The Next Big Thing (At Least To Me.)

Originally uploaded by Phil At Sun

How to make me a huge fan of your band:

1) Cool guest stars (J Macsis–Dinosaur, Jr., Patterson Hood–Drive-By Truckers)

2) Publicly
idolize
and sound influenced by Bruce.

3) Name check one of my idols in your lyrics:

“Raise a toast to Saint Joe Strummer
I think he might have been our only decent teacher.”

4) Kick ass like The Hold Steady

Onondaga County School Consolidation

Originally uploaded by Phil At Sun

A nice conversation on the reasons why people may be leaving Syracuse is happening over at NYCO’s Blog

One of the perennial debates is the quality of public schools. An
oft bandied-about idea is public school consolidation,
dividing the entire County into four quadrants and mixing city,
suburban and rural schools’ resources together.
The theory is you would equalize the highs and lows and improve
everyone’s education. Of course, this sort of social
engineering would probably as popular as root canal surgery. NYCO
suggested that we map out the potential
consolidated districts, even if just a rough estimate to further the
conversation.

So, just click on the image to get a clearer view of a consolidated County school system.

Steven Page, the lead singer for Barenaked Ladieswas arrested in Fayetteville on drug charges.

Some thoughts:
First: is this the first time there has ever been an AP story with a Fayetteville, NY address? My hometown has made the big time!

Two: there must be a sentence of community service that involves some sort of free concert in Fayetteville, I mean come on . . .

Three: Even though it’s not my favorite BNL song (that would be “Brian Wilson”) the song “One Week” just keeps popping into my head:

Its been one week since you looked at me
Cocked your head to the side and said Im angry.
Five days since you laughed at me
Saying get that together come back and see me.
Three days since the living room
I realized its all my fault, but couldnt tell you
Yesterday youd forgiven me
But itll still be two days till I say Im sorry

Organizer’s To Do List

Originally uploaded by Phil At Sun

Day of SUN’s meeting
to push the city to knock down vacant apartment building.

Syracuse’s population has fallen to a record low according to a new report by the U.S. Census. There are 139,000 folks in my town now. That’s a decline from 147,000 in 2000 and 225,000 in the 1950’s.

Two things jump out at me, one good and one bad.

GOOD: If Syracuse falls below 125,000 people NY State will consider us a small city and all future school board budgets will have to be approved by a public vote. This would be great. The school board would never pass another budget and the district would be in open revolt against its own residents. Why would this be great? You don’t think that the school district would prioritize hiring city residents and getting current employees to move back in to the city, just to keep us above the magic 125,000 figure? They have over 4,000 employees. If they think its tough dealing with the Common Council, try marketing ever-increasing school budgets to residents already hard pressed by fuel and heating costs, property taxes and water rates.

BAD: Will the Feds consider us too small to merit our very own entitlement grant under the Community Development Block Grant? That’s currently a guaranteed $7-$9 million a year (and with Barack taking over maybe a bump from the lean Bush years.) City’s too small for their own grant compete for funding out of NY State’s CDBG allotment. It’s an application process and some years you may get a grant, some years you may not. And it will be nothing close to millions of dollars. Goodbye to all the housing non-profits and the community centers.

Update: My typically snarky response to our population loss, with its legitimate cup half-full/cup half-empty policy implications is totally blown out of the water by Sean Kirst’s excellent column in today’s Post Standard. For the non-snarky, humanistic and tug-at-your-heartstrings perfect take on our situation, walk in your bare feet across your porch, pick up the copy of the Post that you paperboy tossed there this morning and read Sean’s column.

Former U.S. Senator and presidential candidate Gary Hart recently wrote an op-ed piece in the NYT predicting that the upcoming election will present the winner with the opportunity to create a new cycle of American history, an age of reform.

Hart dusts off the idea that American politics does run in cycles, or shifts between poles of conservatism and innovation, perhaps most prominently championed by historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. Hart identifies the most recent cycles as the FDR New Deal cycle from 1932 to 1968 and the Reagan conservative movement from 1968 until now.

If we are indeed moving into a realignment and a profound restructuring of our politics, one of the keys to the coming cycle will be undoing one of the Reagan revolution’s major victories, the demonization and rollback of government regulation of corporations. Ralph Nader may have become a laughingstock due to his electoral crusades, but the message is still sound. Corporations have gone hog wild and need to be reined in.

An example of this coming new age rolled into my e-mail box this morning, a press release from U.S. Representative Barney Frank, chairman of the House Committee on Financial Services. The Committee announced a hearing where Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson will testify on the restructuring of regulations governing financial markets.

Viva la revolucion!

I just voted the maximum 25 times in the online voting for the 2008 MLB All Star game. My picks:

American League:
1B: Kevin Youkilis, Red Sox
2B: Dustin Pedroia, Red Sox
SS: Orlando Cabrera, White Sox
3B: Mike Lowell, Red Sox
C: Jason Varitek, Red Sox
OF: Manny Ramirez, Red Sox
OF: Coco Crisp, Red Sox
OF: JD Drew, Red Sox
Write In: OF: Jacoby Ellsbury, Red Sox

American League–entire Red Sox starting line up, except for White Sox shortstop Orlando Cabrera–he played for the Red Sox 2004 champs and the Sox should never have let him go.

