In the spirit of Henry Hudson, local color and Libertarian analysis

Henry Hudson's  'Halfmoon' came 400 years ago.

  Legend has it that when Henry Hudson came up the river later named after him, that a group of native children came out to greet the Halfmoon, his vessel, on a sandy hook now known as Stuyvesant. In Dutch, this ' Children's Corner ' is called Kinderhook. As the Dutch Patroons later settled and parceled out the land in the Hudson Valley that they 'discovered', the name Kinderhook remained and is the current town that I live in. There is also a village so named. We are also proud of our famous native sons like Martin Van Buren, eighth President of the United States. We can even lay claim to fictional characters, like Washington Irving's Ichabod Crane.

  I mention this in passing only because a sense of place is important to some and that I'm going to start this 'Examiner' gig. I've been designated the Albany Libertarian Examiner. The Examiner folks let me retain ownership of content and that was a big part of my decision to do this. It is also an opportunity to expand audience, more so than a bill paying arrangement. While I can certainly lay on the provincial and prosaic highlights of life in Columbia County rather thickly, my previous experience as the Libertarian Party of New York chairman and two runs for Congress gives me a great perspective of how this state is run just across the river in Albany. I suspect that the Examiner model requires strong identification with metropolitan areas rather than every podunk place in this vast country. Jim Leszynski is better suited for the Gotham coverage than I and while he's not really a city guy, Kent McManigal is working hard out west too. Both great guys that I've done libertarian things together with in the past.

  All of New York's political problems start in Albany. As a life long student of politics and history, I've always followed the course of New York politics emanating from Albany. Certainly the new ease of transportation and communication has lent itself to an unprecedented ability to monitor and communicate about life anywhere on the planet. As a college student in Albany in the late eighties, I found myself working in the computer field alongside my studies and I've witnessed this emergence of super information on both hands over the years. Where once a large library would fulfill such needs, a few clicks can often reveal more and better information than an entire day dashing between tomes and microfiche.
 

  It's always easy to point out the inanities of policy and the politicians that so diligently provide them for us. My goal during this stint is to provide some local color and libertarian analysis for what is most certainly not the vast free world that Henry Hudson stumbled across four hundred years ago. Unrestrained by party titles and responsibilities, I hope these thoughts and notions don't disturb folks, so much as offer a different perspective in times that really do require it.