Black Hills. It was great to look up and think that Presidents could, indeed, be figures worthy of high praise.

Each night, in a hotel that we could only hope would have a decent mattress, I would think over the terrain, the roads, the wildlife (or lack of it), and I would dream of car wrecks. Each day, fleeing Los Angeles at 10 to 15 over the posted speed limit, we got a little further away from the entertainment machine that used up my spinal cartilage and spit me out.

In 1999, First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton came to my home town in Delaware County to announce her "listening tour" as she explored a run for the U.S. Senate in New York.  As New York State goes, it doesn't get much more rural and small town than Delaware County, bordering on northeastern PA.

8 years later, I can assure everyone that folks in Delaware County are indeed the kind of bitter Obama was talking about.  And the bitterness, it turns out, results from exactly what Obama blames it on.

I just had to pass on this link to a new NYT story about the Clinton campaign's plans to use the Rodham family's working-class background in Scranton to solidify her status there in favorable parts of Pennsylvania.

http://www.nytimes.com/...

The comment I'd like to make on this:  In 2000, Hillary ran for Senator, where it was thought (and rightly so) that Upstate New York would tough ground for her to take.  It didn't turn out to be, so much; she was pretty successful at playing First Lady and keeping Bill highly visible on a leash.  That worked... eight years ago.

However, if she'd ever used the "Scranton strategy" with Upstate voters, it probably would have worked very well for her.  Although there are no coal mines here, a lot of Upstate New York is in the so-called "Dunder Mifflin Triangle" - same working-class history, hit by the same globalization forces, same determination to survive.

(Cross-Posted at Upstate Blue)

In keeping with Republican faux populism a la George W. Bush "the rancher," in recent campaign advertisements GE trust fund multi-millionaire Alexander "Sandy" Treadwell is now attempting to portray himself as "the farmer."

Additionally, Sandy appears to be quite far out of touch when it comes to the Iraq War and security issues. Listen to comments he made during a 2004 interview at the Republican National Convention.

Sounds like nothing more than your classic GOP party hack...

Here in New York's 26th congressional district, we have two interesting races developing: A Democratic primary which will decide who gets the right (and/or privilege) to challenge Rep. Tom Reynolds in the 2008 elections.

Those of you who attended YearlyKos know that Iraq War Veteran Jon Powers is one Democratic candidate. I met Jon at the Orleans County Democratic Party picnic in July. I conducted an interview with him at the time for the Journal-Register. It was at that time that I extended my hand and told him that I wanted to work on his campaign.

Powers declared in June and has since traveled throughout the 26th congressional district spreading his message to people. Thanks to his hard work, he already has netted two local endorsements plus a huge national endorsement.

(Cross-Posted at Upstate Blue)

After the defeat of Democrat Valerie Keehn in the Saratoga Springs Mayor's race, many of the region's conservative blogs are happily clamoring that this loss effectively means the immediate exit of progressive and liberal forces from the local political arena. Perhaps they may a bit too optimistic. A closer examination of demographics and voter registration trends, in fact, reveal the exact opposite. Progressives are growing in number in Saratoga County and will likely become a force to be reckoned with in the years to come.

Overall, I’d consider last night to be quite a mixed bag for Upstate New York Democrats…

(Cross-Posted at Upstate Blue)

For several years now there has been a major debate brewing over the conservation of the Adirondack Park wilderness. While many individuals, particularly vacationers and second home owners, would like to see the majority of the 6 million acre park remain preserved and “forever wild,” a number of full-time residents have been expressing concerns lately that the strict environmental regulations within the park boundaries may be hampering economic development throughout the region. In fact, some park residents have become so dismayed with the restrictions to the point where they would like to see the Adirondack Park outright abolished and the protected acreage returned to the public domain for future development purposes.

(crossposted in EcuProphets under my revdbh screen name)

Looking at a map of New York State's prisons (click here) is to get a clear picture of the politically engineered "population infusions" to ever-shrinking upstate, courtesy, largely, of six or seven zip codes in New York City. Several rural upstate counties have large prisons and the inmates are counted as local residents for the purposes of redistricting and by the Census bureau.

I want to take an opportunity to show you the faces of soldiers who have served our nation in Iraq and who do not agree with the Bush administration's policy on Iraq. Nothing phony about these men and women. Nope. They're the real deal. Their courage was a virtual magnet that drew thousands to a September 29th march in Syracuse, N.Y. where soldiers and citizens denounced the Iraq War.

The people in our Upstate New York communities support these (very real) servicemen and women. I want to take an opportunity to show you some (very real) photos of (very real) citizens from diverse walks of (very real) community life in Syracuse and Upstate New York who took a Saturday afternoon on a halcyon September day to tell George W. Bush what they think of his administration's (all-too real and disastrous) Iraq policy.

Also at The Albany Project

New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer has been going through a rough patch lately, thanks to GOP sockpuppets in the Murdoch press, but today he announced an agreement on a major development in the Catskills that had eluded his lazy predecessor for seven years.

According to The New York Times, the Spitzer compromise on the development of a new resort community near the state-owned Belleayre ski area is, in the words of a local environmentalist, "a victory for both the environment and for the local economy."

Details on the rare good news for upstate and Spitzer, below.

(Cross-posted at Upstate Blue)

So far, in several rural and suburban Eastern Upstate New York counties, there is still NOT A SINGLE theater around playing Michael Moore’s new documentary devoted to corruption and greed in the health care industry. Unsurprisingly, though, many of the counties in question rank near the very top in the state in terms of their Republican registration advantages. In fact, the GOP organizations in these counties are so powerful that more often than not Republican candidates run uncontested cycle after cycle in most local elections.

Elizabeth "Betty" Little (R - Queensbury), who currently represents much of the Adirondack region in the New York State Senate and is now mulling a run for the 20th Congressional Seat in 2008, appears to be largely bought off and firmly in the pockets of the pharmaceutical and health care industry.

Saratoga County, New York, has long been in need of reform and a better, more open form of government. Anyone who's familiar with Saratoga politics knows that for several generations, the countywide politics have almost been entirely controlled by a quite powerful, well-entrenched, semi-corrupt Republican machine under the control of "Boss" Jasper Nolan. In fact, in most Saratoga County towns and municipalities, Republicans regularly run uncontested on the ballot every November, so effectively the "representation" is all really being hired by the Republican machine, and not really by the people. Because of this, there has been a continued abuse of power throughout the Saratoga political structure.

A blogger who goes by the name of "Mark Bowers" (I wonder if he's of any relation to Chris Bowers at myDD?) today launched a site urging 2006 Democratic candidate Eric Massa to rematch John "Randy" Kuhl next year in New York's 29th Congressional District.

Spitzer-style reformer may receive a "rematch" from a recently defeated, semi-reactionary Bushite Republican.

Today I announce the launch of Upstate Blue, a new blog covering Upstate New York politics with a progressive slant.

A new ActBlue page, titled the "Upstate Progressive Majority Fund," has also been introduced to correspond with the new blog. The purpose of the new ActBlue account is to help raise funding to get more Democrats elected to Congress, the State Senate, and the State Assembly here in Upstate New York.