Full Transcript From Today’s Video. Please pardon any typos as this was generated via our podcast software. I’ve edited the transcript below for clarity, not spelling and grammar. I’ll come back and fix up any egregious mistakes asap.
We can confirm as of 9:46pm the final tallies for the Village of Monroe vote are:
676 for Alex Melchiorre. 578 votes for Neil Dwyer.
730 votes for Joe Mancuso. 713 for Nancy Peifer, 487 for Andy Ferraro and 483 for Martin O’Connor.
So, congratulations Village of Monroe, you now have a MAGA Board, and guess who got the results and posted about it immediately?
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BJ: It’s Wednesday. It’s time for another recording and we’re going to cover three different things that are happening. It would help if I can speak. Three things that are happening that I wanted to talk about. We’re not going to do the Q and A every week. I might do it every other week because we have, sorry, I have a cat and the cat likes to lay in the microphone. So there’s always cat hair on this microphone. Pardon me. Okay.
So there’s three things I wanted to cover in today’s video. We’re gonna do the Q &A maybe every other week, just so I have time, because if I do the Q &A, it’s like an hour long. And as you saw on Monday, when I post the Q &A transcript, it takes effort to read through for people. I might do it like every other week, just to give people a break. And in between weeks, I’ll come out here and I’ll talk to you about a couple of things that are going on. So.
Mrs. Moslem vs. The Village of Woodbury
First I want to tell you about the Post that went up yesterday, which was dealing with Mrs. Moslem who has been speaking at the Woodbury Village meetings and town meetings for as long as the Monroe Gazette has been around, which is about two years now. And after I published the article, there was just like a bit of a knot in my stomach because I...
I felt like on one hand, I understand where Mrs. Moslem is coming from. I have a level of empathy that I have for her situation.
So, you know, I can understand if my husband and son went away to prison for 96 months, I think it was, in one case, and a lesser sentence for Saeed Moslem I, you know, if I was Mrs Moslem and I believed that my son is a hero, which you saw her leave in a Facebook comment in the Better Woodbury, or For a Better Woodbury Facebook group, Mrs. Moslem was very adamant that she believes her son is a hero, so.
I can understand trying everything to try to prove innocence, right? So on one hand, I get it. On the other hand, the concern is there doesn’t seem to be any sort of surefire link between the town of Woodbury, the village of Woodbury and Mrs. Moslem’s case. she, so if you watched the most recent meeting, which I think was
I’m looking at my calendar here. I think it was the Thursday, March 12th meeting in Village of Woodbury where they essentially, she just derails the entire meeting because lately I don’t know if you noticed, but since Mr. Freiband and Mr. Fabbro are gone, the Village of Woodbury meeting is now like a half hour long, which is fantastic. And also in town of Monroe, not to be left out, also now has much shorter meetings, which is kind of great.
But at the meeting just recently, Mrs. Moslem had just this sprawling extended discussion concerning her case and her belief that the village, the creation of the village somehow led to it. still, I’ve read the email that she sent me. I still do not understand where the connection is between the creation and the town and the creation of the town and the village of Woodbury or the separation of Woodbury.
into a town and village and defrauding the federal government. Because if you read the court documents that are in PACER, which is PACER.gov, which is sort of like the federal court lookup system, you can find all of the records involving the Moslem’s case. And what it looks like is that the case hinged on hours and hours of recording from a really shady accountant that they were working with. Now,
I don’t like, I don’t know, you don’t know, she may not know what was going on with the context of those recordings, right? But the accountant that they were working with was Shady. He was an FBI informant. He did help other people inflate their income. Those people were also arrested, which is something Mrs. Moslem has not mentioned. And I think that’s important to point out because I think part of her argument that she sent me was, you know, they were dealing with an FBI informant. Well,
He wasn’t an FBI informant when you started to work with him. He became an FBI informant about two years later. And at some point, he started to record conversations with Mr. Moslem and Mr. Moslem’s son, where they said, allegedly on the recording, that they basically knew what they were doing, and they knew it was wrong, and they just wanted him to do it. Again, without those actual recordings, I don’t know.
what was said, but we know the recordings exist and we know the recordings exist because the accountant a year later, a year after Mr. Moslem and his son were found guilty, the accountant also faced additional criminal charges for another case. And when he was facing sentencing, the prosecutors that he had worked with wrote a letter on his behalf to the judge. And in that letter, they said the hours of recording that documented fraudulent activity on the part of Moslems is what led to that conviction. So
It’s her opinion that there’s some kind of conspiracy. It’s her opinion that something untoward happened, but factually, at least from what the judge ruled. And, you know, look, if you look at Moslem v. United States v. Moslem and then Moslem v. United States, which are all the appeals, you just see the judge throwing out appeal after appeal after appeal. So does that mean she’s wrong?
I don’t know. But it does at least suggest that whatever happened is not the business of the village of Woodbury and it’s not the business of the town of Woodbury. And that’s really important because if Mrs. Moslem for over a year now or over two years has derailed essentially or has used public comment to essentially, I feel this is my opinion, to essentially entrap the village of Woodbury or the town of Woodbury.
She shouldn’t be allowed to do that. Like that’s not a thing you should be allowed to do. I had the same problem and many of you had the same problem where James Freiband when he was a village trustee, was constantly trying to entrap the village of Woodbury into lawsuits. You he tried that with the New York State Thruway Authority, where he was talking about stuff from the executive session. I’m just gonna take these glasses off, sorry. They’re just gonna bother me.
so in New York state, thruway authority, took stuff that he had heard in executive session and like started blurted out during village meetings, like to try to, to get the New York state thruway authority to sue the village of Woodbury. That wasn’t okay either. So regardless of what Mrs. Moslem believes and regardless of whether or not there was a conspiracy, factually, we can say that the village of Woodbury played no role in.
that conspiracy and the town of Woodbury played no role in that conspiracy. And the person Mrs. Moslem alleges was the village attorney was not the village attorney. Does that mean that he did something shady? Again, this is something that happened almost 20 years ago and we’ve reached out to everyone for comment. The shady accountant, we reached out to him for comment. I don’t know if I can show you, I was gonna hold on my phone, but that’d be kind of foolish.
