Congressional Bickering Costs American Lives

Months of worthless investigations and testimony, a failed impeachment investigation and proceeding, headed by a bunch of idiots elected to public office by another bunch of idiots, all while in Wuhan, China, the next killer pandemic was brewing. At the same time the US Congress was playing their backstabbing, witchhunting antics, and giving away American taxpayer’s medical equipment and supplies, while ignoring the basics for the homeland, like healthcare, the elderly, the working poor, and Congress and state legislatures were legislating abortion and pay hikes for themselves, the highly-paid executives of America’s so-called non-profits — like the Captial District YMCA and Easton Mountain sex camp — were abusing veterans or promoting promiscuous sex, while collecting six-figure salaries, WHERE WERE YOU?!?!

A body wrapped in plastic is unloaded from a refrigerated truck and handled by medical workers wearing personal protective equipment due to COVID-19 concerns, Tuesday, March 31, 2020, at Brooklyn Hospital Center in the Brooklyn borough of New York. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)

Meanwhile, the Pentagon will Provide 100,000 Body Bags.

Now that you have learned what self-isolation, quarantine, social-distancing, empty supermarket shelves, people roaming the aisles and streets with face masks all means, maybe you’d like to re-evaluate your status as a “free American,” who is free to die as the result of government and elected official’s negligence and stupidity.

Look, people, this situation doesn’t happen in a single administration; it takes multiple administrations to create a problem like this! This has been brewing in Washington for at least three presidencies: Bush (remember 911!), Obama, and now Trump. It’s not Trump’s fault, either, but he’s the face we glue to the administration. The fault lies in the Senate and the House of Representatives, in Albany, and in Washington, DC. If you look at what’s been going on in Congress over the past two years, you might want to find a barf bag. It’s sickening, so sickening that Americans are now dying, and the Pentagon will be donating 100,000 body bags, while Nancy Pelosi and the gangsters in Washington D.C., are still pointing fingers and wagging their tongues.

Medical staff move bodies from the Wyckoff Heights Medical Center to a refrigerated truck on April 2, 2020 in Brooklyn, New York. – The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has asked the US Defense Department for 100,000 body bags as the toll mounts from the novel coronavirus, the Pentagon said on April 2. White House experts have said that US deaths from the disease — currently at more than 5,100 — are expected to climb to between 100,000 and 240,000, even with mitigation efforts in force. (Photo by Angela Weiss / AFP)

Is this the new Fear Factor? Is the US government trying to cause a panic? It has!

The New World Order has begun, people! You know now how you can be so infected with fear and anxiety by your government that you hoard toilet paper and paper towels; you race to Walmart and your local supermarket to empty the shelves. FEAR!!! AVOIDABLE FEAR!!!!

Businesses and government offices are CLOSED! Restaurants are CLOSED! You are told to stay home!!! See how easy it is to control you? Now we know.

Schools have been closed for weeks. Even God is put on hold! Churches are open but not for public worship! No wakes, funerals, etc. No closure for the bereaved! Thanks to poor or absent government! Incompetent elected officials! More finger-pointing and accusations while Americans are dying!!!

But the United States Goverenment has a solution for its incompetence: SPENDING! What’s Inside The Senate’s $2 Trillion Coronavirus Aid Package, an emergency aid spending package that is spending money we don’t have, but will have to back up in tax dollars. Great planning, right? Poor planning costs us a bundle when a pandemic hits us and then, in order to take our attention off the poor planning and incompetent government, the same incompetent government passes an irresponsible aid package to cover their tracks!  Are you going to continue swallowing this shit? Are you still going to sleep on your stomach waiting for the …. ? Read what the package contains at What’s Inside The Senate’s $2 Trillion Coronavirus Aid Package. But once again, big business gets the lion’s share of the so-called aid: $500 billion compared with $377 billion to small businesses and a stinking paltry $153 billion to public health. We can see where Congress’ loyalties are.

You all have dumped your hard-wire landlines and now are addicted to Facebook and Twitter, where you get all your information and news! How convenient for the Controllers.

People are getting fired or relieved of their commands in the military for speaking out about the government’s denials of support in the crisis. That’s censorship. That’s propaganda. That’s authoritarianism, totalitarianism, the first step towards Big Brother becoming the next fascist dictator!

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) on Capitol Hill after a meeting with fellow Democrats. (Susan Walsh/AP) (Susan Walsh/AP)

You are all addicted to your electronic devices, your smartphones but what will you do when some military genius or government officials ORDER THE CELL PHONE TOWERS deenergized? What will you do when they suspend communications by microwave transmission? You’ll race around in circles like a cornered rat, that’s what!!! You’re trapped in the booby trap set by your American freedoms, your greed, and your ignorance. Stupid sheeple!!!

OK. So you won’t believe us. Denial is very effective, isn’t it? But perhaps you’ll believe a well-respected physician, the editor-in-chief of a respected source for the medical profession. Here’s his recent editorial that appeared in the online medical journal for physicians, Medscape:

Pathology & Lab Medicine
Perspective > Medscape > Eric Topol on Medscape

Topol: US Betrays Healthcare Workers in Coronavirus Disaster
Eric Topol, MD

March 30, 2020

Find the latest COVID-19 news and guidance in Medscape’s Coronavirus Resource Center.

The year 2020 started with American physicians, nurses, and the whole healthcare workforce dispirited, in a deep state of burnout, with the worst rates of clinical depression and suicides that have been recorded. Indeed, this was not confined to the United States; a global epidemic of burnout had been diagnosed. But things were about to get considerably worse for the healthcare workforce.

In December 2019 an epidemic of pneumonia, with many fatalities, erupted in Wuhan, China. The pathogen was sequenced and determined to be a novel coronavirus on January 5, 2020, and was subsequently named SARS-CoV-2. The first patient in the United States with COVID-19, the disease caused by SARS-CoV-2, was diagnosed in Seattle on January 21, which was within 24 hours of the first patient diagnosed in South Korea, a key country for comparison (Figure, adapted from Our World in Data).

Figure 1. Testing for COVID-19 in the United States and South Korea

The First Phase: “Silent” US Spread

Unlike South Korea, which quickly started testing for COVID-19 using the World Health Organization (WHO) test, the United States refused the WHO test, opting to develop its own through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). But the CDC test was ultimately found to be flawed and represents one of many government stumbles. Without an adequate test, there were nearly 50 days from the first patients in both countries before the United States started to ramp up testing. Why was this so critically important?

During this extended phase in the United States, there were countless numbers of patients presenting with pneumonia and respiratory tract symptoms to emergency rooms, urgent care centers, and doctors’ offices. Without the ability to make the diagnosis of COVID-19 or even suspect it, these patients unwittingly spread their infections to healthcare workers. Also, during this first phase of spread, there was likely — albeit still not yet validated — a high rate (approximately 30%) of asymptomatic carriers for COVID-19, which further amplified the chances for doctors and health professionals to be infected.

For the sake of comparison, during the month of February, South Korea performed more than 75,000 tests (versus just 352 in the United States) and adopted all of the WHO best practices, which includes massive testing, tracing every contact of a person infected and testing that person, quarantine of all known cases, and social distancing.

The United States did none of these. Instead, officials repeatedly made bad choices that put public health in jeopardy, along with the healthcare workers charged with caring for the public.

South Korea, meanwhile, got ahead of its outbreak and became a model in the world for how that was achieved. But it wasn’t just South Korea that reacted well. As Atul Gawande summarized, Singapore and Hong Kong also adopted all of the WHO practices, including providing protection for their healthcare workers. In both places, healthcare professionals were expected to wear surgical masks for all patient interactions. That practice turns out to foreshadow the second phase of failure in the United States.

The Second Phase: The War Without Ammo

Although Seattle is where the first cluster of cases occurred, it was the unchecked number of patients diagnosed in New York City in early March that led to the full realization of how ill-equipped the country is in terms of personal protective equipment (PPE), intensive care unit beds, and mechanical ventilators.

The dire, inexplicable lack of masks is well recapitulated by Farhad Manjoo in “How the World’s Richest Country Ran Out of a 75-Cent Face Mask”, and Megan Ranney, MD, MPH, and colleagues similarly describe the profound deficits in PPE and ventilators in a perspective published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Together, a situation was set up for healthcare workers to not have masks — or to reuse them for days on end — and lack other protective gear. And this is about plain 75 cent masks, not the N95s that are better for blocking aerosol droplets.

But the required sharing of equipment is not just among doctors and nurses; it even extends to patients sharing a ventilator in some intensive care units. To put some numbers on ventilators, we will need several hundred thousand to a million but have fewer than 160,000 throughout the country.

It’s bad enough that the United States was totally unprepared for a pandemic and has such an unimaginable shortage of requisite resources. But the situation still gets worse. On a widespread basis, doctors and nurses are being gagged and muzzled by administrators for expressing their concerns, and penalized or even fired when they do speak out.

Meanwhile, the unconscionable lack of COVID-19 testing has continued in this second phase. And with that, systematic testing of the workforce has yet to start, despite being desperately needed.

The Third Phase: Healthcare Professionals Broadly Infected and Dying

Back in Wuhan, Li Wenliang, a 33-year-old ophthalmologist, was one, if not the first, doctor to alert people in China of the outbreak. He died on February 7, 2020. But he certainly wasn’t the youngest doctor to die in China. Xia Sisi, a 29-year-old gastroenterologist, also died after a 35-day hospitalization.

Yet on March 11, from the Oval Office, President Trump stated, “Young and healthy people can expect to recover fully and quickly.”

By late March more than 54 doctors in Italy had already died, and in the Lombardy region of northern Italy, one of the worst hit regions in the world, 20% of the healthcare workforce have become confirmed cases. Now, in the United States, as large numbers of healthcare professionals are getting diagnosed with COVID-19 in Boston, New York, and other hotspot cities, young doctors are writing their wills and making provisional funeral plans.

COVID-19 was not supposed to kill young people, but young nurses and doctors are dying in the United States. There are many theories as to why this is happening, perhaps the best one is the viral load — the mass of COVID-19 inoculum.

Because healthcare workers are exposed to the sickest patients — often without access to the proper protective equipment — the heavy viral load may be overwhelming even young clinicians’ ability to mount a sufficient immune response to counter the infection.

That doctors and clinicians are succumbing to the virus is beyond a tragedy, as many of these dedicated individuals are dying unnecessarily, as a result of the no-testing and no-PPE fiascoes.

Yet a far greater toll in numbers is the temporary loss of clinicians to infections and sickness. This is the other poorly recognized exponential growth curve: As each doctor, nurse, respiratory therapist, paramedic, and patient-care person takes care of tens to hundreds of patients at any given time, the loss of even one of these individuals has a dramatic ripple effect on the shortage of professionals trained to care for affected patients, no less the non-COVID-19 usual patient mix. No number of accelerated medical school graduations (which are being announced) can compensate for these losses, not just by numbers but also by experience.

The handling of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States will go down as the worst public health disaster in the history of the country. The loss of lives will make 9/11 and so many other catastrophes appear much smaller in their scale of devastation. Perhaps what we in the medical community will remember most is how our country betrayed us at the moment when our efforts were needed most.

Eric J. Topol, MD, the editor-in-chief of Medscape, is one of the top 10 most cited researchers in medicine and frequently writes about technology in healthcare, including in his latest book, Deep Medicine: How Artificial Intelligence Can Make Healthcare Human Again.

Follow Medscape on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube

Medscape © 2020 WebMD, LLC

Any views expressed above are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the views of WebMD or Medscape.

Cite this: Eric J. Topol. Topol: US Betrays Healthcare Workers in Coronavirus Disaster – Medscape – Mar 30, 2020.

We’ve kept the links in Dr Topol’s article so you can follow the facts.

Question: Why is it that the death toll in the United States now exceeds that in China, where the whole thing started? Why is it that South Korea, Hong Kong, Japan, were able to keep things under control but the United States cannot? Good ol’ American snobbery, poor planning, greed, and stupidity.

Instead of acting like a herd of cattle with mad cow disease (remember that one?), perhaps you should just sit down, meditate for a minute, collect your thoughts, clear your mind, and consider where the real problem lies, and how you’re going to face tomorrow, when this all clears up.

Think about how different you will be and how different the world will be for you post-COVID-19; sort of like the conditioning you received post-911? Is this another way of training you, conditioning you like Pavlov did with his dogs? Is that what you have become, a pack of trainable dogs? Now that’s something to be proud of, isn’t it?

Think about all of this next time you pledge allegiance to a flag; think about what you’re saying. Or have you forgotten completely how to THINK?

Think of it this way: What if you were the next one to fill a body bag. How would your survivors or your Senator explain your death to your terrified children? Think about that, won’t you?

So, enjoy your stockpile of toilet paper and paper towels. They’ll go well with that case of ketchup you’re hoarding. And wait for the next wave of fear and anxiety while you huddle in some dark corner, denying what’s going on around you.

Local Residents at Shop’n Save buying up toilet paper! How typical!

 

Cap District YMCA: Shameless Arrogance … AGAIN!!!

Stop the Scams!

We recently reported on the Capital District YMCA’s shameless slashing of veterans discounts by 50%, increasing veterans’ memberships up to 50%; one member reported his monthly dues went from $26 to $39/month! We also reported that despite numerous complaints and follow-up, Erin Breslin, Sr. Director of Marketing and Membership, the CDYMCA executive responsible for the reduction in the veterans discount, refused to reconsider their shameful decision. (See our report at YMCA DISGRACE!!! Veterans targeted by YMCA action.)

Senior Director of Marketing and Membership at Capital District YMCA

Shameless and Arrogant!!!

Capital District YMCA Wants NY Legislators to Funnel More Taxpayer Dollars into the Non-profit. We say: Let their execs, who are making 6-figure salaries take a pay cut first!!! CEO C. David Brown pulls more than $330,000 a year, while other execs pull their 6-figures.
NO MORE TAXPAYER DOLLARS!!! PAY YOUR FAIR SHARE!!!

We also recently reported on the incredible fact that the CDYMCA has tens of millions of dollars in property assets in the Capital District but doen’t pay a dime in property tax! We further reported that CDYMCA president and CEO, C. David Brown pulls in more than $330,000 a year in salary, while other executives are pulling 6-figure salaries. Yet the CDYMCA is registered as a non-profit organization and doesn’t pay a dime in property taxes! (See our report at Capital District YMCA: Millions in Assets, Pays No Tax!.)

J.D. Brown Exec Dir CDYMCA, refused to respond.

We reported that the CDYMCA calls itself a charity but charges above-market rates for memberships while also charging market or above-market rates for some of their programs. Yet they don’t pay a dime in tax!

Today, on March 17, 2020, the Capital District YMCA sent out an Action Alert that reads:

ACTION ALERT

Act to protect YMCAs during the COVID-19 crisis!

Dear Advocate,

The New York State Legislature plans to vote on legislation today to address the COVID-19 pandemic. Tell them that your Ys need a COVID-19 package that supports the YMCA. You can take part in this advocacy by sending this important letter to your legislators. They need to hear from you about the importance of significant funding to help YMCAs statewide cover the costs associated with full-time and part-time employees, as well as the loss of membership, programming and donation revenue.

