Author: admin

This past Tuesday the Joint Salary Commission appointed by the Governor, Legislative leaders and the Chief Judge of the Court of Appeals arrived at its deadline for action without recommending salary increases for the legislators.

The Legislature has not had a salary increase since 1999.

The three members appointed by the Governor and the Judiciary voted to abstain on any recommendation for an increase, while the two members appointed by the Legislative leaders voted to recommend an increase.

The reason for the abstention was simple.

The Legislature would not enact any meaningful ethics reform.

In the past fourteen years, twenty-two members of the New York State Legislature have been convicted of political corruption felonies while serving in that body. Four of them were majority leaders of the State Senate and one was Speaker of the Assembly. Yet, when badly needed ethics reforms are proposed, they fall on deaf ears.

During the nineteen years that I sat as a County Court Judge we received two salary increases.

The first was in 1999 when we received one along with the Legislature.

We then went thirteen years without one.

Why?

The reason was that the Legislature tied any judicial salary increase to its own legislative salary increase.

Never mind that our two salary considerations are entirely different.

The state legislative positions are viewed as part-time and legislators are free to engage in any occupation or profession that they desire without any limit on the amount they can earn.

Judges are full-time positions and are prohibited from engaging in any other profession or occupation to supplement our income.

To make matters worse, the Legislators lacked the intestinal fortitude to raise their own salaries or our salaries during the regular legislative session. Fearing that such an increase of their own salaries would be so unpopular that it might jeopardize their re-election, they would only consider raises during the lame duck session between Election Day and the start of a new session.

Since it is more likely that a legislator will die or be convicted of a crime than an incumbent be defeated, it’s hard to see how this delusion took hold.

Another stumbling block was that the Governor would condition his approval of the raises on passage of an unrelated issue he championed, like ethics reform, which the Legislature was unwilling to pass.

As a result for thirteen years, judicial salary increases died with the legislative ones.

In 2012, after the first Commission formed to review salary increases for both branches of government made a recommendation for judicial salary increases that was binding, judges received their second increase during my career. The Governor demanded ethics reform from the legislators and when they balked he refused to consider an increase for them.

The Governor’s latest insistence on ethics reform as a condition of a legislative salary increase seems to be an obvious attempt at a deflection from his own problems.

Since his premature and ill-considered dissolution of the Moreland Commission and the convictions of Sheldon Silver and Dean Skelos which ensued from that, he now finds himself mired in his own political corruption probe. His closest aide, indeed one he characterized as his brother, and others have been charged with bribery, extortion and bid rigging involving his signature economic development programs.

Cuomo, being the King of Hare Brained Ideas, has now vowed that neither his campaign and the Democratic State Committee will accept donations from companies that have responded to state request for proposals (RFPs) until six months after the winning company has been announced.

He hasn’t said anything about the silent handshakes, winks and nods that usually accompany the letting of RFPs during the awarding process.

Against that backdrop, his pious insistence on ethics reform is reminiscent of the children’s fairy tale, “The Emperor’s New Clothes.”

I have friends who serve in the Legislature, whom I know to be hardworking, honest public servants.

Still, given the rampant history of corruption and the current scandals unfolding, ethics reform with the outside income restrictions it includes, would not only make good sense but would be a small price to pay for their long desired salary increase.

The definition of insanity is said to be doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

The day after the election I decided that I needed to focus on a less violent sport, so I decided to attend the University of Tennessee-Kentucky football game that Saturday.

I am a 1971 graduate of U-T and have often told people that you really can’t appreciate the pageantry of college football until you attend a Southeastern Conference game.

I managed to interest my brother, Chuck, and a good friend that I graduated from Syracuse Law School with, Pat Doyle, in traveling to Knoxville, Tennessee with me. I bought tickets over the phone and made hotel reservations on line for that weekend.

Chuck and I decided to take two days and drive to Knoxville and Pat would fly in from his home outside of Washington, D.C. where he is a very successful attorney.

Chuck and I set out on Thursday morning. My plan was to cover as many miles as possible the first day and get as close to Knoxville as possible, so we could spend Friday on campus and pick Pat up when he flew in.

The drive to Knoxville is basically a straight shot down Interstate 81 until you reach I-40 west, which takes you into Knoxville. It is slightly less than eight-hundred miles and takes approximately twelve hours according to google maps.

It is safe to say that google maps has never driven route 81 through Scranton, Pennsylvania.

Construction crews have been working on Interstate 81 in Scranton since I graduated from U-T without any prospect of finishing it. Terri and I drove this portion of 81 in August and I am happy to report that since then, they have completed approximately three feet of the repairs. I never cease to be amazed at the strategy that involves closing one lane of the highway for fifty miles so that they can repair a couple of feet of it.

We drove all day Thursday and made it to Wytheville, Virginia which is approximately six-hundred miles and should take about nine hours. We made it in eleven.

The following day we arrived in Knoxville at noon. We picked Pat up at the airport and I proceeded to give Chuck and Pat a tour of the campus.

One of the great features of the University of Tennessee is that the State of Tennessee will spare no expense in improving it and offering a first rate education. When I was a Political Science major there, almost all of the faculty had their degrees from Ivy League schools and the campus was always being expanded and improved. The same held true as we walked the campus that Friday. There were new dormitories, academic buildings and a state of the art student union was under construction which would double the size of the existing one.

