The Committee to Save Matt Ricchiazzi

Matt Ricchiazzi. Will he ever learn that the path to electoral success and/or a hack job is paved with hard work, loyalty, and not behaving like a lunatic

He started out so promising – fresh face, self-identified bisexual Republican running for Mayor, offering up big ideas. Then he aligned himself with tea party people like conspiratorial truther Allen Coniglio. He alternately endorsed, then didn’t endorse, then endorsed again, Carl Paladino. He ran his sister for city council. He ran for school board but didn’t make the ballot. He ran for state senate, but was ineligible

I obtained a series of emails he sent in 2010, where he lectured western New York’s gay activists about what they were doing wrong, with little positive feedback. For example: 

On a serious note, as long as the gay community is bound to the hip of the Democrat Party WE WILL NEVER, EVER ACHIEVE MARRIAGE EQUALITY. Never. If you think any different, then you’re delusional and stupid. We have ABSOLUTELY NO POLITICAL LEVERAGE AS LONG AS DEMOCRATS THINK THAT GAYS DON’T VOTE REPUBLICAN. They have nothing to fear if they offend, betray, or insult us.

Further, the Democrats are making too much money off of the gay marriage issue, and they have no monetary interest in giving that up. They recieve donations, volunteers, etc because of this ban, and if we had marriage equality there would be no carrot left to keep the gay community on the Democrat band wagon.

As long as gays demonize ALL REPUBLICANS as being homophobic and racist, why are they going to go out of their way to be nice to people that propagate hate against them, because that’s what you’re doing. Especially considering that those pro-gay Republicans would incur political vulnerabilities within that their party that the other half of the Democrat Party is sure to exploit, it would make no sense for them to do that.

That must be why he’s developing and distributing homophobic political lit. 

Date: Sunday, August 29, 2010, 1:22 PM

Camile,

I’m hardly self-loathing. What do I care if I can’t get married to my partner, if he has to move out of state to find work?

I’m voting for Carl because he’s an awesome guy and he understands how the real economy works. Now, I realize that many of you work for the government or off of government contracts, so you’re not concerned with the real (private sector) economy. But for those of us who don’t want to content ourselves sucking on the government tit, we can’t afford to care about frivolous BS, like the word “marriage.”

Now, if you want to get all hysterical about nothing more than a word, then feel free to go waste all your time and energy being hysterical. But I’m far more worried about the economy and my generation’s economic opportunity and the debt burden with which the current generation of leadership is crushing us, than I am with semantics.

For that reason, Carl is far more in touch with the issues and needs that concern my generation

And, Carl has already said that he would not veto a marriage bill that passes the State Legislature. He would sign it into law, even though he personally does not support it, because that’s how he feels a democracy should work.

Paladino for the people!

-Matt

Over the last week or so, he has invented out of whole cloth a non-existent Republican “committee” (consisting of one member), which was ostensibly holding a lit design contest. Five pieces of fake lit were sent out to an undisclosed roster of politicos and press, all of which viciously attacked either Mark Grisanti or members of his staff.  It culminated on September 10th with this: 

It’s not persuasive, it’s not pithy, it’s not funny, it’s not anything except an opportunity for Ricchiazzi to inflame homophobia.  Now recall that all of this stems from the Grisanti camp’s refusal to give Ricchiazzi a job. 

Think about how pathetic this is: a kid who’s gay or bisexual is so  upset over not getting a job that he’s spent the better part of the last year spreading lies about Grisanti’s behavior during that bar fight in the Falls, he’s developing idiotic political literature attacking Grisanti and his aides, and he develops the homoerotic piece of literature shown above for the sole purpose of getting conservative-minded opponents of same-sex marriage angry. He is so self-loathing, so opportunistic that he chooses to inflame anti-homosexual passions. 

The guy Ricchiazzi is supposedly trying to help – Kevin Stocker – told Channel 4 that he finds the ad offensive. Ricchiazzi emailed Channel 4’s Lou Raguse to say that he “saw” the lit and that his “committee” thought it was brilliant. 

