my response to the latest spin

On Thursday, May 17, 2012 The Register Star ran an letter by planning board member and former head of the Stuyvesant Republican party Tom Shanahan called "Courts have better things to do." I know Mr. Shanahan resents the fact that newspapers and the ballot box are not the only checks on government. Luckily, the founding fathers gave us a strong judiciary to stand up to factional government. James Madison, arguing for strong courts, said, "By a faction, I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community."

I found out Mr. Shanahan objects to lawsuits the hard way. On October 26, 2011 I filed my first article 78 suit. On October 30, 2011, after Mr. Shanahan was seen observing my property, I was given a citation in town criminal court for dog barking. The charge is ridiculous but the charge allows up to 15 days in jail. When I showed up at the appearance date on the ticket on November 9, 2011, Judge Carrie O’Hare reported that the affidavit for this charge disappeared off the face of the earth. The town tried to prosecute me in the same way back in January 2011, a charge clearly based on a false affidavit. After I filed a suit in federal court, the town judge dismissed the first ticket, but not after the town hired a special prosecutor, on a dog barking charge, and spent more than $7000 on expensive Albany lawyers from Whiteman, Osterman and Hanna to prosecute me.

Since I filed my suits, this kind of nonsense has now stopped completely. I have not been ticketed for impossible charges. I do not have to endure hearings (the town put me through 16 in 2011). I don't have cars at the end of my driveway. The zoning officer stays away. I can operate my business without worrying about having to justify every action (even how I take out my trash) questioned before a board of busybodies. 

Filing these suits is not sending a message. This is fighting for my livelihood and freedom from oppressive factional government. What is at stake in these suits is the rule of law, the 14th amendment, and basic issues of fairness. 

Mr. Shanahan said, "Perhaps it is best encapsulated in a statement Mr. Pflaum posted about the most recent lawsuit on one of his blogs – 'My lawsuit is meant to send a very simple message: ...'" I never said this statement. It's in quotes. 

Mr. Shanahan said, "the courts are not there for the purpose of 'sending messages.'" Yet on August 5, 2010 in an article on a junkyard in New Lebanon in the Regsiter Star, the town attorney said that a suit was  would  “send a message to anyone in New Lebanon who’s violating the law.”  Google the phrase "send a message" and "lawsuit" and watch what happens.

Speaking about the lawsuit for information filed against the town clerk, Mr. Shanahan said, "Even the state Committee on Open Government, which oversees the FOIL law, applauded Town Clerk Melissa Naegeli’s diligence." This statement was long ago. Mr. Shanahan has clearly not been following the actual suit. I sued to get information Ms. Naegeli denied existed, including evidence that the Hook Boat club assessment is fraudulent. Although Ms. Naegeli mislead the court, I now have town officials on record that the documents exist, the ones they earlier denied. I consider that a complete victory.

Then Mr. Shanahan called my efforts "a frivolous abuse of the legal system." Mr. Shanahan can say this in a newspaper article but none of the town's seven (at least) attorneys have made this charge in court. 

Then Mr. Shanahan said, "For Stuyvesant, the legal fees to defend against them now amount to many tens of thousands of dollars – and it’s likely to go higher." Did Mr. Shanahan complain when the town spent $150,000 to target me? And now, why does the taxpayer have to pick up the tab to defend supervisor Ron Knott's personal interests or the personal interests of ZBA Secretary? 

As per New York General Municipal Law 805 (1)(c), officials cannot “receive, or enter into any agreement, express or implied, for compensation for services to be rendered in relation to any matter before any municipal agency of which he is an officer, member or employee or of any municipal agency over which he has jurisdiction or to which he has the power to appoint any member, officer or employee.” Mr. Knott signed a contract with William J. Better to defend his personal interests on the taxpayers' dime. Does the above law preclude this contract?

Then Mr. Shanahan said, "In the long run – surrendering to intimidation never turns out to be cheaper." My point exactly. As the zoning officer Gerry Ennis admitted, the town posted the ZEO at the edge of my property before dawn 25 times in June 2010, for example. I have a video of town board member Ed Scott threatening to beat me up for conducting a sound test mandated by the planning board on which Mr. Shanahan sits. The fire chief and town employee Steve Montie posted on the internet that I should move out of town and applauded Scott's vigilantism.

