KirstenMortensen.com

You got it, New Yorkers: a bloated, paraciticistic bureaucracy that taxes us rapaciously one day, then gives a bit back (aka pork projects, STAR rebates) the next with a nice wet “see all we do for you?” kissy kiss.

Apparently it works for most of us most of the time. But what about now, when the economy is stumbling?

We’ll soon find out: as the WS Journal reported a few days ago, New York is one of many states facing a huge tax shortfall.

A spokesperson for Paterson is out there softening us up with the words “fiscal crisis.”

The Albany Times-Union piece lists some possible solutions. Guess what they cite at #1? Raise taxes, of course.

Once you’ve fed it and fed it and fed it, you can’t cut it off — it won’t let you.

Good thing the government’s in charge of keeping us happy and healthy and entertained! Such a deal, such a deal!

The economy is teetering. Our food & gas prices are climbing. And, lest we forget, we citizens of New York are the highest taxed in the country.

So how do we want our politicians to spend our tax money?

If you’re a construction worker, you’ll answer: Build Renaissance Square! Because yeah, if that happens, you’ll have a job for, ya know, a few months.

I can understand that. But what comes next?

Most likely, a big long morning after. For example, take this article by Mark Yost in the Wall Street Journal. He’s writing about sports stadiums, but what he says is enough to remind you of your worst public project hangover.

Sports economists have long argued that publicly financed stadiums are a waste of taxpayer money. And they have the data to prove it.

Yes, stadiums do create high-paying construction jobs for a year or two. But the vast majority of long-term employment is low-wage concession jobs. A Congressional Research Service study of the Baltimore Ravens stadium found that each job created cost the state $127,000. By comparison, Maryland’s Sunny Day Fund created jobs for about $6,000 each . . .

Then there’s the fact that only a sliver of the tax base really benefits from a sports stadium. And with ticket prices rising rapidly, that group is getting much smaller.

Consider the New York Yankees, who have the highest payroll in baseball and take in more than $300 million a year just from their television network. They’ll move into a new $1 billion stadium next year, about half of which was covered by the taxpayers. Seats behind home plate that cost $250 this year will be ten times that next year. The net result is that very few of the people who paid for the stadium will be able to afford a seat there.

But perhaps the best argument against publicly financed stadiums is straight out of Econ 101: Opportunity cost.

“What else could the city have invested its money in and what kind of a return would it have produced?” said King Banaian, chairman of the St. Cloud State (Minn.) Economics Dept. Despite reams of evidence to the contrary, the District proceeded with what Councilman Kwame Brown calls “the most controversial project in the history of the city.”

It was controversial, he said, because the city had more pressing needs. The city’s schools are in shambles; crime is out of control; and unemployment in distressed neighborhoods, like Southeast, is double the national average, if not higher.

Fortunately, people are raising their voices. In City Newspaper, Mary Anna Towler asks a whole slew of questions about Ren Square that need to be asked.

Was the big theater the best theater for Ren Square? If MCC or SUNY owns the theater, will taxpayers’ money be diverted from education to subsidize the theater?

If there’s not enough money for the theater, should we go ahead with the MCC campus and the bus station?

And: does downtown Rochester need Ren Square? A few years ago, it seemed to be about the only development hope we had. That’s no longer true. Is it a good idea to build Ren Square, taking prime development land out of the private market - and taking that land off the tax roles?

There’s also an excellent comment after the City piece:

It would be good if the transit portion of the project were as closely analysed as the PAC. Shouldn’t we also notice that over $100 million TRANSIT dollars are essentially being squandered in a way that will make the bus system slower, less efficient and much more costly to operate? Ther is no advantage to the city to leave the auditorium theater and sibleys building empty, as the current plan would do.To pursue such a plan in an environment of record gas prices, (not to mention global warming) falls on the spectrum between “sub optimal use of public funds” and “complete insanity”. The bus station is both the achilles heel and fatal flaw since it literally cannot be used by buses. This might explain why no traffic study has been done.

