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PRESORTED STANDARD PERMIT #3036 WHITE PLAINS NY

Vol. VI, No. XLV

Westchester’s Most Influential Weekly

Thursday, November 7, 2013

$1.00

Federal RICO Lawsuit Against County Executive Robert Astorino and more than 100 of his family, friends and employees

By NANCY KING, Page 3

I Am the American Veteran.

Remember Me?

By ROBERT SCOTT, Page 20 WWW.WESTCHESTERGUARDIAN.COM

rience fundraising, knowledge of what development entails and experience working with sponsors/donors; 2) Operations Manager- must have a good knowledge of computers/software/ticketing systems, duties include overseeing all box office, concessions, movie staffing, day of show lobby staffing such as Merchandise seller, bar sales. Must be familiar with POS system and willing to organize concessions. Full time plus hours. Call (203) 438-5795 and ask for Julie or Allison

Page 2

THE WESTCHESTER GUARDIAN THE WESTcHESTER GUARDiAn THE WESTCHESTER GUARDIAN THE WESTcHESTER GUARDiAn

Of Significance Of Significance

Community Section ............................................................................... 4 Community Section ............................................................................... 44 Business ................................................................................................

Business ................................................................................................

Calendar ............................................................................................... 44 Calendar ............................................................................................... 45 Charity ..................................................................................................

Creative Disruption ............................................................................ 56 Charity ..................................................................................................

Contest Cultural Perspective ........................................................................... 766 Contest ..................................................................................................

Creative Disruption ............................................................................

Energy Issues .......................................................................................

Creative Disruption ............................................................................

Education ............................................................................................. 867 In Memoriam ....................................................................................1078 Education .............................................................................................

Fashion ..................................................................................................

Medicine .............................................................................................10 Fashion .................................................................................................. 89 Fitness....................................................................................................

Najah’s Corner ...................................................................................119 Fitness....................................................................................................

Health ..................................................................................................10 Movie ....................................................................................12 Health ..................................................................................................10 HistoryReview ................................................................................................10 Music ...................................................................................................12 History Ed Koch................................................................................................10 Movie Review ...................................................................12 Community ........................................................................................13 Ed Koch Movie Review ...................................................................12 Spoof ....................................................................................................13 Writers Collection.............................................................................14 Spoof ....................................................................................................13 Sports Scene .......................................................................................13 Books Sports Scene .......................................................................................13 Najah’s...................................................................................................16 Corner ...................................................................................13 People ..................................................................................................18 Najah’s Corner ...................................................................................13 Writers Collection.............................................................................14 Eye On...................................................................................................16 Theatre ..................................................................................18 Writers Collection.............................................................................14 Books Leaving on a Jet Plane ......................................................................19 Books ...................................................................................................16 Transportation...................................................................................17 Government Section Transportation ...................................................................................17 Government Section ............................................................................20 ............................................................................17 Campaign Trail ..................................................................................20 Government Section ............................................................................17 Albany Correspondent ....................................................................17 Economic Development....................................................................17 Albany Correspondent Mayor Marvin’s Column..................................................................20 .................................................................18 Education ...........................................................................................21 Mayor Marvin’s Column .................................................................18 Government .......................................................................................19 The Hezitorial ....................................................................................21 Government .......................................................................................19 OpEd Section .........................................................................................23 Legal ....................................................................................................23 OpEd Section .........................................................................................23 Ed Koch Commentary.....................................................................23 People ..................................................................................................24 Ed Koch Letters toCommentary.....................................................................23 the Editor ..........................................................................24 Strategyto...............................................................................................24 Letters Editor............................................................................25 ..........................................................................24 Weir Onlythe Human OpEd Section .........................................................................................25 Weir Only Human ............................................................................25 Legal Notices ..........................................................................................26 ..........................................................................................27 Legal Notices ..........................................................................................26

YOUR PARENTAL RIGHTS AND COMMITMENT OF GUARDIANSHIP AND CUSTODY OF THE CHILD FOR THE PURPOSES OF ADOPTION, AND MAY FILE BEFORE THE END OF THE 15-MONTH Office Space AvailablePERIOD.

Prime Location, Yorktown Heights UPON GOOD CAUSE, THE COURT MAY ORDER AN INVESTIGATION TO DETERMINE WHETH1,000 Sq. Ft.: $1800. Contact Wilca: 914.632.1230

ER THE NON-RESPONSENT PARENT(s) SHOULD BE CONSIDERED AS A RESPONDENT; IF THE COURT DETERMINES THE CHILD SHOULD BE REMOVED FROM HIS/HER HOME, THE Prime Retail Westchester County COURT MAY ORDER AN INVESTIGATION TO DETERMINE WHETHER- THE NON-RESPONDENT Best Location Yorktown Heights PARENT(s) SHOULD BE SUITABLENOVEMBER CUSTODIANS FOR7, THE CHILD; IF THEin CHILD IS PLACED AND Thursday, 2013 1100OFSq. Store $3100;TWENTY-TWO 1266 Sq. Ft. MONTHS, store $2800 REMAINS IN FOSTER CARE FOR FIFTEEN THEFt. MOST RECENT THEand 450 Sq. Ft. THURSDAY, FEBRUARY Page 3 AGENCY MAY BE REQUIRED TO 23, FILE2012 A PETITION FOR TERMINATIONStore OF PARENTAL $1200. RIGHTS OF THURSDAY, MARCH 29, 2012 Page 3 THE PARENT(s) AND COMMITMENT OFSuitable GUARDIANSHIP OF THEContact CHILD FOR THE 914.632.1230 THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 2012 for anyAND typeCUSTODY of business.

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TODY OF THE CHILD AND TO SEEK ENFORCEMENT OF VISITATION THE CHILD. tor of DevelopmentFT-must RIGHTS have a WITH background in development or expeFeature Section..................................................................................................................................

3 experirience fundraising, of what development entails and

BY ORDER OF THE FAMILY COURT OF THE STATE OF NEWknowledge YORK ence working with sponsors/donors; 2) Operations Manager- must RICO Lawsuit................................................................................................................................

3 have a TO THE ABOVE-NAMED RESPONDENT(S) WHO RESIDE(S) OR IS FOUND AT [specify good knowledge of computers/software/ticketing systems, duties include Veterans........................................................................................................................................20 address(es)]: overseeing all box office, concessions, movie staffing, day of show lobby Westchester OnCommunity the Level is usually heard from Monday to Friday, from 10 a.m. to 12 4 POS suchStreet, as Merchandise seller, Last knownSection......................................................................................................................... addresses: TIFFANY RAY:staffing 24 Garfield #3, Yonkers, NY 10701bar sales. Must be familiar with Noon on the Internet: http://www.BlogTalkRadio.com/WestchesterOntheLevel. system and willing to organize concessions. Full time plus hours. 4 Call (203) Business..........................................................................................................................................

Last known THOMAS: 24and Garfield Street, NY 10701 Because of the importance of addresses: a FederalKENNETH court case purporting corruption and bribery 438-5795 ask for Julie#3,orYonkers, Allison Calendar.........................................................................................................................................

4 allegations, programming with be suspended forArticle the days of Family March 2610 toa.m.

29, 2012.

An Order toheard Show Cause 10 of the Court Act having filed with this Court Westchester On the Level isPerspectives................................................................................................................... fromunder Monday to Friday, from tobeen 12YonNoon Cultural 5 seeking to modify the placement for the above-named child. kers Philharmonic Orchestra Conductor James Sadewhite is our scheduled guest Friday,

Westchester On On the the Level Level with with Narog Narog and Aris Westchester and Aris Aris and

Westchester On the Level is heard from Monday to Friday, from 10 a.m. to 12 Noon on the Internet: http://www.BlogTalkRadio.com/WestchesterOntheLevel.

Join Current Commentary.................................................................................................................

7 March 30.

YOU ARE SUMMONED toPlease appear before thistopic.

Court at Yonkers on the Internet: by http://www.BlogTalkRadio.com/WestchesterOntheLevel.

JoinFamily Court the conversation calling toll-free toHEREBY 1-877-674-2436. stayday on located at 53 So. Broadway, Yonkers, New York, on the 28th of March, 2012 at 2;15 pm in the Education.......................................................................................................................................

8 It is however anticipated that the jury will conclude its deliberation on either Monthe conversation by calling toll-free to 1-877-674-2436.

Please stay on topic. afternoon of27. said day to answer thethe petition and towill show cause why child should be ending8on Richard Narog March and Hezi Aris are your co-hosts.

Incase, the week beginning February 20thnotand day or Tuesday, 26 or Should that be we resume oursaid regular Learning......................................................................................................................................... adjudicated to are be a entourage neglected child whythe you should not be dealt withFebruary in accordance withand the ending on Richard Narog and Hezi your co-hosts.

In week beginning 20th February 24th,schedule we have an Aris ofand guests. programming and announce fact on the Tribune website.

Lifestyle. .exciting .........................................................................................................................................

9 provisions of Article 10that of the Family CourtYonkers Act. February 24th, we have exciting entourage ofshow. guests.

Richard Narog and Hezian Aris are co-hosts of the Every Monday is Medicine. special.

On Monday, February 20th, Krystal Wade, a celebrated participant in http:// ......................................................................................................................................10 PLEASE TAKE FURTHER NOTICE, that you have the right to be represented by a lawEvery Monday is special.

On February 20th, a celebrated participant in http:// www.TheWritersCollection.com ouryou guest.

Krystal Wade isWade, a you mother ofright three who works fifty miles yer, and if theMonday, Courtis finds are unable to payKrystal for a lawyer, have the to have a lawyer Music. ............................................................................................................................................10 www.TheWritersCollection.com is our guest.

Krystal Wade is a mother of three who works fifty miles assigned by“spare the Court. from home and writes in her time.”

“Wilde’s Fire,” her debut novel has been accepted for publication Public Policy................................................................................................................................11 from home and writes ininher “spare time.”

“Wilde’s Fire,” her novel has been for publication and should be available Not far behind her second “Wilde’s does she do it?

PLEASE TAKE FURTHERisNOTICE, that debut if novel, you fail to appear atArmy.” the accepted timeHow and place Services.2012. ........................................................................................................................................11 noted above, the Court will hear and determine the petition as provided by law. and should be available in 2012.

Not far behind is her second novel, “Wilde’s Army.”

How does she do it?

Tune in and find out.

Travel.............................................................................................................................................12 Tune in and find out.Dated: January 30, 2012 OF THE COURT Co-hosts Richard Worship........................................................................................................................................14 Narog and Hezi Aris will relishBY theORDER dissection of all things politics on Tuesday, February 2 column 1 column CLERK OF THE COURT Co-hosts Richard Narog and Hezi Aris will relish the dissection of his all things politicsfrom on Tuesday, February 21st. Yonkers CityWhat Council Chuck will share perspective the august inner YourPresident Doctor Won’t TellLesnick You..........................................................................................14 21st.

Yonkers Council President Chuck Lesnick will share 22nd. his perspective from the august inner sanctum of theCity City Council Chambers on Wednesday, February Stephen Cerrato, Esq., will share Eye on Theatre.............................................................................................................................15 sanctum of the CityonCouncil Chambers on Wednesday, February 22nd.

Stephen Cerrato, Esq.,be will share his political insight Thursday, February 23rd.

Friday, February 24th has yet to be filled.

It may a propiGovernment. ....................................................................................................................................16 his political onwhat Thursday, February 23rd. Friday, February 24th has yet to be filled.

It mayofbeThat a propitious day toinsight sum up transpired throughout the week.

A sort of BlogTalk Radio version Was Mayor Marvin.............................................................................................................................16 tious day toThat sumWas up what transpired throughout the week. A sort of BlogTalk Radio version of That Was The Week (TWTWTW).

Education.....................................................................................................................................17 The Week That Was (TWTWTW).

For those who cannot us live, consider listening to the show by way of an MP3 download, or on Bogenjoin Perspective......................................................................................................................18 For thoseWithin who cannot join us consider listening tofind the the show by wayinof MP3 that download, orlink on demand.

15 minutes of live, a show’s ending, you can segment ouranarchive you may OpEd.................................................................................................................................................17 WHYTeditor@gmail.com demand.

Within 15 minutes of ainshow’s ending,paragraph. you can find the segment in our archive that you may link to using the hyperlink provided the opening Nancy King..................................................................................................................................17 Legal Notices, to using the hyperlink provided in the opening paragraph.

The entire archive is available and maintained for yourAdvertise perusal.Today The easiest way to find a particular interview Legal Notices, Advertise Today Uncommon Sense......................................................................................................................18 The is available and maintained forfor your perusal. easiest to findofa the particular interview is toentire searcharchive Google, or any other search engine, the subjectThe matter or way the name interviewee.

For Legal Ads. . .........................................................................................................................................19 is to search Google, or any otherAOL searchSearch engine, forWestchester the subject On matter orLevel, the name of theRadio, interviewee.

For example, search Google, Yahoo, for the Blog Talk or use the Help Wanted....................................................................................................................................19 example, Search for Westchester Oncall the Level, Blog Talk Radio, or use the Before speaking to the police... hyperlinksearch above.Google, Yahoo, AOL hyperlink above.

