WHITE PLAINS CITIZENETREPORTER 3,374,995 VISITS IN ONE YEAR—65,000 VISITS A WEEK BY 985,281 VISITORS

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WPCNR’S AMY PAULIN’S ALBANY From Assemblywoman of the 88th District, Amy Paulin. (EDITED)February 3, 2003:Assemblywoman Amy Paulin announces today a new law she supported making identity theft a felony level crime punishable by up to seven years in prison and gives victims the opportunity to seek legal recourse.
Recent identity theft crimes in Westchester County have made us aware of how easy it can be for someone to steal our most personal information. Over 750,000 cases of identity theft occur in the United States each year. This crime costs billions in damages to both consumers and the financial industry.”

This month, a Bronx woman was accused of trying to use another woman’s identity to steal $2,800 from a bank in Rye. In addition, a former H&R Block employee working from that organization’s White Plains office was accused of stealing the names, Social Security numbers, dates of birth and addresses of at least 27 customers.

Identity theft occurs when someone uses personal identification information about another person – including a Social Security number, name, or credit card number – to apply for credit, open bank accounts, or make unauthorized purchases.

In the past, financial institutions, such as credit card companies or banks, were legally considered the sole victims of identity theft – leaving consumers with ruined credit and no means of rebuilding their financial reputation. This law provides legal protections to both the credit institution and the card holder.

Westchester residents can protect themselves from identity theft by not giving out personal identification information – such as their maiden name, mother’s maiden name, or Social Security number to persons or companies they’re not familiar with; keeping items with personal information in a safe place; and destroying ATM, credit and debit card, and bank receipts. Check your credit report annually to ensure that they have not fallen victim to credit card fraud.

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WPCNR WHITE PLAINS VARIETY. February 3, 2003:The weekly city news roundup show, White Plains Week brings White Plains up to date on how Governor George Pataki’s suggested 2003-04 Budget cuts in funding Education will impact the White Plains City School District Friday night. The All-Night News Boys will also update the Indian Point Mexican standoff, report on the White Plains Police Department’s Dr. Frank Straub’s security conference of last week.

THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING PATAKI DOLLAR will be examined Friday night by Alex Philippidis, Editor of Westchester County Business Journal, James Benerofe of SuburbanStreet.com, and John Bailey of White Plains CitizeNetReporter, beginning at 7:30 PM on The Spirit of 76, WPPA, White Plains Public Access Television. The program appears every Monday at 7 and Fridays at 7:30 on Channel 76, the White Plains Channel.
PHOTO BY WPCNR ENTERTAINMENT

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WPCNR’S JOHN BAILEY AND THE NEWS. February 1, 2003: Saturday’s fatal Columbia Space Shuttle accident killing all 7 astronauts aboard when the historic spacecraft broke up over East Texas at daybreak Saturday morning begins a period of national mourning.

The expected media speculations have started, guessing at the cause of the reentry that went bizarrely, awfully wrong.

The truth is the civilized world takes absolute scientific miracles for granted. We do not appreciate the courage and skills of the men and women creating the future.

Those of us with cell phones, internet connections, high-speed trains, satellite communications and entertainment (all products made possible by the space program), do not realize the magnitude of daring achievements that you and I have come to accept to be executed like clockwork.

I first learned of Columbia’s fate late Saturday afternoon when my wife mentioned that instead of sports programming being videotaped on our television, there was coverage of a live NASA event on ABC.

(Incredibly, the radio station I had been listening to on the way from a sports clinic had not reported any hint of the accident. That station was Z-100, the most listened-to station in the New York metropolitan area. America Online also on their first up page did not mention the missing craft as of midday. That kind of communications misjudgment is sad.)

As I watched the close of Mr. Jennings’ coverage at about 3 PM, he signed off with no recap, no names of astronauts, and some parting words about what he thought was the cause of the disaster.

I’ll say what he should have said.

Columbia’s seven astronauts who died were Columbus, Magellan, Cook, Lewis, Clark, the Wrights, Lindbergh, De Laroche, Earhart, Markham, Chaffee, Grissom, White, Gargarin, Komarov, the Challenger Crew, the crew of Soyuz 11. They are the hundreds of brave men and women who went into the unknown.

They are the people who trust in their ability and their vessel to expand the world’s horizons, to know the unknown, whose legacies build a better world. Whose deeds inspire and achievements are the catalyst for more achievement.

