Aside From the Shooting Mrs. Lincoln What Did You Think of the Play?

Today I read the most incredulous report I have read since Simpson Found Innocent. It appeared in the Mar.26/Apr.6 issue of The Report. The title of the page 1 story is…. “City’s Major Crimes Up 21% and it encapsulates all I know from my past, learned from my experiences here, and portrays an image of our future in New Rochelle unless corrected either by Noam, the protagonist or the community.

Let me go over some highlights and then quote verbatim from Noam’s narrative. Highlights inclde (1) larceny is up 14% over prior year, Aggravated assaults rose by 28%, arrests dropped by 13%. There is much more.

Noam begins innocently enough, “obviously I am not happy about the increae in crime.” (attaboy). “But I also put these figures in the context of any overall safety record that remains very strong.” (huh). While claiming a new method of calculating aggrvated assaults (brilliant during a year of atrrition), he adds, “it will be important to examine that the spike in 2011 is not the beginning of a trend.” (huh). He goes on to cite we remain an safe community; best in the state, ranking only 8 spots below Carmel, Indiana.

What is missing are any steps to be taken to correct the issues at hand, any response to staff reductions, or arrests.

The title of this article is not chosen by whim, whimsy, or irony. Were I to title this blog entry I would call it, “Aside from the considerable upswing in crime, staff reductions, no announce remedial actions, fewer arrests, and a demonstrated unwillingness to move a precinct to the business district. er, do you feel as safe here as you once did?

The two announced remedies are really not helpful. Park an walk is, frankly, easy to take advantage of in a city experience as many drive by robberies as it is experiencing. You go left when the officer goes right. The other, cameras is fine ex post facto, but damn, who wants to get the hell beat out of them walking home and see it repeated on Channel 12 the following day.

What we have here is a classic Noam Bramson response called, Sophism. He is a former speechwriter, never ran a organization, met a payroll… he wrote speeches and politics speeches inherited there dubious value from the Sophists of ancient Athens and thereabouts.

So, what is Sophistry? It is a plausable but misleading fallacious argument. Sounds like the question put to Mary Todd Lincoln and the one I just put to Noam Bramson. What is the recipe Kenneth; what steps are you going to take to put things back in focus and order and reverse the possibility of any trend?

So, I am calling on Bill and Ted to find a phone booth and bring up Socrates from his resting place. Socrates was the sage who put Sophists in perspective and would put today’s politicans in their place. He is my muse, my idol, and perhaps it explains to some of my posting friends why I tread carefully around “facts.” Noam tramples on facts and simply seeks out plausbility. Socrates destryed Sophists by questions, not by facts knowing that “facts are not truth.” They are a number of other things, not truth and Noam has learne the power of sophistry, of plausable facts in this sad context of city safety.

So, lets go along with Bill and Ted on this excellent adventure. With Socrates in tow, he will tell us pretty quickly that his war on Sophistry was based on the dark and dangerous effect it had on the poorly informed, the frightened, the apathetic, and here, the Enablers. It does not matter if you reside in zip code 10801 – 10805 or any point therein, you are a citizen of Athens, oops, I mean New Rochelle, and you are, frankly, your brother’s keeper and you are your community’s best hope for turning sophistry into democracy.

I don’t want to be too harsh on Noam. I risk the venom of many fellow posters, but give me a pass on this one please. I think Noam is a brllliant man who could work in concert with all the community to find solutions to our many issues. An aware Noam, would understand basic laws of family and society. YOu do not compromise safety, you do not block information, twist and shout, and lock yourself and your abducted team into a single space called 515 North Avenue.

Above all, an enlightened Noam could put things right in admitting that he followed precedent and deep pocket enablers by violating the spirit and intent of the New Rochelle City Charter/jCode. Don’t call him out alone on this; he had plenty of help with his party, the opposition party, and the gang of enablers who snort like pigs at the public trough.

Noam, Socrates would cluck his tongue and tell you to make it right. He understood the excesses of youth. He understood hubris or unquenchable thirst for power. But, he would say “grow up” and make it right. Actually his student Plato, wouldn’t even take you or anyone else serious until they reached 45 or so years of age. Given the death rate then, weren’t that many around to trust.

So, I cared for you deeply, still do and don’t think I can make a case for any defalcation, fiduciary mischief, or any crime or misdemeanor. Maybe others can, I cannot. I do not even want to. What I want is for you to see and sense that you came to this job with no preparation other than a superior intellect, a godmother in Congress, powerful miscreants or even decent folk who wanted to keep it all in the family. But along the way, you began to take yourself very very seriously, too seriously. You forgot your roots, the struggles of your forebearers and mentally thought of people “down these parts” as untermenschen. You can deny it, but it shows.