Please write to your state legislators today!

Enough is enough, already!!! This is getting really sickening!!!

The CDYMCA’sexecutives, Erin Breslin (CDYMCA executive), David Brown (CDYMCA CEO/President), Carl Oropallo (Executive Director), Mark Thurman (Director, Operations, Bethlehem), received a communication this week, after David Brown, the guy pulling more than $330,000 in salary, broadcast a message to Y members that the CDYMCA facilities would be closed for one week for “deep cleaning.” Those executives were asked one simple question: Would members’ accounts be credited for that week that they could not use the facilities? No one from the CDYMCA has answered that question but we’re pretty certain what the answer is.

What is this “deep cleaning” thing, anyway. A facility like the CDYMCAshould have extraordinary hygiene and sanitary measures in place as routine! The cleaning agents and disinfectants they use in the pools, locker rooms, workout areas should all be sufficient to kill just about anything! Sick people don’t work out or take aerobic exercise classes. Normally, the rule of most gym etiquette is to wipe down equipment after use using disinfectants that should be provided. (We are informed that the disinfectant and paper towels are provided for this purpose at commercial fitness clubs and at the Y. The problem is, personnel don’t enforce the practice.)So what’s this deep cleaning that’s going on for a week?

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Editor’s aside: According to our information based on research of the recommendations for what so-called “deep cleaning” involves, the CDYMCA is again playing with terms. There are a number of deep cleaning methods currently being employed to minimize the spread of COVID-19, and none of them, ranging from airlines to the New York Stock Exchange, involve shutting down for an entire week. In fact, the deep cleaning being done involves mainly high contact surfaces, which should be routine day-to-day cleaning practices in a place like a fitness center or a YMCA. First and foremost, the most effective preventive measure is to avoid contact with individuals who have clear symptoms of cough, sneeze, or fever of undermined origin. But that’s common sense! Social distancing, even if around asymptomatic persons, is also proving to be effective but Americans are already socially distanced, so that’s a no-brainer! Self-isoation or self-quarantine is the ultimate step for individuals who know they have been in contact with a symptomatic individual, or an area in which symptomatic individuals have been, or who have traveled to endemic areas, or have symptoms or have been diagnosed with a viral infection or infection with COVID-19. Persons-at-increased-risk, that is persons who are at increased risk of infection generally, are well-advised to stay clear of crowds. When in doubt, call your pubic health hot-line or consult your doctor. So what is the CDYMCA doing for a so-called deep clean that is over and above their normal sanitizing? We’ll ask them and see if they come up with anything. (Sources: “How Big Businesses Get a Deep Clean” (New York Times article; “Ships, Planes And Other Spots Are Getting A ‘Deep Clean.’ What’s That Mean?” (NPR article), both last accessed on March 17, 2020.)

The CDC and World Health Organization have reported that the virus doesn’t survive long on surfaces that have not been disinfected; isn’t it reasonable that the virus would survive for an even shorter time on disinfected surfaces, if at all? (See our report on COVID-19 at Smalbany Statement on the Coronavirus (COVID-19) Pandemic.)

But let’s get back to the shameless Action Alert broadcast today by the non-profit, non-taxpaying Capital District YMCA:

That message reads: “They (state legislators) need to hear from you about the importance of significant funding to help YMCAs statewide cover the costs associated with full-time and part-time employees, as well as the loss of membership, programming and donation revenue.” That’s absolutely ridiculous!

In 2018, the CDYMCAincreased every member’s monthly dues by $1, which adds up to a hefty amount each month. Then in 2019, they slashed veterans discounts by 50%, adding more to their pockets! Now the greedy bastards are asking members to write to legislators to ask that they now give taxpayer dollars to support a non-taxpaying glutton to help cover costs!!!

We say: Any legislator who votes to support this shameless expression of greed and unfairness in our tax system should be run out of the Legislature!!! We have a better idea: Mr C. David Brown, Ms Erin Breslin, Mr Marc Thurman, Mr Carl Oropallo, and their coworkers should take a pay cut!!! How’s that for an idea?

For an organization that contributes nothing to the pubic treasury by being wholly tax-exempt to ask taxpayers and legislators to provide more funds to them to cover costs is one of the most shameful and arrogant things to come from them yet!

The non-profit scam in New York and around the country needs to be reexamined, revised, and most of the scammers need to start paying their fair share of property taxes.

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Easton Mountain, Cambridge, NY
A Gay Retreat Community
A Non-profit Organization

We contacted the Washington County District Attorney’s office some time ago with an inquiry about this place; we never got a response.

There’s a sex camp for gay men in Cambridge, NY, called Easton Mountain. They operate facilities on several acres of prime property with a number of newly renovated buildings and grounds. They claim to be the gay community’s gift to the world but Easton Mountain is the gay community’s gift to the organizers and staff of Easton Mountain. They claim their non-profit status on the basis of spiritual and charity-related work but when you look at their programs, which include neotantra (= so-called sacred sex), intimacy training, orgasm training, erotic massage, even a phony “diploma” course offered by the visiting Brit, etc., and the cost of those programs, upwards of $400 to more than $1000 for a week (5 nights) program!!!They even import some phony sex guru from the UK to facilitate some of their events! We’ll be looking at their filings and report on how much government support they receive in lieu of paying taxes. Did you know that your tax dollars are going to organizations like that? (The most published recent financials, the IRS 990 dates back to 2014!)  See our articles: Tantra or Sex Services? (5/2019), The Follow-up (6/2019), Sex for Sale: The Follow-up II (7/2019).
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We will obtain the voting information and report who in the New York State Legislature votes to funnel more taxpayer money to the CDYMCA and non-profit scammers like them. We’ll publish the names of those legislators who voted to send your tax dollars to the scammers. And we’ll remind you of their freewheeling and dealing when elections roll around.

In the meantime, we urge you, our many readers to support us in our own Action Alert, and to contact your legislators and warn them if they give another dime away to tax scamming non-profits who can afford to pay their executives and directors six-figure salaries, the legislators are going to be looking for jobs!!!

PAY YOUR SHARE, YMCA!!!

 

Our 2018 Election Picks for the Town of New Baltimore and Greene County

Let’s be clear: You don’t “elect” an unopposed candidate! “Elect” in the campaign sign is a LIE!

When you see a campaign sign that asks you to “elect” an unopposed candidate in an uncontested election, think

The legal definition of election is a selection process: In an election voters are presented with at least 2 candidates and choose one of them. Candidates may be “endorsed” by one or more parties but for an election or a selection process to take place, you need at least two candidates. One candidate is not a choice and is not an “election.”

It is the duty of the so-called political parties to present voters with a choice. There has been a disturbing recent trend in our so-called American democratic process — a trend that is becoming very conspicuous in Greene County and the Town of New Baltimore — of presenting voters with a single, unopposed candidate in uncontested “elections.” This is not a new trend and has been concealed from voters in at least 38 states for decades and has been permitted by state election laws, laws that deprive voters of their right to choose who governs them.

As many of our readers know, each election year we study the candidates and make our picks. We share them with you because we have done the research and have asked the questions. When, IF the candidates respond, we let you know what they had to say. Here are our picks and recommendations for November 6, 2018:

First of all, we’d like to start our election choices with a positive:
Peter J. Markou
for
Greene County Treasurer.

Peter Markou is a Five-Star Choice for Greene County Treasurer.
Experience, Integrity, Committed

Peter Markou is a five-star candidate.

Mr Markou is intelligent, a gentleman, honest, and so different from the bottom-feeders that are left on the ballot. Mr Markou has been Greene County Treasurer for several terms and there’s no one who can say anything negative about the man. Vote for Peter Markou for Greene County Treasurer; he’s honest, competent and has proved he can do the job like a real professional, not like a politician.

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Greene County Coroners

Bob Gaus (D) and Joshua Lipsman (D)

(Democrats endorsed by the Independence Party)
opposing
Richard Vigilio (R) and Paul Seney (R)

Gaus and Lipsman have kept their Democrat affiliation a bit under wraps, and have touted their endorsement by the Independence Party. That’s a bit sneaky in our opinion but HEY! we are reporting about much, much worse in this article.

Not many voters really understand what a county coroner does but many may at some time in their lives have to deal with one, so we’d like to make certain it’s the right one.

We have written several pieces on coroners in the past and our basic opinion is that it is an outdated office, political, and really should be made obsolete in favor of the medical examiner’s office. That having been said, and already having raised important questions about the ethics of funeral directors or physicians being involved with the politics of death investigations,we object only to the general ethics and the history of the office of coroner, and why it should be done away with and replaced by a competent, qualified and non-political medical examiner.

There are already two incumbent Greene County Coroners: Richard Vigilio has been Greene County Coroner for 24 years and a funeral director (Richards Funeral Home) for 63 years. We think it’s time for Vigilio to retire before he becomes a coroner’s case himself. Paul Seney is the second Greene County Coroner, and is a funeral director at Richards Funeral Home and Brady Funeral home.

As for the two individuals running for Greene County Coroner: Bob Gaus, a funeral director, and Joshua Lipsman, a physician/healthcare policy promoter, we can say but little about them in terms of competence or character. We’d lean more towards Gaus, given the necessary skills of a funeral director and his experience with death and deathcare on a daily basis. Lipsman? Well, he’s more qualified in the politics of healthcare and probably has much less experience with death and deathcare than Gaus. Could they do the job? Our bets would be on Gaus in terms of effectiveness. Given Lipsman’s history and training, we don’t think he’d be the best choice. Death is something physicians try to avoid (unless you’re a pathologist, which Lipsman is not)and you’ll have a tough time changing a physician’s attitude towards death and with it his attitude towards the survivors. Go with Gaus.

 

As for the second candidate, we’d go with Seney for a couple of reasons: First, he’s experienced and has had the benefit of Richard Vigilio, with whom he’s worked for several years. Second, he’s a funeral diretor and, although we still object to the ethics of a funeral director in the coroner’s position, if we must have a coroner, then the funeral director is intimately familiar not only with death but the paperwork and laws concerning death, and how to best deal compassionately with survivors. So, while we wish Richard Vigilio all the best in his retirement after this election, we think that Paul Seney would be a good man to partner up with Bob Gaus.

Gaus and Lipsman are both 61 years old; Lipsman is from downstate. Both are Democrats. It may seem odd putting a Democrat (Gaus) in office and running the risk of adding more corpses to the list of voters registered Democrat but dead, but Hey! Vigilio is getting close to being a corpse and is Republican; Gaus may have a few years of life left in him, and may be able to complete at least one term of office. What about Lipsman? Too political, too full of himself (he’s a Democrat, a doctor, into public health policy, etc. We all know what happens when a Democrat gets involved in health policy; even if only the dead are affected!) Let’s leave him to his interests in public health policy and his overly liberal politics; he’d be too much of a political prima donna in the coroner’s office. Head’s too big. Lipsman’s from downstate and doesn’t know local culture or people. Not a good choice.

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Now we’d like to handle the
Real Scoundrels List

We’ll have to wait til next year to go after New Baltimore Town Supervisor Jeff Ruso, but we’ve got enough on him already to put someone else in the Supervisor’s office. He won’t be able to save himself with anything worth mentioning in the coming year. He’s dead in the water already.

But we’d like to concentrate on this year’s failures:

Alan VanWormer

Running UNOPPOSED (Denying Your Voice and Wasting Your Vote)

So Why?!?! did the Republicans spend so much money on so many campaign signs for a guy who is running unopposed. In an uncontested election ONE campaign sign and NO votes would hand the election over to him since he’s already legally considered “elected.” Seems that wasting taxpayers’ money is still the way to go in New Baltimore!

This time he’s running on the Republican ticket, Unqualified, Gutless, No Training, No Education. We’ve already published an article dedicated to the problems we have with Alan VanWormer and you can read that article at The Problem with Alan VanWormer. We also are solidly against giving away a vote to any unopposed candidate and not having a voice in who gets into office. We have written a very well-researched article on the problems of unopposed candidates and uncontested elections and Why! they are a violation of our rights. You can read the article at Unopposed Candidates: The Denial of Your Vote!

Alan VanWormer just stood by and kept his mouth shut while Denis Jordan did his tricks in the New Baltimore Highway Department. Alan VanWormer was part of the corruption and didn’t do a thing to stop it. No Integrity! Alan VanWormer’s brother, Scott VanWormer, was hand-picked by Denis Jordan to be his Deputy Superintendent. No one lifted a finger. Dellisanti, Ruso, vanEtten, no one said a word. But New Baltimore Town Supervisor Jeff Ruso, the chief financial officer of the Town, and the New Baltimore Town Board approved sending Scott VanWormer to Ithaca, New York, for a three-day meeting — the Cornell Local Roads Program — all expenses paid plus his salary. The money and the time was wasted since Scott VanWormer doesn’t have the background or education to have understood what was going on. Furthermore, Alan VanWormer (Scott’s brother!!! And also employed by the New Baltimore Highway Department) is the one who is running unopposed for New Baltimore Highway Superintendent. Unopposed means he’s already got the job, so Why? didn’t they send Alan VanWormer to the Highway Meeting, if anyone? That’s the way Jeff Ruso and the New Baltimore Town Board thinks: They DON’T!!!

Question: Why are we still electing unqualified, dumbasses, with no training to the position of Town Superintendent of Highways. Most of them can’t even read!!! Yet New Baltimore still keeps them in a job and hands them hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars, perhaps even millions of taxpayer dollars to play with and squander and no one seems to care. The job should not be up for election in the first place. The position of Town Superintendent of Highways should be a non-political, professional position filled on a competitiive application basis, with the successful hiree having the right qualifications and subject to discipline and even termination! Putting a professional in the position would more than pay for itself because of proper fiscal and human resources management and administration. That’s the Town Board’s job that they’re not doing. They’re a bunch of dumbasses sitting there thinking of ways to keep our Town Hall packed with political dumbasses and friends.

The Alternative: You don’t have one!

Let’s move on…

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Patrick “Pat” Linger (R)

Out of Touch (except in an election year), Doesn’t Care, a Political Fixture/Tool, No Accomplishments, a Wasted Vote.

We have already published an earlier article to Pat Linger and Greene County DA, Joe Stanzione. You can read what we had to say to them at Open Letter to County Legislator Patrick Linger and Greene County DA Joseph Stanzione.

Linger just didn’t think it important enough to tell voters what his accomplishments were during his last term — obviously he had none — but now he’s begging New Baltimore voters for another term. Take a hike, Patty! You ran and hid when residents needed you. You refused to respond to questions regarding your performance in office this past term. You handed New Baltimore Highway Superintendent Denis Jordan hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars, and Jordan pissed them away, doing more damage than he was worth. Now the balless Republicans on the New Baltimore Town Board and New Baltimore Town Supervisor Jeff Ruso is following in the shite tracks of his mentor and now Deputy Supervisor Nick Dellisanti. We’re sick of the same old-same old and the dog and pony acts in Town Hall and in the County Legislature. Take a walk Patty. Your double-talking friends in Town Hall will be following you out the door!

