Part 1: And Then There Were None

This is the first in a serialized version of a new book, The Evil that Men Do. It explores, in great detail, the malignant, deceitful, conspiratorial, contemptible, unethical, and illegal actions of Town of Clarkstown officials, Town and State judges, neighbors, the Congers Civic Association, the State DEC, and other who have been associated with an extraordinary loss of democracy, corruption, and perversion of the Rule of Law in a unique and long-running series of legal actions—nearly a dozen in all—against this author dating to 1999. What will be revealed in this book goes into far greater depth, is harrowing in its scope—and is a good read. Town officials continue to try to block us from reaching Town employees, but we'll continue to try to find a way to get the truth out to you. 
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Part 1: Why this book had to be written

All media—print, electronic, internet—sometimes put a muzzle on what they will report. Some media always put a muzzle on what they will report. The more sensational or scandalous the story, the more they are likely to play it up. The more complex and long-running a story, the more likely they are to ignore it.

There are a number of reasons for this, among them:    * All media exhibit bias, intended or unintended, and consciously cater to their targeted audience. * For-profit media bottom-line executives understand their bread is buttered by loyal advertisers and powerful politicians, and will do everything in their power not to antagonize them, including slanting stories more favorably, more agreeable placement on a page or in the paper, and even pulling stories. Let it be known at the outset that I am a retired journalist, writer, and editor whose nearly 40 years in the trenches have taught me one or two things.

Among the most important reasons why some newsworthy stories never see the light of day, or see it in a way that might be almost unrecognizable to one looking for a nonpartisan accounting of the facts, is political correctness—which, by its very nature, you’ll never hear discussed.

In these days of advocacy journalism, all reporters appear to believe they have a right—almost a sacred obligation, if you will—to present a story in such a way that readers come away agreeing with their leaning. It surely wasn’t that way in the “old” days, where one was taught the difference between an objective and equitable representation of the issues and facts, and an opinion piece. That was right out of the box in Journalism 101.

These days, it’s nearly impossible to find any media not exhibiting bias, intended or unintended, with the conscious intent of catering to their targeted audience. If you’re liberal you’re likely to read The New York Times or Washington Post or Huffington Post, or papers and magazines with a similar perspective. If you’re conservative you’re likely to read The Washington Times or Drudge Report or Breitbart, or papers and magazines with a similar perspective. Liberals who obtain their news on TV typically tune in to CNN, MSNBC, ABC, NBC, or CBS. Conservatives typically watch Fox.  

Political correctness and slanting of the news frequently looms larger than one might imagine, very much like the saying, “Figures don’t lie, but liars figure.”

If you think, when you see, hear, or read an investigative reporting story that it’s the unvarnished truth, nothing but the truth, and complete in its coverage, then you’ve never been inside an editorial office. Stories are often subject to what a producer or managing editor wants his intended audience to see or read and believe. 

In print media, which we are focusing on here, editors try to adhere to the golden rule of 70% editorial content, 30% advertising. * Story too long? Cut from the bottom. * Story being bumped down the scale of importance by breaking news? Demote it, and cut, cut, cut. * Too little advertising? Reduce the number of pages devoted to news, and cut, cut, cut—even eliminate altogether.

And then there is libel. The 800-pound gorilla. The overshadowing reason why media—all media in all mediums—often pull their punches, soft-peddle a story, bend over backwards to treat bigwigs with kid gloves, retract, apologize—perhaps pull a story before it appears, if the pressure is great enough, or even ignore its existence (as well documented with regard to our matter).

In England, a libel suit, or even the threat of one, is serious business. Instead of the accuser having to provide proof of libel, one accused of committing it must substantially prove that one actually didn’t. Guilty until proven innocent. Sort of like “proving” God exists in the absence of a present-day miracle, some might say. 

One Saudi billionaire, Khalid bin Mahfouz, with alleged ties to terrorist-designated organizations has filed and/or threatened to file numerous libel suits in England against those whose works he wants to muzzle. In one recent instance, Cambridge University Press capitulated—to the threat alone—and took the unprecedented steps of destroying all unsold books of Arms for Jihad, recalling books from libraries, issuing an abject apology to him directly, posting an apology on its web site, and paying all his legal fees—all to keep him from suing. Reminds one of Ghengis Khan who, so feared for his brutality, would send an emissary to demand surrender. And he got it.

