The Journal News

Letter to the Editor:

May 17, 2004

Recently we have all been suffering from the effects of escalating gasoline prices. This negative trend for the average American driver will probably be replicated for all of us in the coming heating months. The long-term prognosis of being dependent on foreign fossil fuels is not only unhealthy for our balance of payments deficits, our supposed economic recovery and ultimately our national independence. Therefore, again the impetus for alternate sources of energy must be explored with vigor. Recently I met with Ms. Nicola Coddington, who coordinates the Town of Greenburgh’s Department of Energy Conservation. Not only does her department dispense invaluable material on energy conservation, but also she informed me of the upcoming June 8, 2004, meeting at the New York Power Authority offices in White Plains on energy and technology. This meeting has been called to encourage the efficient usage of energy to boost one’s businesses and institutions. I have recommended to Greenburgh Town Supervisor Paul Feiner to set up a town commission to explore the uses of wind turbines, solar energy, and hybrid cars in helping lower town energy costs and also finding ways to supply less expensive renewable energy to the citizenry of the Town of Greenburgh. Only through aggressive local actions can our communities start to reverse this continuing disastrous trend.

Regards,

Richard J. Garfunkel

Member of the Parks and Recreation Advisory Board

Town of Greenburgh

Letter to the Editor

CBS- News880 Radio

Chrys Quimby

July 2, 2004

 Thanks for your response- below is a letter to the editor that will be published in the Journal News. I have paid attention to politics and public policy since I was in my teens. Over the past 40 years I have been in more political campaigns than I care to remember. I wish to reiterate that your on-air remarks smacked of “monster media” arrogance. Whether one agrees with George Bush, current American policy, the direction we are going as a society, our leadership of the western (free) world, or a myriad of other issues, one must understand that we have become a terribly divided and polarized nation. What so irks me, and so many others, is the fact that much of the airwaves are dominated by previously marginalized one-issue endomorphs.  It seems that the “mainstream” media constantly seems to bend over backwards to be fair to these individuals, especially the ones on the right. I regard myself as a “centrist” who clearly understands the dynamics of what motivates the many different aspects and angles of opinion in America. But for sure, Moore's film has, in the vernacular, exposed the sordid underbelly of international business regarding the Bush family's relationship with the House of Saud. In the main, though, we as a society must confront the fact that lower middle class Americans are doing most of the fighting and dying for our continued American economic hegemony. I have nothing against our hegemony, and I support our dynamic capitalistic system. But we need “fairness” and the current rift in the American body politic is a reflection of that 'great divide” that continues to widen between rich and poor. Essentially the mainstream media is “rich” and must be careful to not exacerbate that continuing fissure. Michael Moore has exposed that growing chasm more than once. He has taken on the corporate greed resulting in the degradation of Flint, Michigan. He has taken on the NRA and the fact that we have over 11,000 firearm deaths in America, probably more than the whole outside civilized world has had in decades, and now has taken on the “war for oil.” There is no doubt that we need oil and it is the lifeblood and mother's milk of our industrialized world. But let us recognize that fact and spell it out. Moore's “documentary” is no less dramatic than Murrow's “Harvest of Shame” or his exposure of Senator Joe McCarthy and his tactic of political character assassination. We must recognize that Moore has made an important and dramatic contribution to this ongoing argument as to who “rules” America, the people or Wall Street?

RJ Garfunkel

October 30, 2003

Letter to the Editor

The Journal News

 Beware the lure of Network News!

Recently my parents, who are respectively 99 and 95, were part of a National Study conducted by scientists from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and the University of Maryland and led by Dr. Nir Barzilai. Because of its conclusion that there may be a cholesterol-linked gene that may be the key to long life, ABC World News Tonight contacted me. I was asked to please make my parents available for an interview that they wanted to do on this emerging story. I agreed and was at my parent’s apartment this past Tuesday to facilitate this effort. Little did I know, but I was soon aware, that this interview team would take up five hours of my parent’s and my time and it would be as disruptive and intrusive as possible. Of course we went along with the delays, repetitiveness and insipid questions for the sake of the story and to be part of history. After it was all over, I had second thoughts about the whole ordeal, but thankfully my parents didn’t get to their advanced age by not being hardy folk. It wasn’t long until I received the foreshadowing call, that the ABC News was limited on their time, and the segment would have to be trimmed. So in conclusion, like many others their segment was left on the “cutting floor.” What a waste of time, what a waste of money, and besides, I was told that five other teams were intruding on others, no less! The report came on, last night it said very little, not unlike the rest of network news. So beware of the lure of fame, it is fleeting.

