Why'd we have to go and change things?

BY DENISE CIVILETTI |EXECUTIVE EDITOR

Change is never easy. We all know that. Sameness is comfortable, especially when you're getting a little long in the tooth, as I am.

Since we unveiled the redesigned Suffolk Times two weeks ago, we've had a number of questions, comments and complaints that I'd like to take this opportunity to address.

Why did we do this? Why not leave well enough alone?

It's true, we had some pretty good-looking newspapers to begin with. And although I don't like change any more than anyone else, we decided the time was right to spruce up and freshen their look. Apart from the introduction of color photography in 2003, the paper hadn't had a comprehensive review from a design perspective in more than 10 years. A lot has happened to newspapers and newspaper readership in that time. We need to try to stay current in order to serve the needs and tastes of a changing demographic. We can't just say, "We like things just the way they are," and leave it at that, for that's the first step on the road to extinction. Imagine if we'd refused to use four-color printing, and kept everything black and white? That may have made some people happy 10 years ago, but how old and stale would we look today if we hadn't changed with the times?

Why did we have to go out of the local area to find a design consultant?

One reader wrote to say she was disappointed we didn't employ a local graphic artist or design firm. While there are indeed many talented graphic artists on the East End, we needed to find people specializing in newspaper design. We searched among nationally recognized newspaper design consulting firms and settled on Creative Circle Media of Providence, R.I., headed by a very bright and dynamic guy named Bill Ostendorf. They not only worked with us on layout and design, but they also ran on-site workshops for our staff to help us improve photo editing, caption and headline writing, and storytelling.

Was this redesign project an attempt to cut costs?

Absolutely not. In fact, the contrary is true. It cost money to do it, in consultant fees and the cost of our new fonts. We believe in our papers and we believe in reinvesting in them to maintain and improve their quality.

Some people have commented on the newsprint stock we're using. The newsprint stock hasn't changed in several years. Several months ago, we did switch from the bright-white cover paper to newsprint. That was indeed a cost-saving measure, but it had nothing at all to do with the redesign project. We took note that none of the other newspapers in the East End market used the heavier, bright-white paper stock on the cover. We also took note of the excellent reproduction capabilities of our printer, which also prints the other East End weeklies. And we decided to take this step -- the savings from which, quite frankly, helped us preserve a job in this very tough economic time.

What happened to The Suffolk Times' 'signature' Page One photo by Judy Ahrens?

This is a tough one, since we all appreciate the beauty of the North Fork and enjoy how Judy captures its beauty with her award-winning photography. While we haven't banished them from the cover, we decided not to run these large feature photos every week on Page One, in order to present more than one story on the cover. Simply stated, we wanted to mix it up a bit. I agree that it's changed the look of the paper and I appreciate Judy's artwork as much as anyone else. That's why today, for instance, we've got a beautiful floral shot by Judy on Page One of our Life and Times section. But we thought it was time to try to get more news on the front cover some weeks.

Why did we change the typefaces we use?

For headlines and such, we just wanted a fresher look. For the body copy -- the font we use for stories -- we wanted a font that was bolder, darker and easier to read. We chose one called Utopia from a field of about six "finalists."

You are now looking at the font we had been using, Times Ten Roman. It seemed to us a much lighter, harder-to-read typeface when printed side by side with the other fonts we were considering. In fact, we did a print test and a blind survey of our staff. Only three out of about 40 people selected Times Ten Roman as their preference. The majority picked Utopia, with a font called Nimrod coming in second.

Give it some time.

The consultants told us the only thing we'd hear at first would be negative reactions. People with complaints tend to speak out more than people who are content. That being said, we've had a lot of positive feedback along with the negative. To those who have called or written to say they don't like what we've done, I thank you for caring so much about your hometown paper, and I ask that you bear with the new look for a while. Give it some time. Maybe, like other changes we've experienced, you'll not only get used to it, you might even like it better.

Ms. Civiletti invites you to join a discussion of this topic at civiletti.blogspot.com. Her e-mail address is denise@timesreview.com.

For 10 points: 'What is...public humiliation?'

For 10 points: 'What is...public humiliation?'

BY DENISE CIVILETTI |EXECUTIVE EDITOR

I haven't slept well in weeks, maybe months. It wasn't the redesign launch this month keeping me awake, or worries about the collapse of the world economy and the resulting disappearance of my 401(k).

Ever since I accepted the invitation of East End Arts Council director Pat Snyder to be a contestant in the East End Charity Game Show tomorrow night, I've lain awake in bed night after night, gripped by fear.

What was I thinking?

It's true enough, this is nothing new. I have a hard time saying no to people, especially when there's a good cause to help. (I did, however, draw the line at taking "the plunge" into a local body of water in December to benefit Peconic Bay Medical Center. I don't know which was more off-putting: the idea of jumping into 40-degree water or being seen in a bathing suit by hundreds of people.)

So when Pat called me up to ask if I'd be willing to be a contestant in this Jeopardy-like game show, I said, "Sure!" And regretted it before I even hung up the phone.

That was even before I found out who was making up the questions. Cutchogue resident Jeff "Doc" Greenberger, Harvard Club distinguished teacher of Latin and ancient Greek will be doing the honors. Oh, swell. The man is a walking encyclopedia.

"Don't worry," Pat assured me when I expressed the panic growing in the pit of my stomach. "He won't make the questions too difficult."

Yeah, right. I have to consult a dictionary just to read Doc's e-mails sometimes. I'm here to tell you Doc Greenberger has no idea what "difficult" means to a mere mortal like me.

For a while, I suffered in solitude, not even divulging what I'd gotten myself into to my family. I was smarter than that. I knew how my teenagers -- both of whom are among Doc's Latin students -- would react.

"LOL," said Katie. (Kids nowadays actually speak Internet shorthand. For the uninitiated out there, "LOL" means "laughing out loud.") "You?" She rolled her eyes. "That's ridiculous."

Thanks for the confidence-boost, kid.

In mid-January, I found myself seated next to Riverhead Town Councilwoman Barbara Blass at a breakfast meeting. Pat Snyder stopped at our table and mentioned the game show.

"I can't believe I agreed to do this," Barbara confessed in a hushed voice as Pat walked away. "I am absolutely terrified," she said. We commiserated. Our upcoming public humiliation would be complete and swift -- on the first round of questions, no doubt.

"Don't worry," Pat had tried to soothe us. "Each contestant will be paired with a brainiac high school student." We'd be able to rely on our student partner's mental acuity to answer questions about subjects we once may have known something about but have long since forgotten.

Great. This only means I'll have the special opportunity of embarrassing myself in front of six of my daughters' friends. So I'll embarrass them in addition to myself.

A few weeks back, I was getting a haircut. Linda Langhorn (who would prefer not to be identified as responsible for my hairdo, since my idea of "styling" my hair is running my hand through it after towel-drying) had a Charity Game Show poster hanging in her shop. She cheerfully informed me that her husband, Butch, was a contestant.

"He's terrified," she said. "He's so afraid he's not going to know anything."

Join the club.

The poster said WRIV manager and morning host Bruce Tria was also a contestant. I called him up.

"Scared? Are you kidding? I'm beside myself with fear," he said, adding, "I'm hoping to enter the witness protection program immediately after game show ends." There might be dead air on WRIV come Monday morning.

