As Sarah Palin (or is it Tina Fey?) might say, let’s get mavericky. Here’s the maverick of my early childhood.

John McCain should adopt this for his campaign theme.

 I’ve just received through the grapevine a photo copy of an invitation to an awards dinner hosted by The African American Chamber of Commerce of Westchester and Rockland counties.

And none other than Bill “Boss” Ryan, the chairman of the Westchester Coutny Board of Legislators, has been named “Political Leader Of The Year.”  Whoa. Am I missing something here?

This is the same guy, who only 10 months ago tried to slip himself a generous raise and would have succeeded if the hadn’t got caught red-handed. This is the same guy, who failed to take a pro-active role in the case of his disgraced chief adviser, Gary Kriss, whose free-wheeling purchases of computer software and eletronic gadgetry, resulted in an ongoing investigation by the district attorney’s office. This is the guy who has maintained control of a county slush fund with which he has used to his own political advantage, who drives gas-guzzler car bought and paid for by taxpayers, who goes on junkets, who punishes any opposition on his board by cutting down the sizes of their offices.

Ryan is a leader in one profound way: He leads the league in cynicism.

The AACCWR dinner is 6 p.m. Thursday at Lake Isle Country Club.

I’m a big fan of The Wag.

The magazine gives me a little bit of a much-needed window on how the richies live in Westchester County.

The October issue has a particularly interesting piece titled, “Trophy Properties,” by Elsa Brenner that takes a look at some of the most expensive homes in the county, the kind that you can only see from a helicopter.  We’re not talking subprime mortgages here.

Tops on the list is Hillandale in Pound Ridge, a 1900 English Manor with eight bedrooms and 10 full baths on property covering 264 acres. The price: $95 million. The property taxes are a stunning $221,166 a year.

To put that in perspective, remember that the median property taxe in the county are $8,000. Brenner mentions another property on Larchmont’s Premium Point—a Stanford White mansion—that is valued at $14 million with property taxes of $256,222. Add a $40,000 a year community maintenance fee, and that’s close to $300,000 in sundry costs, which is what a modest house in, say, Mount Vernon or Port Chester, might go for.

It’s good to see hat some people aren’t hurting in this economy. That’s because, as F. Scott Fitzgerald said, “The rich are different from you and me.”

Oh, by the way…that article is not available on line.

I never thought I would actually feel good about paying  $3.15 per gallon of regular gasoline, but it was only last summer that the price of gas around here was four bucks or more—  with no promise that it was going to come down any time soon.

Well, with the rapidly falling price of oil, (as of this morning, oil was selling at $83 per barrel) gasoline has suddenly become a little cheaper, too. It’s one of the few pieces of good news to come out of the crappy economy. I paid the $3.15 per gallon at the Gulf station on Palmer Road in Bronxville.

This may be the lowest price of gas in  Westchester County right now. The county’s department of consumer protection only has service station figures for the month of September, which is already out of date. According to the survey, Dick’s station on South Broadway in Yonkers is selling the cheapest gas at $3.67 per gallon.

Every now and then, it’s fun to just dip into the campaign filings of our elected officials. Today, I’ve perused the list of donations for Westcheste County Executive Andy Spano, who is clearly raking in the dough for his 2009 bid for a fourth term.

So far this year, King Andy has raised $720,384 from the usual suspects—developers, law firms, construction firms, etc. Again, this is the loot he’s collected for just 2008 alone! I’m not even including the last two years since the 2005 election.

Here’s a quick rundown on this year’s contributors:

Cappelli Enterprises: $4,000.

G&S Investors (who brought us the eminent domain fiasco in Port Chester): $5,000.

Ginsburg Development: $5,000.

Law firm of Al DelBello, et. al.: $8,500.

Lobbyist Patricia Lynch: $1,000.

The going Spano contribution rate these days for commissioners and highly compensated staff members appears to be $400. Several are listed.

How much the Dow Jones Industrial Averages has fallen since its October, 2007 high water mark:

30 percent.

Presidents Bush’s approval rating:

29 percent.

Saturday Night Live’s increased viewership on Oct. 4 over the previous week, owed to Tina Fey’s dead-on impression of Gov. Sarah Palin:

23 percent.

Decrease in viewership of first playoff game between Chicago White Sox and Tampa Bay Rays over similar game in 2007:

21 percent.

Number of TV viewers who watched the first presidential debate between Barack Obama and John McCain:

52.4 million.

Number of viewers who watched the vice presidential debate between Sarah Palin and Joe Biden:

70 million.

