Opening Remarks

“The Advocates”

By

Richard J. Garfunkel

July 26, 2007

Hello, and welcome to our program,  “The Advocates” on WVOX-AM. My name is Richard J. Garfunkel, and I am the host of this weekly forum. This program is coming live from New Rochelle, the Queen City, located on the Long Island Sound, and it can also be heard streaming live on www.wvox.com. One can also call directly to the station at 914-636-0110.  Our guest this morning is Mr. Paul Court, the long-time lead Social Studies teacher at Mount Vernon High School. By the way, a few weeks ago I told our WVOX listeners that Bill O’Shaughnessy talks about Mario’s on Arthur Avenue, but my wife and I eat there. We were there again last Saturday night with my tennis buddy Wally Kopelowitz and his wife Ronnie, and the place was jammed. The Yankees, with their usual Stadium sell-out crowd, had just broken in the Bronx, and I am positive that half of them wound up on Arthur Avenue.

Meanwhile, getting back to our guest, Mr. Paul Court has been associated with Westchester County throughout his life and career. He is a native son of Mount Vernon, where he attended the public schools and graduated from MVHS. He also has earned undergraduate and graduate degrees from Iona College, which to all of you whom are unfamiliar with the City of New Rochelle is located on North Avenue, not too many blocks from our studio. Paul, who has been on the educational staff of Mount Vernon HS for twenty-seven years, is the type of teacher who likes to know his students and find out what makes them tick.

As I say each week, the mission of the “The Advocates” is to bring to the public differing views on current “public policy” issues.  “Public policy”, therefore, is what we as a nation legally and traditionally follow. Over the years the “public policy” of the United States has changed or has been modified greatly. As an example “free public education” is the public policy of the United States. Also, over time, great struggles have ensued over control of the direction of “public policy.” For example: free trade versus protectionism, slavery versus emancipation, state’s rights versus Federalism, and an all-volunteer army or a draft.

The subject of today’s conversation is about the teaching of history. In other words, is history teaching as relevant today as it was a generation ago and if it isn’t what can we do about it?

Looking back over a quarter century as a teacher and almost 35 years as a student what are your impressions regarding the changes?

Meanwhile, I was a resident of Mount Vernon from 1945 through 1965 and I was also educated in Mount Vernon school system, and have remained in the Westchester area throughout my life. Of course my impressions of Mount Vernon, when I graduated 45 years ago, was that the town had not changed much from the previous decades. But of course since the late 1960’s there has been a profound change. By the way Paul, how did your people come to Mount Vernon?

Paul is the fourth lead Social Studies teacher going back to and including the late great Henry Littlefield, who toiled in that department from the late 1950’s until 1967. Henry loved the narrative of American history and was a great believer in the thematic teaching of the subject. Paul, how do you see yourself in that mold, and do today’s students relate to the panorama that makes up our country’s history?

During the second half of our program I want to discuss with Paul the changing curriculum we see in the high schools, and what has been de-emphasized in light of political correctness, and what has become more important in the eyes of the State education policy-makers.

Welcome back to the “Advocates,” a program devoted to exploring large public-policy issues. Today’s program is about the teaching of American history, and we have as our guest Mr. Paul Court, a native Westchester resident, who has been the lead Social Studies at MVHS for many years.

Of course over the last 50 years since I was in junior high school, we seem to have become much more self-critical of ourselves as a nation. I wonder whether our changing demographics have made us more sensitive as a people, or whether different people are now in power. As William Marcy said in the United States Senate in 1832, “…to the victor belong the spoils…” and from some later poet “the victors write the history.” Therefore is our history

I can clearly recall that we did not dwell in a critical way on American imperialism in the Caribbean from 1898 to the 1920’s, the issue of the economic rational of the American revolution wasn’t talked about too much, the social flaws in Woodrow Wilson’s administration wasn’t emphasized, and FDR and the New Deal, along with WWII were crowded into the last few days of the school year.

