HERE AND THERE

Protesting with SEIU in front of WWE owner and US Senate candidate Linda McMahon's Connecticut HQs. Linda McMahon is running for Senator Chris Dodd's seat who is not running for reelection.

It's been a while and I am sorry I have not updated the blog in so long have been extremely busy with work and not a lot of time to blog. I have kept in close contact with my Ulster County sources and there is a lot going on in Ulster County:


Sheriff Paul Van Blarcum now has a GOP opponent, SGT. George Goodwin of the UC Sheriff's office. While Paul will easily beat his subordinate in the general election; I hear the GOP may cross endorse Van Blarcum over the weak Republican candidate.

Elliott Auerbach, the guy that deserves a cross endorsement may face an opponent as well. We hear a "well respected woman" from the Southern part of Ulster County may toss her hat in the ring...I can't get a name on who she is but Elliott has a well oiled machine that will cruise him to victory this November.


Not for nothing but Auerbach has went out of his way to make the office of the Comptroller both transparent and accountable to the people of Ulster County and is the only countywide elected official to reach across the aisle and do the right thing on a daily basis. Mario Catalano should do the right thing and give him the GOP line.


Don Wise, failed candidate for Supervisor and Assembly ( against Hinchey back in the day) has announced that he will be running against the very popular Kevin Cahill in the 101st. While Kevin takes every race seriously and will run a full campaign on the work he has done both as our Assemblyman and as Chair of the NYS Assembly's energy committee he will take out Wise by a 3:1 margin. Putting him in a great position to primary Mike Hein next year for County Executive, if that is something he wanted. No question he would win.

Side note to Don Wise: Please do not use those awful huge yellow signs....such a turnoff


We hear George Phillips who is running against Congressman Maurice Hinchey for the second time may have a GOP primary on his hands. We hear former Assemblyman John Garren is backing Phillips opponent and will be throwing some cash at the race...interesting.


Democratic candidates for NYS Attorney General spoke before the Ulster County Democratic Exec committee last night and from what I hear both Dinalo and Assemblyman Brodsky were on their game. Senator Eric Schniederman and Nassau DA Katleeen Rice (who I support) are also in the running. Rice and Dinalo are the front runners at this point. Although Brodsky is someone that is really impressive...a dark horse in the race.

And finally, I have gotten a lot of comments as to why I took down the Eric Kitchen post, it was out of respect for his wife. I think the point was made and Councilman Kitchen did pay his back school taxes.

Will update the blog this week, it's been crazy with work, just have no time.

Few quick things:

A speedy recovery is wished to UC Legislator Terry Bernardo

Happy that after 100 years we finally have passed heath care in America :)

Will get to local stuff, more on heath care, and the Spitzer write up around Thursday if not sooner.

Spitzer Talks To Sold Out New Paltz Campus!!!!!

Eliot Spitzer event was a blast! I had a great time, Spitzer is brilliant..we had tons of access to him and I have great pics! A report on how he did and pics coming later in the week..Mondayish..it's Saint Patrick's Day Weekend and I am a little busy! :)

NY needs this guy back!!

The former Governor and Sheriff of Wall Street will be in Ulster County tomorrow!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

NOTE: Having trouble with comment moderation! For some reason blogger will not let me see or moderate comments until I get about 12 or so...so if you left a comment, I'm not ignoring it just be patient.

Running for my life ...

I will be running the Kingston Shamrock run this Sunday and am looking forward to it! Certainly something I could not of done just a year ago...if you see my out there running or laying out in the side of the road somewhere ;), stop and say hello!

What is ‘policy’ and what is ‘administration’, ponders Ulster Legislature committee

From MidHudsonNews.com : Ulster County Legislator Brian Shapiro, a Democrat, and member of the Government Operations and Efficiency Committee, calls it ‘reinventing the wheel’.
Republican Terry Bernardo, who chairs the committee, doesn’t quite see their mission that way.
Broadly, this has to do with clarifying the mission of the Legislative and Executive branches of county government, under the year-old Charter, and County Executive Michael Hein.
Bernardo said that despite some misconceptions, the county executive is but one of six elected countywide administrators, along with the comptroller, sheriff, district attorney, county clerk and others.

