What prompted this post is the building housing the Amsterdam Police Department at 1 Guy Park Ave. Here are some street views of the building: 

I’ll admit to not liking the building for a myriad of reasons — the scale, its ‘coldness’, its symbolism as a creation enabled by urban renewal and the arterials cutting through the city, .. I could go on.

With my curiosity piqued as to the architectural origin of the building, I did a little research and found that , from what I can discern, the building appears to be of an architectural style called ‘brutalist’.

Here is an explanation of the origin and the term: 

Like International style, Brutalism is sometimes classified as its own distinctive subtype, though it is considered a variant of post-war modernism. Despite its apparently appropriate name, Brutalism is derived from the French term, beton brut, which translates to “rough concrete”. It is essentially a style based on the shaped and molded forms of concrete, a thick, masonry variation of modernist architecture. Regardless of how the International style, Modernism, and Brutalism are classified, they all share the fundamental modernist principle promoted by Louis Sullivan and his contemporaries and successors, that “form forever follows function,” without relying on revivalist architectural styles of the past.

As someone who harps endlessly on preserving versus demolition, I have to admit it’s hard to muster the same energy when faced with the question of the fate of  brutalist buildings.

I think I’m coming around somewhat but can’t deny that I agree with this: 

 [snip] as Manhattan Institute fellow Theodore Dalrymple who wrote a book about the work of Brutalist architect Le Corbusier and told the New York Times that Brutalism is “absolutely hideous, like scouring pads on the retina.”

Ray listed the five stages of development as they worked in his city, in rough chronological order:

   Stage 1: Coffee, Clubs, and Restaurants

   Stage 2: Arts and Entertainment

   Stage 3: Technology/Office

   Stage 4: Housing

   Stage 5: Retail

Flippin here: Then we have the vital piece, which I’ve advocated before, a public-private entity that is funded and tasked with a mission to bring about economic development:

In his remarks, Ray also allowed that “money matters” and that is also where Schenectady stands out as a model.

Indeed, Schenectady Metroplex was formed under New York State statute that also allowed it to impose a special “half-cent” sales tax (i.e. an additional 0.5% tax within the Metroplex region) whose proceeds would be used exclusively for economic development.  That has created a robust and reliable revenue stream that Metroplex has been able to leverage continuously throughout its efforts.

Flippin here: Priorities and tactics matter:

Besides the stages listed above, Ray’s second major lesson was to “build from strength”.  It seems logical, of course, but required tough choices for the city.  Many redevelopment groups focus their attention on the worst performing neighborhoods and try to fix those “problem” areas.

Flippin here: It’s interesting to note two things from the above:

1) Retail is dead last. In our fair city, we still have proponents of the Retail First strategy. Even with the now vacant Chalmers lot, we have folks who think retail is the top priority

2) Speaking of Chalmers, folks may point to housing as #4 instead of #1 per Kaufman’s proposal. A fair point but that is why I titled my post with the word “models” — there are multiple models that may work in the city but in my view, we are clutching discredited models (retail first) and now working with no model at all.

The questions and issues I highlighted in my post  Big remain the same. A working model would help us get closer to understanding and answering them.

The scapegoat of choice is “social services” which really is code speak for the belief that all public assistance goes to the undeserving Hispanics. Indeed, the prevailing urban legend even posits that recruitment posters are to be found in New York City and elsewhere to recruit Hispanics to move into the city. The reason, of course, is that Montgomery County is imagined to pay higher rates for social services than other counties. Of course, the latter point is flatly false but important to the narrative of what has driven and now drives Hispanics here.

I mean, what else could explain why Hispanics moved here?

Here may be an explanation (from the June 28, 1992 Reading Eagle Newspaper):

Once three huge mills wove some 12 million yards of carpet each year. Knitting mills like the Adirondack, the Warner and the Dean spun out hundreds of thousands of garments, The city had the largest pearl button factory in the workld and it produced more brooms than anyplace on earth.

But the jobs dried up. Many factories were torn down. Some still standing are abandoned shells, skeletons of a dead industrial era.