The Alternative: Jim Eckl

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Joseph “Joe” Stanzione (R)

Running for re-election to the Office of the Greene County District Attorney

Joseph “Joe” Stanzione.
Pantywaist or Panty-waste?

Unaccomplished, Avoids Commitment, Violates his Oath of Office

Just like Pat Linger, Joe Stanzione is a dud, a panty waist.  We have enough duds and panty-waists in Greene County and in New Baltimore. Stanzione goes into hiding when the real issues come up. Did he defend New Baltimore taxpayers and residents when they asked for his help to get compensated for damage done to property by former Highway Superintendent Jordan and his gaggle of monkeys? NOT! Did he go after the New Baltimore Town Supervisor Dellisanti or after Jeff Ruso and the Town Board when they ignored residents’ and taxpayers pleas for relief, compensation for damage to their property? NOT! Does Greene County need a panty-waist District Attorney like Stanzione? NOT! 

Back in we published an open letter to Joe Stanzione. It’s worth a read at Open Letter to Greene County District Attorney Joseph Stanzione. Since then he’s done zilch but now wants to continue doing zilch. No way, José Stanzione! It’s the highway for you, dude!

The county district attorney is the county’s chief law enforcement officer. So Why? is Greene County nicknamed “Cold Case?” Because so little is being done by the Greene County District Attorney in terms of keeping local government honest and criminals prosecuted. That’s Why!

The Alternative: ??? We had a tough time finding out who is opposing Stanzione. We’re waiting for a reply from the Greene County BOE.

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George Amedore

Republican, Irresponsible, Indifferent, Bullshitter.
You know it’s an election year when you see or hear him.

A pink-eared jackass!

George Amedore shows up every election year to beg for the NYS Senate seat, 46th District, and to appear with his Republican cronies at the New Baltimore Republican Club rally to tell everyone fairy tales of what he’s done for New Baltimore and his district. Of course, the gullible back-woods politicians, committee people, and some misguided voters show up to listen to the mealy-mouthed promises never to be kept. In fact, Amedore was complacent and irresponsible when he was handing out state highway monies to Denis Jordan to burn up. We published an article about his legendary generosity with taxpayer dollars and his total lack of accountability. Denis Jordan is under investigation and had to resign; we think Amedore should do the same. He has some nerve asking for New Baltimore’s votes!

Read our article George Amedore, NY State Senator for 46th District, Needs to do Some Homework to learn more about what we told Amedore about New Baltimore and the New Baltimore Highway Department.

The Alternative: ??? Pat Courtney Strong, another woman-wanting-to-be-a-man from Kingston. OMG! That’s a choice??? (Note: Strong is from Kingston, like Amedore, a businesswoman. Problem: Strong knows about as much as Amedore about what New Baltimore and Greene County needs: both know nothing!)

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Antonio Delgado

Democrat, Racist, ex-Rapper, Anti-American.

The Racist Rapper and the Democrat Candidate.
The same face, different outfit.

Is that the best the Democrats can do for Upstate voters? 

Delgado is filth, a racist, ex-rapper whose rapping celebrated sex with porn stars and anti-American, racist lyrics. He might be the hero of give-it-all-away Liberal Democrats. And he might be able to attract votes in mostly minority New York City, but he’s a big dirty ball of crappola to Central and Upstate NY. He might be popular with low-class, inner-city minorities and illegal immigrants with a name like Antonio Delgado, but he’s a clear reject when it comes to people with values and morals. His skin color would get him the downstate minority vote but among people who look deeper than skin color when we vote, he’s a total reject.

We’ve already wasted too many words on a loser like Antonio Delgado. If that’s the best the Democrats can offer New Yorkers, we don’t wonder that they are going to hell in barf bag.

You’ll need this when going to the polls and seeing what the Dems have picked for you.

The Alternative: John Faso

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James “Jim” Eckl

A multiple-loser but our only alternative to Patrick “Pat” Linger, a loser and a scoundrel.

Well, the New Baltimore Democratic Committee made up of Janet Kash, Eileen Vosburgh, Doreen Davis , Beth Schneck. and district committee members Janet Foley,  Richard Guthrie, Judith Felsten, Anne Walsh Mitchell, Lee Davis (Yes. That’s the former loser town justice! Another Democrat loser scraped up by the New Baltimore and Greene County Dems!), Jim Eckl (Yes. That’s the same Jim Eckl the Dems are running against Patrick Linger). New Baltimore and Greene County Democrats have not only failed to give voters candidates, they can’t even get people to serve on their district committees! So they have to keep running losers from past elections.

James “Jim” Eckl, Democrat, Recycled Goods, Democrats’ Last Resort. Give him a chance to fly or fail. Anything’s better than Linger!

His party handlers, the New Baltimore Democratic Committee, Janet Kash, Eileen Vosburgh, Doreen Davis , Beth Schneck., couldn’t tell us why he should get your vote. We found that a bit odd because normally the political party committee members would be over the moon to tell us why their candidate should be elected. Not the New Baltimore Democraps! They didn’t want to say a word about Jim Eckl. Well, there’s not much to say about Jim Eckl, we guess.

The Alternative: Voters in New Baltimore are in a real predicament. You can chose between the Louse (Linger) and the Loser (Eckl).

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In the Town of New Baltimore and in Greene County, we don’t have much to work with. We residents, taxpayers and voters have so much garbage being handed to us You’d think we had a recycling plant or a transfer facility in the neighborhood; we get the dregs from the Republicans and the Democrats can’t even dig up a candidate from the many cemeteries in the area.

New Baltimore & Greene County Elections.
What we have to choose from.
Recycled Garbage.

None of the majority of candidates running are really worth a vote but where there’s at least a choice, that is, when the candidate on the ballot isn’t running unopposed, it would pay to cast a vote for either candidate. They’re garbage but at least you have a choice of which garbage.

When a candidate is running unopposed or in an uncontested race, New York Election Law has already “declared him elected,” and your vote is wasted; you have no voice in who gets the position. As in past elections we say don’t give them the numbers. Don’t cast a vote for that candidate (in New Baltimore, for example, that would be Alan VanWormer) because if you don’t cast a vote, you send the political party and the candidate an important message: You are offended by the fact that you were denied a voice in who to put in that office. If you vote for an unopposed candidate, you are wasting your vote; if you refuse to vote for that candidate, he’s already elected but at least he won’t get the numbers and you will have sent an important message to the parties.

DON’T WASTE YOUR VOTE ON AN UNOPPOSED CANDIDATE!

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If you’re trying to figure out who is running for what office, and you’re having a hard time getting the information, you’re not alone.

We are pretty good at getting information but when it comes to our fine Board of Elections and our Political Party Committees, you just can’t get anyone to say anything or cough up some names or information. If you are having the same problem, you might want to give your Greene County Board of Elections a call or send them an email. If you’re really lucky and they’re having a good day, you might actually get a response. Here’s the contact information:

Greene County Board of Elections

411 Main Street, Catskill NY, 12414

Telephone: 518-719-3550

email (general): elections@discovergreene.com

Republican Commissioner: Brent Bogardus, bbogardus@discovergreene.com

Democrat Commissioner: Marie Metzler, mmetzler@discovergreene.com

The Golden Turd Award
For Political Excellence

 

Riley’s Stats: A near record week.

Since Smalbany published the first article about Riley “Jeremiah” Kern, the young man who was killed in a tragic motorcycle-pickup truck accident on July 27, 2018, the coverage of our investigations into Travis D. Hagen, 48, of Coxsackie, NY, and the Coeymans Police Department, specifically their botched non-investigation and cover-up of the facts of the accident, we have forced Travis Hagen and Coeymnans Patrolman Ian FOARD and acting Coeymans Police Chief Daniel Contento into the headlights. Their reaction: Well Foard and Contento are like deer in your headlights; they don’t know which way to go. Travis Hagen has simply crawled back into the woodwork.

The bad news is the Foard, Conento, and Hagen are still free and walking the streets. No one is safe.

The good news is that Riley’s case has gotten near record attention and interest on an international scale.
We thought our readers would be interested in the stats so we’re sharing them soon.

Reader Figures Have Gone Thru the Ceiling!

The four articles getting all the attention at the expense of other important issues in the region are:

• We Are Re-Opening the Case
• Riley’s Song: Verse Two
• Riley’s Mom Responds: A Mother’s Perspective.
• The Editor Chimes in on Riley’s Song: What have you become, America?

Those articles grew out of our interest and concern that a fatal accident on State Route 143 in Coeymans Hollow, practically on the Sycamore Country Club golf course grounds, received absolutely no media coverage and, when readers started asking Smalbany about the accident, Smalbany started asking questions. (See the footnote in our article, Three Articles on New Baltimore Scandals: Pick One or Read All.)

Riley was a local kid and attended RCS high-school until moving to Kansas with his mom and younger sister.. He had returned to New York, and was living with his father in Climax at the time of the accident. Riley was a very popular kid and had many loyal and loving friends in the RCS area. Riley was 19 when he died; his funeral was on his 20th birthday.

Whatever you want to call it, it’s open now!

When Riley’s mom contacted us and told us how so many obstacles were being put in her path, how many contradictions she was hearing, how the factoids didn’t seem to make any sense, we decided that she had gotten enough of a runaround and heard enough bullshit for one day. We know the area and the people involved, and we know their histories. We know what they are capable of and we knew that Riley’s mom didn’t deserve the treatment she was getting. She had just lost her son, and needed answers, not a runaround.

Hagen, Foard, Contento had opened a can of angry hungry worms and they were on the menu as of NOW!

(Image Credit: We gratefully acknowledge http://www.justoutsidetheboxcartoon.com for this very appropriate image. Please support their site and always give proper credit for images you may use.)

We’ll be publishing the updated statistics on Saturday, September 16, for the information of our readers. The interest shown is phenomenal. Now what we’d really like to see is all of our readers joining together in a show of support for Rye’s mom and his family. They are hurting in a number of ways and need our support. We’ll keep our readers informed in our updates and continuing coverage. Stay tuned!

Fact: Our posts are shared automatically on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook but those views are not counted here on WordPress. That means our numbers are even higher than our WordPress statcounter shows! On LinkedIn along almost 10,000 followers see our posts. On Facebook the figure might be tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands or even millions! We get the word out!

 

 

 

Are Charles H. “Chuck” Stahlman and Son, Zachary Stahlman a Bit too Cozy with New York State Police?

Are the New York State Police Troop F a Bit Too Cozy with the Stahlmans?

Too Cozy with Suspect Felon?

The facts seem to point to a questionable relationship between the Stahlman pair, father Charles H. “Chuck” Stahlman, and son Zachary Stahlman. One particular set of facts raises red flags: the Stahlmans appear to have a special relationship with the New York State Police or at least with one Trooper, presumably a member of Troop F that serves the Glenmont area. Rather than request the assistance of the local law enforcement department in whose jurisdiction the Stahlmans live, they seem to rely on the State Police to be their messengers. We find that suspect and we have contacted the New York State Police with our inquiry Why? are the Stahlmans so cozy with the State Police, so cozy that every time the Stahlmans have an itch, the New York State Police are there to scratch it for them. Could this possibly have something to do with the Chuck Stahlman’s disappearing felony in 2016?

On or about November 13, 2016, Mr Charles H. Stahlman was apprehended by New York State Police for felony passing of a false instrument (counterfeit $10 and $20 bills) at an estate sale. Stahlman was arraigned before a justice of the Bethlehem Town Court on or about November 13, 2016, bail was posted in the amount of $10,000, and Stahlman had a December 6, 2016 court appearance. After that, the case disappears. (As reported in the Times Union, “Cops: Man bought furniture with fake cash” as well as in a large number of other news media).

On or about February 4, 2016, a New York State Trooper accompanied Mr Charles H. “Chuck” Stahlman to a local business to return keys to a lease property leased by Z. Stahlman, who broke the lease. Question: Why a state trooper?

On or about September 27, 2016, Mr Zachary Stahlman, Charles Stahlman’s son, testified under oath in answer to a question as to why a state police law enfocement officer accompanied Charles Stahlman to return keys, Zachary Stahlman’s response on the record (partially inaudible) was, “My father [is or has] friends with the State Police.”

On or about June 22, 2018, a New York State Trooper contacted a local business man on behalf of Mr Zachary Stahlman, to investigate Mr Stahlman’s complaining of “harassment” upon being lawfully served with the business man’s answer and motion opposing Mr Stahlman’s Motion to Reargue before the Greene County Court. Seems Mr Stahlman can play shithouse lawyer and unlawfully serve anyone but the tables turn when Zachary Stahlman is lawfully served. (See our article on Stahlman and local shyster Brendan Baynes, “Shyster Meets Psycho: Brendan Baynes and Zachary Stahlman a.k.a. Fat Cat Antiques” for details.)

The circumstances of the Stahlman’s felony case disposition, the fact that several investigations in which the Stahlmans were suspects were allowed to go cold, and the fact that the Stahlmans, rather than contact local law enforcement in whose jurisdiction they reside, the Bethlehem Police. The Stahlmans seem to have a predisposition to contact the New York State Police, which in combination with the overall factual background, suggests that there may be some impropriety in the conduct of one or several New York State Police personnel and an overly cozy relationship with the Stahlmans. (See our articles, “Local Law Enforcement Might Need Some Help with the Math: 2 + 2 = Stahlman!” and “Criminals Thumbing Their Noses to Law Enforcement? Why?” and “Drive-by Shooting Arrives in RCS“.)

These questions, as you can see, are not new, just unanswered, and we think that they need to be answered. Now!

Felonies just seem to disappear in the Town of Bethlehem…Just like in the Town of Coeymans!

We have requested information from the Bethlehem Town Court where Charles Stahlman was arraigned when apprehended for felony possession [and passing] of a forged instrument. At his arraignment $10,000 bail was posted and a court appearance set for December 6, 2016. After that, the case seems to have disappeared. Do felonies disappear that easily?

The North Country Gazette (“Cops: Man Used Fake Money To Buy Furniture“) goes a little bit more in detail than the Times Union does about the Stahlman felony charge:

“Charles H. Stahlman, 52, of Glenmont, was charged with first degree possession of a forged instrument, a felony.

“Troopers responded to a complaint of fake money that was used at an estate sale on Saturday. Stahlman allgedly used four $20 bills and four $10 bills, all of which were forged. As the Trooper was obtaining a deposition from the complainant, Stahlman showed up to retrieve the furniture he had purchased with the forged money earlier that day. The complainant positively identified Stahlman.”

Not only does the fake money incident raise questions about the New York State Police, it also points directly to Albany County District Attorney, P. David Soares, another figure who has been the subject not only of local criticism but national criticism, for his inept and corrupt practices. You see, Soares would have the final say in whether charges are brought against a perpetrator, and Soares would have the final say as to whether charges are pressed and the perp brought to trial. So if there’s some suspicious activity going on in the ranks of the New York State Police, the so-called Cuomo-the-Homo’s Private Militia, and a law enforcement body answering directly to a Democrat district attorney and Democrat governor, both being the chief law enforcement officers in their jurisdictions and calling the shots, we may have something interesting going on here. Maybe this is something the FBI should be investigating.

