• Gigabit Westchester

  • Nov 10, 2016, 11:30 am – 1:30 pm
  • Tappan Hill Mansion
  • 200 Gunpowder Lane
  • Tarrytown, NY 10591

• Blair Levin to be keynote speaker

• BLAIR LEVIN, A FORMER OFFICIAL IN THE CLINTON AND OBAMA ADMINISTRATIONS, TO JOIN WCA’S “GIGABIT WESTCHESTER” INITIATIVE AS A “VOLUNTARY COUNSELOR”

  Blair Levin, Executive Director of Gig.U: The Next Generation Network Innovation Project and a non-resident Senior Fellow of the Brookings Institution, has joined the WCA’s Blueprint for Smart Growth team as Voluntary Counselor to the WCA’s Gigabit Broadband initiative, which was announced on October 6th at a press conference. Levin served in the first Obama administration as Executive Director of the National Broadband Plan and in the Clinton administration as Chief of Staff to the Chairman of the FCC, where from 2009-2010, Levin oversaw the development of the FCC’s National Broadband Plan.

WPCNR NEWS AND COMMENT. By John F. Bailey, The White Plains CitizeNetReporter . November 6, 2016, Originally Published July 2, 2014:

Good morning, Americans!

The news this morning is showing me ugly pictures of  the America today.

Tuesday is election day. And as Bob Grant, the old WMCA talk show host used to say, “Your vote counts. Use it!”

But use it wisely. Take a good look at what we have witnessed the last year of this terrible campaign for President.

I wrote this column in 2014, when I saw pictures of the townspeople of Murrieta, California blocking a convoy of children from coming to their town, apparently urged to roadblock it  by the town’s mayor, made me shake my head in shame and sorrow at the hate that grows like a field of ugly weeds across the once great land.

Since when is America afraid of children? Since when does America hate children? When are we going to stop chasing down border busters and, instead, change the dynamic:  welcome them with buses to facilities and give them what they come to us because we America are their last hope?

I hated when the Coast Guard turned back the boatpeople years ago. I hated it when Haitians were denied coming to the U.S.  I hate even more the inhospitability of creating an American wall around America.

On July 4, 1776 — when signers of the original Declaration of Independence signed that document in Philadelphia, they knew full well if British authorities found them they could face death for treason against the crown — too many of us have forgotten the second sentence of the Declaration of Independence:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness..”

The men who signed their names to this document had parents who had come to the new world because their parents had come to escape repression in England. That’s why they wrote that sentence.

And, yes, I know they had slaves, exploited the slave trade, and the native Americans. That does not take away from the truth of the words in that sentence I just quoted. The operative word is “all.”

With this sentence they were declaring that in their new country there would not be the oppression of the past. The hate of the past.

Sadly, the beauty of this second sentence in the Declaration of Independence is lost on the America of Hate today. Each day you see, scorn for the plight of children running across our borders from persons who should know better; fingerpointing at persons who are in this country illegally because they came from where they had nothing, because they speak a different language and try to understand ours,   at the same time exploitation of illegals and legal persons too in our restaurants, our businesses, our stores who hire them off the books and make fortunes on their backs, giving no health benefits, a legal worker is entitled to receive.

There is GNN…”The Ghoul News Networks” who cover every  revenge shooting we average two a week in America lately and spend days titillating us with televising the grief of those whose loved ones died–a practice which unfortunately is not good for the mental health of persons who are troubled who I firmly believe are inspired by the media exploitation of mass shootings (because its easy rather than report on solutions).

Coverage of shootings glorify them and is piously defended by the media quest to know why they happen. News reporters, look at your tapes! You’ll see why violence is in vogue! You promote it–inadvertently.

They even reported a knife-wielder threatening the TV show,  Good Morning America. I’d beef up security on Jimmy Fallon soon after that stupidity of reporting the incident. Their argument is always, “It’s news!” But it’s not–it’s sensationalism to get viewers.

There is the “Never Do Anything” Congress in Washington who listen to their lobbyists and donors and do not do what should be done– pass an immigration law which should not kick persons out in any way — but get them into the workforces legally so they can pay taxes, receive benefits from employers.