So armed with hubris, you overlooked some things. A City Clerk’s office who misfiled or mislead on at least one citizen petition which disqualified voters from addressing it. Other departments like Building that conveniently “lost files” a day or two after filed and the petitioner, usually a small store owner, had no redress.

Again, by becoming the “manager of managers” against the language of the City Charter, you proceeded to disobey the rights attendant to your position via the same Charter. You act as a “strong mayor”; a role voted down once or twice over the past few decades by the electorate.

But, your Council mates may have formally empowered you to undertake additional duties. That is allowed by the Charter, but I suspect few have read it, fewer, understand it. Your faithful City Attorney has never turned a hair while all of this is going on. by rights, she only becomes active if requested by Council. Never happened. Michael Boyle is prior years a fine, strong man, but a teacher. Why would he know? Richard St Paul, a lawyer. Why didn’t he know? I don’t know.

Here is what I know. Your team of managers are less than outstanding and belong to the City Council to oversee and manage. These folks do, well some of them anyway, have met payrolls and prepared budgets. Nothing too large however, but they are part timers making a fraction of your salary.

So, Strome fiddles while New Rochelle burns and it does burn my young friend. He is not particularly adept at managing a staff. He is good at meeting current and former city police and others at a local watering hole. But this guy says that “there is no fat in the budget.” He and Howard can add columns and rows but do they understand how to manage and budget, do they reflect on staffing levels, are they concerned about the large number of financial and contractual foolishness under their aegis. I am. Are they.

Bill and Ted have a message from Socrates who is currently occupied at working a Blackberry. He wants us to know that a little knowledge is truly a dangerous thing. Maybe that gets Chuck and Howard off the hook, but not the Council. They could have, for example performed their investigative role last year, and put the heat on Favang. Surely St Paul knew this….. if this was done, the power center would have shifted from Sophistry to Democracy.

I want to sum up my thoughts on Noam Bramson. I would personally work my ass off to put things right in this City. I would tell Ratner to take a hike. I would moderate Monroe and Iona. I would rezone, perhaps even reassess to begin with a blank slate and stop this Certiorari nonsense. Chuck and Howard work as long as they develop a plan to vacate parts of City Hall and the lateral police station to bring a strong city presence to midtown. I would tell Tergis to get a new Engineer Report on the DPW yard and evaluate the land differently… include separate land usage reports on residential and small comemrcial business as well. Then armed with that and with the view of the Tower facing me, the DPW stays and the local community plays a big role in deciding what to do with Beechwood land. The Armory is a no-brainer. Tocci and Bramson kiss and make up, John D signs on along with Freimuth who arranges for a new RFP, obtains NYSERDA and funding from Suzi and others to restore as a model of sustainability or greening for New Rochelle. I want Barbara Davis to be in the mix for future state protection.

I want a code of ethics concerning campaign and political contributions. If the City Attorney can do this, fine, if not, Strome finds a replacement.

I want a New Rochelle museum, a musical theater, a tram service bringing people from the North End down these resurrected parts.

Oh yeah, one other thing. Soon I will post on a topic called Dialetics… you may know it as Karma, even “what goes around, comes around.” What do I mean by this….. we will shortly see our finest citizen Jim Killoran of Habitat, lead an effort to rebuild a house on Beechwood, one that was seriously damaged in a recent fire. Isn’t this ironic, maybe even magical. I think it is spiritual, but I will call it a dialetic.

By this I mean a property misrepresented as a new home for some destructive, a DPW Yard, the antithesis of the will of the people, good project reporting and common sense, now will go through the dialetic process of a homeowner in Lou Trangucci’s district, Anthony by name, a great guy who I had the pleasure of meeting at one of Louis’ community meetings, will get the help he needs and deserves.

Hey none of you people, friends, foes, enablers and non-enablers remembered my 75th birthday. Well, Socrates, Bill and Ted did.

Want to make amends? I call on all of you, North, South, East, West, and points therein, to offer your services as a COMMUNITY, to help Anthony get back on his feet.

Contact Jim Killoran or wait until a future posting as to how you can be part of this. Try it, you will like it. I worked 6 months earlier with Jared Rice and the good people in his district on clean-up. It was a spiritual, loving experience and propelled my dialectic from then until now.

Bless all