Listening To The Governor's State Of The State, Or, Watching Paint Dry.

You would be hard pressed to find a politician as dull as George Pataki. But then I listened to Sheldon Silver's response, as well as responses by Hugh Farley, Paul Tonko and Marc Butler to the Governor's speech and realized that the Governor is not alone when it comes to being dull.

Of course, the Governor did not mention the Mohawk Valley, with the exception of a side reference to Schenectady. He did mention Central New York, which the valley is part of. He also referred to "The Empire State High Tech Corridor, stretching from Buffalo to Albany, through the Hudson Valley, into New York City and out to Long Island." I had heard of Tech Valley but not The High Tech Corridor. I guess The Mohawk Valley is part of that corridor.

Anyway the problems of closed factories and boarded up housing in many cities in the valley are not the kind of things the Governor wants to talk about in his State of the State speech. While there are positive signs in the Mohawk Valley, we are still part of the rust belt, maybe even the buckle of the rust belt. There was little in Pataki's speech to make people in the valley stand up and cheer.