Pat and Chuck wanted to see my old neighborhood but, alas, it had been bulldozed. They immediately jumped to the conclusion that it had been bulldozed because I had lived there. That may have, in some part, been true but the ostensible reason was that it was the location of the 1982 Knoxville World’s Fair.

I was amazed at the changes in the Knoxville area.

When I was a student, if you left campus and went downtown you were left with the same sensation that a Peace Corp volunteer must experience when arriving at their duty station.

In the forty-five years that have elapsed since I graduated, Knoxville has changed dramatically. At its center is the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame which sits on Pat Summitt Drive, named after the legendary U-T women’s basketball coach and the winningest Division I basketball coach in history. Downtown also boasts an “Old Town” section filled with shops and restaurants similar to what we have in the Armory. Greater metropolitan Knoxville has expanded to include first class medical facilities, medical practices and other innovative technologies.

That night we had dinner with a couple that I went to U-T with and remained fast friends. We have arrived at that age where we talked of children and grandchildren rather than the volatile issues that had consumed us in the seventies or even the election that had just concluded.

The following day the three of us went to the football game.

Neyland Stadium holds over one-hundred and two thousand fans and was nearly filled to capacity as the temperature rose into the seventies on a sundrenched afternoon.

In this post 9/11 era we all had to pass through metal detectors which I set off because of my artificial knee. When I explained it to the police officer, he replied, “Well you couldn’t have left that at home. Enjoy the game.”

The Tennessee Volunteers didn’t disappoint. They led Kentucky throughout the game, winning 49 to 36. The half-time show was devoted to celebrating the indigenous tribes of Tennessee and North Carolina and honoring the service of Native-American military veterans. It was a truly impressive ceremony that the fans loved.

That night we went to dinner in the “Old Town” section of Knoxville and at nine o’ clock called it a night. Age, not maturity, does that to you.

The following day, we dropped Pat at the airport and started our journey home. We stayed overnight in Winchester, Va. and arrived home on Monday afternoon.

The trip was the perfect respite from the turmoil that culminated in the election last Tuesday.

Thomas Wolfe wrote, “You Can’t Go Home Again.”

He was wrong.

You can.

I’ll have to do it again next year.

In August of 2003 following the liberation of Baghdad, the Iraqi National Museum was looted by crowds and Iraq’s most valuable antiquities were stolen for sale on the black market.

Asked to comment on this event, Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, observed, “Freedom is untidy.”

Well, I guess we learned that lesson again this year.

In forty-eight hours, mercifully, this presidential election will be over.

It can’t come soon enough for me.

Although I am a self-confessed political junkie, who thought that I was immune to being offended by a candidate’s behavior and tactics, I found that even I was still capable of being shocked and offended.

At the end of September, I was challenged by a reader to make a case for Hillary Clinton.

I tried my best to do so, laying out their policy differences as clearly as I could. I think she is far superior to Trump as a prospective President and Commander-in-Chief in every important area. Nevertheless, I want to revisit them both again on the issues of character and they ways in which they have comported themselves during this campaign.

I am not enthused about the choices this year.

I have never been a fan of the Clintons.

Bill Clinton lost me when he flew home to Little Rock, Arkansas during the 1992 New York Democratic Presidential primary in which the death penalty was an issue, so he could preside over the execution of a brain damaged death row inmate named Ricky Ray Rector who saved the dessert from his last meal so he could eat it after the execution.

If I had been Monica Lewinsky’s father, he would have needed dental work.

I thought Hillary was a creditable First Lady and admired the way she tried to push universal health care in that role.

I thought she was an effective Senator from New York but I still don’t understand why she didn’t read the classified National Security analysis about whether Iraq actually possessed weapons of mass destruction before casting a vote to go to war with that country.

To be fair to her, apparently only a handful of the members of Congress did read it which I still find appalling.

The e-mail server is a festering wound that could have been avoided, particularly if you know that you’re going to be a candidate for President and you suffer on the issue of transparency.

When the news broke about the server in March 2015, I predicted it would haunt her campaign for the Presidency and it continued to hang over her like the Sword of Damocles as we go to the polls on Tuesday.

Only on this day at this hour has the FBI Director again affirmed that she committed no crimes in using it.

The Clinton Foundation is another self-inflicted, unforced error. If, as Secretary of State, you proclaim that you’re going to put a Chinese wall between the Department of State and the Foundation, there has to be a real wall. That would seem to be especially important if you know that you’re going to be a candidate for President.

Her penchant for secrecy is understandable, given the number of times her husband has been indiscrete, but it could still prove to be her undoing.

All of this, however, pales in comparison to Donald Trump.

Transparent is not a word that anyone would put in a sentence that starts with the words “Donald Trump.”

In 2015 he pledged to release his tax returns, the same as every candidate for President in the last half century. Since then he has refused to disclose them, hiding behind the bogus claim that he is prevented from doing so because he is being audited by the Internal Revenue Service.

Likewise he promised that his wife, Melania, would hold a press conference to address all questions that have arisen about her path to citizenship. That has not occurred.

Trump University has been exposed as a scam that dupes people, anxious to learn whatever secrets to success that Trump claims to know, out of thousands of dollars in “tuition fees.”

The Trump Foundation has been revealed to be a scheme that involves Trump seeking donations from others that he donates to charitable organizations while charging them exorbitant fees to host their charitable functions at his Florida country club.

Trump has also used the Foundation money to settle legal claims made against him and to purchase paintings of himself at “charity auctions”, which now grace the walls in his country club.

