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WHITE PLAINS LIBRARY REOPENS FOR ALL SERVICES APRIL 29
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WPCNR MEDIA NEWS. From Brian Kenney, Director, White Plains Public Library. April 15, 2021:
At last night’s meeting of the Board of Trustees, it was decided that the Library building would open to the public effective Thursday, April 29.
Some facts about our reopening:
- We are reopening with the exact same level of service we offered over the summer: A limited number of patrons will be welcome to browse the first floor collections and check out material, while the Trove will be open for appointments, one family at a time
- The Library hours will remain unchanged (Monday-Thursday, 10 am to 7 pm, Friday and Saturday 10 am to 5 pm, closed Sunday)
- Our Grab & Go service will end close of business, Wednesday, April 28. Effective Thursday, April 29 we will revert to having a Holds collection; as was true in the past, patrons will need to come into the building and check out holds material themselves
- All staff and patrons must abide by the protective practices outlined in the Addendum to our Code of Conduct. Please review the Addendum. We remain committed to everyone wearing face masks and maintaining social distancing.
I will schedule a Town Hall meeting for Monday to answer questions regarding this reopening as well as to discuss the next fiscal year, beginning July 1.
Finally, on behalf of the Board and myself, a big thank you for everyone’s efforts at providing excellent services and programs this past year. It has truly been extraordinary. As part of developing a strategic plan, we have been interviewing patrons and collecting information through the survey on our website. Time and again, patrons have expressed their thanks for all you have succeeded in accomplishing throughout this difficult year. These three patrons said it best:
I am very pleased with how the library staff responded to the pandemic and developed tools for the public to use — to stay connected, to continue to be library patrons, to read, to listen, to learn. Some people needed resources for home schooling. The staff was great. The staff is great.
I love the White Plains Library. The staff is always polite and helpful. I really appreciate that the library found ways to accommodate lending books & providing programs during the pandemic. Thanks to your commitment to serving the community, I was able to enjoy good books during the pandemic. Thank you White Plains Library Staff, keep up the great work!
The library has done an amazing job responding to COVID. The expanded access to online streaming and materials, the zoom author discussions and classes, and the incredible responsiveness of the team have all been fantastic! THANK YOU!!!
CONGRESSMAN JONES CO SPONSORS EXPANDING SUPREME COURT to 13 JUSTICES
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WPCNR WASHINGTON WIRE. From Congressman Mondaire Jones of the 37th Congressional District, Westchester, Rockland Counties. April 15, 2021:
Today, Congressmen Mondaire Jones (D-NY), Vice Chair of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet; Jerrold Nadler (D-NY),Chair of the House Judiciary Committee; Hank Johnson (D-GA),Chair of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet; and Senator Edward J. Markey (D-MA),introduced the Judiciary Act of 2021 to expand the United States Supreme Court by adding four seats, creating a 13-justice Supreme Court.
This bill would restore balance to the nation’s highest court after four years of norm-breaking actions by Republicans led to its current composition and greatly damaged the Court’s standing in the eyes of the American people. In order for the Court to fulfill its duty to deliver equal justice under the law, and protect the rights and well-being of millions of Americans, the legislation expands the Court to restore balance, integrity, and independence to it.
“Our democracy is hanging by a thread. And the far-right majority on the U.S. Supreme Court is cutting it,” said Congressman Jones. “From Citizens United to Shelby County to Rucho, the Court has been hostile to democracy itself. The majority’s doctrine is clear: if a law suppresses the right to vote, it is constitutional; if a law protects the right to vote, especially for Black and brown voters, it is unconstitutional. The American people have had enough. To restore power to the people, we must expand the Supreme Court. Today, I am proud to introduce the Judiciary Act of 2021 to do just that.”
“Republicans stole the Court’s majority, with Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation completing their crime spree,” said Senator Markey. “Of all the damage Donald Trump did to our Constitution, this stands as one of his greatest travesties. Senate Republicans have politicized the Supreme Court, undermined its legitimacy, and threatened the rights of millions of Americans, especially people of color, women, and our immigrant communities. This legislation will restore the Court’s balance and public standing and begin to repair the damage done to our judiciary and democracy, and we should abolish the filibuster to ensure we can pass it. I thank Chairman Nadler, and Reps. Johnson and Jones for their partnership on this legislation that will ensure the Supreme Court reflects the value of equal justice under law, not politics.”
“Nine justices may have made sense in the nineteenth century when there were only nine circuits, and many of our most important federal laws—covering everything from civil rights, to antitrust, the internet, financial regulation, health care, immigration, and white collar crime—simply did not exist, and did not require adjudication by the Supreme Court,” said Chairman Nadler. “But the logic behind having only nine justices is much weaker today, when there are 13 circuits. Thirteen justices for thirteen circuits is a sensible progression, and I am pleased to join my colleagues in introducing the Judiciary Act of 2021.”