The garment and carpet industries, which recruited heavily among Hispanics, especially from Costa Rica and Puerto Rico in the 1960s and 1970s , moved offshore or folded in the face of foreign competition.

Well, that bit of history certainly muddies the water around our tidy urban legend. It’s now much more complex to understand the political, economic and social context of what makes the city this way than the false, yet so simple to understand urban legend perpetuated decade after decade. Unlike what we hear — that those people move here for handouts– it appears that many of those people were recruited to work here. Que sorpresa!

Maybe it’s just me but it seems the lessons surrounding economic changes and disruptions from the disappearance of the carpet/textile industries still need to sink in to the collective thinking even today. How can you expect to move forward when you hold on to the false pretenses of yesterday? How many decades, or centuries even, before you adopt policies or strategies that fit with existing reality?

UPDATED

Commenter robertstern802450846 states the folliowing (bold is my highlights):

While I agree that Montgomery County is hardly some sort of welfare shangri-la, the notion that hispanics living there are all descendants of a few people lured to work in carpet mills in the 1960s does not seem to be supported by facts. I believe that the variety mills did not need to import immigrants to fill there unionized jobs and were pretty much gone from Amsterdam by 1960 anyway. Not your usual thorough analysis.

Response: I believe my conclusions are well supported by multiple sources and disprove your assertions above that this did not occur in Amsterdam.  (from Schenectady Gazette, March 31,2002 article by Bob Cudmore titled Anthroplogist Made a Study of Amsterdam:

I’d be interested to see the facts supporting your counterargument that Hispanics were drawn here for the welfare benefits.

UPDATED X 2

Commenter Diane states the following (bold are my highlights):

I too have heard that the mills did hire Latinos for some of the factory jobs back in the 60s and possibly the 70s. However, the Latinos living here now on welfare have moved here to make better use of their welfare dollar which goes much farther up here than in the big city and to get away from the crime. We do not have jobs here, so it cannot be why they move here.

Per Diane’s reasoning, there are no jobs here , hence any influx of people moving here, must therefore be strictly for welfare. Her secondary claim is that you move to Montgomery County to get a better buy for your welfare dollar. Of course, her argument puts forth not a single data point but let’s see if the data supports the reasoning here.

First, the claim is that there are no jobs for Montgomery County residents. If true, then the unemployment rate would be 100%. Per recent figures, the actual unemployment rate for Montgomery COunty is 10% per the BLS. In other words, 90% of people are not unemployed, or indeed, jobs do exist. Also, the notion that people might commute to other counties , such as me, simply do not exist.

Second, for Diane’s claim to be valid, we would expect that each and every person that moves here would be on social services. In other  words, if we know 1000 people move to Montgomery County, then our social services roll would also jump by 1000.

Luckily for us, we can get to some numbers to put her claim to the test:

Using data from NY State Dept of Health , we can calculate the net increase in medicaid and subsistence between 2005 and 2009 as an increase of 1278 adults and children. I excluded the aged and the disabled as likely to move. I also am helping Diane’s argument by assigning the increase in social services solely to those moving here to take advantage of the benefits. In other words, we are ignoring the economic fact that social services usage increases due to economic and social conditions such as loss of job, failing health, et al.

Here is the calculation for the 1278 increase:

Next, we have to get a sense of how many people moved into Montgomery COunty from the New  York City area during that time. To prove Diane’s point, we need to show that approximately 1278 people moved to this county as that would explain the rise in the social services rolls. Again, let’s favor Diane’s argument and say that the increase of 1278 is only from newly moved people versus existing residents.

To get a sense of the influx of people , we can use data from the Census located here. As the table below shows, the influx of people from the New York area totals 310 with a margin of error of 373. So let’s again favor Diane’s argument and say that the total is 310+373 or 683.

