A review of fun or interesting progressive stuff found while surfing Rochester blogs. - bythepeople

Normally this’ll be about recent posts I’ve come across, but since this is my first time doing this I’m including some older posts that are still relevant.

DragonFlyEye.net features not 1, not 2, but 3 solid pieces on local prog issues. This guy’s on fire:

• He gives a favorable review of the Rochester Premier of An Inconvenient Truth, and relates a discussion he had while waiting, about CSA (Community-Sponsored Agriculture). Sounds like a fun progessive evening. I’ve been in a CSA, and it rocks. I want to see the movie, but was afraid I would just leave depressed. According to him, though, it’s motiviating and inspiring. He’s also updated his site to show energy efficiency tips instead of quotes. Very cool.
• He gives an interesting take on the proposal to turn Broad Street into a canal. I still believe a canal, done well, could be a cool addition to downtown, a la Providence, RI, or Oklahoma City. After reading dfe’s take though, I have to agree Broad St. is not the best location.
• He also takes my earlier post about People Powered Polling, and really runs with it. It would be great to see these kinds of ideas really catching on locally.

Over on RochesterWriters, where they’re less intensely progressive but no less interesting, we have a couple nuggets:

• Rottenchester posts on suburbanite shame (which happens to the best of us). The flight to the suburbs is a real problem, one which I’ve contributed to. A rising tide raises all boats. How do we raise up the city as well as the suburbs?
• Rottenchester also wins the “blog entry title” award for “Our Poopy Beaches”, about how Charlotte’s beaches are so bad the Army Corps of Engineers has to engineer a solution to it. The culprit? According to Scientific American magazine, he says, “isn’t algae, it’s the streets and parking lots that come with population growth.” Everywhere I drive around here, there seems to be willy-nilly construction. I saw an ad in a recent D&C, that was designed to look like “news”, about “Smart Growth vs. No Growth”. Ok, fine, but who’s got the grand plan? “Smart” implies seeing the big picture (and I’m talking about the Iroquois’ “7th generation” kind of big picture).
• Rottenchester (trying to compete with dfe for blog output? also weighs in on the gas tax issue, agreeing with Maggie Brooks’ decision to not cap the county portion of the gas tax. I’m suspicious anytime I agree with her, as in “what’s she hiding?”, but I fundamentally agree with Rottenchester that “Maggie is one of the few politicians actually making sense on this issue. The rest of them are trying to pretend that a few pennies off a gallon will make some kind of difference in the long run.” On DailyKos, their Energize America energy plan suggests a compromise: a rebate or fee scaled to how efficient (or not) your car is compared to the national average.
• Heh. Ben catches a funny blooper. Ok, not political, but…heh.
• Jason posts about Ben Frazier’s movie Rochester: A City Of Poverty, but I can’t see the flash content in the post. Anyone else see it?
• Oh, and this from Rottenchester’s (now abandoned?) personal blog: a funny, snarky take on how Ren Square will save Rochester. Just like High Falls and The Fast Ferry did. Oh, wait… (Can we for once try to improve quality of life and build infrastructure for once rather than try for home run after home run and then striking out? How much would the $30-some millions for the ferry go towards incubating an alternative energy program/industry in the city? Come on, people! I know it’s not as glamorous, but we’re getting close to the bottom of the 9th with no-one on base. And no, I couldn’t fit any more baseball analogies into that, thanks.)

From The Rochester DISSIDENT (the City Paper’s Jack Bradigan Spula):

• A short but sweet article about meeting (and biking with) Jonathan Tasini, the primary challenger to Hillary Clinton. Jonathan’s very progressive on the issues of the day and I think this is one of those cases where a primary has the potential of improving the chances of Democrats state-wide, assuming they don’t go negative.

Michael Caputo, in his Political Notebook, agrees:

• “Just open up the mind enough to take a campaign season to learn, to listen, to form opinions on platforms and get actively involved in democracy.” In this case he’s talking about the gubernatorial race, for both Dems and Republicans. I support Tom Suozzi’s right to challenge Spitzer in the primary. But from what I understand about Suozzi, I don’t support him.
• He also gives advice to Maggie Brooks on the sales tax solution to the county budget shortfall.