A contributor has contacted the New York State Police Professional Standards Bureau and the New York State Police Command Division to request investigation and comment on this situation.

We’ll keep our readers posted on this. If any of our readers has any information to add to this, we’d really appreciate your sharing your knowledge with us in total confidentiality. We will investigate and if it’s good, we’ll report on it.

In the meantime, please bear in mind that when we can’t trust those to whom we entrust the public’s safety and give what we so fondly call “police powers”, and when we start taking the deadly turn to becoming a police state in a totalitarian system, signs of which we can see already, and when we give criminals special privileges because they know someone in authority, we may all find ourselves living in fear of our lives, fear of “the camps,” fear of the death squads. It makes you wonder how many of those warriors who challenged the system and were found dead on their tractors, in their cars, or reported as human remains found in a local wooded area, might actually be the powers-to-be’s answer to the questions we ask them.

Thanks for your loyal support!

The Editor

 

 

Smalbany Knew, the Daily News Knew, Greene County DA Stanzione Knew, but New Baltimore Supervisor Ruso Didn’t Know.

 How can New Baltimore Town Supervisor Jeff Ruso deny that the Town of New Baltimore forced Highway Super Jordan to resign? How can New Baltimore Town Supervisor Jeff Ruso say he wouldn’t know if outside authorities were investigating the New Baltimore Highway Department and Highway Superintendent Denis Jordan? How can Ruso be so ignorant of what’s going on in his town and everyone else is reporting on it, including our Smalbany blog for the past at least 4 years, the Greene County DA, the state Comptroller’s Office, the Daily News and Hudson Valley 360, just to name a few. But Ruso knows nothing?

So finally the Catskill Daily Mail picked up on the Denis Jordan scandal in New Baltimore. Congratulations, Daily Mail, it only took you about 4 years to get off your dumbasses and inform the public about what has been going on in New Baltimore for almost 20 years.

Congratulations, Daily Mail, but you fell short of any real reporting. But that’s no surprise, given the quality of the overall reporting. But then, you’re not called Hudson Valley 360 for nothing. You see, 360 means that you’ve made a totally nonsense turn only to arrive where you started from. Now does that make sense? They keep inventing themselves and are now the Hudson Valley 360. They’re not fooling anyone, really. We all know that they are not in the pubic information or the news business, they’re main focus is advertising. Just pick up one of their so-called newspapers and you won’t have any trouble seeing what we mean. In fact, Columbia-Greene Media Corp or CGM as they like to refer to themselves,  a division of Johnson Newspaper, is a full-service advertising agency and publisher of digital and print newspapers (judging from that sentence lifted from their website, their English ain’t all that great, either).

But the Catskill Daily Mail print news and Hudson Valley 360 did put out a blurb and a blurb it was, about the Town of New Baltimore Highway Superintendent’s so-called “voluntary” resignation. Now an involuntary resignation is when you get fired, and that’s what it’s called, “fired,” “terminated,” “pink-slipped.” So a resignation, by definition, is necessarily “voluntary,” isn’t it? Now, you may be given the opportunity to resign or be fired, in which case you have a choice and you might resign, instead of being fired. But that’s still not really what happened in New Baltimore, and we all know it, including Mr. Jeff Ruso, who knows damned well both he and his predecessor, Nick Dellisanti would have given their right arm to be rid of that incompetent dodo, Denis Jordan.

Since 2013, we’ve published at least 42 separate articles about Denis Jordan or that mention Denis Jordan in some negative context. How could you possibly not know?!?!

Smalbany Articles about Denis Jordan

And we know that Mark Vinciguerra and others at the Columbia Greene Media Corp. were well aware are what’s going on in New Baltimore because they read this blog and, to make matters even worse for Columbia Greene Media, we’ve informed them directly about the wrongdoing in New Baltimore. So, again, we have to ask, Where have you been for the past 4 years, CGM?

Columbia Greene Media is one thing. They are a private advertising and “news” reporting company and can do whatever they like.

New Baltimore Town Hall
Home of the Ho’s

But when it comes to our elected officials, that’s were the big buck stops! That’s why, when we read the blurb in the Daily Mail and on Hudson Valley 360, we almost had a fit. Here’s why…

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But first a little historical — or histerical, or both — background:

In the article “New Baltimore Highway Superintendent Resigns; Department Under Investigation,” published in the Daily Mail and Hudson Valley 360 on about June 12, 2018, the author, Richard Moody, reports our illustrious New Baltimore Town Supervisor, Jeff Ruso, as having “denied that the town forced Jordan’s resignation.” What a load of steaming New Baltimore bullshit! Ruso and his predecessor, former Town Supervisor Nick Dellisanti, would do anything to rid themselves of that boil on their butts, Jordan. But they didn’t have the balls to do anything. We have personal knowledge that Ruso and Dellisanti were looking for any way possible to get rid of Jordan and they both knew, as did their predecessors, former New Baltimore Town Supervisors Susan O’Rorke and David Louis and their Democrap boards at the time, what was going on in the New Baltimore Highway Department under the direct supervision and authority of Democrap dodo Jordan. The problem was that Democraps take care of Democraps and most were on Jordan’s favors list. So they didn’t want to kill the goose laying their golden eggs, did they?

So the Democraps over several election cycles ran New Baltimore and Jordan remained a Democrap as long as it served him. Jordan ran successfully 4 times and has been New Baltimore Highway Superintendent for almost 20 years. How does it happen that someone with barely a high-school diploma, no education beyond high school, no training in engineering or a related field, never attended any continuing education courses in highway maintenance or related subjects, although there are quite a few very good ones like the Cornell Local Roads Program (CLRP), but was allowed (by voters and with little supervision by the Town Board) to run a complex department spending hundreds of thousands, millions of tax payer dollars?!? Well, it’s called local politics, the favors system, and very little county or state oversight. It’s criminal so why isn’t it covered in the local press, like any other crime or cases of corruption? Because locals like to keep their very dirty laundry hidden.

But Dellisanti and Ruso are supposed to be Republicans? Right? Correct. And they bend over willingly to get the Conservative and Independence parties to endorse them and their candidates, not that there are that many. That explains why Dellisanti and Ruso were so keen to get rid of Jordan not only because he was ignorant and incompetent, and corrupt, but because he was overconfident, thinking that he had his voter base (after all, he took the last election by one vote only. Big base, right? But then there’s the fact that absentee votes were mismanaged and no one demanded a recount.)

While the Democraps in New Baltimore are and have been corrupt and crooked writ large, the Repukelicans are hell bent on ignoring the people and taking care of their visions of “prosperity” — the problem is that they don’t have any appreciation of local culture or history, they have no intelligence or training in government, civics, economics, development, and they want to run the town like a business, which does not work.

Former supervisor Dellisanti, for example, came from downstate, around New York City. In terms of New Baltimore and its culture and lifestyles he might as well have been from Uranus. He didn’t have a clue how to deal with locals. Two terms and out he went — he “voluntarily” decided not to run again for office; after all, it’s easier to quit than to learn or to fight for what’s right.

Current Supervisor Jeff Ruso ran for Town Supervisor back in 2011 but lost to Democrap Susan O’Rorke, a real bitch and a super-disappointment, Dellisanti ran against O’Rorke in 2013 and won; he was re-elected to be Supervisor in 2015. When Dellisanti decided not to run for a third 2-year term, his deputy, town board member Jeff Ruso, who lost his bid for Supervisor in 2011, ran. Ruso ran as a Repukelican — the New Baltimore Democraps didn’t come up with a candidate, so Ruso was unopposed. When there’s only one candidate to choose from, that’s not democratic process; you can vote for yourself and be the only voter and stil win. That’s just about what happened with Ruso in 2017, when he finally was elected — no one ran against him — unopposed, the only way he could win. (We asked voters in New Baltimore to withhold their votes for unopposed candidates, not to give them any numbers; more than 33% of New Baltimore voters who went to the polls responded by not casting a vote for unopposed candidates. That was a clear message to Ruso and others running unopposed.

Back to the Jordan scandals …

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What’s even worse is that New York Town Law practically handed Supervisor Dellisanti and Supervisor Ruso the very tools to have gotten rid of Jordan but they never moved an inch to do it legally. They had the power of the purse string and could have used financial strategies to get control over Jordan and stop his illegal activities. They had the power to call Jordan before the town board and have him report about what he was doing. But they didn’t. They could have called Highway Department employees before the Town Board and questioned them. But they didn’’t. They could have asked the Greene County DA to step in and help get rid of Jordan. They didn’t. They could have made a petition to the New York State courts to remove Jordan for a great many reasons. But they didn’t.

In the meantime, Jordan was having his way with taxpayer dollars and playing all sorts of favorites games while ignoring very serious problems in Town’s drainage and roadways.

Thanks to Jordan’s negligence, incompetence, indifference, and utter vindictiveness, some property owners in the Town of New Baltimore have suffered incredible losses and damage to their property and the Town of New Baltimore supervisor, who is the chief financial officer of the Town, and the New Baltimore Town Board, instead of making good and playing fair, seeing that justice is done, simply handed the problems over to their insurance company who then handed the case over to their lawyers, who did everything to deny residents and taxpayers justice! That’s our New Baltimore democracy at work. That’s what at least 4 Town Supervisors and their boards have done to residents and taxpayers in New Baltimore by not taking action against Denis Jordan.

New Baltimore Town Supervisor should hide his face in SHAME when he admits that the Town of New Baltimore is not investigating Jordan. He’s also either damned ignorant and stupid or a bare-faced liar when he claims that if outside authorities are investigating, “I would not know anything about that.” That’s simply too stupid or too crazy to believe. How on earth could outside agencies be investigating a Town of New Baltimore department and a Town of New Baltimore elected official and the Town Supervisor, Jeff Ruso, claims he knows nothing about it?!? Maybe someone should investigate Ruso for severe brain damage!

How is it that this Smalbany blog has known about these “investigations” since last year – and reported on them, although exact details were not available. How is it that the Office of the New York State Comptroller is investigating and Ruso knows nothing about it? How is it that the Columbia Greene Media Corp, the Daily Mail, Hudson Valley 360 know about the investigations but New Baltimore Town Supervisor Ruso doesn’t know anything about the investigations?

This stinks of more lies and corruption and it gets worse because Jordan is a Democrap and the New York State Comptroller’s Office is a Democrap-run office in a Democrap state administration. Greene County DA Joseph Stanzione is a Republican as is New Baltimore Town Supervisor Ruso and the majority of the board. We’d like to think that justice will be done objectively but we all know better than that.

We need to see a public outcry, a public demonstration of solidarity in New Baltimore. We need to see our neighbors in Coxsackie, Greenville, Coeymans, Catskill and Coeymans show up at the next New Baltimore Town Board meeting on July 9, 2018, at 7 p.m. to make many, many voices heard demanding fair play and justice in our towns, and a stop to the lies like those we are hearing from Jeff Ruso and others. We need honesty, integrity, fair play and justice in our towns. All American government starts in our towns and villages, our hamlets and in our families. What we allow to happen at home we soon find in the White House!

YES!!! The State Comptroller’s Office and the Greene County District Attorney did receive complaints and we know where those complaints came from. We also know that at least Nick Dellisanti and his sidekick Jeff Ruso have known for the past at least 4 years what was going on and did little or nothing. We want to see something done NOW, Mr. DiNapoli and Mr. Stanzione. Did you hear us? We said NOW!!!

P.s. Mr. Ruso and your New Baltimore Town Board, you have done a lot of damage and we’ve lost a lot of confidence in you. Payback time is just around the corner and it’s called election day and you are called past history (that’s redundant, we know, but we just wanted the Columbia Green Media Corp to know we can write like they do, too.)

Final Word from the Editor

First of all a word to all our readers who live in La-La-Land and refuse to believe the facts and truth we publish. For four (4) years now we have been disclosing the truth about what has been going on in the New Baltimore Highway Department, New Baltimore Town Hall. We’ve been telling you about what has been happening to honest, hard-working New Baltimore residents and taxpayers at the hands of our elected officials and our town employees. It took four years for the Greene County DA to wake up and do something. It took four years for the local trash media, Columbia-Green Media, the Johnson Newspaper Group, etc. to wake up and tell you all what was and is going on in our town. We’ve been on watch for you and telling you as it was and is happening. You’re welcome, I’m sure.

If you are stupid enough to believe that Supervisor Jeff Ruso, after having been in the thick of it for at least 6 years, can claim ignorance of what’s been going on, ask us. We have had personal discussions with both Ruso and his predecessor, Dellisanti. We’ve been present at meetings to assess the damage caused by Jordan and his team of Yahoos. We’ve spoken to Dellisanti and to Ruso about the work done by Jordan on private properties and both Ruso and Dellisanti admitted they knew but “couldn’t do anything about it.” That’s the truth. But it was a lie. State Town Law, and we told Dellisanti and Ruso, provided a number of ways to solve the Jordan problem; problem was that there were too many cowards in Town Hall to put the law into action.

When residents and taxpayers appealed to the Town to remedy problems in roadwork and drainage in the National Historic District — that was back in 2006!!! — nothing was done. In 2016, when Dellisanti and Ruso personally visited New Street together with Denis Jordan and his deputy Scott vanWormer to view the situation and the damage to private property resulting from Jordan’s negligence and indifference, they were made fully aware of the situation. They did nothing!

When Callanan was paving in the Hamlet and Jordan was nowhere to be found and Callanan, under the supervision of Jordan’s deputy, Scott vanWormer, were dumping tons of blacktop and creating hazards, the Town was informed and they did nothing!

When residents went through the process required by the law of serving the Town of New Baltimore and its officers and board with Notices of Claim, official notices of complaint and claim, regarding the damage done by Jordan during his time as Highway Superintendent, the Town of New Baltimore, under Dellisanti and Ruso, DID NOTHING. Well, they did something: They turned the cases over to the Town’s insurance company, the Argo Group, through the Town’s insurance agent Marshall & Sterling of Leeds, NY.

Here’s Dellisanti’s and Ruso’s idea of fair play and justice for New Baltimore taxpayers: New Baltimore insurers Marshall & Sterling (Leeds, NY), Trident Brokerage, and Argo Group (Bermuda) (the Town of New Baltimore is dealing with an off-shore company enjoying the tax sanctuary of Bermuda! Nice going, patriots!) are being paid to work against New Baltimore Residents and Property Owners with good faith claims for damages. The Albany law firm of Bailey, Johnson, DeLeonardis & Peck P.C. have been hired by New Baltimore’s insurers and New Baltimore to make sure New Baltimore residents, property owners and tax payers don’t get justice and fair play! Isn’t there something wrong with this picture? Don’t WE pay the bills in this town? If we as private citizens damage town property our sorry asses are in jail! Maybe that’s where our Town Board, our Town Sole Assessor, Gordon Bennett, and definitely our Town Superintendent of Highways, Denis Jordan, should be!

