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Being Frank. Frank, We're the only way to be is Frank.
Hello everyone, and welcome to being Frank. We're the only way to be
is Frank. I'm your host, Franklebuono, and I'd like to thank you
for joining us on what we like to call the Intelligent Conversation Podcast. We're
no conversations out of bounds, and all points of view are welcome. For
relevance, We'll let you know. We go live to tape and we are
taping on the fourth of January twenty twenty four, our first show of the
new year. And if you haven't noticed, you will that twenty twenty four
is an election year, a big one, not only because it involves the
races for the presidency, Congress, and local legislatures, but because of the
strong choices each of those races reports. I believe this election will be to
decide the very soul of the nation and how we will define ourselves for the
next generations. The process has already begun, with laws in certain states now
in place limiting or completely restricting reproductive rights and transgender affirm and care the situation
at our southern border has spilled over to affect not only those cities there,
but major ones throughout the country as well as our own localities. It is
certainly an untenable situation with tens of thousands of people attempting to enter the country
on a monthly basis, But of instead of dealing with it in a sane,
humane way, in a bit of draconian showmanship, the Republican governor of
Texas has shipped tens of thousands of human beings i e. Migrants in buses
to democratically controlled cities like New York and Chicago. Here in little old Rockland
County, measures have been taken that make it very clear that these people are
not welcome to stay here. It's a classic we say, we feel for
you, but no, you can't stay. We know that most of these
laws have been passed into red states or by Republican administrations, and let's face
it, this legislation would not have been possible if it was not supported by
the people in those areas, and their opinions are not invalid. Something must
be done, so it's not hyperbole. We must vote our conscience and make
our choices clear. One way to do that is to have intelligent compensation conversation
about these and other issues with those who are bold enough to run for political
office. So who are grateful to have mister Elijah Richland Melnik, former New
York State Senator and current candidate from the thirty eighth District representing Rockland in Westchester
Counties, New York, to join us here on being Frank. Thank you.
You've been here once before, Senator, so thank you for joining us
again. Thank you, Frank. It's great to be here with you,
and I'm honored to be the first show of twenty twenty four. As you
said, it's going to be a big election year, so there, I'm
sure we'll have a lot to talk about. I just want to quickly clarify
the district after the redistricting from twenty twenty two, no longer has any of
Westchester. It's only in Rockland County. Only in Rockland, Okay. I
did my research and it said the thirty eighth included so that was an old
it used to. When I ran in twenty twenty the district did include one
town in Westchester, and then after that they redistricted, and so when I
ran last year. It is only in Rockland County. It's the entire county
except the town of Stony Point. Talk a little bit about that a little
bit later on in the program what we can expect from that race. But
one of the things I wanted to start with, especially because it is so
much, very much in the news, and that's the so called migrant situation,
the situation at the border, which is literally spilled over to the point
where it's affecting even local municipalities like ours. I know in the county at
day, the county executive here in Rockland County, and because we do stream,
we stream from Rockland County Stony Point, New York. But because it's
streaming, we go to other areas. So I try to explain to people
where we are, and it's a community about twenty five miles north of New
York City about so we are very much affected by the migrant situation, in
the so called busting situation that I mentioned in my intro, and it's been
made clear, as I said, there is a county wide ordinance that is
preventing migrants from being housed in hotels and motels around the county. And I
noticed that the supervisor for the town of Clarkstown. I believe George Homan also
reinforced that by saying that migrants cannot be bussed through the town of Clarkstown.
So I'd like your thoughts on the situation, since, again it's a national
picture, but because of what happened, it's filtered through the state and from
the state down to local governments. What are your feelings on the situation?
What should be done? What can be done? What would you do had
you have you should you be re elected to the New York State Senate?
Sure? Well, nothing like starting out with a good broad question there,
So you know, look, this is a very complicated situation obviously that's driven
at the national level and to a large extent, driven by things happening well
beyond our borders, which is why you see such a surgeon migrants coming from
countries like Venezuela, which have really gone to near collapse in many cases and
caused large numbers of the people there to flee. We're fortunate in Rockland,
I would say, so far the impact is sort of theoretical rather than real.
There have not been any large groups of migrants that have arrived in Rockland
and while there's been that some might or some could, at the moment,
it's unclear to me that anything particular has happened to harm Rockland as a result
of this. Obviously, if I'm re elected, my first priority is always
going to be doing what's right for people here in our county, and that
has to be the priority of any elected official who is representing Rockland County.
