Conflict & Civility: Items on the Rye City Council Agenda for May 22, 2013

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1. MAY 22, 2013 – PARSING THE PARSERS

   “If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is because everything would be what it isn’t. And contrary-wise; what it is it wouldn’t be, and what it wouldn’t be, it would. You see?”

   https://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mc8mf6jC0w1rviaayo1_400.jpg

   To which Rye City Council watchers might add in a loud and unified voice….

   “And no one HERE condones lying.”

   Because if you repeat this assertive mantra – as Ms. Brett, Ms. Parker, Ms. Killian and Mr. Sack on the council have – over and over and over and over again – you might think that they intend it (1) to be publicly accepted as TRUE and (2) as our fiduciaries for the municipal treasury and its residents – they would ACT before a whole lot of other bad things happen.

   But you would, regrettably, be completely mistaken –

   “Oct 24, 2012 – Scott Pickup’s Lies About RGC, Repeatedly”

   https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=90YIiWEKZk0

   “APR 10, 2013 – RYE CITY MGR PICKUP, CITY ATTORNEY & POLICE COMMISSIONER PERSUADE COUNCIL TO APPROVE FRAUDULENT BID”

   https://www.lausdeo10580.com/lausdeo10580/2013/04/mayor-laughs-as-pickup-connors-wilson-persuade-city-council-to-approve-fraudulent-uniform-bid.html

   “Apr 17, 2013 – RYE TV HEAD: “BULLSHITTING PEOPLE AT COUNCIL MEETINGS” IS PART OF SCOTT PICKUP’S JOB–IT GOES ON “A LOT””

   https://www.lausdeo10580.com/lausdeo10580/2013/04/city-official-bullshitting-people-at-council-meetings-is-part-of-scott-pickups-jobit-goes-on-a-lot.html

   So tune in tonight for more…

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2. AND NO ONE HERE CONDONES LYING.
   “I think we can all admit that his political career is pretty much done. There’s been way too many controversies over the course of his one four year term to survive. But let’s go back to 2009 and his Mayoralty campaign. He campaigned on solidifying the city manager position for the long term future of Rye. His answer to that was Scott Pickup. It has clearly not worked out. Now we can debate the level of that but it clearly has not worked out. But his reluctance to admit that and in defense of Scott Pickup and to continue to defend him over and over again, that’s what’s really caused some issues within the community.”
   “I think that what you have is a problem. How’s Julie Killian going to run on the Republican ticket to reform the city government when she sitting on the council now and not saying a word about it? Now she can say whatever she wants in Executive Session but Joe Sack, for example, who’s running for Mayor, he’s been very vocal in his feelings and what he’s thinks is going on and with the city manager so how is Julie Killian all of a sudden going to run as a reformer when you haven’t been doing it while you’ve have the chance to actually do it?”
   “I want to know why the DA or the State Controller isn’t investigating Scott Pickup for violating municipal bidding law. So we talk about elections coming up I don’t see anybody coming down the road to do it. And this is where citizen journalism and the press comes into play because WE have to force these changes. I don’t see it and again I don’t know how Peter Jovanovich, Doug French, Richard Filippi, Laura Brett, who’s an attorney, Catherine Parker, can sit there, and Julie Killian, and not do anything about it.”
   SAY HEY! TO RYE CORRUPTION AND POLITICS, AS LAUS DEO TALKS W/ WVOX’ LUNGARIELLO & THE SOUND SHORE REVIEW’S CHRIS FALCONE
   PART 1
   https://www.lausdeo10580.com/lausdeo10580/2013/05/laus-deo-talks-rye-politics-and-corruption-w-wvoxs-lungariello-and-rye-sound-shore-review-editor-chr.html

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3. SCARY MEETING II?

   There will be a Special Meeting of the City Council of the City of Rye on Wednesday,
   May 29, 2013, at 8:00 p.m
   https://www.egovlink.com/public_documents300/rye/published_documents/City%20Council/Agenda/2013/Agenda%2005-29-13%20Special%20Meeting.pdf

   There will be a Special Meeting of the City Council of the City of Rye on Wednesday,
   June 5, 2013, at 8:00 a.m. in Council Chambers at City Hall
   https://www.egovlink.com/public_documents300/rye/published_documents/City%20Council/Agenda/2013/Agenda%2006-05-13%20Special%20Meeting.pdf

   Short notice, special non-public secret (executive session) dominated Rye City Council Meetings so far unreported by conventional media serving the City of Rye.

   “Knock, knock – who’s awake?”

