Do You Hear That? That's the Sound of the Establishment Clause Being Violated

"The Blooming Grove Report" isn't the only thing violating the separation of Church and State in Southern Orange County. All this and a sneak preview of upcoming stories here at The Monroe Gazette.

Apr 14, 2024

Do you hear that noise? That noise is the sound of the New York State Constitution’s, and the Federal Constitution’s, Establishment Clause being violated in South Blooming Grove.

That’s because those sirens to announce the Sabbath are on Village owned land.

But that’s not the only story I’m investigating for you here at The Monroe Gazette.

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Now let’s take a look at some upcoming stories and smaller news items I haven’t (yet) developed …

The Sirens Are Calling

Let’s start with the New York State Constitution’s Establishment Clause. It says:

The free exercise and enjoyment of religious profession and worship, without discrimination or preference, shall forever be allowed in this state to all humankind; and no person shall be rendered incompetent to be a witness on account of his or her opinions on matters of religious belief; but the liberty of conscience hereby secured shall not be so construed as to excuse acts of licentiousness, or justify practices inconsistent with the peace or safety of this state. (Amended by vote of the people November 6, 2001.)

An accurate decibel measurement has not yet been taken for those sirens. But as South Blooming Grove resident Chris Maderia demonstrates, the noise can definitely be heard from inside the house:

In the 21st Century, those sirens are unnecessary, when a simple text message or robocall would do.

And let’s be clear, the Haredi in the Satmar community are not the Amish.

Comparisons to the Amish — often made by my fellow Jews who only have a superficial knowledge of the Satmar — are false and misleading on a number of levels. One of which includes the heavy use of dumb phones and smart phones by members of the Satmar religious sect.

More importantly, those sirens are likely at a decibel level that the CDC has found to be harmful for people. That would mean they’re disruptive to the peace of the community, and to everyone’s safety, Haredi or not.

And that’s the key here. As I’ve said, I could give less of a shit about who someone is or how they worship or vote.

What I care about is that we’re looking out for each other as neighbors.

Life is meaningless. There is no point to any of this. So, the only responsibility any of us have is to each other. And that’s the way I approach stuff like the sirens. There are far better ways to remind people about the sabbath without physically harming your neighbors in the process.

Sounds dramatic, right? But it’s not.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, anything above a decibel level of 80 can damage your hearing after two hours. Thankfully, those sirens don’t run that long.

But.

Anything at or above a decibel level of 105 can cause hearing loss in less than five minutes. At 110, less than two minutes, which covers the duration of those sirens every time they activate.

And at a decibel level of 120 or above? Pain and ear injury can result.

So, yes. The science says those sirens can physically harm the people living around them.

Now imagine having those sirens, in some cases right in your backyard, going off twice every Friday at that kind of decibel level.

That’s dangerous not only for those who want to adhere to the Sabbath, but also to those who want to live in the peace and safety guaranteed to them in the New York State Constitution.

The Federal Establishment Clause and the Lemon Test

We’ve already covered The Lemon Test, but I’m going to direct your attention to the “special permit” that was granted by the Village of South Blooming Grove for those sirens.

More research is needed on this resolution and its specific language. But let’s apply the concept of placing these sirens, on Village owned land, to the Lemon Test:

The Lemon Test has 3 Prongs:

Government can only assist religion when …

(1) the primary purpose of the assistance is secular,

(2) the assistance must neither promote nor inhibit religion

(3) there is no excessive entanglement between church and state.

Got it?

And since the Trump appointed justices, along with fellow anti-woman douchebags Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, haven’t yet killed The Lemon Test, it still stands as the law of the land in Establishment Clause cases.

So, a “special permit” to put these giant, harm-causing sirens on Village land is providing non-secular assistance, and fails the first test.

The special permit granting the use of these loud ass sirens is absolutely assistance to promote a specific religion. So, it fails the second test.

And finally, is there an excessive entanglement between Church and State?

That’s harder to answer. But once you factor in other legislation, like Local Law 1 of 2021 and The Blooming Grove Report, along with these sirens, I believe there is an excessive entanglement that now exists between the Village and the Haredi in the Satmar community. Especially given the composition of both the Village Board and Village Planning Board with members of that sect.

That said, I’m not (yet) a lawyer.

So interpretations vary. I will; however, direct your attention to How Rights Went Wrong by Jamal Greene, a Constitutional Law professor at Columbia University.

Greene presents a different way of determining court cases involving the Constitution and the rights it grants, including the Establishment Clause.