We reached out to everyone for comment. We gathered all the facts that we could before we published our story.
My issue is simply, you can’t. Public comment is something that I think people don’t think about a lot. Like they assume that they have the right to speak at a meeting. And, you know, on paper you should have a right to speak at a town and village meeting. But that’s not really how it works. Like public comment is not a right, it’s a privilege. Which is really fucked up. It should be right, but it’s not.
And so at any time, a town or village, if you live in Woodbury or you live in Monroe, you’ve seen it with Tony Cardone, limiting people’s speech to three minutes. Public comment is something that a town or village can mess with. And so what you don’t want is someone abusing public comment in such a way that it creates an excuse for the Kathryn Luciani’s of the world and the Brandon Calore’s of the world or the Tony Cardone’s of the world to say,
we’re just not going to let people speak. If you’re going to come up and repeatedly try to get us entrapped in your lawsuit, we’re just not going let you speak. And we’re not going let anyone speak, because that’s how it works. You can’t ban one person from speaking. You can ban all people from speaking. But you can’t ban one person. In the case of Mrs. Moslem we as the Monroe Gazette Wrote a letter to the town board and the village board, essentially arguing that while we sympathize with
the case, know, any, again, if I put myself in her shoes and if I was the mother of a son who was in prison, and in prison for a long time, and, you he was in solitary according to the paperwork that I read, the federal case, and Mrs. Moslem filed an appeal in February of 2026 on Saeed Moslem’s behalf.
So again, I have a lot of empathy. just, you don’t want people to use their own, whether it’s well motivated or not, you don’t want people to use their personal agendas during the public time. That’s your time. That’s your time to come and talk about the budget. And that’s your time to talk about taxes. And that’s your time to talk about issues that are affecting you that are related to town and village or city business. It’s not the time to...
to litigate essentially, is what’s happening. And by the way, like there was another, I’m blanking on his name, but I don’t know if you remember, it was recently, there was another attorney that came during public comment, I think it was in November or December, at a Village of Woodbury board meeting. And he was kind of like, who do I sue? Because he was talking about the sewer moratorium. And that’s not okay either. Like I don’t think that’s right. So we wrote a letter to the Town and Village Board where we were like, listen,
if you’re going to use public comment to entrap the village or the town, you really shouldn’t be allowed to do that. That’s not okay for anybody. Because let’s say, let’s put our shoes on, I’m sorry, let’s put ourselves where Mrs. Moslem is coming from, Let’s say, hypothetically, that the guy that she claims worked for the village of Woodbury
actually did something wrong. Let’s assume, just for sake of argument, that he did something wrong. And someone at a village board meeting says, yeah, he did something wrong. Then Mrs Moslem could, pro se, file a lawsuit against them. She doesn’t need a lawyer. You can do it yourself. It only costs you like $500. What if she just files a lawsuit saying, the village of Woodbury engaged in conspiracy against my son.
And here are the minutes from the village board meeting, right? That where someone said, yeah, that’s fucked up and that person did something wrong. So that’s my whole thing. But I just, felt uncomfortable because I didn’t want to feel like, I didn’t want to give the impression that we were singling her out because that’s not really what we were trying to do. We just, when people appear before, we don’t want people to ruin public comment. It is really like our, position of The Monroe Gazette is that public comment should be a right.
It is not a right, it’s a privilege, which means that it can be taken away. And so you really, as a community, you really want to police yourselves a bit and say, all right, you you’ve been talking about this for over a year now, maybe it’s time to sit down and try another route. And, know, we’re not saying don’t fight the good fight. Well, what we’re saying is this is not an appropriate forum. So that’s, that’s the whole thing. I just didn’t feel right after I published that story.
That rarely happens. We think a lot. And it is we. It’s not just me that works on this stuff. We put a lot of thought and care into the stories that we publish. even when we’re snarky, or even when it’s a character, B.J. Mendelsohn is a character, it’s Hunter S. Thompson writing a local news story. That’s the whole shtick of the Monroe Gazette that is what if Hunter S. Thompson could only write local news.
happening within like a 10 mile radius. And so that’s fun. And most of you get that. But occasionally, you don’t know where we’re coming from. Or if you don’t realize that the Monroe Gazette is that it has an exaggerated voice. It could seem mean spirited And so we just didn’t feel right about that. So that’s the whole thing. I don’t know where that goes. I don’t think it’s the end of that story. We are actually.
trying to get the recordings that were submitted in federal court. There’s apparently like 10 hours of recordings between the Moslems and this accountant. We’re gonna try to get that. I’m not necessarily gonna publish it, but I am gonna try to get it. So if this comes back up, for whatever reason, if the story continues, well, we at least have it and we can share it with you if we need to. We’re also gonna put in a FOIL request for everything having to do with Exclusive Motorsports, which is the name of the business.
For example, Saeed Moslem was before the village of Woodbury Planning Board, and they were talking about these apartments and how many people are going to live in the apartments. I guess he made, Saeed made a flip remark about how many people could live there. it was something going to the effect of maybe there’s two to four people living there unless they’re Mexicans is essentially what he said, which is offensive.