And that’s not all. Ricchiazzi’s efforts in this instance are so clumsy that it’s gotten tons of attention as the “most anti-gay” piece of literature never sent. HuffPo, BuzzFeed, Politico have all covered this piece of lit. But the best information comes from BuzzFeed’s Chris Geidner, via Twitter: 

The pornographers who produced the images from which Ricchiazzi obtained the images for the mailer shown above posted this: 

While everyone at CorbinFisher is flattered the self-described “Committee to Save the Erie County Republican Party” would select two of our company’s images to represent all-things-gay, the persons/person considering the unauthorized use of our images, in violation of registered copyrights, should be aware we take the protection of our intellectual property seriously.

Whichever group or individual took a break from furiously manipulating themselves to the collection of CorbinFisher gay erotic images they apparently maintain on their computer should be aware use of the images without our prior written consent is a violation of our copyrights.

Certainly, having all heard of occasions in which self-professed family values advocates have vehemently opposed same-sex marriage rights while at the same time adopting “wide stances” in airport restrooms, employing male prostitutes as European vacation luggage carriers or mile-high methamphetamine-smoking partners, and shamelessly pursuing sexual favors from pages in the halls of Congress, it doesn’t quite surprise us those behind the “Committee to Save the Erie County Republican Party” would readily have access to a number of our sexually explicit, gay-oriented images.  Nonetheless, we’d politely ask they discontinue attempts to insert our copyrighted images in to their distributed political material, and instead stick to secretly pleasuring themselves and battling their internal struggles with guilt and shame over the sexual orientation they are unable to come to terms with, like so many other outspoken opponents of gay rights are so good at doing.

So, Ricchiazzi can’t get hired, he can’t properly get a YouTube hit piece up, he can’t get traction for his fairy tales about the Falls bar fight, the Senecas want nothing to do with him, Stocker has disavowed any involvement with him, he’s alienated and angered the gay community, and he’s burned just about every bridge he’s ever tenuously built. What a waste. 

 

Endorsements: State Senate Primaries


Please note: these are not Artvoice endorsements, nor are they to be cited as such. They have not been approved or made by the Artvoice editors, publisher, or any combination thereof. Any endorsements are mine and mine alone. They are preferences – not predictions. 

The primary elections are taking place this Thursday. Please vote, if you can.

State Senate District 60 (Mark Grisanti (R) incumbent)

Democratic Primary: Mike Amodeo

Mike Amodeo is a progressive Democrat who wants Albany term limits, a ban on hydrofracking, reducing the red tape the state imposes to create a business, and you can read the rest of his campaign platform here. It’s solid, smart, and full of things Democrats should be supporting. So, I’m at a loss to explain why it is that we need a “Democrat” like Chuck Swanick to run against him with the express support of homophobic, fundamentally transactional bad actor, Conservative Party boss Ralph Lorigo

If you’re a registered Democrat in the district, you should be voting for Amodeo. Period. 

In what way is Chuck Swanick more progressive on anything than Amodeo? I will grant you, he’s more progressive in terms of, e.g., becoming a Republican, cozying up with Joel Giambra, earning personal perks, privileges, patronage, and pay. I will grant you that he’s more progressive in terms of looking out for #1 above all else, that he is without peer in the business of “protecting Chuck Swanick” and “looking out for Chuck Swanick”. I will also concede that he is unique in that his bad-government bona fides are unparalleled, and that he and his supporters are undeterred by them. If ever there was an advertisement made to highlight “how government and politics in WNY are horrible things populated by horrible people”, Chuck Swanick’s name and image would be plastered all over it. He should be perpetually and serially unelectable – not just unelectable, but the mere suggestion of his election should send average citizens screaming.