Specifically, Greene says in the book:

AMERICAN COURTS TODAY FRAME RIGHTS as a zero-sum game. Faced with a rights conflict, they decide who holds a right instead of asking what holding a right means. Instead of accommodating the cacophony of rights that arise out of close contact between human beings of different backgrounds, circumstances, and values, they discriminate between us. This approach to rights isn’t just wrong; it’s dangerous.

Put another way, if a court case were to happen over the South Blooming Grove Sirens, American Courts would likely view the issue entirely based on whether or not there is a right to place those sirens on government owned land. The issue around the hearing loss caused by those sirens would be secondary and deemed irrelevant.

What Greene promotes in the book, and it’s a stance I take, is a more nuanced approach. One that argues, in a sense, “Yeah. You have the right to use those sirens, but people are being harmed by them, and so your freedom of religion doesn’t matter in this specific case because of the harm being caused and because reasonable alternatives exist to notify worshippers of the Sabbath.”

Other Stories and Claims Being Investigated In Blooming Grove

-The Village of South Blooming Grove absolutely refuses to comply with FOIL requests and other requests that ask if The Blooming Grove Report is an official document from the village.

Until I can prove that it is, the Americans United for the Separation of Church, the NYC ACLU, and the Freedom From Religion Foundation won’t get involved on behalf of residents of South Blooming Grove.

Maybe the sirens will convince them? I don’t know yet, but I am going to circulate this link and let you know what they say.

I think it’s fairly obvious, based on the design of an English language release from the Village, and the design of the BGR, both found below, that the BGR is a Village Publication:

On a related note, I haven’t seen a new issue of The BGR since people started asking the Village about it.

However, the UJC hate group has put out a new newsletter and it’s definitely worth your time to look at because it details all the zoning changes implemented within the village.

And as a reminder, Confidential Assistant to the Mayor, Joel Stern, is the de facto mayor of South Blooming Grove. He is also a board member of the UJC. Isaac Ekstein is the Legislative Aide to the mayor of South Blooming Grove and the president of the UJC. So, there is little to any daylight between the UJC communications and village communications.

Part of the latest UJC newsletter says …

Translated: “The building still bears a historical significance as the public remembers, the previous building that stood on the property before was the symbol of the evil that was done by the previous administration under the cloak of law, when they tore down the house of worship law of the zoning code to be able to block from building or operating houses of worship.”

None of that is true. As per usual, hanhallah lies at the expense of their people and ours.

Also: “the symbol of the evil that was done by the previous administration under the cloak of law.”

Again. It’s a hate group y’all. All because it’s called United Jewish Community of Blooming Grove does not somehow make it immune from being a hate group.

- You might be wondering, what does the Anti-Defamation League have to say about a hate group calling itself United Jewish Community of Blooming Grove? A group that referrs to its opponents as “half-Jews” and “antisemites” engaged in a “conspiracy of hate” with their “evil” laws.

Well, I did ask the ADL. But thus far, I have not received a response. I will not hold my breath on this one, which is too bad, because the ADL had previously been fierce advocates of the separation of Church and State. This includes in the Supreme Court case Board of Education of Kiryas Joel v. Grumet, where the ADL wrote in support of Grumet and the New York State School Boards Association.

Here’s the problem with the ADL’s recent silence: My fellow Jews and I know that, once you start letting God into government, you’re just a hop, skip, and a jump away from stuff like “The Jews killed Jesus, so let’s kill them.”

This is something, in time, I’m afraid hanhallah is going to find out if they keep eroding the separation of church and state. Mr. Louis Grumet agrees, and has stated he’s warned Kiryas Joel Mayor Abraham Wieder of exactly that.

Speaking of which, it’s worth noting that Trump and his fascist friends are not fans of the Jews. And those people do NOT distinguish between Haredi and Secular on that account.

-There are numerous water related rules and regulations that have been willfully ignored by the Village of South Blooming Grove. I’m going to present a round-up of them this week. This includes well-head protection and other rules that should have made the Clovewood FEIS and DEIS void for not following them at all. Thankfully, this was brought to the attention of the DEC just before the public hearing deadline closed.

-At some point, the hate group United Jewish Community of Blooming Grove (UJC) was granted permission to patrol the streets and properties of South Blooming Grove in the name of public safety. I believe this is specific to the fire department and EMS, but it may be broader. I won’t know until I actually get a look at the laws passed by the Village Board, which as you’ll recall, is run by Joel Stern, the founder of the hate group.

