The River Reporter Online - Letters to the Editor

[EDITOR'S NOTE: The River Reporter welcomes letters on all subjects from its readers. They must be signed and include the correspondent's phone number. The correspondent's name and town will appear at the bottom of each letter; titles and affiliations will not, unless the correspondent is writing on behalf of a group.

Letters are printed as they are received, or at the discretion of the editor, and without correction to grammar or spelling. It is requested they be limited to 500 words; correspondents may be asked to cut longer letters. Deadline is 1:00 p.m. on Monday.

Assemblyman Jacob Gunther’s threat to defeat Leni Binder because she dared put together a bipartisan coalition combining Republicans and Democrats to win the position of chairperson for the Sullivan County Legislature is absolute hypocrisy.

Gunther has apparently forgotten the fact that he was one of 19 reform-minded Democrats, who tried to topple Speaker Sheldon Silver two years ago by proposing to vote with assembly Republicans and elect Assemblyman Michael Bragman (D-Cicero) in Silver’s place.

When Speaker Silver managed to survive this attempted political coup, Gunther and all his Democratic buddies deserted Mike Bragman and the possibility of real change in Albany to become slavish supporters of Silver and the status quo once again.

So much for Jake Gunther’s record as a great reformer and a loyal Democrat who would never dream of working with the nasty Republicans.

Instead of trying to control the chairmanship of the Sullivan County Legislature, Jacob Gunther should be mending his own political fences with the ordinary folks he has essentially ignored for years.

Many of us, both supporters and opponents of the Sullivan West merger, remember how Assemblyman Gunther, who was a scheduled keynote speaker for the Sullivan West groundbreaking ceremony last year, never bothered to show up. I still recall SW Superintendent Michael Johndrow frantically looking around from the podium that day and calling out, “Jake! Jake! Are you in the audience, Jake?” Of course, he wasn’t.

Assemblyman Gunther has not delivered on simple things like the proposed $75,000 traffic light at Fosterdale, which was recently denied by the Department of Transportation.

Gunther has yet to enact legislation that would put all school district elections under the protection of the state election laws to prevent massive vote fraud like what happened during the 1999 Delaware Valley merger vote.

Gunther has also been strangely silent about the possibility of introducing special legislation in Albany to redeem the broken promise of 95 percent state aid for all the Sullivan West building projects.

Leave Leni Binder alone, Jake. You have enough on your own plate to take care of before the next election.

Maureen Dowd of The New York Times recently remarked that “Three and a half decades ago, the mantra among young people... was “the fix is in.” She then quoted others as saying that “... we’ve turned into the same selfish people we thought we were against,” and that “The fix is now institutionalized.”

One must wonder if this is what a local columnist was counting on when he recently and gleefully predicted that casinos were now a sure thing because of all the muscle and money they were able to muster, money dropped by legions of losers, by the way.

There is no arguing with the muscle and money part of his observation. Recent developments, however, suggest that casino interests, tacitly acknowledging the strength of the legal position of their opponents and the weakness of their own legal position, may have decided on abandonment of their primary objective, full-fledged casinos.

Rest assured, though, they will be back with yet another perverse and Enronesque version of “economic development” as soon as they can hatch one. It will probably start with a cynical, unctuous and transparent effort to extend the time and frequency limits proposed in their new law.

Governor Pataki to an extent, showy with his self-imposed power. Who has partly changed into a full-fledged liberal by preparing himself for the pending election for governor. Will continue to lower the public standards in order to legitimize his own political private desire. Simply described as one primarily concerned with himself without any regard for others, to disturb other people’s rights to some peace and quiet and to keep from happening the constant encroachment by the few, upon the rights of the many.

And, with too many of his leading supporters, as Hillary with her ever tutor Schumer who are also adamantly trying to subsidize the casinos with a grant with the taxpayer’s amply reaped moneys.

With their shadowed clarifications will unendingly promote their influence onto those suffering from terminal naiveté who are poorly informed, with a growing number of softheads, who will believe and admire them when they will give false impressions long and hard giving them an intense irrational reality of a dream with their half-baked ideas lacking in any discretion.

People cannot be free when they are unhappy when completely controlled by dominating political influences.