By Jeffrey Page

Advisory: You will find the word “Woodstock” in this paragraph and the one that follows, but rest assured this is not more Woodstock nostalgia.

In the new movie “Taking Woodstock” there’s a close-up of The Times Herald-Record and under one of the headlines are the words “By Charlie Crist.”

For 60 years, starting in 1933, Charlie was a reporter for radio stations and weekly papers in the Mid-Hudson, as well as for The Times Herald-Record, which is where I met him. I was hired in 1972 for the Sullivan County Bureau where Charlie once had been the boss. Now he was working mostly out of Middletown though he’d often return to the bureau to use the phone or the teletype.

But first he’d push his glasses to the top of his head, loosen his bowtie, light a cigarette and ask, “And what have you fellers been up to?” Never “fellows,” always “fellers.”

Charlie worked hard. Mornings he would be in the newsroom in Middletown. Then he’d drive back to Monticello, where he lived, to have lunch with his wife Gladys. He’d usually have coffee with us at the bureau, bounce around Sullivan, Orange and Ulster looking for stories, have dinner with Gladys and head out again to meetings. His work was his recreation.

Every small town needs its local paper, and every paper needs a Charlie Crist, a guy who can walk into a bar, or a diner, or a VFW hall, or a church, or a hunting camp, or a meeting of volunteer firefighters, and know everybody in the room. These were the places he found the “real people,” as he called them, that he spent a career writing about. I think he knew every cop in three counties.

Charlie loved to gab with anyone who loved to gab. He and I talked a lot about hunting. “A feller’s got to eat,” Charlie said, and I agreed. I just never understood hunting for sport. “You’d deprive people of the hunt?” Charlie said incredulously. I said a sportsman should hunt a bear on the bear’s terms – wrestle it. Winner gets to eat the loser. “Jeffrey, my friend, that is dumbest thing I ever heard from you,” he said, and would remind me that my “problem” was that I grew up in Queens, not Pine Bush.

Everybody knew him. People would stop by the bureau just wanting to say hello to their man Crist. The firefighters may have loved him more than anyone else for his coverage of the creation of the Firefighters Burn Treatment Fund.

I don’t think he ever slept. Once, I got a call in the middle of the night from the Liberty supervisor, Francis “Stretch” Hanofee, telling me that there was a bad fire at a school for emotionally disturbed kids. I raced over. And there was Charlie. “Thought you’d never get here,” he said.

Another time, it was Charlie calling before dawn with something about a derailment just across the Delaware from Barryville. But we don’t cover Pennsylvania, I said.

“Oh, put your pants on. I’ll pick you up in 15 minutes,” he said.

Charlie was one of the Record reporters who covered the big show at Max Yasgur’s farm in 1969. Five years later he summed it up.

“Half a million naked kids and some music,” he said. Charlie wasn’t cool, just salt of the earth, a man from an earlier time.

I don’t think Charlie would understand what’s happening to newspapers today. What would he say about papers being run by people with no background in news, or by venture capitalists who sink some money in, take a lot more out and walk away, letting the papers wither and die?

Charlie, who died in 1993 at 78, had his share of lame brained managers, such as some alleged geniuses at The Times Herald-Record who strongly hinted in 1978 that it was time for him to pack it in. What did he do? He went back to the weeklies and beat The Record on a regular basis with stories about firefighters and veterans, hunters and cops and other “real people.”

Then he’d drop into the Record bureau, push his glasses up, take a cup of coffee, and ask “And what have you fellers been up to?”

Jeffrey can be reached at jeffrey@zestoforange.com

By Jeffrey Page

I read about the “compassionate release” from prison of the mass murderer Abdel Baset al-Megrahi and, like a few billion other people around the world, I was nauseated.

Al-Megrahi was convicted for the 1988 bombing of Pan-Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie resulting in the deaths of 270 people. It took 12 years to bring him to trial. He was sentenced to life imprisonment with a required minimum of 27 years behind bars.