So I’m trying to get that as well because we did this. We did ask Mrs. Moslem to respond to, you know, your son said like she said her son was a hero and we were like, all right, well, your son made a racist comment at the planning board meeting. Like that’s part of this story. Like we can’t you don’t do you shouldn’t diefy anyone. But anyway, so we’re going to try to do some information gathering on that just just to see. Let put my glasses on for just a second.
because I just want to see if we’re actually like live streaming or if it’s just fucking me and saying that’s live streaming. Okay, so that’s that. Let’s go to our next story, which is the village of Monroe. I’m recording this at it’s 2.31 PM. At this time, the head count is not looking good for Neil Dwyer and Andy Ferro and Martin O’Connor. I don’t have the results.
We will not have the results until about 9:15 or 9:30 this evening. A lot can change. know, people haven’t gotten back from work yet. So if you haven’t voted yet in the Village of Monroe, I encourage you to go vote. Let’s play But let’s play this out, right? The reason why I wanted to record this today instead of doing a Q &A is I want to talk about this. Like what happens in the Village of Monroe if you suddenly have a hostile mayor, right? If you suddenly have a MAGA mayor.
which is what you’re looking at. There’s a lot of issues here. Chief among them is Alex Melchiorre is the Blooming Grove Chief of Police. Can he run as the Chief of Police and be the village mayor? So New York State Board of Elections was kind of like, you know, maybe, like they weren’t very, they didn’t write back and they weren’t emphatic. Like they were kind of like, you know,
Maybe you should check with the County Board of Elections and see if it’s OK. Supervisor Robert Jeroloman and the Town of Blooming Grove didn’t have an issue with Melchiorre running. So that’s a whole different issue, right? So there’s this question I’ve gotten of, can you be the police chief and run for mayor in the neighboring municipality? And the answer seems to be maybe. But then there’s this other question of, OK, well, if you’re elected mayor and you were the police chief in Blooming Grove,
How does that work? And that there seems to be a bit more documentation around conflicts of interest from the attorney general’s office. The Monroe Gazette has reached out to the attorney general’s office about is there a conflict of interest and if so, how is it remedied? If you’re watching this, you know the attorney general’s office kind of sucks. They’ve only ever gotten back to us once, no, twice in the history of The Monroe Gazette Like they have only ever replied to us twice. First was about a thing in Sullivan County.
And then the second time was just recently where we wanted, we put in a FOIL request for a letter that the state AG had sent to ICE. And they got that right to us. within an hour or two that I put in the FOIL, the head of PR and communications for Letitia James got back to us. So, it’s not that they’re not reading the emails, clearly they are. They just choose to get back to us whenever they feel like it. So we did ask the attorney general’s office about whether or not there was an issue.
with Melchiorre being police chief and mayor. The second issue is if you are the 40 % Latino population in the village of Monroe and you suddenly have a MAGA Mayor what happens? Does he fire Chief Guzman? Probably not because Guzman and Melchiorre apparently
They know each other. They’ve got a good relationship. I haven’t heard or seen anything that would indicate a change in the chief of police, which is good because Chief Guzman has been very good in communicating with the Latino community about ICE and about some of the issues. But there is a concern of, well, you know, before Dwyer wasn’t backing the Melt Act resolution, right? Like he wasn’t backing New York for All. Well, now you’ve got a MAGA mayor and you’ve got a MAGA majority on the village board.
So you can just kiss that goodbye. That’s an issue. That’s a very big issue that we’re probably gonna have to spend a lot of time and resources just figuring out what’s going on there. Like who is speaking up for the Latino community in the village of Monroe? It’s not gonna be Alex Melchiorre So that’s another issue. And then there’s other complications, right? So like the Roscoe Smith property, the village of Monroe wanted to, or is, I never...
I never quite got the status of this. My understanding is that they did file an eminent domain, but don’t hold me to that because I haven’t found any documentation to show that there’s an eminent domain proceeding. But now you’ve got this question of, if the village entered an eminent domain proceeding for the Roscoe Smith property, and suddenly you’ve got a MAGA board with the backing of Satmar landlords such as Avrohom Flohr
and real estate representatives such as Lipa Deutsch, what happens to the Roscoe-Smith property? Because they wanted to subdivide that. does that eminent domain request get thrown out? That’s a question for the Village of Monroe residents to start asking. And that’s a question for us as The Monroe Gazette to investigate. So that’s a thing to pay attention to. And then there’s also other issues. So we talked about ICE. We talked about the eminent domain issue.
Flohr and Deutsch have properties with about a decade worth of building code violations. I have a list of all of them. Some of the citations aren’t huge deals, to be fair. One of them is like, a tree was down. The tree is down on your property. Come get the tree. OK. I was looking for something a bit more concerning, honestly, when I put in the FOIL request for Flohr and Deutsch’s properties. And I was much more concerned about.
Is there mold, right? Are they renting the property and there’s mold and the mold is not being treated? Are they renting the property and then are they harassing and taking advantage of the undocumented Latino community, right? Are they saying, if you don’t pay rent, we’re going to call ICE? Are they saying that, like, those are the things that we, as The Monroe Gazette we’re concerned with. What we got was instead a list of like code enforcement violations, which, yeah, those are legitimate. Like, I’m not, I don’t want to sound like I’m making excuses. Like if you are,
wealthy enough to be a landlord, you are wealthy enough to take care of your property, period. And so I don’t want to sound like I’m dismissing it, but we were looking for something a more substantial and we just didn’t see it. But there are questions now of, okay, well, if you want to take the housing in the village of Monroe and you want to build on it let’s say you want to put in an accessory apartment. On one hand, there is a housing shortage. I just wrote a letter to the town board saying, I don’t want any Airbnb.
Because every time you take a housing unit off the market and make it a rental, you’re making the housing shortage worse. So if you live in Southern Orange County and you’re like, I don’t want high density housing, you should be opposed to those Airbnbs It’s because every Signal time it becomes a rental, that’s a house that’s come off the market, which means that there’s one more house we need to build. There’s one more housing unit we need to build. So on one hand, you know, if you say to me, well, we want accessory apartments because grandma needs a place to live. I totally get it. I totally support that.
