Ulster County's Liberty Coalition

I just received this e-mail from Robin Yess, former Ulster County Republican Committee chair.  The Town of Olive has proposed a town plan that seems to have been ICLEI-inspired, but no one can trace the reasons why the particular consultant who wrote the plan was hired.  In any case, Olive is so corrupt that there is little chance of the plan not being pushed through.  It is good that Robin Yess is pushing for some pro-freedom candidates. Let us hope and pray that she is successful.  Given New York's moral and economic deterioration literally over more than a century, it does not seem likely.   With deteriorating real estate prices, by the time I retire a move to a southwestern state will probably be easy to accomplish.  Why on earth would anyone want to live in New York? 

TO: Friends and Supporters of Republican Party Principles

RINOs AMONG US

Three months ago I resigned my post as Ulster County Republican Committee Chair after deciding that fighting a battle with people who don’t support the same principles I do is a battle not worth fighting. After four years, I realized there are too many RINOs (Republicans In Name Only) among us, who make it difficult to make any headway.

Two core principles of the Republican Party are smaller government and lower taxes. When a handful of elected Republican Legislators are supporting policy that goes against these two core principles they are not Republicans, but are RINOs.  When Republican Town Chairmen support continuation or expansion of government (aka build a new Golden Hill Health Care Center), they are RINOs. When an elected Republican Legislator stands in front of the County Office Building carrying a CSEA sign in support of “building new,” there are RINOs among us. When an elected Republican Legislator speaks at a local Tea Party meeting in favor of building new, but fails to disclose that his mother-in-law is a current resident at Golden Hill, we have a RINO on our team. When two Town Boards – one with Republicans in the majority – pass memorializing resolutions in support of keeping a County-run nursing home, we are surrounded by RINOs and are about to get the horn.

I have asked numerous “build new” supporters to show me the numbers. Nothing makes things more painfully clear than a nice Excel spreadsheet. Show me that it’s not going to increase our tax liability, raise our debt burden or require more of a county subsidy and if they can show me that, then I’m on board. No surprise that no one has provided me with those numbers yet. Besides the numbers, there is just no reason for any government to be in the nursing home business. Period.

LIBERTY COALITION

The Liberty Coalition was formed several months ago as a means to help candidates running for elected office at the local, county and state levels who are solid supporters of core Republican principles. While there have been many rumors about this group, we all believe that any Republican who supports continuing a County-run nursing home has lost sight of the Republican philosophy of smaller government and lower/lesser taxes. In the coming months, the Liberty Coalition will register as a PAC (political action committee) to help candidates win and, in some cases, help their opponents lose. We will provide candidates assistance with the help of our experienced team, financial support and volunteers for door-to-door and other efforts. This year we will have a presence in a number of countywide races.

The Liberty Coalition’s advisory team consists of David VanBenschoten, Jon Dogar Marinesco, Pam Odell, Vivian Wadlin, Mitchell Langbert and Robin Vaccai Yess. We hope you will join us and if you would like to, please reply to this email.

POLITICAL DEALS ABOUND

The rumor that Roger Rascoe, new Republican County Chairman, pushed a deal to support longtime Legislator Rich Parete (Democrat) to run on the Republican line in Marbletown is true. Rich, who plays cards with Independence Party Chair Len Bernardo and who will no doubt support Len’s wife Terry Bernardo to become the next Chair of the Legislature (also heard on the street), won the support of his Party and will run on both the Democrat and Republican lines because of Roger’s deal. (Call the Board of Elections to confirm. I did.) I have nothing against Rich Parete personally, but what do the Republicans stand for when they make a deal to support a long-time Democrat legislator whose father (also running for Legislature) is the former Democrat Party County Chairman?

Haven’t we learned that holding the Republican Majority doesn’t mean anything when the elected Republicans don’t behave or vote like Republicans?