And so when we look at that, yes, we need to make sure
and not because you know, we have something against people who are migrants,
but because it's any large group of people that theoretically might show up on our
doorstep without the ability to provide for themselves. That is going to cost taxpayers
in Rockland significant amounts of money. And it is important that we have a
plan in place, and that more importantly, the state and really the federal
government has a plan in place to help a community like Rockland if there was
the case. And again, this is theoretical. It's not theoretical for New
York City, but for Rockland County. We're not seeing what we're seeing in
the city. There's got to be a plan in place to make sure that
local communities are not having to pick up the tab for issues with federal immigration
policy. That to me is the bottom line when it comes to this,
if you ask me at the federal level, the main reason that we're having
these problems is we've let it go decades without any sort of comprehensive fix in
our immigration system. We are there, people know what needs to be done,
it just never seems to happen. We clearly need to make sure we're
enforcing the laws at the border, but also create a pathway so that people
who want to come to this country like all our ancestors did, and to
come here and to work and to start businesses and start families and contribute to
our society have a way to do that. And right now for the vast
majority of people that might want to come to the US like my great grandparents
did and your ancestors and everybody listening, they can't do that. When when
my three quarters of my family came over here from what's now you know,
was then the Russian Empire, now various you know, Russia, Ukraine,
Lithuania around the turn of the century, the turn of the twentieth century,
there was you got on a boat, you bought your ticket, and when
you got to Ellis island. If you didn't have a contagious disease, and
you weren't a communist or an anarchist, they lay you in. You can
get your citizenship a year or two later, and that was that. And
the system we have now, if you don't already have a close family member
here or are working in a very high skilled job, you cannot come here
and start your life in this country. And even if you do have a
family member, it could take you literally a couple decades. If you,
you know, tomorrow, had a brother that lived in some country around the
world and you wanted to apply for him to get his immigration visa and move
here and get a green card and eventually become a citizen, you could expect
he wouldn't show up for fifteen years or more. That's not something that really
works for people, and specifically with this migrant surge. What's happened is a
federal law for decades, probably since the Cold War, has said if you
get to United States soil, whether on a plane or walking over the border,
you are allowed to claim asylum, saying I fear that if I go
back to my country, I'm going to be persecuted or killed because of my
politics, my religion, my race, whatever it might be. You're not
guarantee to get asylum, but you're allowed to claim it, and you're allowed
to have your case heard by a US judge. What's happened now is that
the number of people showing up at the border has totally overwhelmed that system.
So you have hundreds of thousands of people showing up every year, maybe more
than a million, and there's not nearly enough judges to hear those claims and
figure out which of them have a valid claim to asylum because they really would
have a credible fear of being persecuted or killed if they went back to their
country, and which of them are simply essentially economic migrants. Their conditions and
and say Nicaragua are terrible, and so somebody's come up here because they think
they'd make a better life in the United States. That is not grounds for
assylum, whether it should be or not. The current law says that certainly
is not. Just because the conditions in whatever country you live in aren't good
for you or aren't good for your family, that doesn't give you the right
to claim asylum in the US, or to win asylum. You can claim
it but it has to be brought before a judge. So if we were
serious as a country about dealing with this migrant issue, one of the many
things we would do is and people that proposed this, is hire thousands of
additional immigration judges to hear these cases quickly, not in years, but in
months, so that somebody shows up at the border and says I need asylum,
we can evaluate very quickly do they deserve it or not. If they
deserve it, then they get it and they welcome and they start the legal
process to become a legal resident here. And if they don't deserve it,
well we're sorry, but you have to go back to the country you came
from. If I might jump in here, and this is absolutely terrific because
I heard something very interesting today. Speaker Johnson and a number of Republicans went
down to the border. Uh. And President Biden has addressed this because it's
going to be a hot bund election issue. The Republicans are going to hammer
home the fact that there's no security at the border. There's no positis,
which is the border is as secure as it's ever been. If Biden says,
give give give him the money to bring the judges in to bring the
people in. Now, Johnson I just heard is refusing, says We're not
going to throw any more money at the problem because it's not the money,
it's the system. The system is tell you, I don't think that.
I don't think the Republicans actually want to solve the border right now. I
think they want to use it as a as an attack line in the election
and try to blame Biden and Democrats for everything that goes wrong. And you
can you know, I I literally you don't have to take my word for
it. Here's a quote from Texas congressman by the name of Troy Nils who
just this week. Here's his quote on CNN. Let me tell you,
I'm not willing to do too damn much right now to help a Democrat and
to help Joe Biden's approval rating. You know, So this is what we're
dealing with. It's an easy applause line and an easy attack line to say,
close the border, fix the border, stop this. But we know
what it takes. It's not building you know, magical walls, or you
know, shooting people when they approach, or things that are deeply on American.
It's if somebody shows up, and when you look at the videos,
people are not trying that. They're walking over the border and turning themselves in.
They're not trying to evade the border patrol because the whole point is they
want to claim asylum, and so you turn yourself in and you claim asylum.
But they know and this is where the core the problem is. If
they claim asylum, it will be years before their case is heard, and
in the meantime, they've got time to live in the United States while they're
pending. We need to eliminate that. We need to have the people on
staff, and the federal government spends trulyions of dollars, surely we can afford
to hire the few thousand additional judges it would take to process these cases in
a timely way so that people who are trying to come here get a yes
no answer sooner rather than later. Are you eligible or are you not?
And if you're eligible, they can start a life here and not have to
live in the shadows. And if they are not eligible, then they got
to go back where they came from. Well, you know what I see
here center is almost like a paradox, though, and it comes back to
what you were saying the burden of pain for all these things. Okay,
the only way to get it done is to pay for it. Uh And
but people are unwilling to pay for it, so it doesn't get done.
