SamPratt.com

Resistance is Temporary

 

The real reason why Trump makes people so furious? It’s not that his cruel, exploitative, ignorant and belligerent policies are so very different from those of the other Presidents of our lifetimes.

 

It’s that his crass, moronic and selfish personality has forced a previously-complacent majority of citizens to finally glimpse the longstanding nature of American government and society. The mask is both literally and figuratively off.

 

It’s important to that complacent majority to see Trump as an aberration, rather than someone who has finally put an appropriately hideous face on our country’s ugly politics.

 

Now: If we would just elect a grandfatherly figure like Biden to whisk the Orange Man off the stage, then centrist Democrats and Republicans alike can go back to ignoring the deep, institutionalized violence and rapaciousness of our society.

 

Nevermind that we’ll be going back to the same conditions which, under Clinton and Bush and Obama, caused so much hopelessness among Americans, that voters finally said: “What the hell... Let’s give a shot to a freakishly offensive gameshow host whose businesses keep going bankrupt.”

 

And if one points out that Biden has been embedded and complicit in the steady debasement of American government over the past 50 years—and who, by his own boast to Wall Street donors, will not change anything—this makes people doubly furious.

 

Because the most likely outcome is that we just put a blander, more personable face on the same old nightmare, and let those who are less touched by its viciousness to drift back to sleep.

 

One wouldn’t want to actually have to keep paying attention, stay involved, or, gosh forbid, do the hard work of demanding structural change after November.

 

Elect Biden so we can stop feeling we have to care, and not feel so guilty about it.

 

As we learned from the many who did not speak out when Obama killed innocent Middle Eastern kids with drone strikes, or prosecuted whistleblowers to the fullest extent of the law, or further expanded Homeland Security powers, or deported a record number of immigrants: These are only problems when the Evil Red party is in power.

 

Vote Biden/Harris, so we can get back to shopping and Netflix, and resume pretending that America has no kids in cages, no crushing poverty, no imperial colonizations of countless other countries most Americans can’t find on a map.

 

The standard, knee-jerk retort is that if you don’t vote for Biden, that’s because you must be privileged in some way. But the true “privilege” at work in this election is the desire to stop having to resist, and return to apathy.

 

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After Biden is elected—and he will be elected, barring some colossal blunder on the debate stage, or some other medical meltdown—at least a third of Americans will remain one missed paycheck away from insolvency.

 

People will still not be able to afford their healthcare; and Pelosi and Schumer will invent a new set of excuses for why they can’t change that.

 

Much of people’s income, or all of it, will continue to go to rent, or credit card interest, or medical bills. It will still be the case that almost no one can save even a penny, because our whole economy is structured to create perpetual debt.

 

Bad cops will continue abusing and bashing and murdering innocent people, especially people of color. Our jails will stay full, and remain virtual plantations for private gain.

 

We will keep spending the bulk of our nation’s wealth on our decades-old undeclared wars, plus all the lesser-known proxy wars in those places where we are not yet ready to admit we are the aggressor.

 

We‘ll keep slaughtering people by drone, including children and even American citizens; and also giving governments like the Saudis or Israelis all the weapons necessary to wreck their own perceived enemies.

 

Our government will keep spying on its citizens, and persecuting whistleblowers who try to show the public what its leaders are really up to.

 

Big donors, especially corporate donors, will continue to have vastly more influence been 99.8% of Americans.

 

More tax breaks and deregulation will continue to make the rich richer; and they can keep throwing a few coins to charity now and then to deflect from our staggering wealth inequality.

 

We will continue to do nothing meaningful about the climate catastrophe now fully upon us.

 

Almost everyone will forget about protest, or engaging in (mostly impotent) organizing with the likes of Indivisible. Or going to local meetings. Or making whatever other gestures they hoped might dent the impending fascist dictatorship of Trump. Because, you know, there was nothing fascistic about the United States before he beat Hillary... Right?

 

Vote for Joe Biden, because the man at least knows how to modulate the tone of his voice properly, and to stick to his focus-grouped talking points... (At least, up until late afternoon.)

 

And that will give give the other 2/3rds, both Republican and Democrats, license to tune back out.

 

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One of the favorite dodges of those who insist that we all must swallow hard and ignore Biden and Harris’s appalling records, is: “Look, first we just have to get rid of Trump.

 

“Then we can talk about all that other... stuff... after the election. Unlike Trump, we can work on Biden and Harris. We’ll push them to the left!”

 

This longtime activist honestly cannot think of a single time that a candidate on any level—local, county, state or federal—became more progressive once in office than they were on the campaign trail.

 

During a campaign, the general public is the candidate’s audience. The candidate needs their votes, or at least will pretend to need them. After the votes are cast, their audience shifts. It becomes their new colleagues. And those colleagues mainly want to ensure that the incoming class won’t rock the boat, and understands that they had better go along to get along. If they want to get anything but an office in the back of a basement closet.

 

If they don’t promise something explicitly during their campaign, sorry: it ain’t happening after they win.

 

And even when they do make explicit promises (ex: Obama vowing to get out of Iraq, or Guantanamo), it rarely happens once the old guard sits the newly-elected down in private and explains to them “how things really work.” 

 

Biden is, of course, the immensely proud author of the disastrous 1994 Crime Bill, and also claims covert credit for the Patriot Act—two of the main tools Trump is using to oppress protesters.

 

Biden has stated flatly that he could veto a Medicare for All bill if it hit his desk, dismissively adding that it’s a non-issue, because no such bill will ever reach said desk.

 

His history of blatantly racist remarks, bizarre reminiscences, and creepy fondling of women in public, can’t be ignored as just misleading right-wing email memes, as they are are readily verified on unedited, cringemaking video.

 

And again: Biden is on record reassuring his Wall Street donors that if elected, “Nothing will change.”

 

He can make those private pledges, because Biden can rest assured that the Blue No Matter Who crowd’s votes are in the bag. No need to make any concessions to “unify the party,” when everyone from Elizabeth Warren to Tulsi Gabbard to Bernie Sanders to AOC to even Cornel West and Noam Chomsky have pledged their fealty.