Has that changed?

How would you measure the importance NY State gives to the “Japanese Internment” during WII, with the Rape of Nanking and the obvious pass the Japanese fascist government received during the early days of the Cold War?

Do students relate to political scandals and contentious ideological struggles like Teapot Dome, Alger Hiss, The Army-McCarthy Hearings and McCarthyism, Watergate, Whitewater, Katrina and the flooding of New Orleans, and the current one called Gonzogate, regarding the firing of the 8 or 9 US Attorneys?

Do your students see historical parallels between these events, the fall the Alamo, the firing on Fort Sumter, the sinking of the Maine, the sinking of the Lusitania, the attack on Pearl Harbor and 9/11 World Trade center attack, which at different times stirred American patriotic fervor stirred American?

Opening Remarks

“The Advocates”

by

Richard J. Garfunkel

Hello and welcome to our program  “The Advocates” on WVOX-AM. My name is Richard J. Garfunkel, and I am the host of this weekly forum. This program is coming live from New Rochelle, the Queen City, located on the Long Island Sound, and it can also be heard streaming live on www.wvox.com. One can also call directly to the station at 914-636-1460. By the way Bill O’Shaunnessy, whose name is synonymous with WVOX radio always has talked about Mario’s on Arthur Avenue. My wife, Linda and I, were there with our friends Doctor Gerry Appel and his wife Alice, and we treated wonderfully by our hosts Joseph and Barbara and Vallone our server. I told Joseph, that Bill talks about Mario’s, but we were there!

Meanwhile the mission of the “The Advocates” is to bring to the public differing views on current “public policy” issues. The United States Constitution, ratified in 1789 is the framework of our laws. But “public policy” is the amplification of that framework. In other words, new laws are always being written and old laws are always being challenged. Eventually these challenges reach the Supreme Court for “Constitutional testing.” Out of those “tests” rulings either re-affirm or change law. Out of these changes, “public policy” can shift dramatically, but the arguments pro and con can remain with us for many years.

“Public policy”, therefore, is what we as a nation legally and traditionally follow. Over the years the “public policy” of the United States has changed or has been modified greatly. As an example “free public education” is the public policy of the United States. Also, over time, great struggles have ensued over control of the direction of “public policy.” For example: free trade versus protectionism, slavery versus emancipation, state’s rights versus Federalism, and an all-volunteer army or a draft.

Therefore with that in mind, the topic of discussion today is one that is on the minds of many, many Americans. It is whether we should return to a draft army, the problems of the transition back to civilian life and the impact of GI Bill of Rights. 

To discuss that critical topic we have three guests with us. Mr. and Mrs. John Weiner, from White Plains, who is with us in our studio, and Mr. Jim Kurtz, who will join us on phone from his home in Webster, New York. John Weiner, who was born and raised in Livingston Manor, NY and, served honorably in Europe during WWII was discharged as a Captain, is here with his beautiful and brilliant wife Lynne Lehrman Weiner, who has spent a lifetime as an activist, a reporter, homemaker, mother of three and is the author of the book Sigmund Freud Through Lehrman’s Lens, which is being published in English, and will be released within the next month. Her father, Philip Lehrman, a well-known psychiatrist was a student and associate of the famous Sigmund Freud, and she had the pleasure of sitting on the famous Austrian doctor’s lap. John, who taught for many years at the Edgemont High School, was honored by the State of New York, among many others, for his free book program that raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to assist homeless people.

Jim Kurtz, who now resides in Webster, NY, was raised in Mount Vernon, NY, graduated from the Mount Vernon schools and Syracuse University. He volunteered for service in 1967 and served with the 82^nd Airborne Division in Vietnam. When he was discharged from service, Jim had been awarded the Bronze Star among his other decorations. He spent his post-war working career, owning a large restaurant in Rochester, NY.  After a hiatus of 15 years he became quite active with Vietnam veterans, which included outreach activities that included dealing with the transitional problems of returning to civilian life, developing a prosthetics factory for land mine victims, and counseling centers for veterans.