But then there’s this question of, well, is grandma really gonna live in the accessory apartment or is it gonna be someone who’s here that’s undocumented that you’re gonna take advantage of because they need housing and you know that they can’t get housing through other means because they’re undocumented. these are all things to be concerned with with the Village of Monroe.
my other concern is this. a big issue in the town election was what happens with this IMA between the village and the town, this proposed IMA, where the village would offer police services to the town of Monroe at a rate of about $2 million. It was $2 million at start, and it would come down to about $1.87 million. That was the offer the village made. was like it was for 10 officers and new vehicles and...
support staff and just all these things that you would need to expand. Is that going to happen under Alex Melchiorre? Because remember, Alex Melchiorre was hired, and I have to use the quotation marks because it was never really clear if Melchiorre was making money off of this. The Town of Monroe said no, but the Town of Monroe under Tony Cardone lied, so we don’t know.
But there is a real concern of Alex Melchiorre was the one that was shepherding the arrangement between the town of Monroe and Paul Arteta, the sheriff who is pro-ice. So is Alex Melchiorre going to be amenable to a village IMA that provides police services to the town of Monroe? And if not, what does the town of Monroe do? So that’s a big issue. Like that was an election. was...
That was an issue that I think played a massive role in, you know, because voters, if you’re watching this, you’re not in like in the 90 % of voters, right? Like you’re in that 9 % or even 1 % of like you’re engaged or kind of engaged. So you pay attention to local issues, but that’s not most people. Like most people only start to pay attention maybe a month, if that, right? Before an election. And so whatever’s top of mind that month, that’s why they call it an October surprise.
in presidential politics. They call it the October surprise because that’s when the majority of people are paying attention. so the October surprise for Tony Cardone was this sheriff thing. And so now you’ve got people that voted for Maureen Richardson and Beth Stephens and Luis Rivera on this issue of we want the police force to police the town. And now you’ve got a hostile mayor.
Right? Like you’ve got a mayor who is not for that. So what happens? And we don’t, you know, again, it’s 2:41 it’s not nine o’clock yet. We don’t know how the selection is going to turn out, but I’m just trying to game out now, or at least run scenarios by you of things to look out for if Alex Melchiorre wins. I mean, Neil Dwyer wins great. There, you know, there’s no secret that I have issues concerning ICE’s presence in the village of Monroe. I think that you, Monroe,
the village of Monroe , well the town has already passed a resolution supporting the MELT ACT and I understand the town is also going to support a resolution for New York for All, which is fantastic, but the village wouldn’t, right? So you can just forget that under Alex Melchiorre. Like, it’s just not gonna happen unless you scream at him. I’m happy to arrange that screaming, so more on that. So it’s a long way of saying,
The scenario here is very fluid. And the town of Monroe now, if, if Melchiorre and remember it’s not just Melchiorre, it’s Mancuso and Pfeiffer. So you now have a board majority. You have the MAGA majority if they went on the village of Monroe. And then you’ve got, you know, I’m sorry, you’ve got John Karl and Debbie Behringer left. I’ve got, I’m sure Mrs. Behringer is very nice. I have not met her in person. Maybe I have once. I have issues with Mrs. Behringer because during the sheriff debate,
for three straight meetings. She just kind of sat there and let Tony Cardone and Dorey Houl lie to the town. And not once did she get up and say, hey, none of that was true, which I thought was really fucked up because she’s friends with Dorey and Tony and that’s fine. But when you’re an elected official, your job isn’t to protect your friends. Your job is to speak on behalf of the people that elected you. And on behalf of the people that elected you, Tony Cardone and Dorey Ghoul as I call her, are lying.
And your job is the fact check. Your job as a village trustees is to get up and say, no, none of that was true. She didn’t do that. She didn’t do that at three meetings, three consecutive meetings. She did not do that. And then she got up to defend Sal Scancarello because we at the Monroe Gazette had asked about, you know, I think you know the story, if not, Scancarello’s son had a TikTok account and he recorded videos this summer at the Monroe Target, his son, not Sal Scancarello, where Sal’s son was like threatening to murder.
Hasidic men, Samar men. And ⁓ that’s a real thing that people were upset about. And we asked him we said, do you want to apologize on behalf of your son? Or do you want to apologize to the Jewish community for these videos? And Debbie Behringer got up and was like, well, you got to bring your sons into it. And I’m thinking like, what the fuck, Debbie? That’s not what, I don’t care that his kid did it. I care that an elected official during a time of rising anti-Semitism across America had a son.
recording videos at the local Target where he threatened to murder Satmar men. Now, or not it was a prank, which I’m sure it was, I don’t think it was like an actual hate crime or an attempted hate crime, whether or not it was a joke, it doesn’t matter. nationally, there is a problem with anti-Semitism. So Debbie got up and that was the thing that she spoke about with Sal Scancarello’s son. like, as far as I’m concerned, if you live in the Village of Monroe, you should vote her out when she’s up. So.
she’s left over and then John Karl’s left over. And John Karl to his credit has been the one consistently that has talked about the hydrogen sulfide issue in the village of Monroe. Like he has, him and Neil Dwyer have repeatedly since 2021 emailed Orange County saying, there’s an odor, we know where it’s coming from. We know it’s South Blooming Grove. We know it’s because South Blooming Grove won’t turn on the ANUE system. And.
will you do something about it, right? Like they were the Neil Dwyer and John Karl were the ones banging on drum. And then Maureen Richardson picked it up. Rightfully so, because it is an issue, because Tony Cardone ignored it for years. So like John Karl is one thing, like he’s been pretty consistent about communicating this. And by the way, that hydrogen sulfide issue isn’t over.