 

And that after the election, they will be too scared to criticize or challenge the Democratic establishment. If you speak out, you’re helping Trump come back—or someone even worse, if that is possible.

 

So: Assuming you gave been doing any of the following to “resist” Trump, here are some challenges to the self-described Resistance for after November:

• Will you continue to march for racial and social justice?
• Will you demand that Democrats in power pass Medicare for All?
• Will you keep writing irate letters to the editor about the state of our “nation”?
• Will you remember to go to local meetings, and lobby in your state capitol for change?
• Will you stay concerned about the plight of immigrants in our country?
• Will the government spying on you and me and everyone else continue to concern you?
• Will our illegal, undeclared and/or covert wars abroad occupy any of your attention?
• Will campaign finance reform be on your agenda?
• Will students loan debt, credit card debt, and other predatory lending practices still be on your radar? 
• Will you fight for at least a living minimum wage, if not universal basic income?
• Will you take tangible action to reverse global warming—before we all drown, fry, or kill each other to stay alive?

Or will you just be satisfied that Trump is gone, and just go back to the “normal” conditions which led to his election in the first place?

 

... And then insist four years from now that we all better swallow hard again and settle for lifelong prosecutor Kamala Harris, or whoever the DNC foists on us 2024 after Biden’s health presents a reëlection campaign. Because we wouldn’t want to go back to the bad old days of Trump, by criticizing or pressuring Democrats, now would we?

 

Even though those bad old days began long before Trump, and will hardly end the moment he most deservedly gets his comeuppance.

The Hudson Waterfront: Decades in the Making

 

Peter Jung and Sam Pratt of The Valley Alliance gave a presentation last night on the past and future of the Hudson Waterfront. The slides of the presentation can be viewed by clicking here. [large file, be patient!]

Pratt reviewed more than 40 years of citizen and official efforts to protect the Waterfront against threats such as an oil refinery, a toxic waste dump and a massive cement conveyor and barge operation.

These struggles, combined with City efforts (such as developing its Waterfront park, the Vision Plan, the Comprehensive Plan, et al.) have secured the opportunity for a healthier outcome which benefit a wide spectrum of Hudson residents.

Peter Jung focused on the promise the Waterfront still holds: the opportunity to deliver economic, social, cultural, recreational and conservation benefits to the whole Hudson community.

The Valley Alliance agrees with the findings of New York’s Secretary of State in 2005 that both the most jobs and the most enjoyment is to be had by creating a Waterfront where heavy, polluting industry does not prevent the success of parks, marinas, stores, restaurants, housing, entertainment, community gatherings and other mutually-compatible uses.

The presentation took place before the Hudson Planning Board, at the City’s central fire station on North 7th Street. Both of the two adjoining rooms were full, reflecting the widespread community concern about A. Colarusso & Sons’ plans to use the central piece of the Waterfront as a major gravel loading operation.

Legal ethics expert calls D.A. candidate’s actions “totally unethical” and “bizarre”

 

Register-Star report undermines Keeler’s interview claims

 

This site has sat down with both incumbent Columbia County District Attorney Paul Czajka and challenger Gene Keeler for interviews about their November election race. The resulting article had been slated to appear this week.

However, a report this morning in The Register-Star bears immediate discussion, since Keeler’s comments to reporter Amanda Purcell strongly suggest that the Democratic candidate has been less than honest in his assertions to this site.

The Register report also contains a stunning admission from Keeler that if elected, he would have to recuse himself from the prosecution of someone he previously called “a con man,” due to his own attempts to enlist that person to aid his campaign.

A Fordham legal ethics professor interviewed by Purcell agrees that Keeler’s actions are extremely troubling, describing the situation as “shocking” and “bizarre.”

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In his interview with this site, Keeler was given an opportunity to respond to repeated assertions by detractors that he has been collaborating with Stockport’s Jeffrey Yeh.

In an investigative report last summer by Roger Hannigan Gilson in The Other Hudson Valley, for which this site’s author contributed some background research, Yeh was described as having a “criminal career” which

“stretches back at least 26 years. Yeh has been charged with at least 26 crimes by police agencies, including at least 18 felonies. He has been sentenced to incarceration at least five times.

“The charges documented tend to revolve around theft, identity theft, electronic surveillance and possessing forged financial documents. Many of his victims were known to him, such as individuals who employed him, or people he knew socially.“

Visibly upset by a question about any potential connection between Yeh and his campaign, Keeler stood up and thundered “Absolutely not!” 

Keeler then characterized Yeh as “a con man.” Several days later, he attempted to move this outburst off-the-record, though he had not asked in advance for it to be treated as such.

But now, in Purcell‘s candidate profiles for The Register-Star, Keeler calls his own veracity into question by stating the precise opposite. Rather than “absolutely not” in communication with that “con man,” Keeler told the paper on Thursday:

“he has been in communication with Jeffrey Yeh, who was indicted by a Columbia County grand jury in June on several felony charges related to alleged credit card theft. Yeh’s trial is scheduled to begin in January, after the winning candidate in the Nov. 5 election takes office.”

Keeler now admits to Purcell that he circulated negative information about Czajka to Yeh, which Yeh then published on his Facebook group. That page routinely features often salacious, usually anonymous and almost entirely unsubstantiated allegations about County law enforcement and judicial figures.

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Purcell smartly reached out to an independent legal ethics expert, Fordham Law professor James Cohen for an an outside view of the situation.

Cohen characterizes Keeler’s conflict of interest as “a breach of staggering proportion... It is totally unethical that an attorney and candidate for DA would speak to a defendant under criminal indictment.”

Keeler then attempts to brush off the formerly-denied association with Yeh as just “entertainment.” (He similarly told this site that he found Yeh’s antics “entertaining.”) Seeming to realize he may have gone too far, Keeler adds: “Do I have a problem about what [Yeh] says or does, libel and all that? Yes, there are issues there.”

