June 16, 2013 --

Bill deBlasio, presently serving as New York City Public Advocate, is an announced New York City mayoral candidate. Former Congressman Anthony Weiner recently prompted speculation that he will join the race for New York City mayor. (Even without announcing his candidacy, Weiner is reported to be second in a mayoral poll to New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn.) From my personal knowledge of Mr. deBlasio and Mr. Weiner, they should receive remedial training on due process, fundamental fairness, and transparency before proceeding with their mayoral aspiration. This knowledge was acquired during my Dayton Seaside travail, when City Hall, under Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani -- with a boost from the U.S. Dep't of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) -- manipulated property taxes to force the three Dayton Seaside apartment buildings, in Rockaway Park, Queens, into bankruptcy.

The summer of 1999, I learned that Weiner is not interested in hearing from all parties to a controversy. One August day, that year, when I heard that Weiner as on Dayton Seaside premises, I tried to give him information on the property tax travail. As soon as he learned that I was with management, Weiner made it clear that he was not interested in speaking with me. In December, 2000, with Dayton Seaside in bankruptcy due to the NYC/HUD property tax manipulation, Weiner, joined by Assemblywoman Audrey Pheffer and State Senator Malcom Smith, wrote a falsehood-filled letter to the bankruptcy judge on Weiner's official House of Representatives stationery, to influence the judge. A memo from the judge's chambers to counsel on this bankruptcy case indicated that the letter from the three officials could not be considered. (Apart from the smears it hurled, the letter was improper because it was an ex parte communication.)

LPR File Photo of Bill deBlasio from 2004. Note that deBlasio, current New York City Public Advocate, no longer has a beard.

Prior to being informed by a political insider, in late 1999, that my family would be ousted from Dayton Seaside buildings in bankruptcy (we constructed the buildings in the early 1960's), I tried to get information from HUD about the property tax issue.

In response to one letter, I receive a note deBlasio, then HUD regional director for New York and New Jersey, denying any knowledge of the matter. Some months later, I wrote to Mr. deBlasio and again he denied knowledge of the Dayton Seaside tax situation.

Two of the three Dayton Seaside buildings carried HUD mortgages and HUD, apparently at the city's request, applied tax escrows at these buildings to current city property taxes, leaving open the taxes for previous years to create the illusion of vast arrears. I understood deBlasio's two notes to be "stonewalling."

And so, from personal experience with Weiner and deBlasio, LPR concludes that if either of these gentlemen is elected mayor, the day of open government, in New York City, based on due process and fundamental fairness, will remain a hope for the future, not a reality for 2014.

"Aparanoia" -- Our New
Mental Illness

June 16, 2013 --

What is a psychiatrist supposed to say, now, to someone who complains that he is under constant government surveillance?

Apparently, the citizen who is convinced that the government is not eavesdropping on his phone calls, internet communications, credit card transactions is the deluded citizen. LPR would suggest that such a citizen suffers from aparanoia -- which LPR would define as the unreasonable belief that government leaders do not regard a law-abiding individual as a potential threat against the security of the community.

Aparanoia -- the ordinary citizen's irrational response to a ruling leadership that is either afflicted with paranoia or simply refuses to distinguish between between the law-abiding and the bad guys.

Congressman Peter King is quoted as declaring Edward Snowden, the individual who revealed that we are all under government surveillance, "'dangerous to the country.'"

LPR has this curious notion that the surveillance program Snowden revealed considers any and all Americans potentially "dangerous to the country."

The IRS Target-gate scandal has instructed that under severe leftist government of the type endorsed by Bill Ayers and George Soros, conservatives are not included in the phrase "We, the People," but rather are to be regarded as "They, the Enemy."

And wasn't it Hillary Rodham Clinton who, as First Lady, asserted the existence of "a vast rightwing conspiracy?" Coming next: TSA checkpoints at your local intersection.

David Brooks, apologist for leftism, asserted in his June 11 New York Times column that Snowden, among other things, "betrayed the Constitution." Brooks did not not elaborate. The Fourth Amendment protects us from "unreasonable searches and seizures." LPR must conclude that for David Brooks, blanket surveillance of all Americans is...reasonable. LPR is confident, however, that Madison and Jefferson would disagree.

LPR recalled that Snowden was the name of a motrally-wounded member of Yossarian's crew in Catch-22, the World War II novel by Joseph Heller. Googling "Snowden," LPR found this Yossarian quote at Wikipedia: "Man was matter, that was Snowden's secret....The spirit gone, man is garbage.'"

June 16, 2013 --

LPR would not exclude the possibility that the 26% who think the IRS did nothing wrong in Target-gate crosses party lines.

Indeed, LPR would not be surprised to learn that the GOP's self-anointed troika of Karl Rove, Reince Priebus and House Speaker John A. Boehner are included among the 26%.

This GOP troika views constitutional conservatives with leftist-like disdain. If 2016 is too soon to have a merger of the anti-conservative forces behind a Democrat-Republican label,supporting Chris Christie as presidential nominee of the merged party -- LPR expects such merger will be acomplished by 2020.