Where that leaves us is that if we assume every person from NYC is Hispanic and on welfare, we cannot get to the 1278 figure to explain the rise in social services. In other words, there are 600 other people on the social services rolls who are not from NYC and apparently not Hispanic. I’m not sure how we classify the excess other than , in Diane’s view, we are attracting people beyond NYC to move here for the welfare.

As a final counter to Diane’s point, we see that an estimated total of 2592 (margin of error ) people moved into Montgomery County from 2005 to 2009 from the locales as shown below. Interestingly, we see the bulk are not from NYC but rather from closer locales. Anyway, the takeaway is that we had nearly twice as many people move here than appeared on the social services rolls or in other words, not everyone who moves here ends up on social services even under the most gracious, and frankly unrealistic, assumptions in terms of the numbers.

What prompts this post the following from the Business Review story Kaufman gears up to transform iconic Albany Int’l complex: 

“This is incredible,” said Kaufman, president and CEO of The Harmony Group, which just bought the 400,000-square-foot property for $1.35 million. “You never see a building preserved to this degree.”
Kaufman, who transformed the massive Harmony Mills cotton plant in Cohoes into 231 upscale apartments, is laying the groundwork for a $40 million to $50 million conversion of Albany International into apartments and professional offices.

And look what people in non-12010 zip codes say about such things:

“I think it is wonderful for Menands and the Capital District that Uri can have the imagination and the plans to take what has been an historic building and develop it into something that can be vital, that can make a difference in the area,” said Susan Siegel, a company spokeswoman.

Many questions come to mind reading the above but let me boil it down to 3 key sets of questions:

1) Where is the plan which was to have emerged for developing Chalmers once it was torn down? Where are all the developers and ideas that were sure to burst upon the scene once the site was demolished?

2) In light of the above, why are opponents to Chalmers still voted to hold political office? Or listened to on local radio? Or deemed relevant for policy and decision making?

3) Why does Amsterdam shun outside  investment and ideas? What is the cultural and institutional mindset here that expends tremendous energy working against ideas while expending close to zero energy on working toward an idea.

Rubio:  In fact, a major cause of our recent downturn was a housing crisis created by reckless government policies.

Me: It’s a fact that a major cause of the crisis resulted from lack of regulation and oversight.

Rubio: When we point out that no matter how many job-killing laws we pass, our government can’t control the weather – he accuses us of wanting dirty water and dirty air.

Me: A conflation of environmental policy/regulations and global warming denialism wrapped into a strawman argument.  While Rubio’s platform despises nuance, it is not the same to say your desire to repeal environmental regulations to help certain industries involves tradeoffs to quality of life is equivalent to wanting dirty air and water. Let’s not conflate outcomes with intent.

Rubio: All these measures are key to helping the economy grow. But we won’t be able to sustain a vibrant middle class unless we solve our debt problem.

Every dollar our government borrows is money that isn’t being invested to create jobs. And the uncertainty created by the debt is one reason why many businesses aren’t hiring.

Me: I work in a small business and I can assure you beyond any reasonable doubt that our hiring decisions have zero relationship to the size of the deficit in the near and medium term. 

It’s intriguing to me that Rubio is considered a new voice or direction for the Republican party when he’s hardly different , from a policy perspective, than the Republican candidates who just ran for the presidency. He’s not different, es lo mismo — rejection of science to ideology; rejection of economic outcomes and lessons to ideology; and an unwillingness to deal with problems with any degree of seriousness to actually solving them.

For those less familiar with Rand Paul, he,  is an acolyte of Ayn Rand’s objectivist school of thought as applied to public policy. In short, Rand Paul, like Paul Ryan, believes the objectivist principles of Rand can be applied to public policy and decision making. It is , in large part, from this ideology that we get markers vs takers, 53% versus 47%, and the moral underpinnings for conceptualizing affordable health care as a privilege versus a need, and on.

Like the Tea Party, Randians believe governments role should , as a core principle, be absent in almost all matters, with responsibilities and choices falling to individuals or, if need be, local municipalities. To the Tea Party and Randians, the federal government , in its very essence, serves to undermine and usurp individual rights. Indeed, the Tea Party rails against government and serves to invalidate valid democratic processes of Constitutional law through movements such as truthism, birtherism, et al.