Therefore with these two decorated veterans, of two very different wars, I would like to start by asking John Weiner his opinion on the draft, how it affected him in the days before WWII and what whether he thinks it should be re-instated today.

Next and on our call-in line is Jim Kurtz our Vietnam veteran: I pose the same question to Jimmy, who I have the pleasure of knowing from our school days in Mount Vernon back in the early 1960’s.

Background information:

A.       Draft was established in 1863, was unpopular. The law authorized that anyone could hire a substitute for $300.

B.        During WWI- the Selective Service Act of 1917, called for all men between 21-30 to register, (later amended to all from 18-45). Exemptions: men with dependent families, serving in indispensable duties at home or physical disabilities. Conscientious objector status was granted to members of pacifist organizations but had to perform alternative services. Other war objectors were imprisoned. End of WWI 2.8 million men had been inducted.

C.       WWII –Selective Service Act of 1940- provided for an army of not more than 900,000 at any one time and limited to 12 months duty. Later (1941) extended to 18 months. The act called for all men from 18 thru 65 to register, and all men between 18-45 could be realistically called. Between 1940 and 1947, the Act annually expired and was re-enacted one year at a time. Over 10,000,000 were inducted.

D.       . New laws were passed in 1948, 1951, 1955, 1967- the 1948 law called for all men to register between 18-26 and were liable to a 21 month commitment and 5 years of reserve obligation. Later the law was amended to 18.5 years old at the minimum and 24 months of service. BY 1967 all men between 18 and 26 had to register with regular exemptions, which included educational deferments and defense education work, or teaching.

E.        In 1973 an all-volunteer army was created, and the draft was abolished.

F.     In 1980 Congress re-instituted draft registration for men 18 to 25 years old.

One of the greatest efforts that America made, in terms of the federal government’s participation in education was the GI Hill of Rights. Its official name was the Serviceman’s Readjustment Act of 1944. It was signed into law by President Roosevelt on June 22, 1944, just 16 days after the Allies landed at Normandy, and it provided federal aid to help aid servicemen to readjust to civilian life. It focused on hospitalization, purchases of homes and businesses and especially education. It provided tuition, subsistence, books, supplies, equipment, and counseling services. This piece of legislation is considered the last piece of the New Deal acts.

Congressman Charles Rangel, in his well-received book “And I Haven’t Had a Bad Day Since,” describes his effort to reintroduce the draft in 2006. He talks about the downward trend in recruitment, along with the rising level of public skepticism regarding the future of a volunteer army. He suggests a draft that would reach everyone between the ages of 18 and 42, with deferments only for the completion of high school and up to age 20, for reasons of health, conscience or religious belief. 

Today they are offering bonuses of upwards of $90,000 for reenlisting active duty service men and women in certain specialties.

Besides the obvious shortfall vis-à-vis recruiting, a recent story stated that out of the West Point Class of 2001. It was also reported in the Times Herald-Record, of April 28, 2007, that the West Point Class of 2001 had an attrition rate of 46%, after five years, of its graduating class of 903, the highest rate in over three decades. The cost of educating a West Point Cadet is estimated, over the four years to cost between $1 and $1.5 million. Therefore in round figures, the cost to the people of the United States was between $415 and $622 million for that part of the class that has resigned. To me that is quite alarming, no less expensive.

My next question for both John and Jim is their thoughts and experiences with the GI Bill and did it affect their world, or the world of their contemporaries?

A)        Federal Government would subsidize tuition, books, fees, and contribute to living expenses, veterans were free to attend the educational institution of their choice, and the colleges were free to those they would admit.

B)        In the following 7 years 8 million vets received educational benefits. Of that group, 2.3 million attended colleges, 3.5 million received school training, and 3.4 received on-the-job training. By 1951 the total cost was approximately $14 billion.