Democrats in this region are obsessed with our perpetual, counterproductive, ill-considered factionalism (e.g., Lenihan vs. Pigeon; City Hall vs. everybody). But the net result of that is hatred and failure. Chuck Swanick isn’t a Democrat any more than he is a Republican. He is an opportunist, and a corrupt one, at that. He is a member of the Swanick party, and Christ alone knows why any self-proclaimed Democrat wouldn’t back a perfectly reasonable Democratic Party candidate in Mike Amodeo. No one on Earth has given a single, solitary reason why Swanick is preferable to Amodeo on the merits, or – more to the point – why Amodeo is unacceptable. (Except for factionalism and some bizarre, unproven opinion about Swanick’s “progressive” bona fides). How much easier would it be if we had Democrats united behind the singular Democrat who (a) isn’t a patronage whore; and (b) isn’t a careerist.

Some argue that Swanick’s backing by the execrable homophobes at the National Organization for Marriage is beside the point; marriage equality is settled, they say. But it isn’t. Here you have an opportunity to have a Republican (Grisanti) and a Democrat (Amodeo) run in November, both of whom would be unwavering supporters of marriage equality. Yet instead, some supporters of same sex marriage are backing a Democrat who won support from Vomit (Ralph) Lorigo and NOM, thus putting the issue of marriage equality back in the race. If not for factionalism, and the promise of future hack job, on what merits does anyone select Swanick against Amodeo? In what way is Amodeo unacceptable as a “progressive” Democrat? How, precisely, is someone funded by NOM acceptable to anyone as a “progressive” Democrat. This primary is about Chuck Swanick, money,  patronage and factionalism, full stop, end of story.

I’m not a Dem committeeman – not for the county committee, and not for my town committee. I have no say or stake in who becomes ECDC chair. However, I think that once the committee selects a chair, the party faithful should default to supporting the committee’s activities, absent some compelling reason not to. Instead, we have factions who openly and relentlessly challenge the committee, but don’t have the balls or the votes to actually change its makeup. (Who showed up to vote for Sundra Rice?)  Now, you’ve successfully deflected the argument away from my question to you, which is – why do you support the Conservative Party’s candidate, Chuck Swanick? Democrats should run screaming from Ralph Lorigo. All Democrats

Al Coppola is also running. So what?

tl;dr: AFAIC, Democrats should stop backing candidates who seek and obtain the Conservative Party endorsement, full stop. 

[vimeo 49030361 w=500 h=281]

A New Way from WNYMedia Services on Vimeo.

Republican Primary: Mark Grisanti

Last year, Mark Grisanti, in a massive and systemically uncharacteristic display of balls, bucked his party to vote in favor of same sex marriage. For that alone, he deserves re-election. His opponent has a track record of questionable campaign tactics, and is running almost exclusively on the “Grisanti said he wasn’t going to vote for same-sex marriage” platform, such as it is. 

What that amounts to is, “Grisanti broke his promise to do the wrong thing, and did the right thing instead“. 

Grisanti’s vote was a real-life, contemporary profile in courage.

Grisanti’s vote wasn’t influenced by phone calls or internet chatter. Instead, he performed legal research on the matter, finding out that civil unions don’t really work, and that married couples enjoy 1,300+ rights and privileges that unmarried couples don’t. He had to compartmentalize his faith and examine the issue purely on the facts and the law, resulting in a conversion.  However, he would not agree to vote in favor of this law without strong religious exemptions and an inseverability clause, which would render the entire law null and void should a future court change so much as one word.  Grisanti said that the clergy to whom he’s spoken since his vote appreciate that language.

At the time, traditional media were intensely interested in the “betrayal” angle, and whether Grisanti had committed “political suicide”. Grisanti smiled and replied that he’s new to politics and didn’t make his decision under pressure. He said it was going to pass anyway, but he could not in good conscience refuse to extend basic civil rights to his taxpaying constituents. He said he doesn’t know – or care – whether he committed political suicide with this vote. He didn’t get into politics to be re-elected, but to do good by his constituents. If they decide he should leave Albany, so be it.

I guess in western New York politics, we’ve become so cynical and jaded, expecting our electeds to be dirty, dishonorable deal-makers that when we see true leadership, hard work, and conscientious research and analysis, we really don’t know how to react and assume we’re being played. Grisanti wasn’t playing anyone. 