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THE WESTCHESTER GUARDIAN

Thursday, NOVEMBER 7, 2013

Page 3

FEATURE

Astorino Campaign Spokesperson Heckles Sam Zherka at Press Conference

By NANCY KING With only four days left until the general election, newspaper publisher and businessman Sam Zherka held a press conference on the steps of the Federal Courthouse in White Plains where he and his legal team had filed a Federal RICO lawsuit against County Executive Robert Astorino and more than 100 of his family, friends and employees. The plaintiffs in this lawsuit: Zherka, Dr. Giulio Cavallo, Dhyalma Vazquez, and others, assert Astorino and the Westchester Republican Party attempted to “raid” the Independence Party earlier this year when Astorino failed to receive the party’s endorsement. Four years ago Astorino did indeed receive the endorsement of the Independent line; a line that most believe helped him to win the election. This year, the Independence Party is backing Democratic challenger Noam Bramson.

The lawsuit asserts that those 120 individuals named, changed their party affiliation to insure that Astorino would have the opportunity to ballot on the “I”

line. The Astorino team was denied on that matter by three separate courts. Zherka maintains that this scheme was in retaliation for Independence Party Chair Dr. Giulio Cavallo denying Astorino the “I” line and to remove both Cavallo and ViceChair Dhyalma Vazquez as leaders of the Independence Party here in Westchester.

Though this lawsuit is lengthy and is being handled by six separate law firms and appears to have merit, it was the press conference itself that became something of a side show. As Zherka took the microphone to introduce attorney Peter Tilem, Astorino spokesperson and strategist Bill O’Reilly took out his cell phone and began to play circus music thus preventing Mr. Tilem from speaking. Maintaining that Bramson was behind all of this, O’Reilly called for a public apology from the Bramson team.

The Bramson team denies involvement in the lawsuit. Mr. O’Reilly continued his rant throughout the press conference calling Zherka nothing more than a strip club owner. While this was going on, two members of the Astorino campaign staff filmed all of those in attendance. Even more bizarre was when an Astorino campaign team member challenged Mr. Zherka to a

Sam Zherka (second from left) holding a press conference before White Plains Federal Courthouse – November 1, 2013.

fight on the sidewalk. To his credit, Zherka maintained his composure throughout the press conference and actually shook the hands with the three gentlemen representing County Executive Astorino.

The initial lawsuit is nearly sixty pages in its entirety. In addition, Zherka states that there are audio and video tapes of supporting evidence. Astorino is heard saying on tape that he would like to

decapitate Cavallo and Vazquez and that the Independence Party denied him their endorsement because he did not name Dr. Cavallo as the Commissioner of Health

Continued on page 4

where are the thinkers who will foresee the forces of nature?

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THE WESTCHESTER GUARDIAN

GOVERNMENT

Sam Zherka Press Conference Continued from page 3

for the county. Cavallo himself denies ever seeking the position and maintains that during Astorino’s 2009 transition, Astorino encouraged all to submit a resume should they wish a position within his administration.

Today’s shenanigans shouldn’t have come as a surprise. As early as 10:00 am, O’Reilly was tweeting that all of those in attendance where members of the “Zherkus” and should be treated like circus performers.

Answers to those tweets by other members of the media suggested that being aligned with the “I” line was a guaranteed ticket to the circus. For his part, Zherka maintains that it will be up to the court to decide this case and that the evidence of election fraud committed by County Executive Astorino will be enough to land him in jail.

Nancy King is a freelancer.

Thursday, NOVEMBER 7, 2013

CommunitySection BUSINESS

Private Jet Firm ExcelAire Opens White Plains Office RONKONKOMA, NY-- Expanding its presence in the New York City metro area, ExcelAire announced the opening of an office and hangar space at the White Plains Airport (KHPN). ExcelAire, one of the nation’s leading private jet charter and aircraft management companies, has a fleet of more than 20 jets.

ExcelAire will provide a full range of private jet services at its White Plains facility, including aircraft management and charter. Its facilities include office space, a waiting room and hangar space. Currently, ExcelAire’s CJ3 and Falcon 900 are based in White Plains.

“To better serve our customers and to meet the growing demand for management and charter services in the Westchester area, we opened this new office

in White Plains,” said Bob Sherry, president, ExcelAire. In addition to the White Plains office, ExcelAire operates a more than 120,000-square-foot facility at MacArthur Airport in Ronkonkoma, New York.

ExcelAire provides unmatched levels of service to aircraft owners and charter customers. With a team of highly experienced private jet travel professionals, ExcelAire exceeds even the highest expectations and

ensures that each trip is executed flawlessly.

A Hawthorne Global Aviation Services company, ExcelAire is one of the nation’s leading private jet charter firms, specializing in worldwide jet charters, aircraft management, maintenance, and sales. In addition to the office in White Plains, the company maintains office and hangar space at Long Island MacArthur Airport (ISP), with aircraft based throughout the Northeast and Midwest, for travel worldwide. Hawthorne Global Aviation Services is a premier provider of general aviation services, with a rich history in the industry dating back to 1932. Further information about the entire ExcelAire fleet, including downloadable photos and individual aircraft specifications, is available at www.hawthorne.aero, or by calling 631-737-0477.

CALENDAR

News & Notes from Northern Westchester

By MARK JEFFERS Congrats to all those who threw their hats into the race, here are some good results from Tuesday’s election…all the lawn signs are coming down soon, strangers will stop knocking at our doors, no more electronic phone calls and we won’t have to shake hands and chat at the train station every morning, it’s time to get back to enjoying this week’s voter free edition of “News &

Notes.”

The Junior League of Northern Westchester will be holding their 33 rd annual Holiday Sharing Drive the week of December 7-11. The JLNW Holiday Sharing Drive directly helps those who are less fortunate in our area and your support is truly needed. You can choose to sponsor a family, purchase a single larger item and/or make a cash contribution. Please help them make this year’s Holiday Sharing Drive a successful one as they celebrate the JLNW’s 60th anniversary year. If you have questions

Before speaking to the police...call

George Weinbaum ATTORNEY AT LAW

FREE CONSULTATION: Criminal, Medicaid/Medicare Fraud Matters White-Collar Crime & Healthcare Prosecutions T. 914.948.0044 F.914.686.4873 175 MAIN ST., SUITE 711-7 • WHITE PLAINS, NY 10601

or need more information, please call the office at 914-234-4714.

Talk show host and veteran television personality Regis Philbin will be the first guest at The Harvey School in Katonah’s new community program designed to share The Walker Center for The Arts with the local community. “Reege’s” appearance will be on Sunday, November 24th at 3pm in The Lasdon Theater at The Walker Center for the Arts on the Harvey campus.

The first annual Bedford Antiques Show is set for November 9th and 10th at the Bedford Historical Hall, the exhibit will feature select quality and diverse collections from the 18th 19th and 20th centuries.

Congratulations and three cheers to Terry Kean and all the folks at the Alzheimer Association as they raised over $39,000 with 310 participants at their recent area Walk.

Please help support local veterans

through Veterans of Westchester; they are looking for clothing, shoes, bedding and household items, call 914-637-8387 for more information.

I know that Halloween has come and gone, but this event also frightens me… a Couples Cooking class will be held at Hanover Farm in Yorktown Heights on November 15th; bring a bottle of wine, someone special, and get ready for a homemade meal.

FamilyU is an event for you to enjoy with your high school student. You and your child(ren) will have an opportunity to hear from experts in their field, whether it is “Staying connected during the teen years”, or “Parenting for Academic Success,” there is a workshop for everyone. Bedford Central FamilyU will be held on Thursday, November 14th from 5:45 to 9:15pm. The evening will consist of two sessions with a break for dinner between the sessions.

On Sunday, November 10th, from 10:00am to 4:00pm, James Navé will teach a one-day speaking workshop that will help creative writers and storytellers perfect their

RADIO

Westchester On the Level with Narog and Aris Westchester On the Level is heard from Monday toFriday, from 10 a.m. to 12 Noon on the Internet: http://www.BlogTalkRadio.com/WestchesterontheLevel.

Join the conversation by calling 1-347-205-9201.

stage presence. As a poet, performer, and creative coach James will provide insight and practice techniques. The workshop will be held in the Katonah Village Library’s Garden Room.

Our friends at the Community Center of Northern Westchester have started collecting NEW warm sleepwear, robes, socks and slippers for children, sizes infant through 18 years, for neighbors in need.

Please bring un-wrapped donations to the Center, during Center hours, TuesdayFriday: 10am – 4pm and Saturday from 10am - 1pm.

For all those crime aficionados out there this is the event for you... on Thursday, November 7th, FBI Special Agent Elizabeth J. Hemenway and Art Historian Amy Herman discuss how art-based observational techniques help solve crimes.

The event will take place at the Katonah Museum of Art at 7:30pm, and there is a fee of $15 for members and $20 for nonmembers, space is limited so advanced registration is recommended.

Veteran’s Day is here, put your American flag out with pride… please give thanks to all those who serve or have served our great country and keep us safe, hats off and a heartfelt appreciation to all our wonderful veterans…see you next week.

Mark Jeffers resides in Bedford Hills, New York, with his wife Sarah, and three daughters, Kate, Amanda, and Claire.

THE WESTCHESTER GUARDIAN

CULTURAL PERSPECTIVES

Digital Wars Part I: The Pirate Bay

By SHERIF AWAD In the late 1960s and early 1970s, film and literature both reflected futuristic fear that technology might go awry to the point of controlling mankind until it might melodramatically end life as we know. The 1963 novel La Planète des Singes by French writer Pierre Boulle that inspired The Planet of the Apeswas first filmed in 1968. The subsequent franchise until the present imagined a planet with apes as the dominant species, while humans became mute creatures wearing animal skins. In 1973, novelist Michael Crichton wrote and directed the sci-fi thriller Westworld starring Yul Brynner, as an android who goes on a killing rampage driving him to hunt down the guests of a futuristic Western-themed amusement park.

In Demon Seed (1977), Julie Christie played a beautiful woman who becomes the object of obsession of an artificially-intelligent computer called Proteus IV (voiced in the film by Robert Vaughn) which imprisons and forces her to carry its seed, i.e. its own child to the world…

During the most recent two decades, the evolution of computers and the birth of the Interne have proven these fears were somewhat far-fetched. The current wars actually taking place across the digital world are becoming the David-Goliath like struggle between big corporations and individuals who want the Internet to be

Simon Klose.

Gottfrid Svartholm Warg. free and uncensored. The Pirate Bay (aka TPB) website and the story that surrounded lawsuits against it is a good example reflecting this war. Like many websites on the Internet, TPB allowed users to share music and films using torrent files and bit torrent protocols. However, the three young men who founded this website in Sweden back in 2003 were specifically placed on trial by Hollywood studios in 2009, being charged with facilitating illegal downloading of copyrighted material.

Monique Wadsted, Hollywood’s Swedish Lawyer.

Simon Klose, a Swedish director, after opinions until they came to face to face with directing numerous music videos and docu- their fate. The final result is the documenmentaries, went on to focus his interest tary TPB: AFK (The Pirate Bay: Away From toward the TBP trials in Sweden. Klose Keyboard) that everybody can either watch did not only shot the procedures on a daily for free online or download via a torrent from basis but he went to interview the three its official website. Access courtesy of and by founders of The Pirate Bay, Fredrik Neij, Klose. Such is his demeanor, based on his Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, and Peter Sunde, belief system that it is appropriate and right in addition to the Swedish lawyer Monique to share everything on the Internet. In fact, Wadsted who represented Hollywood the trials did not shutdown TPB until now.

Studios in the lawsuit. Klose also followed the Klose’s documentary ends up with Fredrik trio while they were awaiting their respective on his way to install a new computer in a sentences and recorded their testimonies and Continued on page 6

Thursday, NOVEMBER 7, 2013

Page 5

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THE WESTCHESTER GUARDIAN

Thursday, NOVEMBER 7, 2013

CULTURAL PERSPECTIVES

Digital Wars Part I: The Pirate Bay Continued from page 5

secret server hall where TPB servers are hidden in a dark data center until now…

About how he shot and conceived his documentary and his opinions about Internet sharing, Klose answered these questions via Skype: AWAD: How did you get interested in

Peter Sunde.

The Pirate Bay (TPB) lawsuit?

KLOSE: I grew up in Sweden in the 1980s collecting films and music by copying VHS tapes and analog cassettes. It was the cultural perspective of my generation to copy and share. When the Internet came about, I continued to collect rare documentaries and music from this new digital portal, which was impossible before... I think the creativity we see online right now is the direct result of this culture because talented people who

failed to sell their works to big companies can now post it on the Internet… When the news broke in Sweden that Hollywood is suing the three hackers of TPB, I became obsessed about revealing their story because it affects me as a filmmaker and also as a believer in file sharing. While shooting TPB: AFK, I was following my belief in getting up close and personal to my interviewees by winning their trust in order to make them reveal the secrets they have with an open heart. So for four years, I followed TPB trio and became their friend. That’s how I got the exclusive footage of the trials and what was going on behind the scenes.

AWAD: it is unconventional for a filmmaker to post his new film online. Why did you do so?

KLOSE: My dream as a filmmaker is to maximize the spread of my films in order to finance my next project and I think the Internet is an amazing platform by which to do it. So instead of saying that thousands of people saw my film by way of theatrical distribution, I can now say that a few million watched it worldwide on their laptops or iPads. For my film TPB: AFK, there are five million who have watched it after nine months of posting it online. In doing so, the viewership of the film has consequently increased for the European broadcasters that aired it later… Nonetheless, I don’t claim that my working model is suitable for every filmmaker...

