Russian Mafia in Our Back Yards?

Does the Carver Laraway-Boris Jordan-George McHugh Connection Mean We Now Have the Eurasian Mob on our Doorstep?

The Russian Mafia, known in Russia as Bratva, the “brotherhood”, has been around since the Tzar’s days, but up to about the 90s was fairly limited to muscling businessmen and in the protection/extortion racket, and black markets. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the so-called Russian mob was expanded to include ruthless criminals from areas like Chechnia, Ukraine, and other areas until it became more appropriate to call them the Eurasian mob.

The Eurasian mob has been involved in everything from Russian industry, banking and insurance, vice and corruption, to collaborating with other criminal groups like the drug cartels in Central and South America, and even financing and providing guns to the South Italian mafia, the Camorra.

Louis Freeh, former director of the FBI, said that the Russian mafia posed the greatest threat to U.S. national security in the mid-1990s. In August 2010, Alain Bauer, a French criminologist, said that it “is one of the best structured criminal organizations in Europe, with a quasi-military operation.” It’s only gotten worse.

One example is Vyacheslav “Yaponchik” Ivankov, who was sent to Brighton Beach (NY) in 1992, allegedly because he was killing too many people in Russia and also to take control of Russian organized crime in North America. Within a year, he built an international operation that included, but was not limited to, narcotics, money laundering, and prostitution and made ties with the American Mafia and Colombian drug cartels, eventually extending to Miami, Los Angeles, and Boston. Those who went against him were usually killed.

Question: If Ivankov was a well-known organized crime figure and undesirable in his own country, Russia, how did he manage to get into the United States??? Who paid whom off? Where was our national security organization at the time? Where is our national security, Homeland Security, the FBI, now?

On June 7, 2017, 33 Russian mafia affiliates and members of the Russian mob were arrested and charged by the FBI, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and NYPD for extortion, racketeering, illegal gambling, firearm offenses, narcotics trafficking, wire fraud, credit card fraud, identity theft, fraud on casino slot machines using electronic hacking devices; based in Atlantic City and Philadelphia, murder-for-hire conspiracy and cigarette trafficking.

On 19 February 2018, 18 defendants, members of the Russian mob, were accused of laundering over $62 million through real estate, including with the help of Vladislav Reznik, former chairman of Rosgosstrakh; one of Russia’s largest insurance companies. The Russian mob is involved in everything from real estate to banking to aluminum refining companies in Kentucky. (See the article, “Russian organized crime operates just about everywhere” by G. W. Abersold Ph.D. – March 13, 2018). Have they now found a home in Coeymans, a guest of Carver Laraway, at the so-called Coeymans Industrial Park. Will Coeymans be renamed “Russia on the Hudson?

Even the Times of Israel published an article, “US targets ‘Thieves-in-Law,’ Russian mafia royalty” (23 December 2017) and writes, “Washington seems to be confirming that the threat posed by the fabled “Russian mafia” from the former Soviet republics is a more organized one than previously supposed.” Gee! Didn’t you know that?

Russian Mob in Your Back Yard!

Well, Guess What? The Russian mob may be right in your back yard, in the Coeymans Industrial Park, in the grey building with no visible sign identifying what’s going on inside, the very building that houses the Curaleaf marijuana growing and processing operation headed by none other than Russian businessman, Boris Alexei Jordan, who is working in partnership with Carver Laraway and his lackey George McHugh.

This is the Curaleaf facility in the Coeymans Industrial Park
No sign on the building. You’d never find it if you were looking for Curaleaf. We identified it by the many vents on the building and a tiny sign on a door mentioning “Curaleaf Security.” We later confirmed with an employee outside the building.

Boris Jordan likes to talk about how he almost single-handedly turned the Russian economy, including banking and industry, around in Russia. But the boy-wonder, Boris Alexei Jordan, has only a B.A. from New York University, not very impressive credentials for a veritable miracle worker. So how does a guy with only an undergrad degree get to Russia and just start reorganizing things? There’s got to be more, much more to this story than meets the eye. We think we know what it is, too.

Jordan thinks we all came down with the last shower, it seems. Does he and his pals Carver Laraway and George McHugh really think we believe he’d get anything done in Russia without the backing of the powerful Russian mafia and Putin, who himself is closely connected with the Russian mob and mob money? Does Jordan, who blatantly admits that “business is done differently in Russia than it is in the USA,” and that bribery is an accepted way of doing business there, think we’re all stupid?

The Russian Bear Loves Dollar$!

Our question is also this: If he didn’t have mob connections and didn’t work with the Russian mafia and Putin’s crew, how did he stay alive over there? The answer is easy: He worked with them. They had him in their pockets.

It’s no secret that the Eurasian mob is getting more sophisticated and has entered the banking, insurance industries, and even aluminum refining in Kentucky. Jordan himself admits that now that billionaire bucks have bought off the United States government and legislatures, that pot is a major growth industry and a huge market. Jordan has carved out a chunk of that market and want’s us to believe that he’s the genius behind it all. He’s the front man, maybe, but he’s no genius and it’s not Jordan who’s behind it all.

The FBI and other law enforcement agencies in the United States have been aware of this growing problem since at least the 1990’s if not the 1970s but have done remarkably little to slow down the mob’s growth in the United States or even to keep their kingpins out of the country. We really should be asking Why?

In a Connecting Heights (PBS) interview, the interview starts out with a bit of background:

Boris Jordan was a key figure in Russia’s economic transition to capitalism in the early ’90s, assisting in the launch of the Russian stock market and the privatization of state assets. Later appointed chief executive of Russia’s Gazprom Media as well as general director of its NTV television network, Jordan was forced to resign in early 2003 under political pressure.

But there’s one key bit of information we haven’t shared: Boris Alexei Jordan is an American of Russian parentage. You see, his people emigrated from Russia after the revolution. He admits he grew up in a strongly Russian traditional home, went to Russian school, and he even speaks fluent Russian. According the interview transcript, Jordan says:

I was very interested in Russia. My family came from this country. I was educated in the United States at home as a Russian. I had a Russian education on Saturdays for Russian language and Russian history. My university education was based on U.S.-Soviet diplomacy.

[Editor’s Note: This is a bit confusing because at one point Jordan says his education was based on “Russian diplomacy” and a couple of breaths later says that his background was “Russian finance.” The man can’t keep his story straight.]

We also find it interesting that Boris Jordan entered the Russian economic scene in the 1990’s, a time when the Russian state was in a turmoil and the Russian mob was seizing the opportunity of a country in chaos to get its fangs into very vulnerable and influential business sectors. They obviously needed a plan and needed one fast: Enter Boris Alexei Jordan and a small team of other opportunists. You don’t just step in because a bunch of patriots invite you in, not in Russia. The mob doesn’t just let some hungry wannabe waltz in and take over what was theirs to claim. Jordan had to have mob support or he was a dead man.

One clue about the sinister connections is a statement made by Jordan in an interview, when he talks about setting shop in the Metropol Hotel in Moscow:

“We literally had to come in on a weekly basis with a suitcase of $25,000 or $50,000, or $100,000 in cash to just finance this whole operation and put it together.“

Jordan describes how he got things done, avoiding the word “bribe” and replacing it with “incentivize,” according to Jordan: Where’d he get the suitcases of money he was talking about in his interviews? Santa Claus? The Easter Bunny?

Where’d the suitcases of money come from? The United States has laws and rules concerning how much money leaves the country and Russia certainly has rules about the sources and destinations of US$. Where’d the money come from, Mr Jordan?

Was it Easter Bunny money in the suitcases?

In the end it was a very old, simple process that got these guys to agree. We had to basically, I wouldn’t say bribe, but incentivize them by giving them stock.

Shakespeare wrote: “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet?” In other words, a rose would smell just as sweet if you called it a cabbage. Well, bribery by any other name smells just as bad. Whether you call a bribe and incentive or not, it’s still a bribe. Sorry, Boris.

Doesn’t matter whether it’s in the Kremlin, Cuomo’s office, the NY state Senate or Assemby, or in Washington D.C., or George McHugh’s or Michael Biscone’s office.
It’s still bribery.

At another point in the same interview, Jordan responds:

“There’s an argument that I’ve compromised principles somehow by trying to adjust to doing business in the Russian environment…If you’re going to operate within this environment, if you’re going to have an impact on changing it, you can’t do it overnight. You can’t come in here and say, “For God’s sake, you have to follow the U.S. laws on securities for these operations.” You can’t do that. It’s just impossible…I’ve created a way of life for myself here [in Russia]. I’m living here with my family and my children for a very long period of time, and I intend to continue to live here. We are participants in an evolution and a change in this country…I’d love to change this country in two, three years, but I don’t want to make it look like the United States because, frankly, this country has tremendous things that are different from the United States.” [Emphasis provided]

That interview was conducted by PBS “Commanding Heights,” on October 3, 2000; Jordan was 33 at the time. There’s a lot going on in that background but we’ll gloss over it for now. Trust us when we say that it all supports our contention that Jordan is part of something much bigger and much more sinister than just growing pot.

We found another site that tells the story of how Boris Jordan does business. It’s a real eye-opener so do yourself a favor and read the article by Bill Browder, an American investor, “A true story of high finance, murder and my fight for justice in Putin’s Russia,” in which Jordan is a key figure.