Richard J. Garfunkel

September 24, 2003

To the Editor:

Rights without Responsibility

I read with curious bemusement the recent article regarding the antitrust suit filed by Mr. Alan C. Milstein on behalf of his client the former and now suspended Ohio State University running back Maurice Clarett. The athletic department of Ohio State, for certain actions and violations of university and NCAA rules, suspended Mr. Clarett. They generally involve the allegation that Mr. Clarett did not fulfill academic requirements, that he took monies from a businessman “booster” of the team, and that he exaggerated the value of items supposedly stolen from his vehicle. Because of these indiscretions, Mr. Clarett has been suspended from playing football. To Mr. Clarett’s lawyer this conduct is irrelevant, and because his client can no longer play football, staying in school is meaningless. What was he doing in school in first place? Education? Are you kidding? Oh! He was playing football. Now that he cannot play, because of his alleged violation of the rules, Mr. Clarett wants to be rewarded by having professional teams bid for his services by entering the college football 2004 draft. But the rules state that one must be at least three years past one’s graduating high school class year. Hence Mr. Clarett is ineligible until the 2005 draft, and therefore enter lawyer Milstein. Mr. Milstein says throw out the NFL Draft rule, because his client is being economically harmed, and therefore the courts should trash the “draft” standards the league have imposed. What does all this mean, rights without responsibility. Mr. Clarett wants what he can get, and he will go around or over the rules or have them changed. I say reform must start long before we get to this stage. Big-time college sports should bring back “education” into the equation and stop “babying” these so-called students from day one. If they want to turn “professional” so be it. If the NFL wants mature athletes and has an “age criteria” so be it. But the “bottom line” to this whole equation is, end the duplicitous charade that big-time college sports have become. 

Richard J. Garfunkel

Letter to the Editor

The Journal News

July 27, 2004  

Even though I have generally disagreed with former President Jimmy Carter, I admired his speech as well crafted and his extensive interview with PBS's Jim Lehrer. As a consequence of that speech and interview, President Carter was questioned by David Brooks of the Times and Mark Shields. Both Brooks and Shields acted like professionals in stark contrast to that troglodyte Chris Matthews. Watching Matthews bait the Governor of Michigan was the ultimate example of tastelessness in reporting and interviewing. The story isn't Matthews ambition for the spotlight and his constant interrupting harangues, but what our political leaders have to say. For my money, I find his type of so-called throw-back to gonzo journalism repugnant. Whatever happened to civility and intelligent discourse?

But of course the highlight of this great evening was the appearance of that dynamic duo Hillary and Big Bill Clinton. Mrs. Clinton, a greatly admired US Senator from New York, who nationally is the most respected woman in America, framed the argument perfectly for the former President. She spoke from the heart about the need for unity in our politically fractured land. She talked eloquently about how 9/11 changed the political and social landscape of our country and how the present administration has squandered our world-wide capital in unilateral and divisive actions.

Of course former President Bill Clinton, who holds the unique position as one of the only surviving popular two-term Democratic Presidents in American history, held the convention in his hands. Bill Clinton is still dramatically admired and respected by most rank and file Democrats, and he was welcomed with uncommon appreciation by  the collective throng of the party faithful. President Clinton did not disappoint the thousands who reveled at his feet. His metaphoric prose was Clintonesque at his best. He drew strong comparisons regarding the legacy that Bush inherited and the political and military morass we currently face. President Clinton was able, with his uncommon skill, to juxtapose John Kerry's heroic leadership in war and his domestic attributes as a fighter for social justice against the failed policies of the present incumbent. His characterization that brains and strength are not incompatible brought the house down.

All in all, the lead Democratic speakers of the evening, former Vice-President Al Gore, former President Jimmy Carter, Senator Hillary Clinton and the dynamic former President Bill Clinton set the theme for the rest of the convention; leadership with strength of inclusion at home and abroad. They all stressed the cost of this misdirected war, the unfairness of the Republican tax cuts, and the unfulfilled promises of the current administration. Are we better off after four years of the Cowboy from Crawford? The convention answered a resounding no a thousand times!

Richard J. Garfunkel 

Journal News

7-13-03

To the Editor:

I am a relatively new resident of Greenburgh, and recently had the opportunity to attend an outdoor Greenburgh Town Board Meeting. I found Supervisor Paul Feiner's style and the Town Board Meeting very refreshing and open after being a veteran of 33 years of attending and speaking at City Council meetings in White Plains.

Last night I attended my first outdoor Town Board Meeting at Babbit Court, Elmsford. What could be more open than that in a neighborhood that has experienced flooding problems. Supervisor Feiner answered questions, promised follow-up action and made people, who normally are frustrated with government red tape, smile and applaud.