AWAD: What’s your response to

claims that file sharing on the Internet is hurting many businesses?

KLOSE: I think the sharing culture is not bad for people who work in the creative industries. We should try to build new business models relying on open-Internet. I think there is no point with the big entities working against individuals who are using new tools. Also, I don’t think people in the future would like to shop for one film or one music album because services like Netflix have proven to be more rewarding for the consumer right now through membership for instance.

AWAD: the film finishes with the TPB trio found guilty and confronted with the reality of life offline – away from their keyboard, and that’s how the name of the film is derived. But where are they right now?

KLOSE: Gottfrid was arrested by the Cambodian Police. Thereafter, he was deported back to Sweden to serve his tenmonth jail sentence for TPB crimes and another two years for hacking and fraud. He must also face other accusations in Denmark.

I don’t know the whereabouts of Peter and Fredrik who are still hiding from the law.

AWAD: In one part of your films we were able to see Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks and the subject of my followup article, only to discover that among the accusations of the TPB trio were that some posting were of WikiLeaks documents on TPB. Do you believe Assange and the TPB trio share many commonalities; like their naïve hopes for free Internet and the free

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The hidden Pirate Bay servers are sill running....

Aredrik Neij. exchange of information? However, they in Sweden but there are some topics that are may have launched the two sites perhaps not favored to be tackled across the Swedish without knowing the consequences… media; like drug use for instance. Sex or fileKLOSE: Both Assange and Gottfrid sharing are not sensitive subjects… came from the same background, which AWAD: What are you working on is the decryption and hacking of systems. next?

Gottfrid is more right-wing, while Peter is KLOSE: At the moment, we are more left-wing. Assange, however, belongs working on an Internet website called to the older generation that helped to set www.linklib.org which permits filmmakthe architecture of the virtual world. Let’s ers, film audiences, and film critics to enrich remember that the whole point about the movies by submitting written comments first days of the Internet was file-sharing and and posting web-links related to any video; to send files between computers. I think the something similar to footnotes and extra war against WikiLeaks and TPB was basiinformation written into documents and cally against the beliefs of the TPB trio and essays. Everybody can connect to the website Assange. and share information with everybody.

AWAD: Moreover, you used CrowdBorn in Cairo, Egypt, Sherif Awad is funding websites like Kickstarter.com to a film / video critic and curator. He is the film partially finance TPB: AFK... editor of Egypt Today Magazine (www.

KLOSE: Crowd-funding is the way of EgyptToday.com), and the artistic director the future for financing films. But it is not for both the Alexandria Film Festival, in a substitute of the traditional film financ- Egypt, and the Arab Rotterdam Festival, in ing methods. For TPB:AFK, we raised The Netherlands. He also contributes to Variety, US$50,000 on www.Kickstarter.com in the United States, and is the film critic of from among 1,700 individuals from all over Variety Arabia (http://varietyarabia.com/), the world and this helped us to raise the in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the rest of the budget requirement from other Al-Masry Al-Youm Website (http://www.

European TVs and companies. almasryalyoum.com/en/node/198132) AWAD: To what extent does “freedom and The Westchester Guardian (www. of the press” extend in Sweden? What are WestchesterGuardian.com). the taboos inside Swedish society?

KLOSE: We have fair press freedom

THE WESTCHESTER GUARDIAN

Thursday, NOVEMBER 7, 2013

CURRENT COMMENTARY

“Need Blind,” But Not Too Blind

By LARRY M. ELKIN G e o r g e Wa s h i n g t o n University has long told prospective students and parents that its admission staff was “need blind” when considering applications. It turns out they were peeking under the edge of the blindfold.

in their financial aid offers.

But George Washington has for years taken application fees under false pretenses from families for whom those fees are not pocket change. And it has regularly disappointed qualified kids who were told they would be considered without regard to their financial situations, but who ended up instead on a waitlist from which they had almost no chance of getting accepted.

George Washington University. Photo by and courtesy of photo Flickr user dcJohn .

The GW Hatchet, an independent student paper, recently broke the story that GW’s admissions process “has always factored in financial need,” contrary to claims by its admissions and financial aid offices. While admissions officers make their first cut without regard to an applicant’s financial situation, students on the cusp of acceptance are often shifted to the waitlist if they need substantial financial assistance. This practice reportedly affects up to 10 percent of applicants each year.

Skewing college admission in favor of students whose families can pay all or most of the sticker price is not unusual. The only reason certain schools can adopt needblind policies in the first place is that they have enough students who are able to pay the asking price, and alumni or family members willing to make generous donations above and beyond it.Schools with longstanding and healthy endowments can afford to promote socioeconomic diversity in their student body without compromising their academic programs.

Schools without such resources have no choice but to be more judicious

Application fees are not the only reason, or even the principal reason, that schools like GW encourage many more applicants that they have the capacity to admit.

Turning a greater number of applicants away makes a school look more selective, which is a prime factor in school rankings, such as those published annually by U.S. News & World Report. Though many school administrators claim not to take such rankings too seriously, some schools have evidently taken them seriously enough to try to game the system. GW itself is unranked this year on U.S. News’list; it lost its spot after the University disclosed that it had inflated admissions data related to its applicants’ high school class ranks.

The problem of cheating such ranking systems is not limited to GW. In early 2012, the news broke that Claremont McKenna had falsified its applicants’ SAT data.

Iona College admitted to lying about its data as well; so did the law schools of Villanova University and the University of Illinois.

Baylor University offered admitted

students financial incentives to retake the SAT in order to raise the school’s average admitted student score.

Criticism of the U.S. News & World Report list is longstanding and extensive. Some colleges, mostly liberal arts schools like Reed, St. John’s College and Dickinson, have pushed back by actively choosing not to participate. However, the fact that such schools feel the need to explain the decision to prospective students and their families suggests how influential these rankings remain.

In a Forbes article reacting to the recent revelation of GW’s need-aware admissions process, journalist Josh Freedman noted that “The premise of the high-tuition, high-aid model is that the university can raise tuition but keep the school affordable for most students by increasing financial aid in tandem.”

As he then goes on to explain, this state of affairs leads to situations like GW’s, where a university lacks sufficient funds to give financial aid to every qualified student who needs it. Other than adopting need-aware policies, the only avenue left to most schools is to increase fundraising efforts, especially those directed at alumni.

GW’s major problem in the short term is not funding, however.

It is that its administration has been caught in dishonest behavior twice in a short time.

When colleges cheat in athletics, they are subject to penalties, including suspension from bowl competitions and the loss of television revenue. But unlike students, schools do not face suspension over cheating at academics. U.S. News & World Report may choose not to rank schools that cheat – though it left Claremont McKenna on its list, even after it admitted to inflating students’ SAT scores. But to my knowledge, no accreditation body pulls the plug on a major university just because the public can no longer trust what it says about itself.

Whether or not schools should offer need-blind admissions is debatable, and I have written before about the need for changes in the accreditation process. However, in cases like that of GW’s admission process, the immediate problem is

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CURRENT COMMENTARY

“Need Blind,” But Not Too Blind Continued from page 7

one of trust. The issue is aggravated by dissembling by the school. In the GW Hatchet article, university spokeswoman Candace Smith is quoted saying that calling the process need-blind was not “intentionally

misleading.” She went on to say, “It’s still the same process, but it’s a matter of one person defining it one way and one person defining it another way.”

Prospective students and their families are unlikely to be thrilled to learn that it was their own fault if they interpreted

“need-blind” as a process in which financial need did not affect their prospects for admission. GW will not rehabilitate its reputation by simply claiming that it should have been obvious that “need-blind” admissions were only need-blind part of the time.

As long as schools have the incentive to encourage many applicants they know they cannot fund, more scandals like GW’s are

inevitable. In the meantime, families should treat shopping for colleges the way they treat shopping for cars. Assume the people on the other side of the transaction are looking out for themselves, and take what they tell you with a grain of salt.

Larry M. Elkin, CPA, CFP®, has provided personal financial and tax counseling to a sophisticated client base since 1986. After six

years with Arthur Andersen, where he was a senior manager for personal financial planning and family wealth planning, he founded his own firm in Hastings on Hudson, N.Y., in 1992. That firm grew steadily and became the Palisades Hudson organization, which moved to Scarsdale, N.Y., in 2002. The firm expanded to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., in 2005 and to Atlanta in 2008.

EDUCATION

Common Core Sparks Outrage in Westchester Schools

By NANCY KING Everywhere you look these days, someone is angrily talking about Common Core, the national curriculum that was designed to catapult American children upward in the race to the top of the heap in the world of academia.

Proposed to prepare students for higher education and competitive careers, parents, teachers and children alike are coming together to say that the program just isn’t right.

Originally named “Common Core State Standards Initiative”, this program is an effort, and a mighty massive one at that, to transform the educational experience of kindergartners through 12th graders by creating tough new standards that all American children will be following. Mastery of these new standards will be measured by annual testing.

Quietly initiated five years ago, Common Core was developed in hopes that it would increase the math and language arts skills and improve standardized testing scores, but it was

also hoped that this new curriculum would successfully replace the old “No Child Left Behind” curriculum. Common Core places an emphasis on critical thinking, non-fictional reading and the mastery of mathematical concepts rather than rote memorization of those subjects.

So it sounds good at first, but when you take a closer look at Common Core there is a whole lot missing. The first thing missing in this new curriculum is time. It seems the developers of Common Core forgot that it takes time to introduce a concept, teach it, review it and then assess it. In many cases, teachers are only given one day to introduce and teach a concept and then they’re on to the next one. Students are expected to master a concept in a single day! Developmentally we all know children, and adults, all have different styles of learning and there is a difference in the amount of time it takes one to process information. With Common Core you may only get one or two days.

But what Common Core really does is

stifle creative thinking, pushes the arts out of education, limits the introduction of classic literature and throws creative writing out the window. Even science, which just a few years ago was an important part of a student’s learning experience is all but gone. One hopes that students will glean whatever they can about the scientific method by those “non-fictional” reading selections that will be assigned.

This Common Core Curriculum has parents, teachers and children throughout the country finding their voices and complaining. Parents are seeing children suffering in tears and anxiety upon coming home from school unable to master what was presented during the school day. If a kid doesn’t get that day’s concept through a parent re-teaching it at night through homework, then that kid is going to be lost when that standardized test rolls around at the end of the school year.

Teachers too are feeling the pressures of this new curriculum. The prep time to prepare these lightning speed lessons have left them powerless when it comes to insuring their

student’s success and happiness. Throw the new teacher evaluation standards into the mix where teachers are rated in direct correlation to the success of their student’s on these common core exams and you have a recipe for disaster.

Last week, parents, teachers, and kids met in Port Chester to air their complaints to the New York State Education Department (NYSED) about Common Core. Administrators listened patiently but there is really nothing they can do. Common Core is a national mandate and it will be here to stay until a few years down the road, when a new national educational czar makes the not so stunning announcement that the program is just not working. White Plains School District has brought back family reading night in an effort to expose children to the magic of literature but throughout the evening of guest readers, teachers and parents were huddled in small groups chatting about how disastrous this year has been so far. At least school districts here in the county are

Co-founder and Co-director Glen Whitney on the GoMath Coaster Roller. covered by the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Crain’s NY, Barron’s, Scientific American,

Nature, the Smithsonian, the Huffington Post and by CBS Sunday Morning.

Within the museum’s 19,000-squarefoot space, exhibits can be found featuring interactive, hands-on and feet-on experiences.

Included in the exhibits are Feedback Fractals –fractals being geometric shapes that have symmetry of scale. Repeated at ever-smaller scales, fractals produce irregular shapes that have the same degree of non-regularity on all scales. –In this exhibit the visitor can get behind or in front of a camera to use feedback and other effects to create unique, beautiful and ever changing fractals. Another stimulating exhibit is the Coaster Rollers. This exhibit allows one to glide on a rounded triangle down a track on rollers that are not balls, but acorns and other lumpy shapes, and to find out why the ride is as smooth as it is. Then there is the Enigma Café. At this exhibit, you can sit at an interactive table and solve dozens of new and classical physical puzzles while noting the puzzling aspects of the room and everything that is in it. One thing that you can observe is the Math Square. When you

walk on the Math Square, you walk onto an ever-changing display, namely a screen floor that detects your feet. You may be inside a maze, a game, a pattern, or a simulation, all of which can affect the action on the screen below. Another highlight exhibit is Pedal on Petals where visitors ride on a square-wheeled tricycle over a sunflower shaped track. Perhaps the most popular exhibit, in the museum, is the Human Tree. Here, you may strike a pose and see your body replicated as the trunk, branches and sub-branches of a tree created by you! You can move around and watch as the tree morphs producing a surprising array of effects. These are just 6 of the 30 some odd exhibits in the museum.

Math Encounters is a public presentation series at the museum on the first Wednesdays of each month. At these presentations, PhDs in Mathematics from both academia and business give talks designed to highlight the richness of Mathematics. Some of the highlights of this series include Erik Demaine speaking about the math of origami, Frank Morgan speaking about the math of bubbles,

permitting teachers and parents to voice their concerns about Common Core; in one school district in Baltimore Maryland, any parent who criticizes the program while on school grounds risk arrest. It seems that school administrators in that particular district think that using your First Amendment right to criticize your child’s education is equal to harassment. Thankfully there have been no reports here in the county of administrators having a parent arrested for voicing concerns over their child’s well - being.