Now, after eight years, he’s out and back home in Libya, freed by the Scots minister of justice, Kenny MacAskill, because Al-Megrahi has terminal prostate cancer and is not expected to live more than three months. Al-Megrahi was welcomed home as a national hero with flowers tossed at him by cheering crowds. The son of Col. Moammar Khadafy hugged him.

Compassion for al-Megrahi? There are people who can summon up such feelings for individuals like al-Megrahi but I’m not one of them. I’ve been opposed to capital punishment for as long as I can recall, and am saddened that the work of this one man made me believe that in his case the death penalty would have been appropriate. This is a man whose bomb killed 259 passengers and crew, plus another 11 people on the ground. If there’s been talk of compassion for the families and friends of the victims I haven’t heard it.

After I read the news of al-Megrahi’s release, I thought about Theo Cohen. Theo, you may recall, was the 20-year old woman from Port Jervis who was flying home on Flight 103. She was a theater major at the University of Syracuse and had just completed a semester in Great Britain.

To say I knew the Cohens – Theo and her parents, Susan and Daniel – would be an impossible stretch. But 11 years before al-Megrahi’s treachery, my wife, my daughter and I were at a picnic at a friend’s house in the hills over Cuddebackville. The Cohens were there, too. Daniel wrote science books for children. Susan was writing romance novels. Theo was about 9, my kid was 7. They played together on the grass.

And that was it. I don’t think I ever saw any of the Cohens again.

Then came Flight 103 and my admittedly tenuous connection to it. I remembered Theo and of course thought about my own daughter. How could any dad not? And how could I not wonder about the Cohens’ horror, first of not knowing, and then of understanding how their only child died?

The very idea of freedom for al-Megrahi is an abomination. Do the math and you come to the sickening realization that he served precisely 11 days in jail for each of the people he murdered. I think that if anyone deserves to die frightened, alone and friendless in a prison hospital, he does. I don’t often have such thoughts. It took the likes of al-Megrahi to bring them out.

What about compassion for the Cohens, I wonder, and for all the relatives and friends of everyone else on Flight 103? MacAskill said he based his decision to free the prisoner strictly on al-Megrahi’s health, though there are stories circulating that British-Libyan trade and oil may be part of the deal.

I wonder how MacAskill would explain his reasoning if he were seated across a table from Susan Cohen.

Jeffrey can be reached at jeffrey@zestoforange.com

By Jeffrey Page

Here’s what I discovered at a packed public meeting on health care reform Monday night in Greenwood Lake.

First off, a large majority of those attending oppose the current proposed changes.

Second, there was a lot of misinformation, some genuine, some for effect. The host, Assemblyman Greg Ball, who wants to unseat Rep. John Hall next year, called for civility but at no time in the first hour did he step in to correct even the most blatant misstatements.

Not long after Ball’s message about civility, a woman brandished a sign declaring: “Pelosi’s doctor should implant a tongue depressor and wire her jaw!!” Which was no less civil than House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s idiotic likening of some critics of health care reform to Nazis, a claim that infuriated any fair minded person.

A man said, “I resent the administration’s comparing me to a brown shirt or a Nazi.” This was an artful way of slandering President Obama because neither he nor anyone else in his administration made any such comparison. Pelosi of course is not in the administration.

People sounded angry, confused and scared, but mostly angry especially with Obama. One man unhelpfully called the current proposals an “obamination.”

“Your postal clerk will be your doctor,” another man said.

The words “socialized medicine” were used a lot. A man asked, “What is socialism?” and answered himself that under socialism you must justify the air you breathe. Then he said “socialism is worse then slavery” and quickly backtracked to stick in the disclaimer “as evil as slavery was.” Socialism doesn’t give a damn about people, he said, but at least in slavery the owners were concerned about the health of the owned and thus made sure they were well-fed and clothed.

We were told that “elitists” promoting health care reform want the rest of us to drive around in fuel efficient cars as they travel in SUVs and private jets. The elitists were never identified. Still, there were cheers.

A man said the actress Suzanne Somers was from Canada and can attest to the failings of the Canadian national health system because she and several members of her family have suffered with cancer. But Somers was born and brought up in San Bruno, Calif.

