A month ago, Larry “The Brain” Schwartz was summoned to Albany to take the number two staff job under Gov. David Paterson. You read it here first. (See column.) Well, in a flash, Schwartz is now number one, replacing William J. Cunningham III who apparently couldn’t cut the mustard as the governor’s secretary.

For nearly a decade Schwartz paractically ran things around here, serving as Westchester County Executive Andy Spano’s political nurse maid, hatchet man and all purpose power-behind-the-thrown. That is to say, he was “The Brain.”

So we also knew that he wasn’t called to Paterson’s side to merely shuffle papers. He’s gonna micro-manage like there’s no tomorrow. We called that, too.

Here’s a snippet from January’s column:

The way I look at it, Schwartz’s arrival as Paterson’s first deputy secretary can only improve things for a governor whose administration has been thrown off kilter by his poorly received State of the State speech, the nagging controversy over how to close a $15 billion budget deficit and the bizarre debacle over Caroline Kennedy’s withdrawal from the Senate sweepstakes.

Ever the troubleshooter, Schwartz can help right the ship in time for next year’s gubernatorial race.

Here’s a prediction: Schwartz will also revive Paterson’s goofy obesity tax on soda. Don’t forget, he was the architect behind a lot of Spano’s anti-junk food initiatives in Westchester. He’s the guy who was pushing hummus and pita bread as snack substitutes at Playland Amusement Park.

My guest on “High Noon” today will be Jim Castro-Blanco, an attorney and Republican candidate for Yonkers City Council president.

He will oppose Democrat Chuck Lesnick in the ‘09 election.

Tune in to WVOX, 1460 AM or wvox.com to listen to the interview. Calls will be taken at 914-636-0110.

Yonkers City Councilwoman says she won’t push for repealing term limits in Yonkers after all. She’s going to put in the remaining 10 months and call it quits.

Personally, I think term limits aren’t good, (See column) but the majority of people in Yonkers believe that the rascals need to be forced out the door—and have voted twice to maintain a two-term guideline for the council, council president and mayor.

Here’s Barbato’s full statement:

“I’ve thought long and hard about a possible run; about how rewarding public service is, about all the wonderful people you meet along the way and the ability to help people with their concerns.  And, I’ve thought also about the extended demands that a citywide office imposes; the nights and weekends that must be committed to in order to fully serve the people.  At the end of the day, and after almost 10 years in office, time spent with family – my husband, my children, my four beautiful grandchildren who grow so quickly – and vacations with family and good friends, won out.   As well, I have a job that I thoroughly enjoy, and look forward to continuing my duties and working with some of the best people one could hope to work with and for,” said Barbato.

“I want to thank all of the many Ward leaders and District Leaders of the Yonkers Republican City Committee, along with its chairman John Jacono, and those friends and community leaders who have supported me in the past, and who, most recently, have urged and encouraged me to seek the seat of Council President.  Their support of a possible run by me, and their pledge to work hard on a campaign if I had declared, is most appreciated and a gesture that I will be eternally grateful for,” added Barbato.

With another 10 months remaining as councilmember in the Sixth District, Barbato says it has been an honor to serve the people of the district and vows to continue to work hard on their behalf as well as all of the people of the city.  “I will devote myself to giving 100 percent to the job at hand for the remainder of my term.  There are a number of important issues before the city council and a tough budget coming up that is likely to require tough decisions, and I am prepared to give each item my all,” Barbato noted.

It’s been Bill “Boss” Ryan’s goal for some time to become mayor of White Plains, so it doesn’t come as a major surprise that a phone poll is asking voters how they feel about a Ryan candidacy.

His work is all but done as chairman of the Westchester County Board of Legislators, so why wouldn’t he take a stab at a higher paying job. After all, money is very important to the boss.

The chairman’s pay is $89,2000. The current mayor of White Plains, the Republican Joe Delfino, makes $150,000. Plus, it’s far more prestigious to be mayor of a city that is known as the Parking Violations Mecca of America.

According to my spy, the poll asked potential voters felt about Ryan’s attempts to jack up his pay and the salaries of his legislative colleagues. It also touched on the scandal surrounding Gary Kriss, Ryan’s adviser who resigned in disgrace last year and has since been charged with four misdemeanor counts of theft of services.

Yeah, I was off last week. And so everything was on hold—the column, access to e-mail and phone calls…and this blog.