National League
1B: Prince Fielder, Brewers
2B: Dan Uggla, Mariners
SS: Hanley Ramirez, Mariners
3B: Nomar Garciaparra, Dodgers
C: Josh Bard, Padres
OF: Rick Ankiel, Cardinals
OF: Ryan Braun, Brewers
OF: Kosuke Fukudome, Cubs

Ramirez. Garciaparra and Bard are all former Sox. Ankiel is best story in baseball, washing out as a pitcher and then working way back to majors as an outfielder. Fukudome has the most fun name in baseball. I sort of like the Brewers and think both Fielder and Braun are legitimate All Stars. Uggla the only name I recognized in NL 2b’ers list.

Clay Buchholz In Syracuse

Originally uploaded by Phil At Sun

Clay Buchholz pitched Pawtucket to a victory over the Syracuse Chiefs last night.
I went to see the young Red Sox phenom and got
a chance to also see Mike Timlin, the iron man of the Red Sox’s
bullpen in both of their championship seasons.

Buchholz was not dominant last night in his five innings, although he
gave up only a couple of hits and no runs.
Second baseman Joe Thurston was the star of the game, with two RBI’s
and several nice plays in the field.
The infield bailed Buchholz out with three double plays and errorless
play in the field. Timlin came in to relieve
Buchholz in the sixth and set down the home team 1-2-3. I think he
threw all of six pitches. He looks healthy.

Even though the game was played through a persistent drizzle, I had a
great time. There were tons of Sox fans out
flying the colors. In Boston, there is some sniping about poseurs
and folks jumping on the bandwagon.
The blogs are aflame with debates on being a “real” Sox fan. For
those of us in the hinterlands of Red Sox
Nation, the debate is silly. I don’t care if you’re wearing a pink
Sox hat or don’t know the 1967 Impossible Dream team
starting line up. All I know, there were more Ortiz, Papelbon.
Lowell, Dice K, Lester, Ramirez (even a Derek Lowe!)
shirts in evidence last night than Posada, Jeter and A-Rod shirts. In
the middle of Yankee country.

The Supreme Court ruling in the case of D.C. v. Heller is likely to be the final victory of the George W. Bush administration over common sense and justice. They were unsuccessful in overturning Roe v. Wade for the anti-abortionists, but they knocked over U.S. v. Miller for the gun
nuts.

Justice Antonin Scalia carved out a constitutional right for individuals to own handguns in their own homes, to be used for self-defense. He also tossed out the laws that require the use of trigger locks or disassembly of legally owned guns, as these provisions make it nearly impossible to use guns for self-defense. The 5-4 decision was supported by Reagan appointee Anthony Kennedy, Bush 1 appointees Scalia and Clarence Thomas and Bush 2 appointees John Roberts and Samuel Alito.

Now, what was settled law since 1939 has been tossed out the window, ushering in years of court battles in cities and states across the country to decide the scope of the ruling in D.C. v. Heller. The National Rifle Association and other pro-death groups have already vowed to bring scores of lawsuits across the country.

The first battle will be how this applies to states and localities with anti-gun laws. D.C. v. Heller only applies to the federal government and D.C.

It could have been worse. Scalia didn’t totally ignore the fact that “well-regulated” is part of the language of the Second Amendment and specifically stated:

“Nothing in our opinion,” he said, “should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.”

One facet of the ruling troubles me more than any other–Scalia’s dumping of trigger lock laws. According to the CDC National Center for Health Statistics, 55% of all handgun deaths are suicides and 5% of handgun deaths are accidental. It’s obvious that keeping guns away from kids and potential suicide victims is an effective way to reduce the carnage of gun fatalities.

A recent article in the New York Times about a high school basketball star named Brandon Jennings discusses whether Jennings should skip playing college basketball and, since he is barred from playing in the NBA until he is 19 years old, play professional basketball in Europe. The coaching is intense in Europe and the competition is tougher than in the NCAA. Also, the distractions of NCAA regulations, college classwork and little cash reward all disappear overseas.

King Kaufman who writes on sports for Salon.com, posts his oft-stated opinion that opting for Europe will become standard practice once a few ballplayers break with the college tradition. While I tend to agree with both Kaufman and Rhoden about the benefits of honest professionalism versus sham NCAA amateurism and believe in the broadening ideal of travel, a statement of Kaufman’s jumped out at me and forced me to re-think my position:

Would you like to spend your winter in, say, Syracuse, N.Y., playing against other teenagers, not getting paid and not allowed to make money in other ways, living in a dorm room, forced to go to classes you may or may not be interested in? Or would you rather spend it in, oh, let’s see, Milan, playing against men, making a few million, living in a villa and meeting supermodels?

This is all just another shot at the ‘Cuse. So here are the Top 10 Reasons potential basketball stars should play in Syracuse (even if only for one year) rather than in European hot spots such as Milan:

1) Basketball players are gods on S.U.’s campus.
2) They may not be supermodels, but women at S.U. are quite attractive (also see #1 above).
2) Your games are played in front of crowds of up to 30,000 screaming maniacs.
3) Competition? You are playing in the toughest conference, top-to-bottom, in the NCAA.
4) Your games get shown on American television, talked about on Sportscenter, written about in newspapers and magazines.
5) Your parents can easily get to your games, great reserved seats at the Dome, too!
6) #1 interest in Milan–fashion. #1 interest in Syracuse–college basketball.
7) You’re busy playing hoops during bad weather season. Rest of year is beautiful and you’re free.

Milan restaurants and social life is pricey, even for basketball stars. College social life is practically free for basketball stars (see #1 above.)
9) I hate to be naive, but is a $30K+ per year education for free such a bad deal?
10) Two words: Carmelo Anthony