Trump has shown himself to be a racist, misogynistic, uninformed narcissist who revels in the adulation of the neo-Nazi, white supremacist, alt-right universe that have been drawn by his appeals to their darkest impulses, like moths to the flame.

There is no group that is safe from his bullying and vitriol.

Mexicans and Latinos are “rapists.”

Latina beauty queens are to be characterized as “eating machines” and called “Miss Housekeeping,” an apparent reference to the Latina accent.

Veterans who were taken prisoner during war, while fighting for this country and were tortured are not heroes, because they “were captured.”

Women are “disgusting pigs” who exist solely for his uninvited, unrequited sexual gratification.

The disabled exist to be mocked and made sport of, if they have written something that displeases him.

Immigrants are to be rounded up and deported, whether or not they were brought here as infants and have lived productive lives and contributed to this nation.

Muslims are to be banned from this country regardless of whether they or loved ones have given their lives for it in the service.

The legitimacy of first African-American President is attacked by spreading the racist lie that he was not born here.

In his opinion, Saddam Hussein and the KGB thug, Vladimir Putin are to be admired and emulated.

It is why the Cincinnati Enquirer endorsed the first Democratic candidate for President in almost a century.

It is why the Dallas Morning News has endorsed a Democrat for President after seventy-five years.

It is no wonder that no living Republican President will endorse him.

It is no wonder that any living past Republican candidate for President will defend, campaign or appear with him.

It is no wonder that former Secretary of State, the General, Colin Powell and the vast majority of Republican diplomats and national security experts condemns him.

This Tuesday, you have to make a choice.

If you vote for Donald Trump because “you don’t like her” and he wins, you have to take ownership of that.

If you vote for Gary Johnson or Jill Stein “because you don’t like her” and Donald Trump wins, you have to take ownership of that too.

During the 1920 Presidential campaign, almost a century ago, H.L. Mencken observed,
“As democracy is perfected, the office of president, represents more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”

We have never come this close to fulfilling that prophecy as we are today.

Don’t do it.

I never cease to be amazed at how ungrateful we are for the service of our combat veterans.

In the aftermath of the Vietnam War thousands of veterans began dying from strange forms of cancers never seen before.

When it became apparent that the cancers were the result of their exposure to the herbicide Agent Orange designed and used by our government, the government denied all responsibility and resisted any discovery of their role in its use and manufacture for decades.

I have written extensively about this abdication of responsibility many times over the past decade following the death of my closest friend, Larry Hackett, from cancer caused by Agent Orange.

While almost fifty years has passed since the government exposed its soldiers to this poison, the Veterans Administration, after years of denying that the chemical caused these deaths, has now begun to acknowledge the claims of veterans for disability benefits for the damage it has caused.

Congressman John Katko and former Congressman Dan Maffei each introduced the Lawrence J. Hackett Jr, Vietnam Veterans Agent Orange Fairness Act. It would provide a comprehensive study of measures including compensation for veterans and their survivors.

The Act has languished in the House Veterans Affairs Committee. It has two co-sponsors there and none in the Senate despite entreaties to both New York senators and other serving on the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee.

Still, I continue to read the all too frequent obituaries of men dying in their sixties from cancer, who are Vietnam veterans. I don’t guess at the cause of the cancer anymore.

The government fares no better when it comes to veterans returning from Afghanistan, Iraq or the Gulf War.

We witnessed scandals in the Veterans hospitals involving wait times, lack of psychological, psychiatric and counseling services for veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, resulting from the horrors that they witnessed or survived while serving in these wars. The suicide rate among these veterans is staggering.

This past week, the Los Angeles Times reported that the Pentagon has been demanding that veterans of the California National Guard pay back thousands of dollars of re-enlistment bonuses and tuition benefits paid to them as an inducement to re-enlist for additional combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The newspaper stated that as many as ten-thousand veterans are affected. It published stories involving veterans who were injured and awarded medals for service during these tours. Many of them have had their wages garnished and judgements affecting their credit filed against them. Some have lost their homes because of this. Others have lived on a bare subsistence level as they paid back thousands of dollars.

In most of the cases it appears that the affected veterans lived up to their commitment and served successive combat tours.

Needless to say, they feel betrayed.

They have good reason to feel betrayed.

According to the New York Times, when California National Guard officials sought relief from Congress several years ago, it refused to act because of the cost of forgiving these debts.

Shortly after the Times article appeared, The Secretary of Defense, Ashton Carter, ordered the Pentagon to suspend these collection efforts until a new review process could be instituted.

No mention is made of making whole those veterans who have already paid back the bonuses or benefits or been subject to garnishments and other onerous debt collection measures.

There are two elements to this crisis that ought not to be forgotten.

The first is that the bonuses were paid to National Guardsmen to induce them into accepting a combat mission overseas.

Most people enlist in a state National Guard unit because they want to serve in domestic crisis, such as climate disasters, that occur within their state. None of them anticipated the repeated deployments to foreign combat zones such as Iraq and Afghanistan as many in the guard have had to endure.

The second is that the repeated deployments were made necessary because the manpower quotas essential to fighting a war in two places could not be met.

The only alternative to repeatedly deploying state National Guard units would be the return to a draft.

If a draft were reinstituted, unlike the Vietnam War, not just sons but daughters would be subject to it.

That would certainly set new terms of debate about the wisdom of our use of military force overseas.

In the meantime, ten-thousand veterans who have been victimized by our government because they accepted bonuses and benefits they accepted in good faith for service they performed will have to wait in financial limbo until the government decides how to make this right.