We were informed that government control of health care delivery will allow bureaucrats to kill old people, kill special needs people, kill premature babies, kill the sick.

Then came the line that the government can’t run the DMV but wants to control our health. Health care reform would put clerks and bureaucrats in charge. The DMV may make the final decisions on your health care and it could be a postal clerk who’ll be your doctor, sell you a sheet of stamps, a $25 money order and an appendectomy.

A major fear is the business about “death panels” being spread by Sarah Palin. Hers is the shameless lie that really scares the hell out of some older people: The government will decide when you’ve had enough treatment and pull the plug.

A man who said he suffers with pancreatic cancer, heart disease and diabetes – and who, by the way, says he’s 90 to 95 percent satisfied with his Medicare – said he doesn’t want government involved in his end-of-life decisions.

Some people were concerned that reform will subsidize health insurance for illegal aliens, but Hall says in his web site that the proposals specifically prohibit this.

Several other people called for tort reform but failed to address the question of what happens when they go for a kidney transplant and the surgeon removes the wrong kidney.

Some other things I learned were that a preponderance of the crowd were older people – I’m one of them – with concerns about what will happen to Medicare should health care reform come to pass. Obama puts the cost of reform at $1 trillion over 10 years. Does Medicare funding get reduced to pay for total reform? And if so, what happens to the quality of older people’s health care?

This issue is so complicated, so politically charged and ultimately so important that we have to slow things down. President Obama may want quick Congressional action but he can’t have it. Not when it’s clear that 300 million Americans need more time to understand what reform is about.

Hall wasn’t at Greenwood Lake. It was Ball’s political show.

But if these two guys want to be helpful, it’s time to stop playing to the converted. We need Hall and Ball to talk with each other. A Hall-Ball debate should be in a quiet room. It should be televised. It ought to have no moderator but just two men swearing to stick to the truth.

Jeffrey can be reached at jeffrey@zestoforange.com

By Jeffrey Page

In another display of official lunacy, the government (a) decided to conduct a study of telephoning while driving, evidently ignoring the fact that such studies have been going on elsewhere for more than 15 years, (b) discovered that – duh! – it’s not safe to yak on the phone while cruising to work, and, fearful of antagonizing Congress, (c) squelched its own findings.

In other words, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration came through in the clutch six years ago and reached a conclusion that was a surprise to absolutely no one and then pretended it did no such thing.

DWP – driving while phoning – is dangerous?

–You knew it and I knew it because we have, any number of times, observed the idiotic driving of people dialing ahead for a pepperoni pizza or making other very important calls. They veer from lane to lane. Often they seem incapable of comprehending that most uncomplicated expression, NO TURN ON RED. And they go when they should stop and stop when they should go.

–We knew it because there are certain truths in life – even if we can’t explain how we know them. Call it common sense or intuition: We know that if we don’t concentrate on controlling our 4,000-pound vehicles we could be killed. We know this the same way we know not to swim when we see dorsal fins and not to eat wild mushrooms unless we’re in the company of a world class mycologist.

–Oh, and of course let’s not forget that the danger of carrying on a phone conversation while tooling along, say, Route 17, isn’t exactly news.

In fact, the New England Journal of Medicine published a Canadian study showing that a driver talking on a cell phone was as likely to be in a crash as someone who was legally drunk. To state the danger quantitatively, researchers found that using a cell phone in the car quadrupled the chance of a crash.

The Canadians even found that the chances of an accident are not reduced when the driver uses a hands-free phone to order that pizza. It’s not the dialing necessarily, and it’s not the grasping of the phone necessarily that are so dangerous. It’s the very act of talking with someone who isn’t there.

That was published in 1997.

Other studies with nearly identical findings have preceded the outright bans of driving while phoning in Switzerland, Israel, Brazil and several other nations. All were noted in the American press.

If there’s anyone who still refuses to make the connection between driver-phoning and crashes, note The New York Times’s recent report that NHTSA’s 2003 findings – the ones that were nearly lost to the ages – estimated that 955 people were killed in nearly a quarter million phone-related accidents in 2002 alone.

