Last Sunday, we marked the 39th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court decision that guarantees a woman’s right to choose. Reproductive freedom is at greater risk now than at any time since Roe was handed down in 1973, and family planning is under attack. Women can no longer afford to be silent.

Last year, Republicans passed an endless parade of legislation in the House regarding reproductive rights and family planning, and this year promises to be no better. Many of the Republican efforts go far beyond choice and would impact women’s access to birth control and basic health care, including cancer screenings. The number and variety of their attacks on reproductive care is more than simply breathtaking—it’s dangerous. Meanwhile, Republicans have offered zero substantive bills to create jobs, the No. 1 issue for the American people.

Early last year, Republicans zeroed out family planning funding in the 2011 omnibus government funding bill. This wasn’t funding for abortions—federal law already prohibits that—rather, it was aid for birth control, pre-natal care and other reproductive health services.

The bill also included the Pence Amendment, which specifically bars funding for Planned Parenthood. The vast majority of services provided by Planned Parenthood are family planning, cancer screening and other non-abortion-related care. This language would have impacted basic health care for millions of women. Fortunately, the Senate defeated it.

In May, the House voted to repeal health care reform and the Republicans approved an amendment that prohibited federal funding to train doctors to perform abortions, even if an abortion would save a woman’s life. The Senate has taken no action on this bill.

In October, the House considered the most dangerous bill of all, the so-called “Protect Life Act,” which many groups are calling the “Let Women Die Act” because it would let hospitals refuse to provide lifesaving care to women who need an abortion and allow them to refuse to transfer them to another institution that would provide care. It also denies women the right to buy insurance covering full reproductive care on the health care exchanges set up under health care reform. Fortunately, the Senate hasn’t taken it up either.

It has become a time-honored tradition to point out that Roe hangs by a thread in the Supreme Court; Whoever becomes president next year will likely determine whether the Constitution guarantees women the right to choose the timing and number of children they will bear. If any of the four Republicans remaining in the race win, they have promised to select Supreme Court candidates who will overturn Roe and have pledged to sign legislation that could restrict women’s access to basic health care.

If Roe falls, the issue will be turned back to the states. NARAL has identified 69 separate anti-choice measures adopted in the states in 2011, even with Roe. Five states have gone so far as to ban abortions entirely after 20 weeks, with no exception for rape or incest or to protect the health of the mother.

Fortunately, President Obama has made it clear that he supports choice and that he believes that reproductive health care needs to be protected and funded.

Last week, his administration reaffirmed that any organization that is not solely religious will have to comply with the preventive care provisions of the Affordable Care Act, including providing access to all FDA-approved birth control medication.

This year could prove pivotal in the fight to protect reproductive rights. For those of us who support Roe, silence is no longer a viable choice.

Carolyn Maloney represents the East Side of Manhattan and parts of Queens in the House of Representatives.

The city adminstration is aware that nearly 800 public schools in all five boroughs contain lighting ballasts that leak polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), which pose serious threats to the health and safety of our children, teachers and staff. Despite the magnitude of the threat and the simple solution available, however, the best response the city can muster is a 10-year plan focusing on meeting legally mandated energy efficiency upgrades, with the peripheral effect of gradually replacing these toxic lighting ballasts.

Under the city’s plan, a child entering kindergarten today would be continually exposed to toxic PCBs throughout the school day every year for 10 years. PCBs are chemicals that were manufactured in the United States from the late 1920s through the 1970s and were commonly used as electrical insulators in buildings because of their high tolerance to heat, low burn rate and nonexplosive properties. Many New York City school buildings built during that time range still have their original lighting ballasts.

Back then, the dangers of PCBs were not known. Today, however, the dangers of PCB exposure are well-documented. PCBs are known neurotoxins and have been linked to cancer, attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder. Prenatal PCB exposure has been linked to lowered IQ scores, behavioral and thyroid disorders, growth deficits and reduced immune function. Even short-term exposure has been shown to be detrimental. Women of child-bearing age are at increased risk, as PCBs have been shown to be detrimental to reproductive and endocrine systems.

Recognizing these risks, Congress banned their manufacture in 1977, and the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) banned their use in 1979.

The city knows full well of these risks, yet still lacks the will to act to protect our kids. What gives?

At a hearing of the Assembly Education Committee about PCBs in New York City school buildings, I questioned representatives from the New York City Department of Education (DOE) regarding the reasons for the delay. While most of their answers were unsatisfactory, the answer to my question about the DOE’s timeline was downright unsettling. “Why can’t you do it faster?” I inquired. “Because we just can’t,” stammered the DOE’s representative.

