Implementing single-payer on a state level might result in a better system than nationwide Medicare for All. At least that’s the opinion of Assemblyman Kevin Cahill, who has forgotten more about health-care policy than most will ever know.

Like many institutions today, SUNY New Paltz puts a premium on increasing diversity and inclusion. Ultimately, the effectiveness of the college’s ambitions for inclusion will be in the quality of its graduates. What skills will they contribute to a world sadly in need of healing? Will they be able successfully to bring to their careers the civic values they learned in their student days?

Pat Ryan’s let’s-get-on-with-it leadership style exudes restlessness. Ulster County government’s chief executive is impatient with undirected conversation, unclear goal-setting and slow decision-making. He wants to move the county’s economy forward now, he says (among other things). Occasional inevitable policy mistakes, he maintains, are no excuse for inaction. The tone is one of urgency.

Economic trends favor urban centers with a high concentration of talent, like New York City. How can places in their orbit, like the upper Hudson Valley, benefit?

The George Washington School on Wall Street in Kingston was the venue last Friday evening and Saturday for what its organizers termed an unconference. An audience of 200 showed up for “Surviving the Future: Connection and Community in Unstable Times,” billed as both a summit and a progress report on the sustained efforts of the past few years to organize radical political, economic and cultural consciousness-raising in and around Kingston.

Banking variety remains alive and well in Ulster County. What most local people don’t seem to realize is that the same can’t be said of most places in this country.

With the new Office of Economic Development, Ulster County Executive Pat Ryan wants to emphasize the importance of a new separate department and other measures to support his initiative “to grow and diversify our economy for all.” How well it will succeed will depend on the smarts, skills and inspiration breathed into it by its participants.