To be sure, we need educational reform in America but Common Core just doesn’t seem to be the answer. We’ll end up with a generation that won’t experience the wonder of art and music appreciation; we’ll lose those who fall in love with the written word and write novels that will provide enjoyment for those in the future. We’ll lose journalists who keep us informed and allow us to make our own decisions after reading an article. We’ll lose the creativity and wonder of exploration because we’ll be too busy reading non-fiction math books where our literary needs will be met by reading word problems.

Nancy King is a freelance reporter.

LEARNING

Math Made Fun

By HELEN WEISMAN MoMath, as the National Museum of Mathematics is more popularly known, is an experience that can be enjoyed by people of all ages and backgrounds. According to Cindy Lawrence, cofounder and co-director of the museum. “From toddler to senior, from school child to mathematician, MoMath has something for you!” MoMath, only open since December of 2012, has already attracted visitors from around the world.

School groups come from all over the tri state area and even from as far as Hawaii and Japan.

While most people discover the existence of MoMath primarily through word of math, the museum is so phenomenal that it has attracted some of the most respected members of the press and media. It has been

Attendee at MoMath.

Colin Wright speaking about the math of juggling, and Jim Tanton speaking about

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Thursday, NOVEMBER 7, 2013

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LEARNING

Math Made Fun Continued from page 8

topology, (the study of geometric properties and spatial relations unaffected by the continuous change of shape or size of figures), of laundry using pants and shirts to demonstrate.

At the next Math Encounters slated for Wednesday, November 6, at 4:00pm and 7:00pm there will be a program called “Encountering Dali in the Fourth Dimension. Here, mathematician Tom Banchoff will describe a series of yearly encounters with Dali featuring polyhedral models, computer animations of surfaces, distorted perspective and catastrophe theory, a branch of geometry that uses a set of methods to study and classify the ways in which a

system undergoes large changes in behavior. A good example of catastrophe theory would be a bridge slowly changing shape and eventually collapsing from a great weight upon it. Tony Robbin, Soho artist and author of fourfield: Computers Art & the 4th Dimension and Shadows of Reality, will be there to introduce Tom. Another public program that MoMath offers is custom math tours of any area in New York City and beyond. This could include regions within Westchester County.

You name the starting and ending points of the excursion, and MoMath will create a tour tailored to your group and location. For information about other public programs sponsored by MoMath contact the museum.

My whole experience of the museum reinforces to me the declaration that Glen

Whitney, co-founder and co-director of MoMath, made when he said, “The fact that math, which most people think of as being boring, black and white, and predictable, is actually engaging, colorful, surprising and fun!’

MoMath is located at 11 East 26th Street in Manhattan and is open 10:00AM to 5:00PM, 7days a week, 364 days a year, (MoMath is closed on Thanksgiving Day). On the first Wednesday of every month, MoMath closes early, at 2:30PM. Adult tickets are $15.00 and children’s tickets are $9.00. For further information about MoMath, call (212) 542-0566 or go to info@momath. org.

Helen Weisman is a freelance science journalist living in New York City. She has taught writing at The City University of New York.

Math Square exhibit.

LIFESTYLE

End Times, the Rapture and the Impact on Fido

By BOB MARRONE I am going to be rich. If my business model is right and Evangelicals remain convinced that divine events will turn out as they believe, I am going make Bill Gates feel like he is eligible for food stamps. Thanks to a little research I have done on the Rapture and the input of a fellow broadcaster whose gift is a sharp if unwell mind, I will own the most high margin insurance business ever conceived. And what is even better, not only is a, um, client born every day; there are already millions of them right here in the red states of America.

You see, Evangelical Christians, at minimum a large percentage of them, believe that the second coming of Christ will involve his secret return in an event known as the Rapture. The word comes from the Latin verb that means “caught up” or “snatched.”

Yes indeed, snatched right out of your own cloths and ascended directly to heaven. Wait!

Don’t be so sure you are on the list. Only true believers and innocent children will get the call, or should I say the hook. Oh, and if you dead already, not to worry. Like a birthday balloon at the party store, you will have new life blown back into you for the rise into paradise. Paul Thigpen, who wrote about this subject in his book The Rapture Trap, ironically published by Ascension Press, reports that the crafters of this belief say that the “divine abduction, will cause massive, worldwide turmoil, and once they (the abductees) are gone, the Devil will be free to take control of the world through his puppet, the antichrist. This is just what we needed, another movie with superpower villains. In this case,

though, it won’t be Ironman or Thor coming to the rescue, but Jesus himself, for yet a third appearance, this time to kick some butt.

This is not a drill. I repeat; this is not a drill. If you don’t believe any of it, go out and buy Thigpen’s book, or go one better: The original Protestant writers who crafted this ideology are Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins.

Or just go to your books store or library and look up end times. There are tons of books and tapes. The authors, or at least those that read the authors, believe this stuff.

Okay, okay, what about the business, you ask? Here goes. There are millions of dog lovers here in America, and presumably a fair share of the canine’s best friends are owned by Evangelicals. It seems to be me, that when the almighty sucks them out of their togas, tuxedos and turtlenecks, the suddenness of the ride might preclude their making arrangements for the future care of the family St Barnard (Of course). As you will read shortly, things are gonna get pretty rough down here on planet earth before Jesus does his Clint Eastwood routine. So who is going look out for your beloved pet?

Enter me! Yes, indeed, your End Times dog insurance is here now and available. For a very modest fee, you can buy an insurance policy that will guarantee the safety and care of your pet, in the event you are vacuum tube transported outta here. Imagine how good you will feel knowing that rover is getting his two squares, a walk and a cuddle every day, while you are kicking it with the angels.

The insurance comes with our money back guarantee. If after the Rapture you are not completely satisfied, come on back down for a full refund. The service will be known as The Seven Paws. You will see where we got the name from in a bit.

There is already an IPO in the works for this money maker. The customer profile we showed to the bankers, most of whom by the way already qualify for antichrist status, is a winner. Historically, our typical target customer has believed that the world was going to end in the years 200, 380, 838, 1000, 1260, 1533, 1844, 1914 and 1988. So you know brand loyalty is gonna be there.

They also hold other unshakable beliefs that tell us it should not be too hard to separate them from their earthly money. They think

that End Times, to say the least, are going to be filled with some incredible stuff. I am talking about stuff that you would normally not believe except, and this is the kicker, its in the Bible. Our future customers are locked into this market segment.

First there is going to be a great beast who wears the number 666. Thank God it’s not ten because we have Eli Manning selling lots of coffee with that one. Anyway, there will be scrolls with seven seals. There will be seven trumpets, seven thunders, seven golden bowls and seven plagues. There are going to be bugs, lots of bugs, crowned locusts actually with human heads. Don’t let me forget the seven header dragon, who by the way I think

I dated in college; or my favorite a bejeweled harlot on a horse. How hot is that? It gets nasty, though, as you continue. There is this fight between two armies one call Gog, the other, Magog. There is lots of blood, lion claws scorpions, and general mayhem. At some point, the third coming puts an end to all this melee.

The last words of the IPO proposal to the bankers reads, “These people believe this stuff, they will buy anything.”

Bob Marrone is an author and freelance writer.

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THE WESTCHESTER GUARDIAN

Thursday, NOVEMBER 7, 2013

MEDICINE

Obamacare—What’s the Question?

By NEIL BRUCE HOLBERT The fury of the opponents of the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”) revolves around many angry questions.

“Why can’t we register half the nation for this program without all those computer glitches?”

“Why does the new insurance cost more than we thought?”

“Why are they canceling my old insurance plan, and making me buy this new one, when I was told it would cost less, and that— at any event—I could keep my old plan?”

“Why are deductibles so high?”

“And, after all—as at least one US Senator has asked—do we really need the government in on this at all? What’s wrong with friendly caring doctors (making house calls in their horse-and-buggies) who charge just (and justly) according to what the patient can pay—you know, fee for service and pro bono?”

“Isn’t Obamacare redistributionist, like the federal income tax, by which the rich have to pay so that the poor can

survive-- and, while we’re at it, Social Security and Medicare too, whereby the young, who may or may not grow old one day, help the old, and help spare us the nightmare of ruinous medical costs that go along with longer lives for most of us?”

Finally, if we must accept the notion of medical insurance—and maybe we should—why can’t people just set up their own medical savings accounts—which would be an alternative to what we have now, and would be like the privatized social security system that many have advocated too, and which should certainly replace the bureaucratized and federalized system that we have now?

These questions are valid, and the answers are fairly self-evident.

Obamacare represents the further playing-out of a government-as-helper philosophy, a belief in a social contract, repeatedly effected by the Democratic Party since the New Deal. This playing out into a national health care system has, of course been the dream of many Presidents, at least since the time of Roosevelt. The first one.

Theodore. The Republican one. Simply put, it seeks to enlist everyone, including the young “invincibles” who don’t think they’ll ever get sick (or die), and if the former happens, there’s always the Emergency Room, that somebody else will pay for, and which, anyway, is what government, or philanthropists, or somebody, is supposed to provide. As to the website and such (hey, it’s a website, it’s mechanical, it’s electronic; it’s techy, it works, and it doesn’t, it’ll get fixed), the whole system was forced into early and shaky use because the Democrats feared the Republicans would take any sign of weakness as an invitation to destroy it. Those high deductibles (and co-pays) allow the best buys and best suit the purpose of the system: because we can afford the first small chunk but not the big ones that follow. And, finally, the simple help-your-neighbor world (a wonderful thing—I’ve seen it in the movies) presupposes the prudent, family-centered (everybody in this intact family eating breakfast together as mom washes the breakfast dishes as she kisses the 2.1 kids off to school and dad off to work), forward-planning,

idyllic, responsible, edenic, rural, local, white, nativist, Protestant America that exists only in blessed and respected memory.

Obamacare, imperfect as it is, is a response to the real world, and not the made-up one.

But here’s the kicker.

The questions above (and the ripostes thereto) are important, but they are not the nub of the matter… it is, rather, something else that we ought to be asking.

How can it be that, until Obamacare, America was the only industrialized country in the world that did not have a system of national health care—a system under which if you felt sick in the morning, you went to the local doctor, and he saw you today or tomorrow, and did not ask what insurance you had (everybody’s got insurance), but what was wrong with you? (**) No it’s not a fairy tale. That’s the way it is in all those benighted European countries. Yes, the primary care doctor can only see you for seven minutes (vs. nine minutes for primary private-care doctors here). And yes, you can have private insurance too—we did—and you will often be treated in followup in three days, not three weeks. Such a choice is allowable and imperative. And yes,

the hospital that you may go to may not be near or immediately ready for you. It is surely imperfect. As is Obamacare.

But everybody in those benighted European countries is covered, and nobody thinks that treatment is unobtainable. Or charity. Because it isn’t.

Answers are always tentative and subjunctive, and only matter if they go along with notions of historicity, context, and synergy. It’s questions that matter—asking the right ones. If you don’t like the answers to the questions posed in Section 1 above, then ask different questions.

Or maybe just one question—the one above with two asterisks (**).

As Hamlet said: “That is the question”.

It really is.

Neil Holbert has gone through (and is still going through) many careers. First (and still) as a marketing researcher (strategy and tactics) for (among others), Forbes, Grey Advertising, Chesebrough-Pond’s (Unilever), and Philip Morris (Altria). Then, as a part-time and fulltime Professor of Marketing in New York and Hawaii and nine foreign countries, on three continents. And, always, a writer: of articles and books on marketing and other business topics.

MUSIC

THE SOUNDS James Booker “Classified – Remixed OFBLUE and Expanded” Rounder Records

By Bob Putignano James Booker born in 1939 departed too soon in 1983 at the age of forty-three. He mostly toiled small clubs and rarely ventured into a recording studio. This studio recording “Classified” was originally recorded in ’82 and has been in and out of print, and makes its return with nine previously unreleased tracks, and recent heartwarming liner notes from the mind and pen of producer Scott Billington. Only three Booker originals appear, though the traditional “Amen” was arranged by Booker. The other eighteen songs are covers most are clever and sharp, and a few others are humorous in a captivating way.

Booker’s title track opens this recording with a quartet consisting of Alvin “Red” Tyler’s sax, James Singleton’s bass and legendary Crescent City drummer Johnny Vidacovich, where we find Booker’s piano playing filled with flavorful imagination throughout. He covers Lloyd Price’s classic “Lawdy Miss Clawdy” vocally and on piano

www.Rounder.com

without the quartet, but it’s on Doc Pomus’ “Lonely Avenue” where the groove ignites with the quartet especially Red Tyler’s sax. Booker displays is affinity for jazz on a magnificent rendering of “Angel Eyes.”

He then takes on Professor Longhair’s “Tipitina” segueing into “Bald Head.” Roger Miller’s “King of the Road” is especially fun with Booker’s reefer and marijuana lyric substitutions. Booker’s original “I’m Not Sayin’” exemplifies a smoky late club-like atmosphere that’s very bluesy. Leiber and Stoller’s “Hound Dog” is just okay but Allen Toussaint’s “All These Things” may move along slowly yet it’s exceptionally soulful.

