PlanetAlbany

"Ben Butler" in Albany

Well, the Civil War-era political general is in Albany County, NY, at the Curtain Call Theatre in Latham through February 8. It was sold out on preview and opening nights last Thursday and Friday, but we got in Saturday and found the play ("Ben Butler" by Richard Strand) well done.

The theater is about eight miles north of the state Capitol where Butler, despite being from Massachusetts, would have found himself at home. And the play's depiction of him as a canny lawyer and flexible politician, whose cleverness in 1861 made a real and positive (albeit somewhat accidental) contribution to freeing the slaves and winning the Civil War, might well appeal to Albany's fixers and bureaucrats, politicians, staffers, journalists, lobbyists and assorted hangers-on. If they can view him positively, so might the view in their own mirrors improve.

Butler was a general who failed to learn from his own military failures, and a politician whose stock is going up these days, although even going back to the first impeachment trial he got some positive along with the negative reviews. As for this production, I haven't seen any reviews yet, but give it a recommendation here.

WCSS, 1490 AM, 106.9 FM, Amsterdam, NY, at 9:08 Tuesday morning (updated)

While I usually discuss local issues by phone on Jason Subik's radio show, this time he's having me come to the studio to talk Trump and impeachment*. Can I make the defense case, even though I preferred Obama's policy of not sending weapons to Ukraine? Tune in tomorrow and find out.

*Although maybe the Gazette's purchase of the Recorder announced today will come up.

Update Tuesday evening: And here's the video, from interviewer and Gazette reporter Jason Subik's Facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/jason.subik/videos/10102278344710869/

 

 

Good stuff at Albany Institute

A Walter Launt Palmer exhibit is one of the things worth seeing now at the Albany Institute of History and Art. This one is called "Library at Arbour Hill," and is an interior view of the Ten Broeck Mansion in 1878. Palmer was from Albany, and the exhibit is a comprehensive view of his work, including other interiors, landscapes in all seasons, and Venetian vistas.

Also currently on view at the Institute is a richly painted 3,000-year-old Egyptian coffin lid, and a recently discovered Van Dyck portrait of St. Jerome.

Then there's  "The Schuyler Sisters and Their Circle," inspired by the hit musical Hamilton (which I remain too cheap to have seen). On Saturday, however, for the price of admission to the museum, I got to see and hear "a musical pastiche with narrative, song and instrumental interludes telling the story of the early years of Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton" -- which exceeded my expectations. Part of the credit goes to the Musicians of Ma'alwyck, and more to Eileen Mack, who portrayed Eliza, wrote the narrative and sang three songs. It was a truly impressive performance, and she had more feeling for her subject than whoever wrote the typically (for modern museums) tendentious and condescending captions accompanying the exhibit -- which is nonetheless worth seeing.

Debating Physician Assisted Suicide (location corrected)

The Union College Academy for Lifelong Learning is putting on eight events in January 2020 at its Schenectady campus. I will be participating (as seen above) in one on January 14 from 1 to 3 p.m. at College Park Hall (location changed from original post) on Nott Street, across from the Price Chopper HQ. It's not cheap to attend, however -- $20 for non-members of UCALL. Members pay $40 for all eight events.

I am, I fear, heavily outgunned by my rival debater, Robert Baker, a philosophy professor who has written several books on related topics. Nor do I expect most of the audience to be on my side. Still, I'm looking forward to it.

An Exchange with Casey Seiler (updated)

Below is printed an unedited exchange from this morning's Facebook thread of Casey Seiler, with his permission. Seiler is managing editor, and former state editor, of the Albany Times Union, for which he also writes a weekly column in the Sunday opinion section. (He is also co-host of the WMHT TV show New York NOW.) The thread is about this week's column, in which Seiler was highly critical of those voters in Western New York who last November re-elected Republican Congressman Chris Collins, who was at that time facing charges of insider trading. Collins pleaded guilty last week and resigned from Congress.