When pressed by this site about why he had appeared to post in threads or like incendiary messages on Yeh’s controversial page, Keeler blamed his “fat fingar [sic].”

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On September 13th, this site asked Keeler in writing: “If you are elected D.A, is there  any conflict of interest or prior relationship which would prevent you from continuing the existing cases against Yeh begun under Czajka?” Keeler responded:

“I have no relationship with him that would prevent me from being involved with a criminal procedure if he was a witness or defendant.”

But now readers learn from The Register-Star interview that if elected, Keeler does in fact plan to recuse himself from continuing Yeh’s prosecution:

“Keeler intends to recuse himself from the case on his first day in office, if elected, and ask the judge to appoint a special prosecutor from outside the county.”

So Keeler has absolutely nothing to do with that con man... and no reason to recuse himself from his prosecution... Except when he does.

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Keeler also insisted repeatedly in his September interview, and in subsequent direct messages, that he is “running a positive campaign.”

Both Keeler himself and sources within the Democratic Party have indicated that they did not want him engaging in the type of attacks which derailed his previous campaign.

Yet in the Register-Star article, Keeler launches a fusillade of unsubstantiated attacks, much like those of the “con man” he finds entertaining. Alleging “corruption” between the D.A.’s office and law enforcement, Keeler claims that his opponent has been “doing favors” such as “taking care of DWI records for years — reductions and disappearing cases.”

Pressed by Purcell “to produce names, Keeler did not and generalized by saying, ‘They’re police officers, former police officers. They’re everybody.’”

Leaving aside Keeler’s willingness to make extremely serious accusations without backing them up, at the very best he appears to have been less than committed to his pledge to “stay positive.”

Given that today’s political campaigns almost always involve some negative campaigning, readers might wonder why Keeler was straining so hard to keep things positive. The answer lies in his previous run for D.A., in 2011, when he published a faux-tabloid newspaper full of similarly-inflammatory material.

That Fall, the Columbia Paper’s Parry Teasdale raked Keeler over the coals for making scurrilous and unproven accusations. Teasdale lambasted the  “flimsiness of his evidence,” along with “his exaggerations and innuendo,” concluding that his antics had left his campaign with “not a shred of credibility.”

It seems history is repeating itself.

My fellow Democrats...

 

It’s truly dismaying to watch so many of my fellow Democrats devolve into pure partisanship, as a way of coping with the trauma of Trumpism.

 

One sees countless Dems suddenly unwilling to hold our own party accountable, uninterested in issues which require more attention than just knee-jerk outrage, and unable to assess media skeptically unless it helps our “team.”

 

The end result is Dems sounding like either Birchers (crying treason) or a liberal version of Birthers (latching onto any piece of negative info about the GOP even if it can’t be supported by evidence).

 

Meanwhile, the Democratic base gets more and more disaffected, as leadership serves donors rather than voters. This is a recipe for failing to retake a chamber of Congress in 2018, and for Trump to be re-elected in 2020.

 

The party needs to stand for something that ordinary Americans actually care about, when they are considering their bills and their predicament around the proverbial kitchen table. (And by ordinary, I mean pretty much everyone who has never attended a $10,000-and-up political fundraiser.)

 

Stand for a living minimum wage. For health care which does not drain people’s savings while denying them essential medical attention. For an end to predatory lending, including student loans. For the rights of immigrants. For an end to police brutality, and racial equality. For more oversight of our out-of-control “security” agencies, and an end to spying on Americans. For the rights of workers to unionize to protect their incomes and safety. For the meaningful regulation of Wall Street and corrupt mortgage and other banking practices. For the removal of the influence of money on elections.

 

Stand for press freedom, and protecting whistleblowers who expose government and corporate malfeasance. For a reduced military budget, an end to our seven undeclared wars, and cessation of killing people by remote controlled drones. For the future of our planet, including clean air and water.

 

Stand for something besides hoping that some distant spooks and cops will relieve each of us of the urgent need for citizens to participate, tangibly, not just symbolically, in reforming our deeply corrupt and distorted democracy.

 

Demand that candidates take these stands, too, with no hedging and weasel-words, and don’t be conned into accepting merely the lesser of two evils.

Tuesday CD-19 primary: Anyone but Ryan

Email leaked during the HBGary/Berico/Palantir scandal 

 

Got a second for a Stop the Plant war story? It will help explain why Patrick Ryan absolutely must not be your choice in Tuesday’s crowded Democratic primary, which will determine who runs against John Faso for Congress next November.

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During the nearly seven-year fight to stop the massive, coal-burning St. Lawrence Cement proposal in Columbia County, I was spied on clumsily by a private investigative firm from the Albany area. This surveillance activity came to light after several ham-handed attempts to dig dirt about me from my neighbors and family.

My neighbor Joanne Krasowsky (R.I.P.) was the first to report that a peculiar man was prowling lower Warren Street, asking odd questions about me.

A man in a minivan approached Joanne near the corner of 1st and Warren. He claimed that he was from a finance company, and that her neighbor Sam Pratt had applied to them for a loan. The man said that they were planning to approve the loan, but needed to verify some personal information first. Would she be able to answer some questions to help her neighbor out?

Joanne immediately smelled a rat. After all, what kind of lending institution sends out reps to verify loan info via their neighbors? She asked the man for identification to verify that he was who he said he was. The gumshoe stuttered that he forgot his wallet at the office, and quickly excused himself—getting into his car, ostensibly without his driver’s license.

Stop the plant campaign ad designed by S.P.

Of course, I had applied for no such loan.

Next up was my family. A man called my parents’ house and tried to quiz my mother about my finances, using the same flimsy pretext.

Then there was my tenant and friend, Jackie Thomas, a DJ and local shopowner who lived in the garden apartment of my house on Warren Street. Jackie was approached again on the same pretext, but cannily told the man that yes, he would be glad to help... However, Jackie said, he was in a rush to get to work, so could he call him later? The man provided a phone number, which Jackie immediately passed along to me.