“It’s easy to take for granted that the number of justices on the Supreme Court must be nine,” said Chairman Johnson. “But it is not written in the Constitution and has changed seven times over the course of this country’s history. Thirteen justices would mean one justice per circuit court of appeals, consistent with how the number of justices was originally determined, so each justice can oversee one circuit. It’s time that we start thinking about the Supreme Court like we think about the rest of the federal government and consider whether and how its current composition allows it to effectively do what we need it to do — efficiently and effectively administer justice and uphold the rule of law. I am pleased to join my colleagues, Senator Markey, Chairman Nadler, and Representative Jones in taking an important step in that direction today with the introduction of the Judiciary Act of 2021.”
WEATHER WHITE PLAINS 9:45 A.M. EDT:50 CLOUDY WPCNR DEGREES: RAIN TO COME
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Today Periods of rain. High near 53. Southeast wind 5 to 8 mph. Chance of precipitation is 100%. New precipitation amounts between a quarter and half of an inch possible.
Tonight –Rain continues. Cloudy, with a low around 39. North wind 8 to 13 mph. Chance of precipitation is 60%. New precipitation amounts between a quarter and half of an inch possible
.Friday: Rain continues. 50 percent chance of rain. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 45. Northwest wind 11 to 14 mph. (Forecast, National Weather Service)
A Night to Remember the Titanic
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approaching The Carpathia, a rescue ship, 109 years ago this morning
WPCNR MILESTONES. By John F. Bailey. (Mr. Bailey runs this column every year at this time, and sadly nothing changes) April 14-15, 2021
She began her voyage, four days ago, 109 years ago, April 10, 1912.
She carried over 2,200 passengers and crew and was the largest ocean liner of her time ever built.
They were the rich and famous, the poor and hopeful.
She was guaranteed unsinkable.
Her owners, the White Star Line, wanted to set a new speed record for crossing the Atlantic.
Her captain had been warned the northerly course would take it through an iceberg field.
On April 13, sailing under a crisp clear,calm starlit sky at 11:40 PM after an evening of partying aboard ship, prior to arrival in New York today, the ship sideswiped an iceberg.
She was the Titanic.
She was the ship of dreams.
Today, she is the ship of nightmares as her hundreds of passengers from all walks of life perished together in the ruthless sea. The cold fateful, unforgiving frigid indifferent eternity of the sea.
The Titanic’s fate was a lesson that changed maritime laws.
Two and a half hours after the iceberg collision the Titantic sank at 2:20 A.M., early the morning of April 15, (this morning) on that night to remember.
This is an excerpt from the testimony of a survivor, Emily Maria Borie Ryerson watching from a lifeboat desperately trying to row away from the suction of the sinking ship, at the 1912 U.S. Senate SubCommittee Hearing on the Titanic sinking:
“The order was given to pull away. Then they rowed off—the sailors, the women, anyone – but made little progress; there was a confusion of orders; we rowed toward the stern, someone shouted something about a gangway, and no one seemed to know what to do. Barrels and (deck) chairs were being thrown overboard.
“Then suddenly, when we (in the lifeboat) still seemed very near, we saw the ship was sinking rapidly. I was still in the bow of the boat with my daughter and turned to see the great ship take a plunge toward the bow, the two forward funnels seemed to lean and then she seemed to break in half as if cut with a knife, and as the bow went under, the lights went out; the stern stood up for several minutes, black against the stars, and then that, too, plunged down and there was no sound for what seemed like hours, and then began the cries for help of people drowning all around us, which seemed to go on forever.”
Dorothy Gibson, the silent screen actress and survivor – from her testimony before the committee—observed from a lifeboat– in an excerpt from her testimony before the same committee, said:
“Suddenly there was a wild coming together of voices from the direction of the ship of the ship and we noticed an unusual commotion among the people huddled about the railing. Then the awful thing happened, the thing that will remain in my memory until the day I die.
The Titanic seemed to lurch slightly more to the side and then the fore. A minute, or probably two minutes, later she sank her nose into the ocean, swayed for a few minutes and disappeared, leaving nothing behind her on the face of the sea but a swirl of water, bobbing heads and lifeboats that were threatened by the suction of the waters.”
The Titanic’s fate was traced to the negligence and reckless disregard of the risk of sailing at 22 knots through an icefield, and 16 lifeboats for 2,200 persons, insufficient number of lifeboats.
In recent years, analysis of the hull plates recovered from the wreck of the ship on the ocean floor indicated a faulty, economical brittle bolt selection in constructing the hull.
The White Star Line owner J. Bruce Ismay, onboard that night, callously saved his own life by slipping into a lifeboat.
