Facing Out: The Week’s Most Interesting News

January 18, 2025

Photo of the Olympic Speed Skating Oval in front of Lake Placid High School. The Olympic Speed Skating Oval in front of Lake Placid High School is enjoyed by the community when the conditions are right, as they are now. Nancie Battaglia

Dear Colleagues and Friends,

The former editor of the Times Union in Albany, N.Y, was fond of calling the capital city a company town, and the company was state government. That was seldom truer than this week.

Gov. Kathy Hochul announced in her State of the State address that she wants to spend $400 million spiffing up the area around the Capitol, including $150 million to remodel a once-admired State Museum and $200 million for unspecified other projects.

The Governor’s announcement came alongside news that the federal government finalized plans to shower the region with 825 million taxpayer dollars to establish a National Semiconductor Technology Center in Albany, touting it as a first-of-its-kind research and development center. And while not technically a giveaway, the U.S. Department of Energy is backing a $1.66 billion loan to Albany County-based Plug Power to build hydrogen facilities across the country.

No one in the Capital Region will take issue with the jobs and amenities such government largesse figures to create — the praise is flowing — but questions will linger as to whether this is normal or, more importantly, sustainable. Albany has needed a boost and a wealthy patron for a long time. It’s in tough shape. Let’s hope the Hochul money arrives and is used effectively for a substantive and optical makeover, and that it liberates private investment for a reimagining of the Capital City that helps bring it back to its deserved glory … at least enough to make Rebeca Lobo happy.

GET SERIOUS: David Brooks, a longtime columnist for The New York Times, has had enough of the stupidity so often on display on Capitol Hill. Ordinarily mild-mannered and analytical, he turned his full rhetorical fire on the Democrats who were questioning Defense Secretary-designate Pete Hegseth — a man Brooks writes is “in no danger of rising to the level of mediocrity.” Pointing out the many global challenges facing the United States, he writes, “If you’re a Democrat trying to sink a nomination, you would think you’d want to ask substantive questions on life-or-death issues in order to expose the nominee’s ignorance and unpreparedness. But did this happen at the Pete Hegseth hearing in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee this week? If you thought those kinds of questions would dominate the hearing, you must be living under the illusion that we live in a serious country. We do not.” Noting that the questions focused on Hegseth’s alleged personal failings, he adds, “Senator Tim Kaine tried to play the moral disqualification game, dwelling on Hegseth’s various adulteries. With Democrats’ having failed to defeat Donald Trump with this strategy, I admire their capacity for persistent losing.”

IT TAKES GALL: Erin P. Gall, who resigned as a State Supreme Court justice months after she was suspended and recommended for removal following a racist tirade in which she threatened to shoot Black teenagers at a high school graduation party, is back on the public payroll as an assistant attorney in Herkimer County, a rural enclave between Albany and Syracuse. Sylvia Rowan, who chairs the Herkimer County Republican Committee, told The New York Times that Gall’s behavior was something people “will probably frown at.” But, she said, “to question her ability in her job and what she did in that situation is different. ... I’m a firm believer in second chances.”

NUCLEAR REACTION: Global demand for electricity in the age of artificial intelligence is surging, spurred by a boom in investment in new data centers, the largest of which can have annual electricity demands equivalent to that of 400,000 electric cars. MIT Technology Review’s What’s Next series turned its gaze to the newfound interest in nuclear energy spurred by this new demand. “Nuclear had an incredible 2024, probably the most exciting year for nuclear in many decades,” Staffan Qvist, a nuclear engineer and CEO of Quantified Carbon, an international consultancy focused on decarbonizing energy and industry, told the publication. “There’s a big world out there hungry for power.”