It did not take long to trace the phone number to the Albany-area private investigation firm. (Note: Though it had an office in Greenport, the Greenport Project’s law firm and State corporate HQ were both in Albany.)

I called the firm and asked to speak to its president. I told the man that I was well aware that they were falsely representing themselves as a lender to surveill and harass me. If it did not stop immediately, I said, they would find themselves in court—along with their client St. Lawrence Cement for violating laws against suppressing public participation in regulatory processes. The firm’s president denied it all, of course. But there were no further incidents.

Joanne wrote up the incident in a very funny letter to the editor of the Register-Star, and the entire episode reflected poorly on our adversary, SLC. As often happens with overweening corporate tactics like this, they come back to bite the corporation.

Overall, my sense was that the attempted surveillance was so amateurishly done that either SLC, in its usual inept way, had hired a really lame firm; or, the goal was less to gather information than to make their presence known, and thereby intimidate me. If I did have something to hide, they might not find it. But I would hear they were looking, and if I had something to worry about, the threat alone might be enough to get me to back off the fight, or even move away entirely to escape exposure. Unfortunately for the company and its parent Holcim, I neither had any juicy secrets, nor neighbors who wanted to play ball with creepy corporate spies.

Several years later, I also discovered that someone around this same time had filed a request for a criminal background check on me, which was itemized in the records the County Clerk’s office. However, that office claimed that they could not find the original records to see who was responsible.

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Corporate surveillance and harassment of activists, watchdogs and whistleblowers is is all too common. It’s only made easier in the Internet Age, with so much more info being available (both legally and illegally) online. Such harassment may be most familiar to the public from films such as Erin Brockovich, The Insider, or Michael Clayton, which dramatize the way big business uses espionage and gaslighting activity to deal with pesky citizen nuisances.

Pat Ryan (from Daily Freeman)

If it turns out that the journalists, or activist, or union organizer, or whistleblower has a drug problem, or is cheating on their spouse, or watches extreme porn, or has gambling debts, or some other skeleton in their closet, then that info can be used to try to silence them.

And here’s where we circle back to NY-19 Democratic Congressional candidate Pat Ryan.

Back in 2011, I followed closely a developing scandal involving three “data mining” firms: Palantir, HBGary, and Berico. The trio had banded together to seek lucrative contracts from corporations bedeviled by public relations problems. Their potential clients included the huge U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a notoriously anti-labor lobby, and Bank of America, also no friend of working people, notorious for fraudulent, predatory and discriminatory lending practices.

The three-company scheme came to light after hackers obtained a vast trove of HBGary emails, with many communications and memoranda including Berico. The exploit was motivated by public boasts by HBGary that they were turning the tables on hackers by using similar tools to infiltrate them.

At the time, Patrick Ryan was the Deputy Director for analysis at one of these three firms. As investigative reporter Lee Fang wrote at The Intercept,

Seven years ago, Ryan, then working at a firm called Berico Technologies, compiled a plan to create a real-time surveillance operation of left-wing groups and labor unions, hoping business lobbyists would pay top dollar to monitor and disrupt the actions of activist groups across the country. At one point, the proposal included the idea to spy on the families of high-profile Democratic activists and plant fake documents with labor unions in a bid to discredit them.

The pitch, a joint venture with a now-defunct company called HBGary Federal and the Peter Thiel-backed company Palantir Technologies, however, crumbled in 2011 after it was exposed in a series of news reports. 

Fang is not some far-out kook, or a right-winger out to discredit a Democratic candidate who has raised a lot of money for this race. Rather, Fang is best known for his research on the Koch brothers’ influence on GOP politics. He’s a former employee of prominent Democrats in Congress, and a writer for The Nation and many other well-known liberal- or left-leaning publications. Most recently, he published an op-ed in The New York Times about Trump lawyer Michael Cohen. Of Ryan, he and others also reported:

The emails show Ryan at every step of the process to pitch the chamber. He was on the initial email thread on October 19, 2010, discussing the idea. Ryan, responding to a unique opportunity to sell “a complete intelligence solution” using “social media exploitation,” said it “sounded like a great opportunity.”

Later that month, after a meeting with the chamber’s attorney, Ryan announced to his business partners that a “client of theirs is targeted by another entity, specifically a labor union, that is trying to extract some kind of concession or favorable outcome.”

Ryan’s Congressional candidacy brought this mostly-forgotten scandal back to light. A ton of documentation dating back to 2011-12 was archived online, no doubt to the candidate’s chagrin. A 2011 day-by-day timeline of events published by ThinkProgress mentions Ryan by name over 20 times, demonstrating that he was hardly at the fringes of this scheme. (The players eventually branded their triumvirate “Team Themis.”) For example, on November 5th, 2010, 

Ryan asks [Chamber lawyer] Woods what data [it] has, wondering if it includes “Financial Records, Union Rosters, IP addresses” and “access to the union in question’s membership lists”. Ryan attaches a $200,000 cost proposal.

The $200K figure was just for Phase I of the campaign. Phase II was to cost $2,000,000. On November 18th of the same timeline, when the partners have a debate about how to divvy up the spoils from this caper, they settle on a 40/30/30 split—and “Ryan agrees on behalf of Berico.” The proposal includes, among many other tasks, developing a “target list” for whom they will “develop in-depth target dossiers for key entities and groups,” including “key biographic data, relationships, intentions.”

Ryan’s evasive responses have attempted to neutralize and deflect a sordid part of his resumé he had neglected to disclose to voters. And his various excuses only raise further questions about the candidate’s integrity. In his initial reply to The Intercept—whose editor, Pulitzer Prize and Oscar winner Glenn Greenwald, was someone this team also discussed targeting with a campaign to discredit him—Ryan’s third-person press release stated:

Pat worked at a small software firm and was assigned to develop a proposal, but had concerns about the nature of the work, especially in relation to the protection of American citizens’ privacy and civil liberties. The project did not move past the proposal stage.

