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Health & Fitness

Part 6: Holbrook's 'Cesspool of corruption and patronage'

Sluys smelled a good story when he saw one, knew instinctively, as in Hamlet, that “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark,” judged well that the fish was rotting from the head down.

Sluys lit into Holbrook with the savageness of a junkyard dog. His editorials would have made the sleaziest tabloid editor proud. Larger-than-life to his admirers, even in death, Sluys had no fear, went where the story led, pulled no punches. And he was never once sued for libel. Not once. 

Of Holbrook and his governance, Sluys pulled no punches:
     * “In the 20 years in which Charles Holbrook has served in Clarkstown Town government, he has built an empire of patronage… wherein the taxpayers are damned and the favored few fatten on the public purse.”
     * “In the cesspool of corruption and patronage deals that is the government of the Town of Clarkstown under Supervisor Charles Holbrook…”
     * “A bad cause will ever be supported by bad means and bad men. We have observed Clarkstown government for many years, and know the corruption that seethes underneath the surface.”
     * “Of Supervisor Holbrook, little need be said. Chief fiscal officer of the Town, he declared personal bankruptcy, never explaining where he spent almost half a million dollars in personal credit card debt.”
     * “Guardian of the people’s interests, he involved the Town in the disastrous Ramapo Golf Course deal, costing taxpayers $1.5 million, and lining the pockets of the disgraced Democratic Party chairman Paul Adler. Though Holbrook has said precious little about it, Holbrook was in daily communication with Adler during the period of time that Adler profited by the actions of Holbrook and the Town board.”
     * “Holbrook is a politician first, last, and always. His concern is Charles Holbrook, not the people of the Town of Clarkstown. His efforts to spend $300,000 of the taxpayers’ money in repairing the private Mountain Shadows Condominiums [efforts which would have benefitted conservative party heavyweights Ed Lettre, Joseph Mitlof, and Israel Herskowitz] were only stopped when citizens sued him in court.” 
     * “A man who would illegally give away $300,000 of the public’s money to advance himself politically, who will engage in deals with the corrupt chairman of the democratic party which cost taxpayers millions of dollars, and who lacks forthrightness and honesty, is not only a financial bankrupt, but a moral bankrupt as well.”
     * “It has long been apparent to anybody with eyes to see and ears to hear that Clarkstown government is one of the most corrupt Town governments…Anything that is done in Clarkstown…is done not for the advantage for the people, but for the advantage of the politicians who hold office in that government.”

In the federal trial of Herskowitz, in which he was found guilty of a range of charges—and concurrent with the investigation of Adler and others—U.S. District Court Judge Colleen McMahon validated what Sluys had long ago uncovered: Corruption in Rockland, “particularly corruption within the Democratic party, “ is “a cancer on society which cannot be tolerated.” Holbrook was never directly implicated in any of the federal cases swirling around him during this period, but if walls could talk, who knows what they might say?

And who knows what the walls would say about Holbrook’s successor, Gromack, who also has given so much to so few at the expense of so many?—much of which shall be revealed in due course within this book.

And you shall be known by the deeds you do and company you keep. 
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Truth is a great leveler of men. The bright light that illuminates the darkest crevices of unholy activities is a powerful antidote. Being cast into Eternal Damnation from a bully pulpit filled with printer’s ink cannot but strike fear, and perhaps thoughts of revenge, into the boldest of souls. 

Holbrook was the Evil One. Sluys was the Avenging Angel. Our story neither begins nor ends with Holbrook, but as the perceived Puppet Master of much that has befallen us, he is central to The Perfect Storm surrounding our nightmare. 

In our matter, Town of Clarkstown v Goldberg I and II—with numerous “smoking gun” documents showcasing civil and constitutional rights violations, selective enforcement and subjective, false, and malicious prosecution; judicial malfeasance, takings, pressures that the public bring to bear, exceedance of authority, conspiracy and collusion, fraudulent scientific activities and claims, res judicata, denial of substantive due process and vested rights, regulatory takings, illegal directives, fruit of the poisonous tree, overburdensome requirements, illegal search and seizure, lack of good faith, unclean hands, and much, much more, The Journal News, with a senior managing editor, managing editor, local editor, metro desk editors, night editors, and a host of beat reporters, managed not a single investigative article from 1999 to the present into what we consider to be one of the most unique, compelling, and frightening, stories of the first decade of the 21st century in Rockland County. Not a single one. 
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It is in this light—with Sluys long dead and the editors and reporters of The Journal News egregiously derelict in their obligation to faithfully serve the Rockland community—that we place before you our fully documented story, ready to be aired in a court of law, should anyone named herein be foolish enough to file a frivolous suit alleging libel, on which he would be countersued, with severe sanctions sought. 

But potential future legal actions aside, we leave it to you, the reader, to decide whether our civil and constitutional rights have or have not been trampled upon time and again. 

We leave it to you to decide whether the issues we raise about governance in Clarkstown create moral outrage in you, or whether you are content with governance as revealed herein. 

We leave it to you to decide whether any broader issues of society and human nature we touch upon are or are not troubling. 

In the end, no matter what conclusions you may arrive at, we find the truth to be self-liberating, and through the truth, as reported here and additionally documented and on our web site—townofclarkstownvgoldberg.org—we have been made whole and set free. We cannot certify that those named herein will similarly sleep the sleep of the innocent. 

The evil that men do.
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Next week: Little did we suspect that a curtain of darkness would soon descend upon us, and remain for years, over our entire family, from a fateful decision I was soon to make. 

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