From Cook’s fragile vessel which sailed the Pacific, to the marvel that was the Columbia, the captains courageous who sailed the Roaring 40s, blazed the Oregon Trail, discovered how to fly, and flew the oceans, journeyed to the stars, knew the risks they were taking.

It is trivializing their courage, their skills, and the difficulty of what they did and wanted to do, to concentrate on the causes of their failure, as if knowing the cause will make their loss acceptable.

The Magnificent Seven

I do not know Columbia’s Magnificent Seven. I just see their smiling faces in their photograph, and I regret the loss of every one. They had achievement on their faces, pride in their demeanor. Their eyes shown with the glow of being alive and striving to do the great things they set out to do.

Civilization has been created because of people like the crew of the Columbia’s Magnificent Seven.

The Columbia itself had flown 26 missions since launching in 1981. It was guided and outfitted with the best 2003 communications and equipment had to offer. Not like Captain James Cook’s bark, Endeavour, a 100-foot ship powered by sail that conquered the “space” of his time, the Pacific Ocean. It was the Columbia’s Magnificent Seven’s Endeavour. They were tracked, they were backed up, but they perhaps more than anyone here on the ground knew the high dangers of the shuttle mission.

Liftoff, as their predecessors, The Challenger crew fell victim to, is fraught with risk. Reentry, which needs to be negotiated at precisely the right angle of attack, is equally risky. Soyuz 11’s spacecrew of Dobrovolskiy, Volkov, and Patsayev died in 1971 on reentry, when the Russian cosmonauts took too long to descend.

No guarantees in real life. Machines sometimes run out of miracles.

The magnificence of the explorers’ sacrifice and dedication, is that they except the risk of “the endeavor.”

They accept the challenge, bear it alone, seizing challenge with an indomitable spirit and confidence, facing death when it comes with the satisfaction that they made the effort, and I suspect analyzing, coping, trying to fix it until the end.

Columbia’s Magnificent Seven, after 16 days in space, are gone now. My sorrow is with their families who will miss these Magnificent Seven, and who know in their hearts that they died trying to reach the pinnacle of their aspirations.

They are only human.

They tried their best, achieved their best, and experienced what they longed to experience. They dared to live the great adventure.

Not all of us have the courage to follow our longed-for adventures and make them real. You can watch movies that attempt to give that experience by transference. That’s why, I believe, you and I take it so personally when we lose heroic personalities of our time. We wonder what they are like. We glorify them, rightly so.

Follow Me! They Say.

I wonder how those Magnificent Seven felt, how satisfying it must have been, to be at your best, doing what you love, coping with the risks.

The Columbia Crew is the Miracle.

In reality it is not machines that conquer, it is the intrepid personalities, each unique, each contributing, who perform the miracles with God’s help. That they fall short is an example to us, not to take ourselves, our fates, or our existences for granted.

This is true of the everyday people we take for granted: the firefighter, the policeman, the train engineer, the airline pilot, the construction worker. All are highly trained disciplined workers, executing precise tasks for which the non-expert has no feel or understanding . What makes for the desire to achieve? What is out there or up there that leads them on?

The Feel of the Unknown

I took Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s biographical adventure diary, Listen! The Wind down from the bookshelf. She was the young bride of the aviator-pioneer, who navigated for him and ran his radio communications on his many exploratory flights around the world. In a passage she describes a night flight over the ocean, in which she was operating the radio for her husband Charles, who was at the controls. Mrs. Lindbergh is describing the feelings she had as she tries to tune in the South American coast at sea in the dark of night in 1933, seventy years ago. The feeling, the courage of the adventurer, the explorer has not changed

Night was the hardest. It would be all right once it was day. I kept saying…We began to hit clouds. I could tell without looking up, for the plane bumped slightly from time to time, first one wing down and then the other. And the moon blackened out for short periods. Then for longer periods. I could not see to write my messages. I stiffened, dimly sensing fear – the old fear of bad weather – and looked out. We were flying under clouds. I could still find a kind of horizon, a difference in shading where the water met the clouds. That was all. But it seemed to be getting darker. Storms? Were those clouds or was it the sky? We had lost the water. We were flying blind. I turned off the light quickly (to give my husband a little more vision), and sat waiting, tense, peering through the night. Now we were out again. There were holes through which one could see the dark sky. It was all right, I felt, as long as there were holes.

Daybreak—thank God—as if we had been living in eternal night—as if this were the first sun that ever rose out of the sea.