In America—thank God for First Amendment rights and the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Sullivan v New York Times—libel laws are more protective of writers and authors, and bin Mahfouz, whose activities were meticulously documented and referenced in Arms for Jihad, would certainly have had no case to press here. 
But it frequently plays a central role in the decision-making process of what to report, how deeply to report it, how hard-hitting it should be—and whether the threat of libel and negative fallout loom large. 

A case in point is the 2013 lawsuit by Rockland County GOP Chairman Vincent Reda, Legislator/Clarkstown Highway Department Assistant Frank Sparaco, and Clarkstown Highways Superintendent Wayne Ballard, who at the time of this writing are actively suing blogger Michael Hull and former GOP candidate and political blogger Anthony Mele, claiming libel. Hull and Mele, for their part, claim this is nothing more than harassment in an attempt to silence them. Both history and the law would appear to be strongly on Hull and Mele’s side; nonetheless, they are being forced to defend themselves—and must be v-e-r-y careful what they say and write. And—win, lose, or draw—that’s precisely the point of the suit: muzzle your opponents.

We know the feeling, as ongoing legal actions by the Town of Clarkstown, and others, over a 15-year period had the effect of bankrupting us, creating years of mental anguish and medical ordeals, and causing us to abandon our homestead, which had been appraised in 2004 at $755,000, and recently our adjoining parcel of land, which had been appraised at $250,000. All of this occurred despite our having full documentation for every claim we make—see, for example, the rest of this  web site—and we refuse to be muzzled, because truth is an absolute defense. And we can’t wait to countersue anyone foolish enough to file a willfully frivolous suit.
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Except, perhaps, for a handful of independent major dailies, the investigative stories one reads in a local daily may be sanitized, incomplete, written as a routine piece, inconspicuously located on an inside page, and/or run on a low-circulation day, such as a Saturday. Hard questions are often never asked. Responses to difficult questions are often not followed by additional questions. Followup stories are frequently non-existent. 

The quintessential vision of drab, uniform, don’t-rock-the-boat, feed-’em-pablum stories is embodied in USA Today. Even major national stories. Short. Non-controversial. Tip of the iceberg. Homogenized so as not to rile its national corporate sponsors or the traveling business people who are its main targeted readership—some of whom may even have a say in corporate advertising.

The quintessential vision of a major daily is one owned by Gannett, publisher of USA Today, as well as numerous dailies in major metro and suburban markets. They make money, usually lots of money, because the local editorial side is dictated to, and often invisibly controlled, by corporate bean counters. They are chronically understaffed and underfunded—and always implicitly admonished: Don’t make waves! Don’t rile our bread-and-butter sponsors! No cancelled subscriptions! No libel suits! For God’s sake, no libel suits!!!

The quintessential paper, specifically, would appear to be The Journal News, owned by Gannett, proprietor of the largest chain of dailies in the country. Merging several former dailies into one, with modest local editorial staffs, this daily encompasses the lucrative suburban New York City markets of Westchester, Rockland, Dutchess, and Putnam Counties. 

In Rockland, where The Journal News boasts a daily readership of more than 100,000, there was not one single investigative story of our fourteen-year-long legal and environmental battles with the Town of Clarkstown. Not one. 

Oh, there were several articles related to the Town’s pursuit of us. The first was when a County legislator and former Town Supervisor wrote to the paper, praising the efforts of a neighbor who was attempting to stop our “landfill operation”—on one-seventh of an acre of residential property!—which fill had been brought in over a period of four days. Eighteen months earlier. That was played up in a lead article, with color photo, as well as a jump to an inside page, with a photo of this neighbor standing on a hill—our hill—pointing to a grouping of bricks, and saying, “This is despicable.” One man’s meat is another man’s poison. 