Furthermore, people who may or may not be on Grisanti’s opponent’s payroll have been engaged in an utterly disgusting, obscene campaign against the incumbent – so bad that it serves only to enhance Grisanti’s standing. That Grisanti’s opponent expressly or tacitly permits this to happen reflects poorly on him and should be punished. 

If you’d like to know the genesis of that “mailer” emailed around by a conservative “committee” (i.e., by polterpol Matt Ricchiazzi) and the anti-Grisanti animus behind it, it all has to do with a reason and a pretext. The reason is that Grisanti refused to hire Ricchiazzi. The pretext is that Ricchiazzi is somehow insulted by an uncorroborated account of Grisanti’s behavior in that bar fight up in the Falls.  Click below to see a series of text messages that Ricchiazzi sent to Senator Grisanti and members of his staff around the time of the bar fight. Note his initial offer to “help” Grisanti sue the Senecas, and quickly degenerated into a demand for a job. 

State Senate District 58 (Tim Kennedy (D) incumbent)

Democratic Primary: Tim Kennedy

I am a big fan of Betty Jean Grant’s, and I think she would make a fantastic State Senator. She is a tireless advocate for the poor and disadvantaged, and doesn’t cut deals with horrible Republican technocrats for political gain. I am a huge fan of the symbolism of her run. I don’t mean the fact that she’s an African-American or a woman – I mean the fact that Kennedy very deliberately and openly betrayed what should have been a Democratic county legislature majority in 2010 – 2011 and handed the reins of power almost unchecked to the execrable Chris Collins. The so-called “reform coalition” reformed nothing and brought little more than strife and hatred to the county legislature – a body that is about 90% uncontroversial ministerial work, and 10% visceral combat. 

However, I won’t be guided by factionalism here any more than I will be in the 60th. As much as I like her, Betty Jean hasn’t articulated specific policy reasons why she would be an improvement over Kennedy, so I’ll reluctantly give it to the incumbent. While Kennedy touted his no-brainer work on cyberbullying and texting-while-driving statutes, I’d like to see him get out front of more controversial issues and stick his neck out for important reasons. So far,  his tenure has been adequate, not excellent.  

 

Collins and Medicare: Bad Deal for Seniors, Americans

Remember how George W. Bush pushed to privatize Social Security? It failed, because people like Social Security, and because they didn’t want their entire retirement to be subject to the whims of the market. The 2008 quickie depression and the failure of Lehman Brothers was a stark reminder that, sometimes private industry doesn’t have all the answers. 

Paul Ryan’s proposed budget famously proposed to cut $716 billion from Medicare and turn it into a voucher system for Americans not yet benefitting from the wildly popular single-payer program for seniors. 

When Chris Collins hammers Kathy Hochul for voting for Obamacare, which “takes” $716 billion from Medicare and subsidies for Medicare supplemental insurance, remember that he supported a plan that would have done something even worse; that would have fundamentally changed what Medicare is for future generations. 

Hochul’s race against Corwin was about Medicare and how the Ryan budget would change it. Hochul won – and the $716 billion was part of that race. Now, Collins thinks he can fool voters into thinking that Obama and Hochul have weakened Medicare – but nothing could be further from the truth. 

That $716 billion from Medicare

The Affordable Care Act did indeed cut Medicare spending by $716 billion

On July 24, the Congressional Budget Office sent a letter to House Speaker John Boehner, detailing the budget impact of repealing the Affordable Care Act. If Congress overturned the law, “spending for Medicare would increase by an estimated $716 billion over that 2013–2022 period.”

As to how the Affordable Care Act actually gets to $716 billion in Medicare savings, that’s a bit more complicated. John McDonough did the best job explaining it in his 2011 book, “Inside National Health Reform.” There, he looked at all the various Medicare cuts Democrats made to pay for the Affordable Care Act.

The majority of the cuts, as you can see in this chart below, come from reductions in how much Medicare reimburses hospitals and private health insurance companies.

