There was a point in last night’s debate when Andy Spano fell face first into a “Neville Chamberlain Moment.” That is never a good thing in politics.

Chamberlain was the British prime minister who famously waved a piece of paper signed by Adolf Hitler in 1938 that basically said Germany had no intention of invading Czechoslovakia. And we all know what happened, don’t we? That’s right—the opposite of “peace in our time.”

The incumbent county executive’s moment came midway through the debate when he was forced, once again, to defend his settlement of a federal lawsuit that will require Westchester to build, lease or acquire 750 affordable housing units to be spread over 31 communities with mostly white populations. The settlement calls for the expenditure of $52 million, a cost that Spano claims will not be exceeded.

“We don’t see any additional impact on our budget because of the spending, ” he said. “The money that we have to spend is capped. What that means is we have capped the amount of money we should spend, and will spend—and that’s all the housing we have to do, is that amount of money.”

So far so vague. But then Spano walked into it when he said the following. I’ll put it in bold print. “We have a letter from the Justice Department indicating that and I’m confident that everything stands in that vein.”

He should’ve waved the letter aloft. See, peace in our time!

Rob Astorino, the Republican challenger, had a pretty effective rejoinder.

“Well, let’s just do the math,” he began. “He wants you to say it’s a $52 million cap and he has a letter from the Justice Department that says that. The letter is just that. It’s not part of the binding agreement and that is very specific if you read this settlement.”

Astorino said Spano wants people to believe that the cost will be contained. But 750 units divided into $52 million comes out to $68,000 per unit. No way does housing come out that cheap. Not here. And not Aberdeen, South Dakota for that matter.

“By Mr. Spano’s  own estimation in our last debate he said it’s going to be about $400,000 a unit. So if you do 750 times $400,000 you’re going to come out to much more than $52 million. You’re  going to come out to  hundreds of millions of dollars.”

In other words, look out Czechoslovakia. Hello Poland. So long France.

Now, this may be true. Or maybe not. The problem for Spano was that he had no answer to this. At least not a convincing one. This was true pretty much throughout the debate. Politics is about persuasion. And last night Spano left his powers of persuasion at home.

Fines.

The best thing about tonight’s debate between the candidates in the Westchester County executive’s race is that it was over before the start of the first game of the World Series. So I watched the whole debate.

If I were forced to give a peformance grade to the combatants, I’d say that Rob Astorino, the Republican challenger got an A-minus grade and Andy Spano, the incumbent Democrat got a “gentleman’s C.” I know I give Spano a hard time, but by any objective analysis Astorino clearly won the debate that was aired on Cablevision’s News 12.

Astorino came across as polished, prepared and pugilistic—the three “P’s.” Spano came across as, well, tired. He sounded like he was mailing it in.

The most annoying thing about Astorino’s message was his constant reference to his Web site. Spano’s mantra was that Astorino was “divisive.” Most interesting, however, was that Spano, knowing he was on TV, mightily restrained himself from coming across as a grumpy, old codger—which is the way he appeared in previous untelevised debates.

The result was that Astorino got the aggressive upper hand. He started out the debate by telling the viewers what Spano was going to tell them. For instance. he said Spano would complain that  the county’s high property taxes aren’t his responsibility. Also, Astorino predicted Spano would claim credit for the county’s a triple bond rating. without explaining that the rating is high because the local municipalties are responsible to make good on the prioperty tax collections. And he was right—Spano couldn’t veer from his script and he mentioned most of the things Astorino said he would.

And he kept pounding Spano on taxes, on Playland, on the affordable housing settlement and even on Spano’s driver-bodyguards. Spano still hasn’t come up with an answer to that one.

Spano seemed lost at times. When he tried to score on a Fair Campaign Practices Committee that faulted Astorino, he garbled the answer with an inside-baseball explanation that must have been lost on the average viewer.

Astorino also got off a good one-liner, maybe the best one of the night. As he has all through the campaign, Spano read aloud the breakdown on Astorino’s property tax bill to make the point that the county portion of the bill isn’t high. This was an effective “gotcha” in the first debate between the candidates. But this time, Spano garbled it.

Then in an aside, Astorino leaned over to Spano and said. “It’s a little creepy that you’ve been snooping around in my taxes.”

Phillies Win Game 1

Astorino Wins Debate 3

This is great. Yonkers Mayor Phil Amicone announced that today is “Chip Taylor Day in the City of Yonkers.”

Taylor, grew up as James Wesley Voight in Yonkers and went to Archbishop Stepinac High School in White Plains. He is the brother of actor Jon Voight,  wrote the classic garage-band hit, “Wild Thing” and other other songs. His other brother, Barry, is also an actor. 