Hopefully the Ren Square cloud will clear in time to save the federal transit funds to use for badly needed transportation projects that actually move people TOWARDS their destination at lower energy and lower cost.

We have already spent $15.8 million on the Renaissance Square project.

Are we going to wake up and say “no more” before it’s too late?

You know we’re in trouble when our best hope is that Chuck “Godzilla” Schumer will find a way to jinx Ren Square like he did Indy Mac.

Rochester region EWGA chapter tournament, played at Ravenwood yesterday. I shot a 101 and took low gross for my flight.

I’m a happy camper :-)

Cross-posted at Golfolicious.

I haven’t found one of these since I was a kid . . .

Isn’t it gorgeous?

Most the ladybugs we see anymore are non-native species that were imported by the U.S. Dept of Agriculture in the 70s to control agricultural pests.

Sounded like a good idea at the time, but they’ve driven out many of our native species.

The law of unintended consequences.

And look what else I found: Cornell University is asking kids to find and photograph native ladybugs and submit the photos with a little supporting data (date and time seen, location, habitat).

To be able to help the nine spotted ladybug and other ladybug species scientists need to have detailed information on which species are still out there and how many individuals are around. Entomologists at Cornell can identify the different species but there are too few of us to sample in enough places to find the really rare ones. We need you to be our legs, hands and eyes. If you could look for ladybugs and send us pictures of them on Email we can start to gather the information we need. We are very interested in the rare species but any pictures will help us. This is the ultimate summer science project for kids and adults! You can learn, have fun and help save these important species.

The website tells about how a couple of kids found a nine-spotted ladybug in Virginia in 2006 — the first sighting of this species in the Eastern U.S. in 14 years. Isn’t that cool?

And what a great environmental science-based summer activity!

Jim Nugent, Water Quality Laboratory Manager at our Monroe County Water Authority, graciously answered the questions I emailed about our municipal fluoride policy.

So allow me to share :-)

First, the more factual bits.

The county spends $88,000 on fluoridation annually.

None of the fluoride we use here comes from China. Nugent writes that “We require that all source material used for all of our treatment chemicals originate from the USA or Canada. This requirement was approved by the Board of Directors in wake of 9-11.”

As far as purity, he says that the MCWA specifies, as part of its procurement process, that our fluoride be certified by the National Sanitation Foundation or Underwriter’s Laboratory. So if there’s, ya know, dog hair in our fluoride that’s who to blame.

When we get to the stickier questions — why do we do it, and is anyone rethinking it in light of recent science — Nugent toes the pro-fluoride line (not surprising) and suggests that if I’m looking for an agency to pester, it’s not the MCWA but the NYS Department of Health:

MCWA looks to the NYSDOH, the U.S. EPA, the Centers for Disease Control, and the medical and dental communities for their information and research on medical and dental health. The NYSDOH strongly recommends the use of fluoride as evidenced by their new series of fluoride information bulletins (attached). Fluoride addition is currently part of our NYDOH approved treatment process (since 1966) which can not be modified without NYDOH permission.

Under the Safe Drinking Water Act, the USEPA is required to set drinking water standards for the protection of human health. The EPA is required to review and re-evaluate theses standards on a six year cycle or at any time if warranted by new information. The NRC study you reference was part of this ongoing evaluation process. Your interpretation of the results of this study are not consistent with the USEPA’s.

Drinking water utilities are highly regulated entities in the US. These rules and regulations are established by NYDOH and USEPA and it is to them you should address your concerns. The USEPA has been very conservative, i.e., protective of human health, in it approach to fluoridation. It should also be noted that California, one of the most aggressive environmental states, just recently began requiring all water systems to fluoridate.

I appreciate your interest in this matter. I believe the USEPA has looked at fluoridation as hard as any compound it regulates and it, as well as NYDOH, CDC, and the dental community, still support the practice and its safety.

