On Saturday August 11th at 9:15 I was arrested on the street where I live for trying to get to synagogue

PA Transportation Sec. Leslie Richards tramples my rights  & those of my 88 low-income disabled & elderly neighbors  to pray

Richards is  a liberal Democrat appointed by Governor Tom Wolf. for whom my friend Bonnie supported when she ran for office in Montgomery County, Never again.

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PA Secretary of Transportation Richards controls from afar (an hour 15 minute drive away) the  ability of 89 low-income elderly and disabled residents to leave and enter our de facto nursing home. Her remote control autocracy unconstitutionally prevents me from exercising my First Amendment righ to pray to God. That is not all. Sec. Richards has in effect created a ghetto separating our residence Addison Court from the daily lives of the rest of the Downtown State College Community. You have come to the right posting for details.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Form releasing me from jail on my own recognizance

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The route to synagogue before Sec. Richards destroyed it

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How Sec. Richards prevented me from attending synagogue

From a regional office in Clearfield, a rural former coal mining town an hour and fifteen minute drive away from State College, Penn Dot administers the street on which I live ( and noteworthy its sidewalks). I filmed this video the week during  I was arrested.

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How my fellow Jews pray in the only synagogue I tried to pray open that August Sabbath

 

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Class B villain: State College Police Chief John Gardner

August 2016. Channel 6. WJAC.
STATE COLLEGE – After searching for a replacement for several months, the borough announced on Monday night that John Gardner will be the new police chief.Gardner has been the assistant chief for over 26 years. He is taking over for Tom King, who has been chief for the past 23 years. Gardner, who graduated from Philipsburg Osceola High School in 1974, was introduced on Tuesday during a news conference.He went on to study at Penn State, where he received a bachelor’s degree in Individual and Family Studies and he received his master’s degree in Administration of Justice from Shippensburg University.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Chronology of my attempt to get arrested, my final success in getting arrested, my time in jail, my time at Mt. Nittany Medical Center while still under arrest, my appearance in Commonwealth Court, and my next appearance in Court for jury selection

I. Request to be arrested at 7 PM at the Monday August 8, 2018 Regular meeting of the Borough of State College. [ Footnote 1.]

Agenda V called for public comment for which I was given four minutes. In advance, I had passed out hard copy to all Borough Council members, staff, and understandably small audience. of this blog post:

FOR LOW-INCOME DISABLED AND ELDERLY RESIDENTS IN THE BOROUGH OF STATE COLLEGE, A STATE OF EMERGENCY EXISTS

In advance, I had arranged to show the Borough Council the 3 minute plus  video above filmed earlier that Monday showing that construction made it impossible given the traffic and absence of sidewalks (under repair) to synagogue on Saturday. I noted, reading this press release:

To: Mayor Donald Hahn, Borough Manager Tom Fontaine, Solicitor Terry Williams, Esq. and the unfit members of the State College Borough Council

From: Joel Solkoff, [email protected]

7 PM: Four minute praise of Mayor Hahn, Borough Manager Tom Fontaine, and denunciation of all members of the State College Borough Council (all of whom, sadly, are Democrats).

7:30: My arrest on Beaver Avenue between Allen and Pugh

–Explicit

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At 7:05, I scooted to the desk where Police Chief Gardner was sitting and politely asked him to arrest me.

Chief Gardner was less than polite telling me we could talk about it later and “work something out.” I insisted that I wanted to be arrested immediately. He said he was busy paying attention to the meeting. He may have been paying attention but he was certainly not usefully employed given that the next item (which was a waste of a police chief’s time) was: Petition to Vacate a portion of E Alley between Hill Alley and Prospect Avenue.

Clothed in politeness, I did not tell him what I thought. Instead, I said, “Don’t worry, I can find another police officer to arrest me.”

From the elevator, I scooted to the police office on the first floor of the Borough Hall to left of the Allen Street entrance where the expensive and unnecessary automatic doors for the mobility disabled are frequently broken.

The office for the police was closed. I drove my scooter two blocks away to Beaver Avenue–two blocks away–positioning myself slighty to the right of the Allen Street light and parked my scooter  [sadly not an Amigo Mobility brand] on the middle of the street.

