Michael Putney Local 10 WPLG

August 11, 2009

Michael Putney
Local 10 WPLG
3401 West Hallandale Beach Blvd.
Pembroke Pines, Florida 33023

Mr. Putney,

Thank you for your kind note. Since I believe that “modesty is an overrated virtue” I agree completely with your calling me “witty and thoughtful”. What I don’t know is whether I should take your silence as agreeing with my assessment of Clark Clifford and Alvah Chapman.

I do know that when I am in the same paragraph as Paul Krugman it’s is time to count the silverware. If you look at his picture on the Times’ web site and then close your eyes and say “Where have I seen that face before”? the mystery of whether or not Rasputin had children is solved. I have to admire anybody who could turn being a shill for Enron into a career plus. As to his Nobel Prize, he joins a distinguished cast of past winners. Swells such as Le Duc Tho, Rigoberta Minchu, and Yasser Arafat will welcome him. Next in line will be a Pulitzer. Walter Duranty needs company. I oft times wonder what the Ochs/Sulzberger junta would have done if their 1934 winner for Foreign Reporting had been as in the tank for the government he covered as was the 1932 winner.

As to Hudson County politics…

Do you remember John Houseman in the movie “3 Days of the Condor”? He was the wise old man of the CIA who, when asked by Cliff Robertson if he “missed the action”, said “No, I miss the clarity.”

My uncle Danny voted in every election until 1971. He was stopped by a Federal Judge, a Judge appointed by a Republican, who was understandably upset when he found out that uncle Danny had died in 1956.

My father, the legendary Judge Smith, tells of the moral dilemma facing poll workers when they discovered that there were no, as in none, Republican votes in the box. Shut outs are appreciated in baseball but not at the ward level. The boys at City Hall decided to give the Republicans 6 votes. The problem came from whether or not to take 6 from the original total or invent 6. The latter prevailed.

If you ever travel on the Eastern Spur of the New Jersey Turnpike to get to the Lincoln Tunnel you will pass what was known as Snake Hill. Among other things it is the southernmost point of the last ice age. If we ever get Global Warming under control who knows where the next Ice Age will end. The connection to Hudson County politics is that while it was public property it was sold for fill as a private transaction. All that was saved was the face of it.


The county undertaker was able to exponentially increase his net income by doubling up indigents in the same coffin before putting them in unmarked graves.

I remember wondering how a school building in Jersey City was able to spend $900 per casement window – each site having two – in 1958. So did the U.S. Attorney’s office.

Beneficial Finance got its stronghold in Hudson County as a financing arm for county employees to pay the 3% tribute to Hague.

The Hudson County Boulevard, now known as Kennedy Boulevard, had its own police force. 15 miles long and 25 yards wide. There was also the Hudson County Park Police. Don’t confuse them with the Hudson County Police. This may seem strange to an outsider but up there everybody knew what politicians did. They got people jobs.

Down here it is different. Save the manatee, save the turtles, save the homeless, save the halt, the lame, save the old, and save the single mom who is usually a woman of color with a child in need of a good Ritalin program. She is also exploited by the low prices at WAL*MART. Soon there will be committee to save the pythons. Manatee suffrage is next on the agenda. Didn’t we save the aging greyhounds and pregnant pigs?

I can tell you that the majority of the Broward County Commission is “ethically challenged”. It would be funny if they weren’t so pretentious. One member actually uses a different name when she in Tallahassee as a paid lobbyist. These people, having stolen the coins off dead men’s eyes, now steal hot stoves. And they aren’t too proud to ask for help getting down the back stairs with a 6 burner model.

I had an aunt who lived on Hester Street. She used to say, “Don’t pee on my back and call it rain”.

Which brings me back to where I started. Did Alvah Chapman use Clark Clifford to put the fix in? I’ll save the way that Bayonne split the Black vote in 1964 when everybody was praising the Voting Rights Act. After it was split it was then Urban Renewaled out of existence. None of that modern American Liberal claptrap in Hudson County.

My Uncle Tom had this after hours joint in his basement…

Kevin Smith

CC-DTF