Ten years ago, as I stood next to my best friend’s casket in a cemetery I saw a member of the military color guard pass a folded flag to his widow and tell her it came “with the thanks of a grateful nation.”

I wanted to scream then.

I want to scream now.

In the forty-six years that I have been eligible to vote, I have never failed to do so.

It doesn’t matter whether the election was for a Federal, State or Local office. It didn’t matter if it was a primary or general election. It didn’t matter whether I was living in New York or away at college. I always cast a ballot either in person or by absentee.

It has always been my firm belief that if you don’t exercise your right to vote then you forfeit your right to complain.

I have been a candidate for office seven times. I have run in three primary elections and four general elections. I have experienced the thrill of victory and the pain of defeat.

I have worked in countless campaigns for candidates seeking office at every level of government. I don’t have an accurate count of how many were successful and were not.

Sometimes the election involved an issue that was deeply personal to me.

In 1968, before I was eligible to vote, I worked in the Presidential primary campaign of Senator Eugene McCarthy. The war in Vietnam was raging and I had many friends who both volunteered and were drafted and sent to Vietnam. Some came home safely, some came home badly wounded and some didn’t come home.

I though the war was a tragic mistake and I worked hard for any candidate who would end it so that any more friends or young men would be put in harm’s way.

Senator McCarthy wasn’t elected and the war continued under President Nixon into the next Presidential election.

In 1972, at the age of twenty-two, I ran in the New York Democratic Presidential primary election as a delegate pledged to Senator George McGovern, who also pledged to end the war. I was elected and went to the Democratic Convention in Miami Beach that summer where McGovern was nominated. He was overwhelmingly defeated by Nixon that November.

During Nixon’s second term, the nation learned about Watergate and the numerous crimes and “dirty tricks” that the Committee to Re-Elect the President had engaged in to bring about Nixon’s re-election.

Even though the Watergate scandal and criminal prosecutions ultimately led to Nixon’s resignation, nobody claimed that the election was ‘rigged.”

This year, before any votes have been cast, we are being told that the election is “rigged” and the outcome will have no integrity.

It is a curious claim because it comes from a candidate who didn’t utter it until he sensed that the election was slipping away from him.

He made no such claim during the primary season when he was winning each of the Republican Primary races.

He did claim that the results of the Iowa Caucuses were skewered by Ted Cruz who falsely reported that Ben Carson had discontinued his own campaign on the day of the caucuses.

I glean from this, that Trump believes, If Carson’s turnout had not been affected, that he and not Cruz would have won that contest.

That suggests a narcissism and self- grandiosity that is unparalleled even in politics.

What makes his claim that the election is” rigged” so incongruous is that the only evidence that anyone is trying to rig it, comes from the Russian intelligence sources who are hacking into the e-mail accounts of the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton Campaign officials and who are leaking them to their compatriot the accused rapist, Julian Assange, who is hiding out in the Ecuadoran Embassy in London. They are trying to “rig” the election in Trump’s favor.

Yet, we hear no condemnation from Trump about this foreign interference in an election for our highest office.

Trump’s claim that the election is “rigged” rests upon the racist premise that voter fraud occurs on a massive scale among African-American voters. He has issued a call to arms to his Neo-Nazi, alt- right supporters to become vigilantes on Election Day and “monitor” voting in inner-city precincts. This is recklessness that borders on criminal.

In my lifetime, I have seen demagogues like Alabama Governor George Wallace seek the Presidency by appealing to the worst instincts of the American people.

Even as Wallace must have known that he would be defeated, he didn’t attempt to foster violence on the day of the election or undermine the integrity of the outcome.

I can think of no candidate in history who has done this.

Our full and free elections throughout our history have been a beacon for the rest of the world.

I’ve thought long and hard about what should be done to someone who would undermine our democracy in this way.

Only one thing comes to mind.

Lock him up.

I have a four year-old granddaughter whose favorite color is purple. She has a purple bedroom, purple coats, purple sweaters, and purple sneakers. If she could make it happen, everything in her world would be purple.

She also has demonstrated an interest in music. No visit to our house is complete until she sits down at my keyboard and bangs on the keys and pushes all of the instrument buttons.

In retirement, I decided that one of the ways I would try and keep my mind active and occupied was to learn to the play the piano.

There is a music gene in our family but I didn’t get it.

My sister, Mary, got it and took piano lessons and learned to play beautifully throughout her childhood. I can remember how happily our father gave up his Sunday afternoon professional football games so he could sit in an auditorium and listed to ten or twenty children he didn’t know play a recital piece before my sister came on. If he was lucky, he only missed the first half before he could listen to her and sneak out.

My daughter, Meghan, Claire’s mother, got the music gene. She took lessons in grade school and middle school. Her teacher was preparing her for competition when she was tragically killed in an automobile accident. Meghan was devastated and her interest in playing seemed to abate.

I took lessons from one of the nuns I had in parochial grade school for a number of months until the lumps on my head and the mild concussion I suffered during the lessons allowed me to stop taking them.

Claire has heard me practice during her weekend visits and has pronounced my music as “yucky.”

Despite this candid appraisal of my talent, I decided to get her a keyboard of her own to see if it would whet her appetite for learning to play.

Naturally, it had to be purple.

I went to Google and searched for a purple keyboard. To my amazement there was a 49 key purple electric keyboard with a microphone offered on Amazon which could arrive in time for her birthday. I place the order.