In fact, the issue is a little worse than people thought, not in terms of the hydrogen sulfide levels. So the hydrogen sulfide levels, at least I’m trying to think of the day. I saw documents going as far back as like January. I haven’t seen anything recently, but as of January, the levels seem tolerable. You occasionally smell it, but it’s not dangerous. But the issue is this. The issue is how we all thought, including myself.
that the hydrogen sulfide was only coming out of two sewer grates, right? It was coming out of the one in the playground and it was coming out of the one across the street. You know, I took the bus for years across the street from what was Monroe taxi and then became The Depot and I don’t what’s there’s now, but that’s sewergrate where you stand to get the short line bus into the port authority was the other source of the emissions. As it turns out, it’s multiple sources. Like it’s not just those two manholes. The hydrogen sulfide smell is coming from
many manholes in the Village of Monroe And that’s sort of that situation now. And so here’s another question to think about. Alex Melchiorre is buddies with Isaac Ekstein That’s a fact. There was a fire recently at 33 Tanger Road. Robert Jeroloman, the supervisor of Blooming Grove, disputes this story. But I’ve heard from multiple first responders that were on the scene that Melchiorre and Ekstein were palling around. And Melchiorre was telling anyone that would listen that Isaac is great and the media should be nicer to him.
There was another instance where the NBC reporters came to George Kalaj’s house to talk to him about the helicopter and George Kalaj called Isaac. Ekstein blocked in the NBC reporters and then Ekstein called Blooming Grove police. And then within a couple of minutes, Blooming Grove police was there to question the reporters. Ekstein and Melchiorre are tight. So here’s another question. Ekstein and Stern have publicly said that they will not turn on the ANUE
system, which would stop or at least cut down on the hydrogen sulfide problem in Monroe until Orange County drops its lawsuit over Gonzaga Park, which is not happening. I think we’ve bullied Neuhaus enough to where that case is not going to be dropped, or at least it’ll be suicide for Neuhas to drop that case. But what happens when you have a mayor of Monroe who doesn’t want to deal with the hydrogen sulfide issue, because it’s his buddy, who he doesn’t want to upset Ekstein
That’s a real problem. And that’s something we have to think about. So more to come on the village of Monroe. It is deeply concerning. I’ve been on the phone. I’m supposed to work on my taxes today. I was supposed to. I had this whole day set aside where I was like, all right, I’m going to go and I’m to meet with some people. We’re going to talk to some local activists about me running for state senate as a write-in. More on that later. And then I’m going to come home and I’m going to work on my taxes. And that was my plan. And then. ⁓
It’s just sort of been nonstop of talking to local elected officials about, OK, well, let’s say Melchiorre wins. How does that impact the town of Monroe? How does that impact the town and village of Woodbury? How does that impact the town and village of Chester? Can, for example, the town of Chester provide police coverage to parts of the unincorporated section of Monroe that’s on the border? And could the town of Woodbury provide police coverage to parts of Monroe and Harriman?
so that maybe we don’t need to expand the village police, maybe we just create like these zones where maybe there’s some help from the neighboring municipalities, maybe it’s the IMA. Personally, if it was me, if it was me.
I would take all of the police forces in Monroe, Woodbury, Chester, Blooming Grove, and Palm Tree if they’re interested, and Warwick and Tuxedo if they were interested, and even Cornwall if they were interested, and I would merge them. And I would say we now have a one unified municipal police force, and they police everywhere. They’re held accountable to a higher standard if you do that.
I know people’s first reaction is usually, no, layoffs. And I don’t want layoffs. I want more police. I want more police. I want better paid police, better trained police. But I feel like we have all these little fiefdoms with the local police forces and we have all these territorial disputes and you have parts of Monroe that have no coverage. You have other parts of the area that have no coverage. And it seems to me that a simple solution would just be to unify the police.
and have one agency responsible. That’ll never happen. That’s just me. I would love to see it happen. It will never happen. There’s too many egos involved. There’s too many fiefdoms involved. I don’t want to take shots at anybody. I don’t think it will happen. But I think it’s a good idea, honestly, because if you’re a town of Monroe resident, great idea, because you’ve got your police coverage. I also think for EMS and fire.
I want those people paid. I don’t want volunteer firefighters and volunteer EMS in the 21st century, in 2026, in a world where no one can afford to live, let alone do much of anything else, including vote, including coming to town and village meetings. I want everyone paid. The only way to do that though is a merger. Anyway, ⁓ the last thing I want to talk to you about is really two simple questions.
⁓ The first one is this.
If you feel, or the question should be, do you feel that we are living through a national emergency? Yes or no? Because a lot of people say no. And you can tell. You can tell with the ice and Chester thing. There was a lot of people who showed their ass. There was a lot of people that were like, know, it’s a Chester, we’re in Woodbury, that’s a Chester problem, why are we talking about a Chester problem?
And it’s like, well, listen, dipshit, this is a constitutional problem first. And last time I checked, all elected officials are sworn to uphold the Constitution. So in our Constitution, I’m looking for my copy of it. I can’t reach it and be on camera at the same time. In the Constitution, you’ll notice it says people and it says citizens. And that is very deliberate. Like that was a deliberate choice by the founders of America and the framers of the Constitution and by the people who wrote the 14th Amendment.
Like ⁓ Roscoe Conklin is a guy not a lot of people know. If you saw Death by Lightning on Netflix, actually here, do this. If you want to look for a fun watch, it was really good. It was a lot of fun to watch. But the bad guy is not really the bad guy in real life. So the bad guy in Death by Lightning, one of them is Roscoe Conklin, right? And he’s sort of this rival to Garfield who’s running for president, not.