EVIL LURKS: A school district in New York’s Hudson Valley is warning families about a scam in which degenerate criminals use artificial intelligence to mimic children’s voices, hoping to extort money from frightened and unsuspecting parents, the New York Daily News reports. Federal investigators call it “vocal cloning,” the creation of realistic-sounding clips of a loved one in distress. Meanwhile, the family of a Saratoga County girl who was kidnapped from a state park in 2023 and missing for 2½ days are asking Gov. Kathy Hochul to include money in the state budget to make sure child survivors have a dedicated advocate present during all questioning and proceedings, TV station WNYT reports. The proposal has the bipartisan backing of state Senator Jim Tedisco and Assemblyman Angelo Santabarbara. 

Photo the Goddess Columbia statue atop the Soldiers and Sailors monument in Troy, N.Y.Dawn breaks behind the Goddess Columbia statue atop the Soldiers and Sailors monument in Troy, N.Y.  John Bulmer

NAME GAMES: Across New York State, schools have been changing the names of their mascots to comply with a State Education Department order to drop monikers currently considered to be potentially offensive. Almost two years after being indirectly called out by their hometown paper, the Whitesboro school district near Syracuse has acted. Their athletic teams now known as the Warriors are about to go the route of Cher, Madonna and Elvis. Henceforth, pending school board approval, they will be known simply as Whitesboro, the only school in Section III — and perhaps the state — without a nickname. 

DELAYED GRATIFICATION: Turns out the white-collar job market has cooled off, and newly minted MBAs are feeling the chill. Twenty-three percent of job-seeking Harvard MBAs who graduated last spring were still looking for work three months after leaving campus, up from 20% the prior year and 10% in 2022. Most MBAs from top schools end up with good-paying jobs, but the three-month figure is closely watched because it signals hiring demand for corporate climbers in high-wage fields. Meanwhile, the latest Gallup survey of employee engagement found that workers, especially those under 35, are increasingly disconnected from their work. Overall, only 31% of workers reported feeling engaged at work, the lowest since 2014, and more than one in six reported being actively disengaged. Only 30% strongly agree that someone at work encourages their development. Workers under 35 reported a five-point drop in engagement from the previous year. It’s not just the rank-and-file — recent findings from The Conference Board suggest CEOs had lower confidence in their own industries in late 2024.

TRAVELS WITH JACK: Jack first showed up at Union Train Depot in Albany, N.Y., in the 1880s. He was a friendly pup, a terrier, and quickly found companions among the rail yard workers. Jack also discovered he had a taste for travel and adventure. So, he hopped in a baggage car and began many years of riding the trails. He visited New York City, Los Angeles, the Adirondacks, Maine and Canada and points in between. Jack seemed to know somebody at every station and at most of the newspapers along the way, too. Historian Maury Thompson introduces us to Albany’s legendary Railroad Jack.

01_Nuggets.jpgNICE RIDE: Readers of USA Today have voted The Bobcat wooden rollercoaster at the Six Flags Great Escape in Queensbury, N.Y., one of the best new theme park attractions in America. 

MORE GOLD MEDALS: A bipartisan group in the U.S. Senate and House reintroduced a bill this week to award Congressional Gold Medals to the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team, which famously defeated the mighty Soviet team in The Miracle on Ice in Lake Placid and went on to win the gold medal two days later by defeating Finland.

TALK IS NOT CHEAP: A Philadelphia Eagles fan who was recorded yelling vulgar, sexist comments to a Green Bay Packers fan last weekend was fired from his job and banned from Philadelphia’s Lincoln Financial Field after the video went viral. His former employer? BCT Partners, a management consulting firm focused on diversity, equity and inclusion.

CAUGHT DEAD: The feds are beginning to recover hundreds of millions of dollars in Social Security payments made in error to dead people, announcing this week an initial clawback of $31 million.

PAY TO STAY: Starbucks this week said it is adopting rules for customer conduct and reversing an open-door policy that has allowed people to use its bathrooms or hang out inside without buying anything.

ROYAL FORTUNE: Catherine, Princess of Wales, revealed this week that her cancer is in remission and that she remains focused on her recovery as she continues a gradual return to public duties.