The city’s failure to provide any grounds for this 10-year timeline should outrage each and every parent with a child in or about to enter school over the next 10 years.

While this is a time of extreme financial hardship, money should not be an obstacle when it comes to the health and safety of this city’s schoolchildren and those who teach them. Energy service companies and the New York Power Authority will cover the up-front remediation costs, taking payments from the future energy savings to be realized from installing new, energy efficient lighting. In addition, replacing the old energy-guzzling fixtures with newer, efficient models, which is required by the Green Building Codes, will pay for itself in as little as three years.

The city must make PCB removal the urgent priority that it is, which is why I have introduced legislation, A 5374, to require the DOE to replace 100 percent of the toxic lighting ballasts in school buildings constructed or substantially renovated between 1950 and 1978 over the course of two to three years.

I will also be introducing legislation to require the city to publish a list of the order in which each school will be remediated. Using the DOE’s arbitrary standards, students, their parents and teachers have no idea whether their school has been prioritized for remediation. The DOE currently prioritizes schools for cleanup if they have confirmed ballast leaks. Since the city refuses to test any school building for the presence of PCBs, the only way to confirm the presence of PCBs is to identify a visible leak, which is next to impossible given that leaking PCBs can be colorless and odorless.

If we were simply talking about creating an energy efficiency retrofit program, 10 years might seem like a short time. But we’re not. We’re talking about lighting ballasts that are leaking toxic substances into our schools and potentially making children, their teachers and other school staff sick. When you think about it that way, 10 years is a luxury these kids just don’t have.

I will continue to demand immediate action until the city responds with the appropriate level of urgency. But I need all of you to join me. If we speak with one voice, the city will have no choice but to act.

Linda Rosenthal is an assembly member for the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

By Daniel O’ Donnell

There are many disturbing facts about the drilling practice known as hydraulic fracturing, or “hydrofracking,” all of which point to one clear overarching message: Hydrofracking is simply too dangerous to allow in New York.

In my work as a member of the New York State Assembly Committee on Environmental Conservation and a long-time advocate for our environment, I’ve met with advocates, attended hearings, corresponded with regulatory agencies and two governors and questioned the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), the New York City Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), and the natural gas industry regarding the environmental damage and health impacts of hydrofracking found in other states and nations.

In all of the information I’ve received over the years that hydraulic fracturing has been studied and disputed, scientists, legislators and state agencies have found neither proof nor assurance that hydrofracking can be done properly without harm to citizens of New York, our environment and our health.

To obtain natural gas contained in shale rock deep below the earth’s surface, the hydrofracking process uses millions of gallons of water, sand and chemicals—many of them toxic or carcinogenic—to blast open the rock and bring the natural gas-hydrofracking fluid combination to the surface. However, a large percentage of this noxious mixture—some reports have said a large majority—remains underground, possibly migrating into nearby water supplies. The fluid that does come to the surface is toxic waste, and there currently exists no method to properly deal with this liquid.

The clearest evidence of this danger came to light very recently. Dec. 8 the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released a targeted study that stated there is a likely link between contamination of water supplies and nearby hydrofracking activity in Wyoming. This is the first time this connection has been made so directly, but I have no doubt it will not be the last. In an earlier letter to Gov. Cuomo on Nov. 7, I called on the governor to halt the DEC permit process in New York until the EPA had finished its comprehensive study examining the process. I believe the recent development underlines the importance of this study.

The dangers of hydrofracking are indeed grave: compromised water and land, decreased property values, industrial pollution, increased seismic activity and a deterioration of residents’ health due in part to increased levels of known carcinogens.

If hydraulic fracturing is allowed to occur in New York State, it will affect all of us. This issue is not one that is limited to the major cities, which get their fresh water from upstate aquifers, and it is certainly not limited to more rural areas where the drilling will take place. These citizens will face long-lasting damage to their land, their water sources and the industries that support their livelihoods, not to mention their personal health.

This is an issue that all New Yorkers must be concerned about, for our health, our state and future generations. I will continue to fight against hydrofracking as I have in past years to protect our great state from this potentially devastating practice. I encourage all others in our community to do the same.

Daniel O’Donnell is the assembly member for the 69th District, which includes parts of the Upper West Side, Manhattan Valley and Morningside Heights.

