“Trust, but verify.”

–Ronald Reagan

In the midst of this political season where the sides of this new great American debate unfolds, I provide an alternate reality to offset the Space Lasers and preparations for the invasion of Greenland. I submit a little conversation that provides contretemps from my nearly five years in prison for having offended the criminal Hamptons politicians and banks — like Capital One — who reportedly stole from 2 million customers — WaMu, whose mortgage workers were snorting meth — and MortgageIt which Deutsche Bank bought after paying $200 million for committing mortgage fraud. So, for a little Night Music as fascism plays itself out — here’s a conversation in prison which will soon become available from my publisher in book form..

________________________________________________________________________________________

A New York State Prison —

“As I walked around the basketball court with Mat, the mortgage broker, we talked about business in general and his “business” which landed him in prison. I had originally thought that he’d come there with a case involving mortgages — then learned about the attack that got him the nine flat, then dropped to an eight flat after the judge received some letters.

“I got into some shit on the side while I was at Wells Fargo,” said Mat. 

I didn’t ask but listened as they walked aound the court. News reports had outed a few operations that involved drugs. 

Like Washington Mutual. Bankers were creating phony applications while high as a kite. 

A guy named Parsons, he remembered,

“oversaw a team screening mortgage applications, he was snorting methamphetamine daily,” he said. “In our world, it was tolerated,” said Sherri Zaback, who worked for Mr. Parsons and recalls seeing drug paraphernalia on his desk. “Everybody said, ‘He gets the job done.’ ” At WaMu, getting the job done meant lending money to nearly anyone who asked for it.. and its precipitous collapse was the biggest bank failure in American history.” — NYT 12/27/08

“Guy calls me one day and asks me to come down to this bar for a drink. I get there and there’s some celebrities, mobsters, cops, like the place in East Harlem where all the politicians go, you know like Rao’s…”

“Yeah,” I said, “I forget, Giuliani had a table there and a lot of CEOs keep tables there. Crazy. I just read the Wolf of Wall Street and he met an FBI agent there.”

“Anyway…,” said Mat, as we walked around and around. 

“I get there and my friend introduces me to a guy who pulls me aside and says ‘so, I hear you’re a mortgage broker,’ and starts pumping me about what I do — meanwhile, I’m thinking, ‘what does this guy know about me, I’ve never met him before.'”

“Uh,huh.”

“Next thing I know, I’m being treated to drinks and he’s smiling and suggesting we talk again. I’m impressed at being important to this guy, obviously, a Mob guy, and I move around at the bar.”

“So, what happens next?”

“Next time I’m with my friend, his ‘friend’ happens to come by as we’re having a bite to eat. He sits down and my friend excuses himself. This guy, Tony, asks me if I could do him a favor. And, I say, ‘What kind of favor’ and he says, ‘No big deal,’ would I pick up something for him at his friend’s restaurant?” 

“I think about it and try to figure out ‘Why me?’ but I agree and stop by his friend’s place and the guy gives me an envelope to bring back to Tony. I get a REALLY nice meal while I’m there on the house and I don’t look in the envelope and hand it to Tony. He thanks me very much and puts me into something that makes me a small bundle in return.”

I don’t ask what. Mat doesn’t offer either. Clearly, it was illegal. It was drugs. And, Mat kept 100% of the take for doing the deal.

“It was great.” he said.

“And…?” I said.

“And, he asked me a couple of other times to do him a favor. Simple things. And, meantime, he put me into a couple of really simple, really profitable errands. I was making very nice money for not much effort and NO exposure as far as I was concerned. I was almost in the life, you know, like ‘Bronx Tale’ or ‘Goodfellas.’”

“Okay.”

“Then, suddenly, one day,  he asks me for his cut. And, I say, ‘What cut?”‘ 

“I see.”

“Yeah,” said Mat, smiling as we walked.

“He says to me, ‘What do you mean? ‘What cut?’ –What did you think, this is a party just for you?’ And then he takes me down to the basement of his house.”

“Shit.”

“So, now we’re in his basement and he says, close up to my face, really nasty, and scary as shit, ‘You got a couple of deals as a gift, now you work for me and I get a piece off the top. You understand?'”

“And, you understood, I’ll bet?”

“Oh, I understood alright. That’s why, when this guy was following me, the crazy guy I told you about, the one I hit with the hammer and nearly killed — that was about a deal I was handling. There was no way I could go to trial and bring anyone into the thing with a court case and witnesses and all of that shit. I had to just take it and shut up.”

“Nice. And, I thought mortgages were dangerous.”

“It was fucked up,” he said. “But, I had no choice. And, here I am. I’ve got another two years and it’s over.”

“Hopefully, I’ll be getting out with you. Merit Board in a year from this coming June and Parole two years from this February.”

“Well,” he said, “it’s a lot better than some of these guys with an L at the back end of their sentence.”

“Tell me about it.”

