Here's the outrage....

Edward Spychalski was hired in 2006 as Executive Director of the Saratoga Springs Housing Authority (SSHA) at a salary of $74,977. In the last four years his salary has doubled to over $152,000 plus benefits, including an authority car and jobs for two family members. Spychalski is the man who ignored bed bugs in the authority housing for seven months!

Who is responsible for this outrage? Certainly, the Authority Board is culpable. But the SSHA is under the office of Mayor Johnson who appoints these Board members.

While it gets HUD money, the SSHA was created at the request of the then City Council as a "municipal" authority under the NYS Public Housing Law. In addition to appointment power, the Mayor is responsible for ensuring that any salary increase comes to the City Council for approval. No vote on Mr. Spychalski’s increased compensation has been before the City Council since the Mayor Johnson took office.

Fire Spychalski sounds like an easy answer. Not so simple. Mr. Spychalski was given a contract that rolls over every year. Contract termination could prohibit the automatic roll over. But, if removed, the Authority must pay Spychalski $600,000 compensation!!! That is how the Mayor interprets the contract.

Since the State law requires that SSHA Director’s salary be approved by the City Council and this was not done, it is possible that the contract is invalid. But the Mayor, who sues citizens and the civil service so easily, is letting this one slide. Johnson’s inaction is part of the outrage.  What or who is he protecting and why?

Mayor Johnson... ask for the resignation of the SSHA Board members who permitted this contract. They didn’t exercise due diligence. If you cannot terminate Mr. Spychalski’s outrageous contract, perhaps you, the deputy Mayor and the City Attorney should reimburse the citizens of Saratoga Springs for all of the money your office cost us. You all failed in your due diligence.

Now acccording to the Times Union, the Mayor has asked Attorney Izzo to research the jurisdiction of the SSHA.  Apparently the Mayor's legal skills don't extend to such a task or  he is too busy to do this work for the City.  And why do we pay  City Attorney Scala?  He is absent when there is need to adhere to legal process. he is absent when contracts have to be negotiated or signed; he is absent when research has to be done. 

But the real question is why Mayor Johnson is obfuscating.  This is a Mayor who hires outside attorneys and sues everything that isn't to his liking.  From rec center to civil service and citizens, he has sought legal remedies at great cost to the taxpayers of this City.  Why has he held back from action in the SSHA?   All of his soft words about "trying to resolve the issue" sound hollow to anyone who has followed his career of City litigation.

Here's the hypocracy....

How many times have we heard Republicans expound on the benefits of free market economics?  Every year American tax payers give oil companies "entitlements" in the form of subsidies.  This is not free market economics although every Republican legislator goes to the mat protecting these company entitlements. 

But aside from that, the gas and oil market is one of the truly free markets.  The countries that produce oil release more or less of it to keep prices up, at the same time considering the competition from other producer nations.  The refiners control production in line with their profit needs; the distributors control gasoline on the basis of their bottom line and even the local gas station has a say in the price of gas in competition with other local stations. Then the speculators play their part in the mix.  Free market economics on every level.  Only the government tax is a stable figure in the mix.  It doesn't fluctuate.

AND YET, every Repbulican candidate for office is screaming that President Obama is responsible for and must do something about the price of gasoline.  What kind of duplicity is that?  If these Republicans really support free market economics why would they want the government to interfere?  Why would they wish to have government manipulate oil and gas prices?  Is attacking the President whom they hate more important than their principles?  

And why do Republicans insist on supporting subsides for oil companies if they really believe in the free market economy?  Isn't taking both sides of an issue the definition of hypocrisy?

Santorum the Sanctimonious....and some other comments....

Mr. Santorum said President Kennedy makes him want to throw up.  What an elegant turn of phrase for a presidential candidate!!!  His point of view is as astounding as his ignorance.  He says our founding fathers were “Christians”.  Rather they were Deists.  Our Founding Fathers believed in God but they made it perfectly clear that no religion would be imposed on the country by government.  Mr. Santorum seems to want to negate our Constitution and impose his religiously crafted social values on the rest of us. 

President Kennedy told us that his faith was personal to him; he would never let it rule America.  True to his word, he kept his personal faith at home but he never let it govern his actions as President of Americans of all faiths.  Neither did President Regan.  Mr. Santorum on the other hand wants all of us to live his faith.  He says religion should never be kept out of government.  He waives the Constitution whenever he speaks. But has he read it?