For More Information Please Read Our Articles:

• Complacency is a Bad Thing…Especially in Local Government (2017/11/10)
• Is the Town’s Plan to Exhaust Residents Seeking Justice? (2017/11/03)
• Open Letter to Greene County District Attorney Joseph Stanzione 2017/11/02

 

Town of New Baltimore Highway Superintendent Denis Jordan Forced to Resign

We pay these pompous, arrogant dumbasses’ paychecks with our tax dollars! But they sit there all in a row, staring into the papers in front of them, better than those who pay them and who put them where they are, and gaze out, through the citizens and residents sitting in front of them as if they weren’t there. Stuffed shirts, empty heads, and ignorance all in a row, deciding on your lives. And do they stick together?  like fleas on a dog’s back. Nice picture, isn’t it?

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New Baltimore Highway Superintendent Denis Jordan has been forced to resign amid several pending investigations of Jordan’s activities as Town Superintendent of Highways and the operations of the New Baltimore Highway Department under his direct supervision. Jordan’s resignation became effective May 30, 2018.

We have reported numerous instances that point to unlawful and unethical practices by Jordan which have been known for years but only after we brought the issues into the open and public view did the Town of New Baltimore and law enforcement finally wake up and start taking action.

Jordan is not the only New Baltimore public official who should be investigated. We demanded also that former Town Supervisors and Town Board Members who were directly informed of Jordan’s operations should also be brought to justice! For the past several years we have been hounding former Town Supervisor Nick Dellisanti and his deputy, Jeff Ruso, now Town Supervisor, and others to be responsible and honor their oaths of office! They failed this community and violated their oaths of office!

We have also contacted and informed Greene County District Attorney Joseph Stanzione of Jordan’s activities and the Town’s indifference to the illegal and criminal activity going on in the New Baltimore Highway Department. Last year Stanzione refused to answer our inquiries saying only that he could not make a statement because of pending investigations. We want to see and hear what he has done to investigate the other employees and elected officials, past and present, who knew about what was going on and DID NOTHING!!!

We want to know why employees in the New Baltimore Highway Department, in particular Jordan’s deputy superintendent Scott VanWormer kept their mouths shut when Jordan was using his elected office, public property, public moneys to do favors for special parties and totally ignored other residents and taxpayers whose property was destroyed by Jordan’s indifference and negligence.

We want to know who is going to reimburse the public treasury for the money that was misspent, squandered and wasted during Jordan’s years of mismanagement, particularly in the past 2 years, when the Town Board was most intensely aware of Jordan’s operations.

We want to know who is going to answer for Jordan’s abuse of residents and taxpayers, and who is going to foot the bill for compensating the property losses and damage caused by Jordan’s negligence and incompetence.

We want answers from the Greene County District Attorney Joseph Stanzione, former New Baltimore Town Supervisor Nick Dellisanti, New Baltimore Town Supervisor Jeff Ruso, Deputy Highway Superintendent Scott vanWormer, Town Attorney Tal Rappelea, and others yet to be named!

Local government is a failure…

And now on the Town of New Baltimore Office of the Assessor and the Board of Assessment Review: Grievance Day is a Sham!

We  have been looking closely at the Town of New Baltimore’s weird property tax situation and have come to the conclusion that the operation of the Assessor’s Office under Gordon Bennett and the five member Board of Assessment Review (BAR), consisting of Donna Degnan (chairperson), Lynn Taylor, Bernie Jones, Ronna Smith, and Linda LeClair. Linda LeClair appears to be the only functioning brain in the lot!

Under Gordon Bennett’s oversight and Donna Degnen’s chairmanship, the BAR is an incompetent drain on the public treasury. Bennett is not an elected official, he’s a hired fixture. Degnan, too, is not elected but an appointee and the sockpuppets on the Board of Assessment Review, lard asses that they are, handed the chairmanship of the Board over to Degnan, who is a dithering wing nut!

We have examined the NY Real Property Tax Law and its provisions relating to the Assessor’s Office but more precisely those provisions that relate to the Board of Assessment Review and have found that currently too many mistakes are being made and they are not complying with the law. We have an ignorant board with very little training and they’re making a mess of assessments, especially assessments grieved by taxpayers who are not being treated as the law requires.

We intend to notify the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance of New Baltimore’s non-compliance and we intend to notify the Office of the New York State Comptroller of these deficiencies so that they can be targeted at the time of the next audit.

And the New Baltimore Town Court and Justices are soon to be pilloried by the New York State Commission on Judicial Conduct, the New York state committee that oversees the operation of the courts and judges and, upon complaint, reviews the court or the judge and has the power to discipline them for acting in bad faith, unethically, with malice, or in ignorance or abuse of the law. New Baltimore town justice Tom Meacham is at the top of our list.

And the incompetence and ignorance doesn’t stop at the Highway Department! The Assessor’s Office, run by Gordon Bennett, is just as bad and the Board of Assessment Review is a gang of d-bags if we ever met one. Donna Degnan chairs the Board of Assessment Review but is more of a dithering crone than a competent chairperson. Can’t even figure out what property is being discussed and then gets stuck on a thought and you can’t get her off of it. No one listens and no one hears. Read the submissions? Hell NO! Follow the discussion? Hell NO! Four morons in a row! Local government is a failure and we expect state and federal government to be any better? Wake up people!!! No one cares and the apathy is killing us! All we can get is criminals and dumbasses to run for office and, worse still, the dumbasses appoint dumber dumbasses to the local government boards and committees! 

We can agree that the whole system needs overhauling but unless people, voters, taxpayers, residents stand up and work together, we’re going to be stuck with these dumbasses, crooks, liars, and criminals, and we can only blame ourselves. We can’t do it alone. We need to join hands and stop the corruption!

Would you have the balls and the integrity to do that? Not very likely, from what we’ve observed in this cowardly community of weasels….

Of course they’re going to stick together like fleas on a dog’s back. They work in Town Hall where nobody is more than 20 feet away from anyone else. Nothing’s private. They all kiss each other’s asses and make nice-nice in the great love fest at Town Hall, while waiting for the next opportunity to stick in a knife. Most of them hate each other’s guts but they have to stick together or they’ll all end up jobless and in jail. So don’t think for a moment that you have such a great case that they won’t all get in a circle (called a circle-jerk) and make sure no one makes a peep that could incriminate anyone else. They may be incompetent, ignorant, arrogant but they are making the decisions and if you don’t like it, well, you’ll have to hire a lawyer. Would you have the balls and the integrity to do that? Not very likely, from what we’ve observed in this cowardly community of weasels. Well, that’s where the Jordan case is going to get real interesting because now we have not only a weak link but an actual break in the love chain in Town Hall. Things are a happening…let’s keep the momentum and see what’s going to happen next!

We want to see as many residents and taxpayers of the Town of New Baltimore as possible at the next (July) public meeting of the New Baltimore Town Board, and we want everyone to make a public statement about this development and what the Town of New Baltimore is going to do to make things right!

Next Regular Town Board Meeting is on July 9, 2018 at 7:00 p.m.

 

 

LEAVE A COMMENT AND WE’LL PUBLISH IT!!!

 

Dumbass Team: Coeymans Police and Albany DA Soares!

We’ve reported on the May 12 Raccoon incident in several articles, and in each of those articles where we have published new information, the Coeymans Police Department, the Albany County DA David Soares and his corrupt office, and others have confirmed everything we reported. As our readers are aware, we rely on information either from verifiable witnesses, published sources, or information provided by the public offices on our demand under the provisions of the NYS Freedom of Information Law. We frequently have to fight to get the information but we do get it. Here we are reporting on information we forced the Coeymans Police Department to give up, and they don’t look good. Here’s why:

We forced the Coeymans Police Department to cough up the Incident Reports completed by the two Coeymans Police Department personnel who put on the circus act that went international on May 12, 2018, when they used their patrol cars to harass, abuse, run over and kill a wild raccoon in full view of shoppers at Faith Plaza in Ravena, New York. The whole sickening display by the two perverts was recorded on video by a witness and it went viral on YouTube and other social media. The incident was covered by the international press and sent the world to cry outrage. The Coeymans PD and the Coeymans Town Board had very little to say — what could they say, the video told the entire story.

The Faith Plaza Raccoon Iincident Raises Important Questions about the Morality of Our Pubic Servants.

In fact, this embarrassing scandal looms far larger than the simple-minded antics of two small-town police officers and their sikeningly clownish performance while on duty. The incident raises important questions about the morality of our pubic servants, their ethics, their characters, value for taxpayer dollars, the quality of the people and the work done by them in public service, the negligence of our elected officials and their support even of the Constitution per their oaths of office. Yes, the incident even touches upon whether we can trust them and whether they are truthful. It’s ironic that the death of a wild animal should raise such questions in human affairs but it does and we can’t continue to ignore those questions.They’re right in our faces.

The Coeymans Police Totally Ignored their Own Procedures and Instructions

If you’ve been following this incident, you’ll know that the Coeymans PD wouldn’t identify the two officers involved. That was wrong. When we demanded the standard procedures for responding to animal control incidents, we found that they dated back to 1998 and had never been revised. That was wrong. The instructions used by the Coeymans Police when responding to animal control calls instructs them to contact the Coeymans Animal Control Officer, but Coeymans doesn’t have one (they eliminated the position several years ago). But the procedure also instructs officers to contact the Animal Control Officers in neighboring communities if the local ACO is not available. They never did any of that. They even deny any sort of animal control equipment in the Coeymans PD. We don’t believe that for a minute! What happened to the former ACO’s equipment? And Why? don’t they have even a net or a catchpole?

Our investigations show Albany DA Davis Soares’ report to be a load of steaming bullshit.

Albany County DA P. David Soares in Native Albany Costume.

You’ll also know that Albany County DA P. David Soares’ Animal Abuse Division was “investigating” the incident” but that his office found no reason to prosecute the officers because there was “no malice or contempt.” Really?!? Secondly, the DA’s office mentions that the officers performed correctly because there would have been a 2-hour wait for a NYS Department of Environmental Conservation person to respond (There are “only” 300 such state employees in New York). But our investigations show this to be a load of steaming bullshit.

We have the names of the two officers involved: Stephen PROKRYM and Jeff IOVINELLI.

We have obtained the “official” incident reports prepared by one of the two Coeymans Police personnel involved in the incident. We already identified Coeymans Police Department investigator Stephen PROKRYM as one of the pervs operating one of the two Coeymans Police vehicles involved in the scandal. We now have the name of the second officer involved,Jeff IOVINELLI.

IOVINELLI prepared both of the Coeymans Police Department Incident reports Nos. 24647 and 24648. Note the consecutive numbering but note also that the Incident Reports are written the day after the incident, that is, the IRs are written on May 13, a full day after the incident which occurred on May 12. We find these IRs to be suspect for two reasons:

• They were written fully a day after the incident, after the Coeymans PD had made their “official statement” and after the NYS Department of Health had issued their report on the animal. The IRs, therefore, are written to fit the facts rather than to report the incident. That’s dishonest and should be considered misconduct and disciplined. But then the Coeymans PD and the Coeymans Town Board would look really stupid — the IRs now prove they are realy stupid.
• The information in the IRs written by IOVINELLI is full of contraditions and mistakes as we describe below. The Coeymans Police Department, acting chief Contento, Iovinelli and Prokrym, in particular, can’t even get their lies straight!

In the first IR No. 24647, Iovinelli states that the incident occurred on “MONDAY 03/12/18” between 8:46 a.m. and 9:00 a.m. and describes the “Incident Type” as “Animal, Animal acting rabid.”  All other details in the general information appear normal.

In the so-called “Narrative” or description of the facts part of IR 24647, however, it appears that there was a first call put in to the Coeymans PD (through the Albany County 911 dispatch) to investigation “a raccoon acting sick,” and IOVINELLI writes that they found a raccoon “curled up in a ball under the area of some metal steps.” At that time IOVINELLI writes that he left the animal where it was and that individuals were advised not to bother the animal and to contact the CPD if there were any further issues. Now we remind you that that was at about 9:00 a.m.

In an UPDATE to IR 24647, IOVINELLI writes that when checking on “routine patrol [the] animal had left the area.” So, three hours had passed, IOVINELLI just left the animal where it was, did not call for any animal control assistance but, as you can read yourself, writes that the animal was behaving sick. In fact, in the general information part of this IR, you will recall, IOVINELLI writes “ANIMAL ACTING RABID.” Furthermore, we read that “individuals” were advised to leave the animal alone, so someone at Faith Plaza was aware of the animal. Our question is Who?

So, between 9:00 a.m. and 1:00 p.m. on May 12, 2018, IOVINELLI (1) responds to an animal control call, (2) determines that the animal is not a threat, (3) advises “individuals” not to bother the animal, (3) leaves the scene and doesnt come back until (3) 1:00 pm, three hours later, to find the raccoon had gone. None of this follows the instructions of the Coeymans Police manual setting forth the procedures for handling an animal control issue.

We have a problem with a law enforcement officer describing in an Incident Report what he states to be an “Animal Acting Rabid,” simply advises “individuals” not to bother the animal, leaves the scene only to find the animal gone, and never takes any other steps!!! He says the “animal is acting rabid” for chrissake!!! He doesn’t follow procedure. He does NOTHING! Leaving the animal for three hours and then only on “routine patrol” returns to find the animal gone.

Furthermore, if we believe Albany District Attorney David Soare’s statement that the two officers had no choice but to dispatch the raccoon the way they did because they would have otherwise had to wait 2 hours for a Department of Environmental Conservation animal control person to arrive, makes no sense, because IOVINELLI, had he followed Coeymans Police Department procedure, could and should have contacted a local Animal Control Officer or the DEC; IOVINELLI had left the scene for a full 3 hours between 9 a.m. and 1:00 pm, plenty of time to get an animal control specialist on the scene. (A witness states that both cars were at the Cumberland Farms just minutes before the incident.)

Excerpt from Coeymans Police Incident Report 24647.

Let’s now move on to Coeymans Police Department Incident Report No. 24658, again written by CPD Officer IOVINELLI on May 23, 2018, a full day after the May 12, 2018 incident.

Something’s jerry-rigged in these reports.

In IR 24648 IOVINELLI states that the incident occurred between 12:54 a.m. and 1:18 pm. But in IR 24647, he states that he returns “on routine patrol” at 1 p.m., 6 minutes after the start of the incident he’s reporting on in IR 24648. How can that be? Something’s jerry-rigged in these reports. It gets better.

It was OK to allow a supposedly “rabid animal” to approach a “large group of citizens” some of whom potentially could contract deadly rabies

IOVINELLI writes that “[O]n the above date and time,” that is on May 12, 2018, at 12:54, he responded to a “second call in the area of the CVS in Faith Plaza.” When he arrived he saw a “large group of citizens in the area of CVS” and he also notices “a raccoon in front of the CVS.” (You can read other details in the extract below.)  IOVINELLI says nothing about controlling the “large group of citizens” and removing them to safety, but he does mention the behavior of the raccoon, even that the animal aproached a “nearby passerby.” Seems to us that if IOVINELLI, as he writes in his report, thought the raccoon was rabid, he was outrageously negligent in not ensuring the safety of the “large group of citizens” by clearing and securing the area!!! Did he think the raccoon was rabid on May 12 or did he write that the raccoon was rabid only on May 13, when he had the test results? And if he thought the raccoon was rabid on May 12, why didn’t he take steps to safeguard the public, which is the reason why he and PROKRYM gave for not using their service weapons and for using their vehicles to dispatch the animal. According to this report it was OK to allow a supposedly “rabid animal” to approach a “large group of citizens” some of whom potentially could contract deadly rabies for sure but they were concerned about something potentially happening if they used their service weapon. That makes sense, doesn’t it?