In addition, the town hired a special prosecutor, William Nolan, from the biggest law firm in the capital district to prosecute me in town court on a false, indeed impossible charge, based on a perjury then destroyed an affidavit proving a secondary account of perjury.  Mr. Shanahan was involved in the second incident of judicial harassment and destruction of evidence in October 2011 as above. 

Mr. Shanahan is part of the oppressive government that I am suing. If Mr. Shanahan got his wish and removed the ability of courts to keep tabs on local government, can you imagine the abuse and larceny that would be going on? Even now, the situation is not good.

Will Pflaum

7 lawyers, 1 little tailor

Lawyer list at the other blog. Thanks.

unmuffled: Think you forgot a few folks

unmuffled: Think you forgot a few folks: Commentary The local reporter responsible for writing about cops and courts, as well as the Hudson City School District, wrote in a blog ...

story

http://registerstar.com/articles/2012/04/21/news/doc4f92266154fbf763632162.txt#blogcomments

That's the story in the paper. Here is the quote I emailed the reporter April 18, 2012 5:07:05 PM EDT:

Ron Knott hired the biggest law firm in the Capital District and spent $150,000 on Whiteman, Osterman and Hanna in 2011. And after all that time and money, can they name a rule and say I broke it? No. Meanwhile, the town supervisor, Mr. Knott, is breaking the very parts of the zoning law they still want to use against me if they can. If you live in a glass house, don't throw stones. One way to convince people to stop throwing stones is to pick one of the rocks they threw at  you up and throw it back. 

I would think the reporter would use the glass houses quote. 

Grattan, the dynamo

An article this bad deserves two blog posts.

"Pat Grattan, R-Kinderhook has taken a pay cut, initiated the taping of meetings and posted county financial info online, all since January."

Wow. In just four short months he managed to post financial info online. How long does it take him to upload a video to youtube?

A mere 100 days and he has already NOT uploaded any data. After four hard months of work, the County website is exactly the same and just as crappy as always, thanks to the tireless work of that dynamo Grattan.

A pay cut? He has three other jobs, that dynamo.

I know internet access can be slow in Columbia County. But even I can upload some data faster than that and I have Fairpoint Communications DSL.

But you have to remember, the County IT department is full of crony relatives who only play video games and can't actually use computers, and they have to pass all idea through some guys who whisper a lot and act shady, so the fact that they also have dial up modems is not the only impediment to claiming that they uploaded data that they didn't actually upload over the course of an otherwise uneventful 100 days of business as usual with the boss away at this other job.

 "Monthly financial reports and resolutions are being posted on the county’s website."

Wait. The resolutions have been online for a year. Grattan, some dynamo. He's claiming credit for something that is really easy and was done a year before he got into office.

Mr. Dynamo came in, saw that the county website was crappy, and did nothing about it. All in a mere 100 lackadaisical days.

 "The Board of Supervisors is also having its monthly full board meeting videotaped for the local public access channel at a maximum cost of $1,200 a year."

And he put a big "NO VIDEO RECORDING" sign in front of the place where the meeting is, which makes not sense if he also wants to brag about paying someone to tape the same meeting.

So, other than stopping people from video recording the meetings and uploaded the video for free and instead paying someone to put it where no one can find it, claiming to have uploaded data you didn't upload or was already online, and looking at a fire hydrant, Mr. Dynamo did a lot more great stuff.

Like... like... trust me, he's really busy, a dyanmo, the county is in good hands now!

This story is like the Onion meets Pravda. 100 days to not upload a PDF.... that no one uploaded.

our local the Onion

I mean, this has to be a joke right? This is news? The guy is presiding over a corrupt empire and doing nothing about it as his thieving friend Robert Fitzsimmons hands out no show jobs to his own employees in private practice, with Grattan seeing no evil hearing no evil... and he has four jobs himself. What a dynamo! Mulligan-Moore: we want every penny back! (So we can steal it ourselves.)

bring out the paper

I'm in the middle, or more like the end, of a Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) lawsuit against the town of Stuyvesant. Funny to think that when Gerry Ennis revoked my permit on August 9, 2010 and the town clerk Melissa Naegeli emailed me to tell me I have no right to appeal on August 16, 2010 I did not know that the FOIL law existed. Never sent in a FOIL request until then. Now here I am arguing a FOIL lawsuit I filed pro se... and maybe doing a little better than just arguing a lawsuit.

