This poster from the past was sent to us by Terri Hall, a former reporter for the old Mount Vernon Daily Argus and Yonkers Herald Statesman. She covered the Jackson 5 concert back, which took place at Memorial Stadium in Mount Vernon back about 24 years ago.

Check out the ticket price—$6.50!

Terri wasn’t sure if it was 1975 or ‘76. Any memories of this? Post them here.

Gail Burns, the Conservative Party chairwoman, blames the “political underground” for all the trouble she’s been experiencing since she handed her party’s endorsement over to Andy Spano, the liberal-Demoratic incumbent in the race for Westchester county executive.

Rank-in-file party members are furious with Burns for what is perceived as a betrayal to conservative principles. They smell a secret deal that was cut between Andy Spano’s political allies and Nick Spano, the former state Senator and Republican who is now a state lobbyist. According to this scenario, Burns carried out the wishes of Nick Spano to whom she owes her current employment as a patronage hack in Yonkers City Hall.

The two Spanos are not related.

In a recent letter to Conservative Party members, Burns purports to set the record straight, but really says nothing beyond painting herself as bravely opposing unnamed foes.

But it’s obvious that the scapegoat for this perfidy is Julio Cavallo, the shady but powerful head of the Independence Party.

The Burns-Spano story, which they’re sticking to, is that Cavallo was using bullying tactics to force the Conservative Party to endorse people he favored, i.e. Rob Astorino for county exec and Tony Castro for DA. The spin is that they refused to cave into Cavallo.

In other words, they’re trying to say that they actually acted in a courageous manner, conveniently forgetting, of course, that they screwed Astorino, a true conservative, out of the endorsement he deserves over the left-of-center Andy Spano.

Amazing…just amazing.

Here’s the letter in full:

Dear Fellow Conservative:

There has been quite stir surrounding this year’s Conservative Party nominations and our designated slate of candidates. As Chairwoman of our party, I am compelled to set the record straight.

The Westchester Conservative Party is certainly not stranger to contentious elections and hard fought campaigns. Despite decreasing enrollments, we’ve always maintained our rightful position as a strong voting block with principled values.

Unfortunately, in recent weeks there have been many people from the political underground attempting to influence our party and damage its integrity through threats and intimidation.

Simply put, I absolutely will not cave to political coercion. The Conservative Party will not tolerates these tactics, and I now that Westchester’s registered conservatives will not stand for them either.

Now, I need your support to ensure that our party ins ot raided by outsiders. Below please find the countywide candidates that we have endorsed at our recent convention. We are confident that these candidates will represent our party well and, once elected, will best serve the people.

County Executive Andy Spano

District Attorney Janet DiFiore

County Clerk Robert Morabito

Please be mindful of our candidates and those out there purportedly representing the Conservative Party. Make sure to look for the designated candidtes listed above and our “commitee to fill vacancies” designating Gail Burns, Nick Caputo and Gene Branca.

As always, thank you for your support of our party,

Sincerely Yours.

Gail M. Burns

Chairwoman

The first Yankees baseball game I took my sons to was in 1991, the second of two dark periods in Yankee pinstripe history…at least in my lifetime. (The first was the so-called “Horace Clarke Era” when it seemed everybody on the team was either too fat or too skinny, slow, and without any power to go with batting averages ranging between .190 and .230.)

Mel Hall, a journeyman outfielder with occasional  long-ball capability was one of the better players on that 1991  team.

He hit a home run in that 1991 game, which the Yankees won 13-5 against the Baltimore Orioles. Matt Nokes, a catcher and one of the slowest bipeds on earth, also hit a homer.  Steve Sax, the second baseman, went four for five.

Sax, incidentally, was a pretty good player, but he is remembered for having developed a mental block of some sort that made it impossible for him to throw the ball accurately to first base. This malady was surpassed in weirdness by a latter-day Yankee second-sacker, Chuck Knoblauch, whose tortured throws in the dirt became painful to watch.

Hall was considered an unwholesome character, even then. He used to rag on a young and sensitive Bernie Williams in those days. Somwhere we still have a 1991 Yankees yearbook, which included a photo of Hall with his creepy looking girl friend.

Hall disappeared from the Major League scene more than a decade ago, but he returned to public view the other day when he was sentenced in Fort Worth, Texas to 45 years in prison after being convicted for raping a 12-year-old girl.

Guess they won’t be doing a Yankeeography on Mel. They won’t have to because somebody already beat them to it with a special tribute.

The New York State Legislature, aka The Ringling Bros. & Barnum & Bailey Circus, will be topic Number One on today’s “High Noon” radio program on WVOX.

My guest will be Jeffrey Binder, a political consultant, who will help us understand how two Democratic state senators turned an already dysfunctional governmental body into a confederacy of clowns.  More important, we’ll talk about how the current 31-31 Senate deadlock affects you, the ordinary citizen.

Tune in today at noon to 1460 AM. And join the conversation by calling 914-636-0110.