American Investor Bill Browder, at war with Boris Jordan

Jordan was fired from his positions at Gazprom and NTV while in Russia. Apparently he stepped on Putin’s toes and had to go. Read the New York Times report at “American Financier Is Fired as Head of Russian TV Network,” Putin was angered by Jordan’s publishing premature reports of Russian troop movements responding to a Chechen terrorist attack on a Moscow theater that left 129 hostages dead. Jordan thought the report was ”exceptionally well done.” Putin’s response was, “journalists should not ply their trade ”on the blood of your own citizens — if, of course, those who do this consider these citizens to be their own.” The remark was widely seen as a jab at  Jordan and a NTV journalist, Savik Shuster, a Canadian citizen. Jordan’s operation gets 129 people killed and Jordan thinks it was “exceptionally well done.” Disgusting.

The Russian Mob – Boris Alexei Jordan – His American Whores (Carver Laraway/George McHugh) relaxing together.

In one interview with CNBC he openly talks about getting US laws changed. Now how do you think he gets that little tidbit done? He also says that the Candadian market for pot isn’t big enough; its the US that is the target. Does that get your gray matter fired up yet?

Our research has shown that more is written about him in Russian than in English. In fact, credibility is an issue here, and there’s an awful lot about Boris Alexei Jordan that is in-credible. But make no mistake about it: Boris Alexei Jordan is 200% Russian.

For an interesting perspective, see the article “How Russia Prepared Renaissance Capital Co-Founder Boris Jordan For The Cannabis Industry” by Javier Hasse and Alex Oleinic , Benzinga contributors.

But all of that aside, we have to seriously ask ourselves where our elected and public officials were when all of this was in the planning and ultimately got approved by someone. We’re thinking especially of those closest to us and our children, those elected officials and public servants in whom we place our trust to make good decisions and to protect us:

• Ravena Coeymans Selkirk Central School District & Board of Education: When they’re not spending tax dollar wildly or evading paying taxes, where were they when the Town of Coeymans was considering this pot growing and processing facility? Of all the public servants, we’d have expected our kids’ educators to have chimed in at some point along the line. But they don’t care about anything but their own interests and their pensions.
• The Coeymans Town Board and the Ravena Village Board: Where were the public comment sessions and were were the town and village officials while all this was being hatched? Weren’t they elected to protect the public’s best interests? Instead they put out the Welcome Mat to a Russian billionaire, his American whores, and the Russian mob. Great job!
• Where were the Churches?!? All the Jesus Loves You! freaks. All the Bible Thumpers! All the Faith and Family Values hypocrites? All the good church-goers that fill the church parking lots for 45 minutes every Sunday? Where were your pastors, your priests, your bishops, your deacons and elders when all of this was happening?
• Law Enforcement: Yeah, we know: All we can do is enforce the law! Poor excuse, dudes! Are you a bunch of brainless manikins? A bunch of remote controlled robots who get reprogrammed every time the politicians conjure up some hare-brained scheme? Just a couple of years ago, we recall and so do you, you and our corrupt judges were ruining peoples’ lives for a dime-bag of pot. Now you’re right in the middle of the corruption protecting the industrial pot-growers? If that isn’t an example of public corruption and the mob at work, what is. Can you defend yourselves?
• But the worst bunch are the state and federal legislators, the people some voters put in the New York State Assembly and the Senate, and the US House of Reps and US Senate. They’re the biggest failures, disappointments and criminals because they are the real Whores of Babylon, it’s that bunch of elitists who sold us out. They took mob money to legalize another drug plague. They criminalized tobacco, an American addiction, only to legalize marijuana, a foreign addiction. They all should be tried as traitors!
• And our final accusation is against YOU! Where were you when all of this was going on? Probably watching some sick sitcom like Mike and Molly while the rest of us were out voting, exercising one of our most important rights. It was your responsibility, your duty, your obligation to safeguard your children, their community, and their future. You FAILED! Your children’s blood is on your hands. We’ll be there to remind you when catastrophe strikes, if it hasn’t done already.

Moscow on the Hudson

Kremlin and Red Square (Moscow), Law Office of George McHugh (Old Ravena News Herald Building), Coeymans Industrial Park, the News Herald Offices (the former George McHugh law offices). Moscow will soon be in Coeymans via the Coeymans Industrial Park!

 

Happy Independence Day! Everyday.

No Flag-waving, Sunshine Patriotism. It’s all Phony. We are Celebrating Truth, Instead.

Our gift to our readers, followers, and supporters on this Independence Day. From the movie Idiocracy (2006), President Camacho’s State of the Union address:

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Editor’s Note: Idiocracy is a 2006 American science fiction satire/comedy film. The film tells the story of two people who take part in a top-secret military human hibernation experiment, only to awaken 500 years later in a dystopian society where anti-intellectualism and commercialism have run rampant, and which is devoid of intellectual curiosity, social responsibility, and coherent notions of justice and human rights. The main character, Joe Bauers, the definition of “average American”, is selected by the Pentagon to be the guinea pig for the top-secret hibernation program. Forgotten, he awakes five centuries in the future. He discovers a society so incredibly dumbed down that he’s easily the most intelligent person alive. Many in the media and commentators call the film a “documentary” rather than a comedy, and discuss how the theme of the film is actually coming true!

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We’re celebrating the REAL America. We’re celebrating the Catskills!

Unlike most journalism and unlike most media, Smalbany is Independent, totally Independent, and doesn’t sell out for cash, ratings, future promises. Smalbany cherishes the guaranteed freedom of press and opinion, and will never abuse that guaranteed right. Smalbany is no slave to any special interest, any politician, or bribery of any kind. No other area print or online media can make that claim. That’s why we are the areas most read and most trusted journalistic source for truth and openness.

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The Smalbany a.k.a. Albany, NY, team wish all of our readers a safe and peaceful Independence Day 2019.

The Smalbany Blog again celebrates their 5th Independence Day, Yes! 5 years already serving the community and beyond. Smalbany Blog confirms and re-asserts their

• Independence from allegiance to any political party, ideology, special interest, religion, or group; Smalbany’s only allegiance is to Truth and Fairness.
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• Independence from any blame or guilt; Smalbany has always maintained the highest level of integrity — and will continue to do so — and has nothing to fear from the powers to be.

And speaking of misinformation, Most historians have concluded that the Declaration was signed nearly a month after its adoption, on August 2, 1776, and not on July 4 as is commonly believed. The actual resolution of independence was made on July 2, 1776, by the Second Continental Congress in a closed session. So why July 4th? The declaration resolution was publicized on July 4, 1776. In 1781, the Massachusetts General Court became the first state legislature to recognize July 4 as a state celebration. But it wasn’t until 1870 that the U.S. Congress made Independence Day an unpaid holiday for federal employees, and only in 1938 did Congress change Independence Day to a paid federal holiday; in 1941 the day was expanded to become a “national” holiday. (5 U.S.C. § 6103). (Source: https://www.history.com/topics/holidays/july-4th, last accessed on July 3, 2019)

That’s the kind of Independence we at Smalbany wish each and every one of our contributors, followers, readers, and supporters. We wish you all a Smalbany Independence Day, every day!

The Hudson River represents natural freedom and independence. Keep it pure and free.

 

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.

 

$46 Million Dollar School Budget Passed – One Backwoods School District

Voters a.k.a. “residents” approved a local RCS Central School District school budget of almost $46 million dollars. That’s more than the total budgets of several surrounding townships combined! Voters a.k.a. “residents” who passed the budget are largely non-property owners but the property owners foot the bill. What’s more, local government has caved to demands that local corporations get their tax breaks and reduced assessments. Again, local tax burden falls on the shoulders of local property owners. The local area is falling apart and so is the quality of education because we’re educating those who don’t have an appreciation for education and who likely don’t even use it later; they just don’t come from a background that encourages working or learning. So why do we keep spending and spending and spending? We don’t make the necessary adjustments, we just tax more and spend more. Why is that?

You’re still doing it! So we’re here to tell you how…

$45,829,423 budget for the 2017-18 school year!?! That’s more than local town budgets combined! And you wonder why your roads suck? You wonder why your drinking water is toxic and brown? You wonder why crime is rampant and the police do little or nothing to bring in the criminals? You wonder why you can’t make ends meet? But don’t you wonder why your kids act like brain dead morons? Why they can’t read? Why they can’t spell? Why they can’t hold a discussion?

Has anyone ever asked the students — the one’s with the lights on and someone home in their heads — what they think of their education, of their teachers? Times Union, News Herald, Daily News, W10, W13? Has any of the media given a thought to ask students about what they think of their education? Well, it would have to be cleverly done — and that rules out Times Union, News Herald, Johnson Newspaper Group, Daily News, W10 and W13, practically all Capital District media — and it would ideally include past graduates, who would be more likely to be truthful and say where RCS education got them. Current students would be fearful of teacher or student retaliation if they were to be interviewed and identified. That’s the way it has been and continues to be in the RCS Central School District, and is very likely the same situation throughout this third-world, backwoods hole in the earth. (Great place for woodchucks, though.)

We did an informal survey and found that several past graduates agreed that “one in fifteen teachers was any good and cared for students.” Others simply hated RCS and refused to participate even in 10 year class reunions. One RCS teacher with 23 years teaching said that he couldn’t wait to retire, “They have millions for astroturf but no money for books for my AP students! I’m history as soon as I can retire.” A history of pitiful graduation rates, low student and teacher morale, and spending seem to characterize local schools, especially spendthrift RCS.

Why don’t we ask the one’s who know?