After the meeting ended, Supervisor Feiner (along with Councilwoman Eddie Mae Barnes) stayed around and held an informal meeting (that was taped for cable) with a handful of residents. That give and take chat listed until 11:25 pm. Mr. Feiner's opponent in the upcoming election participated in this informal, but animated chat as did a handful of others. The main topic was cable television. Mr. Feiner really tried to be responsive to his critics – inviting them to submit six or seven specific suggestions on how the level of service can improve. My impression, after at least two hours of formal and informal interaction on the subject of local access to cable television, was that the Town of Greenburgh and Supervisor Paul Feiner support open and unfettered programming without government interference. Hopefully suggestions that come out of this forum will help move the process of community involvement and participation forward. The Greenburgh Town Board meeting that I attended was a model of open government and should serve as an inspiration for other elected officials.

Richard J. Garfunkel

Letter to the Editor:

The Nation

June 14, 2004

Reagan and the real fall of the Soviet Union

In the wake of the public mourning of Ronald Reagan, our 40^th President of the United States, his supporters made certain claims. One of these claims was that he was responsible for the collapse of the Soviet Union. As an avid student of history and a witness to those events I must beg to disagree. The process that led to its welcomed collapse was in the works long before he was elected. In a sense it was a result of the confluence of disparate events and circumstances. In 1982 after 13 years of litigation against ATT by the Justice Department, the case was settled, and ATT agreed to give up their 22 Bell Systems and their subsequent monopoly over technology. This “breakup” began a “golden age” of communication that eventually resulted in fax machines, cable television, cell phones and the Internet. Meanwhile in Poland, after 2 months of labor turmoil at the Lenin Shipyards, Gdansk, in 1980 that had paralyzed the country, the Polish government gave into the demands of the workers. This of course was before Ronald Reagan was elected. Over the next few years, Poland, in need for “hard” foreign currency was starting to invite Polish-American retirees from the steel industry to come back and live in Poland. With their large union pensions they were able to buy “dachas”, or country houses and live like princes. This reality was not lost on Walesa, who saw his workers starving, as opposed to American steel workers who were “rich” and now “landed gentry.” Others soon became aware of this reality and eventually through the lowering of phone rates, and the development of the fax machines, etc, communication between citizens of the Eastern Bloc and the West opened up. Hungary started to liberalize in 1989 and a flow of East German citizens started to circumvent the Berlin Wall as they traveled through Hungary to West Germany. So the proverbial “flood-gate” was opened, and it could not be shut. By 1991 the old Warsaw Pact countries had removed their Communist bosses and Soviet troops finally went home. Without their client states, the Soviet system was finally exposed as the economic “basket case” it was, and they shut down the whole bankrupt operation. All in all, his real credit should be for the following; the useless and expensive 600 ship navy, the invasion of tiny Grenada, SDI, the Strategic Defense Imitative (Star Wars), Iran-Contra scandal, the death of 240+ Marines in Beirut, the stock market collapse of 1987, and the tripling of the National Debt, vetoing sanctions against South Africa, the speech at the SS cemetery in Bitburg, backing military dictatorships in Argentina, Chile, and the Philippines, arming Sadaam Hussein, voodoo economics (George Bush’s phrase), inaction against the AIDS epidemic, the nearly 200 members of his administration that faced indictment and prosecution, his appointment of Antonin Scalia to the Supreme Court, the S & L scandal that stuck the taxpayers with a bill approaching a trillion dollars, his relentless attacks on affirmative action, his deregulation of broadcasting gave rise to today’s monopolistic media industry, and a host of other wonderful accomplishments. Ronald Reagan got the last laugh in the end. He is still fooling the impotent media with his “teflon” image that was carefully crafted by his handlers, apologists and sycophants.

Richard J. Garfunkel

March 19, 2004

The New York Times:

To the Editor:

In today’s NY Times, Mr. David Brooks writes in his column “Too Quiet on the Home Front” about President’s Bush’s so-called compassionate conservative” agenda and its obvious inconsistencies. But recently, with the introduction of the use of September 11^th imagery, in President Bush’s re-election advertising campaign, a flurry of controversy has been stirred. As a consequence of that political debate, a comparison, no matter how invidious has arisen between the wartime Presidencies of Franklin D. Roosevelt and George W. Bush. Because of the national emergency and threat that World War II posed, President Roosevelt rushed to bring bi-partisanship into his administration by naming to the key posts of Secretary of War and the Navy two eminently powerful and renown Republicans, Henry L. Stimson and Frank Knox. Neither man was known to be an ally or political supporter of the President. He also filled key roles in his administration with other Republicans and business leaders. He understood the need to bring production people onto his team. FDR virtually abandoned his New Deal domestic agenda with his “Dr. Win the War” proclamation. He understood most pointedly that we could not have “guns and butter.”  FDR also put in programs to control prices, ration valuable resources and institute withholding taxes to pay for the war. The amount of taxpayers grew from 3.9 million in 1939 to 42.6 million in 1945. Even though we accumulated massive debt, and the war effort was more than 90% of our GNP, we were able to put in place a world monetary policy at the Bretton Woods Conference. That all-important meeting would shape and create the International Monetary Fund and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development that helped guide the economies and the recovery of the post-War world. FDR also created the concept of the Allies as the United Nations. The coalition he authored prosecuted successfully the world’s most devastating struggle into total and unconditional victory.

