Terry Cowgill

A Snowball’s Chance

I have a proposal, but hear me out first.

When Jesus declared that the meek shall inherit the Earth, it’s doubtful he was talking about today’s school children, including those in Region One. As our educational institutions grapple with the grim reality of fiscal constraints, it’s become increasingly clear that the Sermon on the Mount wasn’t delivered at budget time.

I have been covering school budgets on-and-off (mostly on) since 1998. And the whole process that begins in the late fall and ends in May resembles a broken record accompanied by axe-wielding school board members and punctuated by the occasional shriek of protest.

Here’s what happens just about every year. The administrators present their “dream budget” with increases across-the-board — often amounting to 7% or more. They present it to a board of education, all the while knowing the spending package doesn’t have a snowball’s chance.

Continue reading A Snowball’s Chance…

Food Fest

In this morning’s print edition of the LJ, you will find my story on food prices. The comparisons were very interesting and I hope they strike our readers the same way.

While researching the story, I sent out an email inquiry to some 50 people asking them to share their thoughts about their shopping habits, as well as their reaction to our survey.

We didn’t have the room to publish them in the print edition, so I am posting them here. All the comments have been edited for clarity and brevity. Thanks to all our readers for responding so thoughtfully.

[One other note that was not included in the story: In an October 2006 Consumer Reports customer satisfaction survey of 54 major supermarket chains, Stop & Shop placed 41, Price Chopper 30 and Big Y 24. Wegmans and Trader Joe’s were 1 and 2 respectively, while Winn Dixie and Tops Markets were dead last.]

Unless it is a special, the [Stop & Shop] prices are very high. When they have a good special on canned goods, more often than not the shelf is empty!!! They make sure you cannot get much at the good price.
Nina Mathus
Salisbury
Continue reading Food Fest…

No Pillory of Hillary

I know it seems like I’ve been obesssing on Hillary, but I have been struck lately by the tightly controlled nature of her campaign.

In most of her appearances in Iowa and New Hampshire, she rarely takes questions from reporters, opting instead to speak directly to voters in tightly scripted “forums” that allow her to showcase her personal charm without media filters.

In some cases, only local media outlets are advised of these events, presumably because the Hillary spin machine thinks they will provide more positive coverage than those pesky members of Washngton press corps who keep asking her about Iraq.

Come to think of it, I don’t think she’s the first candidate to employ that strategy. Someone else did that in the last few years. Someone very prominent. Darn, I just can’t remember …

Happy Valentine’s Day

Smoking Out Hillary

This is pretty much how I feel about Hillary and the war. Praise be to Richard Cohen, whom I first discovered in a college composition class and still wish I could emulate.

A Lot of Hot Air

Update Wednesday night: Here is a funny headline.

My favorite political satirist reports sales of Global Warming shovels are booming in Oswego County in the wake of the bitter cold and 100-inch snowfalls that have slammed the eastern shores of Lake Ontario.

There is no question that the earth is getting warmer and that man is at least partly responsible for it. The question is how much?

One of the amusing aspects of the debate is that global warming alarmists have structured it in such a way as to give themselves maximum latitude.

They tell us that one of the characteristics of global warming is that not only will the earth get toastier, but there will be more incidents of extreme weather (hot and cold).

So if we get periods of bitter cold and record snowfalls, they can say, “Well, that’s global warming, too.” Brilliant.

Believe it or not, there are reputable climatologists and meteorologists (such as MIT Prof. Richard Lindzen) who swear up-and-down that the overall warming trend we are seeing is within historical norms.

Of course, Lindzen has been labeled a corporate shill and a lackey of the fossil fuel industry — typical name calling by people who would rather not debate him on the issues.

Coming next to a theatre near you: “The Criminalization of Global Warming Skepticism.”

Connecticut’s Grandmother Fires A Rocket

Update Sunday: Now this is the kind of contrarian view I would expect from a fiscal conservative. I wonder if Rennie’s take is a harbinger of a revolt from the right?

