Learn from The Boy Scouts

This is a different and smaller than usual post. With all the Albany and Washington fatigue residents are feeling, heightened by the media hype between Rob Astorino and Noam Bramson, we decided to veer away from Greenburgh and check out the new Health Care situation by visiting the New York State website and see “what’s what”. Interestingly, we could not access the website and received an error when attempting to do so. The site was down because there were too many “hits” to the server. For those who might be interested, the site we attempted to access is:
http://info.nystateofhealth.ny.gov/

The other hype is that the federal government was to shut down because Washington legislators couldn’t reach an agreement to keep the government running. Interesting, again, we have not had a passed budget for several years now and all of our collective politicians have been doing everything but their jobs! They continue to kick every can down the road and ignore the will of the people. Pass a budget. It’s grotesque to think that not only do they not do their jobs and increase the political divide through partisanship, but its equally insulting to taxpayers when they campaign about their ability to “work across the isle” and then do just the opposite! What’s also insulting in the “willful ignorance” most voters maintain about all issues and then simply re-elect these same legislators. The government shuts down every weekend. Maybe this shut down won’t be that bad. We’ll never know because the hyperbole from these same politicians and endorsed by the media will never give us a clear picture.

Locally, we’ve witnessed Mr Feiner, recently found guilty (again) of having unfairly said and printed lies about his Democratic Primary opponent, Bob Bernstein. His behavior in general is abominable between the lies he continually makes, the back room deals he partakes in along with secret meetings. Then, as though nothing is amiss, he’ll lie about Greenburgh’s open government. His most recent scramble to get in front of a screw up was when a resident found information left out on a table in the main auditorium detailing approximately $22M in outstanding taxes to the Town. Conversely, Mr Feiner has cost the Town approximately the same amount of money in lawsuits, guilty verdicts and bad and/or illegal actions on his part. So, in a mad scramble to cover this up, Mr Feiner announced a tax amnesty program. See our previous post for more information.

We need to be better prepared with honest politicians, whether we vote them into office or they coast back into the position unchallenged. Government can learn from the Boy Scouts, whose saying says it best, “Be Prepared.” Political change needs to start at the local level and then progress up to County, State, and the Federal levels. These are not the actions of leaders! The public must be engaged and willing to lose good representatives by instituting term limits. ABG believes Greenburgh will be a perfect place to start. If we do this as a long term project, we will get A Better Greenburgh = A Better County = A Better State = A Better Federal government, truly representative of the people!