Downtown doesn’t really need a designated day devoted to dressing like Bob Dylan, Lady Gaga or Danny Zuko, but just because we don’t need it doesn’t mean we won’t embrace it. It’s human nature to dream of being someone else entirely. The popularity of Halloween isn’t the candy, the creepy or even the costumes. It’s the freedom we acquire from shedding the old and becoming the new.

One night, tired of looking at our white walls and inspired by Penélope Cruz’s infectiously bold performance in Vicky Cristina Barcelona, we interpreted Jackson Pollock through wide and talentless fingers and threw paint at our walls. The next morning, we wordlessly and collectively decided the only thing worth keeping from the night before was our memories.

At Home Depot, in the midst of choosing between eggshell and sand, a plucky associate checked our paint-stained hands and said, “Painters huh? Let me show you where we keep our good brushes.” We purchased an entire set. We knew, of course, that one painting does not a painter make, but something about having this stranger believe it made us believe it, if only for a moment. Halloween is like that moment 1,440 times in a row.

As many a good parent would say, the only thing that matters is what you think about you. However, as many a person living in the real world would say, what other people think about you matters a whole hell of a lot. Just ask the participants of the notorious Stanford Prison Experiment. The study made a roar in the ’70s when social psychologist Phillip Zimbardo selected 24 psychologically healthy males and randomly assigned half to play the role of “prisoner” and the other half to play the role of “guard” in a simulated prison.

Though there were no discernible differences between the two groups of participants before the study, once they were given labels and costumes and placed in a prison context, their fictitious entities soon became a frightening reality. The guards took their position to the extreme and showed a flagrant disregard for the rights of the prisoners with verbal assaults, public humiliation and a total lack of scruples. In concordance, the prisoners succumbed to their new roles as well. Each prisoner was stripped of his birth name and only given an ID number to be used throughout the study—prisoners became emotionally drained and riots ensued. The study was terminated after only six days.

Though the experiment raised eyebrows and ethical concerns everywhere, it brought forth a powerful notion: the theory of deindividuation. This theory is usually used to describe the feeling of anonymity and loss of self-identity that individuals take on when given a certain label or name in the context of a sizable group. When placed in a group setting, individuals are less accountable for their actions and have the opportunity to relish behaviors that they would not have ordinarily been able to commit.

On All Hallow’s Eve, deindividuation occurs the moment you put on a Native American headdress and do a synchronized dance next to a construction worker and policeman. With the right costume and attitude, anyone has the opportunity to become who they’ve always wanted to be, whether it’s a painter, prisoner, princess or president. Not only do you get to dress like a fantasy, but your behaviors, actions and emotions are predicated on that new idea of yourself. This new identity gives the identifier the courage and ammunition to behave the way the costume necessitates. Moreover, the more we are treated like a naughty secretary, Michele Bachmann or a WWE wrestler, the more we inhabit that persona.

In previous years, we’ve witnessed witches fly, cheerleaders shout affirmations and sailors open doors, but we can’t help but wonder if it’s not just the magic of Halloween but rather the magic of New York City. After all, there is no place better suited for maintaining your anonymity than the 917. Freedom comes from reinvention and the notion of possibility is paved into the sidewalks of this city. There’s no one to tell you that you can’t be who you want to be. Don’t wait for someone to give you a label.

We say, why not take a cue from Oct. 31, have the fortitude to be who you dream and let New York be your mask? Of course, our brushes have been long forgotten behind dust and dish detergent and we haven’t painted a thing since that fateful night, but we just may have thought of this year’s costume. Or better yet, a new career.

I am a Hungerford; yes, I wince when I volunteer that this is my middle name, but I feel I must to make a point. Only a Hungerford who lives on Park Avenue (qualifier: I took over the rent-controlled apartment from my mother and share it with a 52-year-old Sleepeezee mattress salesman) would have a complete (26 volumes) signed collection of Rudyard Kipling’s works (Bombay edition, leather bound) accumulating dust on a shelf.

I had only a vague notion of who Kipling was and it was mostly negative: an imperialist and racist famous for stating that educating third-world countries was “the white man’s burden.” So I certainly did not cherish the collection. In fact, I’ve always been slightly embarrassed by being a WASP (imperialism, elitism, George W. Bush to name a few), so when my mom told me I could sell the collection she had left behind, I jumped at the chance. The whole experience took only a day, but I can say now that selling books that you inherited is demoralizing, while impulsively selling them for one-tenth of their value is downright gut-wrenching.