But what is the effect of these cuts to seniors and their benefits? Zero. Not a single benefit is cut or reduced in any way. There are no vouchers, no privatization – the $716 billion comes from reducing the cost of the program, not reducing its benefits. Quite the contrary – Obamacare takes that savings and actually adds benefits to Medicare, bringing a new emphasis on preventive care by adding a new annual no-copay wellness visit to the program. From the WaPo’s fact check of last week’s Clinton speech

TRUE: “What the president did was to save money by taking the recommendations of a commission of professionals to cut unwarranted subsidies to providers and insurance companies that were not making people healthier and were not necessary to get the providers to provide the service.”

Clinton appears to be referring to the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, an independent body that advises Congress on the program and the changes they have recommended for the program. MedPAC has, for example, repeatedly recommended that private Medicare Advantage plans should not be paid more than the traditional fee for service program. That, among other changes, was incorporated into the Affordable Care Act’s changes.

DOUBLE COUNTED: “Instead of raiding Medicare, he used the savings to close the doughnut hole in the Medicare drug program…and to add eight years to the life of the Medicare trust fund so it is solvent till 2024.”

Both of these facts are, independently, true. The health care law did indeed use some of the revenue it generated to pay for seniors who land in the “donut hole,” the gap after normal drug coverage ends and catastrophic coverage kicks in. And it did extend the solvency of the Medicare trust fund by eight more years, until 2024, per a report earlier this year.

But this represents some of the least-liked math in Washington, because it uses a sort of “double counting” of Medicare savings. The Medicare Trust Fund counts the health law’s $716 billion in savings as going back into its coffers. The Congressional Budget Office counts them as paying for provisions in the Affordable Care Act, like closing the donut hole. In reality, it would be very, very hard for a Medicare dollar saved to achieve both these purposes. In fact, it would be impossible.

This accounting isn’t unique to the Affordable Care Act. Budget wonks have regularly used this double counting for Medicare savings generated by Congress. There are some defenders of this accounting method. But it is one of the points that the Affordable Care Act’s Medicare savings regularly gets attacked.

TRUE: “I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry because that $716 billion is exactly, to the dollar, the same amount of Medicare savings that [Ryan] has in his own budget.”

Rep. Paul Ryan’s most recent budget does indeed include the Affordable Care Act’s $716 billion in Medicare savings. Mitt Romney has, however, disavowed those cuts and promised to restore insurers’ and hospitals’ reimbursement rates as part of his plan to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

The question, then, is – why do Romney and Chris Collins want to roll back Obamacare’s strengthening of Medicare? Is it because they’re both independently wealthy and what happens to Medicare has no affect on them in any palpable way? Medicare isn’t just some freebie entitlement – like Social Security, it’s something you and I pay into throughout our working lives (check your FICA on your next paystub). Romney and Chris Collins want to fundamentally change Medicare into a voucher program, but that’s not the promise that was made to me and others who have been paying into the system. In contract law, we pay in relying on the promise of a future no-hassles program  that current seniors enjoy. It’s fundamentally unfair to make it one program for one class of people, and something else for another – frankly, I think it’s violative of the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. 

Why do Romney and Chris Collins want to violate the Equal Protection Clause by voucherizing Medicare for one class of Americans, while maintaining it as a single-payer plan for another? 

Oh, and in commenting on the proposed voucherization via $716 billion in cuts from Medicare, Chris Collins told the Batavia Daily News that this doesn’t “go far enough”

Collins said he favors the Tea Party push to reduce the federal government. He praised Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisconsin, for ‘starting the conversation’ about reducing entitlement programs. But Collins said Ryan doesn’t go far enough. Ryan believes the budget could be balanced in 30 years, Collins said it needs to be done in 10 years. To delay it longer isn’t fair to young Americans who will have to foot the bill.

To Chris Collins, everything is an entitlement program – even programs you pay for. And he has the nerve to blame Hochul for harming Medicare through a cost-savings that actually expands its benefits. 