There where several hours of daylight left. Cars, trucks, buses and vans honked and several angry motorists hurled curse words at me. I saw a police officer to the right a quarter block away speaking loudly asking him to arrest me before I made even more of a disturbance.

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Background/digression

I was born in New York City in 1947. From 1965 to 1969, I attended Columbia College at 116th Street and Broadway. Not once did I or any of my classmates ever check to see whether the traffic light was red or green when we crossed broadway to drink beer at the West End Bar and Restaurant.  Instead, if the traffic on Broadway was moving slowly we automatically stepped in front of slow moving cars which a sixth sense told us would stop if we stepped in front. In short, my world view was and ontinues to be distinctly different from Centre Country. Routinely, I take my motorized wheel chair across Beaver Avenue when it is safe enough often causing locals to freak out and yell when I cross safely but idiosyncratically.

By comparison, the vast majjority of my 89 neighbors at Addison Court–an eight story “independent living center”– have never been to New York City. My friends and neighbors often find themselves horrified to be living in Downtown State College. Downtown being the operative word.

About 20 of my neighbors never leave their beds let alone their apartments. They are cared for by an assortment of health care workers who receive minimum wage–most of whom do not have health insurance.  Most of these health care workers live outside the small confines of the Borough of State College which has a population of 45,000.  The Borough is politically dominated by Democrats who regard themselves as liberals. The Mayor has no political power. The power in the Borough resides in the hands of seven members of the Council whose incompetence is noteworthy. Ever the optimist, I assume that the Manhattanization of Downtown is a consequence of their laziness as surrounding the glorified low-income nursing home where I live is being taken over by the forces of Mammon.

Last year, a multi-storied Hyatt opened for business. On the Thursday before the blue and white football game, the Hyatt charged $450 for one night for a room. The attitude of the Borough mothers and fathers is that Addison Court is an inconvenience. When Beaver Avenue is not clogged with traffic especially during the evening rush hour, private cars rush by at speeds of 55 miles an hour despite the 25 mile an hour speed limit and which is not enforced and despite the presence of elderly and disabled pedestrians trying to cross. Afraid, my fellow residents– whose locomotion is dependent upon walkers, canes, and manual wheel chairs–all too often limit their outdoor excursions to sitting in the parking lot watching traffic.

I have begun an oral history project. Here is my friend and neighbor Scott Carter.

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Footnotes

  1. Meeting Agenda
    State College Borough Council
    Regular Meeting
    Monday, August 6, 2018
    7:00 p.m. http://www.statecollegepa.us/AgendaCenter/ViewFile/Agenda/_08062018-1420?html=true
  2. xyz
  3. xyz

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Explicit

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oY9_KE1SEig

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Anita Hill 1991 Testimony

 

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlgAzQ8GJy0

 

 

 

 

 

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2018/09/17/anita-hills-claims-echo-in-allegations-against-kavanaugh-27-years-later-will-anything-be-different/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.a5de03dceb68

 

 

 

 

 

NYT Bombshell op-ed: I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-09-05/trump-orders-nytimes-reveal-op-ed-source-national-security-purposes

 

 

 

 

 

Opinion

I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration

I work for the president but like-minded colleagues and I have vowed to thwart parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.

The Times today is taking the rare step of publishing an anonymous Op-Ed essay. We have done so at the request of the author, a senior official in the Trump administration whose identity is known to us and whose job would be jeopardized by its disclosure. We believe publishing this essay anonymously is the only way to deliver an important perspective to our readers. We invite you to submit a question about the essay or our vetting process here.

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President Trump is facing a test to his presidency unlike any faced by a modern American leader.

It’s not just that the special counsel looms large. Or that the country is bitterly divided over Mr. Trump’s leadership. Or even that his party might well lose the House to an opposition hellbent on his downfall.

The dilemma — which he does not fully grasp — is that many of the senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.

I would know. I am one of them.

To be clear, ours is not the popular “resistance” of the left. We want the administration to succeed and think that many of its policies have already made America safer and more prosperous.

But we believe our first duty is to this country, and the president continues to act in a manner that is detrimental to the health of our republic.

That is why many Trump appointees have vowed to do what we can to preserve our democratic institutions while thwarting Mr. Trump’s more misguided impulses until he is out of office.