The guy who showed up from WEBUYrareBookS4cash.com was good—real good. I instantly wanted him to like me, that’s how good he was. I knew I could probably get more money, but I wanted this cool, sleek chap to get the business. As he surveyed the rare books, punching relevant numbers and dates into his iPhone, I mused. Maybe we could become friends and he would invite me to literary events around town? Granted, I was also desperate for money. I needed to get my cell phone turned on again. So, in the end, I took $1,900 for the complete Kipling set. Cash can be so seductive.

As soon as the door shut behind the salesman, who, within two minutes of meeting me had the books bundled safely in bubble wrap, the storm clouds of regret started rolling in. What had I done? When my mother had suggested I sell the books, I thought only of quick cash! I had once picked up and read part of one volume, Tales From the Hills, and found it depressing. The story, as I recall, is about an imperialist Brit who never returned to India for his Indian bride as he had promised he would after she nursed him back to health. But now I longed for Kipling.

The sentimental value of the books had never registered, but with the haggler gone and the initial thrill of easy money dissipating, I was deflated and left with remorse. I had just sold a part of English history, possibly a priceless collection, to pay off a cell phone bill!

If I may mount a meager self-defense, I had done some due diligence before the salesman came over and undertaken a superficial Google search for the value of the collection. But I failed to include one critical word: “Bombay.” I saw what looked like a similar collection going for $4,000, signed, but the books were not as rare as the Bombay collection. I did come upon an auction house in Texas that had sold four of the books from the Bombay collection for $7,000. Using this as leverage with the salesman, I ultimately got more than he had planned to fork over, but for him my information was a mere bump in the road. “Yes, but they look like the 15-inch edition, the bindings look tighter, you never know what will happen at auction,” etc. (true).

The day before, I had also lugged three of the volumes, including the one signed by Kipling, to Bauman, the high-end rare book buyer on Madison Avenue, where I was told they had sold a similar collection for $8,000. They said my signed volume was in relatively bad shape and needed $500 worth of work on the binding. Either way, I would have to leave one book with them and come back and talk to the final decision-maker. Yes, a pleasant academic Brit added, they were indeed looking for a Bombay collection, their last had sold for $8,000, but of course, they could not pay that price.

Still, this was encouraging information. I figured I could get $3,500 from the good folks at Bauman. I was about to leave the book when I remembered I had an appointment with the WEBUYrarebooks4cash.com guy, so I told her I had to shop it around a bit.

The next day, as I was pushing the sales guy out the door after he had doubled his initial offer of $600, his parting words were, “Yes, you might get $2,000 but you know the big retailers will make you pay taxes on that money!” I did some quick figuring in my head and let him slither back through the door. The rest is history.

After I had counted the $1,900 and he had left, I did another search—this time with the word Bombay in it—and saw my exact collection going for $23,000! I literally felt like falling on a knife. Other collections were more modestly priced at $16,000 and $18,000. It was a small relief to see a similar set for $6,000 on eBay, but they were not leather bound.

In the following days and weeks, my depression worsened. I romanticized; I had a very clear image of browsing the wonderful Jungle Books (among Kipling’s most famous) with my grandchildren (at the moment I’m 46 and have no kids). I had a picture in my mind of the books prominently displayed in a big red room with mahogany shelves. Perhaps we would call it the “Kipling room,” tucked inside a wonderful. warm townhouse. We might have “Kipling nights” or “Kipling parties.”

For a spell I became obsessed with Kipling. I read everything I could about the man. He was an impressive writer, remarkably prolific—a literary titan—and he did capture an era. In a time when there was no video or TV, he brought India (then under colonial rule) to the British through books, not iPhones. Pathetically, I read one of his most famous novels, Kim, online next to the empty bookshelf that used to store his dust-covered collection.

Some advice: If you have rare books (and by the way, don’t mistake old for rare; most old books are just that—old) and need/want to sell them, that’s fine. But for Christ’s sake, they have been sitting there for years—take a month and have fun getting different offers and finding out what they are worth. If they are first editions from a distinguished author, you have the power; someone wants those books no matter how bad the recession is. Cherish this fact. First edition signed books do not depreciate.

Jeff Nichols’s memoir, TrainWreck, was made into a film. He can be reached at www.Jeff-nichols.com

By Matthew Morchower

I suppose everyone has a moment when they know the days of their youth are over.

Graduating college. Getting that first job. Marrying the girl. Having that first kid. Tearing an Achilles. Being checked out by the mom, not the daughter. Squinting at the menu because it’s too dark. Waking to pee twice every night.