This statement employs a number of shady public relations tricks to attempt to minimize and deflect the issue.

first, there is his spurious reference to Berico as “a small software firm.” Leaving aside how small or large Berico was at the time, this seeks to trivialize Ryan’s time there. It was just some small firm, no big deal... But what difference does it make how big the company was? It’s the noxious nature of their activity which is under scrutiny, not their market cap... And if it truly was a small firm, that would only mean that Ryan had to be that much more involved with what happened. 

Next, Ryan claims that he “had concerns” about what he and his company was doing. In other interviews and appearances, he has added the claim that the leaked email trove did not include any of his internal protests about those concerns. How convenient: Somehow, among the tens of thousands of documents published online, none have come to light in which Ryan objects. But many—like the one at the top of this post, in which Ryan states to his colleagues how “excited” he is to be “part of” this project. If such emails exist, why has Ryan not released them himself to clear his name?

Thirdly, and most dishonestly, Ryan uses the deflection that “the project did not move past the proposal stage” to again minimize its importance.

But why did it not move forward?

Because Berico and its partners got caught with their pants down.

Once their scheme to surveill and intimidate people deemed irritating by big business was exposed, it was inoperable. Per my account above, it’s a lot harder to spy on people when they know you’re doing it. And the scandal was a p.r. disaster for all three firms (one of which folded as a result), whose only remaining move was to beat a retreat.

Ryan has also tried to suggest that he was just along for the ride as someone who was incidentally a low-level employee. But he is listed on key memoranda and proposals as the key point-person for such projects, for example in the cover sheet above (highlight added). The full memo can be downloaded here. Ryan can also be seen in other messages acting as a principal actor among the partners, for example in trying to figure out how much they can charge the Chamber without losing the contract.

Ryan in his various responses is deploying what is known in corporate rhetoric as “weasel words.” These are phrases which appear to be benign and narrowly factual themselves, but are intended to mask, evade, twist, or otherwise dodge the truth. Sure, Berico was not as big as General Motors. Sure, the project technically didn’t “move forward.” Sure, he was not the CEO. But none of those things disclose the full scope of Berico’s involvement, or Ryan’s role.

Ryan compounds the sin with this approach. Rather than acknowledging that he made a grave error of judgement, one which he could have learned from and vowed not to repeat, he instead telegraphs an ugly message: That he (or his handlers) seem to think that the voting public is either too inattentive or too gullible to look into and understand what occurred. It suggests a dismissive and cynical attitude to one’s potential constituents.

One might shrug this off as an isolated incident. Say, a youthful mistake seven years ago... But after leaving Berico, Ryan moved onto another firm, Dataminr, which sought much the same type of work and was “funded through an investment from In-Q-Tel, the venture capital arm of the CIA.” As Fang reported,

The firm amassed law enforcement clients, including the FBI and Joint Regional Intelligence Center, a fusion center used by the government to alert multiple law enforcement departments in the Los Angeles region of potential threats. Documents, uncovered by the ACLU of California through a public records investigation of social media monitoring software, show that Dataminr monitored tweets mentioning Black Lives Matter on behalf of the JRIC. The emails show that Dataminr’s alerts vacuumed up tweets from now-Intercept columnist Shaun King, among other activists, in reports sent to law enforcement.

In another email obtained by the ACLU of California, Dataminr pitched the Los Angeles Police Department to use its tool to track protests, among other events of interest to law enforcement. Dataminr’s social media tracking tools are “highly valued by our clients at FBI CTD, NYPD, DoD and all ‘big five’ intel agencies,” the pitch continued.

In other words, Ryan’s interest in spying on fellow Americans to assist corporate and government clients cannot be shrugged off as a one-time thing.

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There are seven Democratic candidates in Tuesday’s primary. Three of them—Ryan, Delgado and Flynn—have the blessing of the out-of-touch, center-right, neoliberal DCCC, the same gang of insider Dems who along with the DNC helped deliver the November 2016 election debacle. These establishment interests expect candidates to shut up about popular progressive policies, aiming to protect their big donors against the interests of rank-and-file liberal voters.

My vote will go to one of the other four, most likely Gareth Rhodes. Rhodes unlike most of his competitors does not appear to have any obvious knock against him that Faso can exploit. He has also shown unusual commitment to the district through grassroots campaigning, managing to visit every single town and city in the sprawling district at least once, sometimes more.

Rhodes is very responsive to dialogue, answering calls and emails from all comers at an astonishingly quick pace. His relative youth to me is not a disadvantage: It could help bring in younger voters, and means he is less wedded to the status quo. I might add that when we started fighting SLC, I had just turned from 29 to 30—and faced resistance from grayer opponents who though that was “too young” to spearhead such a battle. Fortunately, I had a lot of help and allies, and we prevailed, in spite of corporate money and dirty tricks.

But whoever you wind up choosing from this smorgasbord of options, in my view Ryan should be off the menu.

State: Yes, the Freedom of Information Law applies to that Hudson agency

The New York State  Committee on Open Government today issued an Advisory Opinion, disagreeing with a recent contention by Sheena Salvino of the Hudson Development Corporation that HDC is somehow exempt from the requirements of the State’s Freedom of Information Law (FOIL).

A FOIL request was submitted by this writer a month ago regarding HDC’s controversial relationship with the Colarusso company. FOIL requires an agency not only to reply within 5 days, but to either decide on the request in that timeframe, or to give a reason why an additional 20 days are necessary.

When only a terse acknowledgement of the request was issued by Salvino, the law’s deadlines were brought to her attention. Salvino then refused to give any firm timeline for responding, adding that based on the advice of “legal council” [sic] she believes HDC “is not subject to the provisions of the Freedom of Information Law.” As such, she implied, any documents produced would be produced voluntarily, not as required by law. This would allow HDC to pick and choose what it produced, rather than having to follow the narrow limits of FOIL.

As of yesterday, Salvino indicated that she was assembling some documents for my review, but again did not provide a date or any acknowledgement that these would fully cover what was required in the law.