The root of the problem is the president’s amorality. Anyone who works with him knows he is not moored to any discernible first principles that guide his decision making.

Although he was elected as a Republican, the president shows little affinity for ideals long espoused by conservatives: free minds, free markets and free people. At best, he has invoked these ideals in scripted settings. At worst, he has attacked them outright.

In addition to his mass-marketing of the notion that the press is the “enemy of the people,” President Trump’s impulses are generally anti-trade and anti-democratic.

Don’t get me wrong. There are bright spots that the near-ceaseless negative coverage of the administration fails to capture: effective deregulation, historic tax reform, a more robust military and more.

But these successes have come despite — not because of — the president’s leadership style, which is impetuous, adversarial, petty and ineffective.

From the White House to executive branch departments and agencies, senior officials will privately admit their daily disbelief at the commander in chief’s comments and actions. Most are working to insulate their operations from his whims.

Meetings with him veer off topic and off the rails, he engages in repetitive rants, and his impulsiveness results in half-baked, ill-informed and occasionally reckless decisions that have to be walked back.

“There is literally no telling whether he might change his mind from one minute to the next,” a top official complained to me recently, exasperated by an Oval Office meeting at which the president flip-flopped on a major policy decision he’d made only a week earlier.

The erratic behavior would be more concerning if it weren’t for unsung heroes in and around the White House. Some of his aides have been cast as villains by the media. But in private, they have gone to great lengths to keep bad decisions contained to the West Wing, though they are clearly not always successful.

It may be cold comfort in this chaotic era, but Americans should know that there are adults in the room. We fully recognize what is happening. And we are trying to do what’s right even when Donald Trump won’t.

The result is a two-track presidency.

Take foreign policy: In public and in private, President Trump shows a preference for autocrats and dictators, such as President Vladimir Putin of Russia and North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, and displays little genuine appreciation for the ties that bind us to allied, like-minded nations.

Astute observers have noted, though, that the rest of the administration is operating on another track, one where countries like Russia are called out for meddling and punished accordingly, and where allies around the world are engaged as peers rather than ridiculed as rivals.

On Russia, for instance, the president was reluctant to expel so many of Mr. Putin’s spies as punishment for the poisoning of a former Russian spy in Britain. He complained for weeks about senior staff members letting him get boxed into further confrontation with Russia, and he expressed frustration that the United States continued to impose sanctions on the country for its malign behavior. But his national security team knew better — such actions had to be taken, to hold Moscow accountable.

This isn’t the work of the so-called deep state. It’s the work of the steady state.

Given the instability many witnessed, there were early whispers within the cabinet of invoking the 25th Amendment, which would start a complex process for removing the president. But no one wanted to precipitate a constitutional crisis. So we will do what we can to steer the administration in the right direction until — one way or another — it’s over.

The bigger concern is not what Mr. Trump has done to the presidency but rather what we as a nation have allowed him to do to us. We have sunk low with him and allowed our discourse to be stripped of civility.

Senator John McCain put it best in his farewell letter. All Americans should heed his words and break free of the tribalism trap, with the high aim of uniting through our shared values and love of this great nation.

We may no longer have Senator McCain. But we will always have his example — a lodestar for restoring honor to public life and our national dialogue. Mr. Trump may fear such honorable men, but we should revere them.

There is a quiet resistance within the administration of people choosing to put country first. But the real difference will be made by everyday citizens rising above politics, reaching across the aisle and resolving to shed the labels in favor of a single one: Americans.

The writer is a senior official in the Trump administration.

 

 

Liberate the Elderly and Disabled (LED) #segregated State College PA is in solidarity with the feminist movement in opposing the nomination of Judge Kavanaugh to serve on the Supreme Court

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A protester shouts as circuit judge Brett Kavanaugh appears before his Senate confirmation hearing to be an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States in the Hart Senate Office Building in Washington, DC, USA, 04 September 2018.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Day 2

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The glorious Hebrew calligraphy from the mystical city of Safed, Israel

spiral home blessing

ברחת הבית

The Hebrew letters above the spiral read Bless the House. Brchat [bless] Habayit [the house]. Blessing the House has connotations described in the spiral calligraphy below. In the Beginning, Rashi mused, before God created the world, She created the Hebrew alphabet. The Hebrew alphabet created the world. The difference between Christians and Jews is that Christians believe that in the beginning there was the Word. We believe the world began with the creation of with the first letter of the holy Hebrew alphabet. This letter: https://youtu.be/Ibih2s0rLsA

A christian Fundamentalist group released this excellent video on the first letter of God’s especially holy first name. Discover the secret behind the Hebrew letter “Yud”. Visit www.thelivingword.org.au. Published on Oct 12, 2015.