Or realizing you’ll never again hear “10th Avenue Freeze-Out” played live by the man whose story it tells, while “Thunder Road” runs through your head. “So you’re scared and you’re thinking that maybe you ain’t that young any more,” which makes you want to curl up and vomit and agree.

Yeah, it took Clarence Clemons dying to wring the kid out of me. As a little kid, a college kid or an overgrown kid, I’d never expected that would be the trigger.

I’ve been 27 in my head for a long time and I thought I always would be. Young enough to blast the stereo yet old enough to have a 401(k). Young enough for college girls but old enough for grad school women. Young enough to still watch Dude, Where’s My Car? but old enough to appreciate Mad Men.

All because the E Street Band still played like they were hungry and 27.

But then the “Big Man” went down at age 69 with a “beautiful thud.” (That’s from “Lost in the Flood,” for those who haven’t memorized every single Bruce Springsteen lyric by now…and if that’s the case, what have you been doing with your lives?). There goes 27. And there goes the occasional moment of still being 17, skipping class at my Jersey school and flying down the turnpike to the shore in my friend Hewitt’s Mustang convertible with the top rolled down and the music turned up.

There goes a guy with whom you spent more time than your family or your friends, even though he was just a sound wave coming from a speaker. But then a brain clots and someone hits fast forward—bzzzzzt—and you’re not 27 anymore.

I met the man once, right here on my Upper West Side. It was two years ago. It was everything I had hoped it would be and, like so many things in our neighborhood, it happened in a place that isn’t around anymore—just like Clarence Clemons.

It was at the Barnes and Noble on 66th Street; a signing of his autobiography, which was funny, off-kilter, and clearly written by his ghostwriter, an old-school, dusty TV sitcom writer, because Clarence neither writes nor speaks like some sitcom cliché. Chris Rock once said, “I can’t understand a [damn] thing he’s saying. He sounds like a saxophone.”

After waiting my lifetime—plus 45 minutes in line—we were a folding table apart. Of the thousands of things I could have asked or said, I decided to play it cool, though playing it cool around Clarence Clemons is like John Boehner playing it smart around Franklin Roosevelt.

“Big Man,” I said (because we Jersey guys go straight for the nicknames), “I just finished my Springsteen mix for my iPod for the New York Marathon next week. Lot of Clarence in there.”

His answer made him everything I had hoped, and that never happens. Funny and full of braggadocio and lively and honest and winking. “Son,” boomed the baritone from the lungs that supplied the air that supplied my life’s backing tracks, “If you want to run a marathon, you need to be living my life.”

He lived that life like the world’s biggest kid. Every single day. If anyone was still 27, he was.

Springsteen’s characters die in dramatic and powerful ways. They die on the inside, from losing a job, losing a girl, losing a dream. Or they die on the outside, from a gun, a brawl, a flipped car. But the flesh-and-blood saxophonist didn’t die, I learned. Because “Clarence doesn’t leave the E Street Band when he dies,” his legendary bandleader said. “He leaves when we die.”

And if he’s still here, nothing changes and I don’t lose the days of my youth. I must be just a few miles into the marathon. He’d like that.

_
Matthew Morchower, a TV producer and director, is a freelance writer living on the Upper West Side.

As neighborhoods go, Hell’s Kitchen, where I’ve lived since the ’90s, is the poster child for urban grit. The setting for some of the great noir films of the 1940s, it was once the turf of the Westies, a notorious Irish gang. The Capeman Murders happened in a nearby schoolyard. Last fall, in a club across from an Eighth Avenue restaurant where I regularly eat, a man murdered a woman because she wouldn’t dance with him.

But Hell’s Kitchen also has some surprisingly sweet celebrations, annual events that remind us of who and where we are. My favorite begins at the tiny church of San Benito el Moro, on 53rd Street between Eighth and Ninth avenues.

I first encountered it on a late August Sunday afternoon, shortly after I had moved to the neighborhood. It was unusual for me to be in the city on a weekend—ordinarily I was in central New Jersey, where my mother, in her 90s, was saying her long, last goodbye. But that particular day was a respite, a rare chance to re-inhabit my life on a late summer afternoon temperate enough to permit open windows. All of a sudden, asserting itself through the usual din of revving trucks and taxi horns come the strains of a mariachi band, punctuated by a bell, getting louder and closer with each repetition. Leaning carefully out my 11th floor window I can see wooden barricades and a police car blocking off 53rd Street, where a group of Sunday-dressed ladies are facing the music.

