Our Readers Respond...

A Father’s Desperate Plight



Dear Editor:


I’m a parent of two young daughters, 6 and 8, one of whom is in the first grade. Their mother and I are divorced, and she has remarried and
has been granted residential custody. I recently received the following note from my daughter’s first grade teacher:


“Right now I am just trying to get her to stay ‘in this world’ without aliens, nightmares etc. Children are shying away again and she’s not in
a good place. That’s just my thought. If something changes, I’ll let you know.”What would you do if a teacher with over 20 years experience wrote this to you about your child?

What if you were powerless to help your child or the teacher? If the school sent notes home to you saying that your 6-year-old
child was spitting at, and hitting children on the school bus, what would you do?

If you received notice that there was an attempted abduction of your child from a school gym by a man in a black ski mask and your child
struggled to break free, what would you do? If your 6-year-old child came home and said that two first grade boys threatened to cut her throat with a razor blade the following day at recess, what would you do?

If you learned that your ex-spouse and her partner began hitting your child when she was 3 years old child with a wooden spoon as punishment for not coming to the dinner table on time, what would you do? Would you call CPS (Child Protective Services), go to court, call the police? What would you do if your child was subjected to over 20 interviews between the ages of 4 and 6 by just about every agency imaginable, DSS, CPS, doctors, forensic doctors, nurses, detectives, state troopers? Would you put your child into therapy? What if I were to tell you that I had four charges lodged against me by my ex-spouse, all of which were determined to be unfounded?

If you would like the answers to these questions you’ll have to ask the following people in the Westchester Court System: Ken Bunting, James Montagnino, Judge Edlitz, Judge Donovan, Gregory Salant, Rhona Bork, John Ruti, John Rubin, Judge Ratner, Judge Cooney, Judge Leibowitz, Sal Lagonia, Joan Iacono, Harriet Weinberger and others.

For four years my children and I have endured absolute horror at the hands of the Westchester Supreme Court - Matrimonial Part. I have
sat in court and endured Law Guardian Ken Bunting and former Referee James Montagnino making jokes about my children being hit. I have
been coerced, manipulated, and abused. I have watched witness tampering, forgery of court-subpoenaed documents. I have been denied counsel and forced into bankruptcy. I am on the verge of losing my home, the marital home. This is the home my children were born into.
I have spent two years trying to get my children back into therapy that was ordered by the Supreme Court. The accuser, their mother, refuses to bring my children to the therapist. After retaining yet another lawyer, John Rubin, at a cost of over $7,500 merely to fend off more absurd allegations by my ex-spouse, I once again tried to secure therapy for my children before Family Court Judge Edlitz. As a result, another “attorney-only conference” was held and another ludicrous decision with regard to my children’s welfare was generated.

Bill G.



More Kudos

Dear Editor:



Keep up the good work! Joe Pulitzer’s climbing out of the grave and coming over with a prize for the publication’s outstanding value as reporting Justice and its lack thereof.

Richard Gosselin, Jackson Heights



Editor’s Note: Thank you!

The Battle of Mount Vernon

Dear Editor:


Excuses! Excuses! Excuses! That’s all you get from corrupt Ernie Davis and cronies like Joan K. Battle who wrote the latter in the June 14 edition. Hey, Battle, if Ernie Davis isn’t corrupt why is the U.S. District Attorney and the FBI investigating him for taking federal money? Answer that.

Oh, I’m sure you go along with Davis’ excuse that the U.S. District Attorney and the FBI are conducting a political witchhunt. The investigation is the best thing the federal government can do for the people of Mount Vernon to clean out all of the corrupt politicians who enslave and oppress the people with high taxes, high crime, dirty streets, poor schools, no future for the youth. They grab everything for themselves, their families, their cronies – cronyism and nepotism is rampant.

This Battle person said she was an Assistant Property Manager for Levister Towers. I bet she had no experience. She probably got this as a no-show job because she was politically connected to Davis and Serapher Con Halevi. What a disgrace that the poor residents of Levister Towers had to pay high rents for her no-show salary. Her payback? Write a letter for Davis and Con Halevi. No more excuses. They all need to be in handcuffs.

Concerned Resident, Mount Vernon

Reader Responds to Judge Lange’s Column

Dear Editor:


Your paper has been a much-needed breath of fresh air ever since the first issue. I enjoy your features, including the informative articles by retired Judge Kenneth Lange.