“The legislature is the body that appropriates and makes policy for all of those divisions,” she said. “Michael may have put out put out a directive about nepotism, but that only affected his little tower, if you will. It didn’t affect the people in the DA’s office, the people in the Sheriff’s office, in corrections. It didn’t affect the people in the clerk’s office. So that is the job of the county legislature.”

Bernardo noted that during an orientation with County Attorney Bea Havraneck, they were presented with a long “do not touch” list from the county executive.
“And it was all about the things that the legislator couldn’t touch, that were the executive’s. We didn’t really get a big list of things that the executive couldn’t touch.”
Bernardo was disappointed that Hein, who was invited to Wednesday night’s committee meeting, did not attend, but sent a few key staffers, instead.

Two other invitees did attend – Comptroller Elliott Auerbach and Legislature Chairman Fred Wadnola, who charged the committee with the mission of reviewing current personnel policy.
Shapiro, however, said there is a mechanism already in place, that has worked before, at doing the same thing.

“So I think there’s a learning curve right now. I hate for us diving right into creating a new ethics law. Why don’t we give this to the Board of Ethics; that’s what we did last time. They came up with a good product. That’s what I’m going to recommend this time around, to look at the issue of nepotism.”

Shapiro sees this as the new Republican majority, which took office two months ago, wanting to jump in head first.

A Circus at Kingston City Hall, Ring Leader Schreibman

MISS HIM YET?

What more can we take?
Under Julian : Two county wide election loses, the Katz convention fiasco, the bylaws fiasco last night, loss of the county legislature. We can not afford anymore of Chairman Schreibman..enough is enough!

I attended the bylaws vote at Kingston city hall last night before heading back to the city and what a circus it was.

Julian Schreibman called the meeting at 715ish and said a quorum was present, I thought that 40 % was the required number for a quorum to be present so I went up to Kathy Mihm who was taking attendance and asked her if we had the 40% needed for a quorum, she informed me that we did and only 30 % was needed.

I did a head count and there were 75 people in that room, 93 would have been required to have the 30% needed so there was no quorum at that meeting and business was conducted illegally!

Besides that, the meeting was chaos, Brian Shapiro asked very pointed and well thought out questions and Terry Rosenblum did not have answers to those questions it was just a joke.

Attorney Andy Zweeben (no friend of mine) also asked relevant questions which were not answered and people gave him different answers...we voted on a document last night that we were not clear on.

And while Andy Zweben is not my favorite person, I thought it was out of line for Mike Harkavey the chair of the Saugerties committee to heckle him as he spoke, that's completely unacceptable to do to anyone.

How ironic that the Ulster County Democratic committee or I should say the Saugerties Democratic committee and it's ring leader Julian Schreibman passed new bylaws heavily focusing on ethics, in the most unethical manner.

More importantly I am extremly upset that I was lied to directly by the secretary of the meeting when I asked about the quorum, this person also happens to be the Democratic elections commissioner..how can we have faith in the elections process.

I'm not 100% against the new bylaws, two of my friends worked very hard on them and I know at least their intentions during that process last year were genuine but the meeting last night and how it went down was illegal and wrong on many levels.

Sorry

Things have been hectic will update blog during the week

Coming Thursday

We respond to Ulster MoJoe Roberti's latest attack and offer comments on the stinging editorial written about him in Reynolds' City Beat.

Nuisance Suit Settled

DFS settled this case for one reason and one reason only: the enormous cost of battling a gigantic corporate law firm in a "nuisance" suit," Cantor continued.
"As this incredible shrinking case comes to a close - no million-dollar conspiracies, no massive fraud - there is only a penny-ante dispute over bridge tolls and some part-time campaign workers." "For now, we are pleased that we can return to the serious work of advancing 'common-sense progressivism.' Stronger rent regulation. Living wage jobs. Energy efficiency and mass transit. Paid sick days. Lower property taxes on the middle class and higher income taxes on the wealthy. Nothing more, but nothing less.

- Dan Cantor, WFP Executive Director and the only honest party boss I know!