“You know Jose,” he said, “don’t you?”

“Yeah, he jogs a lot. Come to think of it, I haven’t seen him in the Yard for a while now.”

“He’s in my dorm,” said Mat “He’s really depressed. Hasn’t gone out at all. I’ve been trying to get him to come to the Gym.”

“He’s been in prison for 28 or 29 years, hasn’t he?”

“I thought it was 26? Anyway, you know why he’s here don’t you?”

They kept walking and the continuous circles were making him a little tired after having jogged for two miles.

“No,” I said, “what was it?”

“He killed a guy. Shot him six times. It was a contract killing. Just got out of the Army and he was broke.”

“Jesus. He couldn’t find a job?”

“He was young. Only 19 or 20, no money and he was a sharpshooter in the service.”

“So, I guess McDonald’s was not an option?”

“Well, looking back on it I’m sure that would’ve made more sense.” 

“So, is he EVER getting out?”

“I dunno. It’s hard to tell. I’d imagine that they’d have a hard time letting an assassin go. I like Jose, but…”

“I hear you. I’m sure the newspapers would go to town if he ever got out.”

The circular motion continued with Mat and I walking — almost two hours. Before he got back to his own bid. The flat 8 he drew.

“You know in my case I had it coming from all directions.” 

“What do you mean?”  I said.

“The night that all that shit hit the fan I was completely fucked up. It was completely unexpected when the guy drew a gun on me.”

“Where?”

“He came to my house and I let him in because we had a deal. He gets in and pulls a gun on me. I grabbed the nearest thing I could find and hit him with it.”

“Which was…?” 

“A sledgehammer.” 

“I see.”

“So, he goes down and he’s bleeding from the head. Out cold. My friends were there, couple of wiseguys and they help me carry the body out to the car and I put him in the trunk of his car.”

“Sounds like Goodfellas.”

“Well, it was like that. But, I get the body into the trunk and a big black SUV is blocking my driveway. So, we can’t get the car out.”

“Then what happened?”

“Guy wakes up, he’s all fucked up and I say to him ‘Listen, I’m saving your life, shut the fuck up and don’t ever report this.” 

“And he says, ‘yeah, thanks, don’t worry, I’ll never say a word, thanks’ and we get him into the car and close the trunk and manage to drive him around the SUV and leave him parked in front of a hospital.”

“Shit.”

“So what does he do?”

“Beats me,” I said.

“He immediately goes to the Police. Tells them I tried to kill him.”

“You just can’t trust anybody.”

“No shit.” says Mat, “I save this fucking guy’s life and what does he do — he runs to the fucking Police — after trying to kill ME!”

“Talk about ingratitude.”

“Of course, the story the Police got has no gun that he had in it. It was just me trying to rob him — when this was about money he’d taken for a drug deal and didn’t deliver to the people I knew.”

“So what happened?”

“Well, he recovered and now, who knows, after having to take a plea so I didn’t have to worry about bringing MY people into court to testify — maybe he’s still holding a grudge and will come after me when I get out?”

“After doing eight years?”

“Who knows?” he said. “I had a beautiful house with about $500,000 in equity, a beautiful daughter who’s now 6, a new Audi, and a great relationship. The house is gone, the car is gone, my girlfriend went to pieces when I went to prison and I’ve had to fight for custody of my little girl while in here — in order for my parents to take care of her. My girlfriend is gone and I have to find someone else.”

“I don’t envy you having to completely start over.”

“You know,” he said, “part of the reason I didn’t go to trial was the eyewitness from across the street. This older woman says she saw me loading a body into the trunk of a car, closing it and then driving away. It was 10:30 at night, the hood was up and the trunk was open and I’m talking to a guy who’s half delirious and bleeding in the trunk. And, the SUV was blocking her view too. How could she see me?”

“Sounds like ‘My cousin Vinnie.’”

“Yeah,” he said, unable to let it go and not listening to me. 

“But, she worked at the Chamber of Commerce and her husband was a politician. There was no chance. We couldn’t get the truth.”

“Yeah,” I said. “And, then there’s the guy who you almost killed.”

“Oh, yeah,” he said, “that guy.”

“Fucking ingrate.”

— From “Gulag” copyright 2025

“If you want to know who your friends are get a jail sentence.”

— Charles Bukowski

As we celebrate the New Year I reflect upon those wonderful years walking along with a close killer friend and satisfying Sunday meal in Mess Hall and conviviality of prison life in a New York State Correctional Facility. Here’s an outtake from “Gulag” for those who like True Crime and enjoy how things really are in Criminal Justice.

__________________________________________________________________________________

It was a warm August afternoon so I decided to risk a visit to the Mess Hall. The Sunday afternoon chicken was the closest thing to actual food provided at the prison. Julio walked along with me. 

His white poor-boy shirt, green chinos, and sneakers set off his half-grown beard, three missing front teeth and toothless lisp. I was in good company with my friend the killer.

