Give Silver a vaccine and a cell
Beware of the `room of doom’
The Front Page
Morning Update
Thursday, May 6, 2021
By Ken Tingley
Sheldon Silver, the most powerful man in Albany politics at one point, was convicted of seven counts of honest services fraud, extortion and money laundering in 2015. He was a crook.
But there is something a little bit worse about a crook who was elected by the people to serve their best interests, but instead, picked their pockets.
While Silver was disgraced, he didn’t see the inside of a prison cell until last August. While various appeals played out, Silver was allowed to remain free and stroll about his neighborhood on the lower East Side of Manhattan.
After serving less than a year of a 6 1/2-year sentence at a minimum security prison last August, Silver was allowed to return home by New York’s Department of Corrections this week to serve his sentence with home confinement.
Isn’t that what we all have been doing for the past year?
Before being sentenced one final time last August, Silver communicated to the judge he realized his actions had undermined the public trust.
But after five years of hearing Silver’s excuses, the judge had seen had enough. She said he had acted out of a sense of greed and was guilty of “corruption, pure and simple.”
She then sent him to jail.
Finally, there was a glimmer that justice had been delivered.
Until, this week when Silver was allowed to return home.
Prosecutors said they opposed the decision by the Bureau of Prisons.
Silver is 77 now. He has health problems.
He was originally convicted of accepting nearly $4 million in illicit payments on behalf of a Columbia cancer researcher and two real estate developers.
Leadership comes with important responsibilities. Sheldon Silver failed in that regard. He should be vaccinated, given an ample supply of masks and immediately returned to Otisville to serve another six years.
That would be justice.
Room of Doom
I found myself staring down the “Room of Doom” at the hospital this week. I was waiting for an ultrasound when I had the flashback. It was just a routine ultrasound, and I wasn’t worried until I saw the door.
A few years ago I was suffering from a kidney stone. The pain had stayed with me for several weeks so the doctor scheduled a scan. When I was done, the technician told me to wait outside. Then I was told to go through the door to my right.
Inside, there are two desks separated by a partition with a phone on each desk.
After a minute or so, one of the phones rang.
The person on the other end was a doctor and told me that they were concerned about the scan and they were immediately going to have someone take me to the emergency room.
After I hung up, I opened the door to see an orderly standing before me with a wheelchair.
It all turned out to be nothing, except for those few frightening minutes in the “room of doom.”
A couple years later, my wife had a scan and when she came out, they told her to go into he same room.
“Uh, oh!” I said.
We both went in, the phone rang and they told her they had found something in her abdomen. She had to inform them that she had been battling cancer for about eight years at that point so she knew it was there.
When I got done with my ultrasound this week, I walked out into the waiting room, past the “room of door” and never looked back.
Give my book a vote
I wanted to give a shout out to my former colleague at The Post-Star, Rhonda Triller. She recently designed the cover for my collection of columns that is due out this summer.
I had an idea, but as usual Rhonda took it to a whole another realm.
We are in the production phase of the book.
If you could show your support for this project and give my book a vote on my publisher’s page, it would be appreciated.
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