Last American Newspaper shows are sold out
Big beautiful bill will be a nightmare for the millions who lose health care
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Tracey Sullivan, the managing director of Adirondack Theater Festival, told me she had some news at the Village of Vale show Saturday night.
The complete run - all four shows - of The Last American Newspaper is sold out. I've been attending shows long enough to know that does not happen often. Granted, it is in the smaller Cabaret space and not the main theater, but still.
Now, the pressure is really on: Will my adaption of my book to the stage be any good?
Ever since the first dramatic reading in Albany in March, interest in the play has been building.
The play continues to evolve since the March reading, especially the second act.
My fellow editors, Mark Mahoney and Will Doolittle, are characters in the play. Another character, Mary Joseph, is named after one of our most respected copy editors whose untimely passing at the age of 39 rocked our newsroom.
The stories our newspaper covered - Growing Up Gay, Hometown vs. Heroin, downtown piolitical protests, the Fort Edward tanker leak - will be familiar to long-time Post-Star readers.
Ultimately, my goal is to capture the community spirit, of not only my colleagues, but all the journalists at small newspapers all over the country.
I've heard from so many former colleagues who plan on being at the production July 25-27 in Glens Falls. It will be a mini-reunion for former Post-Star employees.
I'm looking forward to hearing, not only their feedback, but your feedback as well. I want to know if I've captured the spirit of the newsroom, if my characterization rings true with the experiences of former staff members.
I suspect some of my colleagues are a little nervous about how they are being portrayed. I've tried to be faithful to my book, but this is a dramatic re-creation where two decades of history are collapsed into a couple hours on the stage, so there is some literary license.
My goal was to remind readers the value of having a daily newspaper which holds public officials accountable while also addressing the ills facing the community. And maybe most importantly, the hole that is left when that role is diminished.
The stories and characters will be familiar to you, but what I hope comes through is the passion and dedication of those workers.
ERs, residents in danger
Ted Peterson shared this video with me about the perils to emergency room-access posed by the spending bill that just passed the Senate.
Peterson points out that there are just three emergency rooms in the heart of the North Country and the proposed budget cuts could force all three of those ERs to close. Rep. Stefanik didn't mention that part before voting for the cuts to health care.
Using a map graphic, Peterson's research shows that most people currently travel 15 or so miles to an emergency room for treatment, but if those three emergency rooms close, that distance could climb to over 50 miles.
That could be catastrophic for many emergency cases and as Peterson points out - cost lives.
Peterson prepared the video for the Saratoga Indivisible group.
It's worth five minutes of your time.
A legend passes
Even if you are just a casual horse racing fan, you've probably know trainer D. Wayne Lukas.
Lukas, who had horses in the Kentucky Derby and Preakness this year, passed away on Monday at the age of 89.
When I first started covering horse racing at Saratoga in the late 1980s, Lukas was the biggest name in the sport. He had all the biggest horses in all the biggest races.
Lukas was an enigma to me. He existed in two very different worlds. I could never figure out if he was a great trainer or a great businessman. He seemed equally comfortable atop a horse watching early-morning workouts, or rubbing shoulders with millionaires at the Fasig Tipton sales in Saratoga.
It is doubtful we will see his likes in the horse racing universe again.
Bill in nutshell
Lots of commentary on the Senate passing the Big Beautiful bill this week including this from The Atlantic's Jonathan Chait:
"The final details still have to be negotiated, but the foundational elements are clear enough. Congress is about to impose immense harm on tens of millions of Americans—taking away their health insurance, reducing welfare benefits, raising energy costs, and more—in order to benefit a handful of other Americans who least need the help. The bill almost seems designed to generate a political backlash."
From Senate floor
And this from Independent U.S. Sen. Angus King of Maine who called the bill a "farce" and said this on the Senate floor this weekend:
“Imagine a bunch of guys sitting around a table, saying, ‘I've got a great idea. Let's give $32,000 worth of tax breaks to a millionaire and we’ll pay for it by taking health insurance away from lower-income and middle-income people. And to top it off, how about we cut food stamps, we cut SNAP, we cut food aid to people?’... I've been in this business of public policy now for 20 years, eight years as governor, 12 years in the United States Senate. I have never seen a bill this bad. I have never seen a bill that is this irresponsible, regressive, and downright cruel.