I was accompanied by brutal, street-wise intelligence. Not the kind of mentor that I had been taught by in NYU Master’s program or, even at the Probation Department in the South Bronx. We began talking about two commonalities: Brooklyn and Wiseguys.

“Y’know Crazy Joe always had a BMW, did you know that?” he asked.

“No,” I said, surprised. “No one had foreign cars in those days.”

“Yeah,” he said, “after they killed him she offered it to me. I bought it for $2500 — I had plenty of drug money then, and business was good.”

“That was a long time ago.”

“Yeah,” he said, “she had it for a long time before she sold it to me. Great car. I won’t own anything but a BMW now. They got a ‘7’ now, it’ll probably be a ‘9’ when I get out.

We entered the Mess Hall together.

I noticed the spot where the cutting had taken place the week before. My skin crawled thinking about it and I looked around –making sure that no one was getting too close to me. 

The fact that I was hanging out with a Godfather-type — someone from the REAL neighborhood who was a Hell’s Angel and a Latin King gave me a little sense of safety. And, at 8 years younger he knew the Gallos, the Gotti’s, and quite a few of the underground people that I met on my walking tour of Little Italy that one night. The fact that I also knew people who were connected and still above ground, also impressed Julio.

“You know when my book comes out,” he said, “a lotta people are gonna want to know me. My writer — the guy whose house I lived in behind his when I was on the run — is a sweet guy. He’s the best.”

“What do you mean in the back of his house?” They were sitting at the long stainless steel table in Mess Hall with about 20 others, scarfing down potatoes that were suspiciously creamy with not a single lump — processed soy shit. The collard greens were fresh — right out of  the can that very morning. And — REAL chicken, drumsticks and breasts that we could not test for steroids — as well as a mini container of “ice cream.” 

Henry had butted into our conversation as we returned to the dorm. He bemoaned his belly. He’d grown in recent months, having been cube restricted, and unable to go to Rec didn’t help the size of his stomach. He was now 50 lbs overweight.

“Yeah,” laughed Julio, “he has a weight problem. He can’t ‘wait’ to eat. You fat fuck,” he said to Henry.

Henry turned away and laughed but was pissed off. 

Julio was not afraid of anyone.

“Where was I?” he said.

“Oh,” I said, “yeah, you were talking about Gotti.” 

“He couldn’t keep his mouth shut. They had that club over on — you know – where it splits off from Houston at 6th Avenue. What’s that? Anyway, on that block was where they had their club — you know?”

“You mean in the building where they used the upstairs for meetings?”

“Yeah,” he said, “that’s it. Gravano ratted him out and got Witness Protection for all those murders and then they grabbed him in a drug deal and he was in State prison.”

“Jesus,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said, “and Cutler just got Peter Gotti off.”

“No kidding,” I said, “great lawyer. Too bad the Dapper Don wasn’t a little more low key.”

“I know,” he said, “and Gravano needs to watch out. I heard there’s still contracts out.”

I was bordering on not wanting to know any more.

As we talked, having just had Sunday dinner, we watched inmates in the Yard. It was a mass of inactivity. No exercise at all. Then about six officers brought a guy out of the Yard and handcuffed him, leaned him against a guard’s house and frisked him. A crowd gathered in the dorm to watch as some guy was escorted away to the Box.

My stomach grumbled. It was my first Mess Hall meal in about a week and the third in about 6 months.

As I passed Motz in the Rec room heading towards the bathroom, I asked him if he’d enjoyed the meal.

“Oh,” he said,”I don’t eat that food.” 

“What do you mean?”

“I only eat the kosher diet. You know, it’s real food.” 

“Real food?”

“Oh,” he said, moving from one foot to the other with his dark glasses staring at me intently. He formulated his words carefully with his mouth as if he were preparing to argue a legal brief.

“I used to work in the Mess Hall.”

“Really?”

“Yeah,” he said, “I had to get out of there. I couldn’t take it.” 

“Why? The early hours?”

He laughed. “No, I was in the military and saw action in the field, the hours don’t matter to me. No, I couldn’t take what went on there.”

“Like what?”

“Well, for one thing, the civilian food administrators would walk around and pick up food, meat, whatever, without gloves on and then drop it back on the trays. And, I would say ‘Hey, put gloves on’ and they were going to give me a ticket for opening my mouth.”

“Then I’d see guys, inmates, working there — and they had gloves on but they’d sit down and put their hands with their gloves in their pants and scratch their balls and scratch their asses and then handle the food. So, I’d say ‘you’re supposed to handle the food with gloves but you’re not supposed to put your gloves up your ass and then use those same gloves again’ and then again I was being threatened for opening my mouth.”

“Nice.”

“But, that wasn’t the worst part.” 

“What do you mean?”

“Well,” he said, “it was the food.” 

“What about it?”