Our fill, deposited on our steeply-sloped backyard for the safety of our young grandchildren, wasn’t to his liking. So, this politically well-connected individual stirred up a hornet’s nest, then sued us in federal court alleging our fill represented a Superfund site and spilled onto his property. Only one problem: his own survey, which he never shared with us or the court, didn’t show any fill on his property. Fraudulent concealment and fraudulent misrepresentation. End of story? Not by a long shot—and you can read about it in future chapters. 

A second article by The Journal News was the day after we were unanimously acquitted by a jury, within five minutes of being sequestered, in a farce of a criminal trial of “operating a landfill without a special permit.” In that article, Town Supervisor Holbrook stated it didn’t matter that we were just acquitted: we had one week to submit to the Town a plan to clear our land of fill, he was quoted as saying—or else. Or else, “If [Goldberg] doesn’t do it, we’ll do it for him and send him the bill.” 

Did it matter to this paragon of virtue that we had just been acquitted and justice had been served? Obviously not. Did it matter to the reporter, who never asked for the legal basis of such a blatantly improper statement? Obviously not. Did it matter to the editor, who never assigned a followup article? Obviously not.

Another occasion was when we called the managing editor and suggested that, on the eve of foreclosure of our home—nearly nine years after the Town began pursuing us, and more than five years after its still-outstanding and never-calendared Complaint alleging hazardous conditions—an article would be appropriate.

For starters, we suggested, the reporter might inquire as to why the Town refused for more than five years to move its Complaint to court, if it believed, as the complaint reads, that our fill “presents a direct hazard to the environment, neighboring property, and to site occupants, as well as to the public at large.” Question never asked. 

Or why the Town continued to allege hazardous conditions, when its own consulting engineer formally and officially reduced to writing his professional judgment that our fill is non-hazardous. Question never asked. And then prepared multiple additional documents advising that our fill was non-hazardous, including the statement, "In the opinion of the Engineer, the fill is non-hazardous." Clearl enough? Question never asked.

And when the Town’s own DEC Director wrote, twice, of our fill being non-hazardous. Question never asked. 

And when multiple Town consulting engineers, along with the Town DEC Director and Town Attorney, unanimously and simultaneously agreed that our fill was non-hazardous, and reduced that to writing. Question never asked. 

Indeed, the reporter also never asked:

     * Why the Town refused to negotiate with our environmental lawyer, after years of our requesting sit-down meetings. 
     * Or why the Town refused to simply discontinue its suit, in light of the professional judgment of its own DEC director and consulting engineers—as well as that of the highest-level State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC)/Region 3 engineering geologist before his retirement, and three additional high-level engineers who signed Affidavits attesting that in their judgment our fill is non-hazardous, as well as several other State officials with significant expertise in these matters. 
     * Or why the Town refused to drop its suit after we had lost our home to foreclosure. 
     * Or whether the Town would legally pursue its new owner, Fannie Mae, to remediate the property, as it had so relentlessly been pursuing us. 

We provided source documents for every statement of fact—more than 40 pages, in all. 

We requested a followup article with these questions, multiple times. In return, we received nothing but a vague promise to consider the possibility of reviewing the documents with an eye toward thinking about writing some kind of article down the road. 

If the thought had crossed your mind that my request was equivalent to trying to elicit a positive response from a Chinese delegation on human rights in Tibet, you wouldn’t have been alone.

When we subsequently wrote and sent a Community Viewpoint to The Journal News, we were informed it was too long. Cut it in half, from about 1400 words, to give “equivalent” space as a rebuttal to a community activist, whose 750-word diatribe mentioned alleged “toxic” conditions in five separate places. 

     * Never mind that he had also read his same “toxic” viewpoint into the record of a recent Town Board meeting. 
     * Never mind that for more than 10 years running he continued to publicly urge the Town to pursue us, even after our home was already lost. 
     * Never mind that our viewpoint was more broadly focused.  “Equivalence” was the watch word of the day, especially since this community activist had been a member of the powerful Zoning Board of Appeals and was a known troublemaker* (*Surely we meant: “guardian of everyone’s rights everywhere at all times under all circumstances”) who had sued the Town, sued a neighbor, complained to the Town numerous times about various neighbors all around him, and to this day publicly comments, and usually complains, about most every Town-related matter.

