A state budget that began with dire predictions of doom and gloom in fact of a $12 billion plus budget deficit ends up spending close to $10 billion more while finally making the rich paying a little more in taxes. The Bigger Better Bottle Bill was finally (mostly) passed, along with the first welfare grant hike since 1990. Many of the worse proposed budget cuts were eliminated, such as in SSI benefit, largely due to the influx of federal dollars in an economic stimulus package. Statements from Hunger Action Network, Medicaid Matters NY, Statewide Senior Action, Governor Paterson below. The newspapers largely slammed the budget for increasing spending, though lawmakers say that is mainly due to the federal stimulus package.

300 people jammed into the Westminster Presbyterian church in Albany on Sunday to hear Cong. Conyers and Paul Tonko speak about the need for single payer health care. The lead sponsor of the event was the Presbyerian Church USA. HR 676, the US National Health Care Act, Single Payer Medicare would replace private health insurance with a single public financing system to provide comprehensive coverage for everyone in the nation, has the most support of any universal health care proposal now in Congress. It also is the plan that is most favored by the American public, doctors, nurses and researchers.

Local residents from Berkshire, Saratoga, Rensselaer, Schenectady,Columbia Counties and many other surrounding areas traveled to Washington, D.C. to attend the March To The Pentagon which drew crowds of about 10,000 in a rally to end all wars, occupations and to call for justice and peace, money for jobs, health care, education etc. rather than for private contractors, military operations here and abroad . The rally was smaller than hoped however. Some question whether Democratic leaning groups like MoveOn.org and United for Peace and Justice have abandoned the peace movement to support Obama.

In the U.S., there are all manner of fights to stop or delay every imaginable low-carbon technology. Wind, solar, run-of-river hydro - these are precisely the kinds of renewable energy that every Earth Day speech since 1970 has trumpeted. But now they are finally here - now that we're talking about particular projects in particular places - people aren't so keen. There's always a better site and a nicer developer. But in the real world, we have at most 10 years to reverse the fossil fuel economy. Which means we have to do everything quickly - conservation and plug-in cars and solar panels and compact fluorescents and 100-mile food and tree planting. And windmills, windmills everywhere there is wind, just like off the shores of Europe.

President Obama continues to push a "Cash for trash" plan - first started under Bush - to rescue America's banks. Mr. Obama has apparently settled on a financial plan that, in essence, assumes that banks are fundamentally sound and that bankers know what they're doing. It's as if the president were determined to confirm the growing perception that he and his economic team are out of touch, that their economic vision is clouded by excessively close ties to Wall Street.

Environmentalists critized Gov. David Paterson recently when his office suggested that the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative would be modified to give free carbon allowances to power plants that have long term contracts. The change came after donations from the Independent Power Producers. Paterson now says that he was only considering the change. Environmentalists are also mad about cuts to the Environmental Protection Funds.

While State Legislators push to cut a deal to weaken the draconian Rockefeller Drug Laws that targets cocaine and heavily attacks people of color, activists continue to push to legalize marijuana. One new argument is that a tax on legal marijuana would help resolve the state budget deficit. With the Dead performing at the Times Center that evening, marijuana activists are coming to town a little earlier in the day to rally and lobby legislators. Meanwhile, the escalating drug war violence in Mexico is largely due to the US, with most of the guns (95%) and money coming from the US.

Starhawk : As I write, my friend Tristan lies hovering between life and death in an Israeli hospital, shot in the head, hit with a tear gas canister at a nonviolent demonstration in the West Bank town of Ni’lin, protesting the wall the Israelis are building to isolate the West Bank. Why don’t the Palestinians adopt the tactics of Martin Luther King or Gandhi? And the answer is simply this—they do. For the last six years, they have mounted an ongoing campaign of civil resistance against Israel’s apartheid wall, which snakes through the West Bank, confiscating Palestinian farmland without compensation. For six years, the movement has moved, from village to village, following the path of the wall. Six years of sparse and tiny victories—here and there, the route of the wall pushed back a few meters

Hundreds of anti-poverty advocates and low-income New Yorkers will gather on Tuesday March 17th at Westminster Presbyterian Church, 262 State St in Albany at 9:30 AM to call for economic justice in the State Budget. Issues include single payer health care, raising the welfare grant, creating Green Jobs, and opposing various cuts such as to SSI benefits and homeless programs.

Cong. John Conyers will be coming to Albany for a Congressional Town Hall Meeting on Sunday, March 29th at Westminster Presbyterian Church, 262 State St. in Albany. The event is from 2 to 4:30 PM. Conyers is the lead sponsor of HR 676, the single payer Medicare for All bill in Congress. This meeting is one of ten nationwide meetings funded by the Presbyterian Church USA to open the discussion of Single Payer Healthcare for the United States.

The global economy is being devastated by the Wall Street crash. Hundreds of millions are are hurtling into extreme poverty, export industries are collapsing, currencies being destabilized. Some progressives, including even Warren Beatty, think it's time to introduce a discussion of socialism, if only to point out that our present course is one of socialism for the banks and corporations. The "bad news" is really an opportunity for progressives, unions and Democrats to build a bottom-up populist alternative to the "greed is good" politics of Wall Street, which has infested both parties.

MoveOn.org members met on Feb. 19, 2009 in Saratoga Springs with Democratic 20th Congressional district candidate Scott Murphy (www.scottmurphy09.com), and his staff person, Mitch Wallace.