“There are guys there that owned restaurants on the street. They would talk about the quality of the food. According to them it is the worst quality of food that can be bought. It’s really a step BELOW roadkill.”

“There’s a couple of companies that they used to buy food from,” Motz continued.

“Yeah?”

“There’s a company called Idaho Foods and another called, I think, U.S. Food — and these companies sell to all the prisons and sell absolute shit.”

“Like what?”

“Well,” he said, “even the chicken, which you like, once a week. That comes in a large plastic bag of frozen pieces that is nothing but grease. It’s completely disgusting. If you saw it, this big bag of grease with pieces of what ‘appears’ to be chicken in it you wouldn’t, couldn’t, eat it. Trust me.”

“I do. You know that they just legalized using roadkill for food consumption, right?”

“Really?” he laughed, “well, trust me when I say that the food here shouldn’t really qualify as food.”

“Well,” I said, “the chicken and potatoes aren’t bad.” “I mean, most of the time they have things like what they call ‘Turkey Tetrazzini’ on the menu. Who the fuck knows what THAT is?”

“Sure,” he laughed, “well, that’s mostly soy crap?”

“That’s my guess.”

“Well,” he said,”most of the ‘meat’ is some kind of soy concoction, very little meat of ANY sort, and whatever actually IS meat are meat by-products that you wouldn’t feed your dog. BUT,” he said, “the potatoes you like are, like 65% soy flakes. I know, I mixed them up. There are NO potatoes in that shit.”

I sighed. “I suspected as much.” 

“Well,” he said, “suspect no more.”

“I know,” I said with resignation, “the report about the processed soy causing testicular cancer really warmed my heart…”

“Among other things,” he said. “This shit really WILL kill you.”

“I know,” I said, “the C.O. told me that he was required to eat the Mess Hall food when he was training for this job and he said that he had diarrhea for 10 days until he stopped eating that food.”

“No shit,” I said.

“It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it.”

— George Carlin

I started to think about more graduate education. You know, more education, more opportunities, better pay (in my case any pay at all), benefits, status, appreciation, maybe enough money to walk around with so I had more than $20 in my pocket after being the victim of A Civil Death at the hands of a criminal D.A. in the Hamptons. I thought about Columbia, Harvard, Penn, NYU, and a few others. I wanted to talk to others about what’s really going on in the prison system and in our communities which are dumping grounds for those poor souls who are abused and then thrown back onto our streets. You see the problem, don’t you? I even told the so-called Graduate advisor at NYU that I’d like at least one professor who I would learn from to be a former inmate. He laughed. I was serious. I was pitching reform of the non-existent mental health and education system in New York prisons, after all.

Apparenntly, though, a lot of stupid people get in to those hot shit schools because they pay their way in for their kids or themselves — and the schools no longer have room for moderately smart people who live in the neighborhood. That’s why, heaven forbid, even Trump has a point. The Elitism is out of control and their policies are hypocritical.

But, I decided to test it myself. My kids all applied to NYU — where I got 3 degrees when they needed students — and the money. You know, before it became Elitist and accepted middle class and working class Americans — not just Europeans, Africans, and Arabians on International scholarships paid for by royalty or 501(c)3 liberals. So my kids applied. They’re smart but not “entitled.” They have the Stoic, Scandanavian values that believe “Its not what you say. It’s what you do that matters.”

They were all Wait-listed. In other words, NYU wasn’t getting any vig even though I’d spent a lot of time there, voted to support their endless expansions on the Community Board, and tried to be a dutiful alumni — but couldn’t afford it. After all, NYU’s endowment is $6 billion, Columbia’s is $14 Billion, Penn’s is $23 Billion and Harvard, fuggedaboudit, is at $54 Billion.

My kids went elsewhere.

I tried again just for myself. No go. It’s no longer for us, folks. The Little People. The evaporating middle class in a sea of billionaires who steal, anti-intellectual quislings who own the media, politically-entitled thugs, and celebrities — who can buy their way in. And do.

Varsity Blues now seems downright quaint.

George Carlin said it well.

——————————————————————————————————–

“There’s a reason that education sucks.
And it’s the same reason
that it will never ever, ever be fixed.

It’s never going to get any better,
don’t look for it,
be happy with what you got.

Because the owners of this country don’t want that.

I’m talking about the real owners now.
The real owners.
The big, wealthy business interests that control things
and make all the important decisions.

Forget the politicians.
The politicians are put there
to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice.

You don’t.

You have no choice.
You have owners.
They own you.
They own everything.

They own all the important land.
They own and control the corporations.
They’ve long since bought and paid for the Senate,
the Congress, the state houses, and city halls.
They got the judges in their back pocket.
And they own all the big media companies
so they control just about
all of the news and information you get to hear.
They got you by the balls.

They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying,
lobbying to get what they want.
Well, we know what they want.
They want more for themselves and less for everybody else.

