The Honorable David Koon
268 Fairport Village Landing
Fairport, NY 14450
koond@assembly.state.ny.us
Dear Assemblyman Koon,
I’d like to respond to a flyer that was mailed to us – it was a flyer encouraging my family to “put our money where our heart is – buy local and support local farms.”
One reason we chose to locate in upstate, NY is because of the neat mix of environmental, urban and agricultural amenities. Indeed, our family buys local throughout the season, and makes many a trip to the numerous farms in Monroe, Wayne, Ontario and other nearby counties. However, we are very concerned with three aspects of this mailing.
What is most frustrating of all is not even what I wrote above – it is that your flyer gets sent to every household in the area as gospel. People will not have any chance to learn about the misrepresentation in your mailing and they certainly will not have any chance to be alerted to the deeper and more serious questions I raise. You might argue that if this is so important to me, why I don’t just print out 20,000 flyers and mail them myself. Well, you can do the math on how much that costs – no single cause is worth that to me when I am trying to raise a family and pay to send our children to Catholic schools while the government uses thousands of our dollars every year to send the children of richer families to schools which resemble university campuses. This is why it is offensive to see flyers like the one you sent out – even as much as I support local farmers. But that is the point – local farms ought to be supported on their own merits. What of the many things that do not have your explicit support? If resources were not being used to pick local farms as “winners” what would they be used for? And we will never see how private choices would have resulted in a pattern of preservation and development that perhaps made even more sense than local agriculture. Again, we love the local apples, blueberries, raspberries, peaches, corn and other products – but we have serious concerns about the role government continues to play in picking favorites, distorting information and misusing funds.
Sincerely,
Michael Rizzo
Perinton, NY
Outstanding!
Have you sent similar letters in the past? If so, have you ever received a response?
I certainly have sent several letters like this to various politicians and other organizations. I have rarely if ever even received a “Thank you for your response” much less a detailed discussion of the point I raise.
I’ll post another letter I wrote to the editors of the Genesee Valley Parent magazine that was addressing serious mistakes and misdirections in their writing and have never even received a confirmation from them.
Frustrating to say the least.
Of course… who’d want to publish letters proving them wrong?
Come to think of it maybe thinking about media is run (and corrupted) would lend to an excellent discussion… I don’t know too much specifics myself. The ideas and spin perpetuated by the media seem to have amazing effects on how the country goes and how the people think.
You should challenge him to a debate on the issue in the local paper (take out an ad!).
My local Congressman (Olver) recently sent out a taxpayer-funded mailing (now I wish I’d saved it), with a chart that showed the CPI over time, with education and health care inflation broken out separately (both much higher of course). Of course his conclusion was not to attribute this to public subsidies, which increase demand relative to supply. No…he wants MORE public funding for BOTH because prices are rising so quickly… Economic Ignoramus ….
Have you ever tried sending this letter to a local newspaper?