• Bob Conner The TU does not endorse on this kind of issue. Nor do voters vote on it. Rather, people and newspapers support politicians who agree with them about policy issues. The TU, for example, for many years endorsed every state Assembly member who voted Sheldon Silver in as speaker every 2 years, despite Silver's corruption being an open secret in Albany, well known to everyone paying attention, including you and presumably the editorial board. Their endorsements were made for the same reason Western New York voters backed Collins, agreement on policy issues such as abortion (crucially important to the TU editorial board, as demonstrated in last November's brouhaha re Jim Tedisco).
• Casey Seiler Bob Conner There's a significant difference between Silver's conduct prior to his arrest — behavior that the TU and others reported on extensively and that the edit board called out regularly — and the question of his support by Democrats after he was hauled into court. When that happened, the Capitol bureau put all of our regional Dems on the record on whether they were willing to support him as Speaker, and when they didn't immediately bounce him the editorial board called them out for it. My point isn't that people shouldn't make political calculations about how aligned they are with a given candidate, even one with significant tarnish on them; my point is that when an elected official has been credibly charged with multiple corruption felonies — Silver or Collins — voters should think about throwing over partisan concerns and kicking him to the curb.
• Bob Conner Up to a point, minister (as the senior civil servant used to tell his political boss in the classic Brit sitcom Yes Minister). To update my point, the TU has done much excellent reporting and commentary (including by yourself) about corruption in the current state administration, while endorsing Andrew Cuomo in every race. The editorial board is making exactly the same calculation as the Collins voters in Western New York, ie corruption issues are of no significance compared to social issues and other partisan considerations.
• Casey Seiler This is the argument that says, "Ehh, they're all corrupt so who cares?" My point, in case it isn't clear by now, is that there is a bright line, a categorical difference, between a pol who has done odious things but hasn't been credibly charged with multiple corruption felonies and one who has. That's why Paul Ryan relieved Collins of his committee post after he had been arrested as opposed to when he was merely the subject of a fairly well-detailed ethics complaint by Rep. Louise Slaughter — who Collins subsequently called a "despicable human" for diming him out.
• Casey Seiler Bob Conner Also: You bet the TU edit board endorses based on this kind of issue — go ask former Rensselaer County District Attorney Joel Abelove.
• Bob Conner I don't accept your characterization of my position, because I do not think I'm being cynical. Or at least not as cynical as an editorial board which, when making endorsements, ignores corruption issues reported in its own paper, leaving itself room to be "shocked, shocked" (like Capt. Reynaud in Casablanca) if and when its political ally is indicted. BTW, did the TU endorse Abelove when he first ran? If not, I think your example does nothing to back up your point.
  Do you object to me reprinting unedited our exchanges here, linking to your Sunday column, on my PlanetAlbany blog?
• Casey Seiler Bob Conner No objections — as I've always told my son: Don't say something on social media that you wouldn't put on a billboard in the front yard.
• Bob Conner Thank you.

 

Notes: State Senator Jim Tedisco (a Republican) gets mentioned in my first post on the thread in reference to a controversy, covered in-depth on this blog (and nowhere else), when the TU retracted its endorsement of him.

Sheldon Silver, a Democrat who was longtime speaker of the state Assembly, is currently free on appeal after being convicted on corruption charges.

Joel Abelove, a Republican, served one term as district attorney, being defeated last year by a TU-endorsed Democrat. He himself faced criminal charges in connection with his handling of a police shooting in Troy. A judge dismissed the charges against Abelove, in a decision which is being appealed by the state attorney general (a Democrat).

I do not mean to imply in the above exchange that I expect Cuomo (a Democrat) to be indicted. I do not expect it. He is a smart lawyer and the most effective player by Albany rules, which give him ample scope to dominate ethics policy and every other aspect of state politics. 

I also probably should not have called the TU editorial board cynical. In fact, I think their downplaying the importance of corruption in relation to other issues is entirely defensible. What I object to is pretending that the editorial board is acting differently from the Collins voters (among whom I would likely have been numbered had I lived in the district). They are on different political sides, with opposite views on social issues, but, contra  Seiler, they agree about not attaching much significance to corruption when making political decisions. So do the overwhelming majority of politicians and voters, from DC, the EU and UN down to the local level. A big problem with this, obviously, is that we are not going to reduce corruption if we don't care about it. But we are going to do even less good if we try to live in a fantasy world, determined to convince ourselves that our party or newspaper is battling like an unsullied comic book hero against the other side's corruption.

The other Corning tower

The most famous Corning Tower is the Albany skyscraper, the centerpiece of Empire State Plaza, which is named after Erastus Corning 2nd, the long-serving 20th century mayor of Albany. But the city of Corning in the southern tier is named after another Erastus Corning, steelmaker, banker, politician and railroad king, whose son, also named Erastus, built a monument to him there 11 years after his death.

The original Erastus, like many New York Democrats, had an ambivalent attitude toward the Civil War, but prospered by it. His spendthrift son did not serve in the war. The son's grandson, for whom the Empire State Plaza tower is named, did serve in World War II. He later betrayed his constituents and benefited his own insurance company by letting Nelson Rockefeller build the Plaza on which his Tower stands.

Not far from Corning, NY, is Elmira, where on the graceful grounds of Elmira College sits the Mark Twain Study, a building which used to be attached to Twain's summer home nearby. Twain wrote most of his best work there, free from distractions. Olivia Langdon was from a wealthy abolitionist family in Elmira, graduated from Elmira College in 1864, and married Samuel Clemens in 1870. Clemens (Twain) famously deserted from a Confederate militia company and wisely avoided most of the Civil War by Roughing It out West, where he laid the foundation of his literary career. He is a character in The Last Circle of Ulysses Grant.