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4. CLEANING UP AFTER OTIS, PLUNKETT & FRENCH
   A thought for Rye’s corrupt – no rest until you are publicly identified and brought to justice. After all, it’s the new regional trend….
   “Cleaning Up After Spitzer”
   In business, you cut your losses quickly. In politics, you cling to blunders and deny they are blunders.
   By HOLMAN W. JENKINS, JR. I WSJ – BUSINESS WORLD I June 4, 2013
   New York State is getting a housecleaning. Two state legislators have been arrested in separate corruption cases. A Siena College poll in April showed New York voters expect more to fall—and only 27% thought New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman was the right person to lead a crackdown. A plurality preferred to trust federal prosecutors with the job.
   Clearly the shine has gone off the New York attorney general’s office, once an office to conjure with. Eliot Spitzer made his name as attorney general before becoming governor and succumbing to a prostitution scandal. Never mind that many of the noisy charges Mr. Spitzer leveled against Wall Street on his way to fame quietly disappeared under the lack of evidence of any crimes having been committed.
   Then came attorney general, now governor, Andrew Cuomo. A New York Times investigation revealed how, as attorney general, Mr. Cuomo had threatened Chevron as a favor to plaintiffs alleging pollution in the Amazon rain forest. He was echoed by Democratic Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli (in charge of the state’s investments), who urged Chevron to settle with the plaintiffs.
   “Andrew has no interest in doing this,” emailed the lobbyist who happened to be a former aide to Mr. Cuomo and wife of one of his current aides. “He is doing this for me. Because I asked.”
   Amid signs of judicial corruption in Ecuador and fraud by the plaintiffs, the multibillion-dollar claim against Chevron is now unraveling. Even Chevron’s critics are abandoning an apparently skeevy case that Messrs. Cuomo and DiNapoli once pressured Chevron to settle for the enrichment of a former aide’s clients.
   Then there’s the continued hounding, through the attorney generalship of Messrs. Spitzer, Cuomo and Schneiderman, of former AIG Chairman Hank Greenberg over an accounting controversy predating and unrelated to his ex-firm’s collapse amid the national mortgage meltdown.
   At least it was unrelated unless you think Mr. Spitzer’s attack on AIG, forcing the company to fire its longtime chief, played a role in its subsequent misadventure with housing derivatives.
   The original case revolved around an accounting question whose merits, whatever they might be, were of no special interest to New York residents, as indeed neither was the Chevron matter. By now, five junior insurance executives also implicated in the transaction have had their federal convictions thrown out. Mr. Greenberg settled a federal civil enforcement action without admitting wrongdoing. He and other defendants settled a class-action lawsuit filed on behalf of AIG shareholders.
   All this had the effect of eliminating New York’s damages claim, the whole point of its case. Mr. Schneiderman concedes as much, yet even so insists that New Yorkers would be served by soldiering on and subjecting the 88-year-old Mr. Greenberg to a public trial that, whatever the verdict, will have no practical consequence.
   Why? Let’s just guess it’s because Mr. Greenberg is a public figure in New York if not elsewhere, and AIG is now a household name. Dropping the case, then, would mean embarrassment to the current and past Democratic New York attorneys general, one of whom is now governor. The outcome would make them seem more implicated in the questionable activities of Mr. Spitzer. It might even give rise to a newspaper column or two like this one, lamenting the politicization of the state attorney general’s office and wondering if the office itself shouldn’t long ago have been a subject of investigation.
   How much better to let the case drag on until Mr. Greenberg succumbs to mortality rather than admit there was never any justification for New York mixing itself up in a matter already being pursued by more competent authorities.
   The pendulum doth swing. Mr. Spitzer seized upon a disused state law, the overbroad 1921 Martin Act, allowing the state to allege fraud when nobody was defrauded and when there was no intent to defraud. Mr. Spitzer set himself up with these powers of intimidation to avenge a public looking for someone other than itself to blame for the dot-com crash. To be sure, Wall Street has always attracted people whose ambition for money and power gets the best of them. Mr. Spitzer turned out to be one of this damaged flock himself.
   In business, you cut your losses quickly. In politics you cling to your blunders and deny they are blunders. Everyone from former Govs. George Pataki and Mario Cuomo to this paper’s editorialists has urged Mr. Schneiderman to drop the case. But as long as it continues, at least it will be a living reminder of the follies unleashed when the dignity and authority of the law are prostituted to political ambition.
   https://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324563004578525121118787776.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_BelowLEFTSecond&cb=logged0.5495665164198726

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5. PART II – LAUS DEO RADIO: RYE POLITICS & CORRUPTION

   On candidate grooming – “I’m a big fan of process and we need a vibrant process and a vibrant election and a good choice from both sides. As far as you know say Catherine Parker running for the county seat that’s important because these councils and these boards you get groomed on these boards on how to do what you want, what the city manager wants or how to do what the machine or the establishment or whatever want and then you “move up.” You know it’s like the minor leagues, Single A – Double A. I wouldn’t like to see Catherine Parker elected to the county seat. You know I’m a Republican and maybe I’d run against her. I don’t know. That’d be fun. … Here’s the Rye Democratic Party. So you have Otis, Latimer and Catherine Parker and instead of focusing on the City of Rye, the City of Rye can crash and burn as long as they consolidate their power on the county level…I’d be happy to run against anyone who thinks they’re going to be entitled to the next position along their political career.”

   On the Rye City Democrats – “If they don’t step up to the plate here, they could very well be relegated to secondary status going forward.”

   On the tight lid on information today in Rye – “I think it’s definitely tightened from the time Doug French got into office until now. He came in on a platform of transparency and open government, which many politicians do. Early on I think he followed through on that but the lid has definitely tightened in the last year and a half.”

   On information control today in Rye – “I think it’s more than controlling information to the press. It’s actually controlling information disseminated amongst the council itself.”

   On lack of oversight by Rye City Manager Pickup – “The bottom line is – there is a lack of oversight in the City of Rye – and someone needs to be held accountable for that.”

   https://www.lausdeo10580.com/lausdeo10580/2013/06/laus-deo-radio-part-ii-rye-politics-and-corruption-part-ii.html

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