But I’ll tell you what they don’t want.
They don’t want a population
of citizens capable of critical thinking.
They don’t want well-informed, well-educated people,
capable of critical thinking.

They’re not interested in that.
That doesn’t help them.
That’s against their interest.
That’s right.

They don’t want people who are smart enough
to figure out how badly they’re getting fucked
by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago.
They don’t want that.

You know what they want?
They want obedient workers.
Obedient workers.
People who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork
and just dumb enough, to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs,
with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits,
the end of overtime, and the vanishing pension
that disappears the minute you go to collect it.

And now, they’re coming for your Social Security money.
They want your fucking retirement money.
They want it back,
so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street.

And you know something, they’ll get it.
They’ll get it all from you, sooner or later,
because they own this fucking place.

It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it.
You and I are not in the big club.”

― George Carlin

Jails and prisons are designed to break human beings — to convert the population into specimens in a a zoo — obrdient to our keepers, but dangerous to each other.

— Angela Davis

Here’s a brief description from my series The Gulag describing, first hand, how our tax dollars are being spent in the New York State prison system — keeping in mind that those who have been relegated to doing time WILL be released into our community. After doing time, innocent or guilty and being ignored and discarded — WE pay the price for a Criminal Justice system that is abusive and ineffective. I spent almost 5 years interviewing them in prison.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

I met a 6′ tall black man with a ready smile and a Jamaican accent who was interested in helping other inmates.

“Hey,” he said, “how are you man?” he said, shaking my hand.

His hat, under which his hair was piled, had multi-colored bands.

“Remember me?” he said. “From IPA? My name’s Esam. “Dey call me Dreaddy.” 

“Sure,” I said, “I remember. Teaching now?”

“Yeah, pre-GED.”

“Uh-huh. How is it?”

“Well, dey don’ have class very often,” he said, “it’s like having a job you don’t go to.”

“What do you mean?” remembering my uncle talking about no-show jobs on the Brooklyn docks.

“The prison cancels the class most of the time so I don’t have to show up.”

“Why?”

“I dunno’,” he said. “I think mostly because they don’t want to be bothered.”

“So, what is pre-GED? What do you teach?”

“I try to teach some of these guys basic math, how to spell, how to read,” he said.

“How to read?”

“Oh, yeah, most’a these guys cain’ read.”

“How many would you say are unable to read in the prison?”

He thought for a minute. “Easily 50% of these guys can’t even read a few paragraphs in, let’s say, half an hour. And, then, they’d be guessing about what it said.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yeah,” he said, “I’m serious. Half’a the guys in this prison can’t fill out an application because dey don’ know what it says. A guy came to me the other day. He had his social security number written where it asked for his name.”

“So, how do they function? How do they agree to a plea or sentence?”

“What d’you mean? Dey from the streets. Dey sell drugs, steal, do whatever dey need ta do ta survive. Reading a book ain’t part a that. Dunno ‘bout da legal stuff.”

“Can any of these guys spell?”

“A little. Words like bid, for their time here, yeah. When it gets to words that my five year old daughter can spell, they’re in trouble. Words like waist turns into waste. It’s pretty scary. Because these guys are going to be on the street again. With NO future. And, soon.”

“You like teaching?”

“I’d like to teach if they’d let me. Some of the guys actually want to learn but they cain’.

I was tempted to ask about how he saw the future of education in prisons progressing. How reduced time could be REALLY, GENUINELY tied to becoming literate. 

But, then I realized that they weren’t going to be discussing Aristotle’s tabula rasa and the philosophy of John Locke anytime soon.

It also went a long way towards explaining why so few people showed up in the Law Library to try to accelerate their release since they neither received nor could understand adequate legal help. Not only didn’t they know how to use a computer, they couldn’t read anything on it or in the books that accompanied it. For many the Law Library was a useless tool.

When I first arrived in the prison I’d discussed some ideas about mentoring inmates — teaching them how to read, how to spell, how to write some basic essays with well-formulated paragraphs. He got a few smiles.

I was in Civil Service land now.  I was the one getting an education. In the prison system, Mental Health and Education were only concepts for expanding budget demands, not for any actual implementation. Just like Criminal Justice.

 “It’s time for the human race to enter the solar system.”

                                              –Dan Quayle

As a celebration heading into the New Year and as a look forward to a new administration in Washington, (not to mention the responsive representatives in SoHo and Greenwich Village) with all of our good wishes and expectations of success in a happy America — I’ve included a few paragraphs from one of my books about mental health and sex in prison — as we all search for nirvana — where I was fortunate enough to have spent nearly five years at no extra charge. I felt like Randle Patrick McMurphy as I continue to thank the politicians in Southampton and in lower Manhattan for standing up for my Freedom of Speech and Freedom of the Press. Here’s an outtake from one of my True Crime volumes. This is what prison life is really like in New York State.