So what does all this have to do with Storm Nemo? Quite a bit.

My thought experiment is rather simple– let’s subject how we deal with snow storms like Nemo under a Randian/ Tea Party ideology and practice.

First and foremost to the Tea Party principles, the government would have zero role and thereby levy no taxes. In other words, we are each responsible for snow removal. At the same time, I am not bound to remove snow per my own individual rights.

Now, you may ask about the roads and streets and how we travel about when faced with 8 to 12 inches of snow. That is your problem , not mine , as I only have to worry about my portion of the road and how I travel. Indeed, per Randian principles, if I see you broken down on the side of the road, I have no moral compunction to help you; in fact, I should celebrate my individual superiority at being able to drive while you spin your wheels. Think of if as the invisible hand of the market pushing my 4-wheel drive along and smacking you down. Likewise, if you’re elderly and fallen on my icy road, don’t expect me to help you or even call 911, as 911 imposes a tax and would be run by a government agency.

You’re on your own , old man.

As the roads would not be publicly owned and maintained, we would expect that we would have corporations or individual owners who build and maintain roads. Ideally, we would have individual ownership as this is the Randian ideal so , in essence, each and every street would have delineation marks of who owns which section of the road. Of course, as it’s private property, I would have to go to the free market to negotiate rights and fees of passage with each owner on my street. And yes, I could erect tolls as well as that is within my right as a property owner. Under the idealized notion of free markets, I would be expected to pay at each crossing from lot to lot.

Now, here is the interesting part in our idealized world — what happens if I can’t buy rights to travel to my house or if a private owner chooses not to plow their section of the road? To this question, there is no Randian answer, otherwise, we are imposing collectivist, statist government sanctions against individual choices. It can’t be otherwise: either everyone acts accordingly and uniformly with no individual variance (sounds like communism to me) so folks can travel the streets and get to work/school on time or we need to impose a set of rules and adopt some form of government. Either way is unworkable in practice.

And there you have the response to the SOTU from the Randians and the Tea Party — an ideology wholly devoid of policy for solving real world problems built upon a fictionalized economic and governance framework as if it did.

What is snow? 

SNOW!

Snow cover is a part of the cryosphere, which traces its origins to the Greek word kryos for frost. Snow is precipitation in the form of ice crystals. It originates in clouds when temperatures are below the freezing point (0 degrees Celsius, or 32 degrees Fahrenheit), when water vapor in the atmosphere condenses directly into ice without going through the liquid stage. Once an ice crystal has formed, it absorbs and freezes additional water vapor from the surrounding air, growing into a snow crystal or snow pellet, which then falls to Earth.

Snow: Friend or Foe?

Don’t get fooled by kids frolicking in the snow with their snow balls, sleds and snow angels! Snow can be dangerous!

– Don’t immerse your head in snow as it impedes inhalation and ultimately may be fatal if immersion continues for an extended period. If you find your head immersed in snow, immediately stand up.

– Don’t follow the speed limit. In fact, your speed should be zero as a reminder to other drivers to slow down. Once snow starts to accumulate, you should immediately jump in your car and run useless errands if you satisfy one or more of the following criteria:

1) Your car has poor tread, summer tires or is a bitchin’ Camaro with summer and extra wide tires.

2) You are terrified of driving in snow yet hope to be an inspiration to other terrified drivers

3) You remain steadfast in your belief that climbing steep, snow-covered hills is not a problem as long as you can spin your wheels fast enough.

–Don’t spend even an extra second in the snow at all costs. Sure, it might be fun at first to throw a snowball but it’s literally a downhill slippery slope to feeling some cold and perhaps even a chill! Snow makes you think it’s all fun and games until you realize you just can’t throw one snowball. Soon, it’s two, three and before you know it, you’ve thrown forty or even fifty snowballs! Side effects of snow are chills, sore throwing arms, rosy cheeks and wet gloves and boots.

Just say No to Snow!