The day before her birthday, I received an e-mail from Amazon notifying me that the item was “backordered” and would arrive sometime between late October and late November. I cancelled the order.

I went back online and found the same purple keyboard offered by Sears. I placed the order and was provided with a U.S. Postal Service tracking number and an arrival date of two weeks later. It would be after her birthday but close enough for a late present.

I should have realized that I was in trouble when I entered the tracking number on the Postal Service tracking site and was informed that it didn’t recognize the number. I waited in vain and when the two weeks expired, I contacted Sears. They told me that the purple key board was lost in the mail but that they would arrange to have another shipped.

A couple of days later Sears e-mailed me that their supplier was out of purple keyboards and they would provide me with a refund.

Undaunted, I went back to Google and found a music company in California that had the same purple keyboard. I went to the web site and ordered one. They sent me an e-mail acknowledging my order and a delivery date in ten days.

On the twelfth day I e-mailed the company and told them I had not received the purple keyboard. They asked for twenty-four hours to review the order after which they informed me that my credit card had been declined and the order cancelled.

I immediately wondered, loudly, how I ever would have known that my credit card had been declined and the order cancelled if they were never going to inform me of that had I not inquired. Terri told me that she couldn’t handle hearing anymore about my travails trying to order the purple keyboard.

II decided to keep my thoughts and frustrations to myself.

I stewed for a couple of days and began exploring keyboards that weren’t purple but lying in bed at night I resolved that a keyboard that wasn’t purple just wouldn’t do.

I contacted the music company in California and asked if I had given them the wrong credit card number. They read me the information on the order and I had not. I explained to them that the card had never been declined and asked them to place the order again.

Two days later, they sent me an e-mail with a delivery date and a tracking number. I waited another day and went to the U.S. Postal Service website, inputted the tracking number and held my breath. The purple keyboard had been shipped and was enroute!

Several days later the package arrived.

We went to my daughter’s home that weekend and presented it to Claire. She was very excited about the fact it was purple. She plugged it in and began to bang on the keys and push the other instrument buttons.

My daughter said it was the loudest keyboard she had ever heard.

I pointed out that it had a volume control button with an arrow on it that you could hold down to reduce the volume.

She pressed it and said to me, “It doesn’t work, Dad.”

“I can send it back for a replacement but we might not get another one until she’s ten years-old,” I said.

Meghan said, “Okay, Dad. We’ll keep it but when we come to visit for the weekend I’m sending her into your bedroom in the morning to play it to wake you up.”

I just hope Claire learns a couple of tunes I like by then.

Several years ago, while I was recuperating from a knee replacement, I decided to learn to horseback ride-or to be more precise, mule back ride.

We had moved to Pompey four years earlier and Terri had returned to trail riding and it was apparent that it was a big part of her life. I wanted to share it with her.

She had purchased her mule, Franklin, at an auction and he was a “thoroughbred cross.”

For those who are unfamiliar with mules, they are a cross mating between a horse and a donkey. As a result they have an extra chromosome that renders them sterile and incapable of reproducing.

When Terri had her first veterinarian visit, the vet said to her; “I’m going to tell you three things about this mule. First; they are ten times smarter than a horse. Second; they are three times stronger than a horse. Third; they have impeccable memories, so don’t ever be mean to it because they will wait months and when you least expect it they will kick you in the head. Lastly, if you haven’t bonded with it in a few months get rid of it because you never will.”

Clearly he didn’t know Terri because God hasn’t created an animal that she isn’t bonded with.

After I completed physical therapy I began taking riding lessons. The instructor had a “lesson horse” who taught me that he was in charge and wouldn’t do anything I wanted him to do.

During this uplifting experience, Terri bought a second mule.

It was a female quarter horse cross that she named “Tulip.” She told me it was my Father’s Day gift. After I watched it take off with her at a dead gallop and she had to turn it towards a tree to get her to stop, I told her; “I don’t thinks so. Thanks but no thanks.”

I continued to take lessons and also began to scan ads on Craigslist and the weekly shopping newspaper for livestock sales. I liked the idea of buying a mule because they have an undeserved reputation for being stubborn. Rather than stubborn, they are exceedingly cautious and will not go anywhere or do anything that they perceive to be dangerous to themselves. I reasoned that if I was going to be on the back of a large equine, while in my 60’s, I didn’t want it doing anything that it thought was dangerous either.

After a few months I came across an ad for a mule for sale in Pennsylvania. We drove several hours to see him.

The woman who had him said his name was “Harry.” He was a draft horse cross approximately seventeen hands tall. She said he came from one of the Catskill resorts that offered riding to their guests.

He was the saddest animal I had ever seen.

He was standing in a single stall in manure over his hooves. You could count his ribs. His still had his winter coat despite it being May.

Mules are notorious herd animals but he had been separated him from his companion, adding to his misery.

My reaction to his plight must have been apparent because the owner volunteered that she had “rescued him.”

“How much do you want for him? I asked. “$ 750.00,” she said quickly. “Here is a check,” I said, “I want a vet check and then will be back with a trailer in a few days.”

On the way home Terri and a friend who had come with us asked, “Do you think he’s right for you?” “I don’t know,” I replied,” but I just can’t leave that animal there. I think we are the ones doing the rescuing here”

A few days later the woman faxed me the vet check, done by her vet, and it showed he was 15 years- old, was under-weight but had no diseases.

We returned to Pennsylvania with a friend who generously agreed to trailer him back for us and loaded him up for the trip home. The trip was very distressing for him because he had to stand in a trailer in his emaciated condition for several hours. When we arrived home he was genuinely in a lather.