So you get this vicious you get this vicious cycle. That's catch twenty two
if you will go and how do we break that? I think we need
to realize that, as we do in our own lives, sometimes you spend
money because you'll save more later. I mean, it's the concept of investing
or putting money away, you know, or or you know, putting money
out now because you know the return will come back. Look, we you
know, it's the same argument that're Republicans like to have. They are they
always want to cut funding for the IRS, and particularly when the IRS wants
to hire people to go after wealthy taxpayers that are gaining the system. But
every dollar that we spend to actually audit people who are, you know,
trying to gain the system as you can if you're a very rich person and
can hire armies of accountants, it makes far more than that back in tax
revenue that's gained. And so you talk about the drain that having hundreds of
thousands of people showing up on a monthly basis at the border has on the
on the tax base, not only you know, nationally, but then what
the impact is on a city like New York or or perhaps you know,
on a you know, a suburban community spending the money and we're not talking.
You know, this isn't like we spend hundreds of billions of dollars a
year on important national defense stuff and nobody bats an eye because it's it's important.
We recognize, you know, we don't want to cut our military.
We need a strong military. We should have the same attitude with this spend
the money process. These people, make sure they get an answer quickly,
and then we have the ability for anybody that is not qualified for asylum to
deport them back to the country that they came from. I continue to think
we should change the law so that we have a process in place that somebody
that wants to come legally can do that and earn their citizenship. Eventually,
we don't really have that process that works for most people now, but that's
a separate fight. We have an asylum law on the books, we need
to enforce it in a more timely way rather than waiting years to process cases.
I want to switch gears a little bit, but it's all related,
of course, it always is. Talk a little bit about affordable housing.
It was going through social media today and there was a post and it really
affected me about it was obviously from a single mom and she was looking for
an affordable apartment, for a one bedroom apartment here again in Rockland County,
a relatively affluent bourb and more suburban type community for people who don't know it.
Again people think of it as fairly wealthy, but was looking for a
one bedroom apartment for herself and her daughter. And she's had references and a
hard working woman, but for looking for something for one bedroom for fifteen to
seventeen hundred dollars in Rockland County and that that's not going to cut it.
And so you again you get into these vicious cycles and it start. If
people don't have the security of a place to live, then it's more difficult
to work, children aren't educated properly than there's food insecurities. It just starts
again this vicious cycle. So what can we do about affordable housing as a
situation nationally but also in particular in communities like Rockland County. What can be
done well. There's clearly a housing affordability issue, not just in Rockland but
all through the state and really in many parts of the country. The few
areas that around the country that are you know, seeing very cheaply affordable housing.
In most cases, it's either communities that are emptying out and the housings
affordable because people don't want to live there because the economy is going downhill,
or there's other issues. And you look at a lot of Rust Belt cities
and you see things like that, it's very cheap if you want to move
to Akron right now, I'm sure, but there's not a whole lot going
on there. But or alternately places in the Sun Belt where there's still huge
amounts of buildable land in relatively close proximity to highways and things like that.
The challenge for the New York area is particularly a place like Rockland, and
the same goes for Westchester and Bergen and the other older suburban communities. We
don't have a lot of land to build on. If you went back to
Rockland fifty years ago or seventy years ago when the bridge opened, it was
farms. You know, Developers, could you know, buy a few farms
and put up hundreds of houses, and that was simply the way it went.
And we don't have that land available in the way that we used to.
And people don't want to see density, you know, we don't want
to see density in Rockland that matches the city that many people came from,
or that matches you know, other large cities. You know, I work
right now over in White Plains and it's perfectly a nice place to work.
And they've got a lot of huge buildings there, office buildings, big tall
apartments. That's fine for that. They've got good train service to the city.
But I don't think that most people in Rockland want to start seeing,
you know, fifteen twenty story apartments going in. So we need smart strategies
to try to incentivize additional construction where we can, in places that make sense
close to transit stops, whether it's our limited train stations or bus stops or
things like that, and to really be smart. I'm proud. When I
was a village trustee in Nayak, we had laws on the books and the
village still does that requires any developer who wants to build multi family housing to
set a certain percent of the units aside as affordable housing units. That's something
which every community in Rockland should be doing, and most are not. It
doesn't you know, that's one step. It doesn't require the construction of any
housing, but it says that if a developer comes in and wants to build
any sort of multi family housing, they need to set some of it aside
for people who are not upper middle class or rich to be able to afford.
I think those are all big pieces of it, you know, certainly
finding ways to reduce any unnecessary red tape that's slowing down construction, but recognizing
that we have to strike a balance between allowing additional housing where we need and
the county has to continue to grow this is the way of the world,
and making sure that we do preserve the sort of suburban way of life that
drew people to Rockland to begin with or kept them here. You know,
if we grew up as a legislator, how do you deal with the so
called nimbi attitude? You know, people love the idea, Oh that's great,
but just don't put it here. So how do you convince people with
an attitude like that, Yeah, the idea is great, but just don't
just don't put it here, and that happens. We've been talking about a
little bit the migrant situations. Yeah we want to see them get helped,
but we just don't help them here. Yeah, we'd like to see affordable
housing, just don't put it here. How do you deal with that?