Do not read on if you are among the faint-hearted.

———————————————————————————————

“After 30 years in the system, Montgomery, known also as Monte, knew the ropes. The fact that he’d reportedly been trading sexual favors for being bumped up on the call-out sheets — so that they could visit him in the Law Library and get legal work done — was not his problem. 

His Parole was history.

Sex, in and of itself, was illegal in prison whether it was between inmates, between inmates and COs, and even between an inmate and himself. It was not, theoretically, a denial of pleasure. It was, ostensibly, to protect State property. Whether that was to keep a towel clean or prevent excessive use of toilet paper, was not clear. Given the nature of the prison, it was unlikely to be, as Jack D. Ripper called it, a “Communist conspiracy to sap and purify all of our precious bodily fluids.”

However, you could be reported for “self-pleasuring.”

         What was described as going on in one of the dorms, however, was entirely different in another depending upon who the cop was on duty. 

          In some dorms it was a virtual Sodom and Gomorrah. 

“Yeah,” said one CO, “you’ve got guys sneaking around with their heads down below the line of sight of the night CO — and slipping in to other cubes.”

“You mean in the dorm that Montgomery was in?”

“Sure, that place is known all over the prison.” 

“How do they deal with it?”

“Well, they don’t,” he said.  “Listen, some homo wants to get into someone’s pants, that’s his problem. The CO probably is sleeping. I mean, gay marriage is legal, what’re they going to do?”

“But, what about forcing the situation?”

“Forcing what situation? These guys are all horny and can’t wait for a blowjob.”

No one spoke. Most remembered an inmate going to the Box just for watching a CO get a blowjob from a female cop. The rules were blurred, the situation was blurred, and as far as I was concerned my mind was blurred.

Having decided to play the psychiatric card in defense of a charge for trading legal work for sexual favors, Montgomery had thrown himself into the abyss. 

From the Box he was transferred to Clinton Psyche, a medical/psychiatric facility that made ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ seem like a remake of ‘Toy Story.’ Clinton’s mental health clinic is a Max facility where “Psych” inmates are stripped, wrapped in cushions and and highly medicated. 

Like Senior Prom for lunatics, I thought.

Stripping psychiatric inmates was the favorite way of dealing with emotional problems — whether it be suicide watch or depression.

The real problem was that no one could ever say anything as simple as, “you know I feel like shit, I can’t take it anymore, and I’m really fucked up.”

Saying that to another inmate was likely not a problem – unless they decided to drop a slip. Saying that to a counselor, however, might get an escort of a few cops and a Sergeant to the Infirmary — naked — with a mattress, gown and a pair of handcuffs on.

Showtime. 

Mental Health was a different kind of social problem in prison. Everyone was depressed – so that was actually normal. If an inmate wasn’t depressed he had to be crazy. Psychopathic, in fact. But admitting to feeling crazy while in an institution that punished mental illness was a sure sign of a serious psychiatric problem. It was Catch-22 with Alice instead of Yossarian as the main character.

Once an inmate attempted to provide a “psych” explanation for ANY kind of behavior in an effort to receive lenient treatment, he’d essentially written himself off and consigned himself to the garbage heap of lifetime supervision. Parole, even IF it were awarded, was often at another facility where treatment for mental problems was offered — and no inmate could escape from whatever “treatment plan” was decided upon.“

Happy Holiday!

“Always forgive your enemies, but remember their names.”

— John F. Kennedy

As we experience this year’s holiday season it is important to remember family and friends and what they have done — supporting us, helping us, guiding us, and in some cases perhaps even betraying us in this “Best of all possible worlds” as Dr. Pangloss so wisely counseled. — as we enter our new “Democracy.”

Of course, that doesn’t mean we have to continue to associate with them. Intelligence and wisdom are not always equally allocated by the ‘Higher Power’ as I learned during a nearly 5 year sojourn in a New York State prison for having exposed corruption, exercising my freedoms of press and speech. I learned the hard way, for instance, that in the Hamptons — a typically right wing financial succubus — that Truth is not appreciated, nor rewarded. I’m a slow learner but I eventually do get the picture. Idi Amin said it best when he said, “We do have freedom of speech, but we don’t guarantee freedom after speech.” Well, folks, I’ve got news for you — his wisdom is about to come to a left wing Starbuck’s near you.

For example, lower Manhattan politicians are useless and self-absorbed, and the City Council as well as the Community Board are more interested in getting re-elected than they are protecting pedestrians or supporting journalists. Making it illegal to call someone Fat is now a law but don’t try to make it safely across Canal Street. Bike lanes don’t making walking safer. Writing about the true nature of press freedom in Manhattan has no better support than the weak knees of major newspapers — either in New York or Washington. Social media has become compromised and is now guided by elite billionaires.

