Rochester Smoke Out

From Ulster County Comptroller Elliott Auerbach’s blog we learn that “the number of properties in Ulster County to be auctioned off for non-payment of taxes is up 28 from last year, and there’s a 32 percent increase in the amount of unpaid taxes.”

Ulster County auction of tax-delinquent properties is set for April 23 at Ulster County Community College in Stone Ridge. This year’s list will include 270 properties that have a total of nearly $5 million in unpaid taxes.

Twenty-five properties are located in the Town of Rochester. If you love a bargain, here is the Auction Catalog. Very, very interesting, to say the least!

– Jon Dogar-Marinesco

“The old one-dimensional categories of ‘right’ and ‘left’, established for the seating arrangement of the French National Assembly of 1789, are overly simplistic for today’s complex political landscape.”

Look at the graphs below…

“On the standard left-right scale, how do you distinguish leftists like Stalin and Gandhi?”

Try this short test to see where you stand in the political spectrum. At the end of the test, you’ll be given the compass, with your own special position on it.

If you feel like sharing the result, please post your coordinates…

– Jon Dogar-Marinesco

It all started with Councilman Tavi Cilenti and Town of Rochester Supervisor Carl Chipman. For years they pestered Councilwoman Manuela Michailescu with one request: “Please, pretty please accept to be in a picture with us.” Not being able to find more excuses, one Earth Day – not long ago – Manuela accepted, and that’s when the above photo was taken.

The next thing you know, more and more people were intent on being in the same shot with Manuela. After much insisting, Orest Fedash and David O’Halloran – well-known community pillars – managed to corner Manuela for a few seconds at a New Paltz Regional Chamber of Commerce event, and the result is the picture above.

The number of requests for photo opportunities became unreal, and – for obvious reasons – Manuela obliged, daring to hope that things would calm down.

Instead, the situation became scarier and scarier…

As requests from beyond Ulster County became the norm, the first person to have her wish granted was Annie Rabbit – a member of the New York State Assembly.

George Elmer Pataki – the 53rd Governor of New York could not be refused.

U.S. Senator Charles E. Schumer begged and begged to no avail, but when he started to cry Manuela couldn’t reject him anymore.

U.S. Congressman Chris Gibson got his picture with Manuela only after Sean Eldridge threatened to close her Facebook account.

By now, the situation got out of hand. Not only Manuela was terrorized by thousands of requests to pose with strangers, but members of her family became also targets.
Jeanine Pirro – the District Attorney of Westchester County and the Republican nominee for New York State Attorney General – didn’t take no for an answer. I have no idea who told her that I am Manuela’s husband…

Believe it or not, but William Jefferson “Bill” Clinton – the 42nd President of the United States – made his support of Hillary’s bid for White House contingent to being in a photo with our niece Maria Elena. Hillary closed the deal, but not before enlisting the help of an untold number of chaperons.

Enough is enough! Stressed by fending off the avalanche of requests, Manuela Michailescu no longer accepts to be photographed. Her decision explains the apparition on the web of images like the one above, obviously photoshoped. Barack Hussein Obama II – the current President of the United States, has never borrowed Governor Pataki’s duds!

– Jon Dogar-Marinesco

Try this short quiz to see which political party you side with.

If you feel like sharing the result, please drop a comment…

– Jon Dogar-Marinesco

Sean Eldridge (right) – the Democratic candidate for New York’s 19th congressional district and husband of Facebook founder and New Republic owner Chris Hughes (left) – with his chum Nancy Pelosi (center). Enough said.

Ulster County Democratic Chairman Frank Cardinale said:

“As New Yorkers struggle to make ends meet and pay their rents and mortgages, George Amedore, the out-of-touch son of a millionaire, contemplates another run for office.”

Ulster County Republican Chairman Roger Rascoe answered:

“I wonder if Cardinale feels the same way about Congressman Gibson’s opponent; a multimillionaire who threw hundreds of thousands of dollars around in campaigns two years ago. Amedore grew up in the family business and works hard for his company. Gibson’s opponent on the other hand, married into the money and is throwing it around trying to buy the Congressional seat. If anyone is out of touch, it’s Cardinale and the former Canadian who only became an American citizen so that he could run for office.”

Advantage Rascoe. And with a candidate like Sean Eldridge, Cardinale should refrain from spreading BS this election cycle. Just saying…

– Jon Dogar-Marinesco

I’m quoting below from a Daily Freeman article by Patricia Doxsey.
The chosen paragraphs describe the privatizing of Golden Hill Nursing Home:

“Ulster County Executive Michael Hein announced plans to sell the county-owned facility in October 2011, which was met with outrage from residents, family members, employees and county legislators who accused the county executive of selling out its seniors and warned that conditions at the nursing home would go down hill.

