Friday, July 24, 2009

Toe Sucking and Popping at the Administrative Loony Bin


Message
Mr. Heggarty, you pooh-poohed its significance to the press despite foot fetishism's long history in the annals of psychiatry about which professional educators should know.

Your response to the press illustrated either your ignorance of an area in which you should be knowledgeable or your far-gone complicity in the administration's and the board's tolerating administrative pathological behavior involving students.

Had this been a teacher playing with students' toes, the board would have fired him or her on the spot.

Did the school board have a psychological examination of foot-fetishist Olayinka before issuing its public stance of "his actions are harmless"? Evidently not.

A teacher called me about this problem about two months ago. A parent had complained to him about Olayinka's odd fetish. I told him to take it to Secretary of Education Smith because the local school board has a default policy of never punishing administrative employee, no matter how vile the offense. Board members automatically collude in this cover-up of an administrative person's bizarre derelictions or any other dereliction to the detriment of the students who are victims of such a weird administrative obsessions as foot fetishism.

The board does not protect students by pretending its members do not know what is going on. Its members come off as stupid and indifferent to administrative misbehavior.

c: all board members
Superintendent Elia

  • 007-06-08.
  • ^ Scorolli C, Ghirlanda S, Enquist M, Zattoni S, Jannini E A (2007). Relative prevalence of different fetishes. International Journal of Impotence Researchadvance online publication 15 February 2007; doi: 10.1038/sj.ijir.3901547. http://www.nature.com/ijir/journal/v19/n4/abs/3901547a.html retrieved March 2007.


  • Lee Drury DeCesare\15316 Gulf Boulevard 802/Madeira Beach, FL /leedrurydecesarescasting-roomcouchblogspot.com


    Never Doubt Corruption in Public Officials: Corruption at ROSSAC and the Board was what the Erwin case was about


    44 Charged by U.S. in New Jersey Corruption Sweep

    Louis Lanzano/Associated Press

    Agents led suspects from F.B.I. headquarters in Newark on Thursday. The inquiry began with questions on money laundering.


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    By DAVID M. HALBFINGER
    Published: July 23, 2009

    A two-year corruption and international money-laundering investigation stretching from the Jersey Shore to Brooklyn to Israel and Switzerland culminated in charges against 44 people on Thursday, including three New Jersey mayors, two state assemblymen and five rabbis, the authorities said.

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    How the Corruption Case UnfoldedGraphic
    How the Corruption Case Unfolded

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    Document Criminal Complaints in New Jersey Corruption Inquiry

    Robert Stolarik for The New York Times

    Peter J. Cammarano III, leaving the courthouse in Newark, was elected Hoboken mayor in June. He is accused of agreeing to help a supposed developer with his projects in exchange for cash.
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    The case began with bank fraud charges against a member of an insular Syrian Jewish enclave centered in a seaside town. But when that man became a federal informant and posed as a crooked real estate developer offering cash bribes to obtain government approvals, it mushroomed into a political scandal that could rival any of the most explosive and sleazy episodes in New Jersey’s recent past.

    It was replete with tales of the illegal sales of body parts; of furtive negotiations in diners, parking lots and boiler rooms; of nervous jokes about “patting down” a man who turned out to indeed be an informant; and, again and again, of the passing of cash — once in a box of Apple Jacks cereal stuffed with $97,000.

    “For these defendants, corruption was a way of life,” Ralph J. Marra Jr., the acting United States attorney in New Jersey, said at a news conference. “They existed in an ethics-free zone.”

    Mr. Marra said that average citizens “don’t have a chance” against the culture of influence peddling the investigation had unearthed.

    Even veteran political observers were taken aback by the scope of the investigation. The mayors of Hoboken, Secaucus and Ridgefield were among those arrested.

    “This is so massive,” said Joseph Marbach, a political scientist at Seton Hall University. “It’s going to just reinforce the stereotype of New Jersey politics and corruption.”

    The arrests had immediate reverberations in the governor’s race, and a member of Gov. Jon S. Corzine’s administration was forced to resign after federal agents raided his home.