If past history is anything to judge by, we have a pattern of fewer property owners (those who pay) and a growing number of social service recipients, senior citizens (those who can’t afford to leave), and transients (those who don’t pay), as well as a decline in taxable businesses, and an increase in pandering to local large corporations (who get “corporate welfare”) who want and get tax breaks but don’t create jobs and don’t contribute to tax revenues. So the misinformation provided by propaganda machines like the Times Union, News Herald, and other local media, flash such titles as “School budgets sail to approval”(Times Union, May 19, 2016) reporting also that “districts were mostly able to avoid huge tax hikes in their 2016-17 budgets thanks to a large increase in state aid.” Really? If that’s last year’s situation, why the increase this year?

The previous year, the Times Union article, “Voters Happy With Budgets” (May 19, 2015) reports that “Voter turnout was typically slim with many school board candidates running unopposed. Albany saw 72 percent of voters who showed up to vote offer support for the school budget. In 2015 Albany passed a $234 million budget that carried no tax increase. Schenectady passed a $177 million budget that will actually decrease the tax levy 0.21 percent. The report goes on to say that “on average, Capital Region schools are prepared to spend and tax more than other districts around the state. Spending is poised to rise 2.87 percent at schools across the region next year (compared to 2.1 percent statewide), while tax levies will increase an average of 0.95 percent (compared to 0.7 percent statewide). That was 2015.

The pattern continues in RCS. 2017-18 budget passed by voters Residents of Ravena-Coeymans-Selkirk took to the polls Tuesday, May 16, approving a $45.8 million budget for the 2017-18 school year, as well as the bus purchase proposition and community library vote. Voter turnout was typically slim (less than 1000 voters, down from previous years) with school board candidates running unopposed.

The local school district got approval to purchase school buses for the year ahead and create additional teaching positions. New technology purchases, like Chromebooks and iPads, were also high on the budgets, as well as a bigger investment in professional development for teachers. More technology, less learning, more cyberkids and sheeple. What a plan for Big Brother!

Local politicians, including the RCS School Board, are like maggots eating us alive.

Corporate Welfare. Lowered assessment for Selkirk Cogen to affect RCS homeowners (May 5, 2017). The RCS Central School District website reports: “One noticeable difference for taxpayers will be increased tax rates for the 2017-18 year, due to a lowered tax assessment for local business Selkirk Cogen. The district does not control home or business assessments, however, taxes collected from those [private] assessments act as revenue for the district.” This is purest propaganda. These businesses come to this area, destroy our historically beautiful landscapes, poison our air and our water, demand tax breaks at the expense of property owners and small business, drive out local residents and businesses, shift the tax burden to local property owners. They promise prosperity and jobs, which our local hillbilly elected officials gobble up like hungry hogs, and don’t deliver. In fact, the trend is to automate operations, leaving the really dirty jobs to low-paid black-collar workers. Now that’s a real vision for the future. Our economic geniuses hard at work for the corporations, while burying us!

According to a RCS school board member : “As a district, we have no control over assessments,” school board member James Latter said. “it’s unfortunate the reduced assessment has an effect on our resident taxpayers, we are thankful for businesses like Selkirk Cogen. It’s businesses like these that often pay large sums of school taxes, taking some of the burden off our residents.” Contradiction here, Mr Latter? Read that quote again! He’s double-talking. And that’s the kind of dumbass RCS voters put on the school board! 

That kind of pass-the-buck double talk is characteristic of weasel Jim Latter, who is an employee of a Saudi-owned corporation in Feura Bush, so we know where his loyalties lie. He’s not going to be honest and tell it like it is: He’s going to spend, spend, spend and then blame the tax hikes on the local town administrations! Of course he’s thankful to Cogen and to his Saudi keepers, they sign his checks.  But it’s his talking out of both sides of his mouth that irks us most. You see, they preach austerity and fiscal responsibility but they don’t practice what they preach.

We’d like to know where the money came from for the sports field refreshment stand that is not used for 6-8 months of the year? The RCS Sports Association was to have paid for it but they couldn’t raise the money. Anybody hear where the rest of the money came from? Anyone care to guess? We all know. But the question is still: If we have so many youth sports associations and groups in the area, why does the school district have to have million dollar playing fields. Is the RCS community that rich? We know it’s falling apart and dirty. We know that our elected swine are handing our community to killer trucks, heavy truck traffic, dust devils, and our roads are tuning into mini-Grand Canyons. We know our students are coming out of RCS schools stupid. We know that there’s money for jocks but no money for books and brain programs. We know the teachers are getting paid very well, get incredible benefits and get paid professional enhancements. We know that 75-80% of the budget goes to salaries and benefits. What else do you know but won’t admit?

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Heres a contribution from one of our readers that should get you thinking:

I was working out at the Glenmont Planet Fitness when a group of about 4-6 boys gathered around one of the equipment. One was on the phone and talking to “his brother”. When he had finished he asked the others whether they knew anyone who would “buy” for them. As the conversation went on it became clear that they needed alcohol for a group or a party that was going to happen in connection with the prom. They brainstormed for a little and made some calls, and then, apparently the problem was solved. Someone, one of the boys brothers, would make the purchase. These guys were obviously still in school at RCS and planning a party after the senior prom. They needed booze and found it. I wanted to give them a good talking to but the way they were acting, it would only have caused a scene and embarassed me. They were too ignorant to care, and their language didn’t make me think they had any brains.

I thought about one of the blogs recent articles about the accident on 144 when Logan Penzabene was creamed and his buddy seriously injured. I remember the quotes from local law enforcement, and then there’s Cuomo’s campaign. I lthought how right you were in that article. Then I saw this one and everything got clear. It’s all smoke and mirrors around here.

Not two weeks after a fatal accident and these knuckleheads are looking for alcohol. What? Isn’t the prom enough? I guess they’re so insecure they have to drink. So where are the parents? Do these kids still have parents? Do they know it? What’s up with all this law enforcement effort to curb these teen morons and their childish behavior? Where’s the school district and the teachers on this one? Where’s Cuomo’s campaign. They’re at Planet Fitness arranging for a booze delivery! I couldn’t believe my ears!

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Well, there you have it, “Not two weeks after a fatal accident and these knuckleheads are looking for alcohol. ” Maybe the RCS school district can get a discount on the grief counseling they provide after the fact. Is that in the budget? Plenty of money to spend but none to spend wisely.

Less than 1 in 5 persons in Coeymans eligible to vote actually voted in the budget vote! And they weren’t property owners voting for a tax increase, we know that for sure!

Coeymans has a population of about 7500 persons with 13% over 65 years of age. In 2010 there were approximately 3000 housing units in Coeymans, of which 70% were owner occupied (the tax base). 91% of residents 25 years old or older are high-school graduates but only 1 in 5 has a bachelor’s degree (they graduated high school but either couldn’t get into a 4-year college or didn’t try)! Of those employed, they travel an average of 26 minutes to work (Obviously they don’t work locally. Where would they work?) Half of the population earns less than $55,500 a year, and there’s a 10% poverty rate. About one quarter of Coeymans residents is under 18 years of age; 13% are over 65 years old. OK. Let’s do some old-fashioned math: 25% of Coeymans are under 18 so they can’t vote. That leaves 75% of Coeymans residents who can vote, or 5,675 eligible voters. Let’s say, just for argument’s sake, that only 5000 are legally registered and can actually vote. The numbers for the budget vote show only about 900 total votes were cast on May 16, 2017. that means that less than 1 in 5 eligible voters actually voted (This is probably less, considering that parts of New Baltimore in Greene County could participate in the voting!). This is even more alarming because if we can believe the US census data, 70% of the some 3000 housing units in the town of Coeymans are owner occupied, meaning that they are property owners and foot the tax bill. That’s about 2,100 voters, at least, who should have showed up to vote on the budget! How many property owners do you know who would vote for a tax increase? So you can guess who the majority of the about 600 votes were, who voted for the budget and the tax increase, can’t you? Piss poor performance in our opinion! Are you proud of yourselves, Coeymanites.

“The impact of the reduced assessment will be reflected in September 2017 tax bills when residents will likely see an estimated tax rate increase between 4.5 and 6.5 percent (based on 2016 tax assessment figures), depending on town of residency.

The RCS Graduate:
Can’t draw, can’t spell, can’t count, can’t write,, can’t drive.
Can drink, can fornicate, can finger-fondle any electronic device.
Can get a social services check.

Local Corporations Get Tax Breaks; Property Owners Get a Tax Increase; Teachers Get Increases in Perks and Benefits; Students look forward to a lousy education; We all Get Shoddy Government by Incompetent Ego-maniacs; Our Roads Get Worse (Our idiot highway departments fill in potholes with sand today, pothole’s back tomorrow). The budget calls for an increase in total spending of 2.6 percent from the 2016-17 school year and a tax levy increase of 1.25 percent, which equals the district’s limit based on the state’s tax levy cap calculation. Translation: for a home valued at $150,000 with no STAR exemption this would lead to a projected tax increase of $195 for Bethlehem residents, $116 for Coeymans residents, $117 for New Scotland residents, and $153 for New Baltimore residents. Here’s what you get for your tax increaase:

• Local Corporations Get Tax Breaks
• Tax burden shifts to property owners and small businesses
• Property Owners Get a Tax Increase
• Teachers Get Increases in Perks and Benefits
• Students look forward to a lousy education
• We all Get Shoddy Government by Incompetent Ego-maniacs
• Our Roads Get Worse (Our idiot highway departments fill in potholes with sand today, pothole’s back tomorrow)
• You get less in the package for more in the manufacturer’s pocket (Do you ever read the labels of your coffee containers?)
• Welfare recipients get their cell phones, transportation, manicures, healthcare for free (Are you going to work today? Second job? Third job?)

