This is the most hilarious shit I’ve seen in a long time. Rupert Murdoch – he who has single-handedly helped to steer the US, UK, and Australia to the hard right to the benefit of their super-wealthy elites and the detriment of regular folks, owns the famously anti-elitist blue collar newspaper, the Wall Street Journal.
A key part of the Murdochian assault on civil societies in Anglophone countries throughout the world is the substitution of fear and hatred for facts. It’s why all three of the aforementioned countries have taken such detours into the fever swamps of the far-right, complete with all sorts of various and sundry paranoias. Hatred and fear of immigrants and immigration is a common denominator in the countries whose civic discourse has fallen to unplumbable depths thanks to Murdoch.
So, the hysteria du jour has to do with drone sightings, especially in New Jersey. Chances are pretty good that it’s nothing to be all that concerned about, and that a lot of people own drones and a lot of times people are mistaking airplanes for drones. Whatever it is, it’s now a thing and it has gone so far as to become another Q-Anon-adjacent conspiracy theory about an alien invasion or maybe Iranian malevolence. Iran, which couldn’t protect its proxies in Lebanon or Syria is supposedly technologically astute enough to – what, to fly drones over suburban New Jersey and then do nothing for some unknown reason.
The Biden Administration has squandered its credibility to the point that it’s rational not to believe what it says. Remember the Chinese spy balloon that traveled across the continental U.S.? The Administration downplayed its importance while it was courting better relations with Beijing, only to shoot it down over the Atlantic Ocean. It also downplayed Rep. Mike Turner’s warning, based on solid intelligence, about the danger from a potential Russian nuclear blast in space.
The Administration failed for months to be candid about its migrant flights from the border to the U.S. interior. And for months it covered up the truth about President Biden’s declining mental and physical fitness, only to have it exposed in a debate. The government’s attempt to censor alternative views about Covid shutdowns during the Trump Administration also spread mistrust. The more Americans don’t trust their government, the more panic or protests are possible.
It would be funny if we hadn’t just – as a country – re-elected one of the most untrustworthy hucksters ever to be chief executive. Chinese Spy Balloon, Migrant Influx, Biden’s fitness, Covid misinformation, Russian nuclear blast that wasn’t – it’s a fucking hit parade of right-wing scaremongering from the last four years.
But the American right would never admit that its neverending divebombing of bullshit might have contributed to Americans’ distrust of government.
The American right wing is definitely in its ascendancy despite everyone’s efforts to return to reality and normality. Trump’s re-election despite a booming economy is proof of this. If you’re wondering why the Democratic Party’s response to all of Trump’s novel incompetence and malevolence (see Hegseth, Gaetz) has been so quiet and poor, it has to do with the fact that we Democrats don’t know how to fucking deal with an Orbanist/Putinist coup that is slowly taking place right now. The levels and degrees of unbelievable bullshit that are emanating from the incoming Trump regime make any misstatement or miscalculation by the Biden Administration look like George Washington and the cherry tree by comparison.
Far be it from me to take the time to recount each and every one of the lies told by the first Trump regime and campaign from 2015 – 2024, but for the serious people at the Wall Street Journal to try and suggest that mistrust of the government begins and ends with Joe Biden is just too funny.
And if you don’t believe me, I’ve got a wall that Mexico paid for, bleach injected to kill Covid, and a loving kissy-poo relationship with Kim Jong Un to show you.
One of the hallmarks of the first Trump regime was how often – and how firmly – his ragtag band of extremist weirdo lapdogs stepped on their own dicks. So, I think I’m going to take my trusty pen and paper and starting on January 20, 2025, I will start jotting down each one.
I predict a huge falling out with Elon Musk by the end of 2025. On the other hand, there could be a situation where the Federal Government subsidizes Musk by buying a fleet of hitherto-unsold and unsellable Cybertrucks for what’s left of various government agencies. Who knows. Maybe both.
