Photo of Andy Arthur

Andy Arthur

October and already the leaves are fading away in the Adirondacks. 🍂 Most shocking to me is that we are less then a month away from November, which in many ways should be a sigh of relief with the craziness of work and with the deep blue skies and crisp days of that month.

I like Trump’s idea of eliminating income tax on overtime

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It seems like a good idea to me on many levels, as it allows workers to take home more of their hard-earned dollars, plus it would deprive the federal government of revenue and encourage shrinking of the federal government. Alabama has introduced a similar policy.

Another version of this idea would be to require employers to pay all taxes on over-time, rather then deducting it from an employee’s paycheck. This would further discourage the practice of overtime and create more jobs at higher wages, which might actually be a better public policy.

That said, I do like the idea of a radically simpler and smaller federal government. I don’t think the US Military does much for me, nor do most federal government agencies. What exactly does the military even do, besides provide some vague notion of public safety from foreign threats?

I can’t think of the last time I saw a FBI agent or even a federal employee. Maybe a Forest Service worker in National Forest, but beyond that it’s hard to even imagine the federal government exists beyond the television and the big chunk of money they take out of my paycheck. So maybe it’s time to move a lot of federal employees to the private sector.

Devil’s Den

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This location was discovered during the depression while the CCC were building the forest road. Over the next seventy years collectors discovered many of the finest alpine quartz specimens from North America here, making the Devil's Den a true classic locality. Take Mt. Tabor Road from Danby, park at Devil's Den picnic area, walk north along road to outcrops on east side of road. Excellent smoky quartz and other minerals are found in pockets in the local schist. https://www.mindat.org/loc-69594.html

Albany’s South End, Historic Dumping Grounds

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Thematic Albany\'s South End, Historic Dumping Grounds

This colorized LiDAR Hillshade of elevation of the South End shows the filled in gorges in Albany South End that were used until the late 1960s for dumping trash and debris from the Empire State Plaza demolition.