Voters turned out in very low numbers, again. Even more alarming is that — even with the low turnout– there seems to be a bizarre pattern in the voting this year (similar to past years) With with the budget receiving 538 in favor and 294, the bus proposition 537 yes and 289 no; The RCS Community Library budget showed the same pattern of 593 in favor and 297. (RCS Central School District webpage, 2017-18 budget passed by voters, last accessed on May 17, 2017). Even more bizarre is that several of the local news reports repeat each other’s stories almost word for word!

The only good news coming out of this year’s budget vote was that the RCS Community Library vote passed with 593 in favor and 297 opposed. Residents also re-elected two candidates to the library board of trustees. Bravo! RCS Community Library! 

The only ones with half a brain appear to be the baby-boomers and they’re quickly disappearing from the area, leaving outright, or just dying. It appears anyone born after 1980 is a product of the materialist consumerism that haunts us today. Those born in and after the 1990’s are a total loss to their anxieties and greed. After 2000, they are either chemical or electronic addicts; orphans, really, and unable to articulate a sentence or even make change at the counter, even when the amount of change is displayed on a screen.

Your school tax dollars at work. Thank you.

Holy Scripture & Our Opinion
The Editor

 

How long do we have to wait? Official or Unofficial?

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It’s 12:00 noon on Friday the 13th, ten (10) days after the Greene County Elections, and the morons at the Greene County Board of Elections STILL HAVEN’T POSTED THE FINAL RESULTS OF THE NOVEMBER 3RD ELECTIONS. THE LINK TO THE “OFFICIAL” RESULTS STILL SHOWS “UNOFFICIAL” RESULTS. WAKE UP GUYS!

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WE WANT TO KNOW NOW!!!

So far, SILENCE!

Today, on Veterans Day, we claim to be celebrating the men and women still among us who served to preserve our dignity, rights, and freedoms. What “dignity”? What “rights”? What “freedoms”? Today, on Veterans Day, we slap our veterans in the face and kick them in the ass! Let’s ask our elected officials and politicians Why? that is!

A “Commander-in-Chief” who talks big about “We’ll keep fighting” but who has never served. Politicians who collect the money and get the benefits but can’t stick to the real issues. Media that sells ratings rather than inform us. We’ve forgotten what it is to be a real hero because we get fed a “hero-a-day”!

She Weeps for Us!

A week after the elections and we still don’t know the final results! Absentee ballots are not yet counted!!!

If the craziness and nastiness of election campaigns and the anxiety centering on the questionable results of local elections were not enough, our paid officials can’t even get their announcements right. It’s no wonder people don’t vote. But how can this country criticize other nations’ voting practices when our own is in such a sorry state?

For example, It’s now a week after the November 3, elections, and the final results are not posted (absentee ballots are STILL not counted).

The Greene County Board of Elections, Marie Metzler  (mmetzler@discovergreene.com) and Brent Bogardus (bbogardus@discovergreene.com), commissioners, can’t even decide whether the results on the Greene County Board of Elections website are “Official” or “Unofficial”. Who would think to look on the Green County Employee Info page for the November 3, 2015, “Official”/”Unofficial” election results, anyway. And they don’t tell us when the results, official or unofficial, will be final.

The Greene County Board of Elections page link reads: “Official Election Results/November 3, 2015” but the link goes to “Unofficial” results and those unofficial results are on the “greeneemployeeinfo” page. Go figure! And we trust those guys with running our elections?

When will they decide? Official or Unofficial?

And we mentioned last week that we expected the Albany County Board of Elections to be dragging their feet. Commissioners Matthew J. Clyne (D) and Rachel L. Bledi (R) don’t bother to provide their e-mail addresses. Do you think they’re interested in hearing from you about the outrageous delay in getting absentee ballots counted and the final results out? Coeymans will have to wait until after November 13, 2015, to learn the results. (Well, the good news is you still have time to leave town!) By the way, that’s Friday the 13th. Does that give the results away?

Albany will Count the Coeymans Absentee Ballots on Friday the 13th!

What’s the delay?!?!

We know Albany County is a Democrap sumphole and is run by a bunch of political machine backroom cronies, but really, do they actually need 10 days to count and tally absentee ballots? Where are we anyway? In Afghanistan?

Our Board of Elections will Let Us Know our Fate
on Friday the 13th.
Be Afraid. Be VERY Afraid!
But there’s still time to leave town, people!

The Editor

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We Sure Can Pick’m! We did it again!

For those of you who still are not convinced that our local communities want the TRUTH and have an appetite for correct information, we provide that right here on this blog. We provided true factual information that local residents and voters needed to make the wise choices in local government. And that’s exactly what New Baltimore voters did: They voted with their heads and made some BIG CHANGES. Ousted two long-term do-nothing fixtures and brought in new blood!

We Published our Picks for the 2015 Local Elections and GUESS WHAT?

WE DID IT AGAIN!

New Baltimore is a Winner

The Three Most Important Positions, Supervisor, Highway Superintendent, County Legislator: Right on the money!

Just as we predicted:
New Baltimore Republicans kicked ass!

Special recognition goes to Alan VanWormer who ousted Denis Jordan for New Baltimore Superintendent of Highways!

Jordan was the incumbent and we all know how hard it is to get rid of an incumbent. But Jordan got too cocky and overconfident in the past couple of years. He apparently thought that he could buy enough votes with favors that he was a Rock of Gibraltar, a permanent fixture until he, Jordan, decided he wanted out. Well, New Baltimore voters made the choice for him. Alan VanWormer, 25 years with the New Baltimore Highway Department, will now take over where Jordan takes off. There’s a lot to be done and a lot of it is real clean-up but we think VanWormer can do it. But only if he has his finger on the pulse of the community and works closely with the New Baltimore town board. He’s made those commitments, now let’s see if he can man up and follow through. We’ll be watching every step — or trip — of the way. Good Luck! Mr Superintendent VanWormer!

Nick Delisanti was a no-brainer when it came to comparing him with Arthur Fullerton!

In terms of numbers, Delisanti creamed Fullerton and rightly so. Fullerton, a dumbocrap sockpuppet, had his head up his arse as far as the issues went. He also has a love affair with Arthur Fullerton and is an egomaniac. Fullerton thought he could take the supervisor’s office simply on ego. Well, voters in New Baltimore kicked ole king Arthur down a couple of notches; sent Fullerton scurrying with his scary tail between his legs. Mr Delisanti did very well in his first two years as New Baltimore town supervisor and we expect much, much more from him in the next two years. Voters gave him a new bunch of people this elections and if Delisanti doesn’t use that capital wisely, we’ll be there to let you know.

Pat Linger handed Jim VanSlyke his walking papers, too. VanSlyke has been a county legislator for several terms but made the big mistake of making a little statement that sent a HUGE message to voters. In effect, VanSlyke let it slip that he puts his discretionary funds where he can buy the most votes. We caught that one and made hay with it; New Baltimore voters made change with it. Mr Linger now has our ear and we’ll be listening very closely. In the meantime, we wish him well in the Greene County Legislature.

That’s YOU, Coeymans!

Coeymorons Re-Elect Dithering Tom Dolan and Put Cemetery Manager Rick Touchette in the County Legislature!

We don’t spend much time in the sewerage capital of the world, Ravena-Coeymans, so we aren’t infected with the apathy virus most Ravena-Coeymans voters seem to have. That may be why we really sucked in our predictions for Ravena-Coeymans. But HEY! we can’t expect the whole world to be reasonable, logical, and honest! So we win a few and lose a few. Unlike Ravena-Coeymans who are TOTAL LOSERS!

Coeymans Loves Its Crooks, Cronies, and Crazies

Coeymans voters apparently have no sense, much less morals, they’ve elected almost to the man Touchette, Dolan, Youmans, all scoundrels and involved in multiple scandals. Ravena-Coeymans had the information but they like their crooks! Unbelievable!!!

[Editor’s Note: We are really reconsidering why we even bother writing about Ravena-Coeymans. It’s a lost cause. So far gone it’s terminal. There’s just no hope for a community that has allowed itself to decline to the extent that Ravena-Coeymans has done. We really can’t do much for them. They made their choices.]

Matt-the-Mutt Joins the Losers’ Club!

Matthew J. “Matt” Miller, double-dipping crook, corrupt atheist school teacher in the RCS central school district, had his beady eyes on an Albany County Legislature seat for District 36. Some voters got smart and decided he was too risky, too corrupt, too beholding to his union keepers and he didn’t get the votes he needed to unseat Mr Mendick. Good for you, Mendick! You beat the slimebag!

Ravena-Coeymans voters make the choice to remain the Anus of the World and re-elect a corrupt court jester, Dithering Tom Dolan,  to the town council and a cemetery manager, R. Touchette, to the Albany county legislature. Both Dolan and Touchette were involved in the scandal involved in the Phil Crandal involving the judge doing special favors for Touchette and Dolan. Seems Coeymans likes its corruption and crooks, and likes to keep them in town and county government. After all what else is there in Ravena-Coeymans?

You can’t make a silk purse out of a pig’s ear. Coeymans proves that.