Today‘s State findings, dated May 18th, 2018, indicate that whatever “council” gave Salvino this advice was mistaken. NYS COOG Assistant Director Kristin O’Neill writes that “I believe that HDC constitutes an ‘agency’ required to give effect to FOIL,” adding that she would likewise expect “a court to conclude that HDC is an ‘agency’ subject to FOIL.”

An added wrinkle is that because HDC is an agency as defined in the law, this means that it is also subject to Open Meetings Law. Of late, HDC has appeared to treat making its meetings open to the public as something of a voluntary undertaking.

A copy of the Advisory Opinion can be downloaded here, along with a copy of the submission made to the agency which prompted its issuance. [PDFs]

Note: HDC has yet to produce any documents, though it has exceeded the maximum 25 days to do so.

 

Quotable Douglass

“The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims, have been born of earnest struggle. 

“The conflict has been exciting, agitating, all-absorbing, and for the time being, putting all other tumults to silence. It must do this or it does nothing. If there is no struggle there is no progress. 

“Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.

“This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. 

“Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. 

“The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. ...  Men may not get all they pay for in this world; but they must certainly pay for all they get. If we ever get free from the oppressions and wrongs heaped upon us, we must pay for their removal. 

“We must do this by labor, by suffering, by sacrifice, and if needs be, by our lives and the lives of others.“

– Frederick Douglass (1857)

Amid email frenzy, Dem treasurer says that Columbia County Fair attracts “lowlife”

ABOVE: Columbia County Fair images posted this week on Instagram

Just as the Columbia County Fair was about to open, a top local Democratic official stated on Tuesday in the midst of a testy email exchange that the popular event “always attracts lowlife.”

The official, County Democratic Committee Treasurer Deb Shakotko, is said to be resigning her post later this year. A request for comment from Shakotko has not been returned at the time of this post.

The inflammatory comment arose in the context of a seemingly benign suggestion that Democrats join efforts to help a young leukemia sufferer in the community.

That mild suggestion touched off a touchy internal wrangle among committee members—eliciting Shakotko’s eyebrow-raising remark, while also shedding a rather dismal light on the CCDC’s internal dynamics.

The wrangle began as a simple request from Ghent committee members Patti Matheney and Judy Rusk, urging the County Democrats to join others assisting the family of a local child who has been diagnosed with a very rare form of the disease.

Matheney had been informed by the child’s parent at an August 29th meatball fundraiser at the Chatham firehouse that the County Republicans were planning to put out a collection plate at the Fair. (The GOP effort was reported spearheaded by County Clerk Holly Tanner.) The child’s parent, said to be quite liberal, wondered if the Democrats might do the same.

CCDC Treasurer Deb Shakotko (Source: Facebook)

In relaying Matheney’s conversation and the proposal, Rusk wrote to four party officers that “We are always looking for ways to get P.R. for the Dems. This seems like a wonderful opportunity for us while doing a humanitarian act.”

Yet the seemingly uncontroversial suggestion—a “no-brainer,” Matheney assumed—touched off a flurry of emails and phone calls among the Democrats' executive committee, including chair Peter Bujanow, 1st vice chair Debby Mayer, secretary Angela Pace, plus treasurer Shakotko.

Initially, Bujanow, Shaktoko and Mayer questioned or even opposed the idea, concocting a wide range of reasons not to support it. When news leaked of their reluctance, this led to significant pushback among more rank-and-file Democrats.

Within minutes of Rusk’s proposal to the Democratic officers early Tuesday morning, Shakotko shot back via email that

“there are so many worthy causes and we have not vetted them all. It could very well be there are other more worthy causes we should showcase in our booth. We ought to think carefully about this [...] We would also need someone to guard any money collected like a hawk as the fair always attracts lowlife.”

Rather than questioning, let alone denouncing, Shakotko’s characterization of the popular County festival, the Dem leadership on the email thread rushed to support her stance on the issue.

Mayer replied that “Deb has restated my thoughts so clearly, so fairly.”

Bujanow replied that “I concur with both Deb and Debby.”

Shakotko added that former CCDC chair “Cyndy [Hall] indicated to me yesterday that even her tables and chairs were stolen at the fair.”

Mayer chimed in again, seemingly eager to deflect the issue:

“I will be working the booth and my focus will be our candidates by electing progressive candidates we have a better chance at addressing problems like this (funding health care).”

Tellingly, however, at least one local Democratic candidate on the ballot this fall has not been invited to circulate literature or be present at the Dems’ fair booth.

Matheney pointed out the discrepancy: “I thought it was of the upmost importance that the booth represent our local candidates. I posed this question to Debby, but I received no response as to why Matthew [Nelson, Town Council candidate in Kinderhook] wasn’t asked.”

Above: The CCDC website omits several key Democratic candidates on the ballot this Fall

Meanwhile, several Democratic candidates, including State Assembly member Didi Barrett along with Nelson, do not appear on the CCDC’s website list of “candidate campaign websites.”

For his part, Bujanow dismissively stated that he didn’t have time for an “intense” conversation with Matheney. But finally, after hearing from numerous Democrats that they were disappointed, Bujanow announced that

“the Columbia County Democratic Committee wishes to support an effort to raise funds for [...] a 12 year old boy from Ghent/Chatham with a rare form of leukemia and that a donation container will be placed at the Democratic Booth located at the Columbia County Fair. ”

Bujanow profusely thanked and credited Rusk with bringing the matter to the fore—studiously omitting mention of its origination and advancement by Matheney—or the resistance put up by the officers before caving in to common political sense.

So what is really going on here?

It’s a poorly-kept secret among Democrats that Bujanow and other top County Democrats hold some antipathy to Matheney, the founder of GhentCAN who got herself elected to her Town Board last fall—an antipathy which often extends to other Democratic activists and candidates perceived to be allied with her. For example, Bujanow was accused behind the scenes last fall of not avidly supporting Nelson’s bid to unseat Kinderhook’s GOP Supervisor Pat Grattan... Nelson and Matheney being viewed as allies.