    The authorities laid out two separate schemes, one involving money laundering that led to rabbis and members of the Syrian Jewish community in Brooklyn and in the Jersey Shore town of Deal, where many of them have summer homes. The other dealt with political corruption and bribery and involved public officials mostly in Jersey City and Hoboken, where the pace of development has been particularly intense in recent years.

    Linking the two schemes was the federal informant who was not named in court papers but whom people involved with the investigation identified as Solomon Dwek, a failed real estate developer and philanthropist who was arrested in May 2006 on charges of passing a bad $25 million check at a bank in Monmouth County, N.J.

    Early on, Mr. Dwek helped investigators penetrate an extensive network of money laundering that involved rabbis in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, where the Syrian Jewish community is based, and in Deal and Elberon, towns on the Jersey Shore.

    Mr. Dwek, a well-known member of the Syrian Jewish community whose parents founded the Deal Yeshiva, never concealed that he was facing bank fraud charges, instead telling targets, who included three rabbis in Brooklyn and two in New Jersey, that he was bankrupt and trying to conceal his assets, according to people involved in the case. The targets, in turn, accepted bank checks Mr. Dwek made out to charities that they oversaw, deducted a fee, and returned the rest to him in cash.

    Much of the cash they provided him came from Israel, and some of that in turn came from a Swiss banker, prosecutors said. All told, some $3 million was laundered for Mr. Dwek since June 2007, prosecutors said.

    The case shifted to focus on public corruption, prosecutors say, after one of the men accused of money laundering, Moshe Altman of Monsey, N.Y., a Hudson County developer, introduced Mr. Zwek to a politically connected building inspector in Jersey City, who then steered him to another city official, Maher Khalil.

    Mr. Khalil, who is accused of accepting $30,000 in bribes from Mr. Dwek, made a series of referrals to what he called “players,” helping Mr. Dwek to branch out to a web of public officials, mayoral and council candidates, and their confidants.

    Mr. Dwek — now operating under an assumed identity, according to people involved in the case — honed an approach: introduced to a local influence-peddler, he would say he was looking to build high-rises or other projects in their city or county.




    (Page 2 of 2)

    He would offer $5,000 in cash for an upcoming campaign, or as a straight-up bribe, with the promise of more to come, and with earnest pleas that his official requests be “taken care of.” And he would pull the money out of the trunk of his car.


    Ralph J. Marra Jr., above center, acting United States attorney in New Jersey, said average citizens “don’t have a chance” against the culture of corruption unearthed.

    How the Corruption Case UnfoldedGraphic
    How the Corruption Case Unfolded

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    Life Can Imitate Art: Indictments Describe Deals More Fit for a Crime Movie (July 24, 2009)
    Syrian Sephardic Communities Shaken by Charges Against a Leading Rabbi (July 24, 2009)
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    Document Criminal Complaints in New Jersey Corruption Inquiry
    Readers' Comments

    Readers shared their thoughts on this article.

    * Read All Comments (339) »

    He also came up with a lingo: corrupt payments were “invitations,” approvals for development projects were “opportunities.” The communities where his pitch appears to have worked included Jersey City, Hoboken, Bayonne, Ridgefield and parts of Ocean County.

    Among the public officials arrested were Mayor Peter J. Cammarano III of Hoboken, who was a City Council member before he took office as mayor on July 1, and Mayor Dennis Elwell of Secaucus, both Democrats; Assemblyman L. Harvey Smith of Jersey City, also a Democrat; and Assemblyman Daniel M. Van Pelt, a Republican from Ocean County.

    Like some of the others arrested, Mr. Smith, a former teacher, ran for office on an anticorruption platform, telling The New York Times: “I don’t take cash. I don’t let people give me things.” He is charged with taking $15,000 in bribes.

    Mr. Van Pelt, who sits on an assembly committee that oversees the Department of Environmental Protection, was accused of accepting money to help the informant obtain environmental permits. In a meeting in Atlantic City in February, prosecutors charged, Mr. Van Pelt assured Mr. Dwek that the environmental agency “worked for” him, then took $10,000 in cash and told the informant to call him “any time.”