Preparing for Snow

Here are the 5 Must-Haves to Weather a Snow Storm

1) AM Radio — How else will you know whose street is not getting plowed or how snow makes streets narrower , not wider, and hence more difficult to travel? Also, stay in tune with how a single snowstorm disproves global warming and how snow takes away your second amendment gun rights.

2) Liquor — A weekday at home with your significant other and possibly your kids makes the stress of snowfall virtually unbearable. Why waste time on quaint outdoor or indoor activities like family time and relaxed conversation when solace can be had two fingers at a time?

3) Local Weathercasts — How will you know what is happening around you unless local newscasters prop themselves on a snowy street, preferably with snow plows cruising by? How will you know what the threat level looks like unless it’s from a teleprompter script? Stay up-to-date with a doppler radar that only a trained metereologist can interpret for you; color coded maps are virtually incomprehensible to a lay person.

4) Facebook — It is almost a statistical certainty that one of your friends will be somewhere warm, tropical and gloat at their fate in life while you bitterly contemplate yours in the meanwhile.

5) Guns– How else will you protect yourself from the elements? I’m not sure who the elements are — a gang, thugs?–  or what they look like but whatever group they are, they’d better not lumber onto my snow covered lawn.

Stay in tune with this blog here or on Twitter for a minute-by-minute, snowflake-by-snowflake watch as this snownami-cane touches down.

What intrigues me is the sense that more people would give credence to the predictive models based upon  Punxsutawney_Phil than, let’s say, models on climate science for global warming.

After all, couldn’t Punxsutawney_Phil be considered a tool of the UN, Agenda 21, environmental wackos , yadda, yadda , all determined to destroy the American way of life?

Just a fleeting thought.

Punxsutawney_Phil

On January 30th, 2013, actor Jim Nabors travels from his home in Hawaii to marry his longtime partner in Seattle. The liberal media intentionally ignores the explosive connection between Nabors residing in Hawaii and Obama’s claim to have been born in Hawaii – the very same state. Not surprisingly, another coverup by the liberal media to hasten the decline of America and the rejection of our traditional values and freedoms.  What follows, explains , in exacting detail, what the liberal media does not want you to know.

On October 30, 1960, the first episode of the Andy Griffith show airs. Given the Kenyan, anti-colonial worldviews held by Obama’s parents, the Obamas immediately recognize the iconic status of the Andy Griffith show in establishing the bedrock of family and cultural values that underpin our country, and indeed, our very democracy. Determined to undermine the democratic ideals of this great country, the Obamas seek spiritual guidance, as they did each day, in the Koran and then embarked on their mission to undermine America. That very night, they would conceive Barack Hussein Obama.

While Obama’s Hawaiian birth certificate purports to show that he was born in Hawaii on August 4, 1961, it is implausible and indeed, as multiple sources definitively demonstrate, an impossibility. From all evidence, the term of Obama’s pregnancy was a typical 9-month term, so a 9-month term from the first air date of the Andy Griffith show,  would place the date of Barack Obama’s birth sometime between June 30 and July 4, 1961! (Oh, what bitter irony if it were Independence Day! )

So what accounts for the 30 day discrepancy between his actual birth and his claimed birthday? It is the Obama’s trip to and back from Kenya, heretofore, a secret trip known only to the Obamas.

From confidential sources and documents, we can confidently say that their trip to Kenya gave birth to not only Barack Hussein Obama but to the inspiration for a time machine based upon some ancient texts granted to them in Kenya. While details of the texts are not known, they present a clear blueprint for ending American hegemony at the hands of Kenyan anti-colonialism. Soon after  Barack’s birth, the Obamas realized that their ingenious plan lay in ruins upon learning of the citizenship requirements to be elected as a US president. It was in Kenya where the Obamas conspired to forge a birth certificate in Hawaii and reestablish Barack Obama’s legitimacy for his eventual presidency.