Up Eighth Avenue lumbers a flower-bedecked platform bearing a life-sized statue of Saint Rose of Lima, the infant Jesus in her arms, on the shoulders of 20 men, five to a side. Over their Sunday suits they wear undyed wool capes trimmed with thick purple braid. Their polished shoes move forward in a rhythmic two-step to the music. A few women precede the platform, walking backwards and swinging smoking silver censers. A uniformed band brings up the rear, followed by the police. One wool-caped man monitors the progress. When he strikes a brass gong on the front of the platform, the band stops playing, the platform is set down and the carriers change position. A few minutes’ rest, another bell and the march goes on.

I’ve been to the festivals of San Gennaro and St. Anthony. This is different. There are no food booths, no richly garbed statues with money pinned to their robes. Ex-Catholic that I am, I know a genuine religious pilgrimage—and this one is going on right outside my door in the streets of Hell’s Kitchen.

As I reach the street, they are navigating the turn onto 53rd Street. Santa Rosa glides past the second floor windows of a Curves gym, The Comedy Club and the mysterious, barricaded Transit Authority building rumored to have been Giuliani’s post-9/11 headquarters. Mid-block, adjacent to the church, is a narrow alley. The marchers maneuver the statue into it and Santa Rosa comes to rest. The congregants crowd in and take flowers from the platform.

One year, at the end of the procession, the bearers began what I thought was their usual final turn into the alley. Instead, they kept turning. Each time the gong sounded and they hefted the platform again, the mariachis upped the tempo. Three times men in wool capes turned that heavy platform, faster and faster. It was exuberant. It was defiant. It was thrilling.

The church of San Benito holds a few other seasonal processions. The short ones only circle the block, while the long ones go as far as 42nd Street, take all day and cover nearly two miles. The November procession, with a statue of the Virgin Mary, is one of the long ones. On 53rd Street, San Benito parishioners—Hispanic working people and families—line the sidewalks to watch the statue pass.

Though I share neither their culture nor their beliefs, the music and marchers draw me out of my apartment every time. The processions have become a means to center myself in the mean streets of Hell’s Kitchen, at the beginning of a New York winter or at the peak of a long summer, witnessing the marchers as they doggedly pursue a goal in the belief that doing so somehow makes things better. It does for all of us, we New Yorkers alive in a troubling, uncertain time, in a place that is sometimes violent.

As the tenth anniversary of 9/11 approaches, I confess a little unease. About a year ago, an inept terrorist tried to blow up a car in the theater district, and the subsequent evacuations stopped just short of my own building. I have a Go Bag. I’ve chosen my route out of Manhattan. I’ve considered buying an inflatable kayak so I can float to New Jersey if the usual exits are closed. But if I ever leave Hell’s Kitchen for a safer, cleaner, less interesting place, I’ll bring with me the message of the church of San Benito el Moro: If a ritual honoring nature begun in the Andes thousands of years ago is still going on in Hell’s Kitchen in 2011, then all is not lost—not ever.

The date of this year’s Santa Rosa procession hasn’t appeared in the parish bulletin yet. It will definitely, said the parishioners I approached after last Sunday’s Mass, be one of the last two Sundays in August. If you’re in the neighborhood, stop for a minute and listen for mariachis and a bell.

“A kiss is still a kiss, a sigh is just a sigh…” and a bald-faced, spit-in-your-face lie is still what it is. It is not raining and Republicans have been expectorating in our kissers for years about more than a few things, the latest of which are the “true” causes of our recession and what needs to be done about them.

When I say “our kissers” I refer to all of us, of course, the news-devouring or even news-nibbling public. But more to the point, into the faces of their “colleagues” across the aisles in Congress, as well as the gullible media, and most infuriatingly, the President and his Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner (with that terminally frozen “Where the hell is the emergency exit?” expression), as well as anyone who dares to call him or herself, as I do, a Liberal, which I define as someone who believes that it is both a responsibility and an honor for the haves in our society, to extend themselves, and some of their fortunes, to the have-nots, and the just plain have-not-quite-enough-to-survives.

What are these lies and where are the voices of our representatives, including the press and the President of all the people, to call their hand and tell it loud and clear like it is?

Republican Lie Number One:
It’s the needy, the poor and the sick who brought the United States to the brink of default by raiding the treasury for their well-earned (and paid for) Social Security and Medicare Benefits.

