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Time to Feed the Beast

Andy | April 17, 2012

Today is tax day. The day where we look back at how much of our income we paid in taxes, and how much additional we must pay by today to avoid even further taxes and penalities.

It would be one thing if taxes always served a purpose of benefiting the people. Yet, we know that increasingly is not true. Increasingly taxes buy deregulation of corporations, tax breaks on wealthy individuals, and increased regulation on working folks.

Take Obamacare. The Individual Mandate is just one example of the government supposedly helping the people, while it’s mostly just a way to drum up additional income for insurance companies by forcing everybody to buy landyacht healthcare policies.

We don’t really have much of a choice in paying income tax. But we as citizens have the ability to advocate that our government use such monies for our interest, and not just for corporate benefit. We can advocate against waste and corporate giveaways. We can fight back against such policies that force individuals to buy corporate products and those that are deregulation solely in favor of corporations.

State Land Acreage By Classification

Andy | January 13, 2012

All figures are in acres except where noted. Table updated April 2011. Reprinted from the DEC Website.

Land Classification		Region 1	Region 2	Region 3	Region 4	Region 5	Region 6	Region 7	Region 8	Region 9	Catskill Park Total	Adirondack Park Total	State Total	Percent of Total State Land and Conservation Easements
State Forest		16,056	758	31,763	102,248	58,354	221,924	200,419	55,581	99,121	–	16,264 **	786,224	17%
Forest Preserve	Wilderness	–	–	89,352	53,482	954,601	206,151	–	–	–	142,834	1,160,752	1,303,586	28%
	Wild Forest	–	–	75,588	60,368	938,664 **	367,123	–	–	–	135,956	1,305,787	1,441,743	31%
	Primitive	–	–	–	–	31,309	15,704	–	–	–	–	47,013	47,013	1%
	Primitive Bicycle Corridor	–	–	15	283	–	–	–	–	–	298	–	298	0.006%
	Canoe	–	–	–	–	18,989	–	–	–	–	–	18,989	18,989	0.4%
	Intensive Use	–	–	4,104	1,542	21,591	1,828	–	–	–	5,646	23,419	29,065	0.6%
	Administrative	–	–	392	0 ***	384	7	–	–	–	392	391	783	0.02%
	Historic	–	–	–	–	531	–	–	–	–	–	531	531	0.01%
	Pending Classification	–	–	–	–	259	111	–	–	–	–	370	370	0.007%
	Under Water* (Unclassified)	–	–	–	–	17,395	6,534	–	–	–	–	23,929	23,929	0.5%
	Detached Parcel	–	–	1,382	4,141	1,441	4,318	–	–	–	–	–	11,282	0.2%
	Total Forest Preserve	–	–	170,833	119,816	2,001,313	601,776	–	–	–	285,126	2,597,267	2,893,738	61%
Wildlife Management Area		6,007	–	12,021	18,518	6,524 **	46,371	49,562	41,462	17,178	407 ***	2,755 **	197,643	4%
Conservation Easement		108	21	7,264	7,286	488,463	336,783	436	–	10	9,437	769,579	840,371	18%
TOTALS:		22,171	779	221,881	247,868	2,554,654	1,206,854	250,417	97,043	116,309	294,970	3,385,865	4,717,976	100%

Notes from the DEC.

* Certain lake beds are considered Forest Preserve, despite some level of private ownership adjacent to the lakes. These underwater lands are not classified. For the purposes of this table, however, lakes and ponds that are completely surrounded by Forest Preserve have been classified the same as the adjacent land.

** Where State Forests and Wildlife Management Areas exist within the Adirondack Park, the Adirondack Park State Land Master Plan also classifies these lands as Wild Forest. However, since these lands are not Forest Preserve, State Forest and Wildlife Management Area acreages within the Adirondack Park were NOT included in the Wild Forest category.