None of us has a handle on how to prepare for this thing. Councilwoman Blass thought it would be a good idea to watch Jeopardy on TV, try to play along. Big mistake. She watched it with her daughter, home from college for the weekend. "Mom, you really need help," Juliet (RHS Class of '08) informed her. "Why couldn't it be Wheel of Fortune? You're pretty good at that."

Truly. I can think of any number of game shows I'd rather compete in. Password. Family Feud. Beat the Clock. Or even the weekly NPR news quiz show, Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me! -- all familiar territory. But testing my dwindling intellect on questions written by Doc Greenberger in categories such as "Ancient Times," "World History," "Literature in English," and "Inventions, Discoveries and Scientists"? I'm doomed.

You can come to Riverhead High School and watch us all make complete fools of ourselves tomorrow night at 6 p.m. If there's one thing I (still) know it's this: You won't be disappointed.

Ms. Civiletti invites you to join a discussion of this topic at civiletti.blogspot.com. Her e-mail address is denise@timesreview.com.

A "Sunshine Week" observation

When Congress passed the so-called stimulus package last month, the major media (Washington Post and NY Times articles, Feb. 14, 2009) reported that the bill limited executive compensation at firms receiving bailout billions.

As far as I can find, what didn't get reported (until yesterday) was a gigantic loophole slipped into the bill by Democratic Sen. Chris Dodd, which exempted bonuses paid pursuant to contracts entered into between bailout recipients and their executives prior to Feb. 11, 2009. That's the loophole that allowed AIG to pay $165 million in bonuses. Dodd is now saying the Treasury Dept. made him write the loophole into the bill. Republican members of Congress are calling for an investigation.

The blame games continue. And the yappers on TV "news" shows gleefully play along.

I'm afraid this episode is evidence of the consequences of the plight of journalism today and a harbinger of things to come. Newspapers folding up and the decimation of remaining print newsrooms (think of all the shuttered Washington bureaus!) mean fewer and fewer people are left to do the job. If NY Times and Washington Post aren't reporting something like this giant, disgraceful loophole — who will? Who will read the fine print and shed light on what government is doing with all these many trillions?

Ironic that this revelation comes out during national "Sunshine Week" isn't it?

What those earmarks mean to us (or not)

recently came across a book called "America the Broke: How the reckless spending of the White House and Congress is bankrupting our country and destroying our children's future." Of course, given the economic news we've been living with since last fall, I couldn't resist it. I was especially intrigued by the book's 2004 copyright. Had its author, an economics professor in Arizona, foreseen what we'd be going through just a few years down the road?

The short answer is no; Professor Gerald Swanson at the Eller College of Management of the University of Arizona had not foreseen the financial industry crisis that triggered the global economy's current tailspin. But what he had to say about deficit spending, the national debt, our trade deficit and the federal government's fiscal imprudence was cause for alarm -- especially since the spending practices Prof. Swanson rails against in his book pale by comparison with recent activity in Washington. I'm talking about bailout upon bailout upon bailout, followed by The Stimulus Package -- spending trillions we don't have -- followed by the $410 billion spending bill passed this week just to tide the government over till September. That $410 billion is over and above the defense and homeland security bills Congress sent to former President Bush.

The latest rage among the yapping heads on TV "news" programs these days is "earmarks" -- funding for legislators' pet projects. While the 9,000 or so earmarks in the so-called omnibus spending bill total some $7.7 billion in spending, according to the nonpartisan group Taxpayers for Common Sense, earmarks are, I'd say, the least of our worries. Sure, $7.7 billion is nothing to sneeze at, but, it is but a fraction of overall spending (independent of the stimulus package.) As Time magazine writer Michael Grunwald wrote: "... blaming the earmark process for wasteful spending is like blaming the Internet for porn. It is just a convenient delivery device, and it can have good uses as well as frivolous ones."

I downloaded a database of earmarks spending from the Taxpayers for Common Sense Web site (taxpayer.net) It was interesting. It's comforting to know that, while taxpayer dollars are being doled out by members of Congress, our own Rep. Tim Bishop has a place at the trough. He scored almost $10 million for Long Island, including some big-ticket funding for Army Corps of Engineer projects on the ocean and at Shinnecock Inlet. But it was bothersome to see how little of the congressman's pork-barrel spending came to our neck of the woods. Of that $10 million, the North Fork saw just $19,000 (not counting a $500,000 grant to The Nature Conservancy for seagrass research and restoration, which may help get to the bottom of the disappearing eelgrass on the North Fork.) Yes, that's $19,000 (no zeroes missing) out of $10 million.

Mr. Bishop's earmarks, according to the database, include lots of spending on the south shore: $500,000 to replace a county sewage treatment plant ocean outfall pipe; $475,000 for ferry terminal improvements in Patchogue; $190,000 for the Shinnecock Indian Nation's construction of a preschool; $2 million for work to be done between Fire Island Inlet and Montauk Point, $3.2 million for Shinnecock Inlet; $720,000 for Lake Montauk Harbor; $100,000 for Moriches Inlet; $191,000 for Montauk Point; and $119,000 for the Forge River watershed. Other projects our congressman deemed worthy of funding: $214,000 to the Stony Brook University journalism school for a partnership program to teach scientists how to effectively communicate with the public and the press; $245,000 for the Suffolk District Attorney for prosecuting gang-related firearms crimes; $196,514 for the Middle Country Library Foundation in Centereach; and $133,000 to the Smithtown Fire District for facilities and equipment.

Time's Mr. Grunwald observed: "Earmarks were made for hypocrisy; they're always reprehensible when they're in someone else's district."

Or in some other corner of your own.

Prof. Swanson, by the way, told me that the disastrous scenario he lays out in his book is still waiting for us around the corner. What we've seen in the past year is, in his opinion, only a precursor of things to come unless Congress and the president get deficit spending, our national debt, and trade imbalance under control. Unfortunately, I think he's probably right.

Politics as usual

The New York State Senate has an operating budget of $100 MILLION. $100 MILLION.

Cars, staffers with six-figure salaries, a secret TV studio, even a "Brunomobile" -- a specially equipped $50,000 van that was used to shuttle disgraced -- and recently indicted -- former majority leader Joe Bruno around after Eliot Spitzer (himself a gleaming paragon of morality) yanked Bruno's helicopter privileges. The story is mind-boggling.

And that $100 million doesn't include earmarks -- hundreds of millions more in tax dollars doled out by politicians to curry favor with constituents and special interest groups.

Nor does it include the private little slush funds these pols have in campaign accounts that they barely have to tap into for legitimate campaign purposes, because once elected and entrenched, they're basically elected for life.

How can these hypocrites talk about cutting school aid and food stamps, and continue to fund this kind of nonsense with our tax dollars?

Will Senate Democrats be very different now that they're in control? Somehow, I doubt it. I'd love to know what kind of similar exceses have been perpetrated in the other chamber of the NY State Legislature at the hands of the other party. This kind of thing, unfortunately, is not limited to one party.

We need TERM LIMITS and we need them NOW.

No time for same old, same old

There have been few surprises coming out of Washington, D.C., during the first few weeks of the Obama administration.

Our new president is a refreshing change in oh so many ways. He exudes intelligence. He can articulate his thoughts clearly. He's a thinker. And he is clearly willing to think outside the box. That's a good thing, because he's facing unprecedented challenges as president. And with the nation perhaps facing unprecedented challenges, it's good to know that the president is smart enough, astute enough and shrewd enough to deal with them.