No, not Andrew Garfield, guy who played Spider-Man once. The other Garfield, the ran for president. Him and Conklin were at odds. And so if you watch Death by Lightning, Conklin is portrayed as a bad guy. But Conklin is one of the framers of the 14th Amendment. And Conklin was very clear in the wording of the 14th Amendment where he said, it says people, not citizens, all people.
in the United States, the law shall be applied to them equally. That was an intentional choice by the founders or framers of the 14th Amendment. So when we talk about things like ICE, it’s a constitutional issue. And I don’t care if you are a MAGA Woodbury town board member, like Calore or if you’re MAGA mayor, like Alex Melchiorre if you do become mayor, because it doesn’t matter what you think. The Constitution says the laws of the United States shall be applied equally to people, period.
For further proof of that, after the 14th Amendment was passed, the Supreme Court, people get mad at the Supreme Court, saying like, oh, look at them selling out to the corporation. But with the exception of the 1960s, 50s and 60s and part of 70s, there was like this brief blip. And there was a blip where the Supreme Court was like, we’re going to put people first. But before and after, the Supreme Court was putting corporations first.
And they were always put in corporations first. And we can show that through the history of the 14th Amendment. Because the 14th Amendment says the word person and people and not just citizen, the rights of corporations grew after the 14th Amendment because the argument that was made repeatedly in different cases was corporations are people too. That was something that was implied a bunch of times. Other times it was outright stated. So the 14th Amendment says that people.
you have to apply the laws equally to all people, which includes people that are here undocumented. And so, the question is, do you think we’re living through an emergency? And when the 14th Amendment is, that is the Signal most important amendment, and I understand.
Look, most people don’t go to college. College is expensive. College is as expensive as shit. And it shouldn’t be. So most people who graduate high school, they never open a history textbook. If you’re lucky, maybe they’ll pop open a book. Maybe if you’re lucky, they’ll watch something like Death by Lightning and they’ll see Roscoe Conklin and be like, all right, I would like to learn more about that weird gentleman who is a bad guy in this TV show, but in real life, wrote
the 14th Amendment, which is the Signal most important amendment in the Constitution. Most people don’t know. And so I understand when you start talking to them about the Constitution, that they just assume because they saw the Fox News or they just don’t know what the Constitution, what the 14th Amendment says. But it says people. It says people. And so if you acknowledge that we’re living in an emergency, you can’t behave as if
everything is normal. And so that’s sort of my issue right now of I see a whole lot of people and I see a whole lot of elected officials, Skoufis among them. Not to Signal him out though, because it’s all of them. It’s all of them. It’s Hochul it’s Letitia James, it’s the Comptroller. Like it’s all of them. It’s Brian Maher, it’s Steve Neuhaus Like Neuhaus, for example, during the ICE thing, what did he say to you in his videos? He said,
I’m more concerned about the protests. He was adamant, like he said, he was much more concerned about the protests than he was anything else. So there’s people that realize that we’re living through an emergency and people that don’t, and the majority of people are people that don’t. And that’s a problem because the situation that we’re living in is only going to get worse. The problem in New York is that New York state politics, they have what they call the big ugly, right? And the big ugly is essentially
⁓ We don’t, New York only does things by smushing it into the budget, right? Like if you want the laws to change in New York state, you have to find a way to get it into the budget, basically. And if it’s not in the budget, if it’s not part of the budget negotiations, then maybe, it gets passed
but that doesn’t happen all that often. Instead, if it’s not in the budget, it’s dead, at least for a year, right? Or alternatively, at the last, usually there’s a big push at the end of the session, right? Like last year there was a big push for the Package Reduction Recycling Infrastructure Act. I’m sorry, it’s P-R-R-I-A, I think is what its initials are. And so there were these calls at the last minute saying, you know, we need to pass this on the last day, but Speaker Heastie wouldn’t bring it to the floor.
because of course not, because he works for the corporations, because he thinks everything is fine. And so if you think that we’re living through an emergency, now is the time for you to plant your feet and start to speak up. Not enough people speak up. Not enough people speak up. I’m seeing the same people, and this isn’t anything against the people who come, God bless the people that come to town and village board meetings. Seriously, like I’m not even a religious person, but if you take the time every day to...
participate in a town meeting or a village meeting. Thank you. But not enough of us do. And some of it, look, some of it is because we’re all time poor, right? Like we’re all being squeezed financially. Our lives are not designed to have time to participate in local government because some of us are working two, three jobs. Some of us cannot pay for groceries. And so, you know, I don’t have two hours to spend on a Monday night because I might need to work a second shift at a gas station. like that’s a real thing.
But if you have time and you know that we’re living in an emergency, then I just want to implore them to speak up. Every chance you get, you plant your feet, you use your voice. Not enough of us are. And it shows. It shows because in a world where people plant their feet, in a world where people vote, and in a world where people organize, we don’t have these crazy situations like we have in Orange County.
where a couple of landlords, you mean to tell me a couple of landlords got pissed and so they’re going to get rid of the mayor so that they don’t have to pay like all these fines. That’s why we’re getting a new mayor? Really? Really. What about the fact that he’s MAGA? Well, that doesn’t seem to be a problem because the two guys don’t care. They only care about their money because money warps our politics and so
This is the time for you to get up and say, I’m not a corporation. I’m not a wealthy person. I’m not a real estate developer. I just live here. yeah, things are not normal. They are going to get worse. And until we start to behave as if there’s an emergency, things will continue to get worse. You should look carefully at your food that you’re buying at Shop Rite because the FDA cuts staff left and right. So who knows whether or not your food’s been checked?
That’s a real thing. Do we have avian flu? We don’t know. ⁓ You might be, here’s another example that you might not think about of a way that this emergency has affected you. You might’ve noticed when you’re watching the weather where, weather people are notorious for getting it wrong. I used to do a lot of work in Chicago with the local media. And when I met the Chicago weatherman, shit, I’m blanking on his name. It was about a decade ago now.