Well, I mean, i'd say as a state legislator there, we do
less with that because all the land use issues tend to happen really at the
local level. The state's not doing zoning shouldn't be. The governor proposed last
year to override local zoning, which I thought was a terrible idea, and
she rightly backed off it because there was a really unanimous opposition from suburban legislators
of both parties. So the state isn't suing so much of that, but
local governments when you're dealing with land use issues and approving projects. Look,
people who live in a community currently, and I think that describes most of
us. Typically, if you like the way your community is, you're going
to stay there, and if you don't like it, you're gonna move if
you can afford to. And so at any given time, most people that
live in a community, like most of them in Rockland, have chosen to
be there, and they wanted to stay roughly the same way that it is,
because if they didn't like it, they would probably pick up and go
somewhere else. So there needs to be an ongoing dialogue both to understand that
that's the reality. People are i think, naturally resistant to what seems like
excessive change, So we shouldn't be doing excessive change. We should be finding
smart areas, looking for the vacant properties, looking for the abandoned properties,
finding places that we can grow in a way that's going to add density in
a smart way without you know, changing the character of a community that people
have come to know and love. And look. Sure, if there's somebody
that just never wants to see a single additional unit of housing built in Rockland
County, I'm sorry. That's Rockland's been building housing, you know, for
as long as it's been here, and certainly ever since the Tappanzee Bridge opened,
has been growing and changing and it's going to continue to but we want
to do it in a way that respects what we have and don't tear down
existing development to put up high rises, and you know, don't force people
out of their houses. And you know, I think you can look at,
you know, places in the city that have changed in a really rapid
way, and people want to make sure that doesn't happen here. So I
think talk about the benefits of as you said, the working mother that's trying
to find a place for her and her child to live, the younger family
that wants to start a family in Rockland, because it's not only rentals,
it's you know, the price of home ownership in Rockland is setting new highs
all the time, and that prices young people out of the market, pushes
them further up, you know, to Orange County or Putnam or Duchess,
and so we lose that it's hard for people in their twenties and thirties to
live in Rockland if they wanted to move back after going to college, or
they you know, are looking to get out of the city and come up
this way as well. As we need these options at all levels of the
market. And that's something which I think everybody, even folks that don't really
want things to change that much, should be able to understand. This is
about making it possible for working people, who we all are working people at
one time or another, have the ability to live in our community, contribute
to our community and build their story in Rockland, just like everybody else has
done. Okay, Another issue that we talk about a lot, and I
think we probably even did the last time you were here on being frank,
and politicians talk about it all the time, and yet there was another school
shooting, this time in Iowa. The issue of gun control and gun violence,
particularly in schools and everywhere. You know, we have in New York
pending a concealed Carrie law that is being challenged but right now is being struck
down as unconstitutional. Anyway, why do we continue to have this conversation and
nothing seems to be able to get done, even in blue states? No
one is immune to this. What can we do and why we haven't the
same conversations? You hit the nail on the head. We've been having this
conversation about gun violence for as long as I've been around, And you know,
I was in high school when the Columbine shooting happened in Colorado. That
seems to have kicked off the current wave of school shootings, and the death
toll since then is beyond belief. It never seems to stop. We've had
elementary school children all the way up to college students killed, and of course
more mass shootings. So you know, to the point where these days,
unless it's you know, truly out of the ordinary, barely makes the news
anymore. I wish I had a good answer. I mean, we're a
country which we've got more guns than people. Sure, we have a Second
Amendment, it guarantees people the right to keep in bare arms. We all
understand that. But there's got to be a better way to manage those arms
and to manage those weapons so that we don't lead the developed world in gun
homicides. More people are killed in the US per capita from guns than any
other developed country. You have to look at places like Somalia and war torn
countries to see a similar gun death rate as we have. And I don't
believe there's all of these red herrings. Oh it's the mental health. Oh
it's the violent video games, it's all of this. I'm sorry. Every
other country in the world has people with mental health issues, every other country
has kids who play violent video games. They don't see this sort of thing
happen on such a regular basis. And the difference is that here you can
relatively easily compared to almost any other country, go out and buy not a
hunting rifle or a handgun, but a weapon of war, a gun that
can shoot dozens of bullets and murder dozens of people in minutes before you can
be stopped. And that often outguns are police and outguns the sort of proverbial
good guy with a gun. I mean the Buffalo shooting two years ago that
killed I believe a dozen people in Buffalo. There was an armed security guard
at that supermarket that tried to stop the gunman and he was outgunned because the
gunman had a much more powerful assault weapon and military grade body armor. And
that armed guard fought back, he lost his life and he couldn't stop it.
And if we have people roaming the street that are more heavily armed than
police, that just isn't sustainable. We need a shift in the culture.