The dangers of driver-phoning are known to all sensible people. What’s breathtaking is that NHTSA, an arm of the U.S. Department of Transportation, tried to hide its own report, a report that states the obvious. Congress was dead set against the agency dealing directly with the states on this matter of auto safety, even though auto safety is NHTSA’s mission.

To oppose Congress on this could have jeopardized the agency’s funding.

NHTSA’s finding might have remained locked forever in a file cabinet in Washington except that the Center for Auto Safety and Public Citizen got hold of it through the Freedom of Information act and turned a copy over to The Times.

Now the information is out there – as if you didn’t know it.

But the question remains: Why would Congress object to NHTSA’s dealing with its counterpart agencies in the 50 states? Forgetting for a moment that studies have continually shown the danger of driver-phoning, wouldn’t it make perfect sense for NHTSA and state transportation departments to remain in contact on such a crucial and widespread problem?

Cynics might wonder if the powerful telecommunications lobby had a role in Congress’ decision to put NHTSA’s findings on ice.

Jeffrey can be reached at jeffrey@zestoforange.com

By Jeffrey Page

Maybe the numbers were on the high side this time. Forty-four public officials, including three mayors and a member of the Assembly, arrested in one day, most on charges of money laundering. But elected politicians in New Jersey betraying the public trust and stealing public money?

It will happen again. Over the course of a century it has happened before.

Some Jersey stories.

In 1971, John R. Armellino, the mayor of West New York, pleaded guilty to taking $1,000 a week to protect illegal gambling interests. Not just any gambling interests but those run by a gentleman named Joseph “Bayonne Joe” Zicarelli of organized crime repute.

The mayor did such a good job in carrying out his end of the bargain that West New York became known as the place to go in North Jersey if you were looking for a little action.

Armellino had come home from World War II a tragic hero. For gallantry in action on D-Day he was awarded the Silver Star. He also lost his right leg at Normandy. On his return home he entered politics. He was mayor for 20 years and ran his town like a dictatorship. If a critic got too vociferous at a council meeting, Armellino would snap his fingers and a cop removed the complainer. At which point, Armellino would calmly say, “Next to be heard.”

The mayor went to prison for four years.

In Jersey City, also in 1971, Mayor Thomas J. Whelan was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment. All Whelan did was come up with a way to provide for his old age. He and some other officials figured they could shake down contractors doing business with the city simply by suggesting that failure to pay up would force Jersey City to give its business to rival contractors – who would then have to pay. It wasn’t original and it wasn’t elegant, but it worked for a while and the Whelan group’s take was said to be more than $1 million.

However, one supplier got tired of being extorted and went to the authorities. It didn’t take long for Whelan and the others to be brought down. The mayor pleaded guilty and was sent away.

Tom Gangemi was another Jersey City mayor who had to leave office prematurely, but not for bribery, extortion or conspiracy. In 1963, two years after he was elected, the feds informed Gangemi that he had a serious problem. He had never bothered to become a U.S. citizen.

A Union City storefront bearing an immodest sign – “The William V. Musto Regular Democratic Organization” – was Billy Musto’s 18-syllable base of operations. This was where Musto, the long-time mayor, would spend time schmoozing with friends, drinking coffee, and meeting constituents. You needed a job? A loan? Maybe some food for the table? You had a complaint about a cop? For these you needed to see somebody with clout. That was Mayor Musto.

How popular was he? Popular enough so that one year he secretly gave financial support to a challenger because, as Musto said, it didn’t look good to run with no opposition.

And popular enough so that on May 11, 1982, Billy was sentenced to seven years in prison for municipal racketeering, and on May 12, 1982, he was reelected mayor. The guy he beat was his former protégé Bob Menendez who testified against him and who never claimed that the vote had been rigged. Today, Menendez is one of Jersey’s senators.

And so popular that when Billy was released from prison after serving three years, he went home to Union City to find that lampposts all over town were decorated with yellow ribbons and welcome-home signs. One said “The leader is back.”

