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DAN WELSH
ON SPREAD OF POWER CONSORTIUMS STATEWIDE
THE PROSPECTS OF SOLAR
PROSPECTS FOR LOWER GREEN RATES THROUGH WESTCHESTER POWER
GROWTH IN COUNTY PEGGED TO YONKERS COMING ON BOARD
WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE TO REACH 2030 GOALS
GEO THERMAL CONVERSION WHAT IT IS
HOW BUSINESSES CAN SOLARIZE AND SAVE MONEY
WHAT WESTCHESTER POWER HAS SAVED IN POLLUTANTS IN ONE YEAR
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WPCNR MAIN STREET JOURNAL. February 19, 2020:
A new video appeared on the White Plains City website yesterday introducing White Plains to the world at large. The promotion, lasting 4 minutes, delivers an inviting and upbeat overview of what kind of city it is with an eye apparently to attract persons and businesses to the city. Here’s a look:
“Fortunately for us, we found the perfect people to help us create this video, Nitrous Ltd, owned and operated by White Plains residents Paul and Melanie Rosen,” said White Plains Mayor Tom Roach on the city website.
“We are extremely grateful to Paul and Melanie for helping us capture the essence of White Plains in this terrific video. And we also extend our thanks to Westchester County Executive George Latimer and the County Industrial Development Agency for funding this project on behalf of the city.”
Paul Rosen, owner of Nitrous said, “As a business owner and resident of White Plains, I often find myself singing the praises of this great city. I wanted to create a video showcasing the great services, year-round events, fellow businesses and of course, the residents that make White Plains such a wonderful place to live. As a video production company, what better way is there for me to showcase the city that I love?
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WPCNR HEALTH OBSERVATION. February 19, 2019:
The Westchester County Department of Health announced yesterday evening 26 persons just returned from the Chinese mainland are being quarantined in their homes to monitor them for any signs of developing symptoms of coronavirus, Commissioner of the Department of Health, Dr. Sherlita Ambler announced.
Caren Halbfinger, Public Affairs Director for the Department of Health answered WPCNR’s questions about how the quarantine is being administered
1. Are persons in the quarantined group confined to the house or residence? And cannot leave?
The individuals who are quarantined must stay away from others – so that means they have to stay where they are, which in most cases is indoors at their own home. The environment is assessed to determine if it is safe to allow them outside.
2. Who checks them and how often or are they self-reporting?
Health department nurses are in touch with them via smart phone video-conferencing several times each day. The Westchester County Health Department is following CDC and New York State Department of Health protocols. The Health Department can call them and these travelers can call the Health Department at any time.
Should they become ill or need to be transported Public Safety and Emergency Services would oversee that and make sure the right equipment is being used.
3. If they are allowed to leave, do they wear ankle bracelets? No – they are not allowed to leave.
4. If they are not allowed to leave, is the county supplying food, essentials? The County Health Department is working with them to ensure they have whatever they need.
5. Are they allowed visitors? No.
6. Is it correct that there are no confirmed coronaviruses infected persons at this time? Wednesday? Correct – none.
7. If more travelers possibly exposed to coronavirus arrive in greater numbers where will the county quarrantine them?
Each individual’s situation will be assessed to determine whether quarantine is appropriate and then, if it is, to determine the best setting.
To date, there have been no cases of coronavirus reported in Westchester County
These are the facts the Department of Health released to WPCNR this morning:
WHAT YOU CAN DO TO STAY SAFE:
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WPCNR ALBANY ROUNDS. From Assemblyman Thomas Abinanti. February 15, 2020:
The Governor has constituted a Medicaid Redesign Team 2020 composed of healthcare providers to propose $2.5 billion in cuts to state spending for Medicaid. (Note that this triggers a loss of $2.5 billion in federal funding for Medicaid services as well.) For more information, visit the Health Department’s website here.
MRT II conducted a public hearing on Feb. 14, 2020 and is planning a second hearing on Tues., Feb. 18 in Rochester.
The website also has a survey seeking recommendations and proposals. Click here.
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Link to Youtube for 2-14 wpw: https://youtu.be/bJ6XObS650Y
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THE FUNDING CRISIS AT OFFICE FOR PERSONS WITH DISABILITIES AND CUTTING MEDICAID FOR THE DISABLED
THE FAILURE TO PAY CAREGIVERS A SALARY TO SUPPORT A FAMILY
THE GROUP HOME CRISIS
PARENTS UNABLE TO CARE FOR THEIR ADULT DISABLED CHILD
HOW MEDICAID CUTS WOULD AFFECT PERSONS WITH DISABILITIES
SATURDAY NIGHT ON “PEOPLE TO BE HEARD” CH 45 FIOS WESTCHESTER-WIDE AND IN WHITE PLAINS CABLEVISION CH. 76 AND RIGHT NOW AT www.wpcommunitymedia.org
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WPCNR WHITE PLAINS LAW JOURNAL. By John F. Bailey. February 13, 2020 updated 4:50 PM EST:
The Appellate Divison, Second Department Ruled Tuesday it would hear the Gedney Association of White Plains vs. French American School of New York, and dismissed the City of White Plains Common Council motion to dismiss the appeal on the ground that the joint appendix is inadequate (did not contain the complete record) because White Plains did not comply with the Electronic Filing Rules of the Appellate Division.