He's not perfect and he will, of course, make mistakes. He will even suffer some disappointments. He already has. But he's already shown he's got the mettle to admit it when he does "screw up."

Unfortunately, none of this may matter much. The occupant of the Oval Office may change, but the permanent government doesn't change much. For members of Congress, their staffers, lobbyists and bureaucrats, it's business as usual, more or less. The bitter partisan divide, the pigs lined up at the trough, the intransigence. These things don't change. Washington, D.C., is its own little universe.

That helps explain why Congress is so willing to sign a blank check to bail out Wall Street investment firms and banks, with almost no accountability for how almost a trillion dollars is spent. But when it comes to helping average people -- people who are suffering largely because of the mess created by the investment firms and banks -- it's time for the same old protracted debate over the relative merits of tax cuts versus spending.

The president's "stimulus" plan proposes to do what we should have been doing all along: reinvesting in America. Produce alternative energy. Modernize our infrastructure. Improve existing mass transit systems and build new ones where none exist. Make our homes energy efficient. Computerize medical records. Equip schools and colleges with computers and modern labs and libraries. Expand broadband Internet access. Invest in science, research and technology. These are investments in our future. These are investments we can't afford not to make -- and shame on us for failing to make them all along.

Instead, we chose to invest in the bottom line of monolithic multinational corporations in the false hope (or on the false promise) that their prosperity would be good for the rest of us, that their wealth would "trickle down" to us little people. Cut taxes. Let the free market operate with as little government interference (read: regulation) as possible. What's good for the barons of Wall Street and the titans of Texas and the sheiks of the Middle East will be good for you and me.

But that doesn't work. It got us where we are today. Moreover, government's hands-off approach to industry and business allowed mortgages to be "securitized" and sold in bundles of tiny pieces. It allowed financial statements to hide risks. It allowed ratings agencies to be complicit in the bill of goods sold to investors -- the triple A-rated funds consisting of funds of bundled, soon-to-be-worthless mortgage-backed securities. It allowed the Bernie Madoffs, the Enrons and the WorldComs, the revolving doors of government that allow industry representatives to oversee "regulation" of their industries and then return to industry to reap the benefits of their (lax) oversight.

Yet in spite of all the evidence that we have gotten it wrong, dead wrong, these past three decades, the talking points of people like Sean Hannity still appeal to the average American. "What historically has worked is capitalism, giving people in this country more of their hard-earned money back," Hannity said the other night, accusing the president of "fear-mongering" by saying this is the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

Yeah! Don't tread on us! Let us keep our money and get government off our backs and we'll be just fine. All things being equal, that could work out. But all things are not equal. We don't have a seat at the same table as the people who are carving up the American pie. I'm not sure we're even in the same room anymore.

Hannity's vision of "capitalism" is what brought us to the brink of disaster. Left to their own devices, Hannity's "capitalists" outsourced American industry and jobs, ravaged our financial system, made health care unaffordable and inaccessible, weakened consumer protection, blocked environmental protection and sucked billions out of our economy, leaving it in utter shambles. Who can reasonably believe that the remedy for what ails us is more of the same?

Copyright 2009 Times/Review Newspapers Corp.

When a church says 'enough'

The Open Arms soup kitchen had been serving a hot meal each weekday to hungry and often homeless people in the fellowship hall at First Congregational Church in downtown Riverhead for the past 16 winters. To many served by this program, supported largely by donations, that meal was their only meal of the day. The hour or two during which the church opened its doors was, for many, their only chance to sit in a warm room, sheltered from the cold, snow and rain.

On Oct. 1, 2008, the church trustees sent Open Arms a letter ordering the soup kitchen to vacate its premises by Dec. 31. No explanation was provided.

Zona Stroy, a retired IBM executive who heads up Open Arms' volunteer board, was puzzled by the termination notice, as there had never been any problems at the site, she told me last week. So she called the chairman of the trustees -- twice, leaving a message each time, she said. Her calls were not returned.

Ms. Stroy said she learned by reading this newspaper that the church trustees hoped to rent out the space for more money, possibly for use as a day-care center. She remains baffled that Open Arms was never even asked if it could pay a higher rent before it was told to leave. (It's been paying $125 per month.)

Clearly, Ms. Stroy concluded, the church just wanted the soup kitchen out.

Resigned to that fact, Ms. Stroy wrote a letter to the trustees last month asking if the church would extend Open Arms' occupancy of the space until the end of March, offering to pay a higher monthly rent.

Again, no reply.

I called the new chairwoman of the trustees myself last week and left a message on her home answering machine. I never got a call back either.

Ms. Stroy has since wrangled temporary use of the unoccupied Riverhead railroad station to distribute cold sandwiches and coffee, supplied by Suffolk County Community College's culinary school for $2 per person. About 80 people have been showing up for lunch at the train station. At $2 a head, it's costing Open Arms much more to feed the hungry than before. The group has use of the train station until April. Ms. Stroy is searching out other locations, so far without luck. And she's desperately seeking financial support. (Open Arms is an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit. In addition to the soup kitchen, it operates a food pantry out of space donated to it by First Baptist Church on Northville Turnpike.)

I used to be a member of First Congregational Church. I was enticed to join by its former pastor, the Rev. Donna Schaper. We became good friends during her tenure there (late 1980s-early 1990s) and remain so to this day. She struggled as a pastor with the sometimes conflicting needs of a church congregation versus those of the world at large.

Whose church is it anyway? Does it "belong" to the families who attend services there on Sunday and support its maintenance with their weekly donations? Does it exist to tend to their needs? Or is its function to reach out beyond the congregation, to touch the lives and hearts of others, to care for the poor and the hungry among us?

These are not new questions. Some 20 years ago, Donna went head-to-head with church trustees who objected to her practice of allowing homeless people to sleep in the church office on frigid winter nights. And First Congregational is not alone in wrestling with this basic issue. At least it wrestles. Some church congregations don't even find themselves discussing such questions.

Meanwhile, the hall at First Congregational Church sits empty at mid-day. Plans to use the space as a day-care center, if they exist, are in the very earliest stages and months from fruition. There was no good reason to kick Open Arms -- and the hungry -- out into the cold this winter. Especially not this winter, in the midst of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, when the needs of the poorest among us grow greater each day, and the number of people needing help is also escalating.

Copyright 2009 Times/Review Newspapers Corp.

Will happy days be here again?

The Great Depression was something my grandparents talked about, something I read about in history books in school, something depicted in scratchy black and white photographs and the jumpy frames of celluloid film reels.

Its psychological impacts could last a lifetime -- exemplified by a family friend, a "Depression-era baby" who grew up poor in 1930s Tennessee and to this day saves, reuses and hoards everything -- though she would live out her life in upper-middle-class comfort on Long Island -- because, in her perspective, you just never know when you'll have to make do and go without again. The day she's long dreaded may have finally arrived. (And she's lived to see it. Yesterday, coincidentally, was her 90th birthday. Happy birthday, Ruth.)

Monday night we went to sleep trying to digest staggering reports of massive job cuts totalling about 64,000. That's on top of the 2.55 million jobs lost since the recession began (in December 2007) and not counting the jobs lost in December 2008. The national unemployment rate is now pushing 8 percent.

