[blindkid] Fwd: NY Times: Paterson's Exit Presents Worry With EachStep

[Deborah Kent Stein]

Can we reach out to this guy somehow?  ... I'll try not to say anything 
cynical about his need for a salary of almost $400,000 ... It's hard, though 
...

Debbie

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Carol Castellano" <blindchildren at verizon.net>
To: <blindkid at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Tuesday, December 21, 2010 6:29 PM
Subject: [blindkid] Fwd: NY Times: Paterson's Exit Presents Worry With 
EachStep


> This is a sad story.
> Carol
>
>>Subject: NY Times: Paterson's Exit Presents Worry With Each Step
>>Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2010 14:10:50 -0500
>>
>>From: "Pamela Gaston" <Pamela.Gaston at dhs.state.nj.us>
>>To: <Bernice.Davis at dhs.state.nj.us>,    <Pam.Ronan at dhs.state.nj.us>
>>
>>
>>NY Times: Paterson's Exit Presents Worry With Each Step By MICHAEL
>>  BARBARO He worries about how he will make a living. He wonders whether
>>  people will value him once he is out of office.
>>But when he thinks about the future, David A. Paterson, the legally
>>  blind governor of New York, is most unsettled by something more
>>  elementary: how to cross the street.
>>For years, a small army of state employees has done for Mr. Paterson
>>  what his predecessors did for themselves: they read him the newspaper,
>>  guided him up stairs and around corners, fixed his collar when it was
>>  sticking up, and even grabbed a quart of milk for him at the
>>  supermarket.
>>"If I go into a grocery store, the state police come in with me," he said.
>>"It's kind of like, hey, Governor, just tell us what you need and
>>  we'll get it for you. And, I know I have to adjust."
>>Many politicians who leave office struggle to adapt to civilian life,
>>  with its everyday letdowns and indignities - the sudden absence of
>>  solicitous aides and gun-toting bodyguards, jam-packed schedules and
>>  an ever-ringing telephone. But for Mr. Paterson, who can see nothing
>>  out of his left eye and only color and large objects out of his right,
>>  the transition will be extraordinary: after three decades in government, 
>> he must now relearn  the basic routines and rituals of living on his own.
>>In a wide-ranging interview, he spoke candidly, and at times
>>  emotionally, about how he was grappling with - and, in some cases,
>>  dreading - that change, saying he planned to enroll at a school for
>>  the blind that he last attended when he was 3 years old.
>>"I know it can be done," Mr. Paterson said, "but it's just the
>>  anticipation of it that gives me anxiety."
>>He also admitted to some concern about money and losing the lucrative
>>  perks that come with his post. He is looking for work in the business
>>  and academic worlds but has no job lined up, a fact that seemed to
>>  slightly nag at him.
>>He has sought the advice of former President Bill Clinton and former Govs.
>>George E. Pataki and Mario M. Cuomo about how to cope with the loss of
>>  title and stature. Most of what they tell him boils down to this: "It
>>  gets easier."
>>He acknowledged previously unknown strains on his family that
>>  accompanied his elevation to governor, especially on his teenage son,
>>  who has hated almost every minute of his father's tenure. At one
>>  point, Mr. Paterson said, he even told the boy he was sorry for
>>  becoming the state's chief executive.
>>He divulged the ways he had been teasing the incoming governor, Andrew M.
>>Cuomo, since his victory in November. And he offered a mediocre
>>  assessment of his own skills as a manager, giving himself a B-minus
>>  over the last four years. He said he had been reluctant to pack up the
>>  governor's mansion and his own office, once gently scolding a staff
>>  member for rushing him out.
>>(His last day is Dec. 31.)
>>But looming over the interview was Mr. Paterson's obvious unease about
>>  what awaits him. He conceded that he had put off confronting his new
>>  reality:
>>he has yet to schedule with his 22-year-old daughter a long-promised
>>  practice run on Harlem's sidewalks, subways and streets.
>>When Mr. Paterson was a boy, his parents were determined that he not
>>  be treated as disabled. Defying his doctors' advice, he never learned
>>  Braille, used a Seeing Eye dog or walked with a cane. Instead, he
>>  adapted: he memorized the city's subway system by listening to the
>>  conductors' announcements, learned to follow the lead of strangers at 
>> crosswalks,
>>  and developed a system for catching cabs that would keep him from
>>  mistakenly boarding a passenger car.
>>The system was not perfect.  He recalled an incident a few years ago when, 
>>as a state senator, he  hailed what he thought was a taxi in Manhattan. At 
>>the end of the
>>  ride, the driver refused to take his fare. When Mr. Paterson pressed
>>  him, the man explained: 'I am not driving a taxi. I just saw you on the 
>> street and thought you  might need a ride.' "
>>His survival skills atrophied when he became lieutenant governor in
>>  2007 - and governor a year later after Eliot Spitzer resigned amid 
>> scandal.
>>Suddenly, he was chief executive of the state, with a huge security
>>  detail and a domestic staff at the governor's mansion.
>>"The reality is that I had a pretty good sense of my own independence.