Ismay in a statement, denied telling the Captain of the Titanic to set a new speed record and denied telling the Captain to increase the ship speed in the ice field region. Also said he just happened to be near a lifeboat about to be lowered and no more women and children around to board, and that was why he got into the lifeboat.
So much for corporate responsibility and guilt of any kind, even then.
Not much has changed in corporate world over the 109 years since this night and morning to remember.
Industrial moguls continue unaccountable and pay little price for their self-serving decisions which kill thousands with foreknowledge.
“Who knew?” is not an excuse. You knew is the answer.
Steroids. The 737. Opioids. Covid denial. Thalidimide denial. Arms dealing.
Narcotics trade. Concussion damage. Gun dealers. Negligence. Overdoses overlooked.
Crimes against humanity just for profit cannot be condoned when they are created by naive design, gambling everything will be all right, when it creates appalling deaths of thousands of innocents.
Perpetual rationalizations of inhumanities to men and women live on in infamy.
Saying sorry is not enough.
Expressing regrets and and sending thoughts and prayers going out to victims by the decision makers who made the reckless decisions is so easy. It does not absolve.
The atrocities of man’s inhumanity and selfish self aggrandizement to their fellow men and women should never be forgotten.
CONGRESSMAN JONES CALLS FOR THIRD “RECONSTRUCTION” IN WASHINGTON POST OP-ED
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WPCNR NEWS & COMMENT. From the Office of Congressman Mondaire Jones of the 37th. april 14, 2021:
This week, Congressman Mondaire Jones (D-NY) wrote an op-ed for The Washington Post underscoring the urgent need to pass the For The People Act in light of voter suppression bills being introduced in state houses across the country.
Jones is a leading champion for the For The People Act, also known as H.R. 1, and helped to pass the bill in the House last month.
The full text of the op-ed can be found below and here:
The Washington Post: Opinion: Now is the time for a Third Reconstruction — abolishing Jim Crow once and for all
By Rep. Mondaire Jones
April 12, 2021
“White supremacists are closer to restoring Jim Crow than at any time in memory. They are staging an assault on the right to vote: reducing early voting, restricting registration and reversing the rollout of voting by mail. We all know why: They need to entrench their diminishing hold on power by disenfranchising voters of color.
As a member of the most diverse Congress in U.S. history and one of the first openly gay Black members of Congress, I know that we are closer to building a true, multiracial democracy than ever before. But twice before in our nation’s history, we have tried to build a multiracial democracy. And twice before, white supremacists have devised ways to disenfranchise people of color.
In 1870, during Reconstruction, Congress adopted the 15th Amendment, outlawed disenfranchisement on the basis of race and created the Justice Department in part to empower Black voters.
But white supremacists soon got around that. If they couldn’t disenfranchise on the basis of race, they would disenfranchise people like me using proxies for race.
They required voters to pass arbitrary “literacy tests,” then denied Black citizens access to education. They required voters to pay poll taxes, then plundered Black communities. They barred people convicted of crimes from voting, then invented new crimes and found Black people guilty of them. And they killed whomever they had to in order to overthrow multiracial state governments.
These strategies led millions of Black Americans, including my grandparents, to flee the Jim Crow South in search of freedom. After North Carolina reelected George Henry White to Congress in 1898, the South would not elect another Black American to Congress until 1972, when Texas elected Barbara Jordan to the House and Georgia elected Andrew Young to the same body.
In 1965, during what many call the Second Reconstruction, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act, which renewed our democracy’s opposition to racial discrimination. The law enacted real protections to safeguard voting rights for Black people across the South for the first time. And it restored the Justice Department to its original primary role of ensuring that we were not systematically denied the right to vote.
But in recent years, a far-right majority on the Supreme Court has enabled white supremacists to circumvent the Voting Rights Act, striking down the strongest protections — as in Shelby County v. Holder — and weakening others.
We now find ourselves at a crossroads. For the first time in 10 years, the Democratic Party controls Congress and the White House. Building a multiracial democracy will not be easy. But if we do not act now, it may soon be impossible.
Now is the time for a Third Reconstruction — one that abolishes Jim Crow once and for all. That means making voting as easy as possible for everyone, by establishing automatic voter registration, protecting our voter rolls from purges, and ensuring universally accessible ballots for seniors, people with disabilities and anyone else who needs an accommodation. That means restoring that right to the 5.2 million people, disproportionately Black and brown, who have been disenfranchised because of felony convictions.
Second, we must end partisan gerrymandering of congressional districts. That’s the distorting system that has evolved to permit politicians to choose their voters rather than voters to choose their politicians. Congress’s power to right this wrong is beyond dispute. As even Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for the Supreme Court in 2013, the Constitution’s elections clause gives Congress the “authority to provide a complete code for congressional elections.” Until we end partisan gerrymandering, a declining White minority will wield it to deny communities of color the representation they deserve — packing them into safe districts to waste their votes or spreading them out to diffuse their power. Meanwhile, QAnon conspiracy theorists will continue coasting to victory in general elections after prevailing in Republican primaries. These are distortions of our democracy.