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WPCNR’S ADAM-IN-ALBANY. By New York State Assemblyman Adam Bradley of the 89th Assembly District. January 31, 2003:
Assemblyman Adam Bradley of White Plains today criticised the governer’s proposed cuts to education saying it would reduce academic standards, increase class sizes and boost property taxes. Here is Assemblyman Bradley’s commentary in which he details exactly how much towns from the 89th from Katonah to White Plains would be cut:
The state must make some tough choices to solve our budget problems this year, but cutting education is absolutely the wrong choice. The governor’s budget ax strikes a serious blow to education this year that could adversely affect our children for years to come.

The governor’s 2003-04 budget plan calls for a $4.4 million reduction in state aid to local elementary and secondary schools in the 89th District. Without adequate state aid, our schools will be forced to cut essential educational programs, lay off teachers and increase local school taxes.

School districts in my Assembly district would be hit particularly hard by the governor’s cuts, including:

·White Plains City School District would lose nearly $1.7 million;

· Katonah-Lewisboro Union Free School District would lose nearly $816,000;

· Bryam Hills Central School District would lose nearly $406,000;

· Chappaqua Central School District would lose over $372,000;

· Harrison Central School District would lose nearly $357,000;

· Valhalla Union Free School District would lose over $190,000.

Hidden Tax Increase

The governor’s budget is really a hidden tax increase. He promised his budget wouldn’t create any new ‘job-killing’ taxes, but that’s exactly what it does. Not only will the governor’s education-killing cuts cheat our children of a quality education, they’ll slap local homeowners with much higher property taxes because school districts will have to raise money to make up their revenue losses.

I also take issue with the governor’s proposed $1,200 SUNY tuition increase that will force the typical SUNY Purchase undergrad to pay $6,113 a year in tuition and mandatory fees, and his plan to cut the Tuition Assistance Program by 33 percent. In addition, he’s cutting our community colleges’ base aid by 15 percent, or $345 for each student – which will also drive up tuition costs and local taxes on homeowners and businesses.

Anti-Education

The governor’s proposals are simply anti-education. Raising SUNY tuition by $1,200 and cutting tuition assistance is cynical and mean-spirited. It only hurts middle- and lower-income families, and students who are least able to afford the price.

These difficult fiscal times require some tough choices, the governor made the wrong choices — preventing students from obtaining a quality, affordable education is shortsighted. My commitment to education is to prepare students for the future and provide them with the tools necessary to promote economic growth, not to take these tools away from them.

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WPCNR FOR THE RECORD. January 31, 2003: The Glen Hockley fund-raising letter, referred to by Jeffrey Binder in his letter to The CitizeNetReporter is hereby reprinted for the record:
COUNCILMAN GLEN HOCKLEY
January 21, 2003

Dear
For about one year I have had the honor and privilege of serving as your Councilman. During that time, my actions have helped to bring our local government closer to the people while my accomplishments have benefited our citizens. Among these action/accomplishments were:

• The sponsoring of a bill (passed unanimously) to hire a grant writer whose function is to raise money to help pay for city services thereby helping to keep our taxes lower. As a consequence, our commissioners will have more time to devote to their primary responsibilities;

• The initiation of weekly neighborhood “waikabouts” during which I visit all houses and apartments in an area, learn about your concerns and then try to solve them;

• The sponsoring with Councilman Greer of the “Citizens to be Heard” bill (passed unanimously), giving you, the citizens of White Plains prior to council meetings, the opportunity to be heard by the Mayor and the Common Council about any issue of your choosing;

• Support of local labor union interests and provision of access to City Hall;

• As a result of my Common Council activities, the TV news program “White Plains Week” recently selected me as their 2002 Man of the Year.

As I am sure you may have heard by now, my former opponent is taking me to court again. The purpose for which is to remove me from office as your Councilman.

During my time in office, the opponent I beat in the last election has continually challenged me in the legal system. This has been a very expensive process and will continue to be through its conclusion. I now ask for your help in this matter and hope that you wilt be the for me as I have been, and will continue to be, for you.

We have established a legal defense fund for this purpose and certainly would appreciate any contribution you can make to it. Checks should be made payable to the Hockley Defense Fund and mailed to Jonathan H. Appel, (address).

I would like to thank you for all the help and support you have shown me in the past and promise you that as I continue as your Councilman. I will never forget the assistance that you have shown me and will, of course, strive to be the best Councilman that White Plains has ever had.

Sincerely,
Glen Hockley
Councilman
White Plains