As for a second viewpoint we asked The Journal News to print--fuggetaboudit! As for a followup story--fuggetaboudit! That this had been at the time a nine-year-long nightmare involving numerous civil and constitutional violations, that our homestead of 30 years had been taken away and we were left financially bereft and, literally, bankrupted; that it involved issues of legal, environmental, financial, and moral concern to the community; that it related to what source documents conclusively showed to be the nefarious, conspiratorial, blatantly unethical and illegal workings of numerous elected and appointed officials of local government over a period of many years--fuggetaboudit! 

Now, not just nine years, but nearly 15 years, have passed. During the intervening six years, we sued the Town, and asked for coverage from The Journal News. Fuggetaboudit! 

We again asked for coverage from The Journal News when the Town threatened us with “severe sanctions” for having the temerity to demand justice on the basis of the numerous official, uncontroverted Town-generated documents identifying our fill as “non-hazardous.Fuggetaboudit! 

We dropped the suit at the insistence of my wife, who had previously developed a number of well-documented life-threatening medical emergencies directly resulting from the Town’s ongoing legal harassment of us. Coverage? Fuggetaboudit!

We again asked for coverage from The Journal News when the Town, out of the blue, after more than ten years of sleeping on its rights, revived its suit against us, we countersued, the Town asked for sanctions, and we asked for sanctions in return. Coverage? Fuggetaboudit! 

We thought it newsworthy to inquire on what basis the Town could revive its claim that our fill “presents a direct hazard to the environment, neighboring property, and to site occupants, as well as to the public at large,” when the Town and its consulting engineer had prepared numerous official, uncontroverted, exculpatory, primary-source documents identifying our fill as non-hazardous. The Journal News editor and reporter didn’t seem to find that newsworthy at all.

We thought it newsworthy, and more than a little mysteriously so, that the Town, in reviving its case after more than ten years, would ask the judge for a rush-rush decision because our fill was dangerously hazardous—after doing nothing to protect the public for more than a decade. The Journal News editor and reporter didn’t seem to find that newsworthy at all.

We thought it newsworthy that this was the first and only case in the history of Clarkstown where a residential owner was both criminally and civilly sued for placing fill on a ridiculously small portion of his back yard (barely 0.14 of an acre) for the safety of his young grandchildren, over a period of days, where nothing within Town code speaks to such an action. The Journal News editor and reporter didn’t seem to find that newsworthy at all.

We thought it newsworthy that this was the longest-running uncalendared case in Clarkstown history, and that having lost our life savings to previous Town actions we were reduced to self-representation. The Journal News editor and reporter didn’t seem to find this newsworthy either.

We thought it newsworthy that the Town, with knowledge aforethought, had filed a patently illegal motion, and in the process was deliberately seeking to subvert federal law by suing us in the admitted knowledge that we were forever held harmless through Federal Bankruptcy Law. The Journal News editor and reporter didn’t seem to find this newsworthy either.

We thought it newsworthy that the Town ws actually claiming in court papers that we didn’t have the legal right to use any of the numerous exculpatory Town-generated documents that officially acknowledged our fill was non-hazardous, despite the Town suing us on that precise basis. The Journal News editor and reporter didn’t seem to find this newsworthy either.

We thought it newsworthy that the Town was in blatant violation of State law by making multiple knowingly, facially-proven material false statements, with intent to deceive the Court. The Journal News editor and reporter didn’t seem to find this newsworthy either.

What, then, did The Journal News editor and reporter find newsworthy? Well, er, um, you see, ahem…nothing, actually. Despite providing them with official records and documents, pointing out numerous inconsistencies, unethical and provably conspiratorial actions; despite providing all manner of suggested questions for them to ask, and calls and emails to them…Nothing. Zip. Nada.

So, these questions come to mind: 
     * Did the Town threaten to withhold information from The Journal News reporter on other issues? 
     * Did it threaten to reduce advertising, in favor of other local publications? 
     * Did it simply refuse to return calls? 