-I DID hear back from the federal Environmental Protection Agency. They stated they do have jurisdiction over the waterways in America, which include Satterly Creek. They also stated they were “aware” of the situation at Clovewood, but would not answer what that “awareness” entails, and whether or not they would intervene on behalf of Southern Orange County residents. You know, like the ones in Cornwall concerned about the Hudson River’s Estuaries that would be harmed by Clovewood. This is sort of like the Town of Blooming Grove telling me there is an “enforcement action” against 466 Clove Road, but the yeshiva operating illegally out of the residence, unregistered with The New York State Board of Education, has been doing so for a couple of years now.

When exactly are they going to do something about it?

-I covered election retaliation in the Town of Monroe, where Supervisor Tony Cardone took away the Deputy Highway Superintendent role from William Brown Jr. after Brown Jr. ran against James “Pat” Patterson. James Patterson is the current Highway Superintendent and backed by Cardone. Apparently, Monroe isn’t the only Town where alleged election retaliation took place. There are two people in the Town of Blooming Grove alleging it happened to them as well.

-How much is South Blooming Grove residents, and the Village, paying for those Spindler Bulk water tanker trucks? You know, the ones that appear daily in the Village and are being used to fill up the wells even though the Orange County Department of Health told them not to do that? Yeah. Those trucks.

-I’ll also take a look at this Faith-Based Affordable housing bill, who is behind it, how much they got paid to push it, and I’ll explain why it’s just a big handout to hanhallah. New York absolutely needs a solution to the housing crisis. So does the rest of America. The solution is simple: All the local municipalities work together to find places to build environmentally friendly high density housing and stop building everywhere else. Of course, that’s not what hanhallah wants. They want to build a city of their own, a Modern Theocracy with a pipeline funded by Congress and the State.

-I’ll have a post coming up that goes through the brief filed by the New York State School Boards Association concerning Washingtonville. The school district is being sued by the UJC hate group. Interesting footnote: Both Ekstein and Stern, while plaintiffs in this lawsuit against Washingtonville, are ALSO the officially designated liaisons to the Washingtonville School District for South Blooming Grove.

-There’s a great video Chris Maderia did that explains how this hate group got its money, both for the lawsuit and for bribing the mayor, among other illegal activities. That video and a full transcript is forthcoming. Hint: It involves violating a whole bunch of laws in the state of New Jersey.

-And finally, The Village Building Inspector and Code Enforcement officer in South Blooming Grove somehow are doing less than nothing. What can be done about that? We’ll take a look at what happens when Building Inspectors and Code Enforcement suck, because that’s a major problem here in Southern Orange County.

And Finally, in Woodbury …

-What happened to Senator Skoufis’s train station push? The one that mysteriously ended. Why are we still humoring one of the world’s wealthiest companies, Simon Property Group, and their plans for expansion without any sort of mass transit hub being built? Paying for a train station at the commons is chump change. So make them do it.

-The Wayne Corts rabbit hole is deep. And a lot of you keep asking me to look into his Falkirk projects. I will. I promise I’m on it. That process began here with the syrup proprietor and hanhallah front man, Tyler Etzel Jr.

-And yes, more building inspector hijinks are alleged by Highland Lake Estates board members. Some are accusing Woodbury Building and Zoning Inspector, Michael Panella, of not doing his job. This sounds a lot like what happened with David Clark and the chainsaw business operating across the street from his house in Woodbury. Richard Cataggio is on the Woodbury Village Planning Board and also the president of Highland Lake Estates. He’s being accused by residents of preventing building codes and other rules from being enforced within the community to the benefit of hanhallah.

-I’m working on resident complaints concerning the Route 32 speed limit. I spoke with Woodbury Police about this. They are advocates for the speed limit on Route 32 being reduced as well. This is something people have been asking for, apparently, for nearly twenty years now.

Wrap Up

There’s more stories of course.

I plan to interview Flatbush Girl about this amazing protest in Kiryas Joel.

Senator Skoufis refuses to acknowledge his ability to investigate the lack of action by Attorney General James’s office concerning Keen Equities. So I’m going to take a look at the campaign finances of everyone on that committee and see if there’s any shady surprises like Skoufis has in his finances.

I keep getting emails about Goshen, Supervisor Betro, and potential conflicts of interest concerning his role as Director of Business Development at Hughes energy. His advocacy of changing laws in Goshen have been called into questions, with concerns involving Hughes Energy possibly building a facility in the Town he helps run.

And yes, I’m still working on a story for Chester explaining why LLCs can be used for crime and what’s being done to prevent that on the State and Federal level.

All this and more, is coming your way real soon.

The Monroe Gazette