The CCDC has been seen as largely ineffectual for many years. In 2013, two of its more visible incumbents lost their re-election bids, Claverack Supervisor Robin Andrews and Copake Town Justice Brian Herman.

In 2015, Democrat Ken Golden’s attempt to unseat District Attorney Paul Czajka fell far short, while the Dems did not even contest the Republicans’ choices for County Treasurer and Coroner. Two Democrats running for Town Board in Germantown failed to unseat a lone Republican there. Perennial candidate and CCDC member Lee Jamison lost yet again in Stuyvesant, this time to Ron Knott, despite having celebrity running mate Frank Serpico on the ballot with her.

Surface gains of Supervisor seats in Chatham (Maria Lull beating Jesse DeGroodt) and New Lebanon (Colleen Teal over Mike Benson) have rung hollow, with Lull and Teal both known as Republicans who wound up on the Dem line only after feuds with their local GOP leadership.

Meanwhile, many GOP incumbents in other towns—including Gallatin, Copake, Stockport, et al.—ran with no Democratic opposition at all.

The progressive efforts of candidates like Matheney (who has gained renown for her effective activism on issues surrounding the County airport, economic development cronyism, and most recently rural broadband access) appear to be resented, rather than embraced by top Democrats in the County.

Such successes are viewed by some Democrats not as a model for how to win elections and prevail on key issues, but rather as a threat to their cozy positions—and a counterexample to their excuses for not being effective in their own right. The County Committee as a whole is viewed by many as at best aloof—with Bujanow notorious for not returning calls—and at worst hostile to those eager to volunteer their time and effort to their party.

Thus when the straightforward, win-win request to assist a local family dealing with a major health crisis came in, the email exchanges between these officers appear to reflect more an antipathy to the source of the request, than an engagement with its substance.

Across the tenures of several recent County chairs, local Democrats seem to be more focused on rivalries and turf wars than on the mechanics of winning elections. The key elements of successful campaigns—such as raising key issues, candidate cultivation, volunteerism, media relations, database development, fundraising, get-out-the-vote mechanics—often appears to be secondary to petty internecine warfare.

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(Endnote: Curiously, CCDC 2nd vice chair Gene Keeler doesn’t appear to have been included in the main email conversation. Keeler later wrote that “I support [Matheney and Rusk’s] request and respectfully ask the leadership to support this matter as requested and with time of the essence to have a review of this matter today.”)

Supers meeting on Wednesday may be best show in town

BOS Chairman Pat Grattan (image adapted from: GrandOldPress.com)

The public may want to bring some extra bags of popcorn to the County Board of Supervisors’ regular meeting on Wednesday at 7:30—where the ethics, transparency and other management issues dogging the Columbia Economic Development Corporation (CEDC) are likely to come up.

Last month, the County’s separate economic development committee voted 5-0 to forward a resolution proposed by Hillsdale Supervisor Art Baer to the full Board, calling for an independent investigation into possible conflicts of interest during CEDC’s past five years of loans and grantmaking.

Prompted by a State report on conflicts of interest related to the Ginsberg’s Food proposal, as well as violations of open government laws, the investigation (if approved) would focus on only grants of $25,000 or more.

Online petition calls for Town appeal of Koweek ruling on Ginsberg’s

A new online petition posted by GhentCann calls upon the Town’s planners to appeal this week’s ruling by Judge Richard Koweek, forcing the Planning Commission to reverse its denial of a permit to Ginsberg’s Foods.

The petition, which can be found here, can be signed by residents of both Ghent and the County, says GhentCANN’s Patti Matheney, to support “sound planning decisions in our County.” The 300,000 square-foot project also received large tax breaks from the Columbia County Industrial Development Agency.

The Departed: Phyllis, Fran & Vinny

Phyllis Herbert was not one to go gentle into that good night. Living out the last decade of her life in Hudson, she could be at times, well, ornery.

As memory failed her, she was prone to frustration with both herself and her interlocutors. She loved conversation, dropping by my office almost every weekday for years. Though her mind was full of both probing questions and lively anecdotes, as the fight got busier and busier I often had to instruct my staff not to let her know I was working downstairs, since such conversations could prove difficult to wind up.

In saying so, I am not trying to tarnish Phyllis’ memory, but to conjure up her intense sense of self and willpower. She prided herself on her independence of mind and lifestyle. To the last, she could be seen chugging up Warren Street in practical sneakers and a long jean skirt, pursuing some errand she insisted on completing herself even after driving a car became impossible. She resisted many attempts by worried relations to move her to assisted living, and finally succeeded in her effort to die at home in Hudson.

She could try the patience and generosity of friends who did their best to help with housework and repairs around the small home she bought in 1998 in the 100 block of Warren Street, after a bitter divorce from her longtime husband. (I discovered, after we’d known each other for a time, that they had lived next-door to my grandparents on Grove Street in the West Village. That explained a lot to me about her character and interests—she brought to Hudson a whiff of old Village contrarianism.)

She was an excellent cook, but could be the victim of her own perfectionism. During the period of the cement controversy, those of us living in “The Flatlands”—the level blocks at the end of Warren—would take turns hosting impromptu neighborhood potluck picnics. Phyllis was invariably too ambitious in her choice of a dish—preparing, say, an elaborate potroast. Wanting to get it just right, she would miscalculate the prep time necessary. Arriving very late to the cookout, bearing a delicious dish which no one had any more room to eat (having already finished dessert), she could become furious at both her neighbors and herself.

Phyllis was smart, warm and cynically humorous when she wanted to be. She had an extensive collection of discarded (often academic) books she had picked up at library sales and thrift stores, and had clearly paid a lot of attention to the theories of Jane Jacobs, another Villager. Among those she loaned me was a 1958 tome called “Small Town in Mass Society: Class, Power, and Religion in a Rural Community.” She thought it might provide some insight into how local officials and their constituents view issues like the St. Lawrence Cement proposal, and she was right. In particular, the book helped crystallize for me how going-along-to-get-along is a powerful force in local decisionmaking, and helped me see ways to break down that predictable dynamic which favors the status quo.