We need people to recognize that, you know, we have police for a
reason. Police are there to keep us safe and we can trust the police
to do that job. And other law enforcement and everybody out there who has
these arsenals that is not necessary for safety. It's not necessary and it raises
the risks. And you know, unfortunately, we just saw in Rockland this
week. You know, when when guns are present, more people can can
lose their lives. And we don't know what happened yet, but there was
this just unimaginable tragedy of a father shooting himself and his wife and two children
in this city just last week. And I was at the vigil last night
for that, and it's probably the saddest thing that I've ever had to go
to, yeah, because it's tragic, unimaginable, unimaginable. And I've talked
to parents who have had to explain to their kids, I'm sorry that your
friend who you've known for years was killed by his own father. And I
mean, I have an eighteen month old at home and I can't imagine having
that conversation. And I can't it just to think about. And this is
what we have to recognize, is that we we talk about, you know,
a school shooting or any shooting, it isn't just the people that were
shot whose lives are lost and impacted. It's everybody who they knew. It's
the family members that the teachers, the students, the friends, the coworkers.
I mean, we've got to do better at this. And I think
that until at the national level, politicians realize that it simply is worth defying
some of the most radical pro gun groups to do the right thing. Nothing
will change at the national level. I am proud that in New York we
have taken many steps that will help. Nothing can end it because we don't
have walls around New York. But while I was there, I was very
proud to raise the age to buy these assault weapons from eighteen to twenty one
years old. Was proud that we pass prohibitions on that kind of military grade
body armor that warned by the shooter in Buffalo. They make it much harder
for civilians to get access to that. We allowed people to actually file lawsuit
against the gun companies for the harms their products caused. Expanded the red flag
laws that allow people if you suspect, you know, if there's a risk
that somebody could harm themselves or others, to try to get guns removed from
the house before that could happen. So New York and we cracked down on
ghost guns, which you know, are these things which people can basically assemble
from unlicensed parts or even three D print off the internet. We were taking
a lot of steps and I do think it would help. And you know,
additionally, I introduced, sponsored and passed and signed by the Governor Alyssa's
Law, which was an important bill that will require all schools in New York
State to consider the installation of silent panic alarms that could link directly with law
enforcement to reduce response times in the event of an emergency. So I think
the state can do a lot, but we do need action from Washington.
And keeping with our theme of all things being connected, there's been an alarming
rise in hate crimes. I mean, the statistics all bear it out,
particularly in an anti semitism. We've, as a matter of fact here being
Frank de voted a number of shows towards it. Why do you think it
keeps increasing and the divide between Americans keeps also increasing. What are your thoughts
on that? What do you feel might be driving all this hate, all
this division? Well, I can give you the there's sort of a big
picture answer, I guess about hate and division. But I mean with this
anti Semitism is pretty obviously being driven in the short term by the fallout from
the hamas Teririst attack on Israel, and we've seen over the years very scary
incidents of anti Semitism coming from Neo Nazis and other people on the right,
the shooter that people at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh a few years
ago, other you know, and many other incidents over the years. And
what's happened in the wake of this attack is I think a strand of I
guess latent anti semitism on the far left has really weired its head as well.
And look, I mean, anti Semitism is often called the oldest prejudice
because Jews have been persecuted, attacked, killed, and otherwise, you know,
harassed for their faith. Ever, you know, for the last two
thousand years, and three quarters of my family left Russia, you know,
at the turn of the century because the climate for Jews at the time there
was appalling. There were regular pogroms of basically state sponsored acts of terrorism coming
in and killing and dispossessing Jewish communities. And throughout Europe, in the Middle
East and all over the place, there's been this trend. And I think
that what we're seeing and it scares me because what we're seeing now is in
a way almost a convergence of the far left and the far right that have
come together in their hatred or at least their fear of Jews. And you
know, this sort of gets masked as you know, you'll see people say,
oh, it's not anti Semitic, it's just anti Zionists. And it
is certainly possible that there you can certainly oppose Israel without being an anti Semite.
But it sure seems like a lot of the people that are the most
strongly opposed Israel also seem to be pretty anti Semitic. And you know,
I think that that that is Jewish people I know in Rockland have never been
as on edge as they are right now. People are fearful in a way
they never thought they would have to be synagogues, yeshiva's, other places of
you know where Jews assemble need armed security guards. This is not something we
should accept as normal in the United States, and we have to keep pushing
back on this. Everybody in this country must have the right to and not
just the right, but the ability to go about their life to worship where
they want to worship, to go to school where they want to go to
school, to congregate with who they want to congregate with, without needing to
fear that there's going to be an attack based on who they are. Well,
what are your thoughts on the rhetoric of form President Trump when he says
that these migrants and immigrants are poisoning the blood. And obviously it's been compared
to language used blay it Off, Hitler, et cetera. It's disgusting.
I mean, it's this is you know, you said, what caused the
division in the country. Trump didn't cause it, but he's done more than
anybody else that I can see, to exacerbate it and to make it worse.
You know, we've had divisions, you know, throughout our history,
for sure, but the current division when you've got people who see the other
political party not as folks to disagree with, but as enemies of the state,
and those are that's also language that Trump has used. And you know,
you've got a lot of you know, you look and you see polls
of some not all Republicans, but some set of right wing conservative Republicans that
seem to trust Vladimir Putin more than they trust Joe Biden. That's a sign
of a really broken system. And that's not the way it used to work.