People so easily forgot how badly his first reign sucked, so we’ll have to do what we can to memorialize the second.
I confess that I was going to fisk a transcript of that Kuhn speech and contrast it to the MAGA hate rally at Madison Square Garden in 2024, but no such transcript appears to exist. Also, I wasn’t about to sit there and watch – much less transcribe – an actual Nazi speech given at a previous iteration of Madison Square Garden in 1939.
So, leave it at that. The Nazis loved Fritz Kuhn for the enemies he made. MAGA loves Donald Trump for the enemies he has. “Owning the libs” and performative cruelty are the hallmarks of contemporary Republican policy.
We know Donald Trump is horrible as a person, but don’t forget that he was a shitty President, too.
So bad that even his former running mate wants nothing to do with him.
What an absolutely exhausting country this has become.
If the polls are to be believed, there is a 50/50 chance that the American electorate returns Donald Trump to the White House. His time out of office is bookended on one side by the attempted coup of January 6, 2021 and resulting riot, and on the other with his ever-increasing threats to our constitutional order and, frankly, blatant fascism.
You don’t have to listen to me. You can believe Trump’s former Chief of Staff and the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Finally, people are overcoming their reluctance to call Trump what he is – a wannabe fascist dictator thug. An American Orban or Putin. Trump would gladly silence any dissent or opposition. He would happily jettison the Constitution in favor of raw power. Declaring anything he dislikes to be “woke”, he will happily use the levers of power not to govern but to rule. The greatest threat Trumpism poses is not to privileged white people like me (although, as a child of immigrants who were not citizens at the time of my birth, I would be in line for revocation of my birthright citizenship and subsequent deportation), but to members of marginalized communities – ethnic, national, religious minorities, and anyone who does not conform to a strictly binary and heterosexual gender identity as defined at birth.
Because 99.9% of Republican “ideology”, such as it is, is what we call the “culture war.” That culture war is about reassuring cisgendered white people that they are still special like daddy said. 99.9% of that is fearmongering – about gays and immigrants and transgender people and Venezuelan gangs and migrants. These people would consider Barry Goldwater to be too woke. The American right knows it cannot win on its policy goals (see the wildly unpopularProject 2025), so it has to rely on trickery and subterfuge instead. It has to rely on gerrymandering and a systematic erosion of voting rights and access. It relies on a nakedly partisan Supreme Court to help it achieve policy aims in a blatantly undemocratic manner. Project 2025 gets implemented if Trump wins, regardless of its unpopularity.
The American right brought you the Dobbs decision, overturning Roe v. Wade. The result? Increased threats to maternal health and safety, and fetal deaths on a level you might expect to see in a third world backwater and not in a country that considers itself to be the best in the world. But more importantly than optics, these outcomes are as avoidable as they are disgusting and unacceptable. How can you reconcile being “pro-life” with increased harm to mothers and infants?
How do you excise a right to privacy from federal constitutional jurisprudence? How do you decide to allow certain states to be less free than others when it comes to reproductive rights? Why is a woman in Alabama or Texas less free to make decisions about her own body than a woman in New York or Massachusetts? How does that jibe, exactly, with the Equal Protections clause of the Constitution?
The catastrophe around abortion rights is just one example of unchecked Trumpism. Project 2025 provides the blueprint going forward for an “anti-woke” illiberal, undemocratic Christian theocracy founded on nativism, racism, and minority dictatorship. 50% or so of your compatriots are willing to go along with this because, I dunno, Trump is based and gas was $1.90 at the height of the Covid pandemic, which Trump botched to the tune of a million Americans dead.
Donald Trump would accomplish nothing. He would do nothing for education, for the poor, for upstate’s economic malaise, for Buffalo, or for anyone except the tea party and the ultrarich. The headlines related to the upstate effort to recruit Trump for governor should have read, “Lawmakers to Massage Trump Ego, Trump Reacts Favorably”.