Let’s talk about his faith.  People in Judeo/Christian based religions all preach certain verities:

Ø      Care for the sick and infirm

Ø      Care for the poor and the hungry

Ø      Treat the stranger within your gates with respect

Ø      Do unto others as you would have them do unto you

What does the current crop of Republican candidates for President as well as Mr. Santorum want to do?  They want to repeal health care.  So much for taking care of the sick and infirm.  They want to cancel unemployment insurance.  So much for caring for the poor and hungry. They want to get rid of illegal immigrants by checking every person of a different nationality even if they are legal green card residents.  So much for the stranger within our gates.

Neo-Republicans speak of smaller, less intrusive government. But they want to impose their prayers in our public schools and our public life.  You become a captive audience to some one else’s faith.  So much for freedom of religion.   They want laws that go into female wombs with vaginal probes if that woman wants something other than what they deem is good for her.  Mr. Santorum says women should have children even if they have been raped or are pregnant by incest. He questions contraception even if it is for health, not reproductive reasons.  He wants to go into our bedrooms; to know with whom we sleep.  If it is with the “wrong” sex, he wants to deny the equal rights the rest of us enjoy including serving in the Military. So much for smaller, less intrusive government.

Mr. Santorum says he wants to do away with our public school system.  He home schools his children because “our public schools are bad for children of faith.” Now, he says our President is a snob because he wants all children to be able to go to college or technical college or some form of higher education.  Mr. Santorum is the elitist.  He who has a college degree and a law degree warns others about the evils of higher education.  Is the American Dream only for him?  Worse then his denigrating education, are the people who cheer him for saying it.  He rallies those who revere ignorance.   Mr. Sanatorium would lock our intellects, our imaginations and our powers of thought up in a narrow, religiously based world.  Does book burning come next?

But perhaps Mr. Santorum’s most egregious sin is that he purveys fear.  He and his fellow candidates spout gloom and doom while hard working Americans are trying their best to work our way out of an economic recession.  Every speech is about getting rid of President Obama.  Surely America deserves Republican candidates who have a more constructive platform than hate of our highly competent black President. 

Religious tolerance started in Pennsylvania where the Quakers found freedom.  Thomas Jefferson wrote the separation of Church and State in that same place.  Pennsylvania kicked Santorum out.  The rest of us should also.

President Kennedy was a war hero.  He broke segregated schools and colleges so that people of all colors as well as backgrounds and religions could get an equal education.  President Kennedy harnessed what makes America great and took us to the moon. He preached hope and inclusiveness and tolerance for all.  Mr. Santorum isn’t fit to walk in President Kennedy’s shadow.

A few comments….

When I went through menopause (that would be past the child bearing age) the doctor proscribed birth controls pills for my health.  I was on them for years.  Does that make me a slut?  I’m a technodolt.  Were I not, I would start an on-line petition saying, “I’m a slut too”.  Come on men, you sign it too.  One wonders what would happen if legislatures outlawed Viagra for unmarried men!!!

Any judge who makes a joke about minorities, no less puts it on the internet, should be impeached.  He no longer has any judgment.  He is no longer able to judge!!!

You want to talk about voter suppression.  Did you know that in the Republican primary, the State of Virginia does not allow write in votes?  One has to vote for choices narrowed by law.

There is a massacre going on in Syria.  Where is the Arab League?  Due to religious differences the West cannot intervene.  It would be mis-labeled.  But the Arab League has no such restrictions.  Why in the 21^st century is anyone who has the ability to stop it, sitting by and watching human slaughter?  We are indeed being dragged back to the dark ages.

#2 - "I'll believe a corporation is a person when Texas executes one".....

In the Citizens United case, the Supreme Court of the United States declared that a corporation is an individual.  Please read the Constitution.  The preamble says, “We the People”.  Amendments start with, “The right of the people”; “No person”; “All persons”; “The right of citizens”; “The rights of citizens”; etc.  No where in the constitution does it ever give rights to a corporation. 
 

We know that corporations and their terminology existed at the time the Constitution was written.  In fact the Constitution, Article II, uses corporate terminology, “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America”.   Yet our founding Fathers did not include rights for corporations.   If they had meant corporations to be treated like people, they were careful framers and would have included them in the Constitution.

The flood of money that the Citizens United case allowed corporations to pour into PACs is always quoted as the serious consequence of that decision.  Please note that I do not say it’s an unintended consequence.  I believe the majority activists on the Supreme Court knew exactly what they were doing.  But there are other much more serious consequences of decreeing that a corporation is a citizen.

