Help Gannett name that protestor

Off to the pokey

The Des Moines Register reports that a gang of "Occupy Des Moines" "protestors" were arrested today as they banged on the locked doors of Mitt Romney's campaign HQ.  While we thank the Register for giving us the basics of the violent incident, we'd like more information.  We suspect the Register's professional staff are busy, so we're asking South of 5 and 20 readers to help out by performing web searches on the apprehended "protestors".

Use Google, Bing, Alta Vista, or whatever "web crawler" you prefer.  With the Register giving us name and town, it's easy.  Please share your results in the comments.  We'll get the ball rolling with "Jennifer Marsh, 38, of Iowa City."  Come to find out, Jennifer is a "field organizer" for a government employee union!

Gannett catches up

We Upstate bumpkins are often called upon to help city folk adapt to CNY's sometimes uncomfortable realities.  This morning, we're happy to note that the professional journalists at old media powerhouse Gannett Corporation have belatedly acknowledged the truth about our former junior senator.

When Hillary Rodham Clinton ran for the Senate in 2000, she promised to bring 200,000 jobs to upstate New York.

But between January 2001, when Clinton was sworn in as a senator, and January 2010, when she resigned to become secretary of state, the northern suburbs and upstate region lost more than 100,000 jobs.

 From South of 5 and 20's archives, March 2, 2011:

Back in the year 2000, when Hillary Clinton was wearing a Yankee cap and running for stepping stone to the White House Senator from New York, she won hearts and minds of Upstate voters by promising to bring us 200,000 new jobs.  As you may recall, we elected Mrs. Clinton, but Upstate continued to loose another 32,400 jobs before she bailed out of New York to become Obama's Secretary of State.

Congratulations to Gannett for getting up to speed.  We're not trained in journalism, of course, but we wonder if the media giant could have deployed its massive resources to ask Hillary for a comment before running this morning's piece?

Dryden residents support fracking

The Town of Dryden, NY, a rural township evolving into a bedroom suburb for Cornell University, held a big anti-fracking hoedown last night.  Dryden's town board conducted a public hearing an on a me-too anti-fracking law.  We hear the usual anti-energy suspects were out in force.

Not to be overlooked in the "let's-return-to-the-stone-age" hysteria, supporters of a more balanced point of view have quickly organized as the Dryden Safe Energy Coalition. Check out the Coalition's website (linked) for a ton of facts and analysis. 

Finger Lakes landmark shut down

AES Cayuga, formerly Milliken Station

Finger Lakes locals have noticed that the ever present steam plume over the AES Cayuga power plant seems to have disappeared.  South of 5 and 20, once again scooping Gannett, has learned that the plant was indeed shut down last Saturday.  Morningstar UK provides this update from Dow Jones:

Below are highlights of U.S. power plant operations reported Monday by Genscape, which uses a network of wireless devices to monitor points on the country's transmission grid. Plant status hasn't been independently confirmed by Dow Jones Newswires.

      REGION PLANT STATUS...

NPCC AES Cayuga, LLC.'s AES Cayuga (322 MW capacity, Coal icon) shut down Saturday.

AES Cayuga is located in the Tompkins County town of Lansing.  With ongoing economic decline in Central New York, and the nation, demand for elecricity has plummeted, and now the Cayuga plant is up for sale.

The power plant plant has been the largest property taxpayer in the region, and will now be paying less.  The Lansing school district and local governments will keep spending no matter what, so Lansing residents will be forced to make up the difference, and it will be huge.  Dan Veaner, who has more patience than South of 5 and 20,  explained the costly bureaucratic nightmare in the Lansing Star.