NY: Elite still 'packing heat' in NY

Josey1

GOV PAL DRESSED DOWN

By FREDRIC U. DICKER

October 26, 2004 -- EXCLUSIVE

ALBANY - Gov. Pataki has quietly allowed one of his biggest contributors to be made a "deputy superintendent" and "colonel" in the State Police, angering law-enforcement officials, The Post has learned.

David Mack, a megamillionaire New York City construction executive whose brother provided the governor with a controversial private jet ride to a St. Barts vacation last year, regularly shows up at official functions, including police funerals, in a full-dress police uniform with a 9 mm pistol on his belt, a prominent law-enforcement source told The Post.

"He's a glad-hander and he is really an embarrassment to all police officers," the source continued.

A senior State Police official called Mack "our own 'Kentucky Colonel,' " and said his appointment "has brought shame to the entire force."

No press release was issued when the high-rolling Mack, who was also named by Pataki to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and is vice chairman of the state-controlled Metropolitan Transportation Authority, was quietly named to his unpaid post six months after Pataki took office in January 1995.

Mack, described by those who know him as a "police buff" with a personal pistol permit, lists the State Police appointment on his official r?sum? on the Port Authority Web site.

A State Police spokesman said no one else holds such a position.

State Board of Election records show Mack contributed more than $40,000 to Pataki and the state GOP during the past four years and his brother Earl, and other Mack family members, have given tens of thousands of dollars more.

Attempts to reach Mack for comment were unsuccessful.



Lt. Glenn Miner, a State Police spokesman, said Mack had been given an "honorary position with no police powers such as making arrests."

He said he had not been given an official vehicle or authorized to carry a firearm.

Miner said Mack is permitted to wear a State Police uniform at official functions and had provided advice "related to the management of trooper stations and training centers" that, he claimed, "saved the state hundreds of thousands of dollars."

Miner also insisted he had "not heard" any complaints about Mack from other police officials.

"I just know from what I understand that he's been an asset to the State Police," said Miner.

http://www.nypost.com/news/regionalnews/32742.htm

GEORGE WASHINGTON (First President)
"Firearms stand next in importance to the Constitution itself. They are the people's liberty teeth keystone... the rifle and the pistol are equally indispensable... more than 99% of them by their silence indicate that they are in safe and sane hands. The very atmosphere of firearms everywhere restrains evil interference. When firearms go, all goes, we need them every hour." (Address to 1st session of Congress)

Josey1

McCarthy: Beyond the gun ban
Amid resolve to renew weapons ban, incumbent seeks to show that isn't only issue she cares about



BY ELAINE S. POVICH
SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT

October 26, 2004


This is the first of two articles looking at the race for the 4th Congressional District.

WASHINGTON - A decade ago, Mineola nurse Carolyn McCarthy was standing on a street corner near the Capitol, tugging on lawmakers' sleeves and imploring them to pass the assault weapons ban. They did, and two years later McCarthy was elected to Congress on a gun control platform.

Now, with that federal law banning assault weapons having expired, McCarthy faces re-election in an atmosphere that in many ways is tougher than the one in which she was first elected. President George W. Bush, who once pledged to retain the ban on assault guns, did little to prevent its expiration. The Republicans who control the House actively sought its demise.

The expiration of the law was enough to bring McCarthy - who lost her husband and saw her only son severely wounded in the 1993 Long Island Rail Road shootings - to tears. At a news conference last month marking the end of the law, she choked up as she remembered why she came to Congress and all that has happened since then.

"Life sometimes takes you to a place you don't want to go," McCarthy, 60, said in a recent interview in her Capitol Hill office. "Last Sept. 13 was a real disappointment. But the next day I introduced the continuation of the assault weapons ban, and come January, when we come back here, the first thing I'll do is start working for it."

Still, McCarthy can't mask the hurt she felt over seeing the bill she worked so hard to pass come to an end.

"I was disappointed in President Bush," she said. "We had been trying to see him for six months. Two weeks before it expired we got a letter back that he didn't have time to see us.