In his report IOVINELLI doesn’t mention calling in for support but we gather from the report that he did, which is when Stephen Prokrym would have arrived. IOVINELLI writes that the “[R]esponding officers attempted to shout and scare the officer away, throwing snow at it several times.” At the “officer“?  Why did IOVINELLI want to “scare the officer away”? Anyway, moving along. Dr IOVINELLI, a renowned expert in disease of wildlife and raccoon behavior, makes the diagnosis that “the raccoon appeared to be exibiting the signs of rabies” and that the “animal needed to be dispatched.” For those of you who are not familiar with Coeymans police jargon, “dispatched” means to be “harassed, abused, and run over;” in other words, killed.

IOVINELLI again confirms that neither he nor PROKRYM had done any crowd control and that they had not secured the area “in the interest of public safety,”  nor were they concerned for the public’s safety when they observed that the animal was beginning to “approach stores and make entry into several of the buildings,” and they were not concerned about the crowds when they were attempting to “scare away the officer” or “throwing snow” at the animal to “get it to change direction away from members of the general public, even as IOVINELLI writes in the report the animal “appeared to be exhibiting the signs of rabies.”

Normally, if the general public is too stupid to avoid danger wouldn’t it be the police who would take charge of the situation and do crowd control, securing the area “in the interest of public safety”? Well, YES, in any other place but Coeymans. In Coeymans they “attempt to scare the officer away,” they “throw snow” and make “loud noises.” But crowd control or secure the area? Nope!

It is PROKRYM who advises IOVINELLI that they shouldn’t discharge a firearm and that the animal had to be dispatched “using the patrol vehicle.” Now that’s a senior law enforcement person telling the patrol officer that somewhere in the Coeymans manuals, the procedure is to use a patrol vehicle to kill an animal when it’s unsafe to use a firearm. We never were able to find that section when we examined the procedures. Maybe Mr PROKRYM can point it out to us sometime.

According to the report, IOVINELLI and PROKRYM “attempted to move the area to a more open location in the parking lot.” What area? Why more the area? Doesn’t make sense but that’s what he writes. Sort of when he writes that they “attempted to scare the officer away.”

What is concerning here in this report is that the first mention of contacting any outside animal control assistance was only after the animal was “dispatched”. This is completely contrary to what is in the Coeymans Police Department manual concerning animal control calls.

Now, if Albany County DA P. David Soares, democrappy fool of an attorney that he is, made his statements after his office had concluded their imaginary investigation into the incident, he would have clearly seen that there was gross misconduct and that procedure was not followed at all. Clearly such misconduct by law enforcement is subject to disciplinary action. If Soares were worth anything as an attorney, which he’s not, he would have noted with some suspicion the many contradictions, questionable statements, and errors in these two official police documents, which would be admissible in court as true. But Soares and his teams of overpaid dumbasses probably never even saw these reports, never even asked for them. If they had, even Soares could not have missed the glaring, conspicuous errors.

But it doesn’t say much for the Town of Coeymans or the Coeymans Police Department, either. You’d think that acting police chief F/Sgt Danel Contento, investigator Stephen Prokrym, or patrolman Jeff Iovinelli would have checked the report and caught the stupid errors and maybe have corrected them before finalizing the report. And why isn’t Prokrym’s signature on the report? He’s the senior officer involved. Didn’t anyone in the Town of Coeymans or the Coeymans Police Department check these two reports? Probably NOT because they thought they were immune to attack, above discipline. 

Well, maybe acting police chief Contento, officer Iovinelli, investigator Prokrym, DA Soares and his team don’t read these things but WE DO, and now YOU DO, citizens. Now there should be some questions, some very burning questions asked not only about this incident but about the overall operations and quality of the Coeymans Police Department and its employees. Here’s one for you:

Our reps will be at the next Coeymans Town Board meeting to ask those questions.

Excerpt from Coeymans Police Incident Report 24648.

The Incident Report (IR) is the Police Department’s Official Documentation of the Facts of an Incident for Legal Purposes.

If the Town of Coeymans, the acting police chief, the two officers involved could not do a more professional job of reviewing and quality controlling an important document like the Incident Report, especially this incident report which is the Department’s official documentation of the incident for legal purposes, in this incident which got international attention and widespread national media coverage, then how accurate are the documents they prepare when reporting on an incident in which you are involved. These documents can make or break a case and they are pitifully carelessly prepared, even when they are meant to cover cops’ asses. Go figure!

We are still waiting for responses from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, the Albany County Sheriff’s Department, and the Albany County District Attorney regarding our demands for documents, including but not limited to the Investigation Reports prepared by their departments. We expect either that no investigations were done or they were done just as carelessly as the reporting by the Coeymans Police Department’s Jeff IOVINELLI.

We have contacted all local communities who have Animal Control Officers (ACOs) and they confirm that they did not receive a call for assistance from the Coeymans Police Department in this incident.

The Adopted Town of Coeymans Budget allows almost $800,000 for the Coeymans Police Department.

The Adopted Town of Coeymans Budget allows almost $800,000, that’s almost a million dollars of taxpayer money, for the Coeymans Police Department, and yet they don’t even have a net or a catchpole to capture a raccoon, and they can’t write a coherent Incident Report to save their own asses. Coeymans taxpayers pay more than $500,000 a year in employee salaries for the Coeymans PD. Most of the arguments made in favor of keeping the Coeymans PD are being made by the elderly who think the Coeymans PD is in the rescue business!!! Don’t they realize they have a Coeymans Fire and Rescue company and a Ravena Fire and Rescue facility with blocks of each other, and both are funded by taxpayer dollars. Wake up stupids! Do you really think that money is money allocated by the Coeymans Town Board with any notion of fiscal responsibility? We don’t.

ELIMINATE THE COEYMANS POLICE DEPARTMENT AND WITH IT THE IRRESPONSIBLE COEYMANS TOWN BOARD.

WHILE YOU’RE AT IT, GET RID OF THAT DEMOCRAPPY RACIST FOOL OF A DISTRICT ATTORNEY, P. DAVID SOARES.

Click Coeymans Police Incident Reports

to see the complete original Coeymans PD Incident Reports.

Our Previous Articles Covering this Incident

Albany County DA Soares Affirms Double Standard Again: Coeymans Clown Cops OK (April 4, 2018)

Officer Identified!!! Coeymans PD Steve Prokrym Involved in Raccoon Scandal!!! (March 26, 2018)

Truth be Told: On the Heels of the Coeymans Town Board Meeting (March 23, 2018)

More on the Coeymans Police Department. Our Recent Investigations. (March 21, 2018)

Follow-up Report: Coeymans Raccoon Incident. We still have our doubts! (March 19, 2018)

We are speechless! OMG! Coeymans Police Caught on Video Again! (March 12, 2018)

DUMBASS BOARD
(Coeymans Town Board)
(Baker, Yeomans, Crandall, Dolan, Burns)

 

Albany County DA Soares Affirms Double Standard Again: Coeymans Clown Cops OK.

Albany County DA P. David Soares Thinks Coeymans Cops’ Conduct OK.

What about Coeymans Town Supervisor Phil Crandall? What’s he going to do?
And what are Coeymans Town Board Members Daniel Baker, Jim Youmans, Tom Dolan and Ken Burns going to do now? Do they think the Coeymans PD did good?

Acting Coeymans Police Chief Daniel W. Contento responds: “We’re going to use the video as a training video.”

Today’s hot news coming out of Albany County District Attorney P. David Soare’s corrupt offices is that the County’s double-standard will continue as business as usual. There’s one standard for law enforcement personnel and another standard for you and me. One standard for the bullies with guns and another standard for those who they are attempting to take guns away from. Now say you didn’t see this coming.

As of today, April 5, 2018, the Petition demanding that the Coeymans police officers involved in the March 12, 2018, incident at Faith Plaza be disciplined, terminated was 95,365 signatures with more than 12,000 people signing in New York alone! Compare that number with 1 Albany DA, 1 Acting Police Chief, 1 Department of Environmental Conservation Director, and 5 Coeymans town board members. Almost 100,000 people can’t be wrong when it comes to seen the truth in what happened and what needs to be done. Imaging if just 1 out of 10 marched on Coeymans! People of Ravena, Coeymans: Don’t let them get away with this scandal!

Albany County District Attorney P. David Soares (inset) Condones Police Ugly Clown Act.

In a statement issued by Soare’s office with regard to the two Coeymans Police Department personnel who used two Coeymans Police vehicles to harass, abuse, and finally to run over a raccoon in full view of dozens of witnesses at Faith Plaza, Ravena, NY, on March 12, 2018, says that the two jerks who perpetrated the scandalous incident will not face criminal charges.

Coeymans Law Enforcement Team.

According to reports, acting Coeymans police chief, Daniel Contento is really taking the scandal seriously (Ha, Ha, Ha!), and is reported to have said that his Department will “use the video as a training video.” Training video? Training Coeymans cops on how to improve their clown act? Training for whom? If the Coeymans Town Board has any balls, there won’t be a Coeymans Police Department or clown cops to train!!! Eliminate the Coeymans Police Department NOW! They’re useless!

How you treat animals is how you treat other human beings. St Francis of Assisi.

According to the article appearing in the Times Union: and another report by WRGB Channel 6 News:

“Soares’ office said the police lacked equipment such as a catch pole, a net or a tranquilizer gun to deal with animals. Police had previously said they worried that using a firearm to kill the raccoon could jeopardize the lives of people in the shopping plaza where it was found.”

“The officers also faced the possibility of a two-hour wait for a state environmental conservation officer to arrive to deal with the animal.

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Editor’s Note: All of what Soares, Crandall, Misuraca, and Contento are saying is pure undiluted bullshit! First of all, the coeymans Police had not only the opportunity to call the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) for capture assistance, they had two, TWO, fire and rescue departments, the Coeymans fire and rescue and the Ravena Fire Department, both or at least one which must or should have animal capture/control equipment on hand. Secondly, we seriously doubt that the Coeymans police put out any call to a local animal control officer in a neighboring community for assistance.

As for a two-hour wait for a response from the DEC, we would like to cite a recent report appearing in the March 28, 2018, Daily News (NY, “Coyote found on mezzanine of New York State Museum released back into the wild” and “Coyote spotted taking a nap on mezzanine at New York State Museum“) , The State (“Coyote found on museum’s outdoor mezzanine released in wild“), US News (“Coyote Found on Museum’s Outdoor Mezzanine Released in Wild“), Fox News (“Coyote found on New York museum’s fourth-floor mezzanine“) and dozens of other news media, which report that the coyote was found sleeping on the premises of the NYS Museum Mezzanine, the DEC was called for assistance, animal control personnel arrived, tranquilized, captured, tested and later released the coyote. What was the major malfunction of the Coeymans Police?

March 27, 2018: A coyote was found on an outdoor mezzanine at a museum in Albany, N.Y.
(New York State Police)

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“Based on facts of the event, the conclusion is that the officers did not act with malice or contempt, and acted with the public’s well-being in mind,” the DA’s office wrote in a report released Thursday.”

The whole thing is an ugly bad joke. The police didn’t have the equipment to capture the animal? They didn’t have a catchpole, a tranquilizer gun or a net??? One local taxpayer, Mr D. Boomer, told the Coeymans Town Board that that excuse was ridiculous as did several other speakers. When interviewed by multiple news media and asked what he, Boomer, would have done, Mr Boomer stated, “I would have turned over a shopping cart to capture it.” There were literally dozens of such carts all over the parking lot. Does Albany District Attorney P. David Soares have some peculiar definitions for “malice,” “contempt”? (We realize he’s from some Island, Brava, Cape Verde,  off the coast of West Africa but he is after all a DA in a predominantly English-speaking nation, isn’t he?)

A nation’s greatness can be seen in how they treat their animals. Mahatma Ghandi.

The two cars were seen by a witness just minutes before the incident at the Cumberland Farms in Ravena.

Soares continues that the officers “faced the possibility of a two hour wait for a state environmental conservation officer to arrive.” That statement, too, is ridiculous. The Coeymans Police Manual instructs officers responding to an animal control call to notify the local Animal Control Officer or, if he or she is not available, to notify a neighboring community’s Animal Control Officer. They did neither. And the “possibility of a two hour wait” just doesn’t make sense. First of all, we don’t believe that the two officers, one a veteran Coeymans PD investigator Stephen Prokrym, who also runs a Schenectady security company, was involved, likely didn’t put out a call to the Department of Environmental Conservation, and just proceeded to put on their circus show. The two cars were seen by a witness just minutes before the incident at the Cumberland Farms in Ravena.

This has to be the most convincing statement of Soares’ stupidity we have heard to date.

Soares final statement, “the conclusion is that the officers did not act with malice or contempt,” brought tears of laughter to my face!!! That has to be the most convincing statement of Soares’ stupidity we have heard to date. Two law enforcement officers in two police vehicles spend more than 15 minutes racing around a public parking lot in full view of dozens of witnesses, harassing, and abusing a single wild animal, and finally running the poor thing over with their vehicles is, in the Albany County DA’s thinking, not “malice or contempt.”

How malicious, evil, and contemptuous of life can it possibly get???!!! But Albany’s DA doesn’t think that the two dumbass Coeymans cops acted with malice or contempt.

What do you think would happen to you?

Let’s just take a real life example and see what you would say: What if you or a neighbor drove into Faith Plaza in Ravena and saw an animal, say a raccoon, a cat, a dog, a deer, a duck, and started harassing it with your car, chasing it around the parking lot like a real clown, and finally running it over. Say there are dozens of people, local shoppers, watching all of this and someone videos it. Someone calls the Coeymans Police and they arrive on the scene. What do you think would happen to you?

What you sow is what you will reap. Pythagoras. Greek Philosopher & Mathematician.

Albany: A Dipshit Racist Albany County District Attorney & Coeymans: Irresponsible and Incompetent Clown Cops.

OK. So you say that the dog or the duck was rabid. Don’t you think someone might ask how you knew that without any test results. And so you say, “Well, someone, I don’t know who, said it was acting abnormally.” Do you think that would keep you out of cuffs? Out of court? Out of jail? We have a double-standard, the same double-standard we see in what we call police states. Except our double-standard is right in our front-yards. A dipshit Albany County District Attorney, irresponsible and unprofessional clown cops.

The Coeymans Police Department and its Company of Clowns Must GO!!!

The state Department of Environmental Conservation had already decided no criminal charges will be filed in the case. The DEC is known to be extremely Democrap and prosecutes only where there’s money to be gotten, even if it’s unfounded; they are not in the habit of prosecuting where there’s no money to be had or business to be ruined. Another useless money pit sucking up New York State tax dollars.

 Acting Police Chief Daniel Contento lied in his public statement.

