Hudson River Radio dot com. It beats listening to nothing. Oh my godness, 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 brief commercial messages. Please don't go anywhere yet. Hudson River Radio dot com. Check out the Angel Quest show with psychic media and author Karen Noe. Karen covers spiritual topics such as near death experiences, reincarnation, life after death, how your thoughts create your reality, creating peace on Earth, and so much more. Check out the Angel Quest Show on Apple Podcasts, iHeart,
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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
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