The discussion of Jesus is not relevant at the conclusion of the living word video because I do not believe in the divinity of Jesus. That said, I revere him. When I was in Israel I climbed to the top of the mount in the Gallelle where Jesus preached this remarkable sermon. Produced here, of course, in the King James Bible. While innacurate, the King James Bible is a work of art in itself. King James English is magnificent.


Matthew 5-7 New King James Version (NKJV)

The Beatitudes

5 And seeing the multitudes, He went up on a mountain, and when He was seated His disciples came to Him. Then He opened His mouth and taught them, saying:

“Blessed are the poor in spirit,
For theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn,
For they shall be comforted.
Blessed are the meek,
For they shall inherit the [a]earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
For they shall be filled.
Blessed are the merciful,
For they shall obtain mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart,
For they shall see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers,
For they shall be called sons of God.
10 Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake,
For theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

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Prelude to Safed

In August of 1967, I was falling in love with Haifa. After shoveling manure in the Negev for a solid month, the head of family returned from his tank in the Sinai. The huge manure pile was diminished. I was not quite on my own.

On a dairy farm, there is always plenty of manure to shovel. I had distinguished myself as valuable because I was the only one of the six volunteers the Jewish Agency had sent to  Kvar Warburg who lasted more than two weeks.

The other five volunteers were all British soldiers of war who had fought for Aparteid in Rhodesia and were eager to kill. Arabs would do. I was the only Jew. I spoke some Hebrew.

Shakespeare and me

William Shakespeare–The Bard [Documentary]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Shakespearehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Shakespeare

Our children have become the other America

“I have spent the past two weeks visiting the United States, at the invitation of the federal government, to look at whether the persistence of extreme poverty in America undermines the enjoyment of human rights by its citizens.

“In my travels through California, Alabama, Georgia, Puerto Rico, West Virginia, and Washington DC I have spoken with dozens of experts and civil society groups, met with senior state and federal government officials and talked with many people who are homeless or living in deep poverty. I am grateful to the Trump administration for facilitating my visit and for its continuing cooperation with the UN Human Rights Council’s accountability mechanisms that apply to all states.”

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The UN’s Philip Alston is an expert on deprivation – and he wants to know why 41m Americans are living in poverty. The Guardian joined him on a special two-week mission into the dark heart of the world’s richest nation

by

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhxWNOtUn90

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Income inequality Huey Long style

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https://youtu.be/doufU_AQB6M

 

 

 

 

 

Hollywood Turkish Bath in State College

Getting you in the mood for Juliet Mae Television Productions new series: “Hollywood Turkish Bath in State College”

 

This is not the 1920s Era photograph I had in mind showing six screen writers in Hollywood
Turkish Bath.

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Dynasty 1981 to 1989: The Heart of the Matter

Joan Collins Saves the Day

Toward the end of the 1980/1981 first season, Dynasty’s adult soap opera was in trouble.  As the night follows the day, cancellation seemed inevitable. Then, at the end of Denver oil magnate Blake Carrington’s trial for murder, Blake’s long lost first wife Alexis ( Joan Collins) shasheys to the front of the courtroom as the prosecution calls on her to testify as to Blake’s culpability.

Still not yet visible, when her name is called, it is as if a tiger ran through the courtroom. Fallon, her only daughter gasps. As Fallon covers her mouth, one can distinctly hear her exclaim, “It’s Mother,” despite the sound of 102 violins, bassoons, oboes become louder and louder.

Joan Collins made the world safe for a newer, younger version of Dynasty’s two bad girls ( e.g. women of easy virtue who use sex to get what they want) twenty-year old Heather Locklear.. Chewing gum and wearing what appears to be even fewer cloths than she is wearing, she seduces Steven into abandoning homosexuality.