Take the case of the Nebraska.  Since corporations are individuals they have paid to take over legislatures as in the State of Nebraska.  The legislative politicians there, bought and paid for, decided they would cede to oil companies that power which has always been reserved for government – it is the power of eminent domain.  Eminent domain permits government to “take” land it needs for the publics good, paying a fair price for it.  The corporate legislature of Nebraska passed a law giving oil corporations the power to take land if they needed it.  And take it they tried for the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada to Texas.

Republican spin masters loudly blame President Obama for stopping the pipeline.  It isn’t true.  The President didn’t stop the pipeline, the Republicans did. The Congressional Republicans stopped it by trying to rush it through requiring an approval deadline in a tax bill.  That tax bill didn’t pass so their deadline did.  The President then put a hold on the pipeline to honor the wishes of the State of Nebraska whose Republican Governor, Dave Heineman, managed to delay the pipeline by a series of special sessions of his legislature.  Why would the Republican Governor do this? 

First, he stopped it because the environmental evaluation had not been completed.  There are concerns about oil leaking from the pipeline and fouling the Sandhills or the Ogallala Aquifer that runs underneath and provides drinking water to 1.5 million people.

Less known is that Republicans, Democrats, Tea Party and Libertarian people in Nebraska, many of them farmers, banded together.  They decided that they didn’t want a corporation to take away the land that their ancestor had purchased and farmed for generations.  When Nebraska and Montana and South Dakota have worked out their problems with the environmental problems of the pipeline the federal government will do its due diligence.  The decision about the pipeline will be made on the basis of serious studies.

But least you believe that the Keystone XL pipeline will bring down our gas prices, it won’t.  All of that oil is simply going down to Texas refineries.  After refining, it will be piped into ships for China.  “Canadian oil won’t replace imports from hostile countries because Texas refiners are serving global demand rather the domestic need,” according to retired Brigadier General Steven Anderson, the US Army’s logistician in Iraq from 2006-2007.  He also said the pipeline will “set back our renewable energy efforts for two decades, much to our enemies’ delight.”

Drill baby, drill makes a great bumper sticker but it’s terrible policy.  It pollutes air; it pollutes water, it makes rich people richer and it has no benefit for those of us who drive in America.  Make no mistake, all of that Canadian drilled and Texas refined oil will keep China booming.

“I’ll believe a corporation is a person when Texas executes one”.

Republicans wax lyrical on “free market economy”.  “Don’t touch the corporations; don’t touch the banks."  A free market economy will make us strong is their mantra. 

Let’s deal with the banks.  In the simplest possible terms, American banks borrow money from the Federal Reserve at very low rates; in these times they have virtually no interest to pay when they repay the loan.  It is our money, our tax dollars they borrow.  They take this money and as we know from the mortgage debacle, they take risks with it.   If they win, they keep the profits to distribute to shareholders around the world.  If they lose, the government, we tax payers take the hit.  We bail them out.  Now a few years ago we had to bail them out or face the possibly of a real depression.  We needed to protect our citizens from that. But, in a real sense the banks live in a socialist world protected form loss by the government.  This is NOT a free market economy. 

Going forward we need government, our Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) to hold the banks responsible for abiding by the rules.  If, in the future, they fail to do so, they will have to go bankrupt and the bank officers who break the law will have to go to jail.  That is a free market economy.

Unfortunately, most of the young attorneys who work for the SEC go from there to Wall Street.  That may explain one reason why SEC enforcement is so lax.

The corporations don’t abide by a free market economy either.  They spend millions of dollars lobbying our Congressmen and Senators to pass legislation that is friendly to their bottom line.  They promote loopholes in the tax law to save them money. So, in effect, corporations spend all of that money to insure that government helps them; protects them from, participation in the ups and downs of the economy just as it would in a socialist country.  That is not a free market economy.

Actually, if you think about it, the Democrat platform that calls for fair and equal participation in and burden from government is the only true free market economy.  By using their large financial resources to pay government to give them special advantages, the corporations are imposing on us their form of socialism under the guise of “free market economy”.  How silly are those who buy into the corporate school of thought without getting an understanding of free or market or economy.

Memorial to Clarence Dart....

We, in Saratoga Springs, were lucky to have a great man from the Greatest Generation in our midst.  I didn’t know Mr. Dart but I knew about him.  Not because of any movie or any publicity but because I lived with that generation.   Mr. Dart was among the greatest, not because he fought in WW II but because of the conditions under which he fought in the war.

