THE STATE SENATOR DIANE SAVINO SCANDAL.

UP FRONT News March 4, 2006
Published by Tom Weiss
Editorial Advisor: Willard Whittingham

"The paper that can’t be bought and can’t be sold."

THE STATE SENATOR DIANE SAVINO
SCANDAL. ROBERT CATALDO, "CHIEF OF
STAFF" - ALEXANDER HAIG-TYPE IN STATEN ISLAND. MESSING WITH THE HOMELESS. PROTECTING HILLARY CLINTON

There are reasons why the New York State Legislature has been labeled the worst in the United States. Two of these reasons, very closely politically related, are named State Senator Diane Savino (D.-S.I.) and her Chief of Staff, Robert Cataldo. While Ms. Savino, who should probably be impeached, during her one direct conversation with me, last winter over the phone, seemed mild-mannered, the same cannot be said for the appar- ently episodically psychotic Cataldo, a civil servant hired gun who is still working for the quite corrupt Savino.

Last winter, as I was nearing the end of a prolonged period of recurrent homelessness, I found myself with no money at all because I had been robbed of my hotel rent money, derived from my Social Security check. Under the Social Security law, in the event of an emergency, it is possible, with a letter from a community leader or an elected official, sent to the Commissioner of the U.S. Social Security Administration, in Baltimore and Washington, D.C. – not to a regional office – for a beneficiary to receive an expedited check. Indeed, in similar situations in preceding years, I had received such assistance, the
first time by virtue of a letter written by my minister, the Rev. D. Timothy P. Mitchell, the Pastor of the Ebenezer Missionary Baptist Church in Flushing, Queens. On a second occasion, utilizing the connection of New York State Assemblyman Adam Clayton Powwell IV’s Chief of Staff Daniel Serrano, through whom I had obtained Mr. Powell’s written support for a Free Tibet resolution in the Assembly, who, upon learning of my emergency, had volunteered the information about his very close connection to U.S. Senator Hillary Clinton. That connection is Mr. Serrano’s wife Yajaira Yepez. I readily accepted Mr. Serrano’s unsolicited offer to quickly send an e-mail to his wife at Clinton’s Manhattan office. Within a day Ms. Yepez had generated a fax to the Social Security Ad- ministration and a check was released.

When the problem recurred by virtue of the robbery, following a verbal (by phone) warning to me from the same local official who had received Ms. Yepez’ fax the first time around, that another request would be denied, I called and left a message for Ms. Jepez. The message was not returned. And neither were several others, on which both return e-mail and phone numbers were left. As readers of UP FRONT News are aware, my last call went to Clinton’s D.C. office. The man who answered the phone, identifying himself as "Democratic Party Investigator" Zimmerman, after telling that Mrs. Clinton had personally told him to take any calls from me, and after reciting to me the political dossier that surveillance-obsessed Senator had kept on me, warned me never to call again. That threat will, in good time, be reported as a crime to all the appropriate law enforcement authorities.

I ended up first wasting my time requesting the assistance of State Assemblyman John Lavelle, whose staff consisting of Dorothy Crimmins and Chief of Staff Keith Pascanda-Rola, mishandled the matter so totally that, had either of them been on that quail hunt in Texas, hundreds of innocent Houstonians would have been sprayed with buckshot.

My last resort was State Senator Savino, whose office I called, at which point I was given an immediate appointment. I met with Savino staffer Tanya Jones-Sullivan. I explained the situation and stressed that any letter must be sent, by e-mail or fax, to the Commissioner of the U.S. Social Security Administration, who has offices and fax numbers in Baltimore and Washington, numbers which I provided to Jones-Sullivan. What I got was an e-mail from Savino stating that she "…spoke to the Social Security Administration" which told her that I "do not qualify" for the hardship payment. I called and Savino happened to answer the phone. I reminded her that the communication had to go to the Commissioner and asked her to whom she had spoken. She refused to answer. Her written offer to have "someone’ at the SSA talk to my landlord was the equivalent of of offering me a soup kitchen in Baghdad. My "landlord" was the drug, violence, and prostitution infested Den of Iniquity a 10 minute walk from her office, known as the Hotel Richmond, run by a sleazebag named Kanti Patel, who would drop me into New York Bay if I was a penny short of my rent for .01 seconds.

A day or so later I returned to Ms. Savino’s Richmond Terrace office, where I was "greeted" by a linebacker-shaped guy who identified himself as Robert Cataldo, Chief of Staff. He asked me why I was there. I told him that that Social Security matter was not re- solved and that the emergency persisted. Mr. Cataldo’s response, almost verbatim exple- pletive non-deleted, was, "Get the fuck out of here or I’ll have you arrested!" As he got out of his seat and moved very menacingly in my direction, I left a bit more quickly.

In a very poorly written article by S.I. Advance reporter Tom ("Wrongleski") Wrobleski, that appeared in that sorry paper on August 27, 2005 in which Wrobleski intentionally blew the story of Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum’s public defamation of me as a "stalk- er", Ms. Savino is quoted as stating, about me, "’He was very hard to defuse when he went off on a rant…Is he dangerous? I don’t know. Is he scary? Without a doubt."'

That comment, aside, from subjecting Ms. Savino to possible legal action for defama- famation of character, will bring about criminal charges stemming from at the very least the very serious anger management problem in her office. When it comes to "rants", she better check out Robert Cataldo. Whether she wants to believe it or not, she’s got a Saddam Hussein personality as her Chief of Staff. And as far as her comment about me be- ing "scary" is concerned, most people, with little to hide politically and ethically, do not find me "scary." It is obvious, however, that Diane Savino - very much like Hillary Clin- ton, a politician with enough skeletons in her closet to supply eons of Halloween parties - is scared!

And, among many, many, many others, State Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno, Minor-ity Leader David A. Paterson, State Senator Martin Connor, and State Senator Eric T. Shneiderman know all about it. And so do the Republicans!
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