We boarded him at the barn where I was taking lessons, while Terri was having her three stall barn built. I visited him each day to walk him and bond while he gained weight. Always doubtful whether his name was really “Harry,” I changed his name to “Donovan” after my favorite Fenian figure Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa.

We had our own vet and an equine dentist examine him. One estimated he was twenty-five years old and the other closer to thirty. I enjoyed telling people that I had a mule that was my age.

Over the course of several months he gained between 200 and 300 pounds.

In time, I went for a ride on him with my riding instructor. He was absolutely docile and willing to do anything you wanted him to. In short, he was “push button.”

I now relished telling people that “Terri lives with four jackasses and three of them are trainable.”

When the barn was completed, all three of the mules moved home with us. Both the herd loyalty and the pecking order was established quickly. Franklin was the boss, Tulip was their siren song and Donovan was just happy to be part of it.

We rode on the trails surrounding our property and sometimes trailered to areas where riding was permitted.

Donovan and I were in complete sync with each other. He didn’t want to trot or gallop and I didn’t either. He was happy to follow Franklin, Tulip or whatever horse or mule that was in front of him and enjoy the scenery. I was too.

He did have one habit I would never be able to break him of and I really didn’t want to.
He would walk with me on his back for ten feet and then stop and eat grass. Walk ten more feet and stop for grass again. This was our endless procession on our rides. I once told Terri that if Donovan and I had to ride to California, we would both be dead from old age by the time we got to Ohio.

I wasn’t the only one he let up on his back. People of all ages rode him from my granddaughter, Claire, at age two with her parents walking along next to her to a friend who was my age and hadn’t ridden in decades. For many of our friends, he was their first riding experience and he hooked them all into deciding to take lessons.

We learned that if you left a stall door even slightly ajar, he would get it completely open and lead the Franklin and Tulip on a merry chase down the road to visit the horses penned there.

I vividly recall one beautiful spring morning when I was working in my home office with the windows open and suddenly heard the clopping of twelve hooves headed down the road. After an hour’s chase with a bucket of grain, Donovan surrendered and let us throw a lead rope lightly around his neck and return him to the barn with the other two plodding along behind him.

From that day forward, Terri hung a sign on the inside of the barn door that said “Bed check for Naughty Donovan.”

In time, he became less sure footed, would begin to stumble and didn’t have the endurance or the strength to go on rides. It took him longer to get up from rolling and the pain in his knees was evident. His teeth no longer permitted him to chew grass or eat hay. His vision and hearing began to fail.

He went peacefully the other day.

He is buried in the lower pasture, just above the pond where we all gather on nice days.

He may have been the nicest sweetest animal I ever encountered.

He brought a lot of joy, good times and fun to the lives of many people.

He will truly be missed.

On September 16, Donald Trump made a truly news breaking announcement. He announced that President Obama was born in the United States.

This announcement wasn’t news to anyone.

What made it newsworthy, “amazing” or “ astonishing” as Trump might say was because Trump was the leading proponent of the ridiculous theory that the President wasn’t born in the United States and was therefore an illegitimate President.

Trump wasn’t the first to call into question President Obama’s citizenship.

There is been a long line of Republican candidates who are “birthers,” including Sarah Palin, Alabama Senator Richard Shelby, Missouri Senator Roy Blunt, former Louisiana Senator David Vitter, former Governor of Arkansas and Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, former Congresswoman and Presidential candidate Michele Bachman, Congressman Nathan Deal, Congresswoman Jean Schmidt, Congressman Mike Coffman and a number of talk show hosts including Rush Limbaugh and current Trump shill, Sean Hannity.

There is no question, however, that the loudest voice in the birther movement was (and perhaps still is) Donald Trump.

Trump began his campaign to undermine the President’s legitimacy in 2011 despite the fact Obama had released his Hawaiian short form birth certificate in 2008 when questions arose because his father was a British subject born in Kenya. At one point Trump claimed that he had sent private investigators to Hawaii and told a television audience that “you can’t believe what they are finding.”

Since Trump never disclosed what they found, we’ll never know whether it was believable.

Trump wasn’t alone in this pursuit. Joe Arpaio, the Sheriff of Maricopa County surrounding Phoenix, Arizona actually sent an investigator to Hawaii at public expense to try and unearth that the President wasn’t an American citizen.

Arpaio has been repeatedly held in contempt by the U.S. District Court in Arizona for racially profiling Latinos.

He once famously marched male detainees through the streets of Phoenix, forcing them to wear pink underwear. Maricopa County has paid forty-three million dollars to settle claims for deaths and injuries to inmates in his custody during his tenure.

It’s safe to say that if Arpaio had been born thirty years earlier, he would have been prosecuted at Neuremberg at the end of World War II.

While Trump has dropped the “birther” claim, for now, Arpaio is still pursuing it, contending that The President’s long form birth certificate released by the White House in 2011 is a forgery.

Trump’s fixation on the President’s citizenship and immigration in general is curious, given the fact that two of his wives, Ivana and Melania are immigrants. When questions were raised about Melania’s status, the Trump campaign announced that she would hold a news conference to answer all questions. Instead, it released a letter from an attorney vouching for her legal status and provided no additional information.

Apparently Trump’s taxes aren’t the only issue that will remain undisclosed and unresolved.

While Trump continues to stonewall on the issues of his tax returns and his wife’s immigration path to citizenship, he is still in pursuit of other details from the President’s life.