*** Where Wildlife Management Areas exist within the Catskill Park, the Catskill Park State Land Master Plan also classifies these lands as Administrative. For calculation purposes in this table, however, Wildlife Management Area acreage within the Catskill Park was NOT also included in the Administrative category.

Terrain Map: Light Pollution New York March 2024

Terrain Map: Light Pollution USA March 2024

The New York City Mapping Problem

Andy | November 17, 2011

I have in the past made maps up of New York State’s population, divided by population density or actual population per municipality. I almost always have to distort that maps for Upstate to show any detail, because of the extreme population concentration downstate, specifically in New York City.

Simply said, there is nothing in Upstate New York at all like downstate. There simply are not the concentrations of people or dense urban core. Our Upstate cities are dense compared to the surrounding countryside — often as much as 100 times more dense (e.g. 100 times more people per mile), but Manhattan is 9 times more dense then even our most dense upstate cities.

New York is truly a metropolitian area, unlike any other in New York State, and like few in America. I welds immense power not just over itself but the more rural parts upstate, and the surrounding countryside that seems — at least to the city folk — so unimportant compared to their extremely dense and complicated living arrangements.

NY State September 2011 Unemployment Maps

Andy | November 14, 2011

It takes the NY State Department of Labor a long time to produce data on the Unemployment Rate. It usually is not released until the middle of the month proceeding month, so the data for September, was not released until around October 20th. The NYS DOL breaks unemployment data down by county, which is relatively easy to merge with Census TIGER Shapefiles, and produce some nice maps. Which is what I did.

Here is the NY State Unemployment Rate by County.

Notice how Rural Western NY has some of the lowest unemployment in the state, though the rate in Saratoga County, along with NY City suburbs of Putnam, Rockland, and Westchester Counties shows the economy is relatively strong in that portion of state too.

Unemployment tends to peak in the Southern Tier and also in the counties impacted by Hurricane Irene that month, e.g. those of the Catskills and the Central-Leatherstocking Region of state.

Here is the Change in NY State Unemployment Rate from September 2010 to 2011.

Notice how Western NY is creating jobs while the economy is stagnant or losing jobs in the regions impacted by Hurricane Irene. Those Hurricane-related job losses may be temporary, and not reflected in the October numbers, but they do suggest that there is a lot of growth occurring in Western NY, not occurring in the Eastern portion of state.

Also, note the weak economy in the Tug Hill Plateau region between 2010 and 2011. Unemployment has increased in Jefferson and Lewis County during that time period, while remaining stagnant in Oneida County. Definitely not good news in that rural part of state.

I probably will do a new series of maps come the release of the October numbers later in the month.

A Look at Top of Ticket Voting Trends in Upstate NY

Andy | October 21, 2011

I was studying these maps I made up the other day of the top of the ticket candidates in New York State from 2006-2010, e.g. Spitzer-Faso, Obama-McCain, and Cuomo-Paladino. One could easily to come to conclusion that Democratic Gubernatorial candidates of recent are more popular in Upstate NY then Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama who ran in 2008.

In the 2006 Spitzer-Faso race, Spitzer did very well except in Western NY, especially in the Southern Tier of NY. Most of the eastern half of state he won, often with 60% plus of vote, except for the most Republican areas of Adirondacks and places were John Faso once represented as Assemblyman — parts of Columbia County, Greene County, and Schoharie County.

Andrew Cuomo did comparatively poorly in much of Rural New York, while winning many rural communities, losing far more then his predecesor Eliot Spitzer won in 2006. Many of the anti-rural community policies persued by Eliot Spitzer probably did not win the Democratic Party friends in those areas. Andrew Cuomo did increase his strength in the North Country, most notably winning by strong margins in parts of Franklin County and South-Western Clinton County, not known for electing Democrats in the past.

Western NY outside of urban centers, is solidly Republican, and if anything is becoming more solidly Republican. It seems likely that Democrats will have a hard time making inroads in this area, if state and national trends continue.