Booker moves to the B3 organ on “Yes Sir, That’s My Baby” performed (as you’d expect) in second line style with a final vocal chorus from Booker. The rollicking rendition of “Baby Face” rolls with heady piano and sax from Booker and Tyler. This wouldn’t be New Orleans without a Fats Antoine Domino cover “One For the Highway”

with the full band in lockstep. “Three Keys” authored by Booker is a solo piano performance that delights with chord changes that entice. The album appropriately closes with the traditional “Amen” and it’s a fitting ending, as Booker checked-out about a year after this fine recording was captured.

Though he was mostly categorized as a blues player James Booker was brilliant, adept, fluid and seemingly comfortable with many styles of music, and applied his piano prowess convincingly. Booker has been gone for some time now, but “Classified” should garner additional interest about his short life manufacturing above par music. For more evidence checkout Lily Keber’s film “Bayou Maharajah: The Tragic Genius of James Booker” at: www.BayouMaharajah.com Bob Putignano www.SoundsofBlue. com. Now celebrating 13 + years on the air at WFDU - http://wfdu.fm , 24x7 On Demand Radio: http://wfdu.streamrewind. com/show/profile/11 , WFDU’s Sounds of Blue is the most pledged to program for 5 consecutive years. Senior Contributing Editor to: http://www.Bluesrevue.com , http:// WestchesterGuardian.com, and http:// YonkersTribune.com.

THE WESTCHESTER GUARDIAN

Thursday, NOVEMBER 7, 2013

Page 11

PUBLIC POLICY

NAJAH’S CORNER

Institutions Matter—Assaulting Labor Institutions Will Only Harm the Economy

By Prof. OREN LEVIN-WALDMAN Economics has long been divided into two warring camps: the neoclassical economists who argue that wages are set by supply and demand in competitive markets and heterodox economists who maintain that wages are also determined by the power dynamics between workers and management. In the neoclassical model, market clearing wages are achieved when the demand for labor is exactly equal to the supply of labor. In such a market, there is no such thing as unemployment because wages either rise or fall until the demand for labor is exactly equal to the supply of labor. At the wage at which demand equals supply, all those willing and able to work at that wage will be employed. If more people are willing to work, the wage will fall further, thereby inducing firms to hire more workers, with the result being that the supply of labor will once again be equal to demand.

Conversely, firms that are unable to hire as many workers as they would like are forced to raise wages as an inducement for additional workers to enter into labor market until supply and demand are again equal.

Unemployment, according to this model, is the result of market interventions, whether in the form of social programs like public assistance and unemployment insurance that causes moral hazard or wage floors and labor laws that promote collective bargaining because they artificially inflate wages above market clearing levels, thereby limiting the flexibility of workers to demand less. The heterodox, or at times referred to as the institutional, model categorically rejects this position.

On the contrary institutions, particularly labor market institutions, do matter. To paraphrase Bill Clinton’s winning campaign slogan in 1992: “It’s institutions stupid”!!! Employers are effectively able to pay their workers less, especially those lacking in skill, because they do not have market power. Institutions like labor unions give their members a measure of bargaining power which, in the absence of organizing, they would not have. Similarly, a wage floor or minimum wage offers unorganized workers in the low-wage labor market a measure of market power too. Conversely, right-to-work laws, which we might refer to as anti-labor market institutions, work to suppress wages.

Data from the Current Population Survey for 2012 shows that median individual income in the U.S. was $31,000 a year. In right-towork states median individual income was only $30,000, while it was actually $32,000 in high union density states. On the face of it, median individual earnings in high union density states is 6.7 percent higher than in right-to-work states. Now consider that in 1992 the median individual income was $17,000 with median income being $15,200 in right-to-work states and $18,335 in high union density states. In 1992 when union density was greater overall (16.0 percent) than in 2012 (11.3 percent), median wages were 20.6 percent higher in high union density states than in right-to-work states.

This too would suggest that the 29.4 percent decline in union density from 1992 to 2012 had the effect of decreasing wages in high union density states relative to rightto-work states. Stated differently, the increase in median wages between 1992 and 2012

was 89.9 percent in high union density states compared to 97.4 percent in right-to-work states. Although it is speculation, it might be reasonable to speculate nonetheless that had there not been a drop in union density the percentage increase in median wages would have been much higher in high union density states.

Institutions also affect levels of income inequality. Income inequality was lower on the basis of the ratio of the 90th percentile to the 10th percentile in high union density states in 1992 than the nation as a whole. Although income inequality increased 21.9 percent from a 90/10 ratio of 10.5 in 1992 to 12.8 in 2012, income inequality tended to be lower in high union density states. Data for 1992 and 2002 shows the 90/10 percent ratio to be lower in high union density states than in low union density states. In 2012, the 90/10 percent ratio was higher in high union density states than in low union density states, which may be attributable to diminished union density.

In 2002 union density was still 13.5 percent, which was 19.5 percent higher than it was in 2012. Of particular interest, however were the 50/10 percent ratios. These ratios also dropped between 1992 and 2012, but again they were lower in 1992 and 2002 in high union density states than in low union density states. And again they were higher in high union density states in 2012 than in low union density states, which again may be attributable to declining union density overall.

Although this is a rough cut presentation of data, more statistical testing does show that states with high union density are more likely to have lower levels of income inequality than the country as a whole, at least during 1992 and 2002 when unions were stronger. It is quite

telling, then, that states with high union density are likely to have higher inequality in 2012 when unions appear to be at their lowest level over a two decade period of time.

If we want to boost the wages of working Americans, we need to reinvigorate those labor market institutions that make a difference. Unions are but one form of wage policy; minimum wages, of course, are another.

Workers need a constituency that will speak for their interests and afford them a measure of market power necessary to redress the power imbalance that is inherent to the labormanagement relationship. But it isn’t just a question of redressing a power imbalance, but of strengthening the economy overall. The assumptions of the neoclassical model, which have lead to the pursuit of a low-road strategy, at the end of the day cannot lead to job creation.

Rather job creation stems from the grassroots level whereby workers are able to demand more goods and services because their incomes are rising. Unemployment is the result of declining demand for goods and services; not labor inflexibility. Institutions, in other words, matter.

Oren M. Levin-Waldman, Ph.D., is professor at the Graduate School for Public Affairs and Administration at the Metropolitan College of New York. Direct comment or inquiry to olevin-waldman@ metropolitan.edu. Learn more: read the just published Wage Policy, Income Distribution, and Democratic Theory:

h t t p : / / w w w. r o u t l e d g e . c o m / boo k s / details/9780415779715/#reviews

SER VICES

Early intervention programs provide therapeutic services to children from birth to three years. Presenting all manner of developmental delays and disability, research shows that for every dollar spent within this time frame, 17 are saved in future service, according Sue Bailter, the Associate Director of Speech and Communication Professionals in Mt. Kisco, New York. So getting commercial insurance companies to pay more than the 2-3% reimbursement rate that they have traditionally paid is good government policy.

Beginning this past April 1st, Governor Cuomo signed a measure to address just that shortcoming. Of course, it shouldn’t be a

surprise that while saving is occurring up front on the dollar, the actual effect skews dramatically toward the 17 saved, and has providers of Early Intervention Programs facing mass extinction across the state; leaving families nowhere to turn.

The Early Intervention Programs (EIP), signed into law by Governor Mario Cuomo always let the providers focus on their therapeutic expertise and left the finances to those who knew it best. “We provided the service, we’d submit a claim.The county would do their exhaustive audit, and they would pay us within a one to two month period,” said Bailter.

Left out of that equation was the constant pursuit of insurance company repayment from the 40% of families who possessed coverage.

Thus, the stated 2-3% rate of reimbursement

Continued on page 12

By NAJAH MUHAMMAD RYAN And with one word Shot at me, an efficacious surge Spittle entered my open mouth My body readily dissolved it

Eagerly responding to some sudden urge Took me Shook me Broke me Woke me I swallowed it Dripped down to the pit The deepest depths of my soul Where it laid for a moment Searching for me Then began taking its toll

And it began turning and turning And turned into essence Grew and expanded This divine presence Like smooth swirls of smoke It began ascending Slithering up my spine Wrapping and winding Reaching Restoring my mind

Where it laid for a moment Making me aware of the time My eyes, how they shine from this chastening Myself I turn upright Give a flick of the wrists An effort of the hands Submission and will This is the awakening

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THE WESTCHESTER GUARDIAN

Thursday, NOVEMBER 7, 2013

SER VICES

Gov. Cuomo Creates Statewide Crisis in Early Intervention Programs Continued from page 11

obviously left the state and counties picking up the tab.

Trying to get the numbers to add up, Governor Andrew Cuomo initially proposed changes that left the simplicity to the providers and streamlined the administration at a state level. “A state fiscal agent was going to act like a clearinghouse and do the processing that the counties had done,” advised Bailter, “and hopefully get the insurance companies to pay up”, she added.

The actual implementation of the law has done nothing of the sort. “The state instead pushed all of the commercial billing processes on each and every provider of the EIP service,” she noted.

Given that each child may receive services multiple times per week, providers are going through a myriad of administrative steps and filing mountains of paperwork. “They are putting us through the ringer,” noted Bailter.

But the administrative burden is far from the only problem for these small local businesses, whose staff has no experience in the area of insurance claims. “Their goal, as we all know, is not to pay,” she emphasized, “and there’s a continual follow-up process of figuring out why claims have been denied”.

In real time, this means providers are going months on end without receiving payment, and since the rest of the world runs on a normal billing cycle, the impact isn’t hard to figure out. “Many agencies have closed, therapists are leaving the state or are leaving the

industry in droves,” she says.

“The cases of business owners going into debt to meet payroll and remain solvent are numerous”, asserted Bailter. “It’s no way to run a business.”

Remarkably, the best possible outcome for the providers is when the claims have been completely adjudicated by the insurance companies. At that point, Bailter added, “The state must make us whole.”

That said, Speech and Communication Professionals (SCP) can still point to a number of claims; dating back to February - that have yet to receive any response. Bailter said, “That’s illegal if it’s not done within a specific time frame.”

Against this backdrop, Speech and Communications Professionals has still

managed not to drop any clients, while its administrative staff tries to keep up. “We are holding our breath to hold the line,” Bailter shared.

Of course, not all agencies and families have been as lucky in receiving an extension on loan repayment or rent cannot be equated to what a delay in service means for children.

Missing critical periods in brain development, she says, “You can never recoup that lost time.”

The exponential cost factored in, one must wonder if politicians have suffered critical omissions en masse on their own; she will not speculate on Governor Cuomo’s motives.

At the same time, Gov Cuomo has made no public comment on the matter. “But this sweeping generalization of our lawmakers doesn’t apply here,” noted Bailter.

A number of legislators speculated at the outset over the ability of recouping insurance

money in this manner.“If county and state officials could only achieve a 2-3% reimbursement rate with all their experience and expertise, how could small individual business owners with no experience have more success,” Bailter said, sharing her sentiment in tone rather than by word.

Nonetheless, Bailter urges people to contact their representatives and also call the governor’s office. “Speak to someone,” she says, “It’s a one minute phone call because the more people who voice that this is important,” the better.

And that hopefully leaves no room for the governor to speculate.

Contact Governor Cuomo by telephone at: (518) 474-8390

where I was able to book a “Viewliner Roomette,” which featured two comfortable, facing seats that turned into bunks, a large viewing window, drinking water, a sink, towels and soap, and a lavatory. The train also featured a full-service, white-tablecloth dining car, with three meals included in the fare, in addition to a café.

Waiting on the platform at the West Palm Beach train station platform, with the early morning sun reflecting light off the station’s pastel-colored buildings, I met June, 84, from Stuart, Fla., who was traveling to New York to visit a close family friend there.

“If there is a wrong place to be, I’ll find it,” she said, with self-deprecating charm.

June explained that on her first airplane flight ever, she and her husband had boarded a plane in Idlewild Airport in New York (now LaGuardia) bound for St. Louis, and discovered shortly after takeoff that the flight wad bound for Ireland (the plane turned around as soon as the error was discovered).

“I’m an old hand at this; this is the fifth time I’ve done this trip in the past two years.

I’m going to stay with my good friend in New York. We spent the past 13 summers traveling all over the country (by car), and

just had a ball,” she explained.

“I love Florida, but at my age, it is really more important to be around company,” she added.

Larry Adams, 64, from Jacksonville, Fla., our train car’s passenger service manager, was quick to welcome me when I climbed aboard, show me to my cabin, and point me to the coffee station on the corridor that also featured ice and juice, plus a full shower next to it.

Congenial and humorous, Adams has worked this job on several of Amtrak’s Atlantic Coast Service (which comprises 12 different routes) for 40 years, and though he had been offered a full pension in 2011, said he was not in any rush to retire.

“I’m just hanging out. That’s how much I enjoy this job. Nancy (the sleeper cars’ dining service manager) and I decided we were going to retire together, maybe next November. We’re the old timers of this run,” said Adams with a broad smile.

The train makes 31 stops between West Palm Beach and New York, each just long enough for passengers to get on and off, and the trip takes 25 hours (although our train

Rich Monetti has been a freelance writer since 2003 and lives in Westchester.