Have you noticed how all of your heroes are suddenly visiting that former Post residence in Florida? I mean, who goes to Florida willingly? Okay, that’s not fair, lots of nice people love Florida. But, to make the trip just to apologize to some guy? For telling the truth? Or making an opinion known? Well, I’ve done that. And, let me tell you, it doesn’t pay if you’re looking for any support. This is no time for resistance, opposition, contrariness, or even having an opinion that differs from what our new overseers and leaders tell us to say, do, support, or even think. It is time to be compliant, agreeable, and even helpful. Allow those around you to be arrested, tortured, beaten, abused and destroyed as I was — A Civil Death — without objecting or being difficult. Allow all of your assets to be taken or destroyed, spend huge amounts on legal fees that only delay the inevitable — so that when you’re done you have nothing, are unemployable, have no medical insurance with deteriorated health as you age, and are shunned by your “friends” — which brings us right back to the point.

After the opposition comprehends their utter stupidity, or is merely a glimmer in their deeply ignorant minds, they may want your advice. Don’t bother.

Just remember their names.

— Martn Niemoller

First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist 

Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist

Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist

Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew

Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me.

— The Who

We’ll be fighting in the streets
With our children at our feet
And the morals that they worship will be gone
And the men who spurred us on
Sit in judgement of all wrong
They decide and the shotgun sings the song

I’ll tip my hat to the new Constitution
Take a bow for the new revolution
Smile and grin at the change all around
Pick up my guitar and play
Just like yesterday
Then I’ll get on my knees and pray
We don’t get fooled again

A change, it had to come
We knew it all along
We were liberated from the fold, that’s all
And the world looks just the same
And history ain’t changed
‘Cause the banners, they all flown in the last war

I’ll tip my hat to the new Constitution
Take a bow for the new revolution
Smile and grin at the change all around
Pick up my guitar and play
Just like yesterday
Then I’ll get on my knees and pray
We don’t get fooled again, no, no

I’ll move myself and my family aside
If we happen to be left half-alive
I’ll get all my papers and smile at the sky
For I know that the hypnotized never lie

Do you?

“We have freedom if speech but we don’t guarantee freedom after speech.”

— Idi Amin

Here’s a sampling of comments reacting to our recent election and state of America.

___________________________________________________________________________

“Undecided voters didn’t believe that some of the highest profile things that happened during Trump’s presidency—even if they saw these things negatively—were his fault.

This was the case on two of the biggest issues in the campaign—the 2020 economic crash and demise of reproductive rights, the operative told me. The result: The good pre-Covid economy during the Trump years largely defined undecided voters’ impressions of him, and no message about his first term could persuade them to the contrary.”

Greg Sargent

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“Our nation’s founders, all white, land-owning men, never envisioned democracy for anyone beyond themselves. White women, when they weren’t merely vessels for reproduction, existed to cater to their husbands. And enslaved Black people were viewed not as humans but as livestock.”

Jayant Sharif 

_____________________________________________________________________________

“We must now realise the truth. It is ugly, it is harrowing, and it should fill every one of us with apprehension. In truth, we should have acknowledged it eight years ago, instead of burying our heads in the sand. But we can, at the very least, acknowledge it now.

America is no longer the ruler of the free world. It is not even currently on the side of the free world. It is on the side of Vladimir Putin and his network of authoritarian gangsters.

More pertinently, America is no longer a reliable security partner. It wouldn’t have mattered if Kamala Harris had won that election on Tuesday. The basic reality would not have changed. Around half the US electorate is prepared to vote for someone who hates the global institutions which make up the post-war order – from the EU, to the World Trade Organisation, the UN, and Nato. Of these, the last is the most acute.”

Sarah Baxter

____________________________________________________________________________

We just elected a guy who’s fine with the planet melting down, kids getting shot in school, insurance companies going back to denying coverage for preexisting conditions, and wants to weaponize the federal government in a way dictators do.

What happened?

Democrats thought the 2024 election would be all about Donald Trump’s embrace of fascism and the future of our democracy. And abortion. 

Pretty much all of us thought that. As did most of the news media and pundits.

But now that the exit polls and research is largely in, we’re finding, instead, that the election was all about who’d be best able to “blow up the system.”

By “the system,” voters didn’t mean democracy (although we may get the end of that); they meant the neoliberal system that Ronald Reagan introduced to replace FDR’s New Deal policies in 1981 and was subsequently embraced by Bush, Clinton, Bush, and Obama.

In other words, they said, “We want the jobs like we had before Reagan’s neoliberalism, when one person could support a household.”

Thin Hartman

____________________________________________________________________________

“People were tired of someone talking in this bullshit, pre-prepared politician lingo,” Joe Rogan, one of America’s most popular podcast hosts, told Trump during an interview a little more than a week before election day. “Even if they didn’t agree with you, they at least knew, whoever that guy is, that’s him. That’s really him.”

Joe Rogan

___________________________________________________________________________________

“Who knows what the next four years are gonna be like? What we do know is that we’re gonna be governed by a monstrous child surrounded by cowards and grifters. It’s really hard to see a bright side here.”