On August 4, 1961 , the Obamas , with baby Barack held tightly in his mother’s arms, would enter Kapi’olani Hospital in Honolulu to set their plan in motion. The Obamas timed their arrival at the maternity ward precisely at the start of the Andy Griffith Show when Americans showed their commitment and ideals to American exceptionalism by watching TV, like all great generations thereafter. Taking advantage of a distracted and giggling nurse, Mr. Obama quickly penned a birth certificate for Barack to be placed quickly back in the manila folder upon her desk.

To her horror, Mrs Obama realized that her husband, also distracted by the zany antics of Barney Fyfe, had filled in the baby’s name as “Barney Fyfe Obama”. While some sources claim that Mr Obama had pressed Mrs Obama on several occasions to name their son “Barney Fyfe” for the appeal to American values, Mrs Obama held firm in her convictions that “Barack Hussein” was an infinitely more traditional name for American politics and indeed, the presidency.  Several sources have confirmed that holding the original birth certificate under a tin foil lamp will reveal the name “Barney Fyfe” under a thin veneer of whiteout and parchment.  It is not mere coincidence that “Bar” forms the first three letters of “Barack” and “Barney” nor that both names have 6 letters which concatenated form  “66”, the prefix to “666”.

On January 20, 2009, President Obama’s first inauguration, he secretly whisked  three books and a single CD into the White House. The books were: the Koran; a memoir by his father titled “Dreams of a Kenyan Anti-Colonialist”; and an old book bound in parchment with Kenyan lettering which roughly translates to “Emmet”. President Obama’s CD contained one song: “The Impossible Dream” by Jim Nabors.

Sometime in 2009, in the midst of the financial crisis of his first term with an intentionally  distracted nation, Obama established a secret program called “Operation Golly” to work on what Obama carried in his parchment bound book “Emmet” on election day, which based on Nabors same sex marriage, we now know to be an ancient Kenyan text on time machines.

While highly confidential, we know Operation Golly went operational shortly before Obama’s historic statements in support of gay marriage sometime in the summer of 2012. However, Obama did not time travel until sometime after the November 2012 elections so same-sex marriage referendums would pass in key states such as Maryland, Maine and importantly Washington state. Armed with binders full of clippings from news accounts of the passage of same-sex passage and its growing support, Obama carried out the final phase of his mission meticulously crafted by his parents decades ago and traveled to the set of the Andy Griffith show sometime early in the fourth season of the classic series. Although it is not clear during which episode, we know it had to occur before episode 7,  “A Black Day for Mayberry”, undoubtedly whose title was inspired by Obama’s visit to Nabors.

Obama’s mission clearly had the desired effect: turning a formerly straight icon of propriety to the homosexual lifestyle upon seeing the inevitability of same-sex marriage. Much like us today, Nabors undoubtedly felt compelled to abandon traditional marriage to adopt the gay lifestyle upon seeing gay married couples. However, the more sinister and nefarious aspect of Obama’s mission would be liberal undermining of the traditional America and indeed our very Constitution by attacking the essence of American exceptionalism – its classic sitcoms. Unquestionably, Jim Nabors would not be gay if not for Obama and gay marriage. Obama had dealt a devastating blow to our very democracy; his fascist, communist, anti-colonialism mission succeeded.

A final point of significance in the story centers on Nabors marrying in Seattle, the birthplace of Starbucks. This is also no mere coincidence. The answer lies hidden in the Starbucks logo, which now features a mysterious mermaid. From our sources, it looks more than likely that the parchments so dear to Obama , in fact, originate from  long lost Atlantis , which some consider submerged in the waters of the Indian Ocean near Kenya. Undoubtedly this is a subtle nod to the origins of the mermaid logo, which at one time featured bare breasts – another assault on traditional values and the American way of life.  Indeed, it is an embrace of European socialism given the prevalence of naked breasts in European public squares and museums.

Without question, Obama will continue his assault on American ideals and his appeasement to foreign lands and leaders.  With his time machine,  Obama will continue to change the course of history to undermine our Constitution and our very way of life. It’s only a question as to which iconic TV sitcom will be next.