A New York New Species

The species of frog from NY Times

A recent posting in the NY Times online entitled, "A New Species in New York Was Croaking in Plain Sight," reports that scientists have identified a new species of frog has been discovered in New York City and surrounding counties in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. It is enough like other, more common frogs that nobody who knows about frogs noticed it until recently—so similar, in fact, that biologists had to do DNA testing on it to confirm that it is a separate species. Evidently, it makes a different call, but for a long time nobody noticed that either. Kinda makes you wonder what might be lurking up here in Lewis County. Surely if an unidentified species of frog has been hanging out in the Big Apple all these years, there has to be some hitherto unknown species of something waiting to be discovered in the back yards of Lowville.

By the way, they haven't named the new species yet.  The NY Times invites suggestions.

A Good Government Story

The U. S. government is under attack by a band of elected officials in Congress who apparently want to bring "big government" to its knees for purely ideological reasons.  Big government is bad government, so their reasoning goes.  They are not in touch with reality, which is common for radical ideologues of whatever persuasion.  Witness a recent news article posted on the New York Times website.  Entitled, "Government Can’t Help? Tell That to the South Bronx," the article recounts the successful urban renewal efforts of the City of New York, about as big a city government as one would want, in the Bronx.  Decades in the making, the story of the renewal of the Bronx illustrates how big government can use big bucks with big results, good results.  For another take on the rise of the "New Bronx," see Jonathan J. Levin's, "A Look at the South Bronx."

Bottom Line:  the issue is not the size of government but rather its effectiveness.