Phyllis contributed to the cement struggle in other unexpected ways. She was something of a hoarder, so a neighbor and my part-time employee Maiysha Kramer tried to help  tame this vast collection of books and papers. Her habit of never throwing anything away turned out to have an unexpected benefit: the little house (which is now the Davis-Orton Gallery) contained virtually every issue of the Register-Star and Independent from the day she arrived in Hudson. 

In a time when few papers were digitized, this had a great value to our opposition research against St. Lawrence, since one of our favorite strategies was to catch the company contradicting its past claims. So Phyllis—despairing of ever sorting through the entire informal archive—agreed to donate it to the cause. This was turned into a sort of reference library at my office, and it proved helpful time and time again.

Two neighbors who tried their best to help Phyllis manage things were Fran and Vinny DeGrazia, a not-quite-as-elderly couple who lived directly across the street. Fran had been a stewardess, and Vinny a musician and bartender. For a brief time, they kept an antique shop—a tchotchke shop, really—several doors upstreet from their two-story house. They loved yardsaling, and it kept them busy in retirement.

They loved jazz, and carried around with them an oldschool vibe of the Ratpack days. One could easily imagine them taking in a Dean Martin or Sammy Davis, Jr. show in Atlantic City, and dancing up a storm. (Occasionally, that oldschool vibe would include some salty or outmoded language, the latter which I took as testament to the ingrained, inherited prejudices of their generation than any mean-spritedness, especially given the diversity of their neighbors and circle of friends. The 100 block of Warren was unusually close-knit back then, but virtually every house has changed owners in the 17 years I’ve been here.)

I remember Fran and Vinny as among the very most reliable volunteers for the cement cause. Putting labels on 5,000-piece mailings was a frequent task, and the two of them never failed to show up to help. Vinny also consistently donated his bartending services to Stop the Plant fundraising events, often working in tandem with Bob Mechling. They died within a relatively short time of each other, and it was indeed hard to imagine one without the other.

Phyllis, Fran and Vinny taught me, among other things, that it takes all kinds of people and personalities for a community to beat back a multinational corporation. As did each of the 4,000 members of the group that prevailed against SLC ten years ago, these three friends and neighbors contributed in their own idiosyncratic and surprising ways... the point of these remembrances not being canonization, but to be as true as possible to their presences.

The Departed: Mary Davidson

Mary Davidson, participating in the Stop the Plant polaroid project

June 21st, 2001, was an uncomfortable day by any standard. The temperature around Hudson reached 90 degrees, and humidity averaged 87%—running all the way up to 100% at its peak. The afternoon was punctuated by downpours and thunderstorms, literal and figurative.

This was also the day that an estimated 1,000 citizens turned out for a public hearing on the St. Lawrence Cement proposal. It began at 10 am in the gymnasium of Columbia-Greene Community College, which had no air conditioning. Administrative Law Judge Helene Goldberger finally closed the session nearly 15 hours later, at 12:40 am.

Concerned—correctly—that it would be outnumbered at the hearing, the cement company set up an operation to bus folks to its headquarters on Route 9, offering them a free meal and a t-shirt in exchange for appearing at the hearing. Many did not realize that they were expected to speak on the company’s behalf. Though they were also provided with magazines (labeled “property of St. Lawrence Cement”), most of those shanghaied to Columbia-Greene left long before their names were called.

Not so with plant opponents, many of whom waited all day for a chance to be heard. 

In the evening, one of the late speakers was Mary Davidson. She had signed up to speak at 3 o’clock, and waited through many sweltering hours to be called to the microphone. Unlike most of the attendees, Davidson was not a stranger to the venue: A professor at Columbia-Greene, her office was not far away. Here is what she said to Judge Goldberger:

MARY DAVIDSON: I'll be brief because much of what I was going to say has already been said by other people. I expected to talk about three this afternoon.

I am a taxpayer in the town of Claverack. I've lived here since 1977, and I'm on the faculty of this beloved institution for 24 years. But let me make my point clear. I do not speak for this institution, but I do speak as an educator on the faculty.

I teach social sciences, classes—psychology, sociology and social work. I'm currently teaching a social problems class focusing on the environment, which I’ve designed specifically around the areas of St. Lawrence Cement, Athens Generating and the dredging of the Hudson River.

As a concerned social scientist, I recognize the need that people have for well paying, quality jobs. Indeed, it pains me to look out amongst the audience today and see many friends and workers that I know in this community who are so desperate for decent employment that they are supporting this cement plant.

This company is not going to provide in the long run well-paying jobs for a number of people; not even in the short run.

But even if they were, why must it pay at the expense of our health in order for that to take place? If the local elected officials in this community were doing their job, we should be able to have decent employment without work ruining our health.

I’m a mother and also a grandmother and I would like my grandchildren to grow up to be healthy. What a choice we have, to be able to have well-paying jobs at the expense of our health, or be able to have good health at the expense of not having any jobs?

It’s time for this community to wake up. Are we not able to trust the testimony of our very own local hospital officials who have adamantly stated over and over and over that this plant is going to ruin the lives and health of all of us?

I’m going to cut it here, I think. I just wanted to go on record as saying I’m a opposed to this plant for the sake of the health and well-being of all of us and future generations to come. Thank you very much.

A native of Buffalo and graduate of SUNY New Paltz, Mary taught Human Services for 30 years at Columbia-Greene. Indeed, she was among the original faculty at the college when it opened in Greenport. At her memorial in 2011, her daughter noted that she “was an activist her whole life for woman’s rights and social justice.”

What I remembered most about Mary’s involvement in the cement battle was her tenaciousness. As the Polaroid photo above shows, she not just determined, but also confident, that justice would prevail. An email she sent in 2003 to a group of activists said: “The world needs more people who are willing to sacrifice to do the right thing.”