I mean, go back to the fifties and sixties, even we were
quite divided in the sixties, but I guarantee you there were not large numbers
of Americans that trusted the Soviet Union more than they trusted our own president.
You know, we're coming up on an unfortunate anniversary in January sixth. As
I said, we're taping right now in January fourth, and that will bring
us I want some of your thoughts on the fourteenth Amendments, whether Trump as
an instigator of insurrection is eligible. We can talk about a few of those
things and a lot more. I want to talk about congestion pricing. I
think that's a big deal, especially for people like us who have to commute
frequently into New York City, and some of the important campaign issues that you
think will be coming up for your campaign. So look about all of that.
Right after this break, my very special guest Great Conversation Intelligent Conversation is
a former New York State Senator and current candidate for the thirty eighth District,
mister Elijah Reichlan Melnick. We'll be back with more being Frank right after these
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Intelligent Conversation podcast. Thanks for sticking with us. I'm your host, Frank
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My very special guest tonight talking about what to expect in this very important
election year twenty twenty four is former New York State Senator and current candidate for
Senate in the thirty eighth district, Mister Elijah Richland Melick, Senator, Thank
you for joining us once again, talking about a host of topics before we
left, talking a little bit about former President Trump and some of his legal
issues, particularly with the fourteenth Amendment, which is to appear on the ballot,
and two states have already removed him from the ballot, being Colorado and
Maine. If that were to come up over a vote in New York work,
what would your vote be? Would you vote to keep him off the
ballot or do you feel it's important that he stay on the ballot and let
the people ultimately choose your thoughts. Sure, I mean so, just to
be clear though, these are not votes that are being taken by elected officials.
These are the Colorado thing was a decision of their Supreme Court and the
main excuse me, and the main issue was from there, I think the
secretary of State or something like that, and so these are not I certainly
don't think that elected officials should be taking a vote. It's not a political
question. It's got to be a legal question. So just so we're clear
with that, Thanks for clarifying that. Appreciate it so. And look,
I mean I am not a lawyer, so it makes it a little hard
for me to take a position on this. I've seen legal arguments on both
sides, and ultimately, if the legal arguments are persuasive, and this is
where I leave it to the lawyers and the judges, that he's not eligible
to run for president, then he shouldn't be on the ballot. If they're
not persuasive, then he should be, you know, clearly, if he
was. There's there are not many disqualifications to be president, but there are
some. You have to be a natural born citizen of this country. You
can't have immigrated here, even if you later got your citizenship. And you
know that even goes back, you know, to the Founding generation and somebody
like Alexander Hamilton, who was a very famous and renowned Founding father, but
was not eligible to be president, and everybody realized that at the time because
he wasn't born in the United States in what was now the United States.
He'd been born I think in Bermuda or Barbados or one of the British colonies
there. And so if somebody showed up and said, you know, let's
say somebody you know, and Trump himself, if you remember, came to
fame as a political figure because he was questioning well Obama, he claimed he
was born in Kenya, which would have made him ineligible to be president.
And of course Obama was not born in Keny. He was born in Hawaii,
but that was a question over eligibility. And if there had really been
evidence that suggested and not suggested, but proved that Obama was born in Kenya,
then I think it's undoubted that he should not have been allowed to run
for president. And same goes if you're a twenty five year old. You
can't run for president because the Constitution says you have to be thirty five.
So there are certain rules that are in the Constitution for what qualifies somebody to
be president. One of those rules, thanks to the fourteenth Amendment, is
that you have not I don't remember the exact language, but have not participated
in an insurrection against the government. So again, I'm not a lawyer.
It's hard for me to evaluate it. There may be things that are not
clear based on that, but I think it's certainly a reasonable question to ask.
And you know, that's what I think courts are going to do.
And frankly, I think this will be a moot point because I think the
Supreme Court is going to weigh in relatively soon, and given the folks that
sit on the Supreme Court, I don't really see them ruling against Trump,
even if there was a strong legal argument. But it's a rhetorical question.
I mean, do you think should someone in a situation like this, where
again, it demonstrates the power of the vote. You know, if people
feel that he is insufficient, unqualified, et cetera, they should not vote
for him. But yeah, I mean, I think the argument though,
if you buy the legal case that he is. If you buy the legal
case about this, if somebody showed up again, who was let's say,
born in France and they've lived here for many years and they're a citizen,
and they said I'm running for president, we wouldn't say, let the voters
decide. We would say you're not eligible to run for president, because the
Constitution says you have to be a natural born citizen. If you know,
I don't know, if my cousin who's twenty eight decided he wanted to run
for president, nobody would say, well, let the voters decide. They'd
say, you're not eligible to run for president. And the question is,
there is a section of the Constitution in the fourteenth Amendment that says that people
that have committed insurrection are not eligible to be a president, a senator,
a representative, etc. And that's never really been tested. So the question
is how does that work exactly? But I think in principle, there's many
other sections of you know, not many, but several other pieces of the
Constitution that set qualifications and therefore disqualifications for who is allowed to serve as president.
