Sound Shore

Good Monday morning. Here’s a look at opinion content published over the weekend in The Journal News:

Saturday, April 9
Federal budget: Commentary
Doyle McManus, a columnist for the Los Angeles Times, comments on last week’s 2012 budget proposal from Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis. While the plan is far from perfect, McManus does offer Ryan a bit of praise:

… On one major point, Ryan has done a great service. He has made it clear that if you’re serious about cutting the federal deficit, you have to make a choice: low taxes or guaranteed Medicare coverage. You can’t have both. …

Open Door Family Medical Centers is hosting a  holiday toy drive for its young patients.

The community health center is hoping to collect 3,000 gifts for children ages 0-14. Santa Claus will be stopping by Open Door’s four locations delivering the wrapped gifts.

Open Door is now accepting new, unwrapped toys with a maximum value of $20. Gift certificates and monetary donations are also accepted. Donations can be  made online through Amazon and Toys R Us. All donations made online via Amazon and Toys R Us. Also, businesses, schools, organizations and individuals interested in hosting a toy drive or gift wrapping event as well as those needing pick up for large donations should contact Alicia Ward at (914) 502-1468 or award@ood.org.

Donations are being accepted at Open Door’s four offices now through Dec. 8 including:165 Main Street, Ossining; 5 Grace Church Street, Port Chester; 80 Beekman Avenue, Sleepy Hollow and 30 West Main Street, Mount Kisco.

Ossining community activist Don DeBerardinis, known locally as Don DeBar, has announced he’s waging a write-in campaign against U.S. Rep. Nita Lowey (D-Harrison).

The “anti-war activist”  said that “in wake of revelation of racist writing by Republican opponent” he’s throwing his hat in the ring and that the “new polling machines make write-in wins possible.” DeBar was referring to candidate Jim Russell’s 2001 essay in the “Occidental Quarterly” in which he warns against racial mixing and embraces anti-Jewish writings.

Read below for Don DeBar’s 9/22 release on his write-in campaign:

Anti-war activist Don DeBar, fresh from a meeting last night between US anti-war activists and Iranian President Ahmindinijad, announced today that he will wage a write-in campaign against Rep. Nita Lowey (D-18) on an anti-war platform.

DeBar attended the conference as a part of a delegation led by former Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-GA).

“Aside from murdering thousands of Iraqis, Afghanis and Pakistanis, the Obama Administration, like the Bush Administration before it, is squandering hundreds of billions of dollars that are desperately needed for jobs, schools, health care and housing and foreclosure assistance,” he said, adding “Lowey has been signing on to every military supplemental for these wars since they began.”

DeBar went to Lowey’s office on March 18, 2003, a day before the “Shock and Awe” attack on Baghdad, attempting to show her evidence that the Bush Administration had misrepresented the cause of the war – alleged weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Lowey refused to discuss the evidence, instead spending the time DeBar sat in her office posing for a photo in front of a giant US flag while granting a magazine interview laying out her support for the invasion.

“We have it on videotape – Lowey refused to hear us,” said DeBar, “and it turns out we were right, and now thousands of lives, and nearly a trillion dollars, have been lost.”

“If elected, I will refuse to fund the war machine any further, and will move to spend the money instead on the needs of the American people – actual development of actual jobs here in New York, single-payer health care, foreclosure prevention that actually prevents foreclosures, housing assistance that actually provides housing and aid to schools that actually educate our children,” he said.

Congresswoman Lowey declined to comment on DeBar’s statements.

Photo of DeBar taken in 2004 by The Journal News.