Ravena-Coeymans women couldn’t even get their act together and put a woman, Stephanie Hamilton, on the town of Coeymans town board. Now that’s a sorry shame! They put Dithering-Tom Dolan, the great ghetto grabber, the same guy who gets votes for benefits back where he can make an ass of himself, the dumbocrap party, and the town of Coeymans! Go figure, people!

Preliminary numbers would indicate that the town of Coeymans voters like the taste of shite in their mouths. Well, after you eat enough crap, you apparently start to like the nutty flavor. Corruption and stupidity are close relatives: Corruption thrives on stupids. One of our first articles three years ago depicted Coeymans as a nest of hypocrisy. Nothing has changed.

The only thing going for Coeymans right now is the fact that Stephen Flach may still be in office; we say “may” because Coeymans is stupid enough to have possibly elected his dishonor Phil Crandall to be supervisor. That would make sense for Coeymans but not the rest of the sane world.

Let’s face the pitiful fact that the Albany Dumbocrap Political Machine, the Give-it-all-Away Party, is so entrenched with the poverty, the apathy, the race-card, the economic disasters that they attract the lowest-of-the-low votes, but there are plenty of them to buy; any local low-life who wants a handout, or who is a values-less liberal (like Joan (“Cut’n-Paste Joan“) & Robbie (“Twitch the Cryptkeeper“) and their ilk, will prostitute their right to vote and vote dumbocrap. That’s a lot of votes in Albany County!

THE ALBANY COUNTY BOARD OF ELECTIONS IS DRAGGING THEIR FEET AS USUAL. PROBABLY NEED MORE TIME TO FIX THE VOTES. WE’LL PUBLISH THE RESULTS AS SOON AS WE GET THEM!

Go Figure!
The Editor

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Our Picks for Local Elections on Tuesday, November 3rd

Who can argue the fact that we tell you what you need to know, not what the politicians and crooks want you to know so that they can live large at your expense.

Our readers know very well that we are not beholding to any political party; we hit them all pretty hard when they mess up. They hate us for our honesty and for the truth but Hey! Somebody’s gotta do it! You also know that we look very closely at experience, potential and job performance, not the circus performance we’ve all been seeing performed by the wannabe’s. We’ve already spilled a hell of a lot of ink telling you why some of the candidates are a definite NO! for our town halls and Albany County legislature. That’s why we are letting you know our picks for local government.

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Here are our recommendations:

For the Albany County Legislature:

YES! for Richard W. Mendick Albany County Legislator, District 36. ABSOLUTELY NO! for Matt-the-Mutt Miller (Click here to know  Why?)

NO! Matt-the-Mutt Miller!

For Town of Coeymans:

NO Youmans, NO Crandall,
NO Dolan, NO Touchette!

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YES! for Stephen Flach Coeymans town supervisor. NO! for his dishonor dumbocrap Phil Crandall (Click here to Why?)

YES! for Bill Tryon Coeymans town board member. HELL NO! for dumbocrap Jim Youmans (Click here to know Why?)
YES! for Stephanie Hamilton Coeymans town board member. NO! for dumbocrap Dithering-Tom Dolan (Click here to know Why?)
YES! for Peter Masti Albany County Legislator, District 37. NO! for dumbocrap Rick Touchette (Click here to know Why? We also think Mr Touchette’s record of corruption and dishonesty knocks him off right from the start, that even despite the fact that Peter Masti is a dud, better a dud than a scoundrel in the Albany County legislative brothel! Masti’s a nurse so he should be able to wangle some Viagra to keep things up and going.)
YES! for Francis “Joe” Vitollo Albany County Executive. NO! for dumbocrap Dan McCoy (Click here to know Why? Democrap Swindle: Dan McCoy, Craig Apple, Tom Dolan do the Democrap Thing.)

For the Town of New Baltimore:

We’d like to note for our New Baltimore friends and Neighbors that the local rag, the Ravena News Herald, has again snubbed the town of New Baltimore and has not published a whit of information for NB residents on who’s running for what! Time to boycott the News Herald and the Johnson Newspaper mob! (We found only one short article on Dellisanti and Fullerton in the October 28, 2015, Daily Mail). Talk with your wallet and checkbooks! Stop buying the Ravena News Herald and stop advertising in the rags of the Johnson Newspaper mob!

Arthur Fullerton’s
Campaign Slogan

YES! for Nick Delisanti  for New Baltimore Town Supervisor. DEFINITELY NO! for dumbocrap Arthur Fullerton (Click here to know Why?)

YES! for Alan VanWormer for New Baltimore Highway Superintendent, District 36. ABSOLUTELY NO! for dumbocrap Denis Jordan (Click here to know Why?)

YES! for Pat Linger Greene County Legislator, District 36. NO! for dumbocrap James “Jim” vanSlyke (Click here to know Why?)

Persson and Dunn are out of the race as far as we’re concerned. They have nothing to offer New Baltimore (they’re Chris Norris and Lisa Benway in Dunn and Persson suits. Persson is dull-dull-dull and hasn’t got the chance of a snowflake in hell! Dunn is done! Too many character issues and totally caca. The other candidates By the way, Norris and Benway have been conspicuously absent from NB board meetings for quite a while. Is that how the dumbocraps represent the people who vote for them?)

We sincerely hope that the information we publish on this blog helps you, our friends and neighbors, to make wiser and more informed choices when going to the polls. It’s our community and we have to serve it in whatever way we can. Please vote whichever way your heads and hearts point you but vote and vote conscientiously for the good of us all!

Please Vote Wisely
The Editor

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Keep Union Lacky Matt-the-Mutt Miller Out of the County Legislature!

Matt-the-Mutt Miller Has His Beady Eyes on a County Legislature Seat

Don’t Let that Happen!!! Vote for MENDICK!!!

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Matt-the-Mutt is part of the Albany Democrat reform movement; you know, the Give-it-all-Away party — but only if what they’re giving away is yours. Any time someone starts barking about reforming and changing things even before he’s close to being elected signals DANGER! And that’s exactly what Matt-the-Mutt Miller is doing. He thinks he’s in the legislator’s chair already and is bragging about what he’s going to change in the Albany county legislature. He’s a damned egomaniac and not much more. Only a halfwit would consider that corrupt megalomaniac for anything other than dogcatcher.

This blog has alerted the RCS school district, RCS taxpayers and RCS parents a number of times about Matthew J. Miller’s a.k.a. “Matt-the-Mutt’s” questionable morals and conduct. Matt Miller is a CROOK! We alerted RCS taxpayers about Miller’s deal with certain now extinct members of a former Ravena-Coeymans-Selkirk board of education (under the Deluca mob) to be paid tens of thousands of tax dollars as “energy manager” for the school district. In other words, he told people to turn off the lights. This wouldn’t have been so bad if he weren’t DOUBLE-DIPPING! You see, he was also being paid FULL-TIME to teach, which he wasn’t doing either (see below). We guess that makes him a TRIPLE-DIPPING CROOK.

Matt-the-Mutt Miller is a Loser!

If that’s not bad enough Matt-the-Mutt Miller allegedly told his RCS students that he’s an ATHEIST. Being an atheist is not big deal but telling impressionable and sensitive young people about your problem is a big deal. Parents: Do you want your teachers telling your kids about their personal beliefs? You’re trying to teach your kids to have values, morals, maybe even be good Christians, Jews, or Muslims, and their teacher is telling them he’s an atheist. So, Mr Miller, what do you do when it comes to the pledge of allegiance? Remember “One nation under God”? Do you refuse to pledge? Or do you make believe and pledge? Or the US dollar, “In God we trust.” Do you get paid double-dipper dollars or in rubles? You’re worse than a simple hypocrite, you’re a crooked hypocrite.

Iff you check out Miller’s LinkedIn page at Matt Miller you’ll have to wonder if his campaign head shot isn’t 25 years old at least. Compare Miller’s LinkedIn photo with the photo from 2014 and you’ll have to ask when he got his facelift? But Matt-the-Mutt’s face really isn’t the issue here. The issue is whether he’s fit for elected office and that is a no-brainer: He’s not. He arrogantly lists on his LInkedIn page that he’s been 14 years Local Union president, 3 years Union Treasurer/PAC chair (PAC is the RCS “political action committee”), 6 years District Energy Manager he means the RCS school district, during which time he was double- or even triple dipping for at an average rate of $8,000 a year, stealing tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars!). He seems to be real proud of his teachers union connection; he says more about that than he does about the RCS central school district. But that makes sense; he’s probably used the district as much as he can and now wants to move on. Like now we thinks he’s going to get a seat on the county legislature for the 39th district. Only if real fools vote, and only then.

Matt-the-Mutt (2014)

Matt Miller (2015)

Matt-the-mutt wrongfully and improperly, Yes! cowardly, encouraged students to be uncivil and disrespectful when sending comments to a local blog, this blog, when he didn’t have the balls to comment himself. That’s what your tax dollars are paying for with Miller: an education in how to be uncivil, disrespectful and deviant. Just like Matt Miller.

For years Matt Miller has been the local NYSUT (New York State United Teachers) sockpuppet in the RCS school district. He’s the teachers union representative in the district. But here’s where he gets he dubious distinction of being a triple-dipper at taxpayer expense: He is paid a full-time teacher salary but has a reduced teaching load so he can do his union work! So, do you think his union work is in your interests or the kids’ interest? Guess again! He works for the union and you’re paying for it! Triple-dipping crook Miller.