Am I persuaded by this?

No.

As just one point, I don’t agree that the USEPA has been “conservative” in its approach to fluoridation. A truly conservative approach would have been to leave the water alone with respect to fluoridation.

It’s that approach which is warranted, IMO. For starters, the assertion that fluoridated water leads to reduction in tooth decay doesn’t stand to scrutiny. It’s another correlation-but-not-necessarily-causation error that people so commonly make when they try to interpret health trends. See this round-up, for example, which includes bits like this:

“Graphs of tooth decay trends for 12 year olds in 24 countries, prepared using the most recent World Health Organization data, show that the decline in dental decay in recent decades has been comparable in 16 nonfluoridated countries and 8 fluoridated countries which met the inclusion criteria of having (i) a mean annual per capita income in the year 2000 of US$10,000 or more, (ii) a population in the year 2000 of greater than 3 million, and (iii) suitable WHO caries data available. The WHO data do not support fluoridation as being a reason for the decline in dental decay in 12 year olds that has been occurring in recent decades.”
SOURCE: Neurath C. (2005). Tooth decay trends for 12 year olds in nonfluoridated and fluoridated countries. Fluoride 38:324-325.

There’s more at the link.

To summarize my thinking at this point: on the one hand the value of fluoridation for its stated purpose (prevention of tooth decay) is questionable. On the other hand there are valid questions about whether consuming fluoridated water might cause health issues for some people (and maybe all of us, if fluoride concentrates in the pineal gland, like some researchers suspect — suppressed melatonin/serotonin production, anyone?).

I’ve read enough. I’m going to be conservative ;-)

I’m going to buy a distiller.

In case you haven’t checked lately, I’ve got the inside scoop, fellow Rochesterarians: Monroe County adds fluoride to our water.

Here’s what they say on their website. It’s not much.

Water provided by the MCWA contains about 1 ppm (part per million) fluoride, the level recommended by the EPA.

Also this, on their page about water treatment — next to a pic of a little girl brushing her teeth, presumably with fluoridated toothpaste:

Before the clean, pure water is pumped to your house, fluoride is added to it to help keep your teeth healthy and cavity-free.

Controversy about fluoridating water isn’t new, of course. But lately the debate has been heating up as more research suggests we really shouldn’t be drinking the stuff — even at the low levels set by our good friends at the EPA.

Consider for example this news piece, describing the National Research Council’s (NRC) “first-ever published review of the fluoride/thyroid literature:”

Fluoride, in the form of silicofluorides, injected into 2/3 of U.S. public water supplies, ostensibly to reduce tooth decay, was never safety-tested.

“Many Americans are exposed to fluoride in the ranges associated with thyroid effects, especially for people with iodine deficiency,” says Kathleen Thiessen, PhD, co-author of the government-sponsored NRC report. “The recent decline in iodine intake in the U.S could contribute to increased toxicity of fluoride for some individuals,” says Thiessen.

“A low level of thyroid hormone can increase the risk of cardiac disease, high cholesterol, depression and, in pregnant woman, decreased intelligence of offspring,” said Thiessen.

Common thyroid symptoms include fatigue, weight gain, constipation, fuzzy thinking, low blood pressure, fluid retention, depression, body pain, slow reflexes, and more. It’s estimated that 59 million
Americans have thyroid conditions.

Robert Carton, PhD, an environmental scientist who worked for over 30 years for the U.S. government including managing risk assessments on high priority toxic chemicals, says “fluoride has detrimental effects on the thyroid gland of healthy males at 3.5 mg a day. With iodine deficiency, the effect level drops to 0.7 milligrams/day for an average male.” (1.0 mg/L fluoride is in most water supplies)

Add that to the growing list. In 2006 the National Academy of Sciences called on the EPA to reevaluate its fluoridation recommendations, in part because we may be overexposing infants to fluoride:

(WASHINGTON, March 21) — A new report from the prestigious National Academy of Sciences (NAS) concludes that the current allowable level of fluoride in tap water is not protective of the public health and should be lowered, citing serious concerns about bone fractures and dental fluorosis, a discoloration and weakening of the enamel of the teeth that the committee noted is associated with other adverse health impacts.