The Bernardos, who failed, but worked diligently behind the scenes to oust current Legislature Chairman Fred Wadnola at the beginning of this year, have already been working the angles to secure the votes for Legislature Chair for Terry, a first-time Legislator who – two years ago – won in a fixed election that she was guaranteed to win. No shock that this didn’t sit well with many residents of the Towns of Rochester and Wawarsing, many of whom have not forgotten this infringement on their rights to choose and elect their Legislators. But let’s not start counting votes for Chair just yet. It’s no secret that Terry has a challenger for her Legislative seat and now after being bumped off the Conservative line, she must first win in the primary election. Manuela Michailescu, finishing her first four-year term as Town of Rochester Councilwoman, is also running for County Legislature in District 2.

In 2009, Manuela was the highest vote-getter in the Town of Rochester in the Republican Primary for Legislature. In the general election she won the Republican line by 415 votes, winning in all 18 local districts of the former Ulster County District 1 (Rochester, Wawarsing and Marbletown). This year without a rigged race, the voters will decide and may the best candidate win.

NEW LEGISLATIVE DISTRICTS AND REPUBLICAN PRIMARIES

There will be Republican primaries for County Legislature in at least three Legislative Districts. This is a good thing.

Legislative District 1 (Saugerties) – Terrence Valk and Mary Wawro

Legislative District 2 (Saugerties) – Walter Frey against Bob Aiello

Legislative District 21 (Rochester) – Manuela Michailescu against Terry Bernardo

In these races, the Liberty Coalition supports Walter Frey in District 2 and Manuela Michaeilescu in District 21. We currently have no position in the District 1 race.

Legislator Frey, serving in his first-time, serves at the Chair of the Health and Human Services Committee.

NOTE: Legislator Belfiglio filed an objection to Legislator Laura Petit’s Republican petitions for District 8. I guess Belfiglio thinks that writing in a PO Box in addition to an already printed registered address (as recorded with the Board of Elections) on a Designating Petition is cause enough to have Petit’s petition signatures to run on the Republican line tossed out. Or could it be that Belfiglio realizes he will lose? An appeal on this matter is pending. The Liberty Coalition supports Laura Petit in District 8.

INDEPENDENCE PARTY OR MISLEAD INDEPENDENTS?

The Independence Party in Ulster County has approximately 5,000 voters registered in their Party. Unfortunately, approximately one-third of them think they are not registered in any Party. The small size of the Independence Party, when considering the total County population of approximately 185,000, does not stop Party leaders from exerting undue influence over elections and candidates. It is no secret that appointed Chair Len Bernardo (not elected by the Party) threatens to withhold Independence Party support from any candidate or incumbent who doesn’t do as he asks. I am told that at a recent meeting of the Saugerties Republican Committee Bernardo strongly encouraged the committee to support a certain Legislator and suggested if they didn’t that no Town candidate would receive the IND line. I doubt the Independence Party members are aware of this.

There will be more to come in the weeks and months ahead and please feel free to forward this email to anyone you think is interested. My email list is blind for obvious reasons, but I assure you it’s large. Soon we will be launching the Liberty Coalition website and a self-subscribe email list. Stay tuned.

Robin Vaccai Yess for:

The Ulster County Republicans in a Can't-Do America

I just submitted this piece to The Lincoln Eagle. 

The Ulster County Republicans in a Can't-Do America

Mitchell Langbert, Ph.D.*

On May 13, Robin Yess resigned from her position of chair of the Ulster County Republican Committee.  In an e-mail that she sent to the county's executive committee, which is comprised of the chairs of the town Republican committees, she wrote that the good 'ol boys' network, the GOB, is the problem with the GOP.  In particular, Yess cited five unnamed GOP county legislators who intend to vote in favor of the $80 to $100 million Golden Hill Health Care facility that will provide senior care to only one percent of Ulster County's seniors, many of whom are related to political officials and the county's wealthiest segment. The facility will cost each Ulster County taxpaying household more than $1,000, not counting interest on the loan, which could cost you another $1,000.  Yess wrote that she believes in limited government and lower taxes.  In her view support for the facility among GOP legislators is inconsistent with the GOP's principles.