Steven Colbert

___________________________________________________________________________________

“In 2016, having covered presidents of both parties as they came and went, I naively believed that even the narcissist Trump would be humbled by the august power and responsibility of being the leader of the free world. That he would grow in the job.

He wasn’t, and he didn’t. We know that now — after his tens of thousands of lies in office, the near-daily chaos, his deadly botched response to the pandemic, undermining of Americans’ faith in elections, flirtations with autocrats, unprecedented refusal to accept loss and peacefully transfer power in 2020, and his absconding with the nation’s top secrets.

In victory, Teleprompter Trump mostly said the right things: “We’re going to try to help our country heal,” he read, eyes shifting left to right to scan prepared remarks. “This will truly be the golden age of America.” (Real Trump ad-libbed the “enemy camp” remarks.)

But we know Trump too well. We are entering not a golden age but a new dark age in America.”

Jackie Calmes

____________________________________________________________________________________

“The Democrats have to stop pandering to the far left,” said Rep. Tom Suozzi, a Democrat from New York, in an interview with The New York Times. “I don’t want to discriminate against anybody, but I don’t think biological boys should be playing in girls’ sports. Democrats aren’t saying that, and they should be.”

Tom Suozzi

____________________________________________________________________________________

Young liberal women across TikTok and Instagram are discussing and sharing information about the South Korean feminist movement, in which straight women refuse to marry, have children, date or have sex with men.

These women say they are enraged and fed up after a majority of their male counterparts voted for a candidate who was found liable for sexual abuse and whose appointment of three conservative Supreme Court justices led to the overturning of national abortion rights protections.”

Harmeet Kaur

“The bigger the lie, the more people will believe it.”

— Joseph Goebbels

As I prepare to publish several volumes that discuss the former Hamptons District Attorney — Thomas Spota — and his merry band of criminals involved in prosecuting me for free speech, with the assistance of politicians who did all they could to prosecute the “writer,” I prepare. They succeeded. Thomas Spota and his associates Chris McPartland, James Burke and unindicted co-conspirator Emily Constant as well as a corrupt prosecutor were the very top law enforcement officials in Suffolk and the Hamptons. The racist Southampton Town, and it’s so-called mouthpiece The Southampton Press pursued what is known as a Vindictive Prosecution culminating in Civil Death.

As a result I spent almost 5 years in prison for renting new houses to immigrants, Blacks and poor whites.

In an effort to target immigrants, Blacks and poor whites, the Town succeeded while eliminating decent housing provided by me and my partners and while killing any affordable housing — and also killed the SoHo Journal Magazine — while prosecuting me for among other things, being a borrower.

I was the only borrower prosecuted and incarcerated as a direct result of the 2009 Financial Crisis.

This was during the Great Recession, created by lenders like Deutsche Bank who used craven mortgage brokers to provide fraudulent paperwork in the form of mortgage documents in order to create CDOs and Structured Investment Vehicles — and thus destroyed the local economy. Unfortunately, in seeking a victim I was targeted. I supposedly brought America to its knees and destroyed the Hamptons economy.

It wasn’t the banks. I did it all!

Meanwhile Spota and Frank McKay were rigging the election system in the Hamptons to stack judges they could control and didn’t like being exposed in my publications and blogs. 

My novels will be available in 2025 regardless of whether the criminal is re-installed as the 47th president. Perhaps he will join Bezos and find a job working for Musk if he loses.

Frankly, with 44 felonies and Trump with only 34, I’m way ahead.

As Steve Bellone described that DAs office, Spota, McPartland, Constant and Stavrides were operating a “criminal enterprise.” Fortunately, I did the time with the Latin Kings, MS-13, the Mexican Mafia, The Bloods, Crips, Trinitarios and assorted bikers as well as the Mob — a much better class of criminals.

The Southampton Press never interviewed me. Nor, did John Sutter, former Villager publisher (now AM/NY archives) who did business with Trump’s gangsters from the FSU following his defamatory character assassination of me and my family. He never interviewed me either. They all got their infio from a corrupt DA operating through a cowardly verbal assassin by the name of Bob Clifford.

All of the fiction was laid out by Bob Clifford of the DA’s office, Spokesman for convicted and imprisoned DA Thomas Spota, ADA Christopher McPartland, sex-offender and Police Chief Jimmy Burke and corrupt prosecutor Stavrides who suborned perjury and took orders from them while trying to get my family evicted. My landlord, Michael Saperstein and his criminal associate Mark Ramer were rumored to have stolen some serious Manhattan real estate belonging to the family of an aging Jew who trusted their “friends.”

But the real story of Hamptons corruption is coming. Look for the P. Diddy story and Gilgo Beach to embarrass a few retired politicians and law enforcement as the trials heat up.

Stay Tuned.