The unemployment rate is even higher when you count previous full-time workers forced to take part-time jobs and people who have given up looking for work and are no longer counted in the official tally. Adding those folks into the mix, unemployment rates are already in the double-digit range, according to economists.

It's all very depressing. And scary.

For the first time in my life I truly understand the meaning of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's admonition to the nation upon his taking office in March, 1933: "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."

Until recently, that famous quotation was little more than rhetorical flourish to this child born into the prosperity of post-World War II America. In my world view as a child growing up during the 1960s anything was possible. There was nothing America couldn't do, invent or build. It was an age of wonder.

I remember as a kid watching the Verazzano Bridge take shape not far from where I lived in Brooklyn -- the longest single-expansion bridge in the world. Across the river, work began on what would be the tallest skyscrapers in the world, and we watched in awe as their towering, square steel frames -- the Twin Towers, they'd be called -- rose on the tip of Manhattan Island.

We eagerly watched every Mercury, Gemini and Apollo rocket launch and every capsule splash-down in our nation's quest to fulfill President John Kennedy's challenge -- to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade and return him safely to earth. Each one was an event -- a kind of modern-day, man-made miracle worthy of observance. And so, briefly, America would pause from its work and watch.

It was an age of optimism, a time when Americans believed we could accomplish anything. And so President Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society" was born. No one would be left behind in our new era of progress, not even the poorest of Americans -- especially not the poorest of Americans -- nor Americans who had not had a seat at the table because of the color of their skin. America could overcome and heal the injuries inflicted by a history of slavery and racial segregation.

America could, after all, do anything.

Even through the troubled times that followed those halcyon years -- the country's bitter division over the Vietnam war and the crisis of confidence and trust in government wrought by Watergate -- we still held tight to the belief that America could overcome any obstacle, meet any goal, accomplish anything it set its mind to.

This age of optimism and confidence shaped the world view of our 44th president. It is in Barack Obama's blood. He exudes it. And that's good. It's just what we need right now. It's exactly what we need to overcome the only thing we really have to fear, as FDR said: fear itself. We have to shed that fear, and, to borrow from Mr. Obama's inaugural address, pull ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and set to work remaking America. We have to set things straight, fix the broken systems that allowed the current crisis to take shape, and reinvest in America.

I believe the president when he says yes, we, as a nation, can do this.

I have to. The alternative is too bleak for me to imagine -- and it's one I refuse to accept, not only for myself, but for my children, coming of age as they are at this pivotal moment in history. I want them to optimistically and confidently embrace life in an America in which anything is possible with hard work and perseverance. That's the essence of the true meaning of freedom at the heart of the American Dream. And the dream still lives.

Tankleff case may be tip of the iceberg

The notorious criminal case of Martin Tankleff, the Belle Terre teenager convicted in 1990 of murdering his parents early in the morning on Sept. 7, 1988, ended without real resolution last December, when the state attorney general announced he would not seek a new trial of Mr. Tankleff.

His conviction had been tossed out in 2007 by a state appellate court after nearly 20 years of maneuvering by a team of believers who never gave up hope that justice would be served.
But the attorney general’s investigation and report did not exonerate Tankleff. It simply found that while there was “some evidence” that the youth committed the crimes, it was too old to form the basis of a new prosecution.

Marty Tankleff won his freedom. But justice was not served. The killer or killers of Seymour and Arlene Tankleff walked away.

A recently released book about the investigation and prosecution of the Tankleff case portrays the Suffolk County criminal justice system — police, prosecutors and judges alike — as a corrupt good ol’ boys network far more interested in protecting each other’s hides than pursuing truth and justice.

“A Criminal Injustice: A True Crime, a False Confession and the Fight to Free Marty Tankleff,” was co-authored by the private investigator who devoted seven years of his life to digging for the truth of the Tankleff murders (remunerated with a $5,000 retainer paid by Tankleff’s pro bono law firm). The book provides eye-popping details about what the investigator, Jay Salpeter, a retired NYC police detective, found — and how the Suffolk DA and the court went out of their way to disregard or bury it all, or worse.

“They are still hunkering down,” his co-author Rick Firstman told me Tuesday, about the posture of law enforcement officials regarding the Tankleff case and new disclosures made in the book.

And with good reason, according to the details laid out in “A Criminal Injustice.” It’s a gripping, can’t-put-it-down read.

The Tankleff case is a gripping, can’t-stop-thinking-about-it kind of case.

Lonnie Soury, a Manahattan-based PR man and part-time Southold resident, who said he became obsessed with Marty’s cause, said “people got infected with Tankleff” because “there was an undercurrent in Suffolk County that this kid got a raw deal.”

There’s the confession coaxed from a traumatized kid with lies by a detective who may have had his own business relationship with the murder victim’s estranged business partner, whom many believe was involved in the crime. Then the same detective becomes partners in a bar with the defendant’s half-sister, who bankrolls their business venture — Digger O’Dell’s in Riverhead — with the inheritance she got because her brother was convicted.

The detective, James McCready, denied under oath that he knew Tankleff’s business partner, Jerry Steuerman, the self-proclaimed “bagel king” of Long Island; he denied he even knew of him.

A “crucial” witness whose testimony at a post-trial hearing in 2004 linked McCready to Steuerman was Lenny Lubrano, now proprietor of Lenny’s Restaurant in Jamesport. Lenny had a wholesale business in the 1980s and bought bagels from Steuerman. He saw the two men together at the store. Later, when he owned a pizzeria in Rocky Point, McCready would come in and buy lunch for his crews — he had a thriving construction business “on the side.” McCready told Lenny he was doing construction work for Steuerman. This was long before the murders. After Lenny heard that Steuerman and McCready were involved in the Tank­leff case and that they denied knowing each other, he came forward.

Greg Blass of Jamesport, an attorney in private practice in Riverhead during the 1980s (he was also then a member of the County Legislature), represented Seymour Tankleff in several business transactions. Seymour usually brought Marty along with him to meetings with the lawyer — he was “grooming” Marty to take over his business. Blass told me he was supposed to meet with Tankleff the day of the crime.

“I had absolutely no doubt that Marty did not do a thing like that,” Blass said. A subdued youth who had a loving relationship with his father, “he was not capable of it.”

Blass remembers Tankleff asking him to review some promissory notes he was planning to foreclose on. He believes they were from Steuerman and that Steuerman knew Tankleff was going to call them in. “Seymour told me he had spoken to him,” Blass said, “and suspected there were going to be some difficulties.”

That may be the understatement of a lifetime.

Copyright 2009 Times/Review Newspapers Corp.

County's trailer hocus-pocus

I give a lot of credit to Mason Haas and Mike Brewer for trying to do something constructive about the county warehousing homeless sex offenders in our community. (They've organized a community forum Jan. 15 at Riverhead High School. Assemblymen Marc Alessi and Fred Thiele, County Legislators Ed Romaine and Jay Schneiderman, and representatives of the county Department of Social Services will be on hand.)

Getting people together is a good first step. It's important for people to understand why the county is dumping all of its homeless sex offenders in a trailer at the jail in Riverside and why the county's policy is wrong.

The county has a legal obligation to provide homeless people with a place to sleep. It turned out there was a saturation of homeless shelters housing registered sex offenders in the Coram area, and when the extent of the saturation was exposed by news reports, there was a loud public outcry. In response, the county announced a new program that would rotate homeless sex offenders among several trailers at different locations throughout the county. That way, according to chief deputy commissioner of social services Greg Blass, the burden would be shared. That sounded reasonable. But the rotation thing ended almost as fast as it was begun, and the trailer in the parking lot of the county jail in Riverside quickly became the only place where homeless sex offenders can bed down as the county's guests.