               
Yess's resignation was accompanied by the usual political infighting.  But the principle ought to be of interest to anyone concerned with America's future.   Both Democrats and Republicans in Ulster County are committed to spending $100 million (not counting interest on the loan, which could amount to another $100 million) after twenty years of Ulster County's growth being one third of the national average.  New York is experiencing an exodus of young and hardworking taxpayers because of liberal taxation, and neither party senses a problem. 

              
The Golden Hill facility is an example of the age-old American phenomenon of special interest politics.  Both parties have pet causes. The Democrats have George Soros, the Trial Lawyers Association, the National Lawyers' Guild, and NYSUT, while the Republicans have Halliburton.  So it is at the county level.  Both parties have friends in the construction industry, in labor unions, and in the grant seeking business.

Both the Ulster County Law Enforcement Center--the county jail--and the Golden Hill facility benefit special interests.  Making matters worse is the absence of a serious press or media (other than The Lincoln Eagle) that employ journalists who are capable of analysis without ideology or being embedded in the special interests concerning which they are supposed to be reporting. 

Back in the day of the Second Bank of the United States, the precursor of today's Federal Reserve Bank, Whig politicians were on the Bank's payroll until Andrew Jackson, the equivalent of today's Ron Paul, abolished the bank and set the stage for the greatest economic expansion in world history.  After the Civil War, Standard Oil captured a number of state legislators, much as Bruce Ratner and The New York Times recently utilized New York State's Empire State Development Corporation to evict law-abiding property owners for Ratner's and The Times's benefit.

In the 19th century the nation's shared belief in limited government restrained lobbying.  Because Americans believed in limited government, corrupt city governments in places like New York and Minneapolis, and the corrupt federal government, could do limited damage. In those days the corruption in New York was due to the Democrats, but the corruption in the federal customs houses was due to Republicans.

The limits on corruption changed with Theodore Roosevelt's election in 1904.  TR, a Republican, strongly believed in expansion of government. Many of his ideas were copied during the 1930s and later.  TR was brighter than his more famous cousin Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  By the 1930s both parties had adopted variants of the Progressivism that TR had adapted from Herbert Croly's Promise of American Life.  The GOP, inspired by President William Howard Taft, whom TR detested after Taft's first term, favored less regulation and opposed welfare; the Democrats, inspired by FDR, favored more regulation and a greater degree of help to the poor.  Both parties favored subsidies to the wealthy. On balance, the Democrats favored greater subsidies to both the very poor and the very rich than did Republicans, but it is difficult to generalize. Both parties changed from their Jacksonian origins to the Progressivism of Roosevelt, Taft and Woodrow Wilson.

Americans who still believe in the ideas that built America--limited government, hard work, innovation and individualism--have no representative in Ulster County, in New York State, or nationally.  The Republicans and Democrats are both Progressive.  That is, Yess is only half right about Republican principles.  The liberty Republicans, led by Ron Paul and former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson, are one remnant of the Jacksonian Democrats.  The rest of the GOP is comprised of Progressives and, perhaps more commonly, self-interested hacks.  There is a smaller remnant of Jacksonian Democrats within a Democratic Party which is dominated by left-wing Progressives and, just like the Republicans, self-interested hacks.

Until recently, Americans could afford to be complacent. Politicians are politicians, many have reasoned, and you can't fight city hall. But politics has become intrusive; government is ending the American way of life.  Unless the silent majority begins to take an interest, America as you once knew it will end.

The Constitution does not have a word to say about political parties, but most Americans feel that they need to vote for either Democrats or Republicans.  After all, a third party might be radical and do strange and unexpected, extremist things. For example a third party might:

-Start three wars at a time
-Quintuple the nation's money supply and hand the printed money to commercial banks and stock brokers
-Legalize unconstitutional searches and seizures
-Borrow nearly a trillion dollars and give it out to politically connected friends

-Replace the education system with an ideologically driven, politically correct indoctrination system that does not teach writing

-Propose a cap and trade law (and UN Agenda 21 under George H. Bush) that would force you to move out of your home
-Declare morality to be dead and then claim that on moral grounds they have the right to tell Americans what to eat.