The court ruled the FASNY motion to dismiss the Gedney Association, Daniel Seidel, Claudia Jaffee appeal filed August, 2018, “on the grounds they improperly raise arguments for the first time on appeal and refer to matter dehors, (Editor’s note: matter dehors refers to something outside the scope of or not included in the agreement or records involved). The records may be a trial record, contract, will, or other matter. The record is held in abeyance and referred to the panel of Justices hearing the appeals for determination upon the argument ” (to be scheduled).
The court ruled that the Gedney Association and Daniel Seidel must “serve and file a supplemental joint appendix containing certain material is granted and must be filed by March 9.
The French American School of New York and the City of White Plains were given time to file a respondent briefs by April 8.
After the Gedney Association papers are delivered to the court, and the FASNY and White Plains brief are in, the appeal will seek a court date. Estimates are the case may not come up for as long as two years.
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WPCNR MILESTONES. By John F. Bailey. From the WPCNR Archives. February 12, 2020:
Today marks the birthday of Abraham Lincoln, whose Presidential performance during the Civil War (1861-1865) was perhaps the most admirable of any American President.
When I strode through the official “White House of the Confederacy” in Richmond, Virginia sometime ago, where President Lincoln met generals. I felt his giant shadow over the decades.
The “White House of the Confederacy,” Richmond, Virginia.
President Abraham Lincoln met with one of his Generals in the Library (lighted window)within hours after Union troops had secured Richmond.
In being in that room, I was awestruck by the spirit of the President and the spirits of the Confederate opposition that discussed strategy with Jefferson Davis the President of the Confederacy in the room on the second floor…a conference room:
Lee, Jackson, the Confederate Generals. That room is on the second floor of this house. The ghosts in this historic home speak to us today.
Lincoln had to create things as he went, dealing with a complex political issue: slavery, while deciding to fight a war to preserve a divided nation.
How did Abraham Lincoln handle pressure and political opportunists?
He did not have press agents and spinmasters and talk show hosts and superior punditry critiquing his every move and loading him up with advice.
Though he did have the “crusading editors” and “editorial boards” of his day. Let’s take a look at the Big Guy from Illinois
In the days of Lincoln, media coverage was simply print media. However, the amount of reporting on the burning issues of the day was far more detailed than today with dozens of newspapers presenting the chronicles of burning issues. People read. For Lincoln’s presidency was the presidency of the nation’s greatest crisis in its eighty-five year history (until World War II, 9/11, and perhaps, now:
The Civil War.
It is interesting to note how President Lincoln conducted himself in dealing with America’s interests, its factions, pulling him to free the slaves.
When Lincoln was running for the Presidency in 1860 at the Republican Convention in riproaring Chicago, he was up against James Seward, a powerful New York politician.
However, the western states at the time were highly distrustful of the New York political machine. (Has anything really changed? They are still distrustful today!)
Lincoln won over support by taking a position of what was good for the nation as a whole.
Taking a Position and Working To it
Lincoln first gave notice of his potential for the Presidency when he impressed Horace Greeley, influential editor of the New York Tribune with a fiery speech at the Cooper Union (still standing today) in February, 1860, delivering a sharp criticism of the South, hard on the heels of South Carolina’s secession from the Union. The speech included these words,
You say you will not abide the election of a Republican President. In that supposed event, you say, you will destroy the Union; and then, you say, the great crime of having destroyed it will be upon us! (The northern states) That is cool. A highwayman holds a pistol to my ear, and mutters through his teeth, “Stand and deliver, or I shall kill you, and then you will be a murderer!”
Greeley printed the speech in his Tribune the next day, scooping the other New York papers, by simply asking Lincoln for a copy of the speech. The subsequent printing in the popular Trib, sent Mr. Lincoln on his way. As William Harlan Hale’s biography of Mr. Greeley (Horace Greeley: Voice of the People)describes the scene at “The original Trib’s” offices, as remembered by Amos Cummings, a young proofreader:
Amos Cummings, then a young proofreader, remembered the lanky westerner appearing over his shoulder amid the noise of the pressroom late at midnight, drawing up a chair, adjusting his spectacles, and in the glare of the gaslight reading each galley (of the Cooper Union speech) with scrupulous care and then rechecking his corrections, oblivious to his surroundings.
A Comeback President
Lincoln had been a highly successful politician from Illinois in the 1830s and 1840s. He was three times elected to the state legislature, and The Kunhardts’ The American Presidency reports he was —
“a recognized expert at forming coalitions…he learned how to keep secrets, how to trade favors, how to use the press to his advantage. And he cultivated his relationship with the party hierarchy.”