They’re all gone now, these characters in the long, never-ending line of corrupt Jersey pols. But clearly, the game of greed, stupidity and betrayal goes on.

Jeffrey can be reached at jeffrey@zestoforange.com

By Jeffrey Page

When I was a reporter for the Times Herald-Record during the Seventies, I covered the Sullivan County Courthouse where I met Judge Louis B. Scheinman, a former district attorney, who brooked no nonsense either as prosecutor or as jurist.

Scheinman was a political realist who understood that district attorneys must show the public a stack of successful prosecutions if they hope to get re-elected. He also was convinced of something more important. The D.A.’s real job – in fact, his single most important responsibility to the law-abiding public – is to seek justice. This far outweighs waving lists of convictions and reciting excuses for acquittals.

There are some prosecutors at work today who could stand a few lessons in this uncomplicated, but apparently elusive doctrine.

Take the case of Lebrew Jones, 52, currently and for the last 22 years, a New York inmate, housed nowadays at the state prison in Otisville. Jones was convicted of the brutal killing of a woman in New York City and sent away for 22 years to life. Several people, including the victim’s mother, don’t believe he’s guilty.

Of course such beliefs are not proofs. And so, as Jones goes before the parole board his week, his lawyers try to win a reversal of his conviction.

So what’s wrong with this picture?

For one thing, the Manhattan District Attorney’s office has rejected a request by Jones’s lawyers to provide them with important evidentiary material about his case. This forces the lawyers to file motions in court to get these papers and adds more time to Jones’s ordeal. Why would the D.A.’s office withhold this information? Because, as the Record reported in a stunning story over the weekend, the material was provided to Jones’s original trial lawyer and he no longer has it.

Read that again. The man’s been in jail for 42 percent of his life – he has no other criminal record – but the Manhattan D.A. won’t hand over a second copy of paperwork that might be key to proving Jones’s innocence. The prosecutor declines to seek justice for Jones after two decades in prison. Which leads to an important question. What is Robert Morganthau afraid of? Running up a high Xerox bill? What could be the real reason for this in-your-face refusal?

It’s important to note that it was after the Times Herald-Record began looking into Jones’s conviction that Morganthau’s office launched a new investigation of it. That was two years ago. The office has yet to finish this examination of a case in which it played a prominent role, the Record reported on Sunday. They don’t seem to move fast at the Manhattan D.A.’s office, do they? But hey, it’s nothing serious – just two more years out of the life of a man who might be innocent.
The case against Lebrew Jones was full of holes. The Record’s story noted that nothing in the glut of evidence at the crime scene connected Jones to the killing. No medical examiner went to the scene.

One of the pieces of evidence against Jones was his often conflicting statements made during a 20-hour grilling. It turns out that Jones, described by the Record as “intellectually challenged,” at one point suggested that the woman killed herself by pounding her own skull with a rock. He renounced his speculation later but this self-pounding story remained part of the record. Did you ever try to make sense after sitting up for 20 hours?

The district attorney’s refusal to provide Jones’s lawyers with the paperwork they need – because he gave a copy to a previous lawyer – is not part of the pursuit of justice. I wonder how Judge Scheinman would describe the prosecutor’s actions in light of his inability to suffer fools well.

Jeffrey can be reached at jeffrey@zestoforange.com

By Jeffrey Page

We need a new State Senate, and we need 62 principled Conservatives, Liberals, Libertarians, Working Family party members and independents to make it work. Democrats and Republicans need not apply, having proved themselves not up to the task.

Never again can we allow a gaggle of quacking Republicans and Democrats to conduct a public temper tantrum as they did in Albany – all in the name of “reform.” That display, which lasted a month, was no more about “reform” than it was about ice hockey. It was about the exercise of political power and we all suffered for it. Important recurring bills, such as renewal of state permission to impose local sales taxes, were not acted on in a timely manner. Additionally, the future of mayoral control of the New York City Board of Education seems to be up in the air.

The issue of gay marriage seems to be a casualty of the impasse. Think about that: A measure to grant equal rights to a segment of the population – whether you support it or oppose it – is a casualty of the so-called fight for “reform.” 