Wow. That’s all I could say when I heard Gov. M. Jodi Rell’s budget proposal. And I don’t say that often about budgets (or about gubernatorial speeches).

[For all the official raw data, click here.]

Every fall when I wait to hear the dreaded “B-word” come from the Region One Board of Education, for example, I know I will be miserable having to spend the next several weeks wallowing around in balance sheets and wearing a green eye shade. That’s not to say what that board does is boring, but I know there will be few surprises beyond which programs to cut.

Yet Rell’s proposal, especially coming from a Republican thought to be something of a fiscal conservative, was stunning in its ambitiousness and scope. Democrats were taken aback (but mostly liked it) and some Republicans were dyspeptic at the thought of raising the income tax by 10% over two years and increasing total spending by 6.7% the first year and 4.7 the next.

[This just in: The House Speaker, a Democrat, is grumbling about the tax increases, arguing that we should use surpluses to fund an ongoing program. He also complained that when she was running for governor last year, Rell said nothing about tax increases. Earth to Amann: Mondale tried that in ’84; it doesn’t work very well.]

Continue reading Connecticut’s Grandmother Fires A Rocket…

The Anna Nicole Channel

Well, cable news has reached a new low.

After I put the kids to bed around 8:30 p.m., I generally surf the Internet and check out what’s doing on TV in the worlds of sports and politics.

From new developments in Iraq, to the Scooter Libby trial and even to the nascent preidential campaign, I figured there would be some interesting discussions on at least one of the cable stations.

Not a chance. Joe Scarborough, who is generally a thoughtful commenator, devoted his entire show to the death of Anna Nicole — as did Larry King (no surprise with Larry) and the already unwatchable Hannity & Colmes.

At the 10 p.m. hour, the endless obsession continued. I must admit I was shocked. Cable news has always been too superficial — even facile — but this night sent its prestige hurtling toward a new low. I mean, even the travails of diaper-wearing astronaut Lisa Nowak took a back seat to the demise of a big-chested bimbo who … well, what did she do with her life anyway?

If Smith had been a notable person, that would be one thing. But this is a woman who is famous for being … famous. She has no significant achievements to speak of. I hope the media critics and the consumers of news let the cable news outfits know this is a complete waste of airtime and that executives badly misjudged the market for this kind of junk food for the brain.

Even a tour inside Sean Hannity’s brain would yield more insight than the cause of this loser’s death …

P.S. Plus you have the perverse spectacle of two men arguing over who fathered her infant child. Typically, men run like rats from a paternity battle, but in this case, the carrying on of Anna Nicole’s legacy is at stake, so attention must be paid …

DeLay Wins After All

He may be a sleazeball, but The Hammer can take a great mugger. The vanquished former House Majority Leader and alleged money launderer Tom DeLay’s mugshot looks good enough to put on his official website.

Meanwhile, the mugshot of alleged attempted murder and NASA astronaut Lisa Nowak looks like she just finished lying on a bed of nails after a crack binge. As for Nick Nolte, well, he bears a stark resemblance to someone was arrested for crashing his Mercedes after one too many Absoluts (and possibly some GHB).

But the case of Nowak is fascinating. She drove from Houston to Orlando (nearly a thousand miles) wearing a diaper because she did not want to stop to go potty. She may be on onto something, for as Colin says, “We all have days when we’re really too busy to go the bathroom.”

P.S. For an explanation of how astronauts deal with their waste in space, click here. Evidently they do not wear Depends.

A Victory For Vouchers

Our old friend John Fund wrote an eye-opening piece today in OpinionJournal.com about a recently passed school voucher program in Utah. In justifying their votes, Utah legislators stated what I have believed for some time:

Far from harming our public schools, school choice and its resulting competition will actually improve them. And to make the concept even more attractive, the vouchers will be awarded on a sliding scale based on family income.

The voucher will only be good for a portion of the state aid, which means public school districts in Utah will actually see an increase in aid per pupil when the student migrates to a private school.

Some of the legislators who voted for the bill are current or former public school officials. Now, tell me again voucher opponents, how will choice harm public schools under this plan?