Mr. Dart was of a generation when black people were apart.  In many areas of our country Mr. Dart couldn’t sit at the same area of an eating place as a white person; he couldn’t get water from the same drinking fountain; he couldn’t sit next to whites on a bus; he couldn’t sit in the same train carl although his father worked on that train.  He certainly couldn’t march, fight or fly next to a white man.  The civil war was over, the prejudice remained.  I remember, as a young person, during the war a Senator got up in Congress and said black people couldn’t serve in the military because their brains were smaller.

And yet when our country went to war, none of this mattered to Mr Dart and his fellow black military men.  When they got their “greetings” from Uncle Sam they responded with the same post Pearl Harbor enthusiasm as every other American.  And the prejudice didn’t end when they were inducted.  They were separated into black units; they were either put in service units or put out as forward observers to get killed first.

But Mr. Dart knew what he wanted to do.  He wanted to fly and he kept at it until he was allowed to fly although not with the best planes and not in the bombers that delivered the blows to the axis powers.  Mr. Dart and his group flew as they were “allowed” to live, serving - flying protection for those great bombers making sure that they were protected from enemy fighters.  And those black flyers did it as they did everything else, competently.  They did it so courageously that soon those white bomber crews were requesting that the black fighter squadron fly protection for them.

I don’t know if Mr. Dart was a Democrat or a Republican.  But I am glad that he lived to see a black man in our White House.  I’m glad that he lived to see the Democracy for which he fought, become a reality.  If Martin Luther King talked the talk, Clarence Dart walked the walk.  It is up to those of us still here to make sure that the America Mr. Dart fought for stays strong; that blacks and women and minorities and immigrants are as equal and respected as every other American.  I believe he was greatly loved by his family.  In fact, he is a great role model to us all.  We must not let him down.

Republicans run amok.....

For a few years now every Republican, local, state and national, has said they want a smaller government.  “Get the government out of our lives” is the mantra of Republicans and tea party members alike.   
 

Yet these self same Republicans, who want government out of our lives, want their government in our bedrooms.  They want to know with whom we sleep.  If
they do not like our choices, they are making sounds about making it illegal. Forbidding same sex marriage is only a start.  How does this square with government out of our lives.

Today the State of Virginia passed a law saying that if a woman wants an abortion, legal according to the Supreme Court of the United State, she must first go through a vaginal probe administered without her consent.  Yes, the State of Virginia requires that she be vaginally violated without her permission.  Doesn’t it sound a lot like legal rape?  If you want or need an abortion you must submit to legal rape.  How does this square with government out of our lives.

Here’s the problem.  Most abortions happen in the first trimester.  A vaginal probe in the first trimester is likely to cause an abortion.  Will the Doctors and the Administrators who are responsible be accused of murder if an abortion occurs due to the procedure?   After all, these legislators also have decided that life begins at conception. 

This abomination is against medical ethics; it is against the very freedoms for which we have fought; it is a dagger in the heart of a woman’s dignity.  Now contraception is at risk. Is the next step to circumcise women as they do in Africa and the world of Islam? 

This is much worse than hypocrisy.  It is destructive of America as we know it. These self same fascists, these right wing bigots are the same ones who want to pass ordinances against Sharia Law.  Can anyone explain the difference between Islamic subjugation of women and homosexuals and the so called “Christian” fervor that led Republicans to pass this horrific law, above mentioned.  Are our working women to be put back into purdah?

Connect the dots…..

How is the right wing taking control to pass these laws state by state?  They first pass laws that abridge the right to vote.  I have been an election inspector for over thirty years in three states.  I have never seen or heard of an example of voter fraud.  They are legislating about a problem that doesn’t exist.

These abridging laws require a government issued identification in order to vote.  If you have no drivers license or passport what is your identification?  In some right wing states a gun license is accepted.  But what if you don’t have a gun; what if you don’t drive; what if you’re too old to have any of the above?  You have to spend money to go down to the City Hall to get an identity card.  This puts government well into your life.

The fact is, if you have to get identification whether it is a car license or a gun license or issued card, you have to PAY for it.  And that, good people, constitutes a poll tax.  Having to pay to get the right to vote is defined as a poll tax.  The Supreme Court of the United States has declared the poll tax illegal.  Has this stopped any state from passing the law?  Why not?

Watch the progression….

These Republican States limit the right to vote.  They get “their kind” of people elected.  Then they proceed to legislate our bedrooms, our uteruses, our morals and in fact our religious beliefs if ours happen to differ from theirs.  If you wrote this in a novel even five years ago it would have been called a fantasy.  Today we are living it. 