And in none of those cases would we say, well, let's just
let voters make that decision. If that's the case, what's the point of
the constitution? Point well taken. Let's move to some things more practical for
a New York State senator, and one of them, and one of those
being congestion pricing, which is still being argued and debated in New York City,
where to get into to Midtown it could cost as much as fifteen dollars
below what is it, fifty ninth Street, sixtieth Street, sixtieth Street.
Yes, understandable on some levels, trying to improve the air quality by removing
some of the cars from New York City using the money earned to improve public
transportations. That's on the upside. The downside is for people like you and
I from Rockland County, and I remember my days at working at CBS.
If I worked at midnight shift, I had no means of public transportation to
get out of New York City to be able to get home, so I
had to take my car. I'm retired now and it's not the same situation,
although I still go into the city obviously for other means and teaching at
Fordham, etc. And the idea of paying an additional fifteen dollars on top
of the extraordinarily high tolls of the George Washington Bridge and the Mario Cuomo Bridge
also there went up. So once again the state very much with hands in
our pockets, and again with people here in Rockland County, if they understand
the situation, your options are limited. So what would you do? What
could you do as a New York State senator to deal with this new kitch?
I mean, you hit the nail on the head. It's the problem
for you and for so many other people in Rockland is there's no alternative.
It's one thing if you live in you know, one of the outer boroughs,
or in Westchester, Long Island, parts of Bergen and Essex and Hudson
Counties in New Jersey, you can take a train, you know, if
you didn't want to drive, if you don't want to pay the additional fee.
There's regular train service for most of these communities, and everybody in Rockland
knows we just don't have that. And the bus service that we have is
not really a good alternative either, even at Russia hour. Frankly, and
especially if you're coming at off hours or late night or just have to be
somewhere at a certain point that's not near the Port Authority or Grand Central or
Penn Station. It's a tax. It's an extra tax on Rockland people.
And I get it if you're in the city, you know. I talk
to the colleagues and legislature that represent Manhattan. They're sick of everybody driving through
the neighborhood. I probably will be too if I leave there if I lived
there. But it gives no option. So if you're going to do this,
then for God's sakes, like expand the train service to Rockland, expand
our bus service, give people here an option to take mass transit if you're
going to charge us more to drive. Otherwise, it's just you know,
sticking, like you said, sticking the hand in our pocket for extra money
to feed the MTA. And I've always been opposed to this. I introduced
legislation last year that would exempt Rockland commuters from it. I plan to reintroduce
that legislation. I think that the state has to understand that the situation that
applies to us who live on the west side of the Hudson and Orange County
are the same as well. I don't never represented Orange, but I hear
from people that do a lot of the same situations, but we just don't
have the transit options. And so if you if the idea behind congestion pricing
is charge people more so they don't drive into the city and it reduces congestion,
that's not gonna work for Rockland because you could charge people more, but
there's no alternative. And if you're a family, what are you gonna I
mean, this is the challenge too. If you have to go into Let's
see, you're a family and you want to take your kids to the museum
or to his Broadway show, or you know, something like that, we're
going to buy four train tickets or four bus tickets. It's just like it
never is gonna unless you stick one hundred dollars charge on it. You know,
you'd have to put some outrageous amount for it to really deter people from
driving if there's no good alternatives. Now, you ran for reelection if a
New York State Senate in twenty twenty and you lost. What lessons did you
learn during that time? What lessons did you learn from being in Albany?
What lessons did you learn from your loss? What do you expect from the
upcoming campaign? What do you think will be some of the key issues that
you would like to see addressed in the upcoming campaign. I know that's three
or four questions. You're good at those multi parties, you know. I
think one of the things which I did take from it is it's very challenging
to get people to cross party lines. It's hard to get people to cross
party lines. And it's hard to get people to actually follow state politics enough
to know who their representatives are at the state level and what they're doing.
And so what I think, you know, what I think we saw last
year is many many voters simply picking a party for the top of the ticket
for governor for UNI, Kathy Vochel or leeze Eldon and staying on that line.
And so in Rockland, a majority of voters, a clear majority,
picked Zelden for governor and stayed on that line down the line we ended up
running with my campaign, I ran quite a bit ahead of where Kathy Holkle
was doing, so we did get some crossover support from people who were voting
for Zelden, but just not quite enough. And partly that, you know.
So the other thing I think which you'll learn and which we hope for
this year is going to be very different. Is voters last year were I
guess I should say two years ago because we're now in twenty twenty four.
Voters in twenty twenty two were not engaged or energized on the Democratic side.
They didn't feel that the governor was I guess, you know, I don't
want to speak for people, but they didn't feel energized by her campaign,
and that showed with the turnout, which really among Democrats was quite low.
And we have to do better this time around, you know, not just
to energize Democrats, but to make sure that independent voters and smart Republicans and
moderate Republicans recognize that you don't need to just pick a party line and go.
You should be evaluating races on their own, and you should ask what
is a candidate and what is an officeholder actually doing to improve my life?