    The bulk of the corruption charges arose in Hudson County. The president of the City Council in Jersey City, Mariano Vega Jr., and the city’s deputy mayor, Leona Beldini, were also arrested. Mr. Vega took three $10,000 payments before and after the municipal elections in May, prosecutors said. Anthony R. Suarez, the mayor of Ridgefield, in Bergen County, was charged with accepting $10,000 in bribes.

    The court papers suggest the ease, and the relatively modest payments, with which local officials seemed willing to be part of the scheme.

    In Hoboken, prosecutors charge in their complaint, Mr. Cammarano, then a councilman running for mayor, eagerly agreed in a meeting at the Malibu Diner this year to help Mr. Dwek with his projects in exchange for cash. Prosecutors said that when Mr. Dwek asked for assurances that his requests would be expedited by the Hoboken City Council, Mr. Cammarano replied, “I promise you,” adding, “You’re going to be, you’re going to be treated like a friend.”

    Mr. Dwek responded that he would give a middleman $5,000 in cash for Mr. Cammarano and another $5,000 after his election as mayor.

    “O.K.,” Mr. Cammarano replied, according to the complaint. “Beautiful.”

    And Mr. Cammarano expressed confidence that he would be elected no matter what, according to the complaint. “Right now, the Italians, the Hispanics, the seniors are locked down,” he is quoted as saying. “Nothing can change that now.”

    “I could be, uh, indicted,” he continued, “and I’m still going to win 85 to 95 percent of those populations.”

    It is not clear from the federal documents whether Mr. Dwek indeed owned any properties or whether any of the developments he proposed were ever built.

    In the money laundering scheme, the rabbis arrested included Saul J. Kassin, 87, a leader of the Syrian Jewish community in Brooklyn and New Jersey; Mordchai Fish and Lavel Schwartz, both rabbis in Brooklyn; and Eliahu Ben Haim and Edmund Nahum, who lead congregations in Deal.

    Rabbi Nahum, prosecutors said, told Mr. Dwek that he should spread his money through a number of rabbis. “The more it’s spread the better,” Rabbi Nahum said, according to the complaint.

    Another man in Brooklyn, Levy-Izhak Rosenbaum, was accused of enticing vulnerable people to give up a kidney for $10,000 and then selling the organ for $160,000. Mr. Dwek pretended to be soliciting a kidney on behalf of someone and Mr. Rosenbaum said that he had been in business of buying organs for years, according to the complaint.

    Weysan Dun, the special agent in charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Newark office, emphasized that the case was motivated by neither religion nor politics. That is an important point since New Jersey governor’s race pits a former United States attorney, Christopher J. Christie, a Republican, under whom the investigation began, against the Democratic incumbent, Mr. Corzine, whose administration was caught up in the arrests Thursday.

    Agents raided the home of Joseph V. Doria Jr., commissioner of the state’s Department of Community Affairs. Mr. Doria, who is also the former mayor of Bayonne, resigned hours later at Governor Corzine’s request, officials said.

    “Any corruption is unacceptable — anywhere, anytime, by anybody,” the governor said in a statement. “The scale of corruption we’re seeing as this unfolds is simply outrageous and cannot be tolerated.” He also called for the resignations of Mr. Smith and Mr. Van Pelt.

    Mr. Christie called it a “really tragic day,” and said that he had worked “extraordinarily hard” to combat corruption in his seven years as a prosecutor, but that, “unfortunately, today is another example that there is much work still to be done.”

    Outside Hoboken’s City Hall on Thursday, where a sign still had Mr. Cammarano’s predecessor’s name on it, residents chatted about the news. Some said they had come to expect as much from their politicians.

    Others retained the capacity for shock. Carlos Ochoa, 63, a city street sweeper, said he had volunteered for the new mayor’s campaign. “I’m very disappointed,” he said. “I had a lot of expectations of him.”
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    Reporting was contributed by Kitty Bennett, David W. Chen, Kareem Fahim, William K. Rashbaum, Nate Schweber and Karen Zraick.
    Sign in to Recommend Next Article in New York Region (1 of 8) » A version of this article appeared in print on July 24, 2009, on page A1 of the New York edition.