He’s been a fascist throughout the last decade. He was a fascist last year, when he threatened the Manhattan DA with a baseball bat. So miss me with all of this. Here’s something that no one is talking about: the fact that Donald Trump’s presidency – you know, the one he actually had from 2017 – 2021 and that everyone has memory-holed – was really pretty shitty in almost every way.
The first thing that pops to my mind when I think about what a lazy and divisive chief executive he was is the time when Homeland Security shut New Yorkers out of Nexus and Global Entry because the state had begun giving driving permits to undocumented immigrants.
Then I remember how he blew up the deficit giving huge tax breaks to the ultra-wealthy while saddling the rest of us with the bill.
Then I remember how he completely mismanaged the Covid pandemic, which hit just months after he shut down the country’s pandemic response office.
Then I remember how he tried repeatedly to kill the Affordable Care Act and went out of his way to weaken it.
Then I remember how he deliberately and cruelly separated immigrant children from their families.
Then I remember how he refused FEMA assistance to jurisdictions that had not voted for him.
Then I remember Sharpiegate and buying Greenland and legitimizing Kim Jong Un and the nepotism and the corruption and how they did nothing when Saudi Arabia murdered and dismembered a Washington Post columnist and Green Card holder and then dissolved him in acid and how he adores dictators like Orban and Putin and how he has never actually uttered a negative syllable about Putin and how he wants Ukraine to capitulate and how he completely botched Covid and told people that maybe injecting bleach was a good idea to pursue.
Then I remember how he kicked almost a million people off of SNAP food aid.
Then I remember how he gutted the right to overtime pay through regulatory shenanigans.
Then I remember how he began to dismantle environmental protections.
Then I remember how his Department of Education went out of its way to funnel money to religious organizations and weakened protections against fraud due to for-profit colleges and predatory lending practices.
Then I remember how he gleefully ignored norms of governance and we just let him do it – things like holding the 2020 RNC Convention on the White House Lawn or hiring his kids or making money off of the sale of hotel rooms to foreign diplomats and federal agencies or releasing his tax returns or health records.
Then I remember how he was able to stack the Supreme Court with right wing judges-for-life who completely shat on any semblance of conservatism by jettisoning stare decisis and overturning Roe v. Wade and rolling back voting rights and abolishing affirnative action.
Then I remember all of it. How every day was exhausting. How every policy and practice was designed to enable Trump’s dictatorial ambitions, erode constitutional democracy, and to elevate raw cruelty as not only an aspirational ideal but set policy goal.
Donald Trump isn’t running on his record because his record sucks. What I don’t understand is why Democrats aren’t going after his record, because it sucks. Oh, your gas only cost $1.80 a gallon in 2020? That’s because we were all locked down because he botched Covid, for fuck’s sake. Oh, grocery prices shot up after the economy opened back up, yeah because demand skyrocketed and companies also decided to grab some profits while they could.
How are the markets doing? How’s unemployment? The big numbers are all at historically good places. While everyone expected a recession after the post-Covid recovery, instead we got a soft landing.
It’s not enough to say that Donald Trump wishes he could be like Orban or Putin or any other neo-fascist dictator. It’s not enough to point out that he’s a sexual predator, an Epstein acolyte, a dirty old man, a doddering old fool, (just compare a 2016 speech to a 2024 speech). He was a crappy President who made the country weaker, sicker, less free, less stable, and poorer.
The Donald Trump presidency of 2017 – 2021 was an abject failure. A disaster. It will hopefully go down in history as a one-off aberration and not an indication of a fundamental dumbing down of America or a turn to authoritarianism led by malignant billionaires like Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, and others.
Harris and Tim Walz make an amazing team, and the Biden Administration’s return to policies that put Americans first is something that we must continue.
LOCALLY
NYS Proposition One: In New York, everything that Proposition One says is already settled law. This proposition would add these provisions into the Constitution to prevent some future rolling back of these freedoms and liberties – you know, like how they’re doing on the federal level. Please vote YES on Proposition One.