"I know unfortunately down the road something's going to happen and I'm the one who has to meet with victims," McCarthy added. And that, she says, is why she has to be the one to say, "I'm not going to give up."

Broader interests

McCarthy has been derided as a one-issue congresswoman, including by her opponent Republican Hempstead Mayor James Garner. But she says her critics are seeing only part of the picture.

Yes, she will always be identified with gun laws. But her nearly eight years in Congress have broadened her perspective and thrust her into areas she was only dimly aware of back in her other life.

Take international affairs, for example. She first became involved in foreign policy through an interest in the Irish peace process, fueled by her relationship with Rep. Peter King (R-Seaford). But she's branched out during her years in Congress, traveling to many countries, including several in the Middle East. She visited Iraq, where she has been at the forefront of demanding that Iraqi women have an equal right to vote in the upcoming elections.

She plans a visit to Thailand after the U.S. presidential election, she said, to press for more action against international trafficking of women.

A Newsday analysis showed she took nine trips during the past four years, at a cost of $10,700 paid for by private interests, the ninth-most-frequent traveler of the 30 New York members of Congress who took trips during the same time.

On the domestic front, McCarthy said she's turned what she learned in her nursing career into pressing for health care and education issues. She says education is directly tied to homeland security because an educated population is essential to keeping the nation on alert.

"Education is one area where this country should be taking a much bigger role now," she said. She said she would like to see colleges do a better job of training teachers, and if they don't, lose their license to teach.

A savvy player

McCarthy has become part of the Democratic leadership - a member of the whip team which rounds up votes - while at the same time maintaining an independent streak that drives some of her fellow Democrats crazy. She received a 42 percent favorable rating on conservative economic issues, for example, according to the authoritative National Journal rankings.

McCarthy's 4th District has a diversity of residents, including the large African-American and Hispanic communities of Hempstead and Uniondale who tend to vote Democratic. There's also the largely Democratic and Jewish Five Towns of Inwood, Lawrence, Cedarhurst, Woodmere and Hewlett. But overall voter registration favors Republicans by about 25,000 registrants.

The neophyte nurse, who admittedly seldom paid attention to elections, has become a savvy politico forging bonds with Republicans as well as Democrats. She teamed with arch-conservative Rep. Randy Cunningham (R-Calif.) to write a bill that would allow former police officers who become private investigators to carry guns across state lines. The bill is still in committee, but the diversity of sponsorship may give it a good chance of passage.

"I think it comes down to really knowing your way around here," she said. "I was told a long time ago that there's always money, you just have to find out where it is."

Knowing where the money is has helped McCarthy help her constituents on Long Island, she said. When direct appropriations for firefighters were cut, McCarthy organized grant-writing seminars for fire departments at her office, showing them how to apply for federal money. She told them to work with neighboring departments, so the requests didn't overlap, giving them a better shot at getting funding.

"We brought in $1.8 million more than the county's ever gotten before," she said.

Garner: More work needed

Not enough, according to Garner, who argues that as a Republican in a GOP-led Congress, he'd do more.

"There's no reason Roosevelt should look like it looks," he said. "I would have brought funds for that. No reason why she couldn't make this an economic development zone."

McCarthy says it "kinda irks" her that Garner doesn't recognize the $10 million she got this year to help her district and his village, including getting $7 million to continue plans for the Nassau Hub. "We've always helped him," she said.

McCarthy has raised more than $1.5 million for her re-election race, compared with about $350,000 for Garner, according to the latest Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks political contributions.
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/ny-usmcca264019565oct26,0,670431.story

GEORGE WASHINGTON (First President)
"Firearms stand next in importance to the Constitution itself. They are the people's liberty teeth keystone... the rifle and the pistol are equally indispensable... more than 99% of them by their silence indicate that they are in safe and sane hands. The very atmosphere of firearms everywhere restrains evil interference. When firearms go, all goes, we need them every hour." (Address to 1st session of Congress)

Josey1

Animal rights' activists criticize bear hunt

JOEL STASHENKO
The Associated Press


North American Bear Center: www.bear.org/

Department of Environmental Conservation: www.dec.state.ny.us/

ALBANY -- A Pataki administration plan to expand hunting for black bears in eight counties is drawing criticism from animal rights advocates, who say the state is taking the "lethal" approach to wildlife management instead of emphasizing preventative measures.