QUEST & DISCOVERY

Riding the Rails Up the Eastern Seaboard

By LEE DANIELS “I have seldom heard a train go by and not wished I was on it. Those whistles sing bewilderment: railways are irresistible bazaars, snaking along perfectly level, no matter what the landscape, improving your mood with speed, and never upsetting your drink. The train can reassure you in awful places—a far cry from the anxious sweats of doom airplanes inspire, or the nauseating gas-sickness of the long-distance bus, or the paralysis that affects the car passenger.”— Paul Theroux, The Great Railway Bazaar, 1975 When I was a child growing up in South Florida, the sound of the train whistle that carried on the wind from the tracks to the West to my bedside at night often lulled me to sleep at night.

Returning to New York from Palm Beach last week aboard Amtrak’s “Silver Meteor” was therefore a pleasant journey back to a familiar sound of my youth, the train whistle singing its lonesome song up the Eastern seaboard, punctuating the ride

Silver Meteor dining car. with intermittent toots as it sped up the before. I needed to get back to New York to track, eclipsing the roll and rattle of the train take care of some business, and called him to car and prompting me to drift off into long make an appointment and discuss the conperiods of daydreaming or sleep. gestion that had settled in my ear.

My opportunity to take the 1,200-mile “Whatever you do, don’t fly,” was his trip arose during a phone conversation with advice. my doctor about my lingering cold the week So, I didn’t waste any time going online,

West Palm Beach train station, West Palm Beach, Fla.

Larry Adams, Passenger Service Manager.

Viewliner Roomette.

Continued on page 13

THE WESTCHESTER GUARDIAN

Thursday, NOVEMBER 7, 2013

Page 13

QUEST & DISCOVERY

Riding the Rails Up the Eastern Seaboard Continued from page 12 arrived in Penn Station an hour early the next morning), with longer stops at Orlando, Jacksonville, Washington, D.C., Baltimore, and Philadelphia.

During the first afternoon on the train, most of which was spent moving through South, Central, and Northern Florida, I counted all the different kinds of flora along the way: scrub oak, palmetto, tall, majestic loblolly pine, orange groves, ferneries, banyan trees, sphagnum moss draped on the branches of large oaks, swamp interspersed with glade, crop meadow, quiet forest clearing, and the occasional crossing of a lake or river. The was not the Florida of the highrise condo or shopping mall, but a glimpse of the rustic and peaceful wilderness, the Old South of Marjorie Kinnan Rawling’s “The Yearling”.

Along with livestock—colorful Guernsey cows resting under the shade of broad, spreading banyan branches—wildlife also abounded along the track: graceful egret, blue heron, turkey vultures describing lazy circles in the late afternoon sky.

“Once I saw two ospreys pinning down an eagle, right over his nest,” said Adams.

“Another time, near Wilmington, N.C., I saw a falcon just walking down the platform,” he said.

“How’s my train looking?” Adams called out to some folks gathered on the platform as we pulled in to Winter Park, Fla., where the annual Arts Festival was in full swing on the esplanade behind them.

Clearly, here was one man who loves what he does and takes pride in his work.

“How are we doing here, Lee?” Adams said, looking in on me, after we had pulled out of the station.

I had to admit that, other than the fact that I wouldn’t be able to enjoy my eggs in Carolina (the Silver Meteor passes through the Carolinas in the middle of the night), I couldn’t have been happier.

Lee Daniels, based in Pleasantville, NY, is an Arts & Leisure writer for The Westchester Guardian, the Yonkers Tribune, and a research editor for ICU, a financial services firm in Kiev, Ukraine.

If You Go: Palm Beach

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THE WESTCHESTER GUARDIAN

Thursday, NOVEMBER 7, 2013

International Religious Freedom Day (not a typo!)

ministers, President Obama’s administration has shown itself to be overtly antagonistic toward religious freedom.

Over the past 6 years, the writing on the wall of the White House has been increasingly plain to see. It reads, “Your religious freedom ends when it conflicts with my Progressive social agenda.” President Obama, like a good statist, believes that all rights are subject to government approval. He ignores the difference between rights which are granted by government as part of the social compact between the governors and the governed, like the right to operate a motor vehicle on a public thoroughfare, and rights which are granted by God alone and are not subject to government authority.

There is no question that religious freedom in America has been eroding for generations; but it is telling to think that 10 short years ago, the political climate in Washington was comfortable enough with religious belief to designate a day in October to commemorate its existence. Should the same bill somehow find its way through Harry Reid’s Senate today, there would be no smiling crowds fawning over the President’s gold pen or his signature of the bill into law.

The law would be quietly taken into a White House broom-closet, put on a shelf, and left to expire. This is, after all, the President’s preferred method of dealing with objects that

WORSHIP

By LUKE HAMILTON “Whereas the people of the United States enjoy and respect the freedom of religion and believe that the fundamental rights of all individuals shall be recognized…

Whereas religious freedom is an absolute human right and all people are entitled to do with their own souls as they choose.” (S. Res. 251, October 23, 2003) In 2003, the 108th Congress designated October 27th as International Religious Freedom Day. They considered it a subject significant enough to officially observe this “absolute human right”; and gave Americans everywhere permission to do what they like with their own souls, which is awfully generous. Just ten short years have passed from this day and it’s hard to imagine where in the world religious freedom can be celebrated without at least a twinge of irony.

Internationally, religious minorities are being forced out of their homes, looted, enslaved, raped, and murdered daily by those ethnic/religious majorities in power; most often Islamists and their totalitarian brethren, Communists. The churches of Coptic

Christians are burned to the ground in Egypt.

People of faith are jailed in Canada for their religious beliefs. Iranian pastors are imprisoned and tortured; their families receiving little or no information about the health of their loved ones. Government officials from neighboring countries brazenly talk about a future Middle-Eastern landscape, devoid of the nation of Israel and the Jewish people.

Entire villages of African “infidels” are burned and slaughtered. All while the UN invites more wolves to the table to discuss tomorrow’s menu.

Domestically, religious freedom has never been more precarious than today. Long has America served as the lone bastion of religious freedom in a secularizing world; yet it appears even she is not immune to the many-faceted influence of secular humanism.

As Rabbi Daniel Lapin deftly describes in his book, America’s Real War, the various factions arrayed against the people of the Book are not as disparate as they seem. They share a common bond, despite the diversity of their methods and ends. The touchstone for this anti-biblical coalition is a hatred of the God of Israel and His Word. Orthodox atheism, militant homosexuality, eco-fascism, Progressivism, Islamism, et al all seek the

elimination of God and Christ from the Public Square, and punishment for those who hold fast to their beliefs.

In times past, Progressivism has draped itself in the trappings of Christianity to garner support for their socialist policies; but as the nation shifts to a post-Christian consensus, progressives are shifting as well. No longer will the likes of Williams Jennings Bryan or Walter Rauschenbusch gain the same amount of traction on the Left. Since their base is no longer drawn to Christian phrases and terminology, there is no need to wear that mask any longer. When Rauschenbusch said, “The God that answereth by low food prices, let him be God,” he was accurately describing the Left’s worship of the State. And now his ideological great-grandchildren have taken it a step further, dropping the sheep’s clothes to savage the sheep around them.

The recent exponential growth of hostility towards biblical religion in America can be laid at the feet of our current President.

America has never had a President whose administration was more hostile to biblical faith and religious freedom. Despite his fumbling protestations of faith, made on the campaign trail or within earshot of influential

outlive their planned termination, as demonstrated by his opposition to an Illinois statute which would have prevented the same from being done to the survivor of an abortion procedure. He was the lone dissenter, all three times it came before the legislature.

This October 27th should hold a special place in our hearts. Not because we have the religious freedom which our founders meant to provide for us, we don’t and it is shameful.

Cherish the 27th of October as a reminder that we have an obligation to each other and to the rest of the world to swing that secular progressive pendulum back the other direction in the next 10 years and celebrate the next decade anniversary with cheer instead of chagrin.

Luke Hamilton is classically-trained, Shakespearean actor from Eugene, Oregon who happens to be a liberty-loving, right-wing, Christian constitutionalist. When not penning columns for ClashDaily.com, Hamilton spends his time astride the Illinois-Wisconsin border, leading bands of liberty-starved citizens from the progressive gulags of Illinois to [relative] freedom. Hamilton is the creative mind/voice behind Pillar & Cloud Productions, a budding production company which resides at www.

PillarCloudProductions.com. He owes all to his Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, whose strength is perfected in his weakness.

WHAT YOUR DOCTOR WON’T (OR CAN’T) TELL YOU

Why is Our Healthcare System the Greatest in the World?

By EVAN S. LEVINE, M.D. After the death of Mr. Brown’s friend he decided to make a trip to a local cardiologist for a stress test. Mr. Brown, a 68-year-old man, belonged to one of those managed Medicare plans. He had some mild hypertension but was otherwise fine. He saw the local cardiologist, requested “ one of those nuclear stress tests” and left being told he would have to wait for the doctor’s office to get approval, to perform the test, from his insurer.

Two weeks later he was back for the exercise treadmill study and a few days later her returned to discuss the results with Dr. White, his cardiologist ( a little Reservoir Dogs plug). Even though he performed well on the treadmill and had no symptoms he was told the nuclear imaging studies showed that there was a serious blockage in an artery supplying the bottom of his heart.

Dr. White suggested that Mr. Brown have a cardiac angiogram with his associate Dr. Green. Mr. White was relieved and thankful he had that test.

A week later Mr. Brown had the study

which showed a 75% blockage of a Diagonal artery and a Drug Eluting Stent was placed in that artery. He was prescribed a new medicine known as Effient and he was told not to stop taking that drug for at least a year.

Mr. White thanked his doctors and left very satisfied that he was smart enough to go get that stress test.

What a great healthcare system!

Is our healthcare system one of the best in the world?

1. Dr White committed a crime, insurance fraud, by getting that stress test approved and performing and billing for that test. There was no reasonable indication for Mr. Brown to have a nuclear stress test and the only way for it to be approved, by the insurer, was that his doctor lied to get it done: told them the patient had chest pain or shortness of breath with exertion, multiple cardiac risk factors, and perhaps an abnormal ECG perhaps .

2. In a patient with great exercise tolerance and without symptoms during a treadmill study a defect in an imaging study , like the one Mr. White had, should not warrant an angiogram. It is very unlikely the patient would benefit from a cardiac

angiogram, with its risks - that include radiation, contrast agents that are toxic to the kidneys, and a small, but very present, risk of stroke or death from a major bleed, stroke, or heart attack.

3. The angiogram results noted a lesion in an artery that was not consistent with the patient’s stress test. The doctors found a lesion that supplies a relatively small area of the lateral part of the anterior wall, not the bottom of the heart, which is what the nuclear scan suggested. So the lesion they opened did not even cause symptoms, EKG changes with exercise, or even a defect on the nuclear scan. The nuclear scan findings were more likely an artifact than anything real.

4. The patient now must take Aspirin and a branded drug called Effient for at least a year. The combination of these two potent drugs that inhibit the ability of your platelets to help stop bleeding, and in this case clotting of the artery which the trauma of the stent placment just damaged, also increases the risk of you bleeding to death, especially if you need some type of emergent surgical procedure in the next year or you suffered some form of trauma. Stop the drug too early, especially in the first few months, and

now, but not before the stent, you have a very real chance of having a devastating heart attack! Need your gallbladder taken out emergently and now you got a big problem!

5. Mr. Browns doctors decided to place him on a drug called Effient. This is a drug that I consider a more potent Plavix, now available under its generic name clopidogrel. More potent means that Effient seems to reduce the risk of heart attacks in some patients who have stents but, since it is more potent, increases the risk of devastating bleeding. In the end, if you consider death a reasonable end-point, Effient is no better than Plavix(clopidogrel) for Mr. Brown.

I like to use Costco for comparison of prescription drug pricing since they have very competitive pricing and they have a price checker on their web site. A two month supply for Clopidogrel at Costco is $14.68 while a two month supply of Effient is $498.83 cents! Mr. Brown must take this medication for at least one year ( some doctors leave their patients on it for even longer) so it will cost him ,or our healthcare system, about $3,000 dollars for Effient instead of the $88 dollars for clopidogrel ( the charge for Effient gets a bit complicated

since some insurance companies provide some coverage for this but someone is going to be paying for this drug).

I wish I could say I am exaggerating reality here, that what I just discussed is not commonplace and only found in smaller non-academic centers but our healthcare system has become so tarnished by greed and dishonesty that even the biggest and the best hospitals, including many in New York are allowing just about any doctor to bring patients to their cath lab. While in the past these big institutions shunned duplicitous operators and provided great oversight some are providing little supervision. The fact is is that heart procedures make big hospitals hundred of millions of dollars a year and that the people in charge, the administrators, are driven by profit. Just a simple angiogram, with less than a few hours at a hospital can create over $8,000 dollars in revenue. Do more, make more. Do more stress tests, find more reasons to do angiograms, find more reasons to place stents or perform cardiac surgery.

What a horrible healthcare system!

Dr. Evan S. Levine is a cardiologist in New York, NY and Yonkers, NY. He is also the author of the book “What Your Doctor Won’t (or Can’t) Tell You”. He resides in Connecticut with his wife and children.

THE WESTCHESTER GUARDIAN

Thursday, NOVEMBER 7, 2013

Page 15

EYE ON THEATRE

One Notable,One Nonsensical

By JOHN SIMON “After Midnight” is that rare show you would wish much longer than its packed, intermissionless 95 minutes. A plotless revue this, for black dancers and singers, all of them prodigious, and able to do everything, and then some.