“I don’t understand the obsession and I never have…with taking health insurance away from people. I don’t get it. Trying to take away the Affordable Care Act in 2017 or 2018 and now this. What’s driving this? What’s the cruelty to do this, to take health insurance away from people knowing that it’s going to cost them…up to and including…their lives.”
EPA fights back
Employees at the Environmental Protection Agency signed a letter denouncing the Trump administration’s efforts to politicize, dismantle and sideline the main federal agency tasked with protecting the environment and public health.
The letter was signed by 270 employees and sent to E.P.A. administrator, Lee Zeldin.
The New York Times described it as a "remarkable rebuke" of the agency’s political leadership and comes on the heels of another letter from 60 employees of the National Institutes of HEalth.
“E.P.A. employees join in solidarity with employees across the federal government in opposing this administration’s policies, including those that undermine the E.P.A. mission of protecting human health and the environment,” the E.P.A. workers wrote.
Getting hotter
The latest climate trend statistics show the EArth is getting hotter, faster.
The New York Times reported this week:
A report published last week found that human-caused global warming is now increasing by 0.27 degrees Celsius per decade. That rate was recorded at 0.2 degrees in the 1970s, and has been growing since.
That trend follows predictions that as things got worse, global warming would speed up.
Yet in the latest funding bill proposed by Congress, it is slashing funds for green energy research and subsidies for electric cars.
The lack of funding not only flies in the face of science, but what we are all seeing with our own eyes every day.
Supreme stats
Substack writer Robert Hubbell printed a statistic I had not seen before about Supreme Court decisions.
He wrote that Federal district courts have ruled against President Trump 96 percent of the time only to be overturned by U.S. Supreme Court decisions.
"That mismatch would be inexplicable in a system where judges were applying the law to the facts in a fair manner," Hubbell wrote. "The only explanation is that the Supreme Court’s reactionary majority is applying a not-so-secret judicial doctrine: Presume a Trump victory and then reason backward to support the outcome that favors Trump."
This court decided presidents were above the law last year and this year you may not be a citizen if you were born here.
DOJ firings
After Friday's column on the DOJ whistle-blower exposing how a high-ranking DOJ official told lawyers to ignore court orders, The Associated Press reported Saturday morning that three prosecutors involved in U.S. Capitol riot criminal cases had been fired.
Two of the attorneys worked as supervisors overseeing the Jan. 6 prosecutions. They were not given a reason for their removal.
Vaccine follow-up
What the two-day meeting of the Advisory Committee on Immunizations Practices showed was that the current administration intends to unravel that fact-based science that has guided the United States on immunizations for decades.
“As a physician and scientist who has devoted my entire career to vaccines and preventing and treating infections, this meeting has been devastating to watch,” said Dr. Lakshmi Panagiotakopoulos, an expert on vaccines who resigned from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention earlier this month.
But here is something to watch. Insurance companies have only covered vaccines if the CDC recommends them. Without that recommendation, you will have to pay for vaccines for your children on your own.
Or go without.
There is currently a measles outbreak in Texas - two children have died - and a whooping cough outbreak in Louisiana where two more children have died.
The researchers are saying the risk from NOT taking the vaccine is far greater than any risk for taking them. But we've know that for decades.
The entire Advisory Committee was removed by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. earlier this year and the New York Times reported that half the new members are not even aware of free immunization programs for American children.
“It’s striking how little the voting members seem to know about the diseases and vaccines that they are discussing,” Dr. Adam Ratner, a pediatric infectious diseases specialist and expert on vaccine policy, told the New York Times.
Ken Tingley spent more than four decades working in small community newspapers in upstate New York. Since retirement in 2020 he has written three books and is currently adapting his second book "The Last American Newspaper" into a play. He currently lives in Queensbury, N.Y.
Elise Stefanik could have voted NO on the Big Ugly Bill. But she didn’t She has no concern for the health of her constituents. Thank you for your attention to this message.
I intend to write every elected official who is on the ballot this November and ask them if they support this "Big Beautiful Bill" and why. I suspect few, if any, will answer. I will vote accordingly.