The state Department of Environmental Conservation is accepting public comment until Nov. 1 on its proposal to open up all or part of Delaware, Broome, Allegany, Livingston, Wyoming, Schoharie, Cattaraugus and Chautauqua counties for black bear hunting. Bear hunting is currently allowed in all or part of 22 counties. The proposal would add parts of Broome, Livingston, Wyoming and Chautauqua counties to the list.

The chief hunting season for bear involving hunters using firearms extends from Thanksgiving to mid-December in the Catskills and western New York and for about a month longer than that in the Adirondacks, starting in October.

The proposal currently before the state DEC would not apply until the 2005 bear hunting season.

The state estimates there are between 5,000 and 6,000 black bears in New York. The numbers of bear reported being taken by hunters has more than doubled in recent years, from 722 in 1994 to 1,864 in the 2003 hunting season.

Also on the increase are human-bear "conflicts" -- instances where humans and bears have crossed paths, the DEC said. That is true for all the areas where an expansion of hunting is proposed. The "conflicts" have resulted in bear damage to commercial agricultural crops and other property, according to the DEC.

"The proposed regulation is necessary to effectively protect both the public and the health of the bear population in the areas where the expansion is proposed," DEC spokeswoman Maureen Wren said.

The regulations were worked out with consultation from Cornell University wildlife experts, farmers and other members of the public, Wren said.

The most dramatic of the bear and human encounters occurred in August 2002, when an infant was knocked out of her baby stroller in the Catskills Mountains and dragged into the woods by a 150-pound black bear. The girl died of head and neck injuries.

It was only the second known killing of a human by a bear in an eastern U.S. forest in 100 years, according to the North American Bear Center in Ely, Minn. In May 2000, an adult female bear mauled a teacher to death near Gatlinburg, Tenn., in Great Smoky Mountain National Park.

The remaining killings occurred in remote parts of Canada and Alaska, where bears aren't accustomed to seeing people, the North American Bear Center said.

Animal rights advocates say creating new areas for hunting in New York is not an effective way to combat nuisance bears.

Holly Cheever, a veterinarian in suburban Albany and hunting opponent, said bears usually cross paths with humans only because people encourage their presence by activities such as improperly storing garbage cans outside where the animals can return again and again for free meals. Another favorite outdoor buffet for bears are bird feeders. Cheever said: "They love the little seeds and they love suet."

"Usually, nuisance bear problems in one area are due to one or two bears, not the whole population," Cheever said. "You go after all the bears, that is really an offensive kind of overkill and not an effective way to go about the problem."

Cheever planned to appear on behalf of the state Humane Association and other groups at an Albany news conference to call on DEC Commissioner Erin Crotty to reject the proposed expansion of bear hunting territory.

The groups got "Law and Order" detective Jerry Orbach to give them a statement opposing the bear hunt proposal.

"The bear is not a criminal and she does not deserve the death penalty for eating tiny seeds from a birdfeeder," Orbach said.

Sue McDonough, legislative chairwoman of the state Humane Association, accused the DEC of trying to expand bear hunting zones so it can sell more hunting licenses.

"If people simply stop leaving food near their homes for pets and other wildlife it would be a big step toward keeping naturally shy bears away from human habitation," McDonough said.
http://www.theithacajournal.com/news/stories/20041025/localnews/1472645.html


GEORGE WASHINGTON (First President)
"Firearms stand next in importance to the Constitution itself. They are the people's liberty teeth keystone... the rifle and the pistol are equally indispensable... more than 99% of them by their silence indicate that they are in safe and sane hands. The very atmosphere of firearms everywhere restrains evil interference. When firearms go, all goes, we need them every hour." (Address to 1st session of Congress)