Third, we must end the pernicious power of Big Money, which converts the racial wealth gap into a political power gap. An under-told truth of our politics is that the donor class often anoints the candidates who make it on the ballot. That donor class is overwhelmingly White and conservative. And that big-money gatekeeping disproportionately excludes candidates of color, who rely more on small donations.
Public campaign financing would amplify the voices of communities of color. The For the People Act, commonly known as H.R.1 or S.1, would match every dollar donated up to $200 with $6 raised from penalties on corporations that have broken the law. A $50 donation would become a $350 donation. In New York City, a limited, small-donor matching program has already fostered more representative donors and candidates for city offices.
This transformation of our democracy will not happen overnight. But Congress can bring us closer than ever before by passing the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act — uncompromised. If we squander this opportunity, future generations will not — and should not — forgive us.”
WEATHER WHITE PLAINS 7:30 A.M. EDT: 42 SUNNY WPCNR DEGREES. RAIN PM
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Today A 20 percent chance of showers after 2pm. Increasing clouds, with a high near 70. Calm wind becoming southwest 5 to 7 mph in the afternoon.
Tonight Showers likely, mainly between 2am and 5am, then rain likely after 5am. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 48. East wind around 6 mph. Chance of precipitation is 60%. New precipitation amounts of less than a tenth of an inch possible.
Thursday Rain. High near 53. East wind 8 to 10 mph. Chance of precipitation is 90%. New precipitation amounts between 1 and 2 inches possible. (National Weather Service)
FIRST DOSE MODERNA COVID VACCINE AVAILABILITIES AT WESTCHESTER COMMUNITY COLLEGE TODAY
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FIRST DOSE Covid-19 Vaccination Clinic at Westchester Community College has appointments available TODAY, APRIL 13. Open to NYS residents 18 years of age or older. The Moderna vaccine will be given. Reserve your appointment here https://health.westchestergov.com/
CON ED SCAM PATROL: WARNS ABOUT ESCO OFFERS AND MORE. Call 1-800-75-CONED to Report them.
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WPCNR THE POWER STORY. From Consolidated Edison Customer News. April 13, 2021:
Con Edison, obviously reacting to the ESCO marketing season that has resulted in an onslaught of mailings and hard sell phone calls promoting inexpensive green energy rates guaranteeing rates that are not true and have “caveats” the telephone salespersons do not tell you about, even when asked, has issued this warning in its Customer News insert newsletter with this month’s bill:
- Real Con Edison employees wear a photo ID. They will give you their supervisor’s name and ask you to call 1-800-75-CONED to verify your identity.
- Scammers can make it look like Con Edison is calling you on your Caller I.D.
- If you ever receive a call asking for payment or other personal information (on your bill, what you pay, for example, a call this reporter has received often) related to your account, hang up and call us: 1-800-75-CONED. We would never demand payment via a prepaid debit card, gift card, bitcoin, Cash App or any digital wallet app like Venmo.
- Don’t pay online unless you are certain you’re using Con Edison’s automated payment system. Con Edison payments can only be made through conEd.com and conEd.com/GuestPayment.
- We do not charge for the installation of smart meters.
- Report scams to your local police department.
- Learn more about common scams at conEd.com/ScamAlert.
Some common phone scams are:
Pretend to be from Con Edison.
They may even manipulate your caller ID to display Con Edison’s name.
Threaten to turn off your power or gas within an hour.
Demand immediate payment—often by prepaid debit card.
From this reporter’s personal experience, independent energy companies known as ESCOS, each year attempt to switch Con Ed customers to their own ESCO power supply by offering you guaranteed rates or green rates lower than your present ESCO or if you are still getting both electricity and delivery of it (the Con Ed delivery charge). The ESCOS say their rate is lower, say it is guaranteed and ask you what your current con ed rate is. When you query them about how long the rate is guaranteed, I have had the ESCO sales people hangup. If you call their number, you are essentially accepting a switch. The ESCO mailings are also deceptive, trying to switch you by deceptively telling you to switch to green power, new low guaranteed rate. Do not do that. It switches your electricity supply provider.
WEATHER WHITE PLAINS 9″45 A.M. EDT: 51 PARTLY SUNNY WINDS NORTH AT 6 WPCNR DEGREES
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Today Partly sunny, with a high near 62. North wind 6 to 8 mph.
Tonight Partly cloudy, with a low around 46. West wind around 5 mph becoming calm in the evening.
Wednesday A 30 percent chance of showers, mainly after 3pm. Partly sunny, with a high near 65. Calm wind becoming south around 6 mph in the afternoon. (National Weather Service Forecast)