Facing Out: The Week’s Most Interesting News

February 15, 2025

Jim Murphy and Assemblywoman Mary Beth Walsh pose next to the portrait that will hang in the Saratoga County Courthouse in Ballston Spa, N.Y., where Jim served 10 years as County Court Judge and Acting Justice of the Supreme Court of the State of New York.

Dear Colleagues and Friends:

Everything you need to know about Jim Murphy was revealed on a frigid Friday afternoon in Ballston Spa, N.Y.

There, the Capital Region legal community packed a Supreme Court courtroom to standing-room capacity for the official unveiling of his portrait, an honor recognizing his decades of distinguished service as a prosecutor, county judge and acting state Supreme Court Justice.

“This portrait is not just a personal honor but a tribute to the institution we serve,” he said in remarks that were characteristically self-effacing and gracious. “Serving the people of the state of New York and Saratoga County has been the privilege of a lifetime.”

Jim comes from a family of public servants. His father was mayor of Saratoga Springs, his grandfather a Congressman representing a large swath of Upstate New York. Jim was himself elected to five terms as Saratoga County District Attorney before his 2014 election as County Judge. It is now our privilege to call Jim our colleague.

IN THE SPORTLIGHT: Two young athletes from Upstate New York made national news this week. Claire Hutton, a 19-year-old graduate of Bethlehem High in the Albany suburbs, was one of 23 players named to the United States women’s national soccer team roster for the SheBelieves Cup, a four-team tournament that begins Thursday in Houston, with subsequent matches in Glendale, Ariz., and San Diego. Hutton, a finalist for both National Women’s Soccer League Rookie of the Year and U.S. Soccer Young Female Player of the Year in 2024, is making her national team debut. And Honor Smoke, a 10-year-old wrestler from the Tonawanda Reservation, is on the cover of the first-ever Sports reIllustrated, which celebrates young female athletes breaking barriers in sports.

TAKE YES FOR AN ANSWER: “The blight that pervades downtown ...”  “The city’s lack of appeal ...” Those were the words that opened the first two paragraphs of a “painful to read” New York Times report about Albany, the state’s struggling capital city, where poverty is twice the national average, crimefighting is impeded by dozens of unfilled police jobs and thousands of people who started working from home during the pandemic haven’t returned. Gov. Kathy Hochul is hoping to give the city a $400 million boost with state funds — she’s calling it the “City of Albany Rescue Plan” — but a $150 million chunk of that is in question because the state Department of Education seems more interested in fighting a turf battle with the governor over the decrepit State Museum than in actually improving the place. “Our city has challenges, and what bothers me is that the people we have in power in Albany, continue to deny it," Dan Cerutti, a businessman who’s running for mayor, told radio station WAMC.

ROLE OF A LIFETIME: Forty-one years after a teenage heartthrob named Ralph Macchio created one of the most iconic movie characters of his generation, the “Karate Kid” is winding down the latest chapter(s) in the fictional life of Daniel LaRusso — while the moviegoers who first made him a box-office smash watch alongside their children and grandchildren. Netflix this week released the final five episodes of Cobra Kai, the six-season series that reintroduced Daniel as an adult, now coaching a new generation of karate kids in the spirt of his mentor, Mr. Miyagi. In May, he’ll return to the big screen in the same role, starring with Jackie Chan in Karate Kid: Legends. Asked by the New York Times how alike he and his fictional counterpart are, Ralph said his family are what he holds the highest. That’s no surprise to anyone who knows Ralph’s parents, Ralph and Rosalie Macchio, who raised their family on Long Island but fell in love with Lake George and bought a beautiful property on nearby French Mountain, where they built a home and an evolving series of hospitality businesses, including The Barn at French Mountain.

STRATEGIC SWIFT: Though Philadelphia Eagles fans might not agree, a senior editor at Harvard Business Review posits that Taylor Swift is more than just a fabulously successful music icon — she is a master strategist who offers business leaders in any field “valuable lessons on innovation, reinvention, and strategic thinking.” “Over the years,” Kevin Evers writes, “Swift has displayed such a remarkable ability to innovate — and to make sophisticated strategy and marketing moves — that it’s worth trying to draw lessons from her career, the same way we study traditional business visionaries such as Steve Jobs, Richard Branson, and Jeff Bezos.”

Tate Frantz of Lake Placid, N.Y., takes flight during the Nordic Junior World Ski Championships in his hometown, which conclude this weekend. Frantz finished second, a week after a top-20 finish in a World Cup event at the same venue. Nancie Battaglia

SAND CASTLE: A multimillion dollar home built 15 years ago on a sandy bluff high above Cape Cod Bay in Wellfleet, Mass., is in danger of collapsing into the water below, with the bluffs eroding at a rate of up to 5½ feet a year. A wide wooden deck that used to be attached to the house is gone, replaced by a barricade that prevents anyone from stepping through the sliding glass doors and tumbling 25 feet to the beach. The owner wanted to build a seawall to protect the property but was denied by a local commission and lost a subsequent appeal in court. Now officials worry about what will happen to the water if the house falls in, concerned that the toxins it may release could endanger a robust oyster industry.