Even Kathy Hochul is trying to hedge on Medicare Advantage, saying she doesn’t like the cuts to that program. But why? Reductions in Medicare reimbursement rates to Medicare Advantage plans and hospitals were negotiated with those entities. Hospitals know that with universal coverage, they’ll get more patients whose bills are paid. The Advantage Plans’ reimbursement rates are reduced to eliminate waste that does nothing to enhance patient care. In reference to the chart shown above

The blue section represents reductions in how much Medicare reimburses private, Medicare Advantage plans. That program allows seniors to join a private health insurance, with the federal government footing the bill. The whole idea of Medicare Advantage was to drive down the cost of health insurance for the elderly as private insurance companies competing for seniors’ business.

That’s not what happened. By 2010, the average Medicare Advantage per-patient cost was 117 percent of regular fee-for-service. The Affordable Care Act gives those private plans a haircut and tethers reimbursement levels to the quality of care administered, and patient satisfaction.

The Medicare Advantage cut gets the most attention, but it only accounts for about a third of the Affordable Care Act’s spending reduction. Another big chunk comes from the hospitals. The health law changed how Medicare calculates what they get reimbursed for various services, slightly lowering their rates over time. Hospitals agreed to these cuts because they knew, at the same time, they would likely see an influx of paying patients with the Affordable Care Act’s insurance expansion.

The rest of the Affordable Care Act’s Medicare cuts are a lot smaller. Reductions to Medicare’s Disproportionate Share Payments — extra funds doled out the hospitals that see more uninsured patients — account for 5 percent in savings. Lower payments to home health providers make up another 8.8 percent. About a dozen cuts of this magnitude make up the green section above.

It’s worth noting that there’s one area these cuts don’t touch: Medicare benefits. The Affordable Care Act rolls back payment rates for hospitals and insurers. It does not, however, change the basket of benefits that patients have access to. And, as Ezra pointed out earlier today, the Ryan budget would keep these cuts in place.

By the way – if Chris Collins gets his wish and repeals Obamacare, Medicare Part A will be insolvent by 2016 unless something else is done. As we know, that “something else” is turning it into a complicated voucher program, fundamentally changing the very nature of Medicare. 

When officials talk of Medicare insolvency, they’re talking specifically about the trust fund for Medicare’s hospital insurance, or Medicare Part A, which covers inpatient hospital stays, care at a nursing facility, hospice care and some home health care. The other parts of Medicare, though costs are rising, are “adequately financed” for now, the program’s trustees say.

The Part A fund’s overseers — the Boards of Trustees of the Federal Hospital Insurance and Federal Supplementary Medical Insurance Trust Funds — said back in 2009, before the Affordable Care Act passed, that the banked money used to make up the difference between income (such as taxes) and expenses for Part A would be depleted in 2017.

But then the Affordable Care Act passed. The trustees reported that the act’s lower expenditures (cutting rates to providers) and increased revenues (a payroll tax hike for wealthier people in 2013) “improves the financial outlook for Medicare substantially.”

The trustees reported in 2010 that health care reform would delay the Part A trust fund’s insolvency until 2029. By 2011, the trustees moved that insolvency estimate back to 2024.

So, to sum up: 

Chris Collins supported the Ryan budget, which also assumed a $716 billion reduction in Medicare expenses. When he attacks Kathy Hochul for this, it flies right back in his face, because he says $716 billion doesn’t go far enough, and would like to voucherize Medicare and reduce other “entitlement” programs. Hochul needs to go on the offensive on this point – the Obama/Hochul cuts expand Medicare benefits and ensure the program’s continued solvency, while Collins’ cuts turn Medicare into something resembling the awful system we have today for most Americans, and threatens the solvency of Part A going past 2016.

Chris Collins, therefore, is a disaster for seniors in NY-27.  

Hope and Change 2.0

Last night’s speech by President Obama was not among those seminal, high-minded speeches that he’s known for. The oratory wasn’t soaring, and the themes were considerably more grounded. But two things stuck out for me: 

1. Citizenship is more than just self-interest. With rights come responsibilities, which we must share to make a better America and to build the foundation for a better future; and 

2. Don’t mock hope.

The Democratic convention was everything the Republicans’ wasn’t. It was well-organized, it saw no sectarian drama, and it was enthusiastic. The