Wait, that's what the Democrats and the Republicans have been doing, most of all Barack H. Obama but also George H. and George W. Bush.  So Yess is wrong. We cannot expect the Republicans to think or act like Americans. The GOP is a big government Progressive Party just like the Democrats.  Do Americans want more government and economic death, or to rise to Yess's call for integrity within both parties or a third party? So far, the results are bleak.  Unlike their ancestors, today's America has declined so much that it is now a can’t-do nation.  

*Mitchell Langbert teaches at Brooklyn College. He blogs at http://www.mitchell-langbert.blogspot.com

De Russy for Congress: Opportunity of a Lifetime to Do a Write-In Vote

My good friend and crusader for justice, Cortes de Russy, is running as a GOP and Conservative Party-endorsed write-in candidate in Westchester and Rockland Counties, the 18th CD in New York.  If you live in the district please support him. The write-in campaign is an ad hoc response to the failure of the mistakenly nominated GOP candidate.  De Russy had been considering a bid for the seat earlier this year but then bowed out when the Westchester Party thought it had an alternative candidate who turned to be a mistake.  Hopefully de Russy will mount a full-blown campaign in two years. I don't know how write-ins work but they can explain that at the polls.  It will be worth voting just to learn how to do a write-in, so please don't forget to do a write-in for de Russy if you live in his district. It will be a spectacular experience, the opportunity of a lifetime. His press release follows:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact:

Doug Colety, Chairman

Chairman@WestchesterGOP.com

914-497-2876

WESTCHESTER GOP ENDORSES CORTES DERUSSY FOR CONGRESS

DeRussy Announces Write-in Campaign in 18th District

White Plains, New York (October 19, 2010) -- Westchester Republican Committee Chairman Doug Colety today announced the Westchester GOP’s endorsement of the write-in candidacy of Cortes DeRussy for the 18th Congressional District.

Said Colety, “I am pleased to announce that the Republican town and city leaders in the 18th Congressional District have voted to support Cortes DeRussy in his bid to represent the 18th Congressional District. The Republican Party is committed to not only giving the voters an alternative to Tax and Spend Nita Lowey, but to winning this critical seat. Cortes DeRussy is a true fiscal conservative and tax fighter who will stand up for the taxpayers of the 18th District. His message will resonate with voters who are ready for a change after more than 20 years of Nita Lowey’s consistent votes for higher taxes and spending. I look forward to working with Cortes over the next two weeks to ensure that he is victorious on November 2nd.”

DeRussy is a resident of Yonkers and has lived in Westchester County for almost 40 years. He was a trustee in the Village of Bronxville for two terms and has served on numerous civic and not-for-profit boards.
The 18th Congressional District is composed of part of Westchester County and Rockland County.

New York's Conservative Party Belongs in Yesterday's Trash

I dislike the label "conservative" when applied to people who believe in freedom and in life. The debate between laissez faire liberals and mercantilists goes back to the 18th century. Advocated by Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury, and David Hume, mercantilism was an earlier doctrine than laissez faire. Adam Smith wrote in response to Shaftesbury just as Locke wrote in response to Filmer, who advocated the divine right of kings.  David Hume was the source of Alexander Hamilton's belief in a central bank and in government intervention in the economy. Hence, state activism with respect to the economy is an older doctrine than laisser faire, which has always been a radical response to the failure of traditional (i.e., conservative) doctrines like monarchy, state intervention in the economy and central banking.