We witnessed Governor Paterson legally issuing order after order for the Senate to convene, resolve its differences, and work for the people. And we witnessed the 62 senators telling the governor to butt out. The senators gaveled themselves to order and then adjourned. That’s not “reform.” That’s lawlessness. That’s the Gang of 62 informing the people they represent, “You’re dismayed? Let us tell where you can stick your dismay.”

Reform. What a joke. In the end, the not-especially-principled Democrats were so happy to get their majority back that they made Pedro Espada Jr. their majority leader. Of course, it was Espada’s jump to the Republicans a month ago that precipitated this sudden push for “reform” in the first place. How nice that Espada has a title. He’s happy. The Democrats are happy. The Republicans have to live with it. But there’s another group, hasn’t been consulted.

No one asked New Yorkers – the real ones, the people who struggle to pay taxes so that members of the State Senate can draw a salary – how we feel about Espada’s being in a position of power. We weren’t asked because, let’s face it, no one gives a damn what we think.

Senator Bill Larkin, the Republican from Cornwall-on-Hudson, handed The Times Herald-Record one of the great straight lines in the history of standup comedy.

“Almost certainly, we should have done this before,” he said about the push for “reform.”

If by “we,” he means the Republicans, it’s amusing to note that until Jan. 1, the Republicans controlled the Senate for 40 years.

If by “we,” he meant the entire Senate, it’s amusing to note that Larkin has been a member for 18 years.

We should have done this before? We should have done what before? Quick, can anyone name the card-carrying Democrat or Republican who ever made serious noise about “reform” of the State Senate?

There exists a path to real reform, but it takes a raging fury to carry it out. It takes determination. It takes an unwillingness to be played for the fool any longer. Most of all, it takes an understanding that such reform won’t happen quickly but could take years.

It won’t be easy to ignore the Gang of 62 when they start littering our mailboxes with campaign crap next year, but we can do it. It takes the time to sit down and inform these incumbent characters precisely why they won’t get our votes. It takes a clean sweep.

The Senate won’t be spotless after one election. But let 2010 be the start.

Jeffrey can be reached at jeffrey@zestoforange.com.

By Jeffrey Page

So Palin leaves when she ought to stay, and Sanford stays when he ought to leave.

In Alaska, Sarah Palin said she would quit the governor’s job in one month. This so she can be free to travel and presumably light the spark under her corner – it’s not actually a wing, is it? – of the GOP. She didn’t exactly say she would stump the nation in preparation for a 2012 presidential run. She didn’t exactly say anything else either.

Instead, during her not-quite-coherent announcement and a subsequent entry on her facebook page, she chanted familiar lines – “I am now looking ahead and how we can advance this country together with our values of less government intervention, greater energy independence, stronger national security, and much-needed fiscal restraint” – but didn’t offer a single suggestion for, say, ensuring greater energy independence. This omission from the governor of oil-sodden Alaska. 

She scolded the press and the Establishment. “How sad that Washington and the media will never understand; it’s about country,” Palin said. In other words, only she – and not all those suspicious reporters, editors, elected officeholders and appointed officials in Washington – knows what “it’s about country” means because, she suggested, she’s the only real patriot.

But she failed to address an obvious question: If resigning as governor in the middle of your first term is “about country,” what about Alaska, the state that trusted her to do a job?

If Palin quit to get a jump on going after the 2012 nomination, she’ll have a problem with voters, who actually expect governors and other elected officials to carry out their part of the bargain and finish their terms of office. It would have been difficult enough for her to run as a one-term governor from a small state. Now she opens herself to the derisive charge that she’s a half-term governor.

And just think, Sarah Palin, who quits when the spirit moves her, could have been that heartbeat away from an Oval Office occupied by a man in his 70s.

Meanwhile, in South Carolina, Governor Love says he’s staying put. That would be Mark Sanford, whose story of the heart is known to everyone who can read a headline or watch a newscast.

