Wow, this blog is only a week old and I’m already taking off for a week or so. What gives?

For one thing, I’ll be at a journalism conference in Boston where I’ll learn more about—yeah, you guessed it—blogging.

Until I get back to the office, I’ll be checking in from time to time from remote locations. Have a good one…

Surf’s up.

Journal News copy editor Frank “Buddy” Waller III, attended last Sunday’s Gay Pride Parade in New York City and tells me he had a great time.

Buddy reports that a number of politicians marched in the parade, including Jeanine Pirro, the former district attorney for Westchester County and the GOP candidate for attorney general. Buddy watched the parade across the street from the New York Public Library. Toward the end of the four-hour procession, Pirro strolled by.

Says Buddy:
“I wave my rainbow flag as a gesture of courtesy to a fellow Westchester resident. She sees me and breaks into a big smile and gives an open-arms wave of recognition, as if she knew who I was. In fact, we’ve never laid eyes on each other. This is another example of how much a part of a politician’s life acting has become.”

I was driving through downtown Yonkers around 8:30 one night and a couple of things struck me. The city is better. There’s no doubt about it

It’s cleaner, brighter. I can remember a time when the winos and drug addicts would stumble around Larkin Plaza like zombies. With impunity, they’d panhandle and urinate on cars. (I caught one doing that to my car and I threw my coffe cup at him.) Then they’d wander over to the old ferry terminal, which was covered with pigeon crap and fall into the Hudson River.

Well, it’s much better now. But the downtown is still dead. There’s no life. And the symbol of the lifelessness was staring at me in the face when I drove past City Hall. Across the street, the Emerald Diner was not open for business.

A city without an all-night diner is hardly in a renaissance. Not in my book.

The New York State Department of Motor Vehicles recently released the results of a 2006 customer poll which said that 84 percent of the 800 people surveyed throughout the state rated service to be “Excellent” or “Good.” Better results were registered for the DMV’s mail and online programs, which came in with high satisfaction levels of 91 percent and 97 percent respectively.

In a newspaper column, I mentioned that seven out of 10 people I talked to outside the DMV office in White Plains thought the service was good or better than good, while the other three rated their experience “Fair” or “Poor.”

In so many words, I asserted that DMV service had greatly improved since the bad old days when applying for a learner’s permit at the Central Park Avenue branch was like lining up for chow at Abu Ghraib.

Well, of course, there were challenges to this assertion. Some readers informed me that I should’ve gone to the Yonkers DMV—a place which redefines the meaning of bureacratic hell.

Ray Watkins of Rye Brook told me of a terrible time he had in White Plains where he went to pick up some stored license plates. It was a quick and easy task, or so he thought.

“Dutifully waiting on line to check in, I was given a number in the ‘D’ series,” he said. “Unfortunately, there were 30 people in front of me. Well over two hours.”

It got worse.

“When I finally was called to Window 12, the lady therre directed me to a lady near Window 6 since she was the only person able to get into the safe,” said Watkins. “That lady was trying to do seven or eight things at the same time. Another 35 minutes.”

Watkins said the other people lined up in the A, B, C, E and F series breezed through in no time. Not him.

“So,” he said, “I’ve yet to see any kind of ‘improved DMV.’ It’s still a horror show.”

Rate the DMV’s customer service yourself. What’s your experience—.Excellent, Good, Fair or Poor?

On Sunday, I attended my son’s high school graduation at the Westchester County Center. Seems like yesterday I was picking him up and tossing him around like a beanbag.

Now he can do that to me.

Well, parents everywhere are coping with the passing of time. It goes fast. They grow up too quickly.
Today, I received a copy of a valedictory speech given by Eliora Noetzel, who attended Yonkers HIgh School and will be heading off to Harvard in the fall. Her mother sent me the speech and I thought I’d share a little bit of it with you because it contains an important message about tolerance, something that’s in short supply.

Eliora enjoyed her experience at Yonkers HIgh, which she noted, is “one of the most diverse schools in the world.”
Continuing, she said the following:

“Many students born in countries all over the globe have come here, several hardly knowing English, and leave having taken honors courses and having been accepted to some incredible colleges. Those of you who have managed to excel despite differences in language and culture, you amaze me, and I am proud to know you. More importantly, the diversity in this school is a sign of hope for our future world. Although so much hate exists all over the Earth, here in his school, everyone is accepted for who they are, and factors such as race, color, and sexualtiy go unnoticed. We prove to the world that tolerance exists, and people from any nationa can gorw to love each other and tie themselves in a bond of friendship.”

Good luck Eliora and to everyone, everywhere, in the Class of 2006.

