Facing Out: The Most Interesting News of the Week

November 16, 2024

Gore Mountain in North Creek, N.Y., is again welcoming skiers to its slopes, opening this weekend, along with Whiteface Mountain in Wilmington, N.Y. Nancie Battaglia

Dear Colleagues and Friends:

Elise Stefanik grew up in Upstate New York, worked in her family’s wholesale plywood business, attended Albany Academy for Girls and held various campus jobs while earning a degree at Harvard, the first in her family to earn a college degree.

After graduating with honors, she worked in the White House for President George W. Bush on the Domestic Policy Council and in the chief of staff's office. In 2014, she became the youngest woman ever elected to Congress to that date. Today, she is the highest-ranking woman in the House of Representatives and a national figure, known for her loyal support of President-elect Trump and her advocacy for Israel, which she demonstrated in a speech to the Israeli Knesset and her grilling of college presidents in congressional hearings about antisemitism on campus.

On Election Day, still just 40, she won a sixth term in Congress with more than 62% of the vote. And then came the call to the world stage: Pending U.S. Senate confirmation, she will leave Congress to become the next U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.

PAY ATTENTION TO ESSEX: There are so many things to love about Essex County, N.Y., the home of Lake Placid, historic Fort Ticonderoga, Mount Marcy, and Lake Champlain. But it’s also a county that knows which way the national political winds blow: Essex County has sided with the winner in every presidential election since 2000. Of the 3,125 counties in the United States, only Essex County and Blaine County, Montana, have that distinction.

NEW LIFE FOR THREATENED MINE: In New York’s predominantly rural and heavily regulated Adirondack Park, good-paying jobs don’t grow on trees. That’s why the communities of Johnsburg, Indian Lake, Minerva and others across the region are breathing a sigh of relief following this week’s meeting of the state’s Adirondack Park Agency. Following an extensive, multi-year review by APA staff, the Agency’s commissioners unanimously approved a permit modification request that will allow family-owned Barton Mines to continue its 146-year-old garnet mining and processing operation for another six decades. Without the permit modification and extension, Barton’s Adirondack operations would have been forced to shut down in less than six years, leaving an irreplaceable economic void in the region. Barton employs approximately 100 Adirondack region residents, pays more than $400,000 annually in local property taxes, and has an overall regional economic impact of approximately $20 million. APA staff found Barton’s long-term mining plan to be responsible and protective of the surrounding Adirondack environment and noted that more than 900 community members, local governments and organizations had sent letters of support. Barton converts its Adirondack-mined garnet into world-class abrasive products for waterjet cutting, abrasive blasting and specialty finishing that are used by the U.S. military, as well as the aerospace, automotive, and medical device industries, among others.

RESCUE THE SQUADS: There’s a health care crisis unfolding in rural areas across the country. For decades, many rural communities have relied on ambulance services run on coin drops and local volunteers. As people age, they rely more on local emergency services, most of which are “staffed” by remarkably well-trained volunteers, who, of course, also are aging. More than a decade ago, the National Academy of Medicine warned that rural population decline was causing a shortage of emergency workers. Even before COVID, more than half of all volunteer-based emergency squads in New York reported that a shortage of volunteers was forcing delays in ambulance response times; nearly a third of agencies had to turn down calls entirely. After the pandemic, things got worse. Some communities have the tax base that allows paying fire and emergency services personnel, but many rural communities with limited tax bases cannot.

HEALTH CARE PIONEER: John Rugge took the long route to the Adirondacks and an even longer one to medicine. Fortunately for the people of northern New York, he got where he was destined to go. Dr. Rugge grew up on a dairy farm in Little Falls, N.Y., graduated from Williams College, earned a master’s degree in theology from Harvard Divinity School and a medical degree from Yale Medical School. While writing a book about canoeing — a classic, by the way — he accepted a six-month job as a physician in Chestertown, N.Y., where the town doctor had retired. Across the North Country, and nationwide, a generation of family physicians was retiring and relocating. No one was replacing them, so patients suddenly had to drive hundreds of miles for medical care. Dr. Rugge set about to find a community-based solution. He founded Hudson Headwaters Health Network, now in its 50^th year, and a national model for rural health care.

A quiet fall day along the stream in New York’s Grafton Lakes State Park. John Bulmer

TOTALLY NUTS: As if the sad saga of P’Nut the Instagram-famous squirrel and his raccoon friend Fred hadn’t already upset people enough, the New York Post reports this week that not only were the two companions of amateur animal rehabilitator Mark Longo negative for rabies, they actually were marked for death a week ahead of the raid in which they were seized. That calls into question the claim that the seizures and testing for rabies were prompted by P’Nut biting one of the handlers during the raid. What a ridiculous mess.

