WAMC Northeast Report on WAMC

New York Democrats are calling on their Republican colleagues in Congress to work with the president to find a solution to the budget cuts that took effect last Friday.

Capital District-area Congressman Paul Tonko  was joined by Syracuse Mayor Stephanie Miner, the state party co-chair, on a conference call today to discuss the effects of sequestration.  Mayor Miner says that the sequester is hitting Syracuse hard.  Tonko labeled sequestration as "mindless.” He says he been against the process from the beginning.

During its first weeks of formation, a chick is provided with all the nutrition it requires inside its shell. As it develops, though, the chick eventually exhausts its supply of fuel and begins pecking around in search for more, thus creating an opening in the shell and giving birth to itself. This is what Buckminster Fuller describes as “precession” when animals, seemingly inadvertently, but by nature’s design, are led to the next stage in their evolution.

State budget negotiations are continuing in Albany this week in the run-up to the self-imposed March 21st deadline set by state legislators and Governor Andrew Cuomo.

New York Assemblyman Richard Gottfried, Democrat of Manhattan’s 75th district, spoke with WAMC's Patrick Donges for an update on budget negotiations and the prospects for medical marijuana in the Empire State, a cause he has long championed.

A federal investigation is reportedly underway involving a long-standing toy fund in the Berkshire town of Lee.

The board of commissioners of the Saratoga Springs Housing Authority will remain in their place following a failed city council vote on a resolution last night calling on Mayor Scott Johnson to remove and reconstitute the board.

The United Way of New York City is distributing more than $5 million in aid to communities affected by Superstorm Sandy. Three Hudson Valley counties are receiving some of the money.

Mahatma Gandhi once said, “…truth cannot be found by violent means.” That idea is currently the topic of the course Ideas that Changed the World at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Tonight, UMass Amherst history professor and associate dean of the school’s Commonwealth Honors College, Daniel Gordon, will present a lecture titled The Fatal Truth: the Cult of Violence in Western Political Thought. He spoke with WAMC’s Patrick Donges.

A workforce development program for homeless families has been launched in western Massachusetts with the help of a major grant from a charitable foundation.  

Leading members of New York's business community gathered today at the Albany Institute of History and Art to call for state lawmakers to pass publicly-financed fair elections this legislative session.