You have to hand it to Brian Mitten, a man who followed his conscience and did the right thing. Mitten resigned from the Lakeland Board of Education because he objected to the board’s decision to give a hefty raise to the schools superintendent at a time when the financially ailing distirct had to cut 40 jobs from the payroll.

After only a year on the job, Superintendent Kennth Connolly saw his annual pay go from $199,700 to $224,000, about the median salary range for school chiefs in Westchester County.

Mitten thought Connolly got too much dough, too soon and that the wrong message was being sent to taxpayers.

So he quit as a matter of principle. The other yea-saying trustees ought to hang their heads in shame.

The bosses get all the marbles, friends. And the working stiffs? Why, they get the pink slips and a warning not to let the door hit them on the way out.

I don’t know Mitten, but he’s alright by me.

Jeanine Pirro, whose fans sometimes address as “Judge Pirro” in homage to her days on the Westchester County bench, seems to harbor no ill will against the news media for the way it covered her disasterous bid for the U.S. Senate against Hillary-What’s-Her-Name.

Way back when, I billed the race as an epic Battle of the Fembots. Wow, was I ever wrong. What a dud.

The former district attorney, who has so far enjoyed a much smoother run for attorney general, an office she’s much more suited to hold, was recently asked by WBC-TV reporter Melissa Russo if she thought the press treated her fairly during the early debacle. (Question: Has Page 10 of her speech ever been found?)

Pirro replied: “Look, you know what, you have a job to do, and I respect the job that you do. And you know what, I think we’re all accountable for what we do. I’m looking forward, I’m excited about this race. This race…”

And blah, blah, blah.

Then Russo asked her if she felt she was getting a fair shake in the attorney general’s race.

Pirro replied: “You know, I really haven’t made that assessment, but I’m sure you have. And you knw what, I think all of us should be, you know, hold our feet to the fire.”

And blah, blah, blah. ENOUGH!!

Candidates like Pirro are too well trained. They’re coached over and over again to stick to the message. Don’t veer from the talking points, they’re told.

That’s why the put us to sleep. They’re boring.

Just once, I’d like to hear her say: “You slobs in the press are lucky you live in a democracy. There are countries in this world where the leadership would string you by your thumbs for the things you print. So get off my case, you free-loading, bottom-feeding scum!:”

Well, I can dream.

It’s been one full year since Kelo v. New London, the landmark Supreme Court case which effectively said it was OK for government to use eminent domain as a meanst to take private property for private development.

The horrible decision caused a national furor. Property rights activists went beserk, and rightfully so. What’s more, state and local legislatures all over the country reacted with proposed laws to curb the abuse and help level the playing field for homeowners and merchants who too often find themselves standing alone against the rapacious Axis of Greed—unchecked developers, corporate Goliaths and craven politicians.

In her dissenting opnion, Justice Sandra O’Connor sounded the alarm: Look out, your neighborhood, too, might be seized, bulldozed and replaced with a hotel. Or a parking garage. Or a big-box store.

Or whatever the hell they want to put there.

Used in this fashion, eminent domain is constitutionally-protected theft. I’ve been saying this for years, ever since they tried to obliterate a neighborhood of homes, small businesses and churches in New Rochelle and replace them with an IKEA furniture store.

They failed.

But guess what? A year after Kelo, the eminent domain scourage is getting worse.

That’s the assessment of he Institute for Justice, a libertarian organization based in Washington, D.C. that gives legal help to individuals fighting eminent domain. The institute reports that over the past year, more than 5,700 properties in the U.S. either have been seized or threatened with condemnation if the owners don’t agree to sell. Repeat—that’s in just one year.
Compare that with an average of 2,000 properties per year over a five-year period before the Kelo case was heard.
Another group fighting eminent domain, the Castle Coalition, calls New York “one of the worst states in the country for eminent domain abuse.”

“This enthusiasm for eminent domain is encouraged by the courts which rubber stamp every condemnation and seem to consider any kind of private undertaking a public use,” says the coalition on its Web Site, www.castlecoalition.org.

Sounds like they took that right out of one my columns.

Because I’ve written so much on this subject, people often ask me for advice on how to thwart emient domain. I don’t give advice as a general rule, but I do know that citizen involvement is paramount. You’ve got to organize and take your cause en masse to the people you elect to protect your rights. You have to fight City Hall, and you can win, too, as the IKEA example in New Rochelle proved.

Also, check out the aforementoned Castle Coalition internet site. Log on, and you’ll find a “survival guide” on how to fight the bad guys.

This country is waking up. It’s not just the defenseless poor who are getting screwed now. The middle class is being besieged by the power brokers, and I can’t think of a more active front in this Class War than the issue of eminent domain.