It got crowded. So they brought in an even bigger trailer. And they reportedly are outfitting the bigger trailer with bunk beds, so they can cram even more in there.

County social services officials are big on double-talk when it comes to explaining why Riverhead-area residents shouldn't be concerned about hosting the county's flophouse for homeless convicted child molesters and rapists. They are brought to the trailer only to sleep, we're told. They are dropped off at county social services offices throughout Suffolk during the day, we're told. Officials give no clear answers about how these men spend their days after being dropped off. Nor do they explain what happens to them on weekends and holidays when the social services offices are closed -- other than to say that they are driven to some up-island industrial park for showers. (The trailer has no shower -- or kitchen.) But, we're told, they're not left to wander the streets of Riverhead. So don't worry.

But we do worry. And so we should. The county's track record on this subject does not inspire confidence. And the trailer is a short walk from our public library, the historical society (a popular place for school class trips) and several public schools.

If the sex offenders are dumped at their "home" county social services centers on weekdays, as we're told, what threats do they pose to the communities near those centers? You should be interested in that, too, because Riverhead hosts one of the county's five social services centers. How many of the homeless sex offenders are being dropped off on East Main Street in Riverhead, then -- and left to wander our streets? We have a right to straight answers, and we're not getting them.

East End county legislators Ed Romaine and Jay Schneiderman introduced a bill in October that would limit to four the number of registered sex offenders that could be placed in emergency housing (like the trailer) in any given zip code. The bill hasn't gone anywhere and even if it is adopted, the county executive would likely veto it.

We need to hold our local officials accountable for their inexcusable passivity on this subject. Supervisor Phil Cardinale and the Town Board have barely said anything. Three councilmen are ex-cops. I can't believe they're not incensed at the county dumping homeless sex offenders on our community like this. The fourth is married to the chief deputy commissioner of social services, the very agency that's perpetrating this mess, so her reticence is more easily explained.

The Town Board's great contribution to the "fight" against the trailer was to make a park out of a little strip of land on West Main Street -- which they named after self-appointed town government watchdog George Schmelzer. I wish Mr. Schmelzer were alive to give the board what-for about its pathetically lame attempt to "do something" about the sex offender trailer dumped in our backyard by the county. Never mind putting his name on it. Mr. Schmelzer always told it like it was. I can only just imagine what he'd be saying at the Town Hall meeting room podium.

Broadwater fate out of Bush's hands

This is probably very good news if you're an opponent of Broadwater:

Broadwater fate is out of Bush's hands
Decision on appeal will be made by Obama administration
By Denise Civiletti
Times/Review Newspapers Corp.
Dec. 18, 2008

The fate of Broadwater's proposed floating natural gas terminal in Long Island Sound will not be decided by the Bush administration, after all.

A decision on Broadwater's appeal of New York's rejection of its plan has been postponed until at least mid-February. U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez on Dec. 10 issued a stay in the appeal proceedings that will keep the appeal record open until Feb. 13, effectively punting the decision to the incoming Obama administration.

“It's one more nail in the coffin,” Broadwater opponent Adrienne Esposito, executive director of Citizens Campaign for the Environment, said in a telephone interview Wednesday. “We're hoping the new administration is going to keep its promises of advancing renewables and relieve us of our dependence on foreign fossil fuels,” she said. “The market for LNG is not good right now anyway. Broadwater would have been a giant white elephant floating in Long Island Sound.”

Broadwater Energy senior vice president John Hritcko said the stay was “not unanticipated” because of the scope of the review. “There is a large record to consider,” Mr. Hritcko said.

The N.Y. secretary of state on April 10 ruled Broadwater's proposal inconsistent with the state's coastal management policy. That ruling would effectively block Broadwater's plans to moor a 1,200-foot-long floating natural gas terminal in the middle of L.I. Sound, about nine miles off the coast of Wading River — in spite of the fact that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approved the Broadwater application. That's because the federal Coastal Zone Management Act gives the state the last word on activities that impact coastal areas. But the federal law allows the federal commerce secretary to override the state's consistency ruling, and Broadwater appealed to the commerce secretary to do just that.

Mr. Gutierrez's decision to keep the record open for an additional 60 days — to collect additional information from various federal agencies — means it's likely that President-elect Barack Obama's pick for commerce secretary, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, will decide Broadwater's appeal.

Mr. Richardson served as energy secretary in the Clinton administration, from 1998 to 2001 and, as a candidate for president in the last campaign, declared he would be “the energy president.” In a key energy policy speech in May 2007, he pledged to lead “an energy revolution” as president, to wean the U.S. from foreign oil dependence and “free the U.S. from its status of international hostage of costly energy” by focusing on developing renewable energy sources. But in the same speech he also spoke of natural gas as a “relatively nonpolluting, plentiful, reliable energy source.”

Mr. Hritcko said the identity of the commerce secretary will not be the deciding factor in Broadwater's appeal.

“It's an administrative review by legal staff, based on the record, the merits of the arguments on both sides and legal precedent. It's a conclusion that's handed to the secretary by the staff. It's not a political decision,” he said. Mr. Hritcko noted that only two LNG appeals have ever been brought to the commerce secretary under the CZMA, and both were brought during the tenure of Secretary Gutierrez. The secretary upheld the state in one appeal and overrode the state in the other.

A spokesperson for the N.Y. state department was optimistic about the eventual outcome of the Broadwater appeal. “We've made our position vigorously to the Department of Commerce,” said Joel Barkin, deputy secretary for public affairs, in a telephone interview Wednesday. “We believe we made our decision properly and we are confident that ultimately we will be upheld.”

denise@timesreview.com

Copyright 2008 Times/Review Newspapers Corp.

You gotta love Riverhead

What a game! What a team! What a season! What a town!
Saturday’s Long Island championship game was classic 2008 Riverhead Blue Waves football. A romp, effectively wrapped up in the first half. It seemed like every Waves possession ended in a Waves touchdown. Give the ball to Miguel, put six points up on the board. Two Maysonet TDs separated by — what — 11 seconds?
But, in classic Blue Waves style, Maysonet was only the beginning. There was Gilliam. There was Moore. There was Velys. And LaGue. And Fitzgerald. And Meyer. And the rest of the undefeated championship team.
Let’s not forget Coach Shay, who’s come a long, long way from being “reassigned” in 2007 for covering up the lens of a security camera in the gymnasium.
But this isn’t about football, exactly.
This is more about what Saturday meant to Riverhead and about my adopted home town.
Saturday, Riverhead kicked butt.
In a big way.
There was the 42-6 score posted on the board at Kenneth P. LaValle Stadium at Stony Brook University.
But the story of Riverhead’s triumph was told in the stands and in the parking lot almost as much as it was told on the field.
Riverhead turned out to support the home team. The Riverhead crowd filled up most of two levels of the stadium seating. (In contrast, the turnout for our rivals on the gridiron, not counting Elmont’s excellent marching band, fit into one section of the one-level bleachers across the field.) But — and this is the really cool part — the Riverhead crowd wasn’t there just because it was the L.I. championship game. No, no. Riverhead’s “road” crowd — the people who turn out to watch “away” games — is as big or bigger than any other team’s “road” crowd in the league. There are the parents, grandparents, siblings, aunts and uncles of team members. And then there are the people like Tony James, star of a Waves team of more than 30 years ago, in the stands every week, ringing a bell, shaking a tambourine and shouting out words of advice and encouragement to current team members on the field. And the teachers, administrators and staff. And the people who come just because … it’s Riverhead, their team, their town.
Riverhead, the much-maligned, often dumped-on putative seat of Suffolk County government. Riverhead, the little town that couldn’t.
Oh, yes, we can. Yes, we can. And we do.
Whether it’s Blue Waves football or any one of a host of other teams, clubs and groups in our school district (for example, our award-winning Latinists, our nationally recognized, exemplary Council for Unity, our award-winning choirs, to name a just a few), Riverhead’s young people shine. They excel. They do us proud. Every day.
They are children of honest, hardworking people who live in a community that still has a soul, a sense of place, an identity — increasingly precious commodities in the modern world.
The magic this weekend — the players on the field and the people in the stands ­­— reminded me all over again why Riverhead is such a great place to live and raise a family.
Thank you, Blue Waves. And congratulations.
Ms. Civiletti invites you to join a discussion of this topic at civiletti.blogspot.com. Her e-mail address is denise@timesreview.com.