The Truth:
It was the bankers who, on the high tide of the real estate boom caused the so-called “mortgage crisis,” lending at seductive low rates to clients with little or no collateral and then, when the tide began to ebb, hiking their interest rates to levels the clients could no longer afford, causing them to default and lose their homes and leading to a nationwide crash of real estate prices to the point where homeowners were paying much more for their homes than they were now worth. The homeowners go homeless and broke, the banks get to keep the houses and the money, and the bankers get to keep their jobs.

The Grand Gonnifs such as Bernard Madoff and the nameless and faceless Wall Street insiders and hedge fund connivers who literally lost billions of other people’s dollars so that they could live like pharaohs. Madoff is the only one locked up for his crime, the others having been consigned to the hard labor of shoveling and raking in more cash and looking for ways to spend it or hide it.

The multi-billion-dollar war against Iraq, which was totally unjustified, cost the lives of more than 4,000 Americans and tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi citizens, in addition to the multi-billion-dollar war in Afghanistan, whose end and outcome remain unpredictable after 10 years of fighting.

Republican Lie Number Two:
Give more federal money and tax breaks to small businesses and startups, and the business “community” will create jobs to lower the unemployment rate.

The Truth:
There is no business “community.” This is dog-eat-dog competitive capitalism. Remember?
Small businesses. “Small businesses.” “Small.” Get it yet? Take out a pencil and paper and a dictionary. Small businesses do not, by definition, hire many workers. And when they do, they are likely to be non-union, with minimal benefits and at low starting salaries. There are more than 12 million “officially” unemployed in the country, not counting those who have exhausted their unemployment or themselves looking for work. It has been estimated that thousands of workers would have to be hired every week over the next five years to get us back to a reasonably low unemployment rate.

Republican Lie Number Three:
“No tax hikes for millionaires or billionaires,” as this would discourage them from using their fortunes to create jobs.

The Truth:
No one is proposing raising taxes on the rich, only taking back the infamous Bush Tax Cuts for Millionaires and Billionaires that have put the wealthiest in our country in the lowest tax rate category, while the rest of us pay full fare.

There are more than a million millionaires in the United States, and somewhere between 400 and 1,200 billionaires. Where are the jobs they have allegedly created up to this time after years of paying minimal taxes on their fortunes? How can anyone assume their behavior will change if they continue to get away with cheap taxes?

President Obama, Harry Reid and all Democratic Senators and Representatives: Hold the line, and don’t buy the Republicans’. They lie like rugs and don’t look half as good.

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Daniel Meltzer is a playwright, an adjunct professor of journalism at New York University and former senior writer and editor for CBS News.

As I watched the saga enveloping Congressman Anthony Weiner, and the ones surrounding Arnold Schwarzenegger and Dominique Strauss-Kahn, there is a frequent chorus I hear from women: Where are the women on this list?

Whether it is Eliot Spitzer, John Ensign, Newt Gingrich, Bill Clinton, David Vitter, Silvio Berlusconi or the plethora of others, the question remains: Where are the women?

Even my three young sons recently asked me if a woman could be governor in New York. Not a surprising question when you consider that we have never had a female governor or mayor in New York.

The answer only highlights the fact that we have a paucity of women elected officials here in the United States and that women have had to fight hard to get where they are in leadership positions, whether it is in the corporate or political world. When we have a society where women are still being paid 77 cents on the dollar to men and where women still bear a disproportionate amount of responsibility for childcare and elder care and other familial responsibilities, one wonders how easily they will throw it all away once they are elected.

To become elected, women generally have to make great sacrifices to balance these extra familial responsibilities with the rigors of running for and then holding office.

Women comprise 51 percent of the population, yet only hold 17 percent of Congressional seats and 23 percent of state elected office in the U.S., according to the Women’s Campaign Forum. The United States ranks 87th in the world in terms of women in elected office, behind countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan. (It bears noting that one of the arguments we heard about why the U.S. needs to be involved in nation building in Afghanistan was to eradicate the terrible treatment of young girls and women under the Taliban, and now we see that Afghanistan has a higher proportion of representation of women than we do in the U.S.) The issue is not that women do not win when they run for elected office, since they do win in equal numbers to men; the problem is that they are not running.

A 2005 study by Jennifer Lawless shows that women are 50 percent less likely than men to seriously consider running for office, and 30 percent less likely to actually run. And when they do run, they are more likely to be interested in local office, while men are more likely to think about state or federal positions. The result? There simply is no pipeline. There is no bench. Why? Because studies show that unlike men, women generally need to be asked to run for office and quite often question their ability to be able to conduct a campaign while frequently juggling outside family demands or shy away from the lack of privacy that running for office and being an elected official entails.