Erie County Proposition One: Listen, if you want Republicans to do what they always do in this region and plunge something into fiscal disarray, then go ahead and vote for them. Proposition Two would allow a simple legislative majority set the sales tax rates in the county and this only makes sense. Vote YES on County Proposition One.
District Attorney: Gardner’s ads against Keane are pretty despicable and anyone who goes around saying “make crime illegal again” should be laughed out of contention for any serious job. Using a 40 year old ticket from when Keane was a college senior is weak as fuck and Gardner uses that because he doesn’t have really anything else to run on except vibes. Vote Keane.
The Western Regional OTB voted yesterday to offer its top job to Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown. Brown, who has been mayor since 2006, recently won an unprecedented fifth term to an office he clearly doesn’t want. India Walton, by contrast, who won the Democratic primary and nomination, obviously did want the job and one can only presume how she would have navigated the city’s current Brown-induced fiscal crisis and engaged with city leadership and the community-at-large to work out ways to solve it.
Instead, for the last year or so, we have had Byron Brown giving himself whiplash while looking frantically around for a lucrative way out of City Hall. Buffalo State fell through, there was no path for him to replace Brian Higgins, a return to Albany would be a demotion, so here we are, with Mayor Brown looking to be the head of the gambling commission.
For all his faults, former City deputy mayor and agent prokakateur Steve Casey was the last guy to take the job of Mayor seriously. He may have been a pretty scummy political operative, but he ran the city’s bureaucracy with an iron fist, and his oversight of (what is now a punchline) CityStat at least introduced to Buffalo the idea of accountability and metrics in city government.
The hope is that Brown’s departure from a job to which he is no longer attracted will eventually land the city with a mayor who actually cares about lurching City Hall into the 21st century both literally and figuratively. Someone who can build on what makes Buffalo great and leave behind our myriad failures, our obsession with static nostalgia, and our attraction to mediocrity.
The patronage free-for-all with the overarching motto being “don’t kill the job” has sort of got to go.
But this isn’t really a post about Byron Brown’s departure or the failures of city government and politics.
This is a post about political reporting and the importance of listening.
Buffalo is a small TV market. We have a handful of local news teams that are all pretty decent, but every once in a while a person or team rise to the top. Two very important interviewing skills are preparedness and listening carefully to an interviewee’s answers. You may have a checklist of possible questions or topics, but if you’re not listening to the person answering questions obeying your list instead, you’re going to miss opportunities to be excellent.
Nate Benson, wearing his trademark tweed newsboy hat, was standing behind Winter. McKinley’s iPhone caught him asking a question so perfect in substance and timing that one can only conclude that Benson woke up Thursday deciding to become a legend. Benson asked,
“[Brown] will be leaving his post with a $50 – $60 million budget deficit. Is that a concern?”
You can at this point see Winter’s soul leave his body, grab its bindle, thrust its thumb out by the side of the road, holding a sign reading, “California or Bust”.
He meekly shakes his head and says he has no further comment.
The video is breathtaking in its simplicity and beauty:
And that’s the key, really. You can talk about Brown’s vast experience running a massive city operation, and his “executive experience,” so to speak, but what is the net result of that 18 years of experience? A massive deficit, plugged with one-shot gimmickry not unlike the county crisis of the mid-aughts. Joel Giambra and Byron Brown were shrewd at playing the political game and getting ahead. Once in office, though, they blew it.
Kudos to Nate Benson, who has become one of Buffalo’s best and brightest reporters.
One is centered around a cultish strongman figure who promises retribution, violence, and dictatorial rule. His followers love him because he directs his vitriolic hatred at the people they fear the most – literally anyone who is not an obedient follower of the cult. It could be easier to say it is a movement of white supremacy and Christian nationalism – a reactionary faction sparked by hatred over the two-time election of a black president, and fueled by weird people who think that it’s wrong for other people to be different from them. One thing is for sure, they do not tolerate dissent. These people who yell “sheeple” loudest are the biggest “sheeple” of all.