Riverhead Blue Waves football L.I. Class II Champs

It was awe-inspiring. Our Blue Waves trounced the Elmont Spartans 42-6 in the Class II L.I. Championship final game today at Stony Brook University. See The News-Review's game story here. And nearly as awe inspiring as the victory itself was the turnout of the Riverhead community to root the team on to victory today. The stands of LaValle stadium were filled to the brim with cheering fans from home. It made me very proud of our town — and our team! Way to GO WAVES!

CHECK OUT THE NEWS-REVIEW'S LIVE BLOG FROM TODAY'S LI CHAMPIONSHIP GAME

News-Review sportswriters will be blogging live from the L.I. Championship game today at Stony Brook University. We'll be posting photos there too. Check it out: www.riverheadnewsreview.com

GO WAVES!

NY AG Andrew Cuomo sues FERC over Broadwater permits

By Denise Civiletti
Times/Review Newspapers, Mattituck, N.Y.

(Nov. 26) Two New York agencies are asking a federal court to review the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's approval of Broadwater Energy's application to site, build and operate a liquefied natural gas terminal in L.I. Sound.

In a petition filed earlier this month with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York City, the New York departments of state and environmental conservation claim that FERC violated the federal Coastal Zone Management Act, the Clean Water Act and the Natural Gas Act when it issued permits on March 20 to Broadwater Energy LLC and Broadwater Pipeline LLC to construct and operate the floating LNG terminal and a 22-mile subsea pipeline in New York waters of L.I. Sound, about nine miles north of Wading River.

Though the petition does not detail the state's arguments regarding the alleged violations of federal law by FERC, which will be contained in the state's subsequent brief and memorandum of law, at issue is FERC's practice of granting permit approvals prior to completion of review and approval by the appropriate state agencies under the federal Coastal Zone Management and Clean Water acts.

FERC has issued such permits expressly conditioned on approval by the required state agencies pursuant to the CZMA and Clean Water Act. At least two states, Washington and Delaware, already are challenging FERC's practice of issuing such conditional permits before state review is completed and approvals or certifications are issued by state agencies. Those actions are now pending before the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C.

The question, according to a brief filed by Washington state in its lawsuit against FERC, is "whether the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission can, through policy and practice, rewrite the terms of federal statutes" that require prior state approval.

The federal law was specifically crafted to allow states that are hosts to these projects and must live with their impacts a "protected" period of time to evaluate them, Joan Marchioro, an attorney in Washington State's attorney general's office, told The Suffolk Times in September. FERC's policy of issuing "conditional" licenses turns the statute on its head, she said, and "once FERC says to an applicant, 'You're good to go,' it puts all the pressure on the state."

A call seeking comment from the New York attorney general's office was not returned by presstime.

"It's a violation of the [federal] Clean Water Act and Coastal Zone Management Act for FERC to license the project prior to hearing from the state regarding CZMA and the Clean Water Act. Those must be decided by the state first," Peter Bergen, the attorney representing the towns of Riverhead and Southold on the Broadwater matter, said in September, when rehearing requests were denied by FERC.

"It violates the plain language of the statutes," he said. Mr. Bergen said section 307 of the Coastal Zone Management Act and section 401 of the Clean Water Act, both federal statutes, plainly require the host state to approve the Broadwater plan before FERC may issue its permits. "We raised that issue in our rehearing request and FERC just blew us off," Mr. Bergen said.

Broadwater Energy LLC, a joint venture of Shell Oil and TransCanada Pipelines, proposes to build a 1,200-foot-long floating LNG terminal in the Sound. The terminal, a storage and "regasification" facility, would be capable of supplying the New York metropolitan area with one billion cubic yards of natural gas each day. It would take delivery of supercooled liquefied natural gas from two to three oceangoing tankers a week, and heat the liquid to return it to a gaseous state. It would then supply the distribution network with gas via 22-mile subsea pipeline that would connect to the existing Iroquois pipeline that traverses the Sound and connects to a land-based distribution pipeline in western Suffolk County.

The Broadwater proposal drew fire from environmental and civic groups on both sides of the Sound, and was quickly opposed by the towns of Riverhead, Brookhaven, Southold, East Hampton and Huntington, as well as by Suffolk County and the Connecticut attorney general.

FERC approved Broadwater's permit applications in March over the broad opposition of local governments and citizen groups. But under federal law, the project must be ruled consistent with the state's coastal policy and the clean water act by the state DOS and DEC, respectively. The new legal challenge brought by the state addresses FERC's policy of approving permits before the state's consistency rulings are issued. Subsequent to FERC's permit approval, the New York State Department in fact ruled Broadwater's plan inconsistent with the state's coastal management policy. Broadwater has asked the U.S. commerce secretary to override the state's consistency determination in the interest of national security. A decision on that pending petition is not expected until 2009.

Copyright 2008 Times/Review Newspapers Corp.

Meet your new neighbor, a registered sex offender

We may not live in a battleground state, but we still get robocalls. And all too often, the robocall is to inform us that a level two or three registered sex offender has moved into the Riverhead area.

Like their political counterparts, these robocalls tend to induce fear.

Here's the one I got on my voice mail Thursday night:

"Good evening. This is Nancy Carney from the Riverhead school district. We have received notification from the Southampton Town Police Department that a moderate risk, level two sex offender is residing in the Riverhead area."

Also like their political counterparts, these robocalls are not very informative. The school official doesn't tell us who the sex offender is or where he lives or works "in the Riverhead area."

How useful.

If you are a parent -- and you are if you're getting this robocall, which is going out only to parents of children registered in the district -- odds are you'd want to know this pertinent information. I mean, isn't that the whole point of the sex offender registration and notification law? To get that information out to the public, especially parents, to protect our children?

Maybe. Maybe not.

The robocall message continues: "Information regarding the individual is available at the district office." In other words, we have the information, but we're just not giving it to you now.

So how do I get the information? It's important for me to know, right? It's important enough that there's a state law mandating disclosure of the addresses of sexual predators, so surely it must be easy to get my hands on the information, right?

Not exactly, at least not according to the school district.