Graff’s book writes that Lincoln was described as “ruthless,” that he “handled men remotely like pieces on a chessboard.” Humor and frankness were character traits.
Lincoln was elected a congressman, only to serve just one term.
Lincoln had been practicing corporate law privately and had lost interest in politics by 1854, until the repeal of The Missouri Compromise, which had restricted slavery to the southern states.
Lincoln felt stirred to come back. He spoke out against the spread of slavery, running for the senate in 1858 against William Douglas, unsuccessfully.
Saving the Union His Mantra
As the furor over slavery and the South’s threats to secede grew, a crisis of spirit and purpose in this nation (which, in my opinion, make today’s concerns about terrorism as a threat to America, pale in comparison, Lincoln realized that the Union was the larger issue.
He expressed this in response to Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune, an influential figure at the Republican (Whig) Convention in Chicago in 1860.
Greeley was the kingmaker at the 1860 Chicago convention who eventually swung the western states for Lincoln, giving the man from Illinois the nomination on the third ballot over William Seward, the candidate of the Thurlow Weed “New York Machine.”
Greeley tried to influence the President-Elect to free the slaves. (Lincoln was being lobbied by the still-powerful Weed-Seward faction to compromise with the southern states on the issue of slavery).
Standing Tall Against Pressure.
Lincoln refused to free the slaves as one of the first acts of his presidency, standing firm to hold the union together, when he announced his attention not to do so, on his way to Washington after being elected. His words in this time of international tension, are worth remembering Lincoln said:
I have often inquired of myself what great principle or idea it was that kept this Confederacy (the Union, he means), so long together. It was not the mere matter of separation of the colonies from the motherland, but that sentiment in the Declaration of Independence which gave liberty not alone to the single people of this country, but hope to all the world, for all future time. It was that which gave promise that in due time the weights would be lifted from the shoulders of all men, and that all should have an equal chance.
Today, I teared up when I read this again. I tear up for the short-sighted, the selfish, the hollow souls who have profited from life in America, and now wish to keep suffering immigrants out. They support jailing children. How can anyone do that? I reject this fear that has been used as a weapon. What do you think Lincoln would say?
Seeing the Big Picture.
After Fort Sumter was fired upon, Lincoln was pressured harder to free the slaves. Still, Lincoln held firm. Mr. Greeley published a blistering open letter to the President, he called “The Letter of Twenty Millions,” meaning his readers (slightly exaggerated)in The New York Tribune.
Greeley’s letter took the President to task for not freeing the slaves now that the Civil War was on, writing, “all attempts to put down the rebellion and at the same time uphold its inciting cause are preposterous and futile.”
President Lincoln responded with an open letter which Greeley published in The Tribune. President Lincoln’s letter is instructive as to how a President moves in crisis, when a nation is ripped apart to calm and state his position. He begins with a conciliatory tone, calming Greeley’s bombast:
…If there be perceptible in it (Greeley’s letter) an impatient and dictatorial tone, I waive it in deference to an old friend whose heart I have always supposed to be right.
As to the policy I “seem to be pursuing,” as you say, I have not meant to leave any one in doubt. I would save the Union. I would save it in the shortest way under the Constitution.
The sooner the national authority can be restored the nearer the Union will be – the Union as it was.
If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them.
If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them.
If I could save the Union without freeing any slaves, I would do it – if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it – and if I could do it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that.
What I do about slavery and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save this Union, and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union.
I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I believe doing more will help the cause.
I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors, and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be new views.
I have here stated my purpose according to my views of official duty, and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free, Yours
A. Lincoln
(Editor’s Note:That is Presidential! It leaves no doubt as to who is in charge and who is responsible and why. How refreshing!)
Wearied by War
Horace Greeley described the toll the Civil War had taken on Mr. Lincoln, seeing him in person shortly before General Robert E. Lee surrendered. Greeley wrote:
Lincoln’s face had nothing in it of the sunny, gladsome countenance he first brought from Illinois. It is now a face haggard with care and seamed with thought and trouble…tempest-tossed and weatherbeaten, as if he were some tough old mariner who had for years been beating up against the wind and tide, unable to make his port or find safe anchorage…The sunset of life was plainly looking out of his kindly eyes.
He was the greatest President of them all.
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WPCNR COMMON COUNCIL CHRONICLE-EXAMINER. February 10, 2019:
Drew Greenwald, Principal of Grid Properties the owner firm of the former Sholz and Lincoln Mercury properties located between Maple Avenue and West Post Road appeared at the Common Council meeting last Monday night to apply for an extension of the Grid Properties site plan for The Boulevard complex shown above. Mr. Greenwald explained why the project had not been started (reluctant retail market), inability to come to terms with a major tenant though he said the company was close to signing. At the close, the Common Council approved the site plan extension.