He has offered money to the President and anyone else who can disclose the President’s passport records, college applications and his transcripts of his college grades.

You might ask what motivates Trump in these pursuits of the President’s life history ?

The answer is race.

It always has been.

Racism is an integral feature in Trump’s character and life story.

It always will be.

In a reaction to last week’s post, a reader responded “I get it Joe, you dislike Trump. Please build a case for Clinton as I am unsettled.”

My initial thought was a facile response that the best case for the election of Hillary Clinton was the candidacy of Donald Trump but that seemed too clever by half. I will attempt to make the case for Hillary Clinton but it can’t be done without comparing the two candidates. So, here goes.

Let’s start by examining the two issues that seem to be dogging her campaign, the private e-mail service and the Clinton Foundation.

The use of the private e-mail server was just plain dumb but according to the FBI Director, James Comey, it wasn’t criminal. Clinton has acknowledged that using it was a mistake. Additionally, no one has shown that its use has compromised national security in any way nor led to any event that harmed the United States.

The issue of the Clinton Foundation is a bit more nuanced. Despite promising to build a wall between the Foundation and the State Department while she was Secretary of State, e-mails between employees of the Foundation and her staff at the State Department revealed requests for meetings between donors to the Foundation and Secretary Clinton during her tenure.

Although the requests for meetings were made, there is no indication that the meetings were for anything more than information or face time with her on particular issues. There is no evidence that any of these individuals received anything or benefited personally from the meetings that occurred. Indeed, it would be hard to distinguish the difference between these meeting and normal diplomatic interaction since some of the donors were officials from countries that would be expected to have communication or meetings with the Secretary of State.

As a result of the uproar that followed these disclosures, the Clinton Foundation announced that President Bill Clinton would withdraw from involvement in the Foundation and no foreign contributions would be accepted.

This is too bad because the Clinton Foundation has done extraordinarily good work on issues that plague poverty stricken countries in Africa and the Third World.

While Donald Trump has been the loudest voice in criticizing the Clintons and the Foundation, it is noteworthy that in the past week the news media has reported that Trump’s Foundation has not received any money from Trump for almost a decade and the money it has received from other sources has been utilized to settle litigation against his business entities and other self-dealing.

In the past couple of weeks, with the bombings and attacks in New York, New Jersey and Minnesota, terrorism is back on the front burner.

Who should be supported is a basic reality check.

Clinton, as Senator from New York on September 11, 2001 was instrumental in securing the financial aid and funds to support the re-building of lower Manhattan and compensation for families who lost loved ones in the attack as well as first responders who suffered health ailments from their service at ground zero.

Trump took advantage of the financial aid to obtain monies for a property that wasn’t damaged in the attack.

As Secretary of State and Senator from New York, Clinton has been involved in diplomatic missions and established relationships with heads of state worldwide. She was a member of the National Security team that brought about the deaths of Osama Bin Laden, Anwar Al-Awlaki and other terrorists who would foster terrorist attacks against this country.

Trump promises to ban all Muslim immigration, bring back waterboarding and even more lethal forms of interrogation, and authorize the killing of family members of suspected terrorist overseas. This last proposal would involve ordering American troops to engage in murder and other war crimes.

When it comes to who is the most qualified to lead the United States on the world stage, Clinton, as Secretary of State, has relationships with almost every world leader on the globe. In 2011 I witnessed her testifying before the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee in Washington, D.C. She had flown all night from the Baltic States in order to fulfill this commitment and despite her fatigue was able to discuss every foreign situation and hot spot that the Committee was interested in and did so without notes. Although scheduled to testify for only three hours she testified for over five answering every question that the members of the Committee had. It was truly an impressive performance.

Trump’s knowledge of foreign affairs is decidedly shallow. He would jeopardize the NATO Alliance and perhaps scrap the major defense bulwark that has stood between us, our allies and Russia at a time when Putin has stepped up that country’s aggression both in the Ukraine and Syria. He claims to have a “secret” plan to defeat ISIS but will share no details about it. His campaign aides appear to double as agents for his business interests in Russia and Eastern Europe perhaps illuminating what appears to be a “man crush” that he has on Vladimir Putin.

On the immigration issue, Clinton advocates heightened scrutiny of any refugees that we would accept from Syria and the refugee camps in the mid-East as part of the world community’s effort to alleviate the refugee crisis. She also is for comprehensive immigration reform that would give legal status and an ultimate path to citizenship to immigrants that have been in the country and haven’t violated the law, most importantly the “dreamers,” the children of immigrants who brought them here during their child hood and were raised here.

Trump would build a wall on the Mexican border, which he would demand Mexico pay for and create a deportation force that would round up somewhere between six million and eleven million people and deport them. The last country to round up six million people for ostensible deportation was Germany during the 1930’s. On the issues of terrorism and immigration, Trump has not advocated a single legal, realistic or sensible solution.

Let’s look at other issues.

On Climate Change, Clinton believes climate change need to be addressed and is a proponent of clean fuels.

Trump is a climate change denier. He champions the use of fossil fuels and vows to make the coal and natural gas markets “great” even though they are mutually incompatible.

On the issue of gun control, Clinton believes in expanded background checks and closing the loophole that allows purchases without them and banning military style assault weapons.

Trump believes in an unrestricted right to carry any kind of weapon and twice has hinted that Second Amendment advocates might wish to kill Clinton. Some might say that Trump was being sarcastic or said it in jest. I can say, that having lived through the assassinations and attempted assassinations in the 1960’s and 70’s, this is not a matter to joke about. I believe that having raised it twice disqualifies him from leading the country.