Though conceived by Jack Viertel and directed and choreographed by Warren Carlyle, who are white, everyone else is black. I name the three excellent headliners Fantasia Barrino, Dule Hill and Adriana Lenox. Twenty-one others are listed, some of whom have solos or small group numbers, while others are mostly, but not always, chorus, all of them, I repeat, handy at

performing miracles.

The musicians are members of the Jazz at Lincoln Center All-Stars, whose artistic director is Wynton Marsalis. Here, under Daryl Waters, who is also music supervisor and additional arranger, they play jazz as good as you will ever hear.The music consists of standards and lesser known but appealing numbers specially adapted, among whose creators are such renowned figures as Duke Ellington, Harold Arlen, Dorothy Fields, Jimmy McHugh, E.Y. Harburg, and Harry James, along with others less famous, but hardly less gifted. Even if the show were only its music, it would still be quite a feast.

Now add the scenery by the great John Lee Beatty, which, though minimal,

Everett Bradley and the After Midnight cast.

Fantasia Barrino in After Midnight.

Julius “iGlide” Chisolm and Virgil “Lil’ O” Gadson in After Midnight.

Daniel J. Watts, Dormeshia Sumbry-Edward, and Phillip Attmore

is choice. Supplemented by the lighting design of Howell Binkley (another gifted black), there are effects of chaste simplicity that nevertheless frame or back up the action with suggestive sights that please. I cite only two examples. Each music stand features a vertical band of light that changes color or intensity to suit the mood of the song being played. And when in many other shows the lights dim and a sky full of stars appears, the stars are spaced as regularly as the sequins on a woman’s gown. (Speaking of which, Isabel Toledo has supplied some wonderfully sassy costumes here.) Well, here the stars are at random distances from one another, just as unregimented as they are in the heavens.

We come now to the spectacular choreography. Carlyle has a remarkable gift for patterns and pictorial composition. When the entire cast is onstage, the effect is as if a great fresco by a major muralist had come to dancing life, its manifold figures savvily deployed. Sometimes it is like the floorshow at one of those legendary old Harlem ballrooms in full, fulminating swing. Or take a jazzily outfitted, jaunty male quintet, either

Continued on page 16

Karine Plantadit in After Midnight.

Cast of After Midnight.

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THE WESTCHESTER GUARDIAN

Thursday, NOVEMBER 7, 2013

EYE ON THEATRE

One Notable,One Nonsensical Continued from page 15 clinging tightly together like some fiveheaded, ten-armed and ten-legged beast, dancing partly in identical movements, partly in contrapuntal ones, as if the jolly monster’s back were undulating.

At other times, we get harmonious small ensembles, often as a soloist and backup trio, cannily stationed in picturesque groupings together or at an answering distance from one another. A man may walk or indeed dance on his hands as easefully as on his feet, sometimes even standing upside down supported by a single hand. You will see crouching, crawling, slithering dancers at incredible angles, virtually parallel to the floorboards, or even prone or supine and still moving in perfect concert with the music.

There is, for instance, a kind of barbershop quartet on a front stoop, with each member taking turns at solo dancing while still singing. I swear that I saw dance steps such as I have never seen before.

There are even a very few bits of Langston Hughes’s poetry strewn in, and of course loads of tap dancing, sometimes fast enough to shame a machine gun as a performer sprints tapping across the width of the stage. And one female cast member sings a song that is all whooping sound without

any words (and not scat either, something done well by another actress) accompanying it with facial expressions saucier than a female circus clown’s.

Ninety-five minutes go by in what seems like the twinkling of an eye, and yet will stay with you as long as you haven’t lost the power of memory.

Production shots of After Midnight by and courtesy of Matthew Murphy.

Venue: Brooks Atkinson Theatre, 256 West 47th Street, New York, NY 10036. Box Office: (212) 719-4099. Website: brooksatkinsontheater.com “The Landing” is three one-act musicals

by Greg Pierce and John Kander, the latter, as you must know, responsible for some of our finest musicals in collaboration with the late Fred Ebb. Now his book writer and lyricist is Greg Pierce, who is much, much lower ebb, and whom I remember only as the author of “Slowgirl,” a poor and pretentious play.

The first item is “Andra,” about a carpenter in love with the constellation Andromeda, named after a mythical maiden.

While refurbishing a family’s kitchen with planks into which he etches the constellation, he befriends and educates in astronomy the boy of the household and also beds his

mother.

In the surreal “The Brick,” a boy’s aunt orders from a TV commercial a brick said to come from the wall bloodied in Chicago’s Valentine Day massacre. The brick is played by a dapper, gangsterish man who, to the boy’s wonder, carries on with the connubially neglected aunt. Somehow they are watching television, while uncle, blowing into a horn that makes the moose mating sound, manages to attract an (unseen) “moosette.”

In “The Landing,” a homosexual couple adopts a twelve-year-old boy who astonishes them by seemingly having lived all over the world. The kid , who is really an angel of death, finally leads away the younger man to the Brooklyn end of a subway line, presumably to a landing, but actually to his demise, while the older man is left alone, stupefied.

The preposterous tales are adequately directed by Walter Bobbie and simply choreographed by Josh Rhodes. John Lee Beatty has designed a perhaps excessively spare but doubtless inexpensive set. The music, arranged by Larry Hochman for four instrumentalists is a curious affair, popping up by fits and starts, hardly ever a bona fide number, but not unattractive to the sparse extent that it exists.

Frankie Seratch is an accomplished child actor, and Julia Murney, Paul Anthony Stewart and David Hyde Pierce (quite amusing as an anthropomorphic brick) are

GovernmentSection

Julia Murney, David Hyde Pierce, and Frankie Seratch in The Landing. valiant adult ones. But nothing much comes of it all beyond our amazement that such reputable adult performers could be trapped in such infantile material.

Production shots of The Landing by and courtesy of Carol Rosegg.

Venue: Vineyard Theatre, 108 East 15th Street, between Union Square and Irving Place, New York, NY 10003. Box Office: (212) 353-0303.

John Simon has written for over 50 years on

theatre, film, literature, music and fine arts for the Hudson Review, New Leader, New Criterion, National Review, New York Magazine, Opera News, Weekly Standard, Broadway.com and Bloomberg News.

Mr. Simon holds a PhD from Harvard University in Comparative Literature and has taught at MIT, Harvard University, Bard College and Marymount Manhattan College.

To learn more, visit the JohnSimon-Uncensored. com website.

MAYOR Marvin’s COLUMN GOVERNMENT

The Critical Voice of Those in the Trenches

By Mayor MARY C. MARVIN I have been asked to join a panel of New York State Mayors to set the State Legislative priorities for the upcoming Legislative session for our parent organization, the New York State Conference of Mayors and Municipal Officials (NYCOM).

Though at times, I have felt it an exercise in futility of late due to inaction on the part of the Legislature, the voice of those in the trenches is critical to the conversation.

Number One – pension reform – will always be the number one priority because the current system is unsustainable and it is the single most expensive State mandate in terms of local property tax dollars.

Just since 2010, the average contribution

rates charged to local governments have increased by 91% for police and fire personnel and 182% for non-uniformed staff.These devastating increases have already led to property tax increases coupled with a diminution of local services and the work force necessary to deliver them.

In an effort to curry favor for his gubernatorial run, then New York State Comptroller Carl McCall, rescinded the small 3% contribution to the pension program by some State workers costing taxpayers billions of dollars in the years since that election. The 3% contribution for Tier 3 and 4 employees needs to be reinstated at a minimum while the entire system is overhauled.

The State’s current “defined benefit” system is virtually non-existent in the private sector and the average retirement benefit for retirees in New York State is more than

twice the average company or union pension benefit.

There has been a perennial unwillingness for State elected officials to address the pension issue. In some cases, it is a fear of not being re-elected and not staying in office long enough to avail themselves of this same generous benefit.

I would argue that these Legislators, because of their inaction, are the real enemies of the State worker. The system is simply unsustainable and without changes the system will go bankrupt and then all is lost.

State Mayors are also united in supporting legislation to constitutionally prohibit the enactment of laws that impose an unfunded mandate or fiscal burden on local communities. All current unfunded mandates should also be required to sunset in two years unless it can be demonstrated that the mandate is essential and a funding source found to offset

the cost to local governments. Currently, there are more than 200 State unfunded mandates.

One particularly onerous unfunded mandate is the Wicks Law dating back to 1912 and affecting both Village and School construction projects. Under the current law, separate plumbing, heating, electrical, etc. – virtually all contracts on a construction project – must be separately bid. The coordination issues involved often lead to costly delays, increased administration costs and lawsuits, raising the cost of projects anywhere from 8% to 30%.

Other smaller but costly mandates are found in the myriad of State tort laws. Their impact amplifies the financial exposure a local government faces from lawsuits and increases the incentive to commence frivolous lawsuits against municipalities. Under current State law, private defendants are allowed to offset the amount of any damage awards by the amount a plaintiff receives from collateral sources such as insurance.

Municipal defendants do not receive the same benefit and in addition must pay interest on judgments at a rate of 9% regardless of the prevailing rate.

Because of the myriad of unfunded mandates, municipalities are desperate for additional sources of non-property tax revenue. NYCOM urges an increase in the rate and to expand the scope of the utility Gross Receipts Tax (GRT). Currently, cities and villages have the option of imposing a GRT on the gross operating income of utility companies, at a rate of 1%. Bronxville exercises this option. I along with my colleagues support a rate increase to 3% that is already enjoyed by Buffalo, Rochester and Yonkers. Additionally, in recognition of the predominance of wireless technology and to achieve equity in the tax treatment for all telecommunication providers, cellular service should be subject to the local GRT. Both the State and New York City have already made changes to their respective statutes to include

Continued on page 17

THE WESTCHESTER GUARDIAN

Thursday, NOVEMBER 7, 2013

-

MAYOR Marvin’s COLUMN GOVERNMENT

The Critical Voice of Those in the Trenches Continued from page 16 cellular service as taxable for the State’s excise tax and New York City’s gross receipts tax.

I am hopeful that some of the

initiatives above can be accomplished via a true partnership between State and local governments because one can certainly make the argument that local officials represent the biggest special interest group of all – the

New York State taxpayers.

Mary C. Marvin is the mayor of the Village of Bronxville, New York. If you have a suggestion or comment, consider directing your perspective by directing email to mayor@vobny.com.

Page 17

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Coming Core: Will It Improve or Destroy Education?

By PEGGY GODFREY Children in Westchester last school year who took the new state Common Core tests received lower scores than on previous years’ tests. This phenomena is also happening on a national level. Parents and school personnel understandably upset by these tests, have publicly reacted to them. State Commissioner John King, the man in charge of these tests, was shouted down on October 10 in Poughkeepsie. Then he canceled four New York State Parent Teacher Association forums.

Criticism followed and several “listening tours” were scheduled. The only nearby one in Port Chester had many parents addressing the problems with the mandates of the Common Core program. While stress on students and teachers to achieve is apparent throughout the state, it should be remembered that the Port Chester District has a great number of students who have only been speaking English for a limited number of years and necessarily need more instructional time before they are able to achieve on the same level of learning as other students. Research tells us that it takes students learning a second language five to seven years of English instruction before they achieve a level equivalent to native English speakers.

Adding to coping with lower student test scores is a mandate that school districts must use electronic “portals” to record each student’s testing data and make these scores available to parents and educational personnel. These “portals” all school districts must now use to allow parents to access their children’s scores.

Even if a school system is using a “portal” for attendance or some other purpose, an additional new assessment portal must be created.

“Portals” were agreed upon by New York State when the State was awarded $700 million in Federal Race to the Top funds in 2010.

These “portals” will necessarily track district’s Common Core testing results.

New York State in accepting this money has created a daunting task. The question now is will children be able to achieve these more difficult Common Core standards or will many young people and their parents be faced with standards they are unable to achieve? The Common Core standards have been adopted by most of the states and many did so willingly when the Obama administration in 2009 stated that by using these standards they might win grant money in the Race to the

Top program. (New York State was one of the winners in this competition).

Part of the Common Core thrust was to make students ready for “college and career.” This is the democratic ideal which has been promoted in the schools. For example, improved thinking skills are embedded and included in Common Core instruction and testing. The reasoning is that no matter which job a person has, even if it is a vocational job, “critical thinking” skills can help them to perform better in that job.

When the Race to the Top funds were accepted by New York State the most disturbing aspect of this agreement was the necessity to rate teachers based on their students’ Common Core test scores. The formula for evaluating teachers mandates that teacher evaluation must be based on: 20% on their students’ test scores, 60% on classroom observations, and the remaining 20% by locally chosen assessments.

But the regions’ superintendent’s study for 35 districts in this area and Long Island (Journal News, 10/16/13), to no one’s surprise, found the state’s mandates did not adequately or fairly address the students’ characteristics which could effect student achievement scores, such as disadvantaged students, or the number of times students had moved (or indeed if they were homeless).

Certainly scores of students with limited English proficiency, special education and poverty needed to be considered and have adjustments made in the formula for evaluating teachers based on test scores. At present there are no mitigating circumstances that can be used to modify the interpretation of these Common Core test scores. Is it any wonder that students, parents, teachers and administrators are upset?

Undeniably, in New York State the Race to the Top money has a choke hold especially in the school districts which accepted significant amounts of this money. There have been numerous reports that to reach Common Core mandates, the teachers need to know at least the broad concepts that they must teach students. This is a piece of the puzzle that has been ignored. How can students be prepared for a test when the content and skills necessary to learn have not been provided to their teachers?

