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Not 1 Shocker of the Week, but 7—Count them and think about what they mean for the future
WPCNR The Sunday Bailey. News and comment by John F. Bailey. Sunday, May 22, 2022:
I have been producing and anchoring White Plains Week for 22 years.
When I was putting together Friday’s report after I taped the show with Westchester Talk Radio personality, John Marino. I realized it was perhaps a bellwether report “that alters and illuminates our time,” as Walter Cronkite used to say on You Are There.
Viewers of the White Plains Week may recall when Jim Benerofe and Alex Philippidis began the program in 2001, we had a feature we called “The Shocker of the Week.”
It was supposed to represent what the three of us felt was the most unexpected important development of the week. We dwelt on the implications of it for the future.
Friday afternoon when I put together the “Teaser” on the website for the the program I realized the 7 Stories I covered were so astounding and potentially game changing, they were actually 7 Shockers of the Week which you can see Monday at 7 on FIOS Channel 45, and on White Plains Optimum channel 45.
SHOCKER NUMBER 1 : THE “IMPROVED VOTING DISTRICTS.
This was the introduction of the new improved election districts by the Court of Appeals ordered he was a man not even from New York State,but a fellow from Carnegie-Mellon University in Pennsylvania. Judge Patrick McAlister tapped him to correct the lines of the districts the after all the first democrat-drawn districts were thrown out by the court of appeals as unconstitutional.
The new districts are based on population equalization, but ignore percentages of key demographic populations living in districts. the result is that minorities representation in the districts does not count.
It is the population bias applied to the newly withdraw districts that strips “the reality factor” from the districts, that every area is different in the kind of minority population that may be dominated by the majority population that may vote in their self interest to keep minorities (where they are). This has happened for decades in this country especially in the south.
What these newly redrawn districts do under the guise of Judge McAllister’s opinion that the districts “even in the number Democratic and Republican Districts there are” (and unless the Court of Appeals or the legislature creates legislation to overrule and the new districts were approved at midnight by the Judge, the time of approval tells you how downright proud the Judge is of this Solomonesque decision.
What District lines do creating a series of majority-based Congressional districts is in reality really hurts freshman congress persons Mondaire Jones and Jamall Bowman and veteran Congresspers like Carolyn Maloney and Jerald Nadler…
Saturday that fallout dropped like an Acme Anvil on Wil E Coyote.
Mondaire Jones, eloquent and action oriented Freshman decided to leave his District 17 District in Westchester (Nita Lowey;s former seat in Congress) to run in the New New York District 10. Paul Feiner, Town Supervisor of Greenburgh said how effective Mr. Jones was.
Now Westchester has lost him. Mr. Jones is running for a Manhattan-Brooklyn district against the highly ineffective politican Bill de Blazio. Nadler and Maloney, we do not know what they will do yet
I think we can agree this redistricting has been a disaster for the democrats, a group that in 15 years of controlling Albany have thrown out 2 governors from their own party, opened up the state for covid resurgence twice now, including this week’s surge that’s on track for another 3,000 infections this week– capped by this pathetic effort to insure democrat majorities that has blown up the public’s confidence, repressed representation and fairness by the legislature which lost control by being too partisan.
The state elections board decided to split the primaries: governor and state assembly june 28, state senate and Congressional Primaries august 23.
Who will know what district they are voting in, who was and is their most recent representative, this will really test the staffs of every candidate and especially incumbents ensnared by the new district lines. The majority population in a district always is the key block of the most voters.
More than minorities in predominant white majority counties have to win against the color of their skin, race, income, and postoring of expertise by professional politicians who appeal to the majority (white, wealthy, business-connected)want to educate only the majority and enact legislation only for the majority. How do I know that? That’s white majorities of congress have always done. Today is the result of “Do Nothing. Keep it like it is. Don’t aggravate backers. Reform just enough to make it look like progress,” government.
That is how the Confederacy grew to protect slave-owning. (How quickly we forget.). The Civil War cost 600,000 Americans their lives, still our most deadly conflict.And it is still being fought today.
Shock No. 2: Buffalo
we cannot overlook the latest horror in Buffalo One week ago. It was first shock of this white plains week and the worst: 10 innocent lives taken in a supermarket shooting and governor hochul is cracking down on violence and media
This was a shocker of the week that continues the malaise, melancholy and the indifference that our leaders in Washington have been very moot—they’re always moot, and get more mooted all the time. This was outrageously a real reality television event. Is their any decency on the internet? Governor Kathy Hochul was not moot on this she went after the internet websites that live-streamed the shootings as they took place.. Governor Hochul is investigating them which really raises the question of how free the press really is how free speech is, if you consider all websites “press” and all speech free to be spoken.
SHOCKER NUMBER 3: COVID
On last Monday, The center for disease control declared Westchester a high covid transmission county. According to the CDC specific Westchester degree of spread, “the county is seeing levels of cases of hospitalizations that are putting a strain on the local health care system.” they have us for 4,000 a week progression over 7 days. Which may as the Covid Daily shows today may “only” reach 3,600..the first time Westchester has decline in 8 weeks. When that is crowed about, you heard it first here.
SHOCKER NUMBER 4: BABY FORMULA SHUTDOWN
The baby formula shortage caused by shutdown of the Abbott Laboratories plant in Sturgis Michigan when traces of bactoria in formula consumed by 4 babies, two of whom died were found in the plant. That shutdown was not last week but it happened 3 months ago in February.