"Should you wish further information," the robocall message continues, "you may examine our records regarding this matter at the Riverhead Central School District office Monday through Friday between the hours of 8 a.m. and 4 p.m."

In other words, I have to take off from work to go to the school district office to "examine" this record. That's swell. But, wait -- they're not done making this as complicated and inconvenient as possible: "It will be required that you complete a Freedom of Information request prior to the examination of these files." And the robocaller doesn't offer any help on how to make the Freedom of Information request. (I'd bet plenty of parents aren't even familiar with what that is, let alone how to make it.)

Since the police department informed the school district of the sex offender moving in, maybe I could get the information from the police.

"Do not contact the local police department," warns the robocall, "as they are unable to provide you with any information."

Say what?

I'm not sure why the school district thinks it's a good idea to make such completely uninformative and somewhat misleading robocalls about a subject so important to parents. But I'll bet lawyers had something to do with it.

In the interest of providing useful information to other parents who are as concerned as I am about sexual predators roaming our streets, here's the deal.

You can find out the names, addresses and descriptions of the level two and three registered sex offenders living in our community by going to the state sex offender registry Web site, http://criminaljustice.state.ny.us/, where you can also view mug shots and find out the details about the offenders' convictions. Be warned: It is not a pleasant experience; this stuff will make your skin crawl.

You can get a lot of the same information, plus interactive maps, from a Web site called familywatchdog.us. In addition, you can sign up for e-mail alerts from familywatchdog.us, which will notify you every time a level two or three registered sex offender moves into your ZIP code. The Stony Brook-based Parents for Megan's Law organization offers the same service through its Web site, parentsformeganslaw.org.

Sex offenders are classified as levels one, two or three, according to the likelihood of the offender repeating his or her sex crime. Level three is someone considered at high risk of repeating. Level two indicates moderate risk.

According to the state registry, a total of 32 level two and three sex offenders live in the "Riverhead area" (including the 11901 and 11933 ZIP codes). Of those 32, 16 are homeless men being warehoused by the county social services department in the controversial trailer sitting in the parking lot of the county jail. The agency used to put homeless sex offenders in housing in communities throughout the county, until there was an uproar in places like Coram and Mastic about "sex offender saturation." Then the county simply began dumping them in Riverhead -- effectively doubling the number of level two and three registered sex offenders who call Riverhead "home."

Twelve of the 16 men sleeping in the trailer -- you can't call it "living" since they have no kitchen or shower, just cots lined up nice and tight -- are level three offenders.

In contrast, of the 16 registered sex offenders living in private homes in Riverhead, only five are classified level three.

Some of these offenders are considered "sexually violent offenders," i.e., they committed forcible rape or sodomy. Many of them committed crimes against children, with some victims as young as 4 or 5 years old.

Parents, don't bury your heads in the sand. Get informed. And don't let bureaucratic red tape and "lawyered" notifications dissuade you from exercising your right to know. The information is readily available on the Internet, 24/7. Go get it. This is one of those times when what you don't know can hurt you -- or the people you love most.

Some things are not negotiable

I set out to write a column about how lucky we are to live in such a beautiful corner of the world. I was reminded of that over the weekend, when our roads were clogged with tourists in search of a little piece of something we take for granted every day: the splendor that is the North Fork. I spent some time this weekend interviewing people at a couple of local corn mazes, and more than one remarked on how lucky I am to "actually" live and work out here.

Yes, that's true. We are blessed to actually live and work here.

We take it all for granted. The natural beauty of our surroundings, the provision of basic necessities, the love and support of family and friends, the right to live our lives in peace and freedom.

Another thing we take for granted is truth. We don't appreciate the innate value of truth, how precious it is, or how central it is to our way of life.

As I reflected on the things I intended to write about, the things we take for granted, I couldn't get thoughts about truth out of my head. I've been bombarded with untruths lately, and shards of truth twisted into untruths, all masquerading as truth. If you've got an e-mail account, you know what I mean.

Perhaps because I'm a newspaper editor, I am treated to more than my fair share of e-mails that purport to disclose the "truth" about Barack Obama that the "liberal elite media" refuses to report. Some of these messages pour in from all corners of the country. Some originate from right here on the North Fork. Obama is a Muslim. Obama is not a U.S. citizen. His Hawaiian birth certificate was forged. Obama refuses to salute the flag. Obama won't wear a flag pin. Obama's education was paid for by radical Muslim organizations that are using him to infiltrate the U.S. government, so they can overthrow it.

I knew that sooner or later it would come down to a matter of biblical prophesy: Obama is the anti-Christ. And I quote (from an e-mail that arrived in my inbox Tuesday night: "According to The Book of Revelations [sic]: The Anti-Christ will be a man, in his 40s, of MUSLIM descent, who will deceive the nations with persuasive language, and have a MASSIVE Christ-like appeal ... The prophecy says that people will flock to him and he will promise false hope and world peace, and when he is in power, he will destroy everything."

Never mind that the Book of Revelation doesn't even mention "the anti-Christ," or that Islam didn't come into existence until more than 400 years after the Book of Revelation was written during the first century A.D. Why bother with truth? As Huffington Post blogger Chez Pazienza observed recently, "the truth is negotiable." In this Internet world we live in, where the proliferation of "information" is easy, instantaneous and free, it is the lie, he observes, that has value. Especially in politics.

Mr. Pazienza puts it quite eloquently: "Whereas once there were a select few sources of information, and those sources were generally deemed credible by all but those on the furthest fringes of the public, now anyone can be his or her own news source. And while ... the rise of citizen journalism and hyper-connectivity has been good for the ethics of media as a whole, it's also created a treacherous wasteland of journalistic mini-fiefdoms, each spouting its own version of reality and together making it impossible, at times, to tell honest, well-researched fact from made-up crap conjured out of thin air to further an agenda."

I've had enough of the "made-up crap conjured out of thin air to further an agenda" to last a lifetime.

Truth really is not negotiable, you know. And truth should never, ever be taken for granted -- just because you see it on TV, or online, or in print doesn't make it truth. The next time you get a scurrilous e-mail, think before you click "forward." Research its claims. Like nature, good health and the love of your family, truth is precious -- and fragile. Don't take truth for granted.

denise@timesreview.com

Steve Levy, quit dumping on Riverhead

Wake up, Riverhead! What's it going to take to get the people of this community to rise up and tell County Executive Steve Levy we're not going to stand for being a dumping ground for the county's homeless sex offenders and we're not going to tolerate any more bull?

How about this? The county is now planning to replace the cots in the trailer with bunk beds, so the county can double up the number of men "living" in the trailer? (See story in the Oct. 9 edition of The News-Review.) That will allow twice as many sex offenders to live in the trailer.

Stack 'em up and pack 'em in, Stevie boy. Thank you very much.

When the county first set up house for homeless sex offenders in a trailer in the parking lot of the county jail in Riverside in early 2007, county officials told this community the trailer was going to be moved from one location in Suffolk County to another.

Bull chips. It hasn't budged.

Despite complaints from residents and town officials, not only did the county keep the trailer here, it brought in an even bigger one, so it could house even more homeless sex offenders. Now 16 convicted sex offenders, some of them bearing the "violent sex offender" designation and the vast majority of whom are deemed "level three" by the state, or at high risk of repeating their heinous crimes -- many of them against little children -- call that trailer home.