On the other side, we have a typically dysfunctional Democratic party. Joe Biden is the current President and leader of that party. He had a pretty disastrous debate performance a few weeks ago, and this led people to complain that Biden had deceptively hidden his true ability to function from the electorate. How this can be reconciled with the decision to do an early debate is anyone’s guess. But, after that performance, it was a full-court press (no pun intended) by beltway media clickmeisters, big-money donors, and some fearful Dems with big followings to convince Biden to step aside.
Joe Biden will be President until next January. He will not be seeking re-election, and his Vice President, Kamala Harris, is expected to run in his stead with overwhelming support. She is an excellent candidate – smart, capable, and qualified. I was not a big proponent of Biden being forced out of this race like this, but am gratified that, once done, Democrats rallied around the Vice President as the only correct and logical choice to take over. It is a big risk either way, but Trump’s support and opposition is so baked-in that there was no real perceptible polling change after the failed attempt on his life, or after the kooky yawnfest that was the Republican National Convention.
On the other end, on my socials, I saw snarky posts from Gen-X Bernie die-hards not making any bones about their full-on gerontophobia. Their hatred of the incumbent reaches Let’s-Go-Brandon proportions, perhaps intentionally. These same people spent much of 2016 and 2020 railing against what they perceived as top-down DNC engineering of a Presidential race, and here they were in 2024 demanding top-down DNC engineering of a Presidential race. Snake emojis and “Kamala the cop” and “Mayo Pete” spring to mind.
The America that Democrats embody at this moment in 2024 is messy, like democracy itself. When you have a big tent of competing interests, they sometimes make aggressive noises at each other before eventually uniting for the common good. The Democrats’ America is about lowering inflation, investment in infrastructure, energy production and independence, job growth, supporting unionization, health care for all, lowering drug prices, defending and supporting liberal democracies like Ukraine, pressuring autocratic regimes like Hungary, and ending the slaughter in Israel and Palestine. The world is a complicated and chaotic place and all of its problems can be dealt with in a serious way that advances our interests, or it can be all reduced to sloppy sloganeering and veneration of tyrants.
It is, when you think about it, quite astounding that we find ourselves here.
Incidentally, as an aside, I listened Monday to “analysis” on WBFO offered by Dr. Shyam Sriram of Canisius’ political science department. He argued that Democrats are stuck on identity politics and offer no substantive policy proposals. He then said that Vivek Ramaswamy, a Trump mini-me, ran on policies. This is madness. I set forth above the policies on which Democrats are running. The race that Democrats ran in 2020 was heavy on policies, most pressing of which was handling of the pandemic that killed over a million Americans. Ramaswamy ran what amounted to a right-wing meme campaign, heavy on slogans and light on substance. It failed with catastrophic celerity in a party defined by a cult of personality.
Dr. Sriram argued that, in deciding on a running mate for Vice President Harris, Dems should avoid selecting a white candidate for the sake of some sort of ethnic balance. I don’t know who said that or where he got that idea, but I’m pretty sure that Harris’ campaign is going to select someone who is ready to become President at a moment’s notice, possibly someone who has relevant experience that she lacks, and also someone who can deliver votes in swing states like Pennsylvania or Arizona. I don’t know what questions were asked of Dr. Sriram, but the idea that Vivek Ramaswamy could be held out as a prime example of a campaign based on substance was too absurd to let go. Ramaswamy engaged in identity politics like crazy, ingratiating himself to white evangelicals, being transphobic, and disenfranchising Americans between the ages of 18 – 25.
