Posted on May 15 at 3:27 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Susan M Crossett's comments about National Grid's ability to serve the Capital District's environmental and energy needs is very optimistic. Given National Grid wants to apply for an RDM(revenue decoupling mechanism) to allow it to increase rates as energy usage drops, as allowed by the PSC, it is hard to see how National Grid can be following sound economic capitalistic policies of free trade and protecting the private sector let alone any enviormental initiatives. Last I looked encouraging someone to not lower prices as the market contracts thus hoping to gain more business(profits) is not the foundation of a capitalistic economy. The RDM policy is treating National Grid as a monopoly by encouraging it to destroy a free trade mechanism. What has become obvious is that the PSC truly believes all utilities are really monopolies. If so I can't understand why they are allowed to exist since other monopolies crucial to the public welfare (water authorities,bridge authorites,highway authorities,indeed the Federal Reserve itself) are formed and allowed to operate. Why not the utilities?
With fuel costs rising and labor costs rising it is no wonder the utlilies want more money. However the public can no longer support corporate, shareholder's interests and still pay for needed facility improvements. To save the infrastructure and develope new facilities it is only a matter of time before New York must decouple the profit motive from providing these services and place it in a non profit authority where all the resources go to support their communities as well as deliver electricity and gas. Free trade policies can no longer exist in this monopolistic atmosphere. The faster we take control of these facilites the faster we can use large scale buying power to get the best price for fuel as well as achieive new economies of scale.
Just a thought but sooner or latter the private sector is going to want to bail out of these industries since they can't make a profit. At that time the public will be left holding a bag of deteriorated and decaying facilities which will cost multiple times more to repair than if we act now.

On Letters to the Editor for May 15

Posted on May 10 at 11:28 a.m. (Suggest removal)

I question whether this project is worth the money and resources. It is true we have a need for rapid emergency services in the area but doesn't Medicall and Urgent Care provide enough facilities for stabilization of the patient to be transported to Ellis or St Clare's,Albany or Saratoga Hospitals? Also our first responders are supposedly trained to stabilize and make a decision whether the patient should go to Urgent Care or to a hospital. Thus it appears we are very expensively proposing to duplicate facilities already in the region.
I believe the Hospital Committee recently tried to curb such expansions so as to make health care more efficient and hopefully more affordable. Fat chance, but a good try.

I know it would be wonderful to have a full service hospital nearby but we are no longer living in a post World War II economy were the US was the only functioning economy and the dollar was strong.

I just question whether this would be the best use of our scarce resources. Wouldn't it just provide more profit to developers and the administrative staffs of such new facilities?

I think we should really think about this.

On Hospital plans start to move forward