JUICE JAM: Orange juice, long a staple of breakfast tables in the U.S., is badly in need of a comeback, its popularity squeezed by cost and concerns about nutritional value, especially its sugar content. Consumption in the U.S. is down by more than half since its peak in the 1990s, Bloomberg reports, hitting an all-time low in 2024 with another dire outlook for 2025. Juice makers are trying new tricks, but suppliers are growing weary, with more farmers selling their prime Florida real estate to condo developers instead. No word yet on how the news affects the Duke brothers, Louis Winthorpe and Billy Ray Valentine.

GREEN MOUNTAIN BLUES: Remember when it seemed like everyone was moving to the open spaces and fresh air of Vermont, taking advantage of work-from-home rules during the pandemic to escape the grit and costs of urban living in the Northeast? If you Google “everyone is moving to Vermont,” you’ll still find plenty of news reports that say the trend has continued. But according to The Wall Street Journal, that’s no longer the case, citing a Census Bureau estimate that the state is again losing more people to other states than it gains. A tight housing market is partly to blame, as is a graying population. “We desperately need more working-age people,” said Kevin Chu, executive director at the Vermont Futures Project, a nonpartisan organization that promotes the state’s economic growth. 

INTEGRITY: The interim U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, a Republican, and five officials with the Justice Department’s public integrity unit in Washington resigned this week rather than comply with an order from the department to drop corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who was indicted for accepting illegal campaign contributions and bribes of free or discounted travel from people who wanted to buy his influence, and was reportedly facing additional charges that he destroyed evidence and instructed others to destroy evidence and provide false information to the FBI.

WHALE OF A SCARE: A kayaker off the Chilean coast was swallowed by a surfacing humpback whale, which quickly released him unharmed, all of it caught on video by the kayaker’s father, who somehow was able to remain calm and urge his son to do the same.

FIRE SALE: A house in Pacific Palisades that burned to the ground during the Los Angeles wildfires received more than 60 purchase offers and sold for more than $1 million, according to the agent who listed the property. The median home price in the community was close to $4 million at the end of 2024, an appraiser told Bloomberg.

MIGHTY MONTY: Monty, a 5-year-old giant schnauzer who won the American Kennel Club championship in December and twice was a finalist for best in show at the annual Westminster Kennel Club dog show, this week became the first of his breed to take the top prize at Westminster, the country’s most prestigious event of its kind.

CHRISTIAN LOVE: Vice President JD Vance, who converted to Catholicism in 2019, cited the concept of “ordo amoris” in discussing immigration and other issues last month. His comments have sparked debate among theologians, including, now, Pope Francis.

DENNIS J. PHILLIPS took on the State of New York, influential environmental groups and punishing political headwinds when he argued in the state’s highest court that private landowners were justified in prohibiting canoeists from trespassing on the waters that coursed through lands they had owned for 150 years. His case was meticulous, but the victory still came as a surprise: Adirondack landowners had long seen their property rights eroded by law, regulatory actions and political muscle. The Brandreth Park case brought Phillips sudden new visibility after a distinguished, nearly 50-year career as a smart and fierce advocate for the property rights of Adirondackers. Raised by a single mom in the Black River Valley of Northern New York, he was an assistant to the headmaster at the elite Dalton School in New York City when he met opera singer Patricia Smith Phillips. They married and settled in Glens Falls, where they shared a deep appreciation for art and culture. He served as a trustee of The Hyde Collection, the Lake George Opera Festival and the Adirondack Experience and as a director of the Charles R. Wood Foundation. He was still practicing law when congestive heart failure claimed his life at 79.

“Kid Rock, who grew up an entitled rich kid in the suburbs of Detroit — and not in the inner city or the country like he’s tried to convince people of at various times in his life — is still a petulant child well into his 50s. The aging, washed-up rockstar recently proved this by walking off stage during a performance because the audience wasn’t clapping for him. You can’t make this s*** up, people.”
— Columnist Stephen Andrew Galiher, on Kid Rock’s decision to stop playing, insult the crowd, and sulk off the stage after not getting the audience participation he assumed he deserved at a performance to celebrate Bon Jovi keyboardist David Bryan’s 63rd birthday.

ATTENTION DEFICITS: Trolling, it seems, is all the rage these days. The governor of Illinois, JB Pritzker, used his public platform to announce that Lake Michigan would henceforth be known as Lake Illinois, because “a great lake deserves to be named after a great state.” Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont suggested the body of water off the coast of his state be renamed the Connecticut Sound. Do these guys have nothing better to do? Not to be outdone, a petition to buy the state of California and give it to Denmark — so the country could have “more sunshine, palm trees, and roller skates” — had received 200,000 signatures by midweek.

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

Principal Author: Bill Callen.

Contributors: Ryan Moore, John Brodt, Kristy Miller, Jim Murphy, Amanda Metzger, Claire P. Tuttle and Nancie Battaglia.

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