And what can they do and what will they do? And that I think
we have gotten away from. And people vote for a party and they don't
vote for a person. And while it may be at the presidential level,
the party is absolutely key. At the level that we're talking about for state,
it's important to look at the person as well as the party. So
the issues that I'm going to focus on certainly has a lot to do with
the record which I achieved during the two years I was there. I'm really
proud. I always prioritized the district that I represented, and so in just
two years was able to bring back about twelve million dollars in grants, ten
million dollars for Rockland specifically. And this is money that makes a real difference.
You know. I was at the opening of one of these projects this
summer of the brand new splash park for kids in Orangeburg for the town of
Orangetown. We were able to I had a two hundred and seventy five thousand
dollars state grant through the Senate to help fund a significant share of the construction
of this project. And then to see, excuse me, a year later,
to see a whole group I came to the ribbon cutting, you know,
one hundred kids happily there having fun with families thanks to money that I
was able to secure. That's the kind of thing that makes, you know,
me feel like I'm doing my job. But I think we need more
of you know, And so the projects, you know, I'm not going
to go through all of them, but you know things like that. You
know, we've got money for every town for road repairs, for highway equipment,
for police equipment, for park improvements, for nonprofits to deliver the services
they need to do, for libraries, for ambulance and fire and you name
it. I mean, that's the sort of stuff which you can see it,
you can touch it, and it makes a difference of people's lives.
If there's one single issue, one thing that you could change there, what
would it be, one thing that I could change about about how things work
in the state? What would you change? Oh? I think the way
we do I mean it's a little bit technical, but the way we do
the state budget process is crazy. New York people probably don't realize this mostly
and no reason you would unless you're a politics junkie. We stick everything into
the state budget. You know, you think of a budget as dollars and
cents and you know, money and money out, and it is that,
but in New York it's also a vehicle for policy and a lot of times
the most controversial stuff gets put into the state budget on a must pass basis
because you don't want to vote down the budget. And you know, see
funding for schools and roads and police and parks and everything run out. And
so you take some of the most controversial policies that have happened in the last
few years. You know, good example being bail reform, which has been
very controversial over the last few years, that was not passed as a standalone
bill on its own, it was included within the state budget and then basically,
you know, put up on an upper down vote for the state budget
which includes all of these policies that are not financially related. I don't think
that's a great way to do policy. I think that things should be you
know, budget should be for dollars and cents, and policy should be policy.
And you can do the legislative process and work through the normal process and
pass policy related bills that way. And you know, as part of that
process as well, in the budget, New York gives the governor a tremendous
amount of authority to the point where the legislature is not allowed to amend the
budget. They can vote yes or no, they can negotiate, they can
ask the governor to amend, They can urge the governor to amend. They
can threaten to vote it down if she doesn't amend but there is no ability
into the state constitution for the state Senator Assembly to actually amend the state budget,
which is just baffling and frankly, I think most people don't even realize
that. Absolutely amazing. One last question from one of our listeners. So
a study listener, Van Dunk, from the Ramapo Native American Indian tribe in
Hillburn, and she wants to know if you would meet with the Hillburn Coupon
group to address some of their issues of land use, etc. In Hillburn.
So she wanted to know if you would make the commitment to meet with
them at some point coupon of Hillburn. That came from June van Dunk,
she wrote in and I promised I would ask, So I'm asking sure of
course, always happy to and I've met with coupon groups around the around Excuse
me. I've met with coupon groups around the county and met with people in
Hillburn many times, and with members of the Ramapo Native people and talked about
some of the issues that they've been dealing with as they're trying to get tribal
recognition from state and federal governments. But always happy to meet. I'd encourage
June. It doesn't have to wait until I'm in office. I'm happy to
meet even before. Feel free to email me. It's Elijah at Elijah for
Senate dot com. That's the best way to get me and always would be
delighted to meet. Well. We'd like to thank you for this intelligent conversation.
It truly was I learned a lot. I always love doing that.
Elijah reichlend Melnick, a former senator and current candidate for New York State Senator
in the thirty eighth district. Thank you for your intelligent conversation, Elijah.
This was great. It's a pleasure. Always good to be with you and
have a wonderful night. Yes, and happy New Year to you and your
family. And of course, we offer special thanks to our listeners who take
the time to give us a voice in their lives. Remember we offer a
fresh topic every week. You can catch us wherever and whenever you get your
favorite podcasts. You can also check us out on the Hudson River Radio Facebook
page. Like us, leave us a comment too, and we also ask
that you consider sharing being Frank with others you know. Last to leave you
with a couple of last things. One is a quote from Abraham Lincoln.
I think it's very apropos. I always try to pick one that is for
our particular program, and he said, my dream is of a place and
a time where America will once again be seen as the last best hope of
Earth. Quite profound and some great music for you will loves loved the Ruse
Brothers and their latest release. This is good thing for our engineer, Neil
Richter. I'm your host, Frank Lebono, and we hope to have you
join us on the next being. Frank, We're the only way to be
is Frank. Thanks again, see you next time. It took me a
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