We’d like to make several final points: 1. It’s always a safe bet to be 100% right after you get all the answers. Yes. The raccoon allegedly tested for rabies but was that testing also done in favor of the Coeymans Police statement made BEFORE the test results were released, that the raccoon was rabid? Did the testing lab fit the results to the Police statement?  Acting Police Chief Daniel Contento lied in his public statement. Contento could not have known that the now mutilated raccoon was rabid; he didn’t have the test results until the following day!!!

2. The DA’s office works very closely, is in bed with the police, with law enforcement; in fact, the DA is the chief law enforcement officer in the county (both the DA and law enforcement are the executive branch of government). There’s no chance the DA would go after his police boys. No chance in Hell!

3. The entire incident got international attention. It brought people from as far away as Queensbury, NY, to make statements at the Coeymans Town Board Meeting, protesting the incident. A petition demanding that the officers involved be disciplined, many signers demanding they be terminated, got more than 90,000 signatures!!! The irresponsibility of the Coeymans Town Board and the Coeymans Police Department cannot be swept under the carpet by just saying these two clowns didn’t have a catchpole, a net, or a tranquilizer gun. Why is that? How much does a catchpole or a net or a tranquilizer gun cost? And why doesn’t the Town of Coeymans have an Animal Control Officer? What happens next? The 911 center gets a call about a stray dog; do they run the animal over?

4. Acting Coeymans Police Chief Daniel Contento lied in his statement. Coeymans Supervisor makes the statement that the call should never have been given to the Coeymans Police. The Albany County DA says there was no malice or contempt. (Ask the raccoon, ask the more than 90,000 protesters, ask the residents and citizens who appeared at the Coeymans Town Board meeting to protest the incident and demand that the officers be discipline, terminated.) Local Ravena-Coeymans taxpayers complain they get nothing from the Coeymans Police except harassment. What’s the solution, Citizens?

Once again the Town of Coeymans, dirty, trashy, little backwater hill towns of Ravena and Coeymans, NY, gets international attention the way it always does: a SCANDAL.

But the Coeymans Town Board does have powers under the law to come out shining

The Albany County DA P. David Soares may not want to prosecute his cronies, and the DEC may not want to prosecute a case that the DA himself won’t prosecute. But the Coeymans Town Board does have powers under the law to come out shining. The Coeymans Town Board can eliminate the Coeymans Police Department or at least terminate or suspend the parties involved, including acting police chief Contento. That doesn’t leave Coeymans or Ravena without law enforcement. All 911 calls from Ravena and Coeymans go to the Albany County 911 Center for dispatch, anyway, and the Albany County Sheriff’s Department and the New York State Police patrolling the area can respond to any 911 call, if necessary.

So Albany DA Soares thinks the Coeymans Cops’ Ugly Clown Act was OK. And the Department of Environmental Conservation won’t prosecute, given Soares’ position. So now what will Coeymans Town Supervisor Phillip Crandall and his Coeymans Town Board members Daniel Baker, Jim Youmans, Tom Dolan and Ken Burns do now to save face in view of the public outrage and scandal caused by two Coeymans law enforcement clowns?  Are they going to get some balls and take control of the situation and do what’s right?

Shame on Albany DA Soares! Shame on the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation! Shame on Ravena & Coeymans!

Editor’s Note: We have interspersed various quotes from well-known great thinkers on what animal cruelty tells us about ourselves and how we relate to other human beings. We stand by those quotes and hope that you, our readers, will take them to heart and join us in demanding that what was done to that raccoon on March 12, 2018, is likely an indication of how those officers would respond to any other animal or to another human being. It is an expression of their perverse and evil characters.

 

 

Who are the Thought Police in Your Community? Do you know?

“As members of a community, even as citizens of a nation, we are frequently exposed to and have to cope with what is known as groupthink, a phenomenon that may seriously compromise our image of ourselves, our relationships with family, friends, neighbors, community leaders, and may also compromise our moral rights of personal dignity and autonomy. And yet, groupthink is precisely what underlies much of our “training” in how to be good citizens and in the so-called education programs and our social organizations, and is pandemic in most of the institutions in which we work. Groupthink,  shamefully, has been a part of our religious institutions since time immemorial. Agendizing, brainwashing, programming.”

Anonymous Contributor.

We, as citizens, as members of our community, parents and educators, as human beings we are told that we have an inherent and guaranteed right to speak freely and openly about most subjects without the stigma that might apply to a person living and working in a different country. We would like to think that people, especially our elected leaders and our educators, tend to listen to us and give some weight and importance to what we have to say; consequently, we can and should play an important and proactive role in deciding how we live, work and are governed, and in order to do this, we must make our leaders aware that we are aware of the groupthink phenomenon, its dangers and risks, and implement ways of avoiding this insidious, infectious, and fatal phenomenon in our communities and in our lives. Once people are made aware of the groupthink phenomenon and ways to identify it and prevent it, we are on the path to reclaiming the efficacy and authenticity we once enjoyed but lost in the wake of the development of corporate control of our institutions and the chilling of interpersonal relations by online social media.

Groupthink.[1] It’s everywhere and it’s toxic! It’s dehumanizing. It perpetuates lies and factoids. Yet you love it! It makes things so much easier when you don’t have to use your own brain and you allow yourself to be programmed to think, speak, act, perform according to the in-group’s agenda.

Irving Janus mainstreamed the term in 1982. [2] According to Janis, groupthink

“[h]appens when in-group pressures lead to deterioration in mental efficiency, poor testing of reality, and lax moral judgment. It tends to occur in highly cohesive groups in which the group members’ desire for consensus becomes more important than evaluating problems and solutions realistically. An example would be the top executive cabinet (the president and vice presidents) of a firm, who have worked together for many years. They know each other well and think as a cohesive unit rather than as a collection of individuals.” [my italics]

We can find groupthink in our workplaces, churches, schools, social media, government, and Yes! even in our homes.

Janis identified eight symptoms of groupthink, which are noteworthy and which I will briefly describe below.[3] Persons affected by groupthink may exhibit any of these symptoms:

1. An experience of the illusion of invulnerability. This illusion produces an unreal sense of optimism and the sense of empowerment to take risks, sometimes extreme, which the individual would not otherwise take.
2. Acceptance of a collective rationalization. The individual ignores the red flags and warnings and refuse to reassess their biases, prejudices and assumptions regarding reality.
3. Belief in the inherent morality of the group. The individual and members of the group are convinced of the righteousness of their beliefs and become indifferent to the ethical or moral effects and consequences of the group’s decisions and actions.
4. Establishment and adoption of stereotypes of out-groups. Stereotypes are a facile way of dealing with the “others” and do not require thinking or decision-making. De rigueur negative presumptions and characterizations of the “enemy” render rational and effective responses to conflict unnecessary. Cookie-cutter responses are the result.
5. The imposition of direct pressure on dissenters. Any deviation from the presumptions and dictates of the group results in sanctions. Individuals, group members are discouraged from expressing alternative views, or representing positions conflicting any of the group’s views.
6. Requirement of self-censorship. The individual and members of the group are required to ensure that any questions, doubts and deviations from the group’s “consensus,” program, or agenda are not expressed. The individual must “watch his/her mouth” or be sanctioned.
7. The illusion of unanimity. The views and judgments, decisions and actions of the “group” or of the group’s statutory and declared leader(s) and majority are assumed to be unanimous, justified and reliable.
8. The presence of self-appointed ‘mindguards’. Certain members isolate and “protect” the group and its leader(s) from information that is problematic or contradictory to the group’s cohesiveness, view, and/or decisions. These are the “thought police” who ensure that any information that can potentially threaten the group or its leaders is filtered out and neutralized.

In other words, the phenomenon of groupthink seems to have grown out of and fits perfectly into the framework of George Orwell’s dystopian novel, “Nineteen-Eighty-Four,” with its implications of superpower invulnerability, collective processing of carefully cooked data and information, a sense of moral superiority of the group’s decisions and actions, the facile handling of non-members by the application of stereotypes, direct suppression and sanctioning of any opposing thought or expression — the individual “watches his mouth” to avoid attracting attention to himself and possible sanctioning —, all communications and indicators seem to indicate that “everyone is on the same page” and “stands united.”  Finally, the self-appointed “mindguards,” the Orwellian “thought police,” ensure that everyone toes the mark, knows his place, and follows the “party line.” Sounds awfully much like PC, political correctness, doesn’t it?

The Thought Police or Mindguards ensure that you don’t think out of the box.

As I mentioned above, groupthink is easily observed in our schools, churches, public servants, social groups, the workplace, etc.

Here’s an example that comes from my college days when I worked as an encyclopedia salesperson. We were trained to ask potential purchasers questions that they could not disagree with, such as, for example: “You do care about your children’s education, don’t you?” or “You want your children to have the best available information for school, don’t you?” Once they answered in the affirmative, they were cooked. It was sort of like asking a veteran the question, “You do love your country, don’t you?” Or a clergyperson asking a dissenter, “You do believe in God, don’t you?” Ask those sorts of questions and you get a commitment to groupthink; the rest follows once the individual is on the slippery slope to group membership, willingly or not.

It’s certainly easy enough to self-test yourself by asking yourself if any of the above symptoms could possibly apply to you…but be aware of the sneaky symptom of “self-censorship” because you might actually be unaware that you are self-censoring; you may actually believe that what you say you believe is in fact what you believe. (Please go back and reread that last part. It’s important and you really didn’t understand it, did you?!)

Everyone connected to the same “brain”, the core-group’s!

Here’s a real example: I was at my fitness center and struck up a conversation with a guy who was working on a neighboring piece of equipment. The conversation started out on muscle groups and doping, use of anabolic steroids, doping scandals, and how natural fitness was desirable over and against taking performance enhancers. The conversation drifted to the inquiry, “What do you do?” The guy was intelligent, apparently well-read in the subject of performance enhancers in athletes, and was no dummy. He responded by telling me he was a “personal income tax auditor” for the state of New York. What followed was a textbook example of groupthink. He commenced by telling me how interesting his job was because he was making sure everyone stayed honest. Everyone should pay taxes. Not everyone was honest, some people were honest but ignorant. The tax department and auditors were there to protect the public. He was happy doing what he was doing, and he liked his work. He was protecting honest citizens from the crooks and the parasites. New York state took care of its people unlike those states with no personal income tax, states that provided sanctuary to people who want to keep their fortunes but not share by paying personal income taxes. Basically, you can’t argue with this guy because what he is saying is superficially true, ethical and moral. But, and there’s the clincher, his thinking from one subject to the other was schizoid! He was very individualized, independent, even liberal when discussing the social and personal impact of performance enhancers on non-professional vs. professional athletes, and the use of performance enhancers in the guy-next-door who works out to stay healthy or attractive. His lock-step “tax department” jargon and speech, almost soapbox preaching, was groupspeak, the product of groupthink. Can you identify the symptoms?

Here are two more examples I found on a professional networking site, LinkedIn, which is slowly morphing into a Facebook-type social media space. Whereas LinkedIn was originally intended to be a forum facilitating networking among professionals, the parasites slowly infiltrated and started their social justice preaching and religious proselytizing.

One characteristic of social justice and religion is that both are fertile ground for a bumper crop of groupthinkers. Example 1: Social Justice. This example is remarkable because it is so homogeneous in the majority responses and because of the sheer number of responses: 5,013 Likes, 321 comments! Synopsis: A young woman with Down’s syndrome appears in what is obviously a staged video, in which she receives a call from a fast-food chain, Chik-Fil-A, in which she is offered a job paying $11.50/h. It is her first real job and she is elated at the offer and accepts.

The groupthink: Actual comments: “Awesome!” “Wonderful!””Isn’t Chik-Fil-A a great company!””The story brought tears to my eyes!” “It made my day! We need more stories like this!” But many of the comments were condescending: They mentioned “learning disability” and how remarkable it was that this young woman had “won,” how employment “is a right,” and other misguided slogans associated with what we know as PC but was described by Janis as groupthink. The censorship/sanction/thought police action: A commenter posted some reasonable, dissenting, conflicting thoughts about the reality of the situation in terms of stereotyping highly functional Down’s syndrome  persons as having “learning disabilities,” a bucket term that stereotyped them unfairly. That she was hired on her merits and if she didn’t have what Chick-Fil-A needed and wanted, she would not have gotten the call. That Down’s syndrome persons are highly desirable in service jobs with customer contact because of their personality characteristics, as was pioneered by McDonald’s some time ago, and that these corporations are exploiting vulnerable persons with Down’s syndrome because they are perfect for these low-paying jobs, and it creates a very positive social image for the corporation, so-called “organizational health.” (See the McKinsey report below.)

Needless to say, the “mindguards” were quick to respond, and butchered the commentor for being “a Grinch,” for not “caring” and for his “dripping sarcasm.” Not a single comment out of more than 300 comments and replies accepted the truth of what the commenter wrote; almost all condemned him for not sharing the majority’s groupthink. (Click here to read the actual comments made by the commenter and some of the replies.)[4]

The value of hiring persons with Down syndrome is not lost on the corporations![5]

The economic benefits of hiring persons with intellectual challenges is not lost on the corporations, as is demonstrated by the McKinsey report[6], but we’re not supposed to talk about the dark side of Julia’s hiring because the group think won’t allow anyone to pop their bubble of denial or distract them from their happy, be nice, love fest by suggesting reality. That’s groupthink.

Here’s another from the same site, LinkedIn. This time it was a religious fanatic known popularly as a “Jesus-freak,” someone who posts an inflammatory statement about how Jesus is the truth and everything else is a lie. First of all, such posts are more Facebook quality and have nothing to do with professional networking, so it shouldn’t have been on LinkedIn in the first place. So the original post by one David Wood, who describes himself as the “Executive Producer Resurrection of Jesus Christ, Resurrection of Jesus Christ LLC, School Of Hard Knocks,” and his project as:

“The Resurrection Project unites the Body of Christ, to launch a global love movement, a feature length movie, and a video game, and tell the story of Jesus’ Christ resurrection and the 40 days that followed. “The Resurrection of Jesus Christ” is the greatest love story ever told.” www.theresurrectionofjesuschrist.com [Author’s note: My italics; I have not undertaken any editing of Mr. Wood’s English.]

His post was simply:

That was it. My first reaction was that Islam never claimed that Muhammad was God. Nor does Buddhism teach that Buddha was a god. The name applied to God in Arabic, and hence in Islam is Allah, which is merely an equivalent of the English, God, so that point is really moot. And the fact that Wood claims that his Jesus is the “only one God” reveals a bit of tunnel vision, even religious and theological ignorance. This is groupthink at one of its worst moments!

My point is this: Approach that post as I did, with the above reasoning, and you will obtain a clear lesson in groupthink.  The post received 51 Likes and 15 Comments but was seen be hundreds, perhaps thousands who didn’t want to “offend” by responding. (Or perhaps because religion is not as popular as Down’s syndrome? Or because the message was so bizarre? Who can say for sure?)

Those three examples should suffice to convince even the hardcore groupthinkers of their affliction.