This goes to the heart of business irresponsibility today: no information, no warning to doctors no urgency to clean up by the company. Why? Nothing like that from Washington D.C. either until last Saturday.
Now they say shortages could last 12 weeks that’s into July.
Only one public official has done something about this and that was Paul Feiner Supervisor of Greenburgh who is organizing volunteers of interns, students to aid women or relatives who need formula to help locate it.
The county followed suit Saturday with listings of breast milk sources in the county. Mr. feiner just got started Monday and they are succeeding in helping connect women with formula.
SHOCK NO. 5: AMAZON DISCRIMINATES
More corporate bad acting. This exploitation of the meek and unlucky is typical of big greed, only exposed because two workers sued Big A.
Amazon has 29 business locations in New York state and employs 39,000 persons and two persons have reported them for discrimination because Amazon refused to honor their conditions as required by new york state law.
Governor Hochul said New York State Division of Human Rights has filed a complaint against Amazon, Inc. alleging the company engages in discrimination against pregnant workers and workers with disabilities by denying them reasonable accommodations in their jobs.
The division also alleges that Amazon has policies that force pregnant workers and workers with disabilities to take an unpaid leave of absence rather than allowing them to work with a reasonable accommodation.
That’s firing in my book. What is this Leave of Absence Crap? Governor Hochul thinks so too! I heard no other politician cry out to the Amazon management. Bad actors.
HOCHUL laid it out for corporations on this issue: “MY ADMINISTRATION WILL HOLD ANY EMPLOYER ACCOUNTABLE, REGARDLESS OF HOW BIG OR SMALL, IF THEY DO NOT TREAT THEIR WORKERS WITH THE DIGNITY AND RESPECT THEY DESERVE,”
GOVERNOR HOCHUL SAID. “NEW YORK HAS THE STRONGEST WORKER PROTECTIONS
IN THE NATION AND WAS ONE OF THE FIRST TO HAVE PROTECTIONS FOR WORKERS WHO ARE PREGNANT AND THOSE WITH DISABILITIES. WORKING MEN AND WOMEN ARE THE BACKBONE OF NEW YORK AND WE WILL CONTINUE TO TAKE A STAND AGAINST ANY INJUSTICE THEY FACE.”
That’s why you need unions to give the workers protection and power.
It is also another example of the effect of the Unsupreme Court ruling that class action suits on behalf a group of people were struck down.
Forcing individuals to sue is a tremendous advantage to corporations.
This is a shocker that belies the oppression of the corporatives that cause inflation, collapses wealth, creates unemployment when it suits their purposes has access to unlimited credit (when student loans, oh they have to pay those don’t they) are protected by bankruptcy laws, yet foreclose at the drop of a hat, and can murder millions with a product and never go to jail. Business has only changed when people have had enough. They all go to the Uriah Heep School of Business.
It’s not what Big Coporate says it’s what they do. If they do not improve their “People Line” their Bottom line never improve.
They need to be good to their public. When will that happen? It has only happened when reporters, leaders and reformers took their lives in their hands and held the Goulds, the Pullmans, the Vanderbilts, the Rockefellers the “admired elite criminals” accountable.
SHOCKER NUMBER 6: FASNY, THE CITY AND GEDNEY ASSOCIATION GO TO COURT
It is the hearing that never ends and it goes back into court June 2 in Brooklyn New York USA.
Gedney Association is contending in the last piece of the Gedney lawsuit, that definition of an institution in a covenant attached to the 1925 deed on the sale of the old Gedney hotel still “goes and continues with the property when the future owner buys the property.
Why they did not drop it, is beyond belief, because the Appellate Court could take the position of the fact that the covenant is from a different time and set a 25 year expiration. Or it could uphold punishments of religious laws of archaic times or in this case say the covenants always stay with the property, giving ghosts control over a property. If they strike the covenant as being out of date, it opens up a ton of challenges to old zoning laws, “forever green” (remember the Toll Brothers property in my neighborhood what was supposed to be evergreen.)
This is a shock that you would expose this again to a court judgment when the attrition of time has destroyed the original plan.
SHOCK NUMBER 7: FAIRER DISTRICTS? NO. MORE OPPRESSIVE
The resolution of the Democrat Plot to insure a Democratic majority in State Senate, State Assembly and Congressional offices has resulted in a constitutional fiaso that preserves the will of the majority. Because the lawmakers did not know the law. (Smacking forehead) Who knew they did not know the law? You cannot make this up.
The way the new districts are being introduced is way short in transparency to the voters who now as of this writing have no idea of who representatives are who is running or where to vote, and what “hacks come latelies” are going to rise from the political graveyard and run again in the newly withdrawn districts.
The newly redrawn districts now though equal in population, are not equal in representation, one of the hallmarks of the old districts, no matter how disingenuous.
More than ever the voice of the Latino,the poor, the African-American, the Haitian immigrant, the Muslim, the Christian, the Orthodox Community has to vote, activate and coalesce with voters of similar sensitivity to move forward to persuade the majority to realize they are part of a minority the minority of oppressed humanity who must act more than they ever have before.
These are a lot of Shocks to endure and overcome but we cannot sit back and take the consequences.