As county legislators grappled with whether to go along with the plan, protests were staged outside the County Office Building, which sometimes included residents who had been bussed to the County Office Building by Golden Hill employees.”

“By all accounts, the concerns and fears that surrounded the debate over whether the county should sell its nursing home to a profit-making company, have proven to be unfounded.

In fact, Ken Hyatt, the head of the facility’s Residents’ Council, said that in some cases, conditions have markedly improved under VestraCare, the company that purchased the 280-bed facility.

“The food is improved remarkably. They have a meeting once a month with residents about what they’re getting and what they would like to get,” Hyatt said.

He said the new owners have also increased the number of occupational and physical therapists over staffing levels under county ownership, and the cleanliness of the building – which had been a source of pride by the county – has also improved.”

All’s well that ends well, but it pisses me off that not one among those fighting against selling the nursing home has stood up and said “I was wrong.”

– Jon Dogar-Marinesco

From the article Nassau Dem Chair To Gov Candidates: Reject Indy Party Line (on State of Politics, a Time Warner Cable News blog):

Nassau County Democratic Chairman Jay Jacobs is calling on the Democratic and Republican nominees for governor to refuse to run on the state Independence Party line in hopes that it will lose the ballot position that provides its leaders with what Jacobs called “oversized and undue clout.”

“The fact that the Independence Party genuinely stands for nothing, supports virtually no political activity and appears to exist only for the financial benefit of its leadership, while distasteful, does not necessarily lead us to take action against it. It is the corrupt activities by its leadership that, I believe, have crossed that line,” Jacobs wrote in a letter to state Democratic Party co-chairs Keith Wright and Stephanie Miner.

“Dealing with this corrupt party requires no change in the law – only political courage. I urge the State Committee to work toward an agreement whereby the Democratic and Republican candidates for governor mutually and jointly agree that they will not accept the Independence Party’s nomination.”

If both the Democratic and Republican candidates for governor reject the the Independence Party line, it could end up all but starving the organization out of existence. If a party’s gubernatorial candidate does not receive at least 50,000 votes on its ballot line every four years, it loses its official status – not to mention its relevance.

Please read for yourself Jay Jacobs’ letter on Indy Party:

::

For more elucidating stuff on the Independence Party’s shenanigans and its destructive effect – via Len Bernardo – on Ulster County politics, please see my previous post Independence Party must die!

– Jon Dogar-Marinesco

For those of you who didn’t see it, I reproduce below an item from Hugh Reynolds’ article Stuck in neutral (Kingston Times – February 21, 2014):

Musical chairs

The usual practice when offices change hands is for the outs to oust the ins. To the victors go the spoils has been the rule since Brutus stabbed Caesar.

Not so, it would seem, in John Parete’s “bipartisan” county legislature. Democrat Parete, recall, won election last month as chairman of the legislature by forming a coalition of Republicans and three Democrats, much to the dismay and irritation of majority Democrats.

The coalition mode continues with Parete’s recent appointments of legislative staff.

Democrat Jay Mahler, a former deputy elections commissioner, joins the staff as Parete’s confidential secretary, replacing Republican Fawn Tantillo, who remains as a legislative clerk. Nattie Tomshaw, a Republican, returns as a secretary. Tomshaw was let go by former chair Terry Bernardo in one of those office intrigues few outside the office understand.

Krista Barringer, a jack of all trades and master of many, remains as a deputy clerk.

Gone but fondly remembered (at least in these quarters) are legislative employees Lisa Mance and Frank Reggero. Parete said he asked the county executive if he could find work for them in his downsized government.

It galls some who follow the plots of patronage that the Democratic chairman of a Democratic majority favored Republicans with these appointments, the inference being that central to the deal with Republicans who brought him to power was retaining most of their people.

Funny, nobody mentions the dirty fingerprints lifted from these musical chairs.

– Jon Dogar-Marinesco

One Bernardo loyalist no longer on our dime
Below is a comment left on this blog. I didn’t have a chance to verify the news, but I’m sure Frank Reggero will help me out…

“Good news, they fired Lisa Mance! That same night I saw her intoxicated and nearly hyperventilating from crying at Bowery Dugout. She made sure the entire restaurant knew she was fired.”

Ulster County Personnel records show that Lisa Mance – hired by Terry Bernardo after being let go from the County Clerk’s office following her arrest for misdemeanor drunk driving – was collecting a $45,915 yearly salary.

David O’Halloran wins the 2014 Terry Award
According to your votes, the Terry Award – to be presented every year to the most malignant Ulster County politician – went to David O’Halloran, former Town of Rochester Republican Committee Chairman. I thought that Len Bernardo, Chairman of the Ulster County Independence Party, was more deserving of the Terry, but he got only 35% of your votes to O’Halloran’s 43%. I sincerely hope Bernardo wins next year.

– Jon Dogar-Marinesco