Nine years ago, a rapacious developer came into Port Chester with an idea of steam rolling much of the village’s commercial district.

G&S, the developers from Bethpage, L.I., succeeded with the assistance of New York state’s eminent domain law which was lopsidedly designed to screw private property owners. Considerable help also was provided by a cadre of enabling village officials who were in their hip pocket.

If you travel to Port Chester today, you will see the fruits of their labors—giant, monolithic, windowless structures. They include a Costco and a multiplex movie theater that hug the Byram River waterfront. Beneath the level of the parking lot and barely visible to passerbys, they built a promenade along the river, which appears to be in disrepair and under utilized.

One of the property owners whose rights were violated in the eminent domain fiasco was a man by the name of Bill Brody. His commercial building on South Main Street was seized to make way for a parking garage and a Stop & Shop supermarket.

Under New York law,  challenges to eminent domain had to be filed within 30 days of a governmental decision to condemn a property. The problem was that the only official means of notification was a legal ad placed in classified sections of newspapers.

If you missed seeing the ad in time, you lost any chance of saving your property.

By the time Brody learned that his property was condemned, it was too late. Nevertheless, he fought back. Enlisting the legal assistance of the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Justice, he took his case to court and won.

Last year, a judge of the Southern District of New York, ruled that his right to due process had been violated. In a way, it was a Pyrrhic victory. Brody’s building had already been torn down.

But the federal court decision did have positive results. It was precedent setting, giving fuel to other property owners fighting unfair eminent domain cases across the country. It also spurred the New York State Legislature  to rewrite the eminent domain procedural law, requiring proper notification to property owners.

There’s also an extraordinary final chapter to the Brody-Port Chester story. The village had to eat crow. As part of a settlement agreement, the village paid Brody $475,000 and publicly apologize. The apology came at a village board meeting Monday night…and set in stone at a settlement signing ceremony held today at Village Hall.

That’s not all. The village also agreed to rename the corner where Brody’s building stood—William Brody Plaza.

Having covered this story in the early years, I never thought I’d see anything like this happen.

However, the apology to Brody isn’t enough. The village should extend it to the scores of merchants, landlords and apartment dwellers who were bullied, terrorized and swindled during that terrible period.

Brody had the means and forbearance to fight back. Others didn’t. They had to cut their losses and leave.

Lt. John K. Koelsch, who was a posthumous recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor for his heroism in the Korean War, will be recognized by the Medal of Honor memorial in Mount Pleasant.

The memorial lists 88 service men from New York state who received the highest medal for valor, going back to the First World War. But Koelsch, a Navy helicopter pilot, was not among the names because he was neither born in New York nor did he enter the military in the New York—both of which are memorial requirements.

However, Peter Fiumefreddo, who heads up the memorial committee told me that an exception will be made for Koelsch, who spent much of his childhood living in Briarcliff Manor and was a considered a local man int 1955 when the old Ossining Citizen Register newspaper ran a story announcing the news that he has posthumously received the medal. Fiumefreddo said the decision to include Koelsch came after last Thursday’s column in which I described the efforts by two Korean War veterans to get his name on local memorials.

Incidentally, there were a number of locals who earned the Medal of Honor before World War, including this man n (right) Robert Temple Emmet, a West Point graduate who fought the Apaches at the 1877 battle of Las Animas Canyon in Arizona. At the time, Emmet was an officer attached to the all-black regiment, 9th Cavalry also known as “Buffalo Soldiers.”

The battle was something of a disaster for the cavalry, but Emmet was cited for bravery for covering a retreat. He was born in New York City, lived in Pelham and is buried at Beechwood Cemetery in New Rochelle.

That’s the topic today, just minutes from now, on my “High Noon” radio program on WVOX, 1460 AM. My telephone guest will be E.J. McMahon, the director of the Empire Center for New York State Policy.

He’ll tell us why New York is heading down the path to financial ruin.

Tune in today at 12 noon or log onto wvox.com. Calls will be taken at 914-636-0110.

An interesting thing happened after Westchester County Executive Andy Spano swiped the county’s Conservative Party endorsement out from under the nose of Republican challenger Rob Astorino, who is the true conservative in the 2009 race.

On Monday night, the county Board of Legislators approved by 14-0 the appointment of former County Clerk Len Spano to the county’s ethics board. (Two legislators—George Oros, R-Cortlandt and Tom Abinanti, D-Greenburgh, were not present for the vote.)

This is interesting because Len Spano is the grand old patriarch of the Republican Spano family—a huge clan of politicos and patronage beneficiaries. However, it’s a stretch to call them Republicans anymore since the two highest profile members of the family, former State Sen. Nick Spano, now a lobbyist, and his brother, Yonkers Assemblyman Mike Spano have aligned themselves with the dominant Democratic Party for purposes of self preservation.