On race relations Clinton has been a lifelong civil rights advocate, who spent her earliest years as a lawyer working for the Children’s Defense Fund. As First lady of Arkansas, she devoted her efforts to improving and raising the standards of that State’s educational system

Trump has a well- documented history of refusing to rent to African-Americans and is the favored candidate of former Ku Klux Klan leader, David Duke, and other White Supremacists. His entry into the political arena Occurred when he led the “birther” movement, the racist campaign to illegitimize the nation’s first African-American President.

On the issue of economic regulation, Clinton supports the retention of Dodd-Franks Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, passed in the wake of the 2007 economic meltdown to regulate the banks that “are too big to fail” and have to be bailed out with taxpayer funds.

Trump favors the repeal of Dodd-Franks and abolishing the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection.

Clinton has been a staunch advocate for universal health care and would preserve the Affordable Health Care Act and improve it.

Trump would repeal the Affordable Health Care Act.

It is safe to say that both candidates have issues when it comes to trust and transparency. Criticism of each is justified. I would be remiss; however, if I did not point out the fact that Clinton has disclosed her tax returns for every year she has been on the public stage and like every candidate for President since 1968.

Trump refuses to do so and offers the excuse that he is being audited. The IRS does not prohibit an individual who is being audited from disclosing their tax returns. It certainly does not prohibit a taxpayer from disclosing tax returns from years that are not subject to audit, which Trump has also refused to do.

In “making the case for Hillary Clinton,” I should touch on the wisdom of voting for Gary Johnson, the Libertarian Party candidate. I would say, do so if you want a President who supports eliminating environmental regulations, abolishing the income tax, abolishing public schools and ending Social Security and Medicare because that is the Libertarian Party Platform. In an interview on NPR, Johnson said he would seek a Supreme Court nominee who is an “Originalist”. That is a justice in the mold of Clarence Thomas and the late Antonin Scalia.

This has been my longest post to date.

I think I’ve laid out enough contrasts between Clinton and Trump for anyone to make the choice they believe is the best.

Hillary Clinton has spent her entire career trying to improve life for all Americans of all races and walks of life. She is knowledgeable and deeply thoughtful on the issues that confront us at a time of danger and uncertainty.

Donald Trump has spent his entire life promoting himself and his business interests, utilizing bankruptcy laws multiple times without regard for investors, contractors, employees or the well-being of anyone who might be affected by his failures and defaults.

My own belief is that Donald Trump would be extraordinarily dangerous both at home and abroad were he to become President based upon the positions he’s taken on the issues.

Last week’s reader was right. I don’t like Donald Trump.

When I was in my teens there was an Academy Award winning movie called the” Manchurian Candidate.” It starred Frank Sinatra and Laurence Harvey. Its plot involved a communist country trying to manipulate a presidential election by having a prisoner of war it had brainwashed assassinate the nominee of one of the parties, catapulting its preferred candidate into the White House.

This year, we have seen computer hackers employed by the Russian Government hack into the computers of the Democratic Party and turn over a trove of e-mails to Wikileaks in an effort to damage the Clinton campaign on the eve of the Party’s convention.

Since the Convention and the disclosure, state election officials been warned by the Federal Government that their electronic voting is at risk and that the results could be manipulated by the hackers.

One doesn’t have to be clairvoyant to see which candidate would benefit from this type of activity.

Vladimir Putin reportedly loathes Hillary Clinton while Donald Trump has a very public “man crush” on him, even hailing him as a stronger leader than the U.S. President.

Trump’s preference for Russia and Putin has been evident for some time. The alarming warning signs about where he would lead us as President have been scattered upon the political landscape throughout the campaign.

Trump has proclaimed that he would condition our commitment to our NATO allies on whether they had fulfilled their financial commitments to the alliance. Never mind that the only time the alliance has been tested was when they all came to our assistance after the attack on our country on September 11, 2001.

Trump has endorsed Russia’s forcible annexation of Crimea comparing it to the invasion of Iraq.

Trump has surrounded himself with campaign aides who have involved themselves in elections in the Ukraine on behalf of Putin’s proxy candidates. Indeed, his campaign chair, Paul Manafort, was forced to leave the campaign after it was disclosed that he may have been paid millions of dollars by one of his Russian proxy candidates.

Make no mistake about the real reason Trump is not disclosing his tax returns as every other candidate for President has done since 1968.

It isn’t about the audit he claims is ongoing.

The IRS does not prohibit a taxpayer who is being audited from disclosing their returns.

Moreover, since the IRS has possession of the returns that it is auditing it is disingenuous to claim that disclosure would prejudice the audit.

Furthermore, Trump has refused to disclose the tax returns for years in which the audits have been completed.

No, the real reason that he will not disclose his returns is because it would reveal the extent of his dealings and holdings in Russia.

While the Federal government, the Clinton campaign, the Democratic Party and legions of editorial writers and columnists have been condemning the hacking, who has been strangely silent about the subject?

Donald Trump.

His only comment to date was a wish that the Russian hackers would hack Hillary Clinton’s computer in search of more e-mails.

This seems somewhat strange since the man has repeatedly claimed that the outcome of the election is “rigged”

What would be even stranger is, if he is right and the Russian hackers change the outcome of our election and succeed in putting a pro-Russian, pro-Putin stooge in the White House.