02_Lives.jpgPAUL VELLANO SR. was a dominating and powerful defensive tackle from Schenectady, N.Y., who teamed with fellow All-American Randy White to lead the University of Maryland football program to national prominence in the early 1970s. Before that, he was an all-state player for Bishop Gibbons High School. He played briefly for the Chicago Bears and for several years in the World Football League before returning home to co-own Vellano Bros., a construction supply company. A son, Joe, also played at Maryland, where he was an All-American in 2011, making the Vellanos one of four father-son duos to earn All-America honors for the same school (Archie and Eli Manning, at Ole Miss, are among the others). “Paul’s legendary,” a former high school rival, La Salle Institute coach John Audino, told The Daily Gazette. A member of the University of Maryland athletic hall of fame, he was 72.

BOB UECKER was affectionately called “Mr. Baseball” by Johnny Carson and the nickname stuck. No sport had a better ambassador than Uecker, who in addition to more than 100 hilarious and self-deprecating appearances on The Tonight Show had memorable turns as a play-by-play announcer in Major League (“juuuust a bit outside”), worked national baseball broadcasts, had a role in the 1980s sitcom Mr. Belvedere and was a pitchman for Miller Lite. But to fans in Milwaukee, he was much more — the beloved and enthusiastic play-by-play voice of the Brewers, his hometown team, for 54 years. The team, in announcing his death, called it “one of the most difficult days in Milwaukee Brewers history. ... There is no describing the impact Ueck had on so many, and no words for how much he was loved.” “We are grateful for this baseball life like no other, and we will never forget him,” baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred said. He was 90.

DAVID LYNCH was a furniture builder, painter, coffee maker, composer, sculptor, cartoonist, and most notably, a filmmaker. Described by one critic as “the first populist surrealist — a Frank Capra of dream logic,” Lynch was best known for the radical and celebrated TV series Twin Peaks about the mysterious murder of a high-school homecoming queen, which debuted in 1990 and won three Golden Globes, two Emmys and a Grammy for its theme music. His films, which included Mulholland Drive, Blue Velvet, Wild At Heart, Elephant Man, and his 1977 feature debut Eraserhead, were known for their imitated but never duplicated “Lynchian” style, pulling “disturbing, surrealistic mysteries and unsettling noir nightmares out of ordinary life.” A childhood friend described him as cheerful and sunny, but always “attracted to dark things.” He received a Lifetime Achievement Oscar in 2019 and suffered in recent years from severe emphysema. He died five days before his 79th birthday, at his daughter’s house, to which he had fled during the Los Angeles wildfires.

03_Almost Final Words.jpg“While members of the press have been made aware of the governor’s plan for the State Museum, unfortunately, the state Education Department has not yet been afforded the same courtesy.”
— JP O’Hare, a department spokesman, responding to news that Gov. Kathy Hochul intended to seek a $150 million legislative appropriation to revamp the diminished facility. 

04_signoff.jpgJUST THE FACTS: The New Hampshire Department of Transportation tried to be one of the cool kids on its social media, issuing a “Skibbity Weather Warning: Roads Are Slippery Sus This Morning!” complete with emojis, and “Locked In Alert: It’s giving Ick vibes this morning, Fam.” There were others. And yes, there were reactions.

05_Bottom.jpgSome of the linked material in Facing Out requires a subscription to read.

Principal Author: Bill Callen.

Contributors: Ryan Moore, Mark Behan, John Brodt, Kristy Miller, Jim Murphy, Amanda Metzger, Maury Thompson, Nancie Battaglia and John Bulmer.

FACING OUT is what we do. We help companies, organizations and individuals work effectively with their most important external audiences – their customers, their shareholders, their communities, the government and the news media.  www.behancommunications.com

Facing Out features news and other nuggets that caught our eye, and that we thought might be of value to you, our friends and business associates. Some items are good news about our clients and friends, others are stories that we hope will leave you a bit more informed or entertained than you were five minutes ago. As always, we welcome your ideas and feedback. 

Let’s make it a conversationmark.behan@behancom.com

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