But in his otherwise fascinating coverage of the September 21, 1938 hurricane, he states incorrectly that “Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia” on September 22nd. It’s true that most people’s attention was distracted from the hurricane by the threat of a new war in Europe, but September 22nd is significant only because the Munich conference began on that date. It ran for a week, and ended with Britain and France (Czechoslovakia wasn’t even represented!) giving in to Hitler’s threats and recognizing Germany’s “right” to annex Czechoslovakia’s mostly
German-speaking Sudeten border area.

In effect, Czechoslovakia was abandoned, and had to agree to Germany’s occupation of the Sudetenland, which took place on October 1st without armed resistance. By March 15, 1939, Czechoslovakia--- already gravely weakened by the loss of the Sudetenland, the Munich pact’s requirement that she demobilize most of her armed forces, and the desertion of her main allies, Britain and France---was helpless to resist Hitler’s demand that she allow Germany to “protectively” occupy her two western provinces, Bohemia and Moravia.

That occupation took place on March 15th, again with no armed resistance. So I don’t think it can be said that Hitler ever invaded
Czechoslovakia, and in any case not on September 22, 1938.

Al Raymond,

Croton on-Hudson


In Our Opinion...


Anybody Seen George Pataki Lately?

We haven’t heard anything lately from George Pataki. Wasn’t he running for President? We seem to recall an exploratory committee and fundraising effort headquartered in Virginia. And, didn’t he open an office, with great fanfare, in downtown Peekskill sometime back in December? A check with the phone company revealed no number at either location. A Yale graduate, with a law degree from Columbia, George seemed to offer such promise when he moved into the Governor’s Mansion, having defeated three-term Governor Mario Cuomo. He entered with the promise that, unlike Mario, he would only serve two terms. It would be eight years before the People of New York would discover how hollow that commitment was. But, there were harbingers very early on that his performance would fall far short of his rhetoric.

That’s not to suggest that he didn’t keep any of his promises. He brought back the Death Penalty as promised, and eliminated vocational and college education in the penal system. However, he did parole some inmates early; those whose father’s contributed five million dollars. He balanced his budget, as promised, albeit on the backs of the physically and mentally disabled and the elderly infirm. After all, he needed to make cuts somewhere, didn’t he?

In 2002, after he had been governor for two terms, Andrew Cuomo decided to run against him, even though Carl McCall was the Democratic Party’s favorite. Cuomo, taking some bad advice from his campaign director Josh Isay, attacked Pataki for how little he had done in response to the World Trade Center disaster, characterizing the Governor as having, “held Giuliani’s coat.” Perhaps Andy might of fared better had he, instead of pointing to what Pataki hadn’t done, pointed to all the wrong he had done.

George Pataki distinguished himself amongst governors of New York State, by bringing a new dimension -well, maybe not an entirely new dimension - to state government, but clearly, a lot more of it: Corruption. From Day One George made no secret about the kinds of characters he would be appointing to high state office, and giving sweet deals to. For five years, until he was convicted of massive tax fraud in Federal Court, in June 2000; Al Pirro was repeatedly referred to, by Pataki, as his “best friend and fundraiser.”

Pirro, in his capacity as a lobbyist, walked away with numerous sweetheart deals for himself and his clients, as did many other Pataki insiders. At the same time, Pataki had a penchant for appointing some of the most criminal, and scandalous individuals, many of them Peekskill cronies, such as Robert Boyle who, together with Al Pirro, had ripped of the Hudson Valley Hospital Center, and who was forced from office in disgrace over the Javits Center Scandal while he was Chairman of the Port Authority.

Then there was Jack Gaffney, former Supervisor of the Town of Cortlandt, and father-inlaw of Kieran Mahoney, Pataki’s campaign director. Gaffney, appointed to a $138,000- a-year position as Chairman of the State Bridge Authority, first investigated by the State Inspector General, was ultimately indicted and prosecuted, and forced from office by Ulster County District Attorney Donald Williams, for some $188,000 in over-charges, charges for personal travel, and false charges for compensatory time.

As time went on the rampant corruption, and blatant failures of the Pataki Administration; the World Trade Center paralysis, the starved up-state economy, the inability to pass a budget on time, and run-away taxes, highest in the nation, came to be viewed as the Pataki Legacy by most New Yorkers. The notion that he could seriously suggest he was seeking higher office, the Presidency, seemed ludicrous, even more so than his ‘comb-over.’ Nevertheless, there were numerous trips to Iowa and New Hampshire, states with early presidential primaries, to “test the waters.”

All that presidential campaign talk has somehow faded to silence. Nobody has seen, much less heard from, George Elmer Pataki in months. Maybe, just maybe, his pollsters discovered that the voters in Iowa and New Hampshire, and elsewhere decided that, if elected President, he might do for them what he did for New York.