In recent columns, I’ve pointed to a conspiracy theory on how Andy Spano, a liberal Democrat, who is no relation to the “other Spanos,” got the Conservative Party nomination. The word is that it started with his powerful former deputy Larry Schwartz who twisted Nick Spano’s arm, who in turn twisted the arm of Gail Burns, the Conservative Party chairwoman, who owes her job to Nick.

The quid pro quo works this way:

Schwartz ensures that his old boss, Andy, wins a fourth term. In exchange, he gets suburban support for his new boss, Gov. David Paterson, who is unpopular and has a very steep hill to climb in order to win election in November. Or, assuming Paterson is doomed, Schwartz has a job waiting for him back in Westchester.

For leaning on Burns, Spano gets lobbying business from the state and/or county not to mention future Democratic support for his kid brother, a newly minted Democrat, who has aspirations for Yonkers mayor and possibly county executive.

Who know what other favors may or may not be in the works.

But Andy Spano’s appointment of the retired Len Spano to the ethics board certainly looks suspicious. Should the father of Tricky Nicky Spano sit on such a panel?

And how will Len respond to any ethics complaint filed against Andy?

This is troublesome.

Andy Spano is no blood relation to the other Spanos, but he sure is related in spirit. That’s becoming more and more obvious.

As I wrote in today’s column, the scuttlebutt is that the fix is in tonight for incumbent Westchester County Executive Andy Spano, a Democrat, to win the Conservative Party endorsement.

If this should come to pass, it will have very little to do with pure Conservative ideology and everything to do with a cynically rigged system that runs purely on connections and favors. It would be proof positive that elections aren’t really decided on election day in November, but in the hot days of spring and summer when nobody’s paying attention to the deal makers who convene in the proverbial smoke-filled rooms.

Simple Fact No. 1: Andy Spano is not a Conservative. By any definition, he would be characterized as a classic New York liberal.

Simple Fact No 2: Rob Astorino, the Republican candidate in the race, is philosophically a Conservative in every respect, though it would be an unfair stretch to say that he is, well, a Rush Limbaugh-style Conservative. And what happened?

Simple Fact No. 3: Well whaddya know? Only four years ago, the Conservatives nominated Astorino when he unsucessfully ran against Spano the first time.

So how is it that Spano is now the worthy Conservative candidate and Astorino is chopped liver?

A possible answer lies in the conspiracy theory that Larry Schwartz, who works for Gov. David Paterson and was Spano’s deputy county executive, engineered a deal with county Conservative Party Chairwoman Gail Burns—using former State Sen. Nick Spano (no relation to Andy) as the go-between.

Burns worked for Nick Spano when he was in the state Senate and has maintained close ties with him.

In exchange, the theory goes, Nick Spano would get powerful Democratic Party support down the road for his kid brother, Assemblyman Mike Spano, who has strong designs on the Yonkers mayoralty and possibly the county exec post as well. Does this sound far-fetched?

Well, it’s certainly more believable than Andy Spano getting hit by lightning and becoming a follower of the cable-TV teachings of Sean Hannity.

Sue Swanson, the chairwoman of the Mount Pleasant Conservative Party and a supporter of Astorino, smelled a rat when Andy Spano was interviewed by the party leaders. She said she attempted to ask him how he felt about gun control—and Burns wouldn’t let him answer the question.

Swanson also discovered that a sizeable number of her election district votes were snapped up by Burns, presumably as a tactic to stack the deck for Spano.

“She told me not to make trouble,” Swanson said of Burns. “I said, ‘I’m put on this earth to cause trouble.’ ”

Burns denies any of this happened, including the rigged endorsement. We’ll see what happens tonight when the party holds its closed-door convention at the Polish Community Center in Yonkers.

But Burns has already state a rationale for picking Spano over Astorino. It goes like this—See, there’s a dichotomy in Conservative thinking. There’s the state-level Conservative philosophy, personified by state chairman Mike Long, who is right of center on fiscal issues AND social issues such as abortion and gay marriage…and then there’s the Westchester Conservative.

The Westchester Conservative is tough on fiscal issues but a softy on everything else. Spano is that type of Conservative, and therefore deserves the Westchester Conservative Party nomination.

Do you buy this baloney?

The obvious fallacy is that no one in mainstream politics ever cops to being in favor of big government with high taxes and free-wheeling spendiing. Everybody claims to be a Conservative on that score, even when it’s not true.

The bottom line is that Andy Spano is in no way a born-again Conservative, not even a fiscal one.

A couple of weeks ago, I scheduled David Spano for an interview on my “High Noon” radio program on WVOX, but he canceled on me at the last minute because he said he didn’t feel prepared.

Well, now Spano says he’s ready to talk and will come on the air tomorrow at the usual 12 noon time, 1460 AM and wvox.com.

Spano, you may recall, is running for Westchester County Executive. His main opponent is his father, Andy Spano, the incumbent. The junior Spano says he wants to shrink county government and feels that his dad has taxed middle class residents to the point where they can’t afford to live here anymore.

So, I’m hoping he’s show up. Calls will be taken at 914-636-0110.