The kinds of groups that are particularly at risk for the groupthink phenomenon are, of course, groups that we could characterize as cliques, whether consisting of 3 or 3000 persons. Cliques don’t need to be small and a whole company or department may become a clique. The group or clique should be cohesive for groupthink to develop; cohesive factors may include ethnicity, similar interest, and physical appearance. Members of a clique often isolate themselves as a group and tend to view the clique as superior to anyone outside the clique.

Cliques can form in any age group but they are most associated with groups whose members have gotten stuck in an adolescent or late childhood developmental stage, the stage when individuals normally form and become members of such groups. Accordingly, groupthink is characteristic of individuals who may have gotten stuck in a pre-adult developmental stage.

Facebook is a well known huge groupthink-collective in which groupthink can be diagnosed at various levels in the interactions from the very top, where the Facebook Standards and the thought police are active censoring deviant thinkers, that is, anyone who may not agree with Facebook or its policies, to the smaller yet equally repulsive “groups,” which may be “open,” “closed” or “secret”. The problem and real danger associated with Facebook and other social media that functions by exploiting the groupthink phenomenon is the sheer numbers of people who can be and actually are affected by the clique(s).

The proven disorder of Facebook Addiction or Internet Addiction Disorder make the problem even worse because once subscribers are addicted, they are captivated by the groupthink phenomenon and cannot escape.(See our article on Facebook Addiction Disorder on this blog.)

It’s the beginning of the end of open communication, autonomy, and due process.

Another problem is what I would call the “Room 101” factor[7]:  the fact that in terms of groupthink, when Facebook decides to deactivate an account for one reason or another, whether for a period of time certain (days, weeks, etc.) or permanently, this “punishment” practice has a psychospiritual effect on the affected individual, similar to being shunned or banned froma group or a clique. It is a powerful motivator to keep people under their thumb, a control strategy, that works extremely well once Facebook has hooked a person, and the person is sufficiently invested in Facebook in terms of time spent online and digital friends collected, such that the now addicted subscriber will feel the psychosocial pain of being “deactivated.,” in a sense placed in isolation by Facebook without the benefit of due process. Yes, it’s the beginning of the end of open communication, autonomy, and due process. Similar, in fact, to “vaporizing” a dissenter in Orwell’s “1984” where the dissenter is simply made to disappear, as if he never existed. [8]

The recent reports of Facebook’s cooperation with the US and Israeli governments to deactivate certain Facebook pages because their messages are “inconvenient” is a very disturbing step taken in the direction of thought control, Thought Police and Mindguards. That’s why we’ve been trying to get through to our readers to campaign against social media like Facebook! (See our articles on Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg‘s ambitious agenda to become God. Once he’s got a fifth of the world’s population addicted to Facebook and can control what they read, hear, see, and say, he’s well on his way to become the next Dictator in Heaven.)

The same “vaporizing” occurs when someone “unfriends” or “blocks” another subscriber who may have violated the group-leader’s or the group’s groupthink policies. Have you been Facebook vaporized recently? You wouldn’t know if you had been because Facebook strategically keeps it a secret; only the vaporizer and Facebook know it. Same applies when someone has a grudge against you on Facebook: they simply report you for such-and-such, and you find yourself deactivated. Groupthink à la Facebook!

The groupthink phenomenon can be avoided but only if the clique or the group is willing to acknowledge the phenomenon, to recognize it in their group, and sees the benefits of avoiding the phenomenon.

Fred Lunenburg (2012) proposes a number of possible ways to avoid groupthink in a group, including[9]:

• Encouraging group members to state and air objections, doubts, and questions,
• Promoting impartiality rather than stating preferences and expectations of the group at the outset,
• The group leaders should periodically discuss the group’s policies and practices and report their transactions back to the group, inviting feedback,
• Members should be invited to challenge the views of core members (and leaders),
• At least one member should play the role of devil’s advocate, expressing objections or critiquing group policies and practices, and beliefs,
• Where there is devil’s advocacy, members should spend time and effort evaluating the warning signals of developing groupthink inherent in adverse responses,
• Alternative scenarios should be constructed by group leaders in evaluating any rivaling intentions,
• In the case of a member who appears to consistently rival the group’s polices or practices (Red flag! Think groupthink!), the member should be asked to express as vividly as he can all his residual doubts,
• Group leaders or core members should present the entire issue to the group to elicit feedback and insights before making any definitive choices or decisions.

Group coherence and decision making has clear benefits over individual decision making. This is especially true when a decision must be made under conditions of uncertainty.[10] Some of the benefits described by Bonito (2011) include[11]:

• Improved decision quality
• Higher level of creativity and creative thinking
• Improved decision acceptance and organizational learning
• Increased decision understanding
• Enhanced effectiveness in establishing objectives, identifying alternatives
• Greater decision accuracy and avoidance of errors and glitches

Admittedly, these benefits may be less related to the actual outcomes of decisions than they are to group morale and satisfaction; we can agree that groups should and probably do perform better when

• Group members present a variety of relevant skills that differ sufficiently but do not create constraints or conflicts;
• There is a division of labor or effort, input;
• Individual inputs can be “averaged” in such a way as to arrive at a group “position.”

Are you controlled by the Thought Police, the Mindguards from the cradle to the grave?

By now you might be asking yourself the question: “That having been said, and while applicable to business decisions or to Facebook and other moderated social media, how does that apply to spiritual care or to our lives in our communities and the nation at large?” Well, in order to answer that question, I have to ask you to step out of your stall in the sheeple box, and think about the environment in which you live. Ask yourselves if you can identify groupthink in these situations:

• In your church or faith community. (Hint: How do you talk about other faith or belief groups)?
• In the Sports Association or Social Club. Do you have to toe the mark in what you talk about?
• In your political or social club (Hint: When at a Republican Club or Democratic Club or American Legion occasion, are you careful what you say?)
• In your children’s schools (Hint: Do you speak your mind at a Board of Education meeting or just sit simmering? At a PTA meeting what do you feel you can discuss? Do you even attend any of these?)
• At town board or village board meetings (Hint: Do you speak your mind at a board meetings or just sit simmering? Do you even attend any of these?)
• Have you ever avoided going somewhere or doing something because you were concerned what “they” would say?
• Are there subjects or topics or language that you avoid specifically to avoid being stereotyped or labeled? Do you choose political correctness over truth and honesty? Do you do that out of fear of the Mindguards?

Are you being stalked by the community or social media Thought Police, the Mindguards?

At home do you have open discussions with family members or are some subjects simply avoided or off-topic? Are the Thought Police at work in your home? Or are you letting the Facebook and social media thought police do their work for you? Have you seen your kids today?

When is the last time you looked at what your schools are teaching to your children? Have you ever openly questioned what they are being taught? Or are you letting the Mindguards manage your kids’ minds?

At work do you challenge social injustice or do you simply turn your back hoping it won’t hit you next? Are you open in discussing what you feel needs to be considered for change? Do you suggest improvements? Or are you living in constant fear of being “vaporized,” “unfriended,” “blocked” by your employer or even your workmates and coworkers?

Have you been castrated by the Thought Police, the Mindguards?

Most of us will find ourselves interacting throughout our entire lives with employers, educators, community members, governing bodies, committees, or just with our families. We take these interactions for granted; that’s a big mistake..Each of these environments is at high risk of the groupthink phenomenon, and we need to start thinking about the nature and quality of those interactions. Can you identify the symptoms of groupthink in any of your relationships or interations?

We frequently say that “emotions are contagious,” but we don’t frequently admit that not only emotions but the environment created by the attitudes and thinking of leaders and core members in a group are just as contagious in the form of groupthink.

Organizations like schools, religious institutions, government, social organizations are hotbeds for the groupthink

Those of us who are aware of our lives will admit that each group or community has its own culture, and if we are to work effectively with the members and effetively serve the ourselves and our community, we have to be aware of the groupthink phenomenon as it most certainly exists in that group or community. Ask yourself if you feel your teachers, your administrators, your elected officials, local law enforcement are listening to you and your concerns and their attitude towards the “necessary evil” of your opinion must be tolerated rather than facilitated. That attitude extends to all the members of the community, including educators, elected officials, law enforcement, etc.,  and the symptoms of groupthink can be quickly and easily identified if you care to look. How do we deal with that situation armed with the awareness of the probable existence of groupthink?

Organizations like schools, religious institutions, government, social organizations are hotbeds for the groupthink phenomenon because they are founded on very clear principles of operation and program; they have their” agendas.” The objectives and goals of the group are clearly defined and the members are controlled by the assignment of specific tasks and imposing protocols. The agenda is clearly defined. You simply don’t dissent or rock the hospice boat. Groupthink.

Institutional Agendas Define the Group.

 

As “tradition” the groupthink may have developed as a response to the local culture, whether it be socioeconomic, ethnic, religious, etc. In this case, it is a response to the exigencies of doing living and functioning with that demographic mix, and is almost a requirement for survival. Is this “positive” groupthink? Perhaps, but it goes without saying that unless the establishment leaves the door open to open discussion, sharing of insights, correct interpretations of warning signs and red flags, it can quickly transmute into “negative” groupthink.

As the organization leaves the traditional, local, “family” orientation or organization and moves towards the group or the corporate systems, groupthink becomes more of a high risk than a positive stabilizing factor. This is where the culture of the group or corporation overshadows the individuals that move it as well as those who consume its products and services. Rather than being an evolving, “living” organism, it is a monolith. Again,I can’t help but cite Facebook or the federal government as outstanding examples of such a negative development.

A number of large multinational corporations like IBM, 3M, Anheuser-Busch have recognized the threat posed by groupthink and have implemented and developed processes to prevent or at least to mitigate its deleterious and prejudicial effects within the components of the organization and on the organization as a whole. Lunenburg (2012) discusses some of the ways they have approached prevention of groupthink by way of methods like devil’s advocacy and dialectical inquiry. McDougel and Baum (1997) discuss the application of devil’s advocacy to stimulate discussion and avoid groupthink in focus groups.[12] McAvoy et al. discuss how devil’s advocacy and the principles of sensemaking can be used in a method they call the “agitation workshop” as a method of challenging the false consensus created by the groupthink phenomenon.[13]

Do frequent meetings and evaluations work to avoid groupthink? More likely than not, they may actually promote groupthink when leadership reiterate at each meeting the same expectations at the outset, setting the stage for a more limited and controlled conversation that does not allow for alternative discussion. But such meetings and evaluations and be highly productive if, at the outset, the leaders or facilitators are aware of the symptoms of groupthink and some of the methods to directly avoid it, as well as the quasi-paedagogical methods of enhancing creative thinking, even improving performance by institutionalizing dissent!

We can and should play an important and proactive role in making the organizations and leaders with whom we work aware of the groupthink phenomenon, its dangers and risks, and ways of avoiding the phenomenon in our environments. Once people are made aware of the phenomenon and ways to identify it and prevent it, we are on the path to reclaiming the efficacy and authenticity we once enjoyed but lost in the wake of the development of corporate control of our institutions and the chilling of interpersonal relations by online social media.

By using your brain you can avoid the dangers of groupthink!
The Editor

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Notes

[1] Irving Janis originally coined the term groupthink in 1972. (Janis, Irving L.  (1972).  Victims of Groupthink.  New York: Houghton Mifflin.)

[2] Janis, I. L. (1982). Groupthink: Psychological studies of policy decisions and fiascos (2nd ed.). Boston, MA: Houghton-Mifflin.

[3] For a more comprehensive discussion of the eight symptoms please refer to Janis’ Groupthink, Psychological Studies, above. A brief and very helpful overview of groupthink is provided in What is Groupthink? (http://www.psysr.org/about/pubs_resources/groupthink%20overview.htm, last accessed on January 8, 2018, 2018).

[4] The “Julia got a job!” obviously scripted video is synopsized on YouTube in the following words: “A heartwarming video shows the moment a teenage girl with Down syndrome receives her first job offer. A girl named Julia gets a phone call from a Chick-fil-A employee in Rancho Murieta, California. ‘I was just calling to offer you a position here,’ the woman says on speaker phone. ‘Your pay rate would be 11.50 per hour, would you like to accept?’ ‘I do,’ Julia says, her face overcome with emotion. As the woman tells her that she will start in December, Julia breaks down in tears of happiness. ‘Oh my gosh,’ she can be heard saying as she thanks the woman profusely. Julia’s family then encircles her and gives her a massive hug while chanting ‘Chick-Fil-A’. “ (AutoNews- Source:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5101331/Teen-girl-syndrome-cries-s-given-job.html?ITO=1490&ns_mchannel=rss&ns_campaign=1490)

[5] According to McKinsey & Company, a global management consulting firm that serves private, public and social sector institutions, in a report entitled, “The value that employees with Down syndrome can add to organizations,” we read “[H]owever, some companies have chosen to tackle the far more complex challenge of hiring people with intellectual disabilities. Those that have done so have found that these people can add value to organizational health (an organization’s ability to align, execute, and renew itself faster than competitors so that it can sustain exceptional performance over time). Employees with Down syndrome are a particularly interesting topic of research, as they have a number of characteristics that both increase the challenges associated with inclusion and bring added benefits.” [my italics] (McKinsey & Company (2014) “The value that employees with Down Syndrome can add to organizations” (Vicente Assis, Marcus Frank, Guilherme Bcheche, and Bruno Kuboiama), last accessed on January 9, 2018.)

[6] Ibid.

[7] I’m referring to the notorious Room 101 described in Orwell’s novel “Nineteen-Eighty-Four,” the room in the Ministry of Truth (MiniTru in Newspeak), where dissenters were taken for “processing,” most never to be heard from again. “You asked me once,” said O’Brien, “what was in Room 101. I told you that you knew the answer already. Everyone knows it. The thing that is in Room 101 is the worst thing in the world.”  (“1984” Part 3, Ch. 5)  In “1984” the Inner Party persecutes individualism and independent thinking known as “thoughtcrimes” and is enforced by the “Thought Police.” The Ministry of Love (Miniluv), the ministry in charge of torturing dissidents.  The protagonist Smith is subjected to many forms of torture and is forced into the horror chamber known only as Room 101.

[8] Mind Control – George Orwell BBC 101 Documentary last accessed on January 9, 2018.

[9] Lunenburg, F. (2012).” Devil’s Advocacy and Dialectical Inquiry: Antidote to Groupthink”. International Journal of

Scholarly and Academic Intellectual Diversity, Vol 14, No. 1, pp 1-9.

[10] Nikolaidis (2012) defines uncertainty as “the condition under which an individual [or group] does not have the necessary information to assign probabilities to the outcomes of alternative solutions. (Nikolaidis, E. (2012).  Design decisions under uncertainty with limited information. New York, NY: Taylor & Francis.)

[11] Bonito, J. (2011). Interaction and influence in small group decision making. New York, NY: Routledge.

[12] McDougal, C., F. Baum, (1997) “The Devil’s Advocate: A Strategy to Avoid Groupthink and Stimulate Discussion in Focus Groups,” Qualitative Health Research, Volume 7, Number 4, pp 532-541.

[13] John McAvoy, Tadhg Nagle and David Sammon, (2013) “A novel approach to challenging consensus in evaluations: The Agitation Workshop,” The Electronic Journal Information Systems Evaluation, Volume 16 Issue 1,  pp 45-55.