SUFFOLK CLOSEUP - LI Emmy Award Winner Is Also A Banker And Immigrant

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

Lupito GadeasJust three years ago, Lupita Gadeas was a student in my Investigative Reporting class at the State University of New York/College at Old Westbury. Following an internship she did at Adictivo, a TV program shot at studios in Hauppauge and Long Island City and aired on Telemundo, she got a job with Adictivo as a reporter.

In April, Lupita and two other journalists at Adictivo received an Emmy Award from the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. 

I was thinking of Lupita in recent days as the horror unfolded of more than 2,000 children being separated from their families who were seeking refuge in the United States, mostly from Central America, with many of the kids put in cages. 

Lupita is from El Salvador in Central America. She left the violence in that country in 2008 for the promise of the United States. She is now, happily, a U.S. citizen.

She told me, proudly, on the phone last week of having just interviewed Nayib Bukele, a candidate for president of El Salvador, on a visit he made to Brentwood, historically a center for Latinos in Suffolk. (Now Latinos are spread through the county.) 

In addition to being an associate producer at Adictivo, Lupita is a banker at Chase Bank. She also worked at Chase while a student at Old Westbury.

Lupita’s energy—as a student and today—is boundless. Since graduation, she told me, she has bought a house and gotten married (to a young man from Guatemala). 

“In the United States, you work hard and you can succeed,” she commented.

For me, Lupita is an example of what immigrants—now and since the founding of the United States—have brought to this country. My late father used to say “hybrid vigor” was a key to how the U.S won World War II against powerful enemies, how it built nearly 3,000 Liberty ships and 300,000 military aircraft (many of these on Long Island at the Grumman and Fairchild plants). We overwhelmed the Nazis and Italian and Japanese fascists. Hybrids have great strength. Consider the mule. The diversity of people in this nation has given it enormous strength.

Lupita doesn’t want to go back to El Salvador “not even to visit.”

It isn’t that she doesn’t love her homeland. She told of interviewing Mr. Bukele, a former mayor of San Salvador, the nation’s capital, and asking about “what his plan is to help the country. He said he wanted to make El Salvador ‘a better place so people would want to stay.’”

Crime in El Salvador is intense, said Lupita. “People are killed every hour, an average of 23 every day.” The root cause: poverty and gangs, and they connect. She told of her aunt who works in a market two days a week and gets $3 a day—“$6 a week! You can’t make ends meet on $6 a week.” Poverty causes people to become gang members and “be pickpockets or get involved in the protection racket.” And if you don’t pay money for protection, “you or your children can get killed.”

“You can get killed in El Salvador for $20,” said Lupita. If you want someone murdered, she said, you can go to a gang member and pay $20. ”It’s a nightmare.”

She got out. And fortunately, she came to the U.S. with a Green Card due to her father having come here earlier and becoming a U.S. citizen. (Typical of Latino newcomers, he has a landscaping business on Long Island “and during the winter does snow removal.”)

Lupita told of watching the children in cages on TV. “Heartbreaking!” she said.

I have many Latino students at SUNY Old Westbury. Indeed, the college in its now more than 50 years has been committed to diversity as a central part of the educational experience, and there is wonderful diversity on the student, faculty and administrative levels.

The story of Lupita isn’t unique.

Newsday this month featured on the cover of its “LIlife” section a story headed: “Best in class. It’s the first time East Hamptons valedictorian and salutatorian are both Latino.”  It was about Nicolas Sigua Pintado, the valedictorian, and Christopher Gomez, the salutatorian, the top students in a class of 215 graduating East Hampton High School this year. 

“Sigua will be the first in his family to obtain a college degree, and both will attend Ivy League institutions come fall—Sigua at Harvard University to major in political science, and Gomez at Cornell University to study astronomy and physics.” The article quoted Adam Fine, the high school’s principal, as saying: “These kids, whether Latino or not, are two of the best young men I’ve encountered in my career.”

And, said the piece, “In addition to excelling academically, Gomez is senior class co-president and goal-keeper on the varsity soccer team. During his junior year, he traveled to Malawi with the BuildOn Club to help construct a school. Sigua is captain of the swim team…and works during the summer as a lifeguard. This year he and students created a debate club.”

“Sigua was born in East Hampton to parents who emigrated from Ecuador.,,,Gomez moved from Guatemala with his single mother when he was 7.”

All these extraordinarily intelligent and highly active young people will bring great credit to the United States. 

Zeldin Campaign's Statement On Perry Gershon's Primary Victory

Zeldin for Congress Statement Following NY-1 Democratic Primary

Port Jefferson Station, NY – Zeldin for Congress released the following statement after NY-1’s June 26, 2018 Democratic Primary:

Congrats to Park Avenue Perry on buying his way into a general election. It’s amazing that the Democratic Party was so desperate that they nominated a liberal Manhattan Democrat who has never even voted here in a November election for Congress. After a primary where he continuously preached about his desire to make Nancy Pelosi the next Speaker of the House, made the disgusting comparison of President Trump’s rallies to Hitler rallies, pathologically lied about Congressman Zeldin’s policy positions, defended high taxes, and took many other out of touch, far left positions, Park Avenue Perry proved how unrepresentative to us he would be as a representative. Having just changed his residency into the district from Manhattan this past year, he has more in common with radicals like Bill DeBlasio and Nancy Pelosi than the residents of our Congressional District. The east end of Long Island is not NYC or San Francisco and to think otherwise proves just how out of touch Park Avenue Perry really is. Our district will not elect someone who supports sanctuary cities and protects violent members of MS-13 from being deported and we certainly will not allow Nancy Pelosi to once again become Speaker of the House. With the limited number of votes Park Avenue Perry received today to get the Democratic Party nomination, voters were clearly unimpressed and unmotivated by the best options Democratic money can buy. The few Democrats who did decide to vote chose someone who sees this district as one that can be purchased. Park Avenue Perry will learn the rest of that lesson the hard way in November.

Lee Zeldin is a stark contrast. The lifelong Long Island native is a Congressman, soldier, and family man, who proudly served our country as a paratrooper in the U.S. Army and continues to serve today as a Major in the Army Reserves. An independent, honest and effective leader in Congress, Lee has consistently fought for national security wins, economic wins, infrastructure wins, and so much more over these past few years on issues that were of the highest priority and importance for Long Islanders. Despite the lies the Democrats have been desperately attempting to deceive voters into playing along with, the residents of the First Congressional District are smart enough to sort fact from fiction and reject the false, radical partisan attacks on our Congressman made up by the far left.

Regardless of the resistance from liberal obstructionists who oppose everything and anything, Congressman Zeldin continues to deliver one win after another for his constituents: Passing his Adult Day Health Care bill into law this year to help severely disabled veterans, leading the effort to eradicate MS-13, combating the heroin and opioid abuse epidemic, working to secure our borders, bringing home record funding for our local environment, and pursuing key foreign policy wins abroad. As an extremely accessible Representative who any constituent has the ability to meet with, Congressman Zeldin also successfully resolved over 8,500 constituent cases in favor of NY-1 residents.

The reality is that our national economy is going great. Our national security is doing well. ISIS is nearly wiped off of the map. MS-13 is being defeated. Unemployment is setting historic lows. Our markets are hitting historic highs. Our borders are also being better secured. This is all great for anyone who is rooting for America’s success and Congressman Zeldin’s voice is always being heard in the middle of all of this. Lee Zeldin calls it as he sees it and has proven he is willing to work with absolutely anyone to move our community, state, and nation forward.

When local fishermen, boaters and small business owners recently reached out to Lee Zeldin concerned about navigation conditions in Moriches Inlet, we all witnessed how effective our Congressman is with his immediate and successful advocacy to secure an emergency dredge. Lee Zeldin is a workhorse who delivers positive results again and again and again.

Congressman Zeldin consistently delivers for the Long Islanders he represents. We all experienced it up close and personal when he led the successful effort to eliminate the MTA Payroll Tax for 80 percent of employers, eliminated the Saltwater Fishing License Fee, cosponsored the nation’s strongest property tax cap, reduced middle income tax rates to the lowest level in 60 years, created the PFC Joseph Dwyer Program for veterans with PTSD and Traumatic Brain Injury and authored the law that bans protests at military burials.

Congressman Zeldin is committed to continue pursuing his New Era of American Strength agenda to protect America’s security at home and abroad, help grow our economy, support our veterans and first responders, improve healthcare and the quality of education, repair our nation’s infrastructure and safeguard our environment. He looks forward to building upon his work for Long Island and our nation in his third term.

Voters in NY-1 demonstrated their overwhelming support for Congressman Zeldin in 2016, reelecting him to a second term with over 58% of the vote.

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP - Bridge Over Sound Discussion Decades Old

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

Heading off Long Island and being stuck in traffic on the Long Island Expressway, I daresay most people have thought about why there’s no tunnel or bridge extending north before one reaches New York City and the Throgs Neck and Bronx-Whitestone bridges.

Indeed, following Governor Andrew Cuomo’s call in his 2018 State of the State speech for a tunnel north off Long Island, Newsday editorialized: “Unless you have time for a ferry to Bridgeport or New London, there’s only one way out of here—through New York City. That’s life on the giant cul-de-sac that is Long Island….Whether you are visiting a college in Boston or vacationing upstate…chances are at some point you’ve asked yourself the same question that’s vexed generations of Long Islanders: Why do I have to go west to go east? Or to go north.”

The answer to that is despite repeated drives, there’s been strong public opposition on Long Island, the cost has been high, and in the case of the first push exactly 80 years ago, the death of the man behind that scheme.

He was Royal Copeland, a three-term U.S. senator from New York. His plan advanced in 1938 was for an island-hopping span from Orient Point and across Plum, Great Gull and Fishers islands landing in Groton, Connecticut or Watch Hill, Rhode Island. But he died that year and his plan with him—for a while.

Two decades later, in 1957, a former New York State superintendent of public works, Charles Sells, advanced a proposal for two bridges—one from Orient Point in Suffolk to Watch Hill, and a second, from Oyster Bay in Nassau, to Rye in Westchester County.

Suffolk’s first county executive, H. Lee Dennison, was supportive of a Long Island bridge during his term in office from 1961 to 1973. An engineer, he loved bridges—for example, he pushed for the construction of bridges on the north and south sides of Shelter Island but was stopped by the then Suffolk Board of Supervisors. “If Dennison wants to rape Suffolk County, we want him to leave Shelter Island alone,” said Shelter Island Supervisor Evans K. Griffing.

But it was an even bigger fancier of highways, tunnels and bridges, Robert Moses (the person responsible for the LIE and instrumental in insufficient resources going towards a balanced mass transit system for this region) who was central to the biggest battle over a Long Island bridge. That was in the mid-1960s when Mr. Moses, whom that Newsday editorial identified as the “original master builder,” pushed anew for a bridge from Oyster Bay to Rye. 

Intense public and governmental opposition stopped this Moses plan. A leader was former Congressman Lester Wolff of Muttontown. Two weeks ago, Congressman Thomas Suozzi, who represents parts of Nassau and Suffolk, announced he was introducing a bill to rename the Oyster Bay National Wildlife Refuge in honor of Mr. Wolff. Creation of the refuge helped block the bridge. Mr. Wolff, at 99 the oldest living former U.S. congressman, was at a meeting a day later in Locust Valley, at which hundreds gathered to organize against the Cuomo tunnel plan, recommended having Congress designate the Long Island Sound as a marine park to aid in stopping the tunnel. “The Long Island Sound is a national treasure,” he said.

Governor Hugh Carey in 1979 set up a tristate advisory committee that considered bridges from sites at Port Jefferson, Wading River, Riverhead, East Marion and Orient Point. But its report found expanding ferry service as preferable.

Governor Cuomo, whom the Newsday editorial referred to as “New York’s modern master building,” said of a Long Island tunnel in his State of the State speech: “It would be underwater. It would be invisible. It would reduce traffic on the impossibly congested Long Island Expressway and would offer potential significant private investment.”

A study released since by the state, done by WSP of Montreal, determined that a tunnel or bridge, or a bridge-tunnel combination, would cost $31.5 billion to 55.4 billion. It recommended as “feasible” two routes—from Oyster Bay to Rye or Port Chester in Westchester, or from Kings Park to either Bridgeport or Devon in Connecticut. It dismissed a link between Wading River and New Haven or Branford, Connecticut as not fostering economic development and being too expensive.

The Kings Park link would necessitate an extension of Sunken Meadow State Parkway. This, said State Assemblyman Michael Fitzpatrick of St. James, “would destroy Sunken Meadow State Park. That’s not going to go over.” As to other environmental damage, at the gathering in Locust Valley, James Gaughran, chairman of the Suffolk County Water Authority, warned of damage to the underground water table on which Long Island depends for its potable water from the tunnel and its construction. It would be, he said, “an environmental disaster.”

Karl Grossman is a veteran investigative reporter and columnist, the winner of numerous awards for his work and a member of the L.I. Journalism Hall of Fame. He is a professor of journalism at SUNY/College at Old Westbury and the author of six books.  

Op Ed- Zeldin's Op Ed On Prescription Drug Cost Is Wrong

By Perry Gershon

The United States is home to some of the world’s best pharmaceutical research and doctors; nevertheless, the world’s richest and most powerful country has worse medical outcomes and higher drug costs than the rest of the developed world. The United States should be a leader in affordable health care, not drug addiction. Something is deeply wrong when American patients scream in anguish over the ever-rising cost of prescription drugs. When our patients are forced to take only half the prescribed number of pills for an ailment because they can’t afford their medication, and when they suffer from higher and higher rates of drug abuse, we need to act to cure our broken prescription drug system and we need to act now!

I come from a medical family. My mother was a lead researcher in the development of the chickenpox vaccine, which improved the quality of life for millions of Americans. My father has done ground-breaking research discovering how the nervous system of the gut (“the second brain”) controls the behavior of the bowel. My mother’s dad was a Colonel in the US Army Medical Corps who participated in the liberation of Dachau. I grew up around practitioners and doctors who would do anything for their patients. Trust me when I say that even though the Affordable Care Act was a great first step, it is not enough. America needs Medicare for All to improve the American healthcare delivery system and curb the excessive costs of prescription drugs once and for all.

Republicans like Lee Zeldin want you to believe that buying prescription drugs could be like buying a shirt or a television set. The problem with this simplistic analogy is that while consumers of shirts or television sets have a choice, sick patients do not. One can skip the purchase of another shirt or television set, shop around for a discount, or bargain with the seller. Sick patients have none of the options; they need medical care and they often need it immediately. One can get another opinion, but one cannot ask people to search for the cheapest brain surgeon. Sick patients are free neither to choose their care nor to skip it. Delays in treatment and avoidance of preventive care lead to higher costs in the end. These delays are a major reason that that American healthcare costs so much in aggregate. Too many people defer preventative healthcare and resort to emergency rooms (where costs are multiplied) for treatment when they are in extremis. The alternative is not a cheap neurosurgeon or a discounted heart valve, but pain and suffering, or even death. This lack of effective choice opens the door for exploitation, providing an opportunity for people like Martin Shkreli to gouge patients for life-saving HIV treatments for HIV. It makes it possible for unscrupulous companies like NextSource to raise the price of its life-extending cancer drug Lomustine by 1400%. Pharmaceutical companies charge this much because they can. They know, unlike other businesses, that their customers are at their mercy, and fundamentally cannot say no.

The misleading assertion that deregulation of pharmaceutical companies will not lead to price-gouging uses the same logic that led to the assertion that deregulation of banks would not lead to fraud and speculation. Theft is controlled by law and regulation, not by asserting that thieves will not steal if only they could be deregulated. It is not only wrong—it is an example of how willfully complicit Republicans are in corporations putting profits above people. Corporations exist to maximize profit. Patients, who have no ability to shop around for medical care, are required to pay what private corporations charge and, as a result, are typically overcharged for health care. Deregulation cannot change behavior. It is inherent in the business model. 

Medicare for All is the best way to correct this imbalance and to ensure that patients get a fair price on their prescriptions. In his Op-Ed, Lee Zeldin claims that “doctors, often small practitioners who lack the market power to bargain effectively,” enable pharmaceutical companies to overcharge. Zeldin implies that the government leaves the negotiating to people without marketing power because the government is incompetent, negligent or mean. In fact, the Republicans pushed through a prohibition that forbids the Government from using its great purchasing power to negotiate favorable drug prices. This Republican-passed prohibition accounts for why drugs are cheaper in Canada than in the USA. Zeldin destroys his own argument. He illustrates the importance of governmental action. Reducing regulations has not and will not lower costs; it may make drugs less safe, but not less expensive. I can think of no better argument for Medicare for All. Medicare for All will allow patients to maximize their market power and enable all 325 million Americans to bargain collectively to get the best prices for their prescription drugs. Medicare for All will ensure that pharmaceutical companies are no longer able to exploit their customers. We must act now, before even the most basic prescriptions are out of reach of all but the wealthiest Americans. 

Perry Gershon is a businessman and entrepreneur who is running for elected office to represent the people residing in New York’s First Congressional District. Mr. Gershon is a candidate in a Democratic primary on June 26.

Suffolk County To Establish Protect Suffolk Taxpayers Task Force

L-R Suffolk County Budget Review office Director Robert Lipp, Presiding Officer DuWayne Gregory, Dr. Ronald Masera, superintendent of Remsenbur-Speonk UFSD, Ralph Scordino, mayor, Village of BabylonThe Suffolk County Legislature will vote tomorrow Tuesday, June 19, to create the Protect Suffolk Taxpayers Task Force. The task force, announced earlier today at a press conference held by the Legislature’s Presiding Officer (PO) DuWayne Gregory, will study the potential costs and benefits associated with school districts and local governments establishing charitable gift reserve funds and offering tax credits to persons who donate to the funds to reduce the impact of changes to the Federal Tax Code that limited the State and Local Tax (SALT) deduction to $10,000.

“While the damage to Long Island’s economy from these changes in the tax law can only be estimated at this time, we do know it could be in the billions. We need to understand if these options outlined by New York State are a real possibility for assisting our residents with easing the additional tax burden that this federal policy has created,” PO DuWayne Gregory

The Protect Taxpayers Task Force will consist of nine members and have ninety days to study, hold a public hearing, and issue a report of its findings with recommendations before it will be disbanded.

At the press conference PO Gregory introduced three of the nine panel members of the proposed task force: Suffolk County Budget Review office: Director Robert Lipp; Dr. Ronald Masera, superintendent of Remsenbur-Speonk UFSD; and Ralph Scordino, mayor, Village of Babylon.