So, now Matt-the-Mutt Miller wants you, the town of Bethlehem, to elect him to be an Albany County Legislator. That’s just what the already crooked, corrupt Albany political machine needs like a hole in the head: another corrupt crook! So, go ahead, put the atheist, double-triple-dipper, union lackey Matt Miller in a legislator’s chair in Albany. You don’t have to be a nuclear physicist to guess whose interests he’ll be serving there: the union’s and his own!

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Click on this link to return to What You Need to Know Before Voting on November.

You can stop corruption! The Editor

 

Think Before You Vote. Or Pay the Price Later!

Jim Youmans and Tom Dolan are Losers!

WOW! This just in: We’ve acquired a copy of the October 26, 2015, Coeymans town board meeting. We will be publishing extracts of that meeting so that you can be aware of the stupidity of Youmans and Dolan, and you can hear for yourself what idiotic scoundrels they are. Or, you can go to Coeymans town hall and ask to listen to the recording, and decide for yourself! You be the judge! You’ll also hear residents telling Youmans and Dolan off for being such jerks, and for misleading the community. Tom Dolan, especially, gets a good whoop’n from one resident. You gotta hear the tape!

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We’re Here to Tell You What They Don’t Want You to Know!

Politics is all about character, or should be. But all we, as voters, get to see is the big smiles, hear the big promises, and get the nice-guy treatment. But what you see is not what you get. Let’s take a deeper look at what’s available next week in the voting booths. And you thought the Walking Dead was scary? Read on!

Give me [your brain, and then] your vote!

We’ve already covered the Coeymanazi bunch of recycled politicians running for election or re-election in the town of Coeymans. Anyone with the memory of a cockroach would steer far away from these accidents looking for a place to happen:

We’ve already reported in considerable detail on the terrible choices the Coeymans Dumbocraps under Tom Dolan have this November 3. If you missed the article, you can read it at   Go to the article link above for The Crandall, Dolan, Touchette Connection: Wanna Be Sick?

Phil Crandall: We’ve already pointed out his problems — we’ve already written about them — so we won’t go into that again here. Just go to the article link above for details.

Rick Touchette: A charter member of the Crandall “do-me-a-favor” club. He’s a loser, too. Ran last election time and lost. Why would you want to have him again? Check out the link above.

Jim Youmans: This guy is the proverbial “used car salesman” with a lousy personality. He’s mean, nasty, and most people in Coeymans town hall want nothing to do with him. He joined the losers’ club when he lost his bid for re-election to town supervisor a couple of years ago. And didn’t Youmans show his true colors when he stomped out of the October 26th town board meeting. Jim Youmans is now publishing CONFIDENTIAL town information on FACEBOOK (obviously Tom Dolan is leaking this CONFIDENTIAL town information DESPITE the town attorney’s (a Democrat!) caution not to publish it yet. Youmans received a copy of the confidential draft document from Tom Dolan, and now Youmans is wrongfully publishing the information on FaceBook, in order to sabotage the town and to take advantage of the Dolan leaks. Youmans lifted the copy of the CONFIDENTIAL document from Tom Dolan’s table at the October 26th town meeting. Isn’t that theft?

While Jim Youmans is a bully, he did a lot of his damage using his tool, Touchette. Was Touchette willing to be Youmans’ tool or was it just that Touchette was easy to use. Either way, it doesn’t speak too highly of Touchette, not that anyone or anything would.

And Why? hasn’t anyone yet asked about Jim Youmans arrest record. He’s a well known bully but hasn’t anyone but a very few, including his victims, questioned his fitness for public office with an arrest record for harassment? Our information and reliable sources indicate that he and perhaps his wife also, were arrested for harassment. Sort of goes along with the reputation as a bully, doesn’t it?

Tom Dolan: This dimwit has kept the lights in Coeymans town hall dimmed for years now. He has a long history of scandal and questionable behavior regarding votes and voting, and misusing his position with the Choices program in Ravena-Coeymans. He’s Dithering Dolan, the political failure who, when he’s not exchanging benefits for votes from ghetto residents, he’s renaming the town. This guy is useless and a member of the Crandall “do-me-a-favor” club, and one of the crooks who got Crandall canned from his job as Coeymans town justice and part-time Ravena village justice for violating the NYS Judicial Laws Check out the link above. And didn’t Tom Dolan leak a confidential draft from the Comptroller’s report on the audit done this year, clearly labeled “CONFIDENTIAL“? Can’t Dithering-Dolan read? And you can thank Dithering-Dolan for the fine choices he’s provided in terms of unelectables on the Dumbocrap ticket; Old Tom Dithering-Dolan is the Coeymans Dumbocrap chairman and picks the Dumbocrap candidates. Just buddies helping buddies out –it’s called political cronyism a.k.a. corruption!

If you don’t think Touchette and Youmans are losers, ask anyone in Coeymans town hall who were unlucky enough to have had to work with them when they were in office before! Ask people like former Coeymans town supervisor Henry Traver, who was so abused by Youmans and Touchette, that he had to ask the Coeymans police to be present to prevent mahem at town executive sessions. Traver was terrified of Youmans, and Touchette, sneak that he is, backed Youmans’ lousy and cowardly behaviour. Youmans was a bully and nothing has changed. Just what we need back in Coeymans town hall and the county legislature, more thugs.

We don’t want to mention the dirty politics that went on when the Coeymans democraps were collecting signatures or the scandal about the absentee ballots. How can a Dumbocrap sign a Conservative petition and have the signature witnessed? Ask his dishonor, Phil Crandall and his son-in-law, Anthony “Tony” Walsh.  We won’t mention the fact that Crandall’s son-in-law Anthony “Tony” Walsh, Jenna Crandall’s husband, falsely witnessed the illegal signatures on Crandall’s petitions. Basically the same ethical violations for which Crandall was brought up on charges. How can Crandall’s son-in-law witness his father-in-law’s petition signatures — without being present when the petition was signed? Walsh signed as a witness but, according to reliable witnesses, allegedly wasn’t with the candidate, his father-in-law, when going door-to-door; you have to be either a notary or member of the party, but Walsh, a registered Conservative, just let Crandall go off and do what he wanted. Van Buren Street in Ravena, absentee-ballot capitol of the world, seems to be home base for these crooks.

The Phil Youmans mutant. If you see this, go Republican!

Now here’s another juicy bit of news: Mike Albano was caught red-handed by Joe Vitello, candidate for Albany County Executive, tearing down Vitello’s campaign signs;  Mike Albano is Phil Crandall’s father-in-law! Albano was caught red-handed by Vitello himself! We’ll be interested to see if any charges are pressed. Go figure.

Phil Youmans, a Phil Crandall–Jim Youmans mutant, goes around putting his signs right in front of Stephen Flach’s signs so that Flach’s are not visible. Seems that Dan McCoy Supporters are doing the same thing to Joe Vitello’s signs, so that they can’t be seen. Doesn’t the RCS school district have places for retards like Youmans and Albano? Yeah, it’s called special ed kindergarten. Or Albany County Jail. You choose.

And we don’t want to mention insider Nita Chmielewski, former failed town supervisor,she’s hot for Crandall. Wonder if she’s got her beady crossed eyes on a job as “confidential” secretary? Well, if she does you know one thing for certain: With Crandall’s record of unethical conduct and Chmielewski’s character, nothing will be safe, much less confidential! Or maybe Nutty Nita has her eye on the budget office. Be careful here! Remember Nita Chmielewski resigned as town supervisor over the flack she got for publishing a 10% budget increase. But do we have to mention that that 10% was an error resulting from Nitas problem doing simple math? Maybe it’s just best to keep Nutty Nita and her buddy disgraced ex-judge Phil Crandall as far away from Coeymans  town hall as possible. What do you think?

Peter Masti: Masti’s been taking up space on the Coeymans town council and that’s all he’s been doing. No, wait a minute, he likes to write letters to the editor of the Troy Record. Troy Record! Why doesn’t he put his opinions in the local rag, the Ravena News Herald? Well, Coeymans voters, if you haven’t figured it out yet, this California-transplant unbeliever-turned-bible-thumper from Hippyville-California doesn’t have much use for you, unless it’s as a stepping stone. Maybe he’s trying to keep his crazy ideas away from the local voters because they’re too “California-crazy” and wants to have his say but far and away.

Learn more about these characters and why you need to stay clear of them in the voting booth by visiting our article at The Crandall, Dolan, Touchette Connection: Wanna Be Sick?

Matt-the-Mutt Miller Has His Beady Eyes on a County Legislature Seat

Don’t Let that Happen!!!

This blog has alerted the RCS school district, RCS taxpayers and RCS parents a number of times about Matthew J. Miller’s a.k.a. “Matt-the-Mutt’s” questionable morals and conduct. Matt Miller is a CROOK! We alerted RCS taxpayers about Miller’s deal with certain now extinct members of a former Ravena-Coeymans-Selkirk board of education (under the Deluca mob) to be paid tens of thousands of tax dollars as “energy manager” for the school district. In other words, he told people to turn off the lights. This wouldn’t have been so bad if he weren’t DOUBLE-DIPPING! You see, he was also being paid FULL-TIME to teach, which he wasn’t doing either (see below). We guess that makes him a TRIPLE-DIPPING CROOK.

Matt-the-Mutt Miller is a Loser!