The NAS report puts concerns about the safety of fluoride in tap water squarely in the mainstream of scientific thought. The committee called on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to reevaluate and tighten current safety standards in light of these concerns.

In just one example of the potential health risks from water fluoridation, the committee cited concerns about the potential of fluoride to lower IQ, noting on page six of the report that the “consistency of study results appears significant enough to warrant additional research on the effects of fluoride on intelligence.” IQ deficits, the committee noted, have been strongly associated with dental fluorosis, a condition caused by fluoride in tap water (NAS pg 175).

The committee’s findings support Environmental Working Group’s (EWG’s) recommendation that fluoride exposure should be limited to toothpaste, where it provides the greatest dental benefit and presents the lowest overall health risk.

Being conservative on matters like this, it seems to me it’s a no-brainer. Stop fluoridating the water now.

Make that “yesterday.”

We don’t understand it enough. We don’t understand how it accumulates and the effects of long-term exposure. We don’t understand how individuals react to given doses.

It’s not worth risking our babies’ brains.

But that’s just me. I decided to email the Monroe County Water Authority to ask them some questions about their fluoridation program and give them a chance to present their well-thought-out justification for fluoridating:

1. What is the MCWA’s position on fluoridation today given the current science?

2. What cost-benefit analysis have you done, and has it been updated to compare the presumed positive impact of fluoridated water on dental health vs. the potential public health impact of over-exposing infants and adults with thyroid issues?

3. How much does the county spend on fluoridation annually?

4. Considering how ubiquitous fluoridated toothpaste and rinses are today, does spending money to fluoridate people en masse really make for good public policy any more?

I’ll post again when I get a response.

A question I didn’t ask, but probably should have, is where they get their fluoride and whether they test it for purity. See this, for instance:

The fluoride added to public drinking water is actually fluorosilic acid. It is described by critics as an industrial waste product. Supporters prefer to call it an industry byproduct. Most of it has come from Florida’s phosphate fertilizer industry.

Florida’s phosphate rock is about 3.5 percent fluorine. To make phosphoric acid for fertilizer, the rock is mixed with sulfuric acid. The mixture produces a gas called silicon tetrafluoride. The gas is sent through ductwork and a water scrubber to create fluorosilic acid, a clear liquid that in high concentrations is toxic. The acid is what fertilizer companies sell as a fluoride additive.

However, one of the little-known effects of Hurricane Katrina was to cripple the production of fluoride. Since then, more of America’s supply of the controversial chemical is coming from China – a country not always known for the highest safety standards on exports.

Yeah, now, there’s an understatement . . . and you thought a little lead paint on your kid’s Thomas the Tank Engine toy was worrisome . . .

Instapundit linked to this piece in Popular Mechanics which begins

Yesterday’s tragedy makes it clear that the U.S. has been squandering its infrastructure legacy by turning a reckless blind eye to critical upgrades . . .

I don’t know about you, but I’ve suspected as much.

The plain fact is, an awful lot of our infrastructure is OLD, if not ancient, and in the back of our minds, we know it’s in trouble. How can we not, when the news keeps nudging us, tap tap tap, with little reminders?

So you have near-tragedies, like what happened here in Rochester last year when a parking garage ramp collapsed. You have mini-tragedies, like that steam pipe explosion in New York City last month. You have seasonal tragedies, like the short-circuiting electrical systems that are zapping dogs and pedestrians as we walk our streets.

The sad thing is, it took something of the scale of the Minnesota bridge collapse to wake people up.

What’s even sadder is that just because we’re awake doesn’t mean we’ll act like adults about it. I’ve already seen one comment in a thread about the bridge that blames Bush for it — the poster claims that had he not invaded Iraq, all that money we spent over there would have been used to repair bridges.