To return to the original question, this is not to say that women do not have affairs, because of course they do. Indeed, to me, if any of these politicians had engaged in an extramarital affair it is a private matter between the elected official and his spouse. But what many of these cases entail is something far different, and that is why they’ve been an issue. Many involved affairs with staffers or interns, thus bringing into play the politician’s supervisory role and influence over a junior staffer and raising the specter of sexual harassment and a hostile work environment. Even in the case of Weiner, while no staffer has come to light, he chose to tell some of these women to “cover up” their exchanges (as when he instructed Ginger Lee to use certain wording to frame a rebuttal or told her to add “y’alls” to her answers to sound more “authentic” and “charming”) and commenting to another woman on Jewish women’s sex drive, thus raising the issue of the objectification of women that the feminist movement has fought against so diligently for years.

Many of these cases involve treatment of women in degrading ways. Whether it is having an affair with a married staffer, as John Ensign did, which the Senate’s Select Committee on Ethics report noted that the Senator exerted “enormous power” over the staffer as he controlled both her salary and her husband’s, and funds for her children’s education; frequenting a prostitute as Eliot Spitzer did or as David Vitter was alleged to have done, it raises the question of how these individuals view women. Notably, some of the men who have been implicated over the years, such as Newt Gingrich and John Ensign, were so-called “family value” Republicans who want to stop women from having a right to choose whether or not to have an abortion.

I hope one of the positives we see out of these scandals is that qualified and talented women decide to seriously run for office. Then we might see less of those who abuse their positions of power by having an affair with a staffer or holding up their “family values” morality over a woman’s reproductive rights and other social issues, while on the other hand thinking they are above general standards.

Only then will I be able to stop having to explain to my three young and impressionable sons what this funny business is all about.

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Julie Menin is a board member of the Women’s Campaign Fund and former national chair of WCF’s “She Should Run.”

By Rev. Kate Dunn

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the David B. Skinner Shelter at Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church. It is a milestone we plan to recognize this fall, honoring the volunteers who host 12 homeless men every night and keep the shelter running 365 days a year.

But it’s not the sort of thing you celebrate, not when we are still so far from mitigating the chronic homelessness in New York City that compelled us to open the shelter in the first place.

Back in 1986, we thought (we hoped) that the precipitous increase in homelessness the city was experiencing was temporary—the product of an economic downturn that would largely disappear once things improved. We knew our 10-bed shelter (we expanded to 12 in 2004) couldn’t begin to address the enormity of the problem, but our faith taught us to do what we could. In addition to the shelter, our church also started providing comfort and referrals to services to the men and women who slept on our front steps every night.

In 1986, there were fewer than 25,000 people in the city’s shelter system. Tonight there will be nearly 40,000. Thousands more are unsheltered. The Coalition for the Homeless reports that the number of homeless New Yorkers is the highest it’s been since the Great Depression. A societal problem of this scale requires a comprehensive solution, including a meaningful commitment of resources, at the city, state and federal levels.

Our work with the homeless men and women we have come to know these last 25 years has led us to become advocates—for the creation of more affordable housing, and for progressive public policies that would alleviate some of the root causes of homelessness. Until these larger goals are achieved, however, there is still much that can be done to provide for the thousands of New Yorkers living on our streets and in our shelters.

Earlier this year, Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church developed an innovative, temporary shelter model in partnership with the West Side Federation for Senior and Supportive Housing and the Church of the Ascension on West 107th Street. In February, during some of the harshest winter weather, eight men who had taken refuge on the steps of our church in midtown were relocated to a temporary shelter at Ascension, where they received dinner and case management services.

Over the three months of the project, 17 men were housed in the Ascension shelter. Eleven of them eventually transitioned to temporary or permanent housing, and two more found housing on their own. We believe this model can be replicated in other parts of the city.

While temporary shelters can be useful, permanent supportive housing is the most cost-effective and lasting way to address chronic homelessness. A permanent supportive housing facility provides on-site assistance to formerly homeless individuals who are unable to live independently. Such facilities exist on Manhattan’s west side and in the outer boroughs; but Midtown, despite its large homeless population, does not offer a permanent supportive housing option.

We urge the city, and our neighbors, to work with us to address this vital need. Working together, let us find a location and marshal the resources to provide more than a handout or a free meal to our fellow citizens in need.

Let us provide them a home.

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The Rev. Kate Dunn is the associate pastor for pastoral care and outreach at Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church in Manhattan.