But the first thing he said to me was, BJ, it’s nice to meet you. Do you know what the most dangerous job in Chicago is? I said, what? And he said, weatherman. So weather people are notorious for getting it wrong, a blowing forecast. But if you watch the news, you might have heard something different where they’re saying, according to this model, listen carefully. The next time you listen to the weather, the next time you watch the weather on News 12 or NBC4 or any of local TV stations, listen to them carefully.
because you’re going to hear them say, according to this model. And the reason why is because the Trump regime has cut a lot of funding to the National Weather Service. so, for example, one of the things our government does is we put out weather balloons in the Pacific Northwest, because that could tell us which way the winds are blowing and which way the storm systems are coming in. We’re not doing that. We’re not, because someone decided it was too expensive and we didn’t want to do it. And so now we have these competing weather models that are giving us different information at different hours.
So that is incredibly dangerous and very scary because we’re heading into yet another spring and summer of climate change and climate emergency where our storms are more powerful. You’re getting 50, 60 mile per hour winds, which are incredibly dangerous that could blow in without much notice or advanced warning. that’s, a lot of people, even if you’re the most selfish person, even if you’re like, the only thing I care about is my house and my property value. Okay, well, let’s play that out.
If you care only about your house and the only about your property value, what are you going to do when 60, 70 mile per hour winds take down a tree and the tree falls on your house? And then you might go, well, FEMA is going to cover it. Well, guess what? FEMA has also undergone a lot of budget cuts. And if you look at what happened out in California with wildfires, if you look at what’s happening in Nebraska right now with their fire. They’ve got a huge fire. It’s the largest in their history. If you look at the Jennings Creek fire.
which we had in our region, yeah, we was eight miles away from Monroe. These are large scale problems. And if you think that the federal government’s gonna come and bail you out through FEMA, it ain’t happening. And that’s to blame Trump specifically, because I remember during Hurricane Sandy, I wasn’t here, I was up in Potsdam at the time, but I remember there was a lot of damage to my parents’ house. And FEMA basically said, yeah, the only thing we can pay for is like a casket.
So FEMA has always had problems, always, always, always had problems, but now the problem is worse. And that’s the difference. So do you live in an emergency? Yes or no? I say yes. And if you think yes, it’s time for you to speak. And the thing you can do, the last thing I’m tell you is, and you’re gonna hear me say this a lot over however long we keep doing the Gazette. The thing you’re gonna hear me say a lot of this ...
The answer to the question of whether or not you are organized is this. If you say to me, we are organized, the first thing I’m gonna say to you is, okay, well, that means you have a Signal group with 10 of your neighbors. And then the thing I’ve heard repeatedly is I don’t have that. Then you’re not organized. You’re not. You are either depending on Facebook, which is fine to a point, but you have to remember that Facebook does not reach everybody.
repeatedly since we’ve been doing the Monroe Gazette. I constantly do sentiment analysis, which is basically looking at what everyone is saying in the comments section of popular threads, whether it’s on Nextdoor or whether it’s on Facebook or whether it’s in For A Better Woodbury or whether it’s in Monroe Matters. And yes, I have burner accounts in different groups. I’m not going to tell you who those are. But I do use the burner accounts to lurk, essentially, and see what’s being said.
And repeatedly, what you see on Facebook is not reality, not in our region anyway. Like it’s just not true. A great example of this is during the sheriff’s thing where, you know, if you went by like the threads on Monroe Matters, you would think everyone supported the sheriff. But if you went to the meetings, completely different story, completely different story. Like the people that came out, the people that actually live here did not want a PRO-ICE sheriff. And so...
you have to have these Signal groups. These Signal groups are the key. This is how.
whoever you want to fight, whoever it is, whether it’s the real estate developers, whether it’s Trump, whether it’s bad Democrats, we have a lot of bad Democrats too. And I’m an independent by the way, I’m not registered Democrat anymore, so I’m not affiliated with them. So it’s anyone, anyone that you want to oppose or deal with. If you don’t have these Signal groups, you have nothing, because a Signal group allows you one, to organize and say, all right, we got a town meeting, who can go, who can’t go.
If you can’t go, do you have five minutes to copy and paste this letter? If you can’t go, here’s a script to call Skoufis and tell him you should support the New York Health Act. And who cares if it’s too expensive because it’ll save billions of dollars in, I’m sorry, it’ll save us billions of dollars and millions of lives. That’s a fact. It will save us $4 billion a year once it’s fully implemented. That’s from the RAND Corporation. Like that’s not me pulling that out of my butt. That is from a very conservative think tank saying, yeah, New York Health Act will actually save New York State.
billions every year and it’ll save millions of lives. So it’s not acceptable for Skoufis to say, it’s too expensive. It’s like, yeah, we know it’s expensive, but we will make that money back. That’s why you invest. That’s why like any business owner will tell you that you eat shit the first one to three years that you’re running a small business, you will eat shit. Like you will not make a lot of money. But over the long term, over the long term, you will see a growth curve and you will start to see the money coming and then you will start to make up for the losses as long as you’re growing the business appropriately.
doing things you’re supposed to do. Anyway, so my challenge for you is this, you’ve made it this far and you’re listening to us and you think you’re organized, do you have 10 of your neighbors in a signal group? Because once you’re organized, you can do things like I just mentioned. You can also do things like spread actual information and correct disinformation. So for example, if you see like a crazy Tim Mitts post where he’s...
I’m trying to think of some crazy, he has me blocked, so I’m trying to think of some crazy shit that I’ve seen from him recently. ⁓ yeah, where he’s like going on and on about Maureen, or I’m sorry, Supervisor Richardson. Saying she’s in bed with Satmar but she’s not in bed with Satmar. She has a better relationship with Kiryas Joel than Tony Cardone does. Whether or not you like that, that’s not for me, I don’t have a problem, but there are.