In Ramaswamy’s and Trump’s America, we also have the Supreme Court, which has in the last two decades devolved into a corrupt, corruptable, and politically unchecked fiefdom. It has taken in recent months to make fundamental changes to what we understand to be American values. For decades, the conservative movement has moaned and wailed against “activist” courts and judges, which had interpreted the Constitution in ways that expanded our ideas of freedom, liberty, and privacy. The “activist” courts declared that segregation was violative of the Constitution, that a right to privacy exists in the Constitution that prevents government from intervening against interracial marriage, use of contraception, same-sex marriage, and the right of women and their physicians to have the freedom to decide whether a pregnancy needs to be terminated either by choice in its earlier stages, or due to medical necessity later on. All of this has now changed. Contemporary conservatives reject the idea of a federal, constitutional right to privacy because it is inconsistent with their need to wield raw power and to rule, unobstructed by democratic or legal considerations.
We had for years understood as a society that our elected leaders – even the President – are not nobility immune from liability for criminal acts. Yet the Supreme Court, which now has a “conservative” majority, is as activist as any in history. Just last year, it took the unprecedented step of taking away womens’ reproductive decision-making rights. Seldom had the highest court in the land shrunk people’s individual rights in modern times, yet here we are. This year, the court granted to Presidents the right and ability to act with impunity from criminal liability as to any “official” acts. Impeachment is specifically set up in the Constitution as a political tool to remove Presidents when they commit high crimes or treason. It stands to reason that, if the Constitution anticipates criminality in the chief executive that would allow for political trial and removal, then sanctions set forth within the underlying criminal statutes would also be applicable.
The Supreme Court as it is currently constituted is a threat to our democratic republic. Donald Trump and Trumpism are, likewise, threats to our democratic republic. You may have heard by now of “Project 2025“, which is a 900-page handbook written by overpaid preppies from the so-called “Heritage Foundation.” What it amounts to is a “Neo-Fascistic Autocracy For Dummies”. Without getting into details, which you can research for yourself, it would amount to a return to the US as it existed pre-New Deal. The federal government would be reduced to little more than a tool to oppress anyone who exists outside the prescribed norm of white, male, and at least nominally Christian. Project 2025 will make you poorer, less free, and easier to be ruled. It will subjugate the women in your life, treat minorities of every stripe cruelly, outlaw things like abortion, contraception, and being in any way gender non-comforming, and put an end to things like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
I like to consider myself politically pretty normal. I don’t go in for extremism on any end of the political spectrum. To me, the Trump people and the Project 2025 people are really weird on a fundamental level. I don’t get the appeal of any of it. I look at the meltdowns that the Trump people have displayed online and on TV over Biden dropping out and it’s quite clear that they’re not processing the news well. One local Trumpy congressman demanded that Biden resign the Presidency because he decided not to run for re-election. Not sure how a decision not to serve four more years equates to an inability to serve 100 more days, but these people are just having a hard time processing the fact that they are running a convicted felon against a former prosecutor, a guy pushing 80 against a woman in her 50s. You’d be panicking, too.
In the choice between these two Americas, I choose the one that is built on competence and hope. I choose the one that is founded on diversity of ideas, visions, and people. I choose the one that looks forward and not backward. I choose the one based on making life better for average people, not the one that wants to take rights away. I choose the one that thrives on innovation and change and not the one that trafficks in fear and hatred. I will prefer the messy democratic republic over strongman autocracy. I will also insist on the power of the Supreme Court being checked, whether through congressional action or rules concerning ethics and terms of office. No person in our government ought to exist as an untouchable entity above the law – not the President, and not the Supreme Court Justices.
When November rolls around, I am going to vote enthusiastically for Kamala Harris for President. I can only hope that the US can imitate the wholesale rejection of conservative ineptitude and right-wing fearmongering we recently saw in the UK and France, respectively.
In the year 2024, how can anyone be shocked that this church is shrinking? And why is this happening? According to the Bishop,
“multiple challenges” facing the diocese, including a “significant priest shortage,” declining Mass attendance, aging congregations, and ongoing financial pressures in its Chapter 11 bankruptcy case.