 

 

The Dumbing Down of Public Education

Nice column in the New York Post this week by Michael Benjamin, about the idiocy of New York City political and educational leaders crusading against gifted-and-talented programs. The establishment reasoning is that such programs tend to have too many Asian and white children, and too few black and Hispanic ones, which makes them racist -- a hard case to make against Benjamin, who is the black guy in the middle of the doorway in that never-gets-old New York Times photo from 2008, when the Eliot Spitzer scandal was breaking in New York City as we watched on Betty Flood's TV, on the third floor of the state Capitol.

He was then then a Democratic assemblyman from the Bronx, and unlike a great many state legislators, was willing and able to think for himself. The party apparently "tired of Benjamin's go-it-alone ways".  

Now he is a member of the Post's editorial board, and writes:

"I had a miserable middle school experience because there weren’t enough seats in the one special-progress program in the one junior high school in District 8 that offered it. I persevered, fought the bullies and passed the Bronx Science exam.

"Back then, you were accused of acting white if you were “bookish” or spoke standard English. Today, Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza and his fellow travelers scold us for allegedly internalizing white supremacist values, such as using good grammar, proper spelling and wanting to outdo others academically.

"Carranza is already on the record saying that he considers G&T classes another example of segregation. This, even though the classes are virtually non-existent in minority school districts. ...

"There isn’t an African American or Latino who is happy about the large decline in the number of kids from our communities attending specialized high schools. But the response shouldn’t be to dig out the pipeline but to restore it.

"We can create better outcomes for minority kids by identifying and nurturing their academic and creative talents early. And if that means bringing them together for special attention, then so be it."

Meanwhile, at the state level, the Board of Regents is moving toward abolishing the Regents exams.

Schools cut art and music programs, and embrace PC politics as pedagogy, grinding the life out of the humanities. Standards have been falling for many decades.

 

Skip Parsons' Riverboat Jazz Band

That's the wife in the doorway of McGeary's in downtown Albany, where we went Monday to catch Skip Parsons' Riverboat Jazz Band, a lively bunch of good musicians including our friend the drummer Tim Coakley. The house on the left was home to the teen-age Herman Melville, before the family fell on harder times and they had to move to Lansingburgh. He was working then and attending school part-time, including Albany Academy up the hill (also still standing, and now the headquarters of the city school district in Academy Park, across from the state Capitol, Court of Appeals, and the county courthouse).

We arrived just after 7 to discover the dining room, where the band was playing, already full, so herself, Tess Collins, hospitably gave us her control perch to see and hear the show, along with a quick reference to Mother Judge and the history of it all. The food and ale were good, too. Skip's band has a regular gig there now on the second Monday of the month. Be there or be square.

23 Minutes to Showtime

Those few empty seats had filled up by the 8 p.m. start time for "In the Heights" at the Park Playhouse in Albany, where the guy who introduced said it was the biggest Tuesday night crowd he'd ever seen there in 23 years. Most of the seating is free of charge, and you can stake out your lawn chair there well before the performance and walk around lovely Washington Park.

The show is a hit, and deservedly so. It's the first musical by Lin-Manuel Miranda, whose later and better known work "Hamilton" is coming to Proctor's in Schenectady next month. I'm too cheap to see "Hamilton," though I look forward to doing so eventually (and have a bright idea regarding which book -- not by Ron Chernow -- Miranda should option next).

Meanwhile, Park Playhouse does a good job with "In the Heights," and the occasional siren drifting in from outside fits in well with the barrio set of Washington Heights in New York City. Go see it during this last week of its run in Albany. It is playing through Saturday.

 

The Cassandra Syndrome

Who could possibly have guessed this would happen? That the federal government would put the Saratoga Center nursing home in Ballston Spa "on a watch list of the most troubled facilities in the nation."

Or that staffing and other cuts there have led to terrible conditions and consequences for patients?

Ballston Spa happens to be the seat of Saratoga County government, which used to own and operate the nursing home, then called Maplewood Manor. Saratoga is the most prosperous county in upstate New York, with a booming economy. But costs were increasing at the Manor, so the county privatized it in 2015. 

The workers and their union, the Civil Service Employees Association, warned against this, but no one else seemed to care. No politicians or pundits protested, as far as I am aware, except, ahem, for me. I wrote two opinion pieces about it for the online Ballston Journal, in August and December 2014 (which I believe I linked to this blog), predicting the bad consequences which now in fact have happened.

I don't work for the Journal anymore, but am putting the matter on record again here, to provide further evidence of the broken state of politics.