You know this sordid jumble. He went missing. Then his staff said he was on the Appalachian Trail trying to clear his head. But he was really in Argentina, having a week with his “soul mate.” Then he returned and was trying to learn to love his wife all over again. Then he quit as head of the GOP governors association. He might have been a candidate for president in 2012 and on and on.

In any case, he’s staying on as governor even as Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and liberals, Whigs and Tories, Socialists and anarchists, agnostics and saints, church people, unchurched people, ice cream salesmen, farmers, chicken pluckers and minor league ballplayers ask – demand, actually – that Sanford take his apologies, his heavy heart and his Peyton Place life and go elsewhere.

Such as Bosnia or Nepal. Or at least over the state line into North Carolina.
 
Not the Honorable Mark Sanford. After disgracing himself, humiliating his wife, exposing his lover, embarrassing his four children, and playing the fool before 4.5 million South Carolinians, Sanford decided to stand on principle.

He won’t go, he says, because he was elected to do a job for the people though lately he’s doing a job on the people.

In Palin and Sanford we have a pair of pols who don’t know when to stay and when to go. Here’s how to figure it out. If you haven’t been indicted and you’re still breathing you stay. If the people, especially if led by those of your own party, say it’s time to go, recite a nice speech and vanish.

Jeffrey can be reached at jeffrey@zestoforange.com.

By Jeffrey Page

The little section of New York known as the State Senate has taken on the trappings of a zoo with all the noise and stink that the inhabitants of zoos generate. Specifically, as the Senate’s Democrats and Republicans, conservatives and liberals go at one another, they are, by extension, going at the people they’re supposed to represent. That would be you, me and the guy who lives just down the street.

And so, while the Senate boys and girls do battle over the political matter of which party will set the agenda and pound the gavel, the business of the people is dead in the water. At risk, as I write this, are the future of county sales taxes, the New York City Board of Education, and numerous other matters that must be extended by Tuesday the 30th if they are to survive. These are no small deals. If a county, such as Orange, loses its authority to collect sales tax, guess whose property tax could rise to make up for lost revenues.

The senators even gave a (figurative) middle finger to Governor Paterson several times last week when he ordered them to convene and behave like the mature public servants they pretend to be. The Democrats met and adjourned a minute later – after courageously voting to officially mourn the death of Michael Jackson. The Republicans’ session lasted about as long.

Paterson, outraged, ordered a stop to the senators’ per diem payments and travel reimbursements, and asked the comptroller to withhold their paychecks. The test of the governor’s anger will come when all this is over and the senators ask for their back pay. Won’t it be instructive if Paterson stands his ground and tells them that they forfeited their pay when they decided to play partisan games on the people’s time?

The situation in Albany has gotten so bizarre that Friday’s Times-Union took note of a Democratic senator’s unhappiness with Paterson’s actions. Translation: Paterson’s standing with the public, which has been in the tank for months, may be improving, but senators of his own party still could make life difficult for him because he insisted that the Senate meet and actually do a little work.

If you’re sickened by the action, or inaction, in Albany, just think. In another 17 months these distinguished gentlemen and ladies will be asking you to return them to office for another term. They may be waiting for 2010 to tell you what a great job they do for the people, but the people can tell them right now that the 19,004,911 New Yorkers who happen not to be members of the Senate are outraged.

Surely your state senator is concerned about your thoughts on this matter and would love to hear from you. Here are some handy phone numbers for the three senators who represent Orange, Sullivan and Ulster Counties:

John J. Bonacic, 42nd District: Middletown office, 344-3311. Bonacic represents the Orange County towns of Deer Park, Greenville, Minisink, Mount Hope, and Wawayanda; all of Sullivan  County, and the Ulster County towns of Denning Gardiner, Hardenburgh, Hurley, Kingston, Marbletown, New Paltz, Olive, Rochester, Rosendale, Saugerties, Shandaken, Shawangunk, Ulster, Wawarsing, and Woodstock.