When residents and town officials complained, because this concentration of dangerous sex offenders, thanks to the County of Suffolk, was living within walking distance of the library and several public schools, county officials told us not to worry. The sex offenders were kept locked up in the trailer at night under the watchful eye of private security guards behind a secure fence (even though the men are not, technically, in jail) and during the day they are taken in a county van to their "home" social services offices.

More bull chips. The "secure" fence has a gaping hole in it and a wide-open gate through which anyone can stroll, any time. (They're fixing it now, they say.)

Well, we asked, what about on weekends and holidays, when county offices are closed? What happens then?

On weekends, the county spokes-hack tells us, the men are driven up-island to shower at an industrial complex whose location the county refuses to disclose.

All right, that's half a day. What about the other day-and-a-half every weekend? And the trailer's got no kitchen. What do they do for meals?

Humminna ... humminna ... humminna...

The needle on the bull chip meter just went wild.

The county rejected my idea of moving the trailer to land outside the county's minimum security jail in Yaphank -- a very good idea, if I do say so myself -- because the Yaphank site is undergoing a $150 million renovation that "makes it impossible" to place the trailer there.

Wanna bet this is just more bull?

And now, in the add-insult-to-injury department: bunk beds, so the county can squeeze 40 men in a trailer now equipped to house only 20.

Remember, folks, the county trailer came into being because other communities -- Coram and Mastic -- objected loudly to the large number of registered sex offenders in county housing within their borders. Mr. Levy's solution was to put them in a trailer and rotate the trailer around the county. It would be moved every week or two, we were told at the time.

Social Services deputy commissioner and Jamesport resident Greg Blass (our former county legislator, one-time Family Court judge and the husband of Councilwoman Barbara Blass) told The New York Times in February 2007 that the trailer would be rotated around county-owned sites "in large, undeveloped areas away from communities."

Uh, like downtown Riverhead?

"[Sex offenders] have tended to locate permanently in places where they were placed in temporary shelters," Mr. Blass was quoted in The Times. "This lets us avoid making any one area a haven for sex offenders. It's an attempt to prevent saturation."

Except saturation is OK if it's in Riverhead.

Mr. Levy, a Democrat cross-endorsed by the Republicans last time out, thinks he is politically invulnerable; he certainly doesn't think he needs Riverhead's votes. He believes he can do whatever suits him.

And right now, dumping on Riverhead suits the county executive just fine. It's convenient, and not too many voters seem to give a damn. This is Riverhead, after all. We're used to it.

Besides, Stevie figures what better place to dump all the county's homeless sex offenders than a town where a convicted sex offender once headed up the Business Improvement District and actually ran for supervisor? We must be a very tolerant place.

C'mon, people, make some noise.

Copyright 2008 Times/Review Newspapers Corp.

$85 billion? What 85 billion?

Check this out. AIG blew through most of that $85 billion already, without accomplishing what it was loaned the money to do. Now it's planning to feed off the $700 billion bailout fund. I wrote about it here.

Repeating the scary past

"This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today."

Those were the words of President Franklin Roosevelt in his first inaugural address on March 4, 1933 -- his famous "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself" speech aimed at rallying a downtrodden America to rise up and overcome the Great Depression.

Here's how our 32nd president described the "conditions facing our country" 75 years ago:

"Values have shrunken to fantastic levels; taxes have risen; our ability to pay has fallen; government of all kinds is faced by serious curtailment of income; the means of exchange are frozen in the currents of trade; the withered leaves of industrial enterprise lie on every side; farmers find no markets for their produce; the savings of many years in thousands of families are gone."

Sound familiar?

"More important, a host of unemployed citizens face the grim problem of existence, and an equally great number toil with little return," Roosevelt continued. "Only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment."

Or maybe a certain presidential candidate.

But back to our straight-talking president as he confronted a nation in the throes of economic calamity.

He said, "Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men."

The practices to which Mr. Roosevelt referred included what economist John Kenneth Galbraith, economic historian of the Great Depression, called "large-scale corporate thimble rigging" that "took a variety of forms, of which by far the most common was the organization of corporations to hold stock in yet other corporations, which in turn held stock in yet other corporations."

Does that sound familiar, too?

Carter Glass, a newspaperman turned politician, authored the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, predicted the consequences of banks lending money for stock market speculation, and after the stock market crash in 1929 and the widespread bank failures that followed, wrote a banking reform bill in 1931 to provide the Federal Reserve Board with more control over speculative credit practices by banks. His bill, the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, regulated the "practices of the unscrupulous money changers" that drove the nation into the Great Depression.

It worked pretty well for 66 years, until the unscrupulous money changers had their way with Congress and then President Bill Clinton in 1999. They repealed Glass-Steagall with the passage of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act.

Former Senator Phil Gramm, Republican of Texas -- Sen. John McCain's economic adviser in his campaign and, reportedly, a likely cabinet appointee in a McCain administration -- sponsored the "deregulatory" legislation. He said at its passage:

"In the 1930s, at the trough of the Depression, when Glass-Steagall became law, it was believed that government was the answer. It was believed that stability and growth came from government overriding the functioning of free markets. We are here today to repeal Glass-Steagall because we have learned that government is not the answer. We have learned that freedom and competition are the answers."

Until the greed of "unscrupulous money changers" in the unregulated free market runs the free market into the ground. Then government becomes the answer again -- to the tune of probably a trillion dollars in the economic calamity of the 21st century.

Sen. McCain, by the way, voted for Gramm-Leach-Bliley, in a vote that closely followed partisan lines in the Republican-dominated 106th Congress. Sen. Joe Biden voted against the House bill in May 1999, but then voted for conference bill that reconciled the House and Senate versions in November 1999 -- a vote which Mr. McCain, then seeking the 2000 Republican presidential nomination, missed because he was campaigning in New Hampshire.

Sen. Barack Obama, at the time a member of the Illinois state senate, and Gov. Sarah Palin, then mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, didn't get to vote on it.

It pays to note that the Leach in "Gramm-Leach-Bliley" is former Republican congressman Jim Leach of Iowa, who crossed party lines to endorse Mr. Obama and delivered a speech at the Democratic National Convention this year. Mr. Leach would reportedly have some role in an Obama administration.

When President Bill Clinton signed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, known as the financial services modernization act, into law on Nov. 12, 1999, he said it made "the most important legislative changes to the structure of the U.S. financial system since the 1930s." Did he know just how "important" those changes would be?

"Financial services firms will be authorized to conduct a wide range of financial activities, allowing them freedom to innovate in the new economy," Mr. Clinton said.

Freedom to innovate granted to Mr. Roosevelt's "unscrupulous money changers" got us pretty much right back to where we were when FDR took office. But for the intervention of Mr. Glass' Fed, you and I might soon be standing on a bread line.

In 1999, while Bill Clinton and the 106th Congress were entertaining us with the juicy details of the president's Oval Office trysts with intern Monica Lewinsky, they were actually busy undoing the underpinnings of the security of the nation's financial system. The phone sex and stogies were merely a side show. In the background, unbeknownst to most of us, there was true bipartisan cooperation to serve the interests of the titans of finance who, left to their own devices, would get us into a fix very similar to the conditions about which FDR spoke in March 1933.

That's the bipartisan cooperation comic genius Jon Stewart of The Daily Show last week called a "clusterf#@k to the poor house." He's right. He was right, too, about this: "Those who do not study the past get an exciting opportunity to repeat it."