If that’s not bad enough Matt-the-Mutt Miller allegedly told his RCS students that he’s an ATHEIST. Being an atheist is not big deal but telling impressionable and sensitive young people about your problem is a big deal. Parents: Do you want your teachers telling your kids about their personal beliefs? You’re trying to teach your kids to have values, morals, maybe even be good Christians, Jews, or Muslims, and their teacher is telling them he’s an atheist. So, Mr Miller, what do you do when it comes to the pledge of allegiance? Remember “One nation under God”? Do you refuse to pledge? Or do you make believe and pledge? Or the US dollar, “In God we trust.” Do you get paid double-dipper dollars or in rubles? You’re worse than a simple hypocrite, you’re a crooked hypocrite.

Iff you check out Miller’s LinkedIn page at Matt Miller you’ll have to wonder if his campaign head shot isn’t 25 years old at least. Compare Miller’s LinkedIn photo with the photo from 2014 and you’ll have to ask when he got his facelift? But Matt-the-Mutt’s face really isn’t the issue here. The issue is whether he’s fit for elected office and that is a no-brainer: He’s not. He arrogantly lists on his LInkedIn page that he’s been 14 years Local Union president, 3 years Union Treasurer/PAC chair (PAC is the RCS “political action committee”), 6 years District Energy Manager he means the RCS school district, during which time he was double- or even triple dipping for at an average rate of $8,000 a year, stealing tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars!). He seems to be real proud of his teachers union connection; he says more about that than he does about the RCS central school district. But that makes sense; he’s probably used the district as much as he can and now wants to move on. Like now we thinks he’s going to get a seat on the county legislature for the 39th district. Only if real fools vote, and only then.

Matt-the-Mutt (2014)

Matt Miller (2015)

Matt-the-mutt wrongfully and improperly, Yes! cowardly, encouraged students to be uncivil and disrespectful when sending comments to a local blog, this blog, when he didn’t have the balls to comment himself. That’s what your tax dollars are paying for with Miller: an education in how to be  uncivil, disrespectful and deviant. Just like Matt Miller.

For years Matt Miller has been the local NYSUT (New York State United Teachers) sockpuppet in the RCS school district. He’s the teachers union representative in the district. But here’s where he gets he dubious distinction of being a triple-dipper at taxpayer expense: He is paid a full-time teacher salary but has a reduced teaching load so he can do his union work! So, do you think his union work is in your interests or the kids’ interest? Guess again! He works for the union and you’re paying for it! Triple-dipping crook Miller.

So, now Matt-the-Mutt Miller wants you, the town of Bethlehem, to elect him to be an Albany County Legislator. That’s just what the already crooked, corrupt Albany political machine needs like a hole in the head: another corrupt crook! So, go ahead, put the atheist, double-triple-dipper, union lackey Matt Miller in a legislator’s chair in Albany. You don’t have to be a nuclear physicist to guess whose interests he’ll be serving there: the union’s and his own!

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Pope Paul VI: “The smoke of Satan has entered the church through a small crack.” In Ravena’s St Pat’s RC, that’s a mighty big crack

And then we have Saint Patrick’s Roman Catholic Church in Ravena, the favorite watering hole for the Ravena-Coeymans Incest Club and the Coemanazi Coalition. St Pat’s is where “Dirty Hands Jerry” Deluca and Bottle-blond fitness club failure Cathy Deluca hang out. It’s where Phil Crandall, Rich Touchette and other “good Catholics” go to collect political capital and play the hypocrite in saint’s robes. It’s where Crandal, Touchette, Dolan and their kind go to hand out holiday turkeys as if they were their own, and getting credit for the generous gifts. Pope Paul VI made the famous statement that “The smoke of Satan has entered the church through a small crack.” In Ravena’s St Pat’s, that’s a mighty big crack that lets in the likes of the Crandalls, Touchettes and Delucas. And you wonder why churches are avoided by the honest and good people of the community?

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New Baltimore

Does anyone know any of these people running for office in New Baltimore? Does anyone know anything about these people who

Who are they?

are asking for your votes? We’ve lived here practically our entire lives and those names might as well be from Kansas! Well, pretty close: Arthur Fullerton is from Arkansas. Really!!!
Let’s start with the candidates for New Baltimore supervisor. We have the incumbent, Nick Delisanti. Delisanti is a pussy-cat in a business suit but is doing a sincere,  honest and decent job in town hall. Actually, the worst thing he has done since voted into the supervisor’s office is make the stupid statement, “Republicans appoint republicans.” We think he’s paid enough for that stupid remark, and if he’s smart he’ll be grateful for the non-Republicans who put him where he is.

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This just in: At the October 26, 2015, town council meeting Mr Delisanti and his team passed the preliminary New Baltimore town budget with no net increase and no more deficit; it’s balanced! (There is no longer an operating deficit as there was in 2012, 2013, 2014!). Only 1% pay increase to hourly-wage town employees. A slight increase in health benefits for employees and retirees, which was due to the insurer, not to any action by the board. Again, Delisanti and his team have kept the town budget under control. The final budget is slated for discussion and for final approval at the November 9, 2015, town board meeting.  Thank you!

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But Delisanti and his team have cleaned up New Baltimore Town Hall and have put policies in place to ensure transparency and accountability. Some people don’t like that. They call themselves New Baltimore Dumbocraps and they take their orders from witch-on-a-stick Diane Louis.

What Delisanti has done together with his team is clean up the crooked and incompetent mess left by two dumbocraps, Louis and O’Rorke, and their dumbocrap friends. Remember when the most recent dumbocrap, Susan O’Rorke, left town hall, all the computers were wiped clean of data, records either disappeared or were locked up tight and no one seemed to have a key. (We still wonder why those responsible for that didn’t end up in jail.) That’s an example New Baltimore dumbocrap transparency and accountability with town dumbocrap chairman Diane Louis’ clique. Those of us who watch the New Baltimore dumbocraps know what sneaks and crooks they are. New Baltimore Dumbocraps don’t do their business in New Baltimore town hall, they do it at (or under) the bar at the Boat House (the New Baltimore Dumbocrap HQ and town hall).

Arthur Fullerton is a Loser!

This is a good place to deal with another phoney running for public office: New Baltimore’s answer to Coeyman’s Jim Youmans: Arthur Fullerton. Some character with a mega-ego, Arthur Fullerton, another unknown, has been put up for New Baltimore town supervisor by the New Baltimore Dumbocraps, and is another Louis sockpuppet. Fullerton is from Arkansas (Bill Clinton’s state) and is a recent implant, a carpetbagger as they were called in years past, in New Baltimore. Fullertons’s big on stealing credit from others and using it to make himself look real pretty. Just look at his gimme-your-vote card we all got in the mail. Nothing about Fullerton just about his ancestors. Big deal!

Fullerton’s website is just as big a pile of bullshit as Fullerton is; full of rhetoric and lies and little real information for voters. Did you expect anything else from a Diane Louis lackey?

We said earlier that Fullerton doesn’t really represent anything substantial and his website says it all: He has a tab, a section on “Issues.” (click here to read Fullerton’s “issues“). The self-proclaimed communicator and consultant Arthur Fullerton apparently has no understanding of what issues are but he has enough issues of his own. His issues page is about as empty as Fullerton’s credibility chest! And if we rely on Fullerton’s press releases (go to “Press Releases“) to get some idea about Fullerton and his plans for New Baltimore, all we get is Fullterton’s concerns for cell phone reception and the New Baltimore town newsletter. Are those the biggest issues facing this town, Mr Fullerrton? Well maybe in Fullerton’s empty dumbocrap head. Some of us have bigger fish to fry (right now it’s keeping corruption and idiots out of New Baltimore town hall, starting with Arthur Fullerton!).

The problem with Arthur Fullerton is that he can’t get his facts straight or is an outright liar. Probably both. One example is the propaganda he’s been putting out about the New Baltimore town newsletter. Fart-face Fullerton claims on the website “Bring Back the New Baltimore Town Newsletter” but incorrectly and inaccurately that, “New Baltimore had a great informative town newsletter for many years. The current administration choose to kill it.” WRONG! That’s an example of Fullerton’s version of incorrect facts. It was actually the O’Rorke administration that eliminated the New Baltimore town newsletter, not the Dellisanti administration. It was Fullerton’s own party-partners, Diane Louis and Susan O’Rorke and their cronies who eliminated the New Baltimore town newsletter. So let’s get that little bit of misinformation corrected like yesterday!

Fullerton is not strong on issues. Actually, Fullerton hasn’t really said much about issues in the town of New Baltimore, has he? Well, except for the bid lie about the newsletter and that’s got to be one of the biggies we all are losing sleep over. Isn’t it? What’s Fullerton’s stand on getting Mr Denis Jordan to comply with the law and with town policies about spending and approvals for contracts? How about that one? But it’s unlikely Mr Fullerton will be much interested in stuff like that since Mr Denis Jordan is a party-pal.

Mr Fullerton is really a big bag of wind blowing warmly from Diane Louis’sagging butt. Fullerton is a paid-in-full, dyed in the wool member of the misinformation party, the give-it-all away party, the me-mine-it’s mine party, the New Baltimore Dumbocraps. So, if you like being misused, left out, and if you want to give away what little you have left to the New Baltimore incest club, Fullerton’s your man. Can you live with that?

Denis Jordan

Driving through New Baltimore you can almost guess where you’ll see a “Denis Jordan for Highway Superintendent” campaign sign.