I'll discuss the details of the case soon enough. We'll see how it plays out, my case is looking pretty good, but I'm not sure the Freedom of Information system is working as well as it should.

Freedom of Information Law and the right of the public to information is far too weak in New York State and United States. We have a solid right to publish our opinion. We don't have a solid right to get the information necessary to know what to say. If the government wants to cover stuff up, they can get away with it. If they get caught, nothing much happens to them.

Who's fault is that?

The process back in the 18th Century that lead to our Constitution was good. The anti-Federalists had good reasons to oppose the Constitution - like the power of unelected, lifetime appointed judges. Good points on both sides, mixed in with plenty of deception and power grabs. Both sides argued intelligently. The process worked.

When the anti-Federalist complained that there was no bill of rights in the first draft, Madison wrote back that you don't want a list of rights. There are things that should be rights that will not get on the list of rights. If you make a list, then that's it, anything not on the list isn't a right.

The anti-Federalists said, no, if you don't have a list then you might have no rights. The anti-Federalists won that one, except maybe Madison and company did get in the 9th amendment, which means there are other rights other than those on the list.

Madison had a point, as enshrined in the 9th amendment. Take FOIL. It's not a Constitutional right. It would have been a strange thing for people in the 18th Century to think of as a right. They didn't have photocopiers or carbon paper. They had printing presses and newspapers but documents, government documents, were hand copied pieces of paper. I guess you could require the government to make a copy and post it on a pole somewhere - and in fact, we have plenty of laws about "notice" that amount to just about that. They could not have imagined the huge amount of data and easy of copying that data that we have now, or even what we had 50 years ago.

So they didn't think about Freedom of Information. How could they? I also think the Founding Fathers didn't pay enough time thinking about embezzlement. And maybe 12 or 20 years would be enough for a Federal judge, who then has to be re-appointed (or not). And plenty more they didn't think about... which is why the Bill of Rights was never intended to be the end of the story.

The Founding Fathers knew things would change, so they left the door open for rights they hadn't thought to put in the Constitution back then. The Right to Information, FOIL or FOIA, is exactly the kind of thing they had in mind: an example of the kind of thing they had in mind when they said there would be things they did not have in mind.

When the government hides stuff, it should be a bigger deal than it is. FOIL or FOIA means don't hide stuff from the people.

The 14th amendment boils down to what's good for the goose is good for the gander. The 1st amendment means you have a right to your own head and body. The 2nd and 3rd are hard to figure out. The 4th amendment means, hey, this is my house. The 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th mean they can't railroad you, take your property and lock you up for nothing. All kind of basic common sense stuff in there.

And information? The government can't hide what their doing. Pretty simple. No hiding stuff is a pretty basic, simple idea. No secret meetings. No secret budgets.

I think Freedom of Information is covered by the 9th amendment, as we have laws and 40 years of legal precedent to back those laws up. The right to information is now part of the culture, as well as the law of the land. I think the right is now covered by the 9th amendment and there is no going back. FOIL and FOIA cannot be repealed (I would say).

But like everything else in the Bill of Rights, or even the Constitution generally, you'd be hard pressed to prove that the government actually follows what the paper says. The president can start a war without Congress, no matter what the paper says. They can strip search you for nothing. They can fly over your house with drone and take pictures of you. Hide the budget. Hide everything. Lock you up. Kill you, whatever.

Still, I think information is a right, even if it is violated by the government as completely as all the other rights. I think when the government hides stuff, it should be a big deal, like when they hammer you to try to shut you up. We know they shouldn't punish you for speaking your mind, arrest and strip search you for attending a peaceful demonstration and all the other stuff they do.

It's just as bad when they hide what their doing, hide the paper.

FOIL or FOIA is what the Federalists had in mind when they wrote the 9th Amendment. So hand over the documents. Post everything online. Open up the files. Bring out the paper.

Go file a pro se FOIL lawsuit.