A recently published book, Reign of Error

by Diane Ravitch, addresses many aspects of this movement which proposes to improve education in this country. It was disturbing to

learn that when George W. Bush was in office, a task force recommended adopting Common Core standards in mathematics and reading, even though these Common Core concepts had never been field tested. The expansion of charter schools and vouchers are now a reality.

There are many statistical facts in the book which illustrate how these untested Common Core standards are not adequate to address society’s problems. The latest thrust to fire teachers based on their students’ test scores only intensifies the situation. Don’t students need to be prepared for a changing world? Making tests harder will not give teachers time to plan innovative and creative lessons and activities.

What good are higher standards if there are no jobs when students graduate high school or college? Will the future of education in this country be determined by those that have the most money to dictate what should be taught?

Let us hope that reasonable people will reach reasonable conclusions about how our youth should be educated.

Peggy Godfrey is a freelance writer and former educator.

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THE WESTCHESTER GUARDIAN

Thursday, NOVEMBER 7, 2013

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Surely some other observers of government must have also come to recognize “Democracy” cannot survive private campaign “contributions.” They do not always win, but increasing money intolerably corrupts elections. It is clear that the Banana Republicans, as some call them, use a growing bundle of devices to corrupt our elections. But the largest of these is their grotesque power from their obscene wealth.

Campaign Contributions, or as they like to say “Campaign Donations”, are in the news again as the “formerly” Supreme Court moves to expand their grotesque Citizens United decision that allowed virtually unlimited private funds, including for “right” wing candidates, beyond established limits.

The conclusion should be clear. These “contributions” are in fact not merely generous gifts to public progress, but purchases of elected government officials. The court should not increase the limits of such “donations”.

Government must simply provide public funding of election education and move the limit of private contributions to zero. Any other limit merely increases the fees given to election lawyers, such as those who write letters to editors, and who find legal grounds to evade any limits.

Such perversion of our democratic elections has led many citizens to simply give up in frustration and consider voting a waste of time.

Unfortunately a very great deal of our lives is determined by government action, or inaction.

Not only health care for tens of millions of folks with modest means, but until now, with no insurance, as well as no jobs, and our nation’s economic condition, personal security and fire protection, tax policies, education, the environment, communication, transportation, housing, as well as war and peace, all are aided, or disrupted, by our elected officials.

For better or worse our elections can make of break our personal, national, and international survival, quality of life, our prosperity or decline, and the future of our children.

We must, at this late date, get serious about the equality or inequality of representation in our government at all levels. We know how. Around the world, people have found a way to improve representation in government.

And we should surely see why popular representation does not happen. Of course, ambition and greed exist in all of us. And there will always be substantial differences between the average working stiff and the most clever and aggressive among us. Those with enormous wealth and power cannot be expected to hesitate in their moneyed manipulation of our society and our elections.

Recent decades of explosive economic concentration of wealth have produced a nightmarish growth in the power of a very few over the average paid workers. Even our

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wealthy founding fathers could not possibly have imagined the current chasm between workers and the hyper-rich. [I found some years ago in my writing that rich and super-rich simply did not somehow convey the extremes of the unbelievable rich, thus we might call the hyper-rich.]

Some such large gaps are common in monarchies and totalitarian states. From time to time societies rise up and seek more acceptable social systems. At the time of our revolution against British colonialism the French found their own way to cut down those with enormous wealth and power. No one in our day and age here would advocate the French solution to this problem, centuries ago, the guillotine. But we do have to find a way to use our democratic mechanisms, educational levels, mass media, and social media to improve elections.

The most direct improvement is the use of the Choice ballot.This concept developed in the 19th Century also can be used to eliminate the serious problems of Run-off Elections, as described earlier. It is particularly effective in combined districts, which permit representation without the abominable Gerrymandering of “Single Member Districts.” Such Districts produced the horror of our current federal House of Representatives with its disastrous misrepresentation with insane manipulation.

The party that failed by 1,400,000 votes to win a majority vote in the last popular election of the House allows an extremist group to run it with ignorant, demagogic destructive tactics.

All the other elements of manipulating balloting and preventing many from voting at all are shown in other writings.

Perhaps part of our political problem is in our language. Central to many such discussions is the language trap that distinguishes political positions and spokesmen as Left and Right.

Although these words are sometimes claimed as derived from French Parliamentary seating of representatives, it should be discontinued.

Certainly no one who claims to be progressive should call themselves Left, nor even more surely dare we refer to some so-called conservative contemporaries as Right.

Our culture is right-handed biased, so many of us might well call the Extreme Right rather more correctly as the “Extremely Wrong”. The word “Left” almost always carries a negative connotation, e.g. left-over, left in the lurch, left-out, left-waiting, etc. Historians tell us that ancient cultures were ambidextrous and the Romans were the villains that insisted on organizing a Right Handed society, and even still many tools favor right handedness e.g. many dangerous power tools, even scissors, cameras, cell phones, violins, and even saxophones. They decreed left was sinister, Sinistra in the Roman’s Latin; and only the right hand could be skillful, handy, dependable, deft and be dexterous, Dexter in Latin,. I understand some south-paws even insist on a Bill of Lefts and demand an end to the notion that Right

Makes Might.

Similarly, we might avoid usages such as Conservative when such folks seldom believe in conservation, unless it refers to conservation of their privileges to avoid progressive tax rates that make for a decent and just, survivable society. A nation where differences in wealth go the way of recent years’ astronomical concentration is surely headed for precipitous decline or even revolution. Witness the control of state and national legislatures by such grotesque irrationalities of the Koch brothers’ political control. The recent published remarks of a Republican congressman includes the usual hoax of a key Republican preoccupation on the national debt and annual fbalanced federal budgets.

The national debt has always been largely the result of our enormously expensive, and frequently wrong wars. In any event, Republicans also need to be reminded that their heroes, Ronald Reagan and his vice president, were responsible for doubling our national debt, accumulated over previous centuries since our revolution.

The basic point is that it is not their socalled ideology that makes them so ignorant, wrong-headed, and destructive. It is their central role [over any ideology, some God given principle or other theory], rather as hirelings of those who paid for their elections. Rather their motivation seems merely to further the intolerable greed of those who pay them with contributions for their election campaign expenses. We can only plead that they not waste our time with their ignorant, high flown, phony rhetoric about our economy, “corporations are people,” their wet dreams of helping the handicapped, employing out of work populations, and soft-soap about legitimate national interests they consistently work to destroy.

Some Tea Party style Republicans are so out of touch with the real world and simply say we must have a much smaller government. Somehow they never noticed, even in their kindergarten days or since, that a map of the world shows the United States is a large nation, even larger in terms of its inevitable role in the world. Perhaps such folks might be more comfortable, and so be encouraged to immigrate to a much smaller nation, with a much smaller government, perhaps Haiti or Somalia.

Bob K. Bogen served as comprehensive longrange facilities planning director for the New York Metropolitan Regional Planning Commission; as planning director for the New England Regional Commission; as a major United Nations official in Pakistan; Board Chairman of the Communications Coordinating Committee for the United Nations; and Principal Representative of Architects / Designers / Planners for Social Responsibility to the United Nations.

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NOTICE OF FORMATION Merritt Capital and Consulting LLC. Arts of Org. filed with Secy of State (SSNY) on April 18, 2013.

Office Loc: Westchester. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process may be served and shall mail copy of process against LLC to principal business address: 5 Pheasant Dr., Armonk, NY 10504. Purpose: Any lawful act.

NOTICE OF FORMATION Harr-Ray Enterprises, LLC. Art. of Org. filed with the Secy of State (SSNY) on June 26, 2013. Off. Loc: Westchester. SSNY designated as agent for service on LLC. SSNY shall mail a copy of process to: 100 Riverdale Ave., Ste. 16-J, Yonkers, NY 10701. Purpose: Any lawful purpose.

SMOOTH SKIN CARE LLC Articles of Org. filed NY Sec. of State (SSNY) 3/6/13. Office in Westchester Co. SSNY design. Agent of LLC upon whom process may be served. SSNY shall mail copy of process to C/O United States Corporation Agents Inc. 7014 13th Ave Ste. 202 Brooklyn, NY 11228. Purpose: Any lawful activity. Registered Agent United States Corporation Agents Inc. 7014 13th Ave Ste. 202, Brooklyn, NY 11228.

VMS ENDEAVORS LLC Articles of Org. filed NY Sec. of State (SSNY) 10/2/13. Office in Westchester Co. SSNY design. Agent of LLC upon whom process may be served. SSNY shall mail copy of process to The LLC 8 Fairway Dr., Mamaroneck, NY 10543. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Notice of formation of Goeprof, LLC. Articles of Organization filed with Secretary of State of NY (SSNY) on 07/16/2013. Office loc.: Albany County. SSNY has been designated as agent of the LLC upon whom process against it may be served. The PO address to which the SSNY shall mail process to 1737 Congress Ave, Peekskill, NY 10566. Purpose of LLC: Distribution of e-learning material.

LEGAL NOTICE: NOTICE OF FORMATION OF A LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY (LLC), Name: GREAT DAY FAMILY CHILD CARE LLC; Articles of Organization filed with the Secretary of State of New York (SSNY) on 09/16/2013; Office Location: Westchester County; SSNY has been designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served; SSNY shall mail copy of process to: C/O GREAT DAY FAMILY CHILD CARE LLC, 22 Siebrecht Pl, New Rochelle, NY 10804

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HARRISON REAL ESTATE GROUP, LLC Articles of Org. filed NY Sec. of State (SSNY) 9/11/13.

Office in Westchester Co. SSNY design. Agent of LLC upon whom process may be served.

SSNY shall mail copy of process to The LLC 287 Bowman Ave Purchase, NY 10577. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

FOURTH GENERATION PARTNERS, LLC Articles of Org. filed NY Sec. of State (SSNY) 8/13/13. Office in Westchester Co. SSNY design. Agent of LLC upon whom process may be served. SSNY shall mail copy of process to The LLC 707 Westchester Ave Ste 401 White Plains, NY 10604. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

FOURTH GENERATION PRIVATE EQUITY PARTNERS, LLC Articles of Org. filed NY Sec. of State (SSNY) 8/5/13. Office in Westchester Co. SSNY design. Agent of LLC upon whom process may be served. SSNY shall mail copy of process to The LLC 707 Westchester Ave Ste 401 White Plains, NY 10604. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

TENANT KING LLC Articles of Org. filed NY Sec. of State (SSNY) 10/2/13. Office in Westchester Co. SSNY design. Agent of LLC upon whom process may be served. SSNY shall mail copy of process to C/O Michael Rossi 44 Loop Rd Bedford, NY 10506. Purpose: Any lawful activity. Registered Agent: Michael Rossi 44 Loop Road Bedford, NY 10506.

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THE WESTCHESTER GUARDIAN

Thursday, NOVEMBER 7, 2013

AMERICA

I Am the American Veteran—Remember Me?

By ROBERT SCOTT My roots are deep. On April 19, 1775, I was present at the clash between 70 American militia and some 700 British troops on the village green at Lexington, Mass.

The British were on their way to seize guns and ammunition, stored by restive colonists in nearby Concord, when they were confronted by the Lexington Minutemen-so named because they could turn out in a minute.

“Don’t fire unless fired upon,” Capt.

John Parker told the militia assembled on the village green. “But if they want a war, let it begin here.”

As the Americans were dispersing a shot rang out from the British ranks, and a British officer commanded, “Fire.” Ralph Waldo Emerson later described it as “the shot heard ‘round the world.” The battle at Lexington was over in a matter of minutes, leaving eight Americans dead and ten wounded.

By the time the British reached Concord, six miles away, the supplies they sought had been removed and hidden.

Forewarned by the midnight ride of Paul Revere, companies of armed militia were waiting for them. Three British were killed and eight wounded at Concord.

On the 17-mile march back to Boston, the British ran a deadly gauntlet of rifle and musket fire. Fighting Indian-style from behind walls and hedges, American militia killed 73 and wounded 174 British redcoats.

The American War for Independence began that April night 238 years ago.

It was a decidedly unequal contest.

Great Britain’s population was three times that of the 13 colonies. Superbly trained and well equipped, British troops in America were augmented by 30,000 hated German mercenaries. Eight long years would pass before the last British soldier or German mercenary would depart from our shores.

Many battles would be fought in one or another of the colonies stretching from New England to Florida. Westchester, the gateway to the Hudson Highlands, would be bitterly contested throughout the war.

Patriots controlled Westchester north of the Croton River. British troops and Loyalists (also called Tories) held the area

below Dobbs Ferry. The broad swath east of the Hudson between the American and British positions was called the “Neutral Ground”--the haunt of “Cowboys” and “Skinners” whose main occupation was stealing sheep, cattle and horses to sell in British-held New York City. The Westchester Guides, a light cavalry group, was organized in 1777 to combat Tory depredations, recover stolen goods and livestock, and guide American troops over unfamiliar terrain.

Had the British seized the Highlands, they could have cut communication between the rebellious colonies. Fortunately, British Gen. Sir William Howe preferred to bivouac his troops in New York City, where he flagrantly enjoyed the company of his mistress, the wife of Loyalist Joshua Loring.

Robert Scott, is a retired book publisher, an editor, and writer

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