Here’s the boring stuff I did:

I moved furniture.

I paid bills. But I did not pay my $410 Yonkers City water bill. Not yet, anyway. I journeyed to City Hall to get an explanation and I’m still confused. Outside, I ran into a city official who laughed when I told him why I was there. “Join the club!” he said…or words to that effect.

I took my 10-year-old dog to the vet for shots and a checkup. The vet said she needed to lose weight to ease her arthritic knees. She is not overweight. The vets is nuts. I mean, the last thing I need is a bulimic dog on my hands.

I did my taxes. I will owe the government, again.

I saw two movies—“Frozen River” and “The Wrestler.” I recommend them both. Michael O’Keefe played a cop in “Frozen River.” He was very good. He went to Mamaroneck High School around the time I did. He showed up at a reunion last fall as did I. O’Keefe was known as “Ray” in his Larchmont days. I did not know him, but everybody says he’s a nice guy… Funny thing, one day while I was off twiddling my thumbs I heard a cacophony of police sirens coming from the direction of Eastchester-Tuckahoe. Only later did I realize that it was because the cops were in a high-speed chase, going after Scott Siegel, a 34-year-old actor from New Rochelle who appeared in “The Wrestler.” Siegel was charged with illegally selling steroids. He had a great scene in the movie, selling steroids! Too bad he got busted.

I visited my mother. Twice.

I wrote three e-mails to a cousin, who seems to be MIA. He’s a dance instructor for one of the Fred Astaire studios. He has not replied to the e-mails. Hey, what’s up with that?

I ran almost every day on the Mount Vernon High School track. It is littered with Canada Goose crap.

I tried out a new pizza joint in Mount Vernon. The pizza was fine, but I can’t remember the name of the place.

I read Rick Atkinson’s book, “The Day of Battle,”  on the Allied invasion of Italy in 1943. It’s the second of his three-part Liberation Trilogy. Reading about the human suffering of World War II presents the perfect reminder of how important it is to recognize that things could be a helluva lot worse. More of us should shut up and stop complaining about the petty nonsense in every day life. I’m glad I have warm dry socks and a roof over my head…and I’m grateful that the only land mines I have to avoid are the leavings of birds.

Thursday’s column was a hypothetical discussion about what kind of approval ratings Abraham Lincoln would’ve gotten had there been scientific polling in his time.

In writing that piece, I spoke with Harold Holzer of Rye, a premier Lincoln scholar who lately has been all over the television dial in documentaries about the life, death and legacy of the 16th president.  (Holzer later wrote to tell me that he disagreed with my guess that Lincoln’s poll numbers would’ve gone up slightly with the announcement of the Emancipation Proclamation to free the slaves. Holzer’s the expert, so I bow to the master.)

Lincoln’s 200th birthday was celebrated on Thursday. Holzer was in on the festivities in Washington, D.C. He visited the president and other big shots. Holzer is the guy at the far left.

Rob Arrow’s “Ten at Ten” feature on 107.1-FM, (The Peak) is one of the few radio gems of Westchester. Every day, Arrow picks 10 songs from any given year and plays them without commercial interruption.

The best thing about it is that along with familiar hits he makes a point of selecting stuff that for all the wrong reasons rarely, if ever, gets played anymore. The other day, Arrow highlighed 10 songs from 1972.

And true to form, he picked one great tune that I hadn’t heard in 37 years—Thin Lizzy’s version of  “Whiskey in the  Jar,” a rock version of a familiar old Irish song. (Numerous artists have recorded it.) Don’t let the big hair and goofy ‘70s garb put you off.

The lyrics aren’t exactly uplifting;  the song is about drinking, thievery and a lover’s betrayal. Perfect for Valentine’s Day and for whatever else ails you.

Musha rig um du rum da, / Whack fol the daddy O

 Yeah, that about sums everything up.

Here’s a truism: Donald Trump, the TV billionaire who is about as genuine as Thurston Howell III, cannot be shamed into anything.

Last week, I wrote a column about the Hope Community Services of New Rochelle’s efforts to feed the hungry, which is a challenging task even in good times. But now that we’re in a recession the likes of which have not been seen in generations, donations are really scarce.

Carole Troum, Hope’s executive director, told me that donations of food and money have dropped 30 percent in the past six months.