Additionally, most of these “righteous” religionists have forgotten their verities.  They don’t want to take care of the sick, the poor, the old, the hungry.  They rile against Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.  According to them every person must be responsible for his/her own welfare or die - unless, of course, welfare is done by their churches.  It comes with pressure to convert and is funded by government money.

An interesting fact is that these same right wing political activists simply refuse to raise taxes on the income people make over a million dollars year.  We know that trickle down economics didn’t work for all of the Bush years.  There is no evidence that it ever worked.  But these right wingers take vows to Grover Nordquist NEVER to raise taxes.  And here we thought their oath was to listen to us, citizens who live under the United States Constitution.  Can we connect the dots from money to these fanatics and their legislators?  Could business play a part in the fervor of legislators and jurists who deem corporations people?

 What has happened to the honor of serving in Congress?  What has happened to  our personal freedom?  What has happened to separation of Church and State?  What had happen to Judeo/Christian values?  What has happened to the individual dignity of each human being, man or woman, once so prized in the United States?  The right wing is threatening to take down the very principles on which this country was founded.

Decide if you want to live in our America or their New World being sneaked into our laws by the right wing.  Eschew fear of terrorism; it leads to laws like the Patriot Act that abridge our freedoms.  Avoid fear of economic recession; they will sell you a worthless “better way”.  You will not like their New World.

America is a special place in the history of mankind.  Never has  there been a country offering such codified freedom.  When we got rid of the abomination of slavery, we were the first country that offered everyone upward mobility.  After the Second World War we developed a middle class never before seen in the world.  Do we really want to let these fanatics drag us back to the dark ages? 

Bed Bugs and More….

The City of Saratoga runs a 176 unit high rise Housing Authority property for the elderly and vulnerable among us.   It was created as an Authority by State ordinance and is run by a Board appointed by the Mayor and a Director, currently Ed Sypchalski.  Under State law salaries must be approved by the City Council and jobs fall under the Civil Service Commission.

A few summers ago preventive monthly insect exterminations were cancelled by the Director.  Last summer bed bugs were discovered in a number of units. After seven months it is reportedly a bed bug infestation and the problem has yet to be addressed.  There are still bed bugs unchecked at Stonequist.

 

Here are some facts.

 

1. The Director was hired in 2006 at a salary of $75,000.  In the last four years under Mayor Johnson, that salary has risen to $152,000 plus benefits.  The Director also has a housing authority vehicle that he drives to and from his home in Half Moon.

1. According to the State ordinance that created the City’s Housing Authority, salaries are to be approved by the City Council.  According to Council minutes no salary has come before the Council for approval since 2000 when the then Deputy Mayor was the ex-Chair of the Housing Authority. 
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3. The Director has his daughter and his son working for the Housing Authority and there is question about the required Civil Service Commission waivers.

4. The Housing Authority Board and the Director have had a travel/training budget of $25,000 and more per year for the past two years.  According to F.O.I.L. information, the Director, Chairman Brunelle, Board member Eric Weller and others have spent over $57,000 for travel, training and lodging in the past two years.

4. According to the newspapers the housing authority had more than $2.8 million in June, 2011.

4. It is reported that the Housing Authority Board has hired an Albany Public Relations firm to help deal with their image.

So the questions are: Why haven’t the Director and the Board of the Housing Authority dealt with the bed bug problem?  Why has the Authority Board given the Director a 100% raise in the past four years?   Why do the Authority Board and Director have $25,000 and $31,000 in travel/ training expenses that were spent in Las Vegas and Florida?  Why have our lawyer Mayor and City Attorney Scala permitted these salary excesses without requiring that the Authority come before the Council?

Should the Mayor replace the entire Board?  Should the Directors be required to return their “training” expenses and the public relations money to help defray the bed bug extermination expenses?

Above all, where is the accountability?  A City Hall workshop called by Commissioner Franck nearly turned into a free for all with accusers grilling Authority Board members without due process or representation.  We do not need a witch hunt!!!  We need the Mayor, Deputy Mayor and City Attorney to fulfill their responsibilities and protect this vulnerable part of our community.

Article 3, Section 32 of the State Public Housing Law says, “Officers and employees; compensation and expenses. 1. When the office of the first chairman of the authority becomes vacant, the authority shall select a chairman from among its members.  An authority shall select from among its members a vice-chairman, and it may employ, subject to the provisions of the civil service law applicable to the municipality in which it is established, a general manager, a secretary, technical experts and such other officers, agents and employees as it may require, and determine their qualifications, duties and subject to the approval of the local legislative body, fix their compensation.