Do they do that…..Nooooooooooo–because that would cost big businesses too much money and end the bonanza of an expolited workforce– the slavery of today. I once worked in a restaurant where they paid me 90 cents an hour. They imported Puerto Rican men to work 6 days a week, for less. I will never forget the hovels they were housed in in the back of the restaurant.

Our leaders buy into the “penance period,” of witholding voting, citizenship until illegals do their time leave and come back. Even those who are here legally face incompetent, endless approval times for citizenship because of the incompetence of the immigration agency.

That extended penance period is promoted by the white supremacist capitalists in power in this country and forget their parents were immigrants once, too.

The power elite in the Republican and Democratic Parties that have with their greed wrecked our economy…Supremacists clinging to their power by “buying” the weakest people in America: elected officials. They influence our feckless elected officials with money and sophist arguments to make the illegals have to wait for citizenship.

It reaches right down to the roots…right herein Westchester where illegal housing festers. This cowtowing by government to the realty and businesses at the suffering of those who work the hardest, and who have to know two languages while most of us only know one.

Locally, we are very good at keeping illegal residents packed into two-family homes, exploited in shabby conditions in Battle Hill in White Plains, in the Fisher Hill Neighborhood and elsewhere.

Contributions to political parties are carefully designed to assure the overcrowded conditions in sweltering rooms make the tenements of the lower East Side of the 19th century look spacious.

Where are the sweeps by the City of White Plains to get rid of these people traps? Talk about quality of life? What about fire inspections once a month in multi-family homes? That might change things. Dream on.

Why do organizations designed to help newcomers who speak Spanish promote residences that are overcrowded? (I have seen copies of the lists). The lists are available for the city to go to every place and inspect them. They don’t.

And just once, I’d like the Common Council to hold a conference on cleaning up illegal housing in White Plains. They never have in the 17 years I’ve run this website. How do they sleep at night?

What do they and Westchester County and New York State do? Lots of tax breaks for businesses to come in and establish businesses in our cities. For which the taxpayer pays.

However, America does care if white persons anywhere in the world are victimized. We definitely champion them. But we do not get upset at the continuing violence in Somalia, Sudan, Iraq, Afghanistan — Ukraine–Bangladesh, Istanbul.

When American businesses shirk taxes by shipping jobs overseas, we have abetted this, contributing to the drain of manufacturing jobs.

When banks screw up and lose $6 Billion, just lose it, without explanation. Nothing is done to them. No banker czar or tycoon went to jail except Bernie Madoff.

When businesses break the law, they do so, and admit no wrongdoing when lightly slapped on the wrists by the attorney general.

I was in a hospital Monday to be there for a person undergoing a procedure. The nurses were of all races. All spoke English. The anesthesiologist was Indian. The surgeon was Indian. They dealt with their patients deftly, with compassion and understanding.

I want to assure the people of America that the children will not hurt you. They will not take your taxes. But you unfortunately have failed to do what Americans used to do: put yourself in someone else’s shoes.

The scene in Murietta California two years ago only lacked one thing: the water hoses and the police dogs and the police with clubs stopping the citizens of Murrieta from hurling stones and rocking the buses.

The government was wrong in letting them turn away the convoy, and diverting to San Diego. The Murrieta Mayor should not have incited his town against the border children. He just took a politically advantageous stance to assure his pathetic reelection. Why does government ignore bad behavior by elected officials who should know better?

When elected officials do not stand up for what is right, when they espouse hate against children, as officials in the south did in the early 1960s during the freedom rides, the people have to wonder, how would this person treat me?

The failure of great big American business to rebuild Detroit, New Orleans, and the govenmental snafu on Staten Island after Sandy speak volumes for how the government really feels, how patriotic businesses really are…let alone American business leaders, and the competence of the people who run government departments.

Not only is this now an America of Hate, it is an America of Insecurity, America Without Confidence, and America without know-how, and an America dedicated to its own pleasure.

The stone faces of Presidents of the Past on Mount Rushmore are grim faced for a reason: We have failed their vision.

Vote with wisdom Tuesday and demand more of whom you chose.

Your vote counts, use it.