>>  But over the last four years," he said, "I haven't been on the subway.
>>  I haven't crossed a street by myself. Haven't gone into a restaurant
>>  by myself."
>>Mr. Paterson, 56, said he planned to attend classes at Helen Keller
>>  Services for the Blind and, if finances permitted it, hire a full-time
>>  aide to help guide him for the first year, in part to deal with
>>  strangers he expects will still approach him.
>>"It would probably be good for me to travel with somebody, because,
>>  who knows, I may have more pardon requests," he said mischievously.
>>Though he did not rule out running for office again someday, Mr. 
>>Paterson, who has earned $179,000 a year as governor, said he was
>>  eager to earn a bigger salary in the private sector. That would allow
>>  him to put his son through college and to replicate, at least in some
>>  ways, the comfortable life he has grown accustomed to.
>>"You have a false income when you're governor, because you live in the
>>  executive mansion," he said, ticking off the perks: free meals, free
>>  transportation, free staff. "And, so, if you computed that out to a
>>  salary, it's probably twice the governor's salary."
>>He confirmed that he had met with administrators at New York
>>  University and Touro College to discuss taking teaching positions. He
>>  has spoken with executives at a local talk radio station, WOR, about
>>  becoming a substitute host. So far, though, he has not hammered out
>>  any contracts. In the meantime, he has filled out paperwork to begin
>>  collecting a state pension.  (With 27 years, he can collect about 
>> $80,000 annually.)
>>"I am worried about money, because I am not a billionaire, in case you
>>  hadn't heard," he said.
>>His advisers - old friends, current aides and former chief executives
>>  - have encouraged him to think big. Mr. Clinton, for instance, asked
>>  him to consider running a foundation in Harlem that would employ
>>  youngsters and cut energy costs by painting the roofs of buildings
>>  white to reflect sunlight.
>>"You want me to make all the roofs in Harlem white?" Mr. Paterson
>>  recalled asking Mr. Clinton inside the former president's office on 
>> 125th Street.
>>Mr. Clinton nodded. "Don't you think Harlem has become white enough?" Mr.
>>Paterson asked him.
>>Over the last few weeks, he has conducted a distinctly Paterson-esque
>>  farewell tour across the state, much of it over local AM radio,
>>  dispensing frank and funny observations about himself and his
>>  colleagues. He has compared the news media in New York to the
>>  corruption-riddled Tammany Hall, and declared that the quality of
>>  lawmakers in Albany has plunged over the last two decades. "I am sorry
>>  to say this," he added, impishly.
>>He even made light of his own multiple run-ins with state prosecutors
>>  and ethics investigators, telling the audience at a Bronx school the
>>  other night that when he saw all the people in their seats, he figured
>>  he had walked into a grand jury room.
>>He had only good things to say about his predecessor and his successor.
>>Asked how he planned to welcome Mr. Cuomo, he has said he had already
>>  swept one big obstacle out of the governor-elect's path: he made sure
>>  the faulty outlet above the sink in the master bedroom of the
>>  governor's mansion got fixed.
>>"I said, 'This is important stuff, Andrew,' " he recalled. "'You don't
>>  know what it's like when you need to plug something in, like an
>>  electric razor, and you can't.' "
>>He even weighed in on Mr. Spitzer's show on CNN, which has suffered in
>>  the ratings and has led to a debate about whether his co-host,
>>  Kathleen Parker, has been unduly sidelined by the ex-governor. If
>>  anything, Mr. Paterson opined, the show needs to revolve more around
>>  Mr. Spitzer to showcase his brilliance.
>>He said he was looking forward to having a more normal family life,
>>  recounting the difficulties his wife and his son faced once he became
>>  governor.
>>"I don't think anything about me being governor ever looked like it
>>  made him happy," he said about the boy, Alex, now 16. Asked how it
>>  made him feel as a father, he responded: "Very guilty."
>>He and his wife, Michelle, grew so frustrated by tabloid photographers'
>>trying to shoot pictures of them as they vacationed poolside at a
>>  friend's house in the Hamptons that they grabbed the family camera and
>>  took pictures of the paparazzi, who they said were trespassing.
>>"While we found that funny, and it's a great story to tell," he said,
>>  "the reality is it was very hard to sit back and say, 'So how have you 
>> been?'
>>Because you are both under this constant pressure."
>>Reflecting on his tenure, he paused for several seconds.
>>
>>"Some things went well, some things went not so well," he said. "It
>>  was a privilege. It was an honor. I would serve. I would do it again."
>>Still, he could not resist a joke, cheekily recalling the suddenness
>>  with which he landed in the governor's office.
>>"I would like two weeks' notice next time," he said.
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>
> Carol Castellano
> National Organization of Parents of Blind Children
> 973-377-0976
> carol_castellano at verizon.net
> www.nopbc.org  _______________________________________________
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