Here, in two snapshots, is the difference between Nate McMurray getting his way vs. Nate McMurray not getting his way. It is an illustration of how Nate McMurray behaves when he is soliciting help for his campaign (March 2018) vs. Nate McMurray being his nasty, dishonorable, toxic self (right now).
Wow! What a great guy and a super team player! Oh, wait – that was March 2018. Here’s how it’s going in March 2024:
Every time Nate loses an election, his would-be constituents dodge a bullet with a Trump-sized ego.
He is as condescending as Trump. He thinks himself so much better than everyone else, like Trump. Despite having only served as supervisor of a rich island suburb, he now denigrates people who want to be “dog catcher” in Cheektowaga or a committeeperson from an inner city ED as “district leader of porto-potties.” I have never seen levels of This guy is as attention-seeking as Trump and plays the victim like Trump. Like Trump, he hurls nasty epithets and insults at people he doesn’t like. He is a phony like Trump – kiss his ass, he’ll talk you up. Ignore him, and the narcissistic rage seeks limp retribution – like threatening to assault someone with cake on their birthday at a fundraiser no one wants him to attend.
What are we – on failed race number 5? (Three times for Congress, (or is it two?), once for CE, once for the Congressional special, and now the Congressional general? Someday, he’ll give up and go back to trying to keep a regular job.
For years, the city’s snow plan consisted of clearing main roads, then secondary routes. After those were cleared, they would start snow removal on residential streets.
“That’s how it always used to be, even before I became mayor,” Brown said. “That was the standard city snow plan. But now, the public is saying, ‘We don’t want that. We want more than that. We don’t just want our main streets and our secondary streets opened up, but we simultaneously want our residential streets opened up.’”
Oh, you want your residential street plowed? LOL
the mayor warned that as extreme storms become more common, providing that level of services will most likely lead to an increase in property taxes – possibly as early as next year.
Basic city services cost extra is the bottom line. I am old enough to remember all of the disingenous clamor from city hacks and suburban Republicans over how Comrade India Walton would turn Buffalo into Pyongyang-on-the-Niagara. Instead, Mayor Brown, now in his wildly unfortunate eighteenth year of office, is basically issuing threats to the people who elected him, demanding that they pay up if they expect the city to do its job.
If the plan had previously been for the city to just ignore residential streets for random and undefined periods of time after a snow event, then it was no plan at all – something a dose of Waltonese socialism would have been good for. Remember in 2005 how Mayor Brown was elected as a fresh face who was going to make the city run like a business, on data and responsiveness? CitiStat and open hearings to improve services and processes? Now that Mayor Brown is in his 18th year of public office – as his tenure reaches the age of majority, FFS, we are instead left with the novelty of plowing side streets and this:
Brown and the Common Council have caught heat for using about half of the city’s $331 million in American Rescue Plan federal dollars for revenue replacement, mostly to fill budget gaps, instead of spending it to expand certain community-based programs, The News previously reported.
Buffalo officials plan to spend $172 million of the Covid-19 pandemic relief funds under the “revenue replacement” category, with about $160 million of that used to plug budget holes.
The mayor said funds to pay the $6.6 million storm tab are included in his most recent adopted budget.
“But going forward, one of the things that’s going to have a budget impact is we want to try to increase our budget for snow-fighting even more,” Brown said. “And so while this year we will absorb this with savings and other areas of the city budget, going forward, we want to increase the amount of money that we put in the budget for snow removal and addressing snowstorms.”
$331 million in free federal money could have been used to great effect to improve the lives of city residents in myriad needed ways. I’m sure any Joe Schmoe reading this could come up with ten ideas as to how to spend a fraction of that money to great civic effect. Instead, the city – known now for letting suspended workers stay on its payroll indefinitely without oversight – used half of it to plug its own budgetary holes, whereas the increased cost about which Mayor Brown is so exorcised represents 2% of that federal windfall.