The anti-conservatives are, of course, the nation's political force that holds. rather strongly, to the view that politics is the stuff of insiders. There is no room in insider politics for interlopers who believe in our founding legacy of government of, by and for the people. These interlopers are to be discarded from the political process.

Thus far, political consultants for the Republican insiders have instructed their patrons how to distance themselves from conservative principles, just like leftists. These "consultants" are apparently convinced that presidents will be elected by leftist contituencies.

These "consultants must have determined that there is no room, politically, economically or socially for ordinary middle class people in the transformed America. There is room only for their class at the levers of government: The Elite Class -- our New Aristocrats, who would transform America from land of liberty to land of accepted tyranny.

Target-gate offers Tossed-Aside America a taste of its future in an America where our Founding Legacy is deemed dead and buried. It is no surprise to LPR that Speaker Boehner's advice, in dealing with Target-gate, as reported in The New York Times, May 17, is to be cautious.

How much more difficult to suppress conservatives by acting bravely in support of liberty. Tyranny, thy handmaiden is timidity.

June 16, 2013 --

LPR began the week, June 10, at a New York Public Library (Spuyten Duyvil branch) computer looking for late developments in the IRS Target-gate story and found a Reuters report saying that according to Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, ranking Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, the idea to single out conservative groups for special scrutiny was the idea of a "conservative Republican."

Congressman Cumming says this makes it clear that politics had nothing to do with the issue. LPR is not certain, at this point, that anyone has asked Congressman Cummings if this "conservative Republican" has explained why months and months and months went by without action on applications for tax exemptions for Tea Party groups.

LPR also wonders how this "conservative Republican" would explain why the special scrutiny given conservative groups seeking tax exemption included lenghtly and very intrusive questionnaires while leftwing groups scooted by with their requests for tax-exempt status.

Meanwhile, according to a CBS New/New York Times poll, 80% of Republicans, 66% of Independents and 60% of Democrats believe that politics motivated Target-gate. The poll also reported that 26% think the IRS did nothing wrong. That 26% probably includes Congressman Cummings and even, perhaps, one thus far unnamed, "conservative Republican" at the IRS.

And by the way -- that Reuters on-line story came with pop-up ads seeking people to sign petitions that were anti-Koch brothers, anti-Paul Ryan, and pro-Obama. LPR saw no pop-up ad demanding transparency from, say, George Soro, or The New York Times.

June 16, 2013 --

An Open Letter to The New York Times

Your June 7 editorial, "The New Security Team" calls on Amb. Susan Rice, as national security adviser to the president, to "be an honest broker among the other top officials and agencies involved in national security decision-making," and to "allow contrary views to be heard." Your use of the term "honest broker" is unfortunate, in view of Amb. Rice's performance in what The Times outrageously dismisses as "a trumped-up controversy over the Benghazi, Libya tragedy."

Ms. Rice, apparently lacking independent information on Benghazi, spoke to the American people on the basis of official "crib notes" to promote the specious claim that that "tragedy" was spurred by an anti-Islam video. That is to say, in the Benghazi context, Amb. Rice was hardly honest broker vis-a-vis the American people in providing political service to the President in an official capacity. By asserting that Benghazi is "a trumped-up controversy," The New York Times displays its eagerness to propagandize for the Obama administration with the apparent aim of suppressing "contrary views."

June 16, 2013 --

An Open Query to the Obama Administration

In view of your commitment to the cause of transparency in government, please advise -- concerning your surveillance of our phone calls and internet communications -- how do you monitor all the stuff, how many people are monitors, and where are they located?

Importantly: can you assure us that surveillance monitoring has not been outsourced to places like Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and India?

www.broadwayshowleague.com
www.shulerhensley.com
www.rickey.org
www.thepamphleteer.blogspot.com
www.pamspage.blogspot.com
Jackson Simon Review
www.texasbikini.com
www.spicemice.com
www.usarchery.org
www.fixbrosfruitfarm.com
www.davecousins.com
Manhattan Short Film Festival
www.faqbaseball.com
www.nyfilmvideo.com
www.USAFashionShows.com
Veltis Harrattan
www.Tamarkagan.com
www.freedomxtreme.com
www.CapMag.com
www.richardtucker.org
www.jonathanpollard.org
www.homefilmfest.com
www.robbscottdrawings.com
www.thefield.org
www.margotleitman.com
www.Hoyosgroup.com
www.skullco.com
www.nascar.com
www.curventures.net
www.cerealism.com
www.thomastonoperahouse.org
Christmas Village, Torrington, CT.
www.longmarriedcouples.com
www.theblisstones.com
www.nycvisit.com
www.geminiandscorpio.com
www.costumenetwork.com
www.ekayani.com
www.picturestartfilmfestival.com

LPR's Website is
In Memory Of …

Shana Zukerman
1989 - 2006