A lot of bigots and anti-Semites, But within your Signal group, you would be able to discuss this without having to worry about astroturfing, without having to worry about someone with a fake account trying to persuade you, without having to worry about Facebook. Because people think if I post something on Facebook, everyone will see it. Well, it’s not the case. This is my field of expertise. I’ve been in this space. I’m a published author.
in this space, you know, my first book came out, social media is bullshit, like I know these algorithms. And people think if I post something on Facebook, everyone’s gonna see it. It’s just not the case. Facebook is constantly scanning for what they think the most engaging thing is to show you. And if you’re posting very calm updates about stuff that’s happening locally, Facebook is not showing it to people. If you’re posting like bad shit, crazy things, that’s the thing that Facebook’s gonna show people because rage.
and anger, you might have heard the term rage bait. That’s essentially what that is, right? Like rage sells. And that’s what Facebook shows you. So in a Signal group, you don’t have that problem. It’s one to one communication with people that you’ve vetted. If you can get enough people in that group and then get another, know, so the idea is this. You, if you organize it, you’re you’re the neighborhood captain. Your job then, once you have the 10 people, is to recruit other neighborhood captains and have them form a Signal group.
and have them form a Signal group of another neighbor. You see how this works? And then you scale up. You don’t want to too many people into one Signal group. That gets crazy. But you do want to have this constellation of local signal groups where information can hop from one group to another through the captains. Once you have that established, you will see some serious shit change around here. I promise you. If I had 1,000 people.
A thousand dedicated people calling Skoufis every day to pass the New York Health Act. He would cave and say, oh yeah, it’s a good idea. If we had a thousand people call Neuhaus every day and say, no more ICE agreement with Orange County Jail, he will cave. The thing is, there is no local infrastructure. There isn’t. There’s a lot of well meaning people who set up a Facebook group. Or there are, but they’re a one and done, right? So a good example, and I’m not picking on.
anybody with us, we the people of Woodbury right? Did an amazing job. did, they did, that group did an amazing job with the petitions to the DEC. And what happened? They won. But then what happens? What happens to that coalition after you’ve won? Right? Because a lot of people think, okay, we won, it’s over. It’s never over though. It’s never over. This is an ongoing battle. This is a thing that requires
If you want to live in a democracy, if you want to live in a place where all people, regardless of their citizenship, where all people, regardless of how they came here, what color they are, what their religion, whatever. If you want to live in a world that upholds the 14th Amendment, that says that all people count, essentially, is that everyone counts, then that requires constant vigilance. That requires staying in touch after you’ve won, staying in touch after you’ve elected your people, and saying, OK.
Kathryn Luciani is coming back. We’re going to stop her. This person is going to run against Robert Jeroloman again. Jeroloman is up for reelection. That’s a big issue in Blooming Grove. That’s a huge thing that’s coming up is Supervisor Jeroloman’s reelection. Are you organized? Do you have that signal group? If not, you’re not organized. It’s a constant battle. It’s a constant fight and it’s exhausting.
And I understand that. And that’s why you want these neighborhood groups, because you shouldn’t have to carry the load. The whole point of the group is that everyone is doing their part. Everyone is chipping in. Everyone is building momentum. Everyone has a role to play, as opposed to an amazing show of force ⁓ with We the People Woodbury. It’s about consistency. It’s about being able to continue to show up, even after you’ve had a victory.
and continuing to speak out and continuing to be organized. And that requires on the ground one-to-one organizing and we just don’t have it. So my project with the Monroe Gazette is gonna help this community build that. I didn’t answer any questions. I still spoke for almost an hour. I apologize. That was not my intent. I wrote down three things I wanted to talk about and here we are for an hour. So, man, there’s a lot happening. I wish.
I truly, know, I, when Maureen, Beth, and Luis and Andrew, and Jackie, like just Martha, when everyone won, and Vernick. I’m sorry, I’m just blanking on everyone’s name, but when everyone in Woodbury and Monroe won, I was so happy, because I.
Because I thought, OK, now I could just write about South Blooming Grove. Right? Like, now I can just focus on the fire, the big fire that we have to deal with, which is South Blooming Grove. It hasn’t worked out that way. And that’s not their fault. It’s just the nature of.
we’re living through an emergency and things like the ICE concentration camp comes up, right? And then things like, how do the police protect us? Because that’s next story that we’re working on, If you drive on 32, along 32 along Woodbury Commons are those flock safety cameras, which are constantly collecting and gathering information that goes to Woodbury police, just for example. And in that database, that database may be accessed by DHS and ICE.
Do you want that? Well, I don’t know. But that’s another story that’s coming that we need to talk about. So because we live in an emergency, I haven’t been able to step back and take a breath. Because the thing I want to leave you with, you can’t put your head in the sand. You can’t. I’ve had this conversation with people where a lot of people just want to pretend that nothing is happening. But bad things are happening. I know that’s simplistic.
but that’s the world we live in. And you might not know this specific bad thing. You might not have known about the weather thing until I told you. You might not have even thought about the safety of the deli meat. You buy at Shop Rite You might not have thought about algorithmic pricing and Shop Rite You might not have thought about Trump wanting Medicare to make decisions using artificial intelligence instead of a person, which would mean that some of you watching this maybe denied medical coverage, maybe denied coverage for a procedure that you need. You might not have known. And I get it because part of
the game, right? Part of the game plan is just to flood everyone with so much shit at once that you don’t know what’s up and down. And so it’s very easy to put your head in the sand and say, all right, I’m just gonna pretend it’s not happening. But it is affecting you. It is impacting you and you need to plant your feet and you need to speak up. So I’m gonna shut up now. I will leave you with that. I will let everyone know on the Monroe Gazette Facebook page and through our notes, if you go to MonroeGazette.com and click on notes.
is a little section there that I update as I get stuff. So I’ll make sure to update that with some village election results and I’ll see you all next week with another video.
