SamPratt.com

Concerning ‘concerning’

In today’s newspapers and newscasts, journalists will often report something like: “Local officials say the recent increase in muggings is very concerning.”

But as this useful and concise site notes, they’re using the word incorrectly. “Concerning” is a preposition synonymous with “about,” not an adjective which means “upsetting”:

People commonly say of things that are a cause for concern that they are “concerning”: “My boyfriend’s affection for his pet rattlesnake is concerning.” This is not standard English. There are many better words that mean the same thing including “worrisome,” “troubling,” and “alarming.” 

The more a word is misused, the more people pick it up. (Go to any meeting of a local government body, and you’re almost certain to hear someone describe some worrisome trend as “concerning.”) So in another few years, grammarians who believe that language should be defined descriptively rather than prescriptively no doubt will argue that this incorrect usage should be added to our dictionaries, since that’s the way people have come to use it.

In Politics and the English Language, George Orwell famously (but not famously enough) argued not only that sloppy thinking causes sloppy expression, but also vice versa.

A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. The point is that the process is reversible. Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers.

Listening to the news, reading the papers, and attending political meetings, one can only conclude that there’s a lot of confused thinking out there. And last week’s midterm elections only ratified that conclusion...

Senior moment

Carole Osterink’s blog has a new post about the latest attack on popular programs at the Hudson Youth Center—still known to most people locally as the Boys & Girls Club. This is just the latest eruption of the same boneheaded nonsense that Carole Clark was subjected to last winter.

The whole “$50 an hour” thing is a total red herring, intended to mislead people about the true cost and benefits of the program. More honest questions would be: How much is paid per class? How many students are there? And, is the program benefitting them? The clear answers appear to be: The cost is very reasonable, the classes are popular, and seniors clearly feel they are deriving benefits.

Having lived with a yoga instructor for eight years (who taught many classes in our area), I’m a bit familiar with the economics of the profession. This is hardly a highly lucrative job by any stretch of the imagination. Most instructors do it out of dedication and a passion for helping others feel calmer and healthier. It’s hardly a way to get rich.

A typical class lasts an hour. That doesn’t include arriving early for set-up, and sticking around as students unwind and chat afterward; and the instructor doesn’t get paid extra for that time. A yoga teacher around here will typically charge between $8-$15 per student, depending whether a student pays by the class or for a whole season. (The price can be more like $20 per student or more as you get closer you to NYC.)

So if you there are about eight students in a typical class, a private instructor might gross between $64 and $120 per session.

Those are gross returns, not net profit. And as such, $50 for a class ought to be considered a tremendous bargain.

Fifty bucks is literally an unbeatable price. Trying to pay someone $25 for teaching such a class would be an insult—and anyway, it’s highly unlikely the City could ever find anyone qualified to do it at that rate. Moreover (as discussed in detail here), using an hourly rate to evaluate a freelance job like this is completely bad math.

A self-employed teacher usually only gets paid for the actual minutes the students are being instruced. Typically, s/he doesn’t get paid or reimbursed for related expenses such as travel, equipment, certification, ongoing training, phone bills, insurance, space rental, advertising, business cards, taxes, accounting, set-up and clean-up time, and the like. So that flat fee for “per hour” has to cover countless other hours of training, prep, and countless self-employment expenses.

If an instructor were teaching three classes per week at a flat fee of $50 per class, the cost of delivering free yoga classes to dozens and dozens of seniors would be about $7,500 (assuming no classes on holidays). At that price, the instructor will make very little profit, maybe a few thousand dollars per year, while members of the community enjoy free, beneficial classes.

If the people at the Hudson River Bank Foundation don’t get that, they probably shouldn’t be in banking at all. All this observations above are just Freelance Business 101. Unfortunately, one suspects that they do understand it, but are again deploying the bogus “$50 an hour” slogan as cover for going along with a political agenda driven by Hudson’s mayor.

That agenda is to push “those people” (independent professionals like Clark et al.) out of the picture. They don’t want fearless, observant eyes observing what goes on inside City-run fiefdoms. So one suspects that if another funder were to come up with the monies that HRBF plans on canceling, the City would just come up with a different excuse why such classes must be stopped.

Unaccountable

The Kingston Daily Freeman’s editor made a telling point on WAMC this morning. Appearing on the Roundtable, he noted that despite Albany devolving over the past two years from mere dysfunction to utter farce, and despite the public supposedly being in a mood to “throw the bums out,” pretty much every incumbent State legislator in our region was re-elected. 

The paper wrote:

With the exception of one race that was too close to call, all incumbent state senators and assemblymen who represent the Mid-Hudson, whether Democrat or Republican, were elected to return to Albany, long cast a place where dysfunction rules.