The announcement fro Chip Taylor Day is being made, probably as I write this post, at City Hall in the Mayor’s Reception Room. (From left to right, the photo shows Barry, Jon and Chip Voight.)

Taylor and his friends and family and friends are there right now. According to the mayor’s office, the songwriter has a new album out that was inspired by  Yonkers. But he’ll probably be always know for “Wild Thing.”

The British group, the Troggs, made a hit out of “Wild Thing” back in 1966. Click on video.

Check out the low production values with the Beatle-brow hairdos and striped, clown suits. And how about the half-dead onlookers on the train platform? This should’ve been a zombie movie, and I don’t mean, The Zombies, another group from the British Invasion years.

Soupy Sales, who died last week at the age of 83, was a precursor to Uncle Floyd and Pee Wee Herman—and a lot funnier.  One of the things that made him so funny was his expert utilization of the comic pie throw, which goes back to the silent comedies of Mack Sennett, Laural and Hardy and later, the Three Stooges.

It’s hardly sophisticated brand of humor, but it still cracks me up. There’s an art to it.

Soupy was a pie connoisseur. He knew that the pie had to have a crust that allowed for pieces of it to slowly fall off  the face of the “victim.” To be really funny, the impact also had to have a loud, whirlwind kind of sound to give it that shock and awe feeling.

A key element to  confection-based slapstick is the have the proper recipient. Here’s an example of a particularly effective  pie-throw, involving, of all people, the rock star, Alice Cooper.

He appeared on Soupy’s kid show in 1979. The setup involves White Fang, the giant dog who was mostly off-camera and had an expressive way of grunting.

Here’s an update on the visit to my Yonkers home by a team of ghost investigators from Katonah Paranormal. They arrived last week and concluded that there is indeed, some paranormal activity going on, particularly in the second floor hallway where my son saw the image of a tall man (a phantom?) during an incredibly violent thunder storm one night last summer. That’s the storm that knocked out the electricity, and there was talk that it also created a tornado effect in Mount Vernon.

Here’s a photo of that storm taken by a friend of mine, Mike Augustyni n Mamaroneck. Ain’t that incredible? Right out of a Frankenstein movie.

Bob Marrone, the fine journalist of WVOX radio and host of “Good Morning Westchester,” will do a Halloween special on the results of the investigation this Friday at 7 a.m. I was interviewed for the piece, so it should be very amusing.

Tune in Friday at 1460 AM or log onto wvox.com.

In this election cycle, incumbent Westchester County Executive Andy Spano has received $15,000 in campaign donations from  G&S, the Long Island development firm that was able to transform much of downtown Port Chester, thank to an abusive implentation of eminent domain. That’s a little added tidbit that’s relevant to  today’s column, which begins as follows:

By attributing racist motives to those who may be skeptical of a controversial settlement in an affordable housing lawsuit, Andy Spano has unwittingly put himself on notice.

If the incumbent county executive truly believes in the principle of a level playing field in which everyone – regardless of racial, ethnic and economic background – has an equal shot at the American Dream, then he can make a very simple statement to back it up.

To see how that involves eminent domain and Port Chester, read more by clicking on column.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not out to the soak the rich baseball players.

But this was a mind-blowing revelation. While I was watching a recent playoff game between the Yankees and the Angels, I got to thinking about how the so-called “post season” has now extended deep into the regular season of the NFL. Some day they’ll be playing the October Classic in December, I thought.

Then I wondered how much the players get in World Series these days. As a kid back in the 60s, I remember how the perennial champs, the Bronx Bombers, always counted on, and in fact, expected to receive the extra money gained from their series shares. Going online, I found this very revealing chart.

It shows the winners’ and losers’ shares from the first year the World Series was played in 1903. The winners got $1,182 for a full share. Somehow the losers got a few bucks more—$1,316. Maybe somebody can explain that anomoly to me, but it was the only year in baseball history that it was better to lose than win.

Looking at the chart, you can see that for nearly a half-century, the shares rose in only small increments. Year after year, the take was $2,000 or so, slowly building to the five- and six-grand range. (A low point for the losing side was $439.50, but in 1908 that was still pretty good bread.)

It was unitl 1954 when the New York Giants faced the Cleveland Indians that the winners’ share topped $10,000—but only be $1,147. From that time until 1968, the winners’ share exceeded $10,000 only five times.

In 1988, when free agency was pulling in higher and higher regular season salaries, the winners share finally went over the 100-grand mark.

Then came the sterioid era of the 90s. World Series shares have more than tripled since then. During the Yankees heyday of the late 90s, any player (even a bullpen coach, potentially) earned well over $1.5 million just in World Series shares alone.

Last year, the winners’ sharted was $351,504.48 and the losers got $233,730.05.