George Bush, on the other hand, has sought no bi-partisan support, has fractured the unity of our western alliances, has watched our dollar crumble in value, has mismanaged our debt structure, and has undercut all of the international bodies that took decades to strengthen and nurture. Even though he has tried to link the brutal, and not lamented dictatorship of Sadaam Hussein to Al Quieda, and the war upon terrorism, there is slight evidence that they were ever connected. He has justified a war against Iraq from the earliest days of his administration, while ignoring international terrorism until the disaster of 9/11. With this policy he has alienated our traditional friends, spread thin our manpower resources to dangerous levels, and created new an unacceptable addition to our national debt. Unlike FDR, he has not tried to support the cost of this war, but has placed its burden on unborn generations. Unlike the unified domestic home front of World War II, we here have a divided nation that is being constantly assaulted by a divisive domestic agenda of tax giveaways to the super rich, erosion of personal liberties, confusion over immigration, high job loss, record trade deficits, a health care system out of the reach of multi millions, spending out of control, a “real” unemployment rate approaching 10%, and an erosion of the “establishment” clause, regarding the separation of church and state.

Richard J. Garfunkel

January 29, 2004

To the Editor:

Why the People of the United States should fire George W. Bush!

Unlike our various sports teams in New York and elsewhere, our television sit-coms and news shows and our failing CEO’s, who can be retired or dismissed by an owner, or a Board of Trustees, we cannot fire a President or any other elected officials during their term. Unless it is a case of high crimes and misdemeanors, no matter how bad a job our chief executive is doing, we are stuck with him/her until the conclusion of their term of office.

But of course, we do have the opportunity to fire that person through the electoral process. I believe that George Bush should not be judged on what he may or will do in the future. I conclude, that like any other coach, or producer or failed executive, he should be judged on what he has done in the past. It is the past that we should analyze critically and that he be held accountable for. George Bush has presided over a stock market collapse, the loss of 3 million jobs, a health care crisis, unaffordable drugs for millions of elderly citizens, an uncontrollable immigration crisis, an intelligence gathering failure, a squandered surplus, a new added budget deficit of $2.5 trillion, a struggling and expensive educational system, a college cost runaway, a corporate compensation abuse scandal, a mutual fund fee rip-off, an increase in crime nationwide, the exporting of jobs overseas, a record trade deficit, a quagmire of blood and treasury in Afghanistan and Iraq, a tax give-away to billionaires, a homeland security vulnerability, hatred around the world, a loss of stature amongst our traditional foreign allies, and a policy that is clearly anti-environment. These are not ideological or specifically social issues. They are American issues. The loss of jobs, pensions, the decline of our dollar, our continued trade vulnerability regarding China and our energy dependency are not “politics as usual” issues!

I say to conservative, liberals, and moderates, fire this failure and send him packing off to his ranch in Crawford, Texas where he can contemplate his oil and his family riches.

Richard J. Garfunkel

Ms. Cynthia Koch

The Franklin Delano Roosevelt Library

4079 Albany Post Road

Hyde Park, NY 12538

January 30, 2003

Dear Cynthia,

I hope this letter finds you quite well. I just wanted to say to you, that my wife Linda, my friends and I had a marvelous time. Even though I had been to Hyde Park many times over the years, including; FDR’s 100^th Birthday celebration, Eleanor Roosevelt’s 100^th Birthday and the 50^th anniversary of FDR’s death, the thrill never goes away. I was so glad that some of my friends were able to enjoy the experience of re-visiting, through the library, one of our most dramatic periods in history. Certainly for all of us alive today, whether young or old, the impact of Franklin Roosevelt’s life and contribution is immeasurable. Any casual student of history would readily know that without FDR’s contributions and leadership, our way of life would not exist.

With regards to my participation with this committee, I must say that I have enjoyed every minute of it. I look forward to contributing in any way to not only the growth and prosperity of this effort, but to the advancement and continued great work of the FDR Library. The memory and legacy of FDR, at least to me, and I know countless others, continues to be a beacon of hope and enlightenment to the world.

Meanwhile I hope that our joint work will continue and prosper, and this effort will be continued far into the future with great success.

Regards and stay well,

Richard J. Garfunkel

 2801 Watch Hill Drive

Tarrytown, NY 10591

914-524-8381, e-mail rjg@cloud9.net

ps: Please find  a copy of  the cover qnd a few pages of Fireside Chats, published by Gustav Detjen, Jr. (I thought it was run by Clyde Sarzin, my mistake!) out of Clinton, Corners, NY. Also if you want me to work on a FDR philatelic exhibition, I would love to do it!