Having been a journalist and editor myself for nearly 40 years prior to retirement, I’m not entirely naive about the strong-arm tactics that can be applied from the top of one organization to the top of another. You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. Or else!

For those who read The Journal News in Rockland—and it appears to be a rapidly decreasing number (with good reason!)—one would have thought that our matter, unique in many ways in the annals of Clarkstown and probably all of Rockland, would have made a great series of investigative articles. But one would have been wrong. It would have taken a good amount of reading and comprehension, reflection and analysis, tough and persistent questions, hard-hitting writing up against deadlines. Clearly, journalism is rarely, if ever, practiced at The Journal News these days.
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In the field of print, most publications are weekly, cater to limited markets, work on a shoestring budget, have minimal resources, and rely on news releases and photos submitted by school districts, municipalities, civic associations, sports programs, and other local entities. But on a rare occasion one stands out as a lighthouse casting its midnight spotlight over all its surveys. One such was The Rockland County Times.

It is instructive to compare The Journal News’s non-investigative reporting over the years on our issue (which we will explore in some length) with the type of reporting and editorial content produced by Peter Sluys, now deceased editor of The Rockland County Times. 

 “Chief cook and bottle washer," Sluys typically produced a 16-page, tabloid-size weekly, with a virtually non-existent staff of stringers, cramped offices, archaic printing press, little advertising, and modest readership in a distant bedroom suburb of New York City. 

Laboring under such handicaps, he could easily have been forgiven had he produced a typical run-of-the-mill publication devoted to student and community honors, dates of upcoming local events, grip-and-grin photos, police blotter activities, non-controversial editorials, and mostly thank-you letters-to-the-editor for splashing such heartwarming events as a small Easter or Fourth of July parade across the front and multiple continuation pages.

But Sluys was not your typical newspaper person. Rather, he was a throw-back in looks and substance to the “old” days typified in the movies. Hard-driving, hard-charging, heavy-handed, sometimes arm-twisting, not well-liked but deservedly feared, Sluys had developed over time a network of contacts—”informers,” if you will. To his loyal readers, he was as a magician who conjured the most macabre—but true—exposés seemingly out of thin air. Those he harpooned—politicians, fat cats, conspirators—hoped that if they studiously stayed far out of Sluys’s way he would leave them alone, but they were all fair game. None dared cross swords with him. We can think of one, above all others, who might have truly wished him dead: Charles Holbrook, former Town of Clarkstown Supervisor, on whom Sluys’s detestable disdain had no bounds and no end.

Sluys was, in fact, a contradiction in terms: 
     * A disbarred lawyer, he wanted to be a priest. 
     * A Crusader for Truth, his unethical behavior hung like an albatross around his neck. 
     * A muckraker in the noblest way, he frequently stooped low to obtain his facts. 
     * A man who misappropriated a substantial sum from his dearest friend, he nonetheless lived in great modesty. 
     * An individual of robust health, he died mysteriously and without warning of a heart attack at the ripe old age of 50.

Sluys never wrote about our matter. But we believe he would have. We believe his involvement might well have cast a needed spotlight on the malignant, insidious, contemptible, and outright conspiratorial actions of Town officials—and judges, the record shows—thereby creating a hospitable environment where uncontroverted documents, facts, and the Rule of Law could prevail in the glare of public disclosure.

To the extent that Sluys cast a wide net over the nefarious activities of Holbrook, who ruled the Town of Clarkstown as a fiefdom, we are deeply indebted. Some of his writings, which we have kept for many years, lay a foundation for many of the most serious charges we level against both elected and appointed Town officials. Without Sluys, this book might never have been written. Now that he is no longer with us, it must be.
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Next, we’ll take an inside look at former Supervisor Holbrook and the company he kept. If you like what you’ve read, please take a moment to bookmark townofclarkstownvgoldberg.org. You’ll find numerous fully documented columns on the malignant, deceitful, conspiratorial, contemptible, unethical, and illegal actions of Town of Clarkstown officials, Town and State judges, and others who have played with the Rule of Law and ethics like a child plays with putty. If you appreciate what you read, please ‘like’ us and share our web site with all you know. Thank you.