We need to wake up. There are two reasons nobody is taking care of our roads, and bridges, and underground pipes and electrical circuits.

The first is that we, the American people, aren’t taking responsibility for it. The best analogy is to compare it to owning an older home. You can’t just buy a house and figure the only think it will cost you is your mortgage payment. You’re going to have to budget for periodic repairs, and sometimes those repairs are going to cost a lot.

We should all be thinking that way about our national infrastructure. We should be looking at our roads, and bridges, and electrical grid, and thinking, “this is a huge and complicated and important thing, and it will naturally cost us billions in upkeep.”

We should recognize that THIS is a top, top priority at federal, state, and local levels — not subsidizing charity or designating National Pea Splitting Day or appointing special prosecuters because Senator Johnny called Senator Suzy a bad name in the hallway. Or building ugly performing arts centers that will continue to drain away our resources on non-essentials for generations to come.

The second reason we’re in the shape we are is that we have elected idiots to Congress. It’s Congress, not the President, who decides where to spend our money — OUR money — and what they do with it, if you haven’t been paying attention, is sneak it off, in complete secrecy, and give it to their friends and political supporters for totally bogus projects.

Argue if you want that our foreign policy is misguided, but right here at home, John Murtha has just grabbed 48 earmarks in the 2008 defense spending bill — totaling $150.5 million. Altogether, there are 1,337 earmarks in that bill — 3.07 billion dollar’s worth.

That’s our money. But don’t bother asking for an accounting of it — because as far as Congress is concerned, it’s THEIR money.

Meanwhile, according to the PM piece I linked above:

According to a report card released in 2005 by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), 160,570 bridges, or just over one-quarter of the nation’s 590,750-bridge inventory, were rated structurally deficient or functionally obsolete.

It’s time we made it clear to Congress that the state of our infrastructure is unacceptable — and that we want our tax money to be spent on things that really matter. The corruption and theft of our money has to end.

Technorati Tags: Minnesota bridge collapse, earmarks, pork

My friend from England was here for a visit (the reason I haven’t been blogging much!) and we spent a couple of hours last weekend at Mendon Ponds Park, a 2500-acre county park south of Rochester.

We were looking for Nature, since he doesn’t get much of that in London, and found some. Here’s a pic.

Isn’t he gorgeous?

Probably a “he” since the females usually have more blue on their hindwings, according to my butterfly field guide, Butterflies of North America by Jim Brock and Kenn Kaufman.

What’s really interesting, though, is that if you went by the top of the wings (along with the range) you’d assume this is an Eastern Tiger Swallowtail (Papilio glaucus). But if you look at the underside of his wings . . .

. . . it’s not so clear cut.

You see, there’s a Canadian Tiger Swallowtail too (Papilio canadensis), and it has a range that happens to overlap the northern part of New York State.

The two species of butterflies are very similar, but on the Canadian, the yellow marginal band underneath the forewing is continuous. Like this.

On an Eastern Tiger Swallowtail, that band would be broken — it would look like a series of dots.

But even that’s not the answer. My butterfly was big. Canadian Swallowtails are usually quite a bit smaller than Easterns. And the black stripe on the underside of the butterfly’s hindwing, closest to his body, would be a lot thicker if he were a Canadian.

As it turns out, the guide says differentiating between the two species “can be difficult along the lengthy, narrow strip where their ranges meet . . .” and to make it even more interesting, “some individuals appear intermediate.”

I’d say this is one of those individuals, wouldn’t you?

We saw several other species of butterfly while we were there — it’s a fantastic spot for butterfly watching, since there’s a terrific mix of wetlands and woodlands — but I wasn’t able to get nice photographs of the others.

This was the best shot I got of this little guy, which is too bad, because the focus isn’t clear enough and I can’t ID him. I’m guessing it’s some kind of Skipper, but the closest in the guide is a Chisos Banded-Skipper, and they’re described as “rare, found in our area only in oak woodlands of Big Bend National Park, Texas.”