As first reported by the Voice's Tom Robbins yesterday, the deal requires Rose to pay $8,525 to make good on "alleged undercharging" by DFS - the bulk of which, $5,600, is for the services of three employees: Vonda McKeithan, Bryan Collinsworth and Rachel Goodman.
Rose also has to pay a $5,000 outstanding bill for work DFS did on the February 2009 special election she lost to Ken Mitchell, whom she later ousted in the September primary.
In addition, DFS has agreed to a host of "corporate structure and corporate governance" reforms, including changes to its contracts with candidates, the appointment of independent directors; the establishment of employment, management and administrative structures wholly separate from that of the WFP and annual audits by an outside CPA.
The settlement appears in full after the jump. There's also a confidentiality agreement that you can read here.

As Robbins noted, this is hardly the big bombshell that Mastro made it out to be when he first filed his lawsuit back in October. But there's room for both sides to declare a measure of victory here.
Mastro will no doubt trumpet the fact that he managed to force the WFP to make significant structural changes that will uncouple it from DFS.

WFP officials have privately said they would likely have done so anyway, once former Chief Judge Judith Kaye is done with the review she has undertaken at the party's request (and expense).
This does clear away one headache for the WFP, leaving only the US attorney's probe into DFS for the party to worry about - a not insignificant concern. But if that investigation comes to as clean and timely a conclusion as this lawsuit has, the WFP will be able to flex its muscle - a lot more carefully - in the upcoming fall elections. WFP Executive Director Dan Cantor, who has been keeping a low profile of late, released a rather defiant statement calling Mastro's action a "nuisance suit," and insisting that DFS "did not undercharge the Rose campaign - or any other - by a single dime.

New Paltz Equality Rally

NEW PALTZ – Saturday, February 27 will mark the sixth anniversary of the New Paltz same-sex weddings and hundreds of human rights activists are expected to mark the occasion with a rally in that community.The New Paltz weddings, on February 27, 2004, were conducted in solidarity with the San Francisco same-sex weddings that month.The 25 weddings solemnized that day were annulled two years later by a New York State court.The state Assembly recently approved same-sex marriage, but the Senate rejected it this past December.Former Mayor Jason West, who performed the weddings, will be at the rally to lend his support for state legislative approval.

Gov. Paterson Makes it Official at Hofstra

"After all you have heard, there's one rumor I will confirm, I am running for governor this year," Paterson said to a crowd of about 400 at Hofstra University. "They haven't knocked us down yet and they never will."

Gilpatric Did What?!? You're Kidding?

The Daily Freeman has some sort of weird man crush on Supreme Court Justice James P. Gilpatric, it just kills them that the people of Kingston and most recently six counties elected him by huge margins, despite his past mistakes. I mean how many times is the Daily Disappointment going to mention the fact that Jim Gilpatric has suffered from addiction? We get the pont, it's in your newspaper anytime you do a judicial story, give it a rest! We all know and we all accept it. Move on.

Mike Hein Delivers Second Annual State of the County

"I caution any individual whose real intention is to erode the charter or drag the government back into it's dysfunctional past: You will find no greater opponent, I will always side with the people of Ulster County."

Check Out Auerbach's Website

www.auerbachforcomptroller.com

Van Blarcum for Sheriff Campaign Kick Off

Please Join Sheriff Paul Van Blarcum for his Campaign Kick Off at Hillside Manor:

Friday Feb 26th from 530-730

donation of $40

rsvp at: pvbforsheriff@aol.com or call :845-417-4123

Check out the Sheriff's website at: www.paulforsheriff.com

County Executive Mike Hein to Deliver State of the County

TONIGHT

County Executive Mike P. Hein

Ulster County Executive will deliever his state of the county, Tuesday, February 16th at 6pm on the 6th floor. Public is encouraged to attend.

Former Governor Eliot Spitzer Coming to New Paltz

Who likes Gov. Eliot Spitzer more then me?!?! I'm excited to report that the former Governor will be at Suny New Paltz Thursday, March 11th and the public is welcome to attend at no cost. I will be there and hope you will too! It's from 5-7 at the Lecture Center.

Use your Facebook account to R.S.V.P.

3 months ago at Skate Time 209...just found this on my facebook and thought it was kinda funny!