This is handsome bonus money indeed. So I pose the question: if the government can impose salary and bonus restrictions on investment bankers that took taxpayer bailout money, why can’t the same be done with baseball? It seems to me that with taxpayer-subsidized stadiums, they got bailed out too, thanks to the hard-earned money of regualr wage earners.

My guest on my “High Noon” radio program tomorrow will be George Albano, who will take about the life and times of his late brother, famed wrestler Capt. Lou Albano.

Lou Albano, who grew up in Mount Vernon, died last week at the age of 76.

Tune in to 1460 AM for the show, or log onto wvox.com.

Chris Collins is the county executive of Erie County—and there’s talk that some day down the road he might run for governor. Right now he says he is backing Rudy Giuliani who has yet to announce his intention to run.

Collins was elected in 2007 with one line on the ballot (Republican) in a county while his opponent had four lines and outspent him  three to one. He got 64 percent of the vote. The first thing he did when he took office was fire 21 of the county’s 25 commissioners.

He took away 250 cell phones and Blackberrys from public employees. Only five commissioners are allowed to have take-home cars.

Collins himself, drives his own Buick. He pays for his own gas. Evidently, he doesn’t  believe he needs bodyguard protection like Westchester County Executive You-Know-Who. His cell phone is his own.

He has two people in his office who handle media relations. You-know-Who has six.

Erie County has one million residents, close to the population of Westchester. But Westchester’s budget of $1.8 billion is abou twice the size of Erie.

Collins’ credo is run government like it’s a business, which he claims he has done with success. His slogan is lead by example.

Rob Astorino, who is running against Westchester County incumbent You-Know-Who seems to be holding Collins and his accomplishments in Erie County up as a model to follow. That may sound like a stretch because Erie is way out in the western New York  rust-belt and has been in economic decline for quite some time. When Collins took over the reins of government, there really was nowhere for Erie to go but up.

Nevertheless, Astorino earlier today introduced Collins to a round table of Westchester business leaders in White Plains, touting him as a rare example of a political leader who is succeeding in an uphill battle to streamline government.

Clearly, Astorino sees hope in Collins’s underdog election victory. But whether or not that can translate into a similar upset over the entrenched and very well-heeled Andy Spano, aka You-Kow-Who, remains to be seen.

In any case, the race in Westchester seems to be tightenting. An indicator of just how tight it’s getting is evidenced by the increasing level of nastiness. If Spano was genuinely secure, it’s doubtful he would release a mailing that attacks Astorino’s pro-life stance—and Spano did just that.

Collins talked at length about his efforts to reel in Erie’s public unions, with whom he said he has fought “tooth and nail.” Astorino may not be as successful in that area, but he has pledged that he will require all non-union employees to pay for health care.

In a brief interview following  the round table, which included leaders from the Business Council of Westchester and the Westchester County Association, Collins said that he managed under  a “limit test of what government should do and shouldn’t do.”

For instance, he’d unload Playland Amusement Park, which annually operates in the red.

“Absolutely, in a heart beat.” he said. “It’s not government’s role, I don’t believe, to do that type of thing—especially if it’s not making money. If it’s making money, that’s a whole different discussion  about quality of life and so forth.”

Astorino chimed in that 65 percent of Playland’s patrons are from outside Westchester, “So you have a minimum of $5 million taxpayer subsidy” for 35 percent of the population,” he said.

I love the e-mail scams. They’ve been out there trolling for suckers ever since Al Gore invented the Internet. Somebody must be falling for them, to. Or the crooks wouldn’t keep trying them out. Usually, these con jobs come from guy claiming to be a lawyer from Nigeria.

But here’s new one I just got from “Jill Rothstein.”

Am in a hurry writing you this note, Just wanted to seek your help onsomething very  important, you are the only person i could reach at this point, and i hope you come  to my aid. Because something very terrible is happening to me now,i need a favor from you now, I had a trip here in UK on a mission. Unfortunately for me all my money got stolen on my way to the hotel where i lodged along with my bag were my passport was ,And since theni have been without any money i am even owing the hotel here. So i have limited access to emails for now, please i need you to lend me about 1300Pounds so i can make arrangements and return back please,i have spoken to the embassy here but they are not responding to the matter effectively, I will return the money back to you as soonas i get home, I am so confused right now.
I will be waiting to hear from you.
jillie

For laughs, I e-mailed good old “Jillie” back. I didn’t expect to get a reply, but she surprised me.

I wrote:

My God, that’s terrible. How much is 1,300 pounds in American dollars?
Please write back.

Jillie wrote:

Thank you! This was a scam, so crazy!

I wrote:

Wow. Really? And here I was, ready to help.. Oh well.

Jillie wrote:

So appreciate it!