More important with respect to today's Conservative Party in New York is that the purpose for its very existence has been obviated.  The Conservative Party was founded for two conceivable reasons: (1) the dominance of corporatist, big government Republicans, so-called "Rockefeller Republicans," in New York's Republican Party and (2) the pro-choice platform of many Republicans.  Some Republicans are pro-choice and some are pro-life.  The Conservatives were presumably aiming to define themselves as "social" as well as economic "conservatives" and so offer a position consistent with the Catholic Church's and the various Protestant denominations' that are pro-life.

In 2010 the Conservative Party, led by Mike Long, chose to nominate Rick Lazio over at least two superior alternatives (there were likely more; virtually anyone I know would have been a superior alternative to Rick Lazio): Steve Levy and Carl Paladino.  The Conservatives' and GOP's backing of Lazio removed Levy, who lacked the resources for an independent bid.  The Conservative Party and the Republican Party memberships had the opportunity yesterday to redeem their parties from, respectively, the Rockefeller Conservatives and the Rockefeller Republicans, who are eager for jobs and corrupt bonuses from big government.  The GOP membership showed that it is fundamentally "conservative" in the sense that I don't like using the word.  The Conservative Party members showed that it is less "conservative" than the GOP.

Although much press has been given to "Rockefeller Republicans" much less has been given to "Rockefeller Conservatives."  Yet, it is clear that under Mike Long's leadership the Conservatives have veered to the left and are now more "liberal" (another inappropriate term) than the GOP.   So who needs a Conservative Party?

The Conservative Party is creating a serious problem.  The "conservative" candidate, who is pro-life and for small government, is running on the GOP line but not on the conservative line.  The Conservative Party has reserved their line for a pro-choice, big government advocate, Rick Lazio.  The Conservatives are proving that corrupt motivations rather than an interest in liberty or in life is are enough to determine their nominations.   Conservative Party members might consider that by belonging to it they are harming the cause of "conservatism."

Yesterday's election proved that the GOP is more conservative than the Conservative Party.  It was enough to consign Mike Long and the Conservative Party to the trash bin of history.

Republican Paradox

Several of my friends support Rick Lazio for Governor of New York State.  Lazio had worked as a lobbyist for JP Morgan and had helped arrange Morgan's $25 billion bailout. No greater expansion of government power has occurred in the past two decades.  In exchange for his help in facilitating the expansion of government, JP Morgan paid Lazio a one million dollar bonus.  In addition, Lazio is on record in support of abortion.  As well, Lazio is entrenched in the same self destructive New York GOP that has allowed Alfonse D'Amato to play the GOP against itself in favor of the Democrats.  It is the same GOP  that continues to support Governor George Pataki, whose last term in office involved expansion of state government, an alliance with the state's Service Employees International Union boss Dennis Rivera and corrupt indifference to extensive Medicaid fraud.  These patterns cannot be excused by the State Assembly's Democratic majority or the state's liberal ideology, as even the left-wing New York Times took issue with the criminality in Medicaid that flourished during the Pataki administration.

It is thus puzzling that so many Republicans continue to favor Rick Lazio for governor, the GOP establishment's choice. These Republicans seek an outsider with considerable establishment experience.  That is, someone who supports less government but has spent his life earning a living through big government.   I would support Paladino if only to keep Lazio out of office, and a candidate who makes a 20% budget cut the centerpiece of his platform is certainly preferable to a paid lobbyist for JP Morgan. Another Pataki-like fraud would simply be too discrediting to the GOP.

The Republicans have grown used to dissonance between words and deeds.  The dissonance has become so sharp that the party's image has deteriorated and will not recover until new personnel are introduced at the highest levels.  Mr. Pataki and Mr. D'Amato are relics and do not belong in any leadership role.  Likewise, candidates such as Michael Bloomberg and Rick Lazio with big government track records need to be purged.  There is nothing moderate about the the bailout that Mr. Lazio facilitated. It is not mainstream; it is not "conservative".  The bailout was an extreme, self-indulgent, radical expansion of government, a violent taking of money by the powerful from those less powerful, and those participating in it lack the moral fiber to play any prominent role in government.