One re-elected legislator, Republican John Bonacic, dismissed this dispiriting degree of political stasis by reflexively pointing a finger toward the Big Apple, as if every mess in Albany can be pinned on New York City (said with a Texas twang, as in that old salsa commercial).

There are at least two more plausible explanations:

(1) that the Albany pork system is very difficult for challengers to overcome, since incumbents do little but dole out their member items (witness Saland’s relationship with fire houses) and arrange press availabilities;

(2) that the quality, funding and organization of challengers is pretty limp. Sending out a few emails, having lunch at a couple of diners, mass-mailing some clunky flyers, and giving away a few signs to hapless committee members does not a campaign make. 

In Federal races, incumbents will sometimes lose, though not often enough. This is in part because the general public doesn’t keep much track of who’s really responsible for good and bad legislation in Washington, instead reacting viscerally to mass-media caricatures of national figures.

On the local level, voters tend to know little about their State Senators and Assemblymen, unless maybe they saw a picture in the paper of one giving a check to a local library, firehouse, or VFW. (Photo ops with farmers is another area staple.) These local “leaders’ aren’t really connected to the mess in Albany, even though they are the mess in Albany.

For real change and progess to occur, voters have to be communicated clear, strong reasons why they should change devils, rather than sticking with the devil they already know. They need to be engaged with something more personal than a robo-call or mass-mailer. They need to be drawn into the drama of a fun campaign by friends and colleagues they trust. They need to be motivated and inspired, not just hammered with attack ads from all sides, which can be dismissed as partisan he said/she said persiflage. And in the waning days of the campaign, all effort needs to focus on getting already-identified supporters to vote—the oft-discussed but seldom-executed “GOTV strategy.” (When crunch time rolls around, few campaigns have truly ID’d their voters, and even fewer have drummed up the volunteers necessary to get them to the polls.)

These rudimentary tasks are rarely handled at all, and even more rarely handled well. So the same old schnooks get sent back to Albany again and again. The result is a democracy in name only, where responsiveness to the public and the accountability of leaders is more often an appearance than a reality.

The Midterms: It’s not all bad

• Abstinence nut and former witchcraft-dabbler Christine O’Donnell, a Sarah Palin endorsee, was soundly defeated in Delaware (a Senate seat the GOP otherwise might have picked up);


• Likewise, it appears that Palin protegés Joe Miller in Alaska (whose thuggish security handcuffed a reporter asking him question) and Sharron Angle (who was hinting at armed rebellion if she lost) both lost;


• In California, Jerry Brown and Barbara Boxer both won their races for Governor and Senate, respectively, despite their opponents spending oodles of cash;


• Crusading Attorney General Richard Blumenthal beat the WWF candidate in Connecticut, who likewise spent a fortune on her candidacy;


• Denver mayor John Hickenlooper beat paleolithic conservative Tom Tancredo to become Colorado’s new Governor;


• Maurice Hinchey was re-elected yet again to Congress in New York’s 19th District;


• New York’s Green Party reached the 50,000-vote threshold necessary to guarantee themselves an automatic ballot line Statewide for the next four years;


• The Democrats did not lose control of the Senate, meaning the GOP won’t have control of both houses of Congress, and no carte blanche to force idiotic bills in front of the President.

Otherwise, it was pretty bad...

All dressed up & somewhere to go

Roy Volkmann is sharing his album of Halloween costumes from last Saturday’s Witches’ Ball, organized by Dini Lamot and Windle Davis (with help from a host of volunteers) to benefit The Valley Alliance. There’s also an album of party pictures here. Roy is selling prints for the very affordable prices of $15 for a 5" x 7", $20 for an 8" x 10... Call (518) 828-2512 for details, or visit his website.

Live Election Results

WNYT (Channel 13) in Albany has the most comprehensive and frequently-updated election results I’ve found so far for the region... Here’s the link for Columbia County races:

http://wnyt.com/article/stories/s1228511.shtml?cat=11732&list=ALLCL

It looks like Holly Tanner will be comfortably re-elected as County Clerk, but the County Coroner’s race appears very tight, with Roberta Davis narrowly ahead.

Here's the Times-Union's link for Congressional and other races:

http://web.timesunion.com/election/results/race_statewide.asp?racecode=NYH20

As of 9:55 pm on Tuesday night, early returns for Congress (NY-20) show Chris Gibson beating Scott Murphy pretty handily in Saratoga and Dutchess counties, and narrowly in Columbia County. In NY-22, Maurice Hinchey looks to be cruising to re-election. No word yet on John Hall in NY-19.

Xtraphone

Seen at the Claverack Xtramart.