No defense for ‘shady’ politics
To The Editor:
Re “Trumped up case against Silver” (Talking Point by Ken Paskar, Feb. 12 – 25, 2015):
It hardly inspires faith in our local political organizations, in this case the Lower Manhattan Democrats represented by Ken Paskar, to attempt to refute the charges made by U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara against Sheldon Silver. Perhaps it is oxymoronic to assume that politics can ever be objective even where ethics are concerned.
While Sheldon Silver did remarkable good for us, his constituents, as our representative in Albany, “one hand does not wash the other,” as the saying goes. It is naïve to pretend that the climate in Albany is the best that our democracy can offer.
It is the role of local political groups to make it better, and not attempt to justify the shady climate that our state capital is well known for where Silver was one of “three men in a room” making deals for everyone in the state. Making deals gets to be a way of life.
Dolores D’Agostino
A World Trade mistake
To The Editor:
Although I do give my condolences for the death of John Whitehead, I don’t believe he did the right thing for the W. T. C. site (Obituary, Feb. 12 – 25,“Whitehead’s Downtown legacy”). Like the rest of the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., he just followed whatever then-Gov. George E. Pataki wanted, rather than actually listen to the public.
As a person who has attended just about every hearing or other events involving the process on the W. T. C. site, I have never heard anyone outside the panel ever support what was planned. If Whitehead really did want to be a hero for Downtown Manhattan, he should have agreed to go with what the public wanted, and have the Twin Towers back, rather than just go with some different plan that was mostly supported in a backroom by an elite group.
I suggest reading some books such as “Sixteen Acres” and the “Outrageous Struggle for Ground Zero” by Phillip Nobel or even the more recently published “Debacle: Failing to Rebuild the Twin Towers” by Joe Wright to find out what really happened.
More importantly, Whitehead should have known that rebuilding the Twin Towers wouldn’t just cost less than building what was being planned, but it could have even been done faster as well.
Tal Barzilai