William J. Larkin, 39th District: New Windsor office, 567-1270. Larkin represents the Orange County towns of Blooming Grove, Chester, Cornwall, Crawford Goshen Hamptonburgh, Highlands, Monroe, Montgomery, New Windsor, Newburgh, Wallkill, Woodbury; city of Newburgh, and the Ulster County towns of Esopus, Lloyd, Marlborough, Plattekill, and the city of Kingston.

Thomas P. Morahan, 38th District: Nanuet office, 425-1818. Morahan represents the Orange County towns of Tuxedo and Warwick, and all of Rockland County.

The State Senate may not mean business these days, but its 62 members need to be told that the people mean nothing less than business.

Jeffrey can be reached at jeffrey@zestoforange.com

By Jeffrey Page

 In 2007, 12,998 people were killed in alcohol-related crashes in the United States. Nearly 400 were New Yorkers – possibly our friends, our children, our parents, our neighbors.

 Thinking about so many dead can be a difficult abstraction. But they come into focus when you realize they were a population equal to Port Jervis, Woodridge, Walker Valley, Forestburgh and the village of Florida combined.

The greatest atrocities drunken drivers perpetrate on us of course are the bloodshed and misery, and the widows and orphans they create. The randomness of their criminal acts – you could be watering your garden when some drunk runs you down – is terrifying.

Sometimes we’re subjected to additional outrages by judges who pass sentence.

And so we come to the case of Mario Reyes, 59, who was walking to catch a bus home after a night’s work at a shipping company in Miami. It was 7 a.m. when Mr. Reyes had the bad luck to encounter Donte’ Stallworth who drove up in his Bentley.

Mr. Reyes is now dead.

It was time for justice, but justice often is elusive when a case involves one person who is bathed in shiny celebrity and the other in pallid anonymity. Donte’ Stallworth is a (suspended for now) $5 million wide receiver for the Cleveland Browns. Mr. Reyes was a crane operator who likely will soon be forgotten by all but his family and friends.

Stallworth’s blood alcohol concentration at the time he killed Mr. Reyes was 0.126. In Florida, the presumption of drunkenness is reached at 0.08. This doesn’t mean you’re sober at 0.08. It’s just the legal limit. In fact, a 180-pound man who drinks two martinis in an hour will have a BAC of about 0.103.

Stallworth faced 15 years in prison for killing Mr. Reyes.

He was sentenced to 30 days by a judge newly arrived from the planet Neptune.

Thirty days for killing a man going home after a night’s work is not a sentence. It’s a minor inconvenience. To Stallworth, 28, it means he won’t be able to take in a movie, go to a ball game, have dinner out, or stop in for a drink for a whole 720 hours. To the rest of us, it’s yet another atrocity.

Additionally, Judge Dennis Murphy gave Stallworth two years of house arrest and eight years of probation. Not so severe when he could have sent Stallworth away until the age of 43.

Murphy also noted that Stallworth had agreed to pay an undisclosed sum to the Reyes family. That’s very nice, but it seems to ignore the fact that the prosecution was not in the name of the Reyes family but in the name of the people of the State of Florida, all of whom need protection from the likes of Donte’ Stallworth. The sentence also forces you to wonder what would have happened to Stallworth if he were not a rich man.

The judge then ordered Stallworth to make a $2,500 contribution to Mothers Against Drunk Driving, and it is MADD that comes out of this tragedy with its head highest. MADD essentially told Stallworth and Murphy where to stick the $2,500.

“If we took the settlement, we’d be part of the settlement and we don’t agree with the sentence and therefore the settlement,” said Laura Dean-Mooney, the president of MADD.

The sentencing of people who kill with a bottle and a car shouldn’t be a joke.

Here in the Hudson Valley, a 21-year old man from New York City got two years in prison for killing a pedestrian. A man from Shadaken got one to three years for killing a man while driving with a blood alcohol level of 0.11. And in Sullivan County, a man with two previous DWI arrests on his record drew four to eight years for killing a popular 17-year old student. Two years? Three years? Four to eight? Are they the value of a human life?

Of course not, but 30 days is grotesque.

We need a law: Drink, drive, and kill? Fifteen years.

Next case.

Jeffrey can be reached at jeffrey@zestoforange.com