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    * In Testy Exchange in Congress, Christie Defends His Record as a Prosecutor (June 26, 2009)
    * In Crisis, Prosecutors Put Aside Turf Wars (October 31, 2008)
    * Councilman Puts Double-Dipping Issue Before Voters (October 26, 2008)
    * ON POLITICS; A Plan of Action Against 'Pay to Play' (October 5, 2008)









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    To see a Rogues' Gallery of the Guilty, go to

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    Tuesday, July 21, 2009

    Just the Facts, Ma'am



    Message

    Ms. Kurdell: I would like copies of board protocol in the matter of banning or allowing citizens to comment on agenda items. In fact, I would like a copy of all protocols that govern the board's treatment of citizens' First Amendment rights and their ability to approach elected officials in a public forum for redress of grievances.

    I was kicked out of the board room by Jennifer Faliero when she was board chair ostensibly because I used a name. The real reason was that Faliero was afraid I was going to reveal her adultery with the then head of Community Relations, Marc Hart, and had cooked up an eviction of me with the head of the campus police, that big Green Giant guy, who threatened to have the police come and arrest me in the lobby if I didn't leave the taxpayers' premises.

    Now you and Steve Hegarty and perhaps others of the board and administration have apparently plotted to prevent my signing up for comment on agenda items because as Mr. Hegarty says, "they" think I am "confused" and don't know what I am talking about. Pray tell me if a licesensed physician especially a psychiatrist has made this judgment and provide his or her name and also whether any of the people responsible for banning me from commenting on public issues marked with citizen-comment privilege on the Web-site agenda are licensed physicians, or are you and they practicing medicine without a license?

    And has the level of the board's public civility to citizens who wish to comment on issues of government decisions by the board descended to trying to denigrate a citizen who is elderly such as I with slurs of mental incompetence to deprive of her right to her First Amendment rights to free speech? And how would you, Mr. Hegarty, and in others in on this vile procedure to deprive a citizen of free speech answer the above questions in a court of law when under oath?

    Lee Drury De Cesare

    15316 Gulf Boulevard

    Madeira Beach, FL 33708

    tdecesar@tampabay.rr.com

    leedrurydecesarescasting-roomcouch.blogspot.com

    -----Original Message-----





    The Council of Trent aka as the Hillsborough County School Board is in perpetual session to squelch free speech.


    Ms. Cobbe: I don't think it would be fair for you to charge another citizen who wants the Kemp files for redaction once you have charged me. I mailed the check for $72; you should have it by now.

    Send me a copy of the protocol that you use to charge citizens for copying. I want to send it to the First Amendment Foundation for analysis.

    There is extant now a committee with a member of the First Amendment Foundation on it that has voted to do away with charges to citizens for copying public-information documents. The majority has voted to do away with the charges. That's a step for citizens against the tyranny of rules made to discourage their asking for public information. That $72 I sent you would be too much for many people to consider. So the charge is discrimination against poor people who want public information.

    Lee Drury De Cesare

    Will they allow you the privilege to speak to an agenda item in the future or have they taken that privilege away from you? If it is the former, we can take a wait-and-see attitude and see what happens. If it is the latter, we need to address it post haste.