SCAM-A-PALOOZA: There are run-of-the-mill if dangerous scams, like this knucklehead tried to pull on a Queens freeway, and then there are schemes that make you ask all kinds of questions about the nature and depth of human depravity. Tom Stebbins, executive director of the Lawsuit Reform Alliance of New York, summarizes the stunning cases making their way through the courts in which a host of bad actors, including lawyers and surgeons, are alleged to have conspired to collect huge insurance settlements through fake construction-site injuries that were treated with very real and permanently disfiguring surgeries. “While the fraudsters line their pockets, the victims are often left permanently mutilated, taking with them just a sliver of the ill-gotten payout or settlement – and a lifetime of pain and suffering,” Stebbins writes in an explosive op-ed for Empire Report New York. “True, these allegations have yet to be confirmed in court, but a mountain of evidence suggests this vile scheme is very real.”

A VOICE RESTORED: She lost the very thing that gave her life meaning and which so many others comforting. Allison Stewart was a popular host on New York City’s public radio station WNYC. Every day she introduced her listeners to writers, artists and politicians. Suddenly, on February 22, 2024, she lost her ability to speak. Doctors found a mass on her brain. She found Dr. Randy D’Amico, 43, who has been at the forefront of introducing a novel software program called Quicktome, which precisely maps a patient’s brain networks before surgery. The surgery, during which Allison was awake, worked, and she’s back on the air. 

ESCAPE PLAN: A cruise line announced what it called a “Skip Forward” package, offering a four-year cruise around the world for those who’d rather be away from the U.S. A single-occupancy cabin goes for just over a quarter-mil.

ESCAPE PLAN II: A 45-year-old father of three whose disappearance prompted an extensive eight-week search of a Wisconsin lake is now believed to have fled to Europe, according to authorities who cited a forensic analysis of his laptop.

WICKED EMBARRASSING: Mattel is apologizing and pulling products off store shelves after printing the web address of a pornographic website on packaging for newly launched “Wicked” dolls, instead of the movie’s official website.

VONN IS BACK: Three-time Olympic medalist Lindsey Vonn announced this week that she is ending her retirement at age 40 and rejoining the U.S. Ski Team. She last competed in February 2019.

NEW BOSS FOR LGA: The Lake George Association, one of the premier private lake protection organizations in the U.S., has a new executive director, hiring Brendan Wiltse away from the Adirondack Watershed Institute. He’ll start Jan. 2.

PRESSING ON: The Daily Gazette of Schenectady is an anomaly in today’s disrupted media landscape: A locally owned newspaper that has found a way to cover the important local stories from every nook and cranny of its Upstate New York home and stay in business for 130 years. It’s under new ownership and branching out.

TED OLSON was the Solicitor General of the United States, working in his office at the Justice Department on September 11, 2001, when he received a cell phone call from his wife. She was hiding in a bathroom aboard American Airlines flight 77, the flight that had been hijacked by terrorists and would imminently crash into the Pentagon, killing her and everyone else aboard. Olson had earned the job of Solicitor General in part because he led the legal team that helped President George W. Bush secure a victory over Al Gore in 2000. He later teamed with his adversary in the Bush-Gore case, David Boies, to successfully fight a California law banning same-sex marriage. He appeared before the U.S. Supreme Court 60 times and was widely considered one of the finest lawyers of his generation. He suffered a massive stroke and died at 84.

TOM ULASEWICZ was the Bronx-born son of retired New York police detective Anthony Ulasewicz, the colorful hush money bagman for the Nixon presidential campaign and perhaps the only source of merriment during the televised 1973 congressional hearings on the Watergate break-in. Tom went to law school, became an expert in environmental law and moved north, as had his parents before him. He became acting general counsel at the Department of Environmental Conservation and later executive director of the Adirondack Park Agency. He was instrumental in the permitting for facilities for the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid. He entered the private practice of law and for many years handled high-profile Adirondack land use matters. He was 76.

“(T)he consequence of one man's political will, imposed upon our time and space in spite of its incredible cost, in spite of the arrogant wastry and duplicity that marked the manipulation of public money, in spite of the many construction scandals, underworld intrusions, and colossal thievery."
— Author William Kennedy of Albany, describing the construction in the 1960s of the Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller Empire State Plaza in Albany, N.Y., which eliminated a neighborhood and transformed the city’s skyline.

STRANGER THAN FICTION: The Onion, the famous satirical news outlet, purchased the media empire of the abominable Alex Jones at auction, proceeds of which will help pay some of the $1.5 billion Jones owes to families of Sandy Hook victims who successfully sued him for defamation. The victims agreed to forfeit some of their proceeds to help The Onion make the purchase.

Some of the linked material in Facing Out requires a subscription to read.

Principal Authors: Mark Behan and Bill Callen.

Contributors: Ryan Moore, John Brodt, Kristy Miller, Claire P. Tuttle, 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 conversation: mark.behan@behancom.com