Way back in June, Hope wrote a letter to Trump asking for help. And why not? He’s always bragging about rich he is…and he made a pile of dough building a 40-story monstrosity in the middle of the Queen City of the Sound. If only for the sake of good will, he could part with at least a few bucks to help out a worthwhile cause in the same town.

But nope. The Trump Organization didn’t even have the class to respond to Hope…not until I called them last week. Then they said, oh yeah, they had an answer and you know what?—it had just gone out in the mail.

Today, Troum called me to say a card from Trump had just arrived in the mail. Trump’s answer was “no.” Big surprise.

“It’s a pre-printed card; it’s not even signed,” Troum said. “It says, “We have limited funds available for contributions which prevents us from responding to a great number of worthwhile causes.”

What a guy.

By the way, contributions to Hope can be made by calling, 914-636-4010 or by writing to Hope Community Services, Inc., 50 Washington Ave. New Rochelle, N.Y. 10801.

Mayor Phil Amicone of Yonkers says he is philosophically against term limits, but if the city council should vote to do away with them—which they are threatening to do—then he would “in all likelihood” veto it because the citizenry wants term limits.

Last Sunday’s column was about the recent flirtation with abolishing terms limits, which were upheld twice in voter referendums. However, it wasn’t clear how the mayor felt about the issue—and I nailed him down  yesterday.

“I don’t support them,” he said of term limits. “But people voted twice.”

Amicone echoed the thrust of the column when he said that term limits “are a lazy man’s way of not having to vote.”

The mayor said the opportunity for throwing a bad politician out of office comes on election day.  But with terms limits, he said, “Why would you artificially get rid of somebody you can want to keep—whether it’s a council member or a mayor?  So, I don’t think term limits make any sense. Certainly at the local level, they make no sense at all.

Amicone said he would rather see the issue resolved in another referendum, if that’s possible, instead of  allowing it to be decided legislatively.

In any case, the two-term mayor added, “I’m certainly not looking to run again.”

The populist surge against corporate crooks like Erons’ Ken Lay and Wall Street’s ethically challenged, greed-mongers (take your pick among many) isn’t anything new. It goes back the days of John D. Rockefeller.

But three fictional characters who were created in the anxious post World War II-era, are constantly referred to in the modern discussion of destructive, game-rigging avarice. There may be more, but  the images and thoughts evoked by these Three Stooges of the Apocalypse are especially powerful additions to  our ingrained , cultural ambivalence about money and the supposedly free and unfettered acquisition of it. How many times over the last six months have you seen these made-up people pop up in clips and quotes?

Above left is “Old Man” Potter, the “evil banker” in “It’s A Wonderful Life,” who made life so miserable for the little people of Bedford Falls, not to mention the “good banker,” George Bailey of the Bailey Home Savings & Loan.  The movie was made just after the Second World War when the average American still had a fresh memory of the Depression and a distrust of banks. A defining scene is the run on the foundering Bailey S&L and somebody yells in the crowd that everybody should cut their losses and go to Potter who’s paying 50 cents on the dollar.

Gordon Gekko, the character played by Michael Douglas (above right) in Oliver Stone’s film, “Wall Street.” was a stereotype of the Satantic arbitrager, an unstoppable predator of the 1980s who reaped millions by acquiring, merging and destroying. His credo was, ”Greed is good.”

The doofus twin of Gekko was Sherman McCoy, the hapless, Waspy bond  trader in the novel (and later film),  “Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe, who invented a term for Wall Streeters that is a staple of op-ed columnists everywhere—“Masters of the Universe.” It was Wolfe who exposed the hubris and insulation of the Wall Street culture that has now become such a critical obsession more than 20 years after “Bonfire” was published.

Wrote Wolfe:

“The Masters of the Universe were a set of lurid, rapacious plastic dolls that his otherwise perfect daughter liked to play with. They looked like Norse gods who lifted weights, and they had names such as Deacon, Ahor, Mangelrd , and Blutong. They were unusually vulgar, even for plastic toys. Yet one fine day, in a fit of euphoria, after he had picked up the telephone and taken an order for zero-coupon bonds that had brought him a $50,000 commission, just like that , this very phrase had bubbled up into his brain. On Wall Street he and a few others—how many?—three hundred, four hundred, five hundred?—had become precisely that….Masters of the Universe. There was….no limit whatsover!”