    'Ken.Otero@sdhc.k12.fl.us'; 'Dan.Valdez@sdhc.k12.fl.us'; 'Lewis.Brinson@sdhc.k12.fl.us'; 'Gretchen.Saunders@sdhc.k12.fl.us'; 'Wynne.Tye@sdhc.k12.fl.us'; 'Cathy.Valdes@sdhc.k12.fl.us'; 'Connie.Mileto@sdhc.k12.fl.us'; 'David.Steele@sdhc.k12.fl.us'; 'Gwen.Luney@sdhc.k12.fl.us'; 'Stephen.Hegarty@sdhc.k12.fl.us'; 'linda.cobbe@sdhc.k12.fl.us'; 'CANDY.OLSON@SDHC.K12.FL.US'; 'CAROL.KURDELL@sdhc.k12.fl.us'; 'JACK.LAMB@sdhc.k12.fl.us'; 'MARYELLEN.ELIA@sdhc.k12.fl.us'; 'SUSAN.VALDES@sdhc.k12.fl.us'; 'APRIL.GRIFFIN@sdhc.k12.fl.us'; 'DORETHA.Edgecomb@sdhc.k12.fl.us'; 'JENNIFER.FALlIERO@sdhc.k12.fl.'; 'larry.mason@sdhc.k12.fl.us'; 'phildra.Swaqger@sdhc.k12.fl.us'; 'alice.loeb@sdhc.k12.fl.us'; 'renalia.dubose@sdhc.k12.fl.us'; 'davidschmidt@sdhc.k12.fl.us'; 'steven.eichhorn@sdhc.k12.fl.us'; 'steve.vanoer@sdhc.k12.fl.us'; 'Stephanie.tamargo@sdhc.k12.fl.us'; 'steven.eichhorn@sdhc.k12.fl.us'; 'steveotto@tampatribune.com'; 'michael.smith@sdhc.k12.fl.us'; 'don.johnson@sdhc.k12.fl.us'; 'mike.phillips@sdhc.k12.fl.us'; 'chuck.fleming@sdhc.k12.fl.us'; 'nancy.lind@sdhc.k12.fl.us'; 'henry.washington@sdhc.k12.fl.us'; 'jeaneen.down@sdhc.k12.fl.us'; 'henry.ballard@sdhc.k12.fl.us'; 'edward.mcdowell@sdhc.k12.fl.us'; 'Karine.johns@sdhc.k12.fl.us'; 'donna.leonard@hcsd.k12.fl.us'; 'jeffrey.bandry@sdhc.k12.fl.us'; 'richard.parrish@sdhc.k12.fl.us'; 'Sue.hindman@sdhc.k12.fl.us'


    Ms. Kurdell: I would like copies of board protocol in the matter of banning or allowing citizens to comment on agenda items. In fact, I would like a copy of all protocols that govern the board's treatment of citizens' First Amendment rights and their ability to approach elected officials in a public forum for redress of grievances.

    I was kicked out of the board room by Jennifer Faliero when she was board chair ostensibly because I used a name. The real reason was that Faliero was afraid I was going to reveal her adultery with the then head of Community Relations, Marc Hart, and had cooked up an eviction of me with the head of the campus police, that big Green Giant guy, who threatened to have the police come and arrest me in the lobby if I didn't leave the taxpayers' premises.

    Now you and Steve Hegarty and perhaps others of the board and administration have apparently plotted to prevent my signing up for comment on agenda items because as Mr. Hegarty says, "they" think I am "confused" and don't know what I am talking about. Pray tell me if a licensed physician especially a psychiatrist has made this judgment and provide his or her name and also whether any of the people responsible for banning me from commenting on public issues marked with citizen-comment privilege on the Web-site agenda are licensed physicians, or are you and they practicing medicine without a license?

    And has the level of the board's public civility to citizens who wish to comment on issues of government decisions by the board descended to trying to denigrate a citizen who is elderly such as I with slurs of mental incompetence to deprive of her right to her First-Amendment rights to free speech? And how would you, Mr. Hegarty, and in others in on this vile procedure to deprive a citizen of free speech answer the above questions in a court of law when under oath?

    Lee Drury De Cesare

    15316 Gulf Boulevard

    Madeira Beach, FL 33708

    tdecesar@tampabay.rr.com

    leedrurydecesarescasting-roomcouch.blogspot.com

    Monday, July 20, 2009

    Ectomorphic Grasshopper Clone Picks on Old People for the School Board



    Age Discrimination in the Hillsborough County Board Room

    At the July 14 board meeting, a young woman sat beside me new to board meetings. She asked me about the people on the podium.


    "Know, first of all, that the people sitting as officials on the board rotunda are first quartile of the Stanford Binet. The lawyer, Gonzalez, may be in second quartile, but I would need to see test-results proof.


    "See that fellow the size of an emaciated grasshopper scampering about the board room stooping with abject obeisance at the shoulders of one then another of the board members?" I asked. "That's Steve Hegarty. He's head of Community Affairs. I examined the file of applicants for his job. He was least qualified of the finalists. Ms. Elia hired him because she is dumb enough to have thought that a guy who was a former reporter for the SPTimes could get her the good publicity for which she is so avid."


    Ms. Elia made a bad guess. Reporters hate Hegarty for jumping ship and making more money than they do--over a hundred thousand a year and climbing--for a cushy tax-paid job that involves nothing but bowing and scraping and laundering board and administration skullduggery with duplicitous messages sent out to regale the public on how wonderful the board and Ms. Elia are.


    Le Hegarty presides over an office that produces public-relations lies to the public, which pays to be lied to. The Public-affairs office of the School Board is another rip-off of the taxpayers by the government.


    Ms. Elia's lust for good publicity explains her sacrifice of five percent of her salary--about $13,000 her recent bit of drama to get good press. She gave her "bonus money," about $38,000, to charity last year. She should abandon that is ill-gotten "bonus money" altogether. It comes from teachers' work to boost student performance. The "bonus" emerged from the sly head of Earl the Pearl Lennard, who tried to fire Doug Erwin and deprive him of his pension because the latter discovered crime and graft in ROSSAC and wanted the board and administration to do something about it. They didn't because, logic says, they were benefiting from the crime and graft.


    Mr. Hegarty upheld the First Amendment when he was a reporter. The First Amendment keeps newspapers in business. The first thing a dictator does is shut down free speech and free press. The board and ROSSAC thugs try to shut down free speech in the School Board environs and the free-speech blogs that some teachers such as Steve Kemp have been intrepid enough to mount. His blog explains Kemp's one-year-plus suspension after the sheriff threw out the charge of child abuse lodged by the school board against him.


    Now the board, the administration, and the attorney want everybody to forget that the whole thing happened. They created such a mess of obvious teacher oppression that anyone can see why they want it swept under the rug.


    However, I will do my best to see that this outrage is kept on the front burner to remind people how the board savages teachers and uses the Professional Standards office to fake charges against them as blackmail to keep them quiet and to serve as examples to keep other teachers afraid to let out a peep about the board's and administration's malfeasance for fear that a Professional Standards Scarlet Letter will be their fate.


    Teacher blogs represent an island of democracy in the dictatorship of the board and Ms. Elia.


    After Hegarty became a ROSSAC factotum, he squelched free speech without demur for his new un-American ROSSAC bosses.


    Hegarty and Carol Kurdell, board chair, have cooked up a routine to keep me from commenting on hiring decisions made in secret. I want the board to put the names of the candidates for jobs on the Web with hyperlinks to their resumes. That's what Attorney General McCollum suggests in his recent press release about using technology to ensure citizens' knowing about what is going on behind closed doors of government. McCollum is ahead of Sink in the polls. He may well be our next governor.


    To keep me from targeting the questionable hiring practices of the board at the mike, Hegarty won't allow me to submit a board-appearance request when hiring comes up. He had to have gotten that order from Kurdell and other board anti-free speech thugs.


    Ms. Kurdell took an oath office to protect the Constitution. She violates it every time she refuses a citizen the legitimate right to comment on items on the agenda with a public-comment marker beside them. She has no right to try to monitor a citizen's right to comment. It is the American privilege to free speech that should deter her bullying people who come to the mike.


    Steve's oath is not to the Constitution; it's to do whatever it takes to keep his job.


    I asked why Hegarty denied me the right to comment on a board-agenda item. The little anti-free speech sneak said that "they" had noticed that I didn't always know what I was talking about and "got mixed up": the template Alzheimer's slur against the elderly, even if it were Einstein, who worked on nuclear projects until his death at Princeton.


    Hegarty could have been frank and not dumped on the elderly by telling the truth: "We don't want you to mention equal employment opportunity because we don't practice it. We just put that 'We are in equal employment opportunity employer' logo everywhere to make people think we practice fair hiring. I wouldn't have got my job if the board and administration practiced equal-employment opportunity."


    Steve is so skinny that he looks like an ectomorphic grasshopper. I weigh more than he. Everybody does. I am stronger. Everybody is.


    I can waylay Steve in the parking lot to slap him silly for insulting helpless, sweet, Alzheimer's-afflicted little old ladies such as I.


    Called before the court for assault and, I hope, battery, I will plead temporary Alzheimer's and say I don't remember a thing.


    The accusations against the elderly that they are "confused" and "don't know what they are talking about" represent a way of saying they are in the throes of Alzheimer's, a crude excuse to discriminate against them and diminish their humanity.


    Steve Hegarty's telling me that "they," meaning the members of the board, said I "didn't know what I was talking about" and was "confused" is use of elderly-abuse accusations to deprive me of free speech so that I cannot get a place on the agenda to comment on the shoddy hiring practices of the board and administration.


    The Florida Elderly Abuse Council may need a heads up on this despicable practice of the Hillsborough County School Board's discrimination against old people.


    I have company at the national level: The Obama administration has disappointed me by firing the inspector-general guy Walpin, in his late seventies as I am, who had unearthed the stealing of government money by a supporter of Obama, a Mr. Johnson, who stole grant money from AmeriCorps.


    Mr. Walpin became inspector general for CNCS in 2007.

    Washington Times: Fired inspector general files lawsuit

    To read the whole article: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jul/18/fired-inspector-general-files-lawsuit/?source=newsletter_politics-government_headlines

    Earlier this year Mr. Walpin issued reports that found that St. Hope Academy, founded by Mr. Johnson, had misused some of the nearly $850,000 in grant money it received from the federal AmeriCorps program. The academy has agreed to pay back about half the money.


    But his actions [ inspector General Walpin] in the investigation were criticized by the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of California, Lawrence G. Brown, who said the inspector general was out of bounds in pushing his case against the mayor [Johnson] and hindered the prosecutor's own investigation [my read: the prosecutor wants to curry faver with President Obama].


    Days after the firing [of Walpin], a White House lawyer wrote a letter to a small group of senators explaining that Mr. Walpin at a May 20 meeting was "confused, disoriented, unable to answer questions and exhibited other behavior" that led the board of the corporation to question his ability to serve as inspector general.

    Though it's not part of the suit, Mr. Walpin's lawyers said in their legal brief that the case "raises serious questions of age discrimination" because of the accusations that Mr. Walpin, who is in his late 70s, seemed unable to function.

    The suit was filed in federal district court in Washington, D.C.

    My comment: Hurrah for Mr. Walpin for fighting back against ageist slander.


    7/20/2009

    Dear Ms. Obama:


    I am disappointed in the President for firing Inspector General Walpin on what is, in effect, the rationale of age discrimination to keep him from punishing a man who stole government money who happens to be an Obama supporter.


    The "confused" accusation is a cover for contempt for elderly people. The president was remiss in applying it to Mr. Walpin in his press conference.


    I too am elderly and face similar discrimination by the Hillsborough County School board, which won't let me comment in board meetings on their jobs racket in which they award jobs not on merit but on being buddies with the board and administration. They award jobs behind closed doors to hide their practice of flouting equal-employment opportunity that would give citizens the most skilled employees, not the buddies and sycophants and relatives of the board and the administration.


    We elderly form a large and powerful voting block, and we won't forget President Obama's cooperation in the abuse of the elderly inspector general whom he fired for doing his job.


    I ask that you talk to your husband about the implications of this case and have him review his actions. I supported Mr. Obama in the election and sent him what for a poor retired teacher was a generous donation early on.


    I won't repeat that support if he is going to protect his supporters by firing people who to expose their crimes and beat up on us elderly in the process. Other elderly won't support President Obama either.


    Lee Drury De Cesare

    15316 Gulf Boulevard 802

    Madeira Beach, FL 33708

    tdecesar@tampabay.rr.com

    leedrurydecesarescasting-roomcouch.blogspot.com


    c: All members of School Board; all senior administrators