And you can pretty much assume that where you see a Denis Jordan campaign sign that the property owner is on the Denis Jordan gift list; that’s the gift list that Denis Jordan has for people he likes to do special favors for at taxpayer expense. Most of us are on the Denis Jordan blacklist; the list of residents that Denis Jordan refuses services to despite the fact we pay taxes.

If you have a Denis Jordan sign on your lawn, you’re probably getting favors from him for your vote!

Denis Jordan has been a Dumbocrap fixture for years and has been misusing and wasting New Baltimore money and resources since he’s been superintendent. He refuses to obey the law when he makes purchases for the highway department. He makes deals with his friends. It’s easy to be a dumbocrap fixture if you’re stone ignorant and corrupt.

Jordan flatly refuses to comply with town of New Baltimore purchasing and contracts policies, which were put into place to provide voters and residents as well as auditors with transparency and accountability. These policies were put into place by the Dellisanti team when, to their horror, they found that previous administrations didn’t have any, ignored them if they had them, or just looked the other way when Jordan played his unlawful games with taxpayer money. After all, how was Louis and O’Rorke going to get their driveways plowed? And wasn’t it Jordan who refused to plow out the fire department’s driveways and parking lots? What does that tell you about Jordan?

Not enough for you to consider Alan VanWormer to replace Jordan? Read on…

Here are some snippets you’re probably unaware of about Mr Jordan:

• Denis Jordan has about 17 years with the New Baltimore highway department (Alan VanWormer has 25+).
• Jordan demoted Alan VanWormer from his position as deputy superintendent as soon as Jordan found out VanWormer wanted to run against him. We guess that Jordan is a big fan of fair play. NOT!
• George Acker, Independence Party county chairman, gave Alan VanWormer a promise of support and backing from the Independence Party; Denis Jordan’s signatures were thrown out. Denis Jordan failed miserably in the primaries.
• Denis Jordan has no respect for highway department employees (ask them!). For example, one employee had a heart attack, was transported to the hospital by ambulance, in hospital and Jordan throws a fit because the employee can’t come in. Another employee is diagnosed with thyroid cancer, on chemotherapy, has side effects and can’t come back to work as planned. Jordan asks him if he wants to keep his job. Is that the kind of guy you’d like to work for?
• Jordan orders highway department employees not to speak to a certain community leader if they see him. Jordan obviously never heard of the First Amendment or of common courtesy. We’re not surprised, he’s a dumbocrap.
• The famous Jordan-Halstead truck deal: A couple of years ago (during the Louis administration), Halstead bought some trucks from Denis Jordan. Halstead then sold the trucks back to the town. Smell any corruption here?
• According to the Office of the New York State Comptroller, in an audit the Comptroller found that Jordan’s department was in violation of the New York State General Municipal Law regarding highway spending, contracts and quotes required for purchases. According to our information, Jordan is pulling some illegal tricks and is still not complying with state laws.
• When summoned by the New Baltimore town council to answer questions on his spending and purchasing practices, Denis Jordan fails to appear but sends his attorney, Maeve Tooher, recently resigned (August 24, 2015) from the NB planning board, to respond for him. Tooher, in an outrageous display of ignorance and defensiveness, defends Jordan’s violations!
• Jordan submits to the New Baltimore town council a bogus corrective action plan.
• Jordan, together with former Dumbocrap Louis-lackey Susan O’Rorke decide that they are not going to plow the Medway Grapeville fire department property. Marylyn Woodhall, a close friend of Denis Jordan, together with Jeane Horne are on the Fire Board. The fire departments have had to get outside companies to plow. Fire district funds down the chute!
• Denis Jordan, while refusing to plow fire department property, still plows New Baltimore Conservancy dumbocraps’ parking lot for $1. (Still Wondering why the New Baltimore Conservancy is supporting Arthur Fullerton and Denis Jordan? The Conservancy is on the Jordan gift-list!)
• When we talk about Denis Jordan’s gift-list friends you might want to ask some residents on Washington Avenue why their buildings are collapsing because of poor roadway and drainage maintenance! Or ask a couple of New Baltimore residents why they still don’t have the collapsed culverts repaired (Ask Bernie Jones or Patty Hildebrandt, for example, what the response has been from Mr Jordan and his department).
• Since the 2013 Comptroller’s audit, the O’Rorke administration provided Mr Jordan with a computer so that he could comply with the New York state purchasing and contracts laws, look up bids, etc. (See the O’Rorke administration’s bogus Corrective Action Plan in response to the Comptroller’s audit. The Comptroller’s 2010 audit found the same issues as the 2013 audit. Nothing changed!). But Mr Jordan is still 100% computer illiterate. Why is that?
• We have foiled public access information from Denis Jordan’s highway department and have found that Jordan does not keep complete records! No records for drain or drainage work on Madison Avenue East or New Street in the National Historic District. None at all!
• Mr Jordan has a very special relationship with Peckham Materials (road paving materials etc.), but they’re not even in Greene County! But why would Jordan pay more for materials from Peckham than he would have to pay locally? Why does Jordan refuse to get bids and quotes for the materials? Answer: Because Jordan is incompetent, corrupt, and doesn’t know the first thing about contracts!
• Finally, even though the New Baltimore town council under Nick Delisanti has purchasing policies in place to ensure compliance with the law and to provide responsible management of taxpayer dollars and to provide taxpayers with transparency and accountability, Jordan is fighting them tooth and claw. He refuses to comply with the law and with policy. He’s even breaking down purchases into multiple orders and invoices to avoid having to get approval for the amount of the whole purchase. What’s the problem Mr Jordan? Got something to hide?

Denis Jordan is a Major Loser!

That’s why Denis Jordan needs to go on November 3. Jordan needs to be replaced by Alan VanWormer, who has more experience, has been with the New Baltimore Highway Department longer, knows the business, and will provide the  transparency and accountability we all fairly expect from an elected official but can’t seem to get from Denis Jordan.

We may never be able to uncover all of Denis Jordan’s corruption — there’s just too much and it’s been going on for far too long —  but at least with someone new in the job, we can keep an eye on what the new guy does in the highway department right from the start..

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VanSlyke vs Linger for Greene County Legislature:

Mr Jim VanSlyke is running for re-election to the Greene county legislature. Mr Pat Linger is opposing him. We think a statement made by Mr vanSlyke at a recent New Baltimore town board meeting sums up Mr vanSlyke: “As a county legislator we get some money that we can give away. I have to give mine to Catskill, Cairo and Windham, because there aren’t enough organizations in New Baltimore who ask for it.” (paraphrased by informant). We expect Mr vanSlyke to have his finger on the pulses of the communities in his territory and that he should know who they are and if they need support; vanSlyke should announce the availability of the funds and organizations could then apply for them. What’s wrong with you, Mr vanSlyke? What in hell are you doing, anyway?

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You can stop corruption! The Editor

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New Baltimore Taxpayers Sucked In Again by Teachers-Union-Owned-and-Operated RCS Board of Education

The Ravena-Coeymans-Selkirk Central School District and its Board of Education manipulated the timing and the vote to again shortchange RCS taxpayers and deprive them of their votes when, on Tuesday, January 13, 2015, they pushed the vote on two proposals totaling and additional $30 million in tax burden on an already faltering tax base. So, Ravena-Coeymans-Selkirk Social Services Recipients and Friends of New York State United Teachers, the Teachers-Union-Owned-and-Operated Ravena-Coeymans-Selkirk Central School District approved an additional $30 Million dollars in indirect tax assessment they’re calling “Capital Improvement” for the RCS Schools. Let’s watch and see who gets the contracts for the so-called “capital improvements.”

New Baltimore Taxpayers Sucked In Again

May be business as usual in Ravena-Coeymans-Selkirk but New Baltimore doesn’t have to put up with it! Or do we?

We have just one question: When will the Town of New Baltimore smarten up and leave the Ravena-Coeymans-Selkirk Central School District, a failing group of schools with a corrupt board of education under a corrupt superintendent and move on to join the Greene County success story? When will the Town of New Baltimore town board finally get its act together and take the necessary steps to ensure that New Baltimore taxpayers are not playing the fool for a failing district that knows no bounds when it comes to spending and taxation. The RCS district is losing tax base a mile-a-minute and attracting non-taxpaying population. More properties are either going up for sale, being abandoned, or vacant in the case of commercial properties with more of the tax burden falling on Guess Who?!?!

Ravena has enough money to allow Cathy Deluca’s unlawful and failing Ravena Health and Fitness Center to continue losing taxpayer dollars to the tune of more than $6000 a month, and the town of Coeymans can give half the town away in concessions to carpetbagger business with nothing in return. But can New Baltimore continue to pay for Raven-Coeyman’s debauchery and free-wheeling spending addictions? We say NO!

Don’t be a Newbaltimoron
(First used by Joan Ross, pseudosophisticate of New Baltimore, to describe her neighbors.)
The Editor

 

 Articles in Press

Stay Tuned and Stay Informed!

Retaliation in Local Government: Ravena Village council/board Violates Law & Dismisses Planning Board Member without Due Process or Public Hearing! and New Baltimore Highway Superintendent Denis Jordan removes Deputy Highway Superintendent vanWormer Because vanWormer admits he’s planning to run against Jordan. Ethics violations and retaliative human resources action = lawsuit!

Ravena-Coeymans Taxation and Water-Sewer Rates: Continuing indifference and unlawful billing! Should the NYS Attorney General, Comptroller, Inspector General get involved to straighten out residents’ dilemma? Another resident writes to this blog for help.