Maybe I’ll try to go back and get another pic. There were two or three of them around. It’s a small butterfly but the banding on the wings was pretty striking.

This isn’t a butterfly, but a Yellow-collared Scape Moth, Cisseps fulvicollis. He’s hit some hard times, judging by how raggedy the back edges of his wings are. These are really common moths around here — you see them all the time on flowers during the day. For some reason I find them just a touch creepy. They look like they’re up to something.

The park has other critters besides Lepidoptera. There are about a billion chipmunks.

And of course, the requisite Canadian Geese. I liked this shot, only I wish the camera had captured a bit more detail on the head and neck of the goose in the foreground. The shots where I did get more detail, the goose wasn’t posing quite as nicely. Didn’t she know she was supposed to copy the arc of the log in the water? :-)

Technorati Tags: Mendon Ponds Park, Eastern Tiger Swallowtail, Canadian Tiger Swallowtail, Yellow-collared Scape Moth, Canadian Geese

Five years ago, my Time Warner cable bill was a little over $40/month. When I got the bill with the latest price hike, which caused total to crest above $60, my patience finally gave out.

Who do these people think they are?

Do they really imagine their gawdawful product is worth even half of that?

Do they think nobody notices we’re being charged to watch ads?

I seriously considered dropping it altogether. I really don’t watch that much television. I get most of my entertainment from the Internet, from books, and from my family and friends. Some of whom are so entertaining it’s a bit scary, ha ha ha.

But every once in awhile, I’m in the mood to catch a sitcom, or I notice an interesting movie or documentary. So I haven’t quite been able to bring myself to drop it.

Directv will at least gets the bill back down to what I find bearable. And I’ll be getting about 1/2 again as many channels, which means that when I am in the mood to watch t.v. I’ll be more likely to find something watchable.

And yeah, I know some companies are even worse — about a month ago, Instapundit blogged about his ComCast bill going up $50 in one pop.

This Businessweek piece says

You aren’t really paying more because there are so many channels. The main problem is programming costs have gone up — by 34% in the past six years, the GAO report found. Much of that is because of the high salaries commanded by sports celebrities and the actors who star in top-rated shows. Those higher costs are passed onto the cable operators, who pass them onto customers, explains Gary Arlen, a media analyst with Arlen Communications in Bethesda, Md. Says Arlen: “Someone has to pay.”

Cable operators have also spent a lot to upgrade their systems — more than $75 billion from 1996 to 2002, according to the GAO report. Those upgrades were mainly to allow them to offer high-speed Internet and digital service, and the extra fees they charge for those services will more than cover those costs over time. What makes consumer activists mad is that providers are also charging nondigital (or analog) customers more for cable as well. “The upgrade was paid for twice,” says Mark Cooper, director of research at the Consumer Federation of America.

The article also reports (from the same GOA study that “rates are about 15% lower in areas where two cable companies compete. Unfortunately such competition exists in only about 2% of markets nationwide.”

Except that — as is true with any purveyor of entertainment — there’s a lot of competition. The aforementioned books and friends, the Internet, Netflix, other new media.

Seen in that context, there’s almost something comical about these incremental rate hikes. Like a cartoon character disguised as a bush, trying to move only when you’re not looking. If they only hike the price by a couple bucks at a time, nobody will notice that cable has suddenly become a major household budget item. That we’re no longer paying for it with pocket change. We’re having to make choices. Cable . . . or a nice dinner out. Cable . . . or Internet . . . make that, two months of Internet. Cable . . . or a week’s worth of groceries.

I think they’re pricing themselves out of their own market. In fact, assuming the politicians stay out of it, I predict the cable industry will discover that it has to either start cutting prices (imagine that!) or watch its customer base melt away.

Ha.

Technorati Tags: outrageous cable bills