Number of viewers who watched the 1980 presidential debate between Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan:

80.6 million.

2007 bonus for Richard Fuld, the fallen chief of Lehman Brothers:

$22 million.

2006 salary for homerun king Barry Bonds who is under federal indictment:

$20 million.

Fuld’s pay on a per hour basis:

$17,000 and change.

Median income of working women living in Mount Vernon, N.Y.

$33,543.

A reader sent me this terrific Bingo game before last night’s debate between Joe Biden and Sarah Palin. I wished I saw it before the big show.

Check it out.  Also feel free to comment here about who you thought won the debate and why.

If you’ve been wondering if the Republican machine was ever going to remind voters of Barack Obama’s past associaton with William Ayers, the former Weather Undeground figure, don’t fret.

Yonkers City Councilman John Murtagh will talk about the 1970 terrorist bombing of his home when he meets Sean Hannity on “Hannity’s America,” Sunday at 9 p.m. on the Fox News Network. The principal target of the bombing was Murtagh’s father, a prominent justice on the state Supreme Court.

Murtagh, a Republican running for the state Senate against Democratic incumbent Andrew Stewart-Cousins, was nine years old at the time. I wrote about the incident in an April 27 column for The Journal News and Lohud.com.

The following is an edited version of the column.

About 4:30 a.m. on Feb. 21, a few minutes after a patrol car had passed by, the Murtagh family was awakened by two loud explosions that rocked the house.

“To this day, I have this absolute memory of dreaming that my bed was being lifted off the ground and being dropped,” Murtagh recalled. “And then boom! Boom! The next thing I’m awakened by my mother coming into the room and grabbing me out of the bed.”

Ayers and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn, who today are college professors in Chicago, never had to answer for the bombings. But seven years ago, Ayers told The New York Times that he didn’t regret detonating the bombs and wished he had done more in the cause for ending the war in Vietnam.

In later life, Ayers and Obama were fellow community activists in Chicago.

What’s the last number on the Wall Street bailout—$800 billion? Let’s say that’s the bill the taxpayers will ultimately have to pay on a hope and a prayer that it will thaw the crippling freeze on credit and keep the economy running.

Do we have a choice? Probably not.

But consider this: That $800 billion  could build 50 new Tappan Zee Bridges complete with expanded bus and rail lines. That’s right—50! (If the money was given directly to each American citizen, it would come to a stimulus package of $11,000 for a family of four.)

But we’re talking about infrastructure. So look at it another way. According to some estimates, we’re spending $95-$100 billion a year in Iraq. That figure includes not only the cost of our military operation but also the rebuilding of the oil-rich country’s infrastructure. Project that out to five years, and we can build another 150 Tappan Zee Bridges.

These are sad, sorry facts. While our nation’s infrastructure sags under the weight of age and overuse, we’re throwing billions and billions of dollars to answer emergencies which never should have happened in the first place.

Roads and bridges like the Tappan Zee Bridge, which is one of the most heavily traveled spans in the land, are critical to the health of the economy. They move the wheels and gears of commerce, which is the key to free enterprise.

But our priorities are screwed up. On Sept. 26, when state officials announced plans to rebuild the Tappan Zee, they said the cost, including the east-west rail link, would be $16 billion. They said the state would try to finance the project with federal money and from some kind of private partnership.

That’s an interesting wish given the meltdown in the marketplace. Remember the developer from Long Island who only a year ago said he wanted to build a tunnel under the Long Island Sound and connect it with Interstate 287 in Rye? His idea was to finance that baby with the help of a private investment bank—- Bear Stearns.

So you’ve got several comprehensive studies to choose from. One of the most up-to date comes from the National Priorities Project, and Amherst-Mass.-based group that tracks the impact of federal spending on local communities. Using a “top-down” calculation based on U.S. budget appropriations, the group estimates the total money spent or allocated comes to about $255 million per day, or a little less than $1.8 billion a week. That figure includes both military and non-military spending on things like reconstruction.

It’s the battle of the mini-titans. Joe Biden and Sarah Palin square off in the only vice presidential debate tonight, and we’re going to about it today on “High Noon,” on WVOX, 1460 AM.

Our guest will be Mike Edelman, a Republican consultant.

Who is favored to win? What strategies should the candidates employ? These and other questions will be explored when “High Noon” goes on the air at 12 noon.

As always, listener calls will be taken at 914-636-0110. And don’t forget, if you are not in the WVOX listening area, you can hear the show by logging onto wvox.com.