C)        Another provision was the 52-20 clause. This enabled all servicemen to receive $20 per week for 52 weeks, while they were looking for work. Less than 20% of the money set aside for the 52-20 Club as it was called was distributed.

D)        Low interest loans, zero down payment loans for houses for returning servicemen.

E)         The Vietnam era vets used the GI Bill’s education benefits (72%) than WWII (51%) or Korea (43%). The Vietnam era cost of higher education was $38.5 billion, which was 2.5 times the cost of WWII benefits, when adjusted for inflation.

F)         In the new 1952 law tuition was not paid directly to the colleges because of tuition gouging

G)   Veteran’s benefits for education continued to rise, reflective of inflation from the new 1966 bill through the Montgomery GI Bill in the 1970’s.

Obviously the transition back to civilian life is a most difficult one for many returning veterans, especially those who saw combat, were involved in long and prolonged combat situations and were physically or psychologically affected by what they experienced and what they saw. There have been many films that reflected that transition: The Best Years of Our Lives, The Men, The 4^th of July, Forrest Gump, and Pride of the Marines with John Garfield about Al Schmid, who was blinded in action.

Letter to the Editor of the Journal News

7-16-07

Secrecy and Manipulation in Greenburgh:

Maybe it is time to have the Westchester DA’s office, and the NY State’s Attorney-General, find out why developer Richard Troy is swearing in a deposition that the Greenburgh Town Board is conspiring with lawyer Robert Bernstein on how to manipulate the ownership and the price of a piece of property that abuts the Greenburgh Nature Center. Does Bernstein want this property for his own personal use? Will this property be used as an eventual Edgemont village hall, if Bernstein is able to engineer Edgemont’s secession from Greenburgh?  It seems to this observer that Richard Troy and his partners, according to his sworn testimony, met Town Board members without the Supervisor’s knowledge. He may have not known that it was against the law for the Greenburgh Town Board to meet secretly, but for sure the Town Board understood the provisions of the state’s “open meetings” statutes. Only a proper investigation will expose how much real influence Mr. Robert Bernstein is exercising in Greenburgh, as he seems to lead the Town Board into one tangled web after another.

Richard J. Garfunkel

Opening Remarks

“The Advocates”

by

Richard J. Garfunkel

July 12, 2007

Hello and welcome to the inaugural program of  “The Advocates” on WVOX-AM. My name is Richard J. Garfunkel, and I am the host of this weekly forum. This program is coming live from New Rochelle, the Queen City, located on the Long Island Sound, and it can also be heard streaming live on www.wvox.com. The mission of the “The Advocates” is to bring to the public differing views on current “public policy” issues. The United States Constitution, ratified in 1789 is the framework of our laws. But “public policy” is the amplification of that framework. In other words, new laws are always being written and old laws are always being challenged. Eventually these challenges reach the Supreme Court for “Constitutional testing.” Out of those “tests” rulings either re-affirm or change law. Out of these changes, “public policy” can shift dramatically, but the arguments pro and con can remain with us for many years.

“Public policy”, therefore, is what we as a nation legally and traditionally follow. Over the years the “public policy” of the United States has changed or has been modified greatly. As an example “free public education” is the public policy of the United States. Also, over time, great struggles have ensued over control of the direction of “public policy.” For example: free trade versus protectionism, slavery versus emancipation, state’s rights versus Federalism, and so on and so on. I have been interested in “public policy” for a very long time and as a result of that interest I have created the Jon Breen Fund that raises money to sponsor prizes for essays written by high school students on “public policy” issues each year. Students write their essays each year on a topic of public interest, then present and defend their position regarding the topic in a forum with their peers. I have had the pleasure of reading and judging thousands of these essays over the past fourteen years. Out of that interest I thought it was important to bring together “Advocates” on some of these timely subjects, which affect our lives each day.

Today, we are going to explore an important issue that we are all facing, here in Westchester and around the world, it is the problem of “Sustainability and Resiliency.” I do not have two opposing views here, but I have two advocates for creating a new public policy agenda. These two individuals Councilmember Glen Hockley of White Plains, NY and Mr. John Berenyi of Greenwich, Ct. have created the concept of the “Sustainability Alliance.”  This “Alliance” would serve as a vehicle to collect material and ideas regarding county, educational and local efforts to reverse the effects of pollution, promote green-friendly structural development, and reduce our consumption and dependence on carbon-based energy sources. The creation of a community-based organization will bring together various persons and sectors of our society to address these long-term problems.

We have here in the studio, Mr. Glen Hockley, a member of the White Plains Common Council. Mr. Hockley is life-long New Yorker, whose early career was in manufacturing in NYC. He was attracted to public service after long years of involvement with the Rotary Club and with organizations confronting the problems of homelessness and hunger in White Plains. Currently Mr. Hockley is focusing on solutions that focus on racial and religious harmony, and their root causes. Because of this intimate involvement Mr. Hockley has been a strong advocate of housing and addressing the problem of White Plains’s infrastructure. He has become a strong advocate of a new perspective regarding city planning that integrates the goals of sustainability and resiliency.

Our second guest is Mr. John Berenyi, who has undergraduate and graduate degrees in, engineering, management sciences and applied economics from Columbia University. He has been an investment banker, who has specialized in alternative energy and environmental finance for the past 25 years. In the early part of his career, as a Loeb Fellow in Advanced Environmental Studies at Harvard University, he developed the composite set of environmental indicators to measure the quality of life in cities across the United States. Cities, counties, states, and academic institutions have adopted this work, across America, as a tool for public of public policy and evaluation. Today, after a long career serving companies like Citicorp, HSBC Capital and IF Rothschild, he is the managing director of Ecocite, a Canadian-based company that works as an energy investment trust for eco-property development.

We also will have a special call-in guest from northern Virginia, Dr. Lewis J. Perelman, a former native New Yorker, who has over thirty years of professional experience that has focused on the processes of innovation, transformation, and sustainability, including strategic intelligence and policy development.

Dr. Perelman, who has taught at Harvard University and George Mason University in Virginia, is the author of the Global Mind, the best–selling book School’s Out, and The Learning Enterprise. Heis a phi beta kappa graduate from CCNY in physics and earned his doctorate from Harvard in Administration, Planning and Policy at Harvard University, following a program of research linking cognitive systems and human ecology in strategies for sustainable development. Dr. Perelman, throughout his long career has worked at the Solar Energy Research Institute, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, has been a Fellow at the Homeland Security Institute, and an a consultant on homeland security to the Institute for Defense Analysis.

I would like to start with Councilmember Glen Hockley, who had initiated this concept of the Sustainability Alliance, at a breakfast in White Plains in May. Glen, how do you see this issue affecting the long-term future of Westchester Community, no less the region?

John, please feel free to tell us how you see the Sustainability Alliance making a difference in White Plains, Greenburgh and the region?

Additional  Questions:

1) Can “sustainability and resiliency” be paid for today, or can we not afford to ignore it and not pay?

2) How do you gentlemen see the economic long-term future of this region sustained with its present growth, energy use, the cost of government, and the potential need for new infrastructure? By the way in this week’s Journal News –the cost of a 1.8-mile stretch of Interstate 287 will cost over $500 million. Can we afford a greater burden of traffic, pollution, and infrastructure repair in the foreseeable future?

3) Dr. Perelman, as one familiar with Homeland Security, how do you see our level of preparedness with regards to infrastructure sustainability?

4) As we have crested over the $72 per barrel cost for oil, how do you see that increasing cost affecting the cost of local government, and its ability to operate?

Additional thoughts “Save the river or save the factory” can we do both and is Sustainability the path to take?

 5) Can we afford the cost of replacement? The Tappan Zee Bridge is a classic example of a future cost that is daily escalating!

 6) Is there a duplication of effort?

 7) Is there too much talk and not enough discernable action?