Once again and, it seems forever more, the Brinks robbery ends up amidst national politics. The connections of both Democratic presidential hopefuls to Weather Underground figures has gained some spotlight.
There’s lots of discussions about Barack Obama’s links to former Weather Underground radicals Bill Ayers and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn, now respected Chicago community leaders and academic types. “The evidence linking Obama, who was born in 1961, to the two former militants, now in their 60s, remained thin,” the Los Angeles Times reports (see link.) Lots of the hullabaloo comes from this YouTube video titled “Obama’s Terrorist Connections.” No one’s saying Obama and Ayers don’t know each other. But what that means, well, is up to interpretation.
But as Obama has pointed out, President Bill Clinton (the spouse of his challenger) granted clemency to two former Weather Underground members, including Susan Rosenberg, who had been indicted, but never tried, for her alleged involvement in the 1981 Brinks heist. In 2001, Clinton cleared the way for Rosenberg’s and Linda Sue Evans’ prison release on other Weather Underground-related charges.

So, here we have both linked to Brinks, a crime that forever changed Rockland.

Weird.

As a “middle school parent,” I have heard all kinds of crazy complaints from parents and kids about suspensions that make little sense, but well, follow the rules. None, of course, are documented. We just hear that a kid, who another kid knows, ended up suspended for some odd reason. Like the kid who supposedly brought a silver dagger to a local school—a souvenier from his grandma’s trip to somesuch country—and then was suspended for bringing a weapon to school. Or the kid caught in a shoving match another one started, but only one is suspended. Sometimes you just shrug and figure the kid learned some common sense. Sometimes you shake your head at the nonsense, and sigh.

But, here’s a story that just makes me so, well, sad. A student at a central Texas high school was suspended after he answered a cell-phone call from his father, serving in Iraq.

Oh, come on.

Talk about supporting families! Talk about supporting our troops! Poor kid. Poor dad. Poor mom who now has more stress to handle in a family already under great stress. Poor school administrators who can’t get out of their own way.

There’s little as annoying as one of those monthly tests of the Emergency Broadcast System.
It usually comes at the pivotal moment in a drama, when Emeril is explaining an intricate process in making a complex sauce or when they’re announcing a score you’ve been waiting most of SportsCenter to hear.
There’s that disturbing tone and the announcement that this is just a test, etc.
A couple of times in the past few days—including at 10:42 this morning—the message has been longer and more involved.
The Cablevision tone sounded this morning and then there was the usual voice, followed by the announcement that the new Indian Point sirens had just been sounded as a test.
That’s good to know, especially if you were within earshot of the sirens, but the timing couldn’t have been worse.
It came just about a minute into President Bush’s remarks, welcoming Pope Benedict XVI to the White House.
We’ll have to wait for the replay to find out what he said.

Here’s a little additional information, bouncing off today’s editorial about the subprime mortgage crisis and subsequent home foreclosures. In his April 1 “State of the County” address,  Rockland County Executive C. Scott Vanderhoef  introduced a “Foreclosure and Eviction Assistance Program” that would help people facing eviction by placing tenants on a rental assistance program, and a repayment agreement with a landlord. Along with rental assistance, the program would work with local nonprofits to provide mandatory credit counseling. I’d like to hear more about how those facing foreclosure would be helped.

The hot spotlight of criticism has sure been on the Federal Aviation Administration lately, and not just in Rockland. Local have been angry—in a litigious way—over theNew York-New Jersey-Philadelphia Metropolitan Area Airspace Redesign that would bring an average of 300 to 400 planes a day over Rockland within a couple of years and increase noise levels for more than 11,000 residents in parts of central Ramapo and Orangetown.

The FAA’s latest problems are being aired for all to see in Congressional testimony that shows an agency far from an aggressive regulator of airline safety. It started with relevations by FAA whistleblowers that Southwest Airlines was allowed to fly planes that needed safety checks. Of course, now the pendulum has been swinging the other way—Southwest was slapped with millions in fines, and stepped up inspections have led to hundreds of American Airlinesflight cancellations to reinspect MD-80 jets for possible wiring problems. Delta, Alaska and Midwest airlines also had jets grounded for such inspections.

Sure, safe planes are primary and the safety vigilance now is needed. But does it occur to anyone that if the regulations had been consistent—and if the airlines had expected to have to meet requirements—these massive flight cancellations would have been avoided, even as safe monitoring was happening?

Here’s a telling tidbit: A 2003 “Customer Service Initiative” refers the FAA’s “customers” as the airlines, when one would figure, the federal agency regulating the airlines would view the flying public as the customers. (More here in this USA Today editorial on the FAA’s woes.)

As for local effort to fight the regional airspace redesign plan, Rockland County’s lawsuit (and a dozen other suits from local governments and organizations) is working its way through the federal court system. The reason for such ire? The plan would re-route arriving Newark flights over Wesley Hills, Montebello, Kaser, Monsey, Chestnut Ridge and Pearl River. Rockland’s suit concentrates on the FAA’s apparent failure to adequately address environmental concerns and violations of its own rules on alternatives and noise mitigation issues. The FAA held a last-minute informational session in the county last summer after local leaders screamed that they hadn’t been given a public hearing, but the county’s comments weren’t entered into the Record of Decision.

Will the latest FAA black eye have anything impact on the lawsuits over the regional airspace redesign plan? Probably not, but surely local critics are glad to see the bigger picture.

I met with Joyce Brown, co-president of Rockland’s branch of the AAUW (American Association of University Women) for a quick coffee. Actually, we got to talking about all the interesting goings on with AAUW (and with her recent trip to New Orleans, where she helped rebuild homes in the lower Ninth Ward for those still struggling mightily with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, two and a half years later.) She had so much interesting to say, I never got my coffee!

One of the programs that she told me about was the Foreign Policy Association’s “Great Decisions 2008” discussions that tackle all kinds of issues (this month it’s Russia and Putinism) among people throughout the United States. It bills itself as the “oldest and largest grass-roots world affairs education program of its kind in the country.” There are several discussion groups in the area. Look here for the ones in New York.

Rockland County’s AAUW branch is impressively active. Their Web site can be found here.

I had hoped to hear more about AAUW’s activities — and Joyce’s New Orleans trip, as well as her participation through Rotary on trip to Vietnam with other Rotarians and Vietnam veterans, many from Rockland. The trip was documented by Journal News staff writer Nicole Neroulias on her LoHud.com blog, Return to Vietnam. And I had hoped to get some much-needed coffee. But, alas, deadline pressed.

So, I hurried off and made a swing into New City to drop something off at the home of a friend. She was in a rush, I was in a rush, but she opened the door and said, “I just put some coffee on. Time for a cup?” Ah, coffee karma.

I was looking through some old clips on Nyack parking. The village’s transition to the municipal multi-meters has been marred by misunderstandings, bickering and poor planning (meters first, signs second. Oy.)

Such coordination problems with Nyack parking switches are hardly new. I found a November 1979 Journal News article, in which the chief of the then-Nyack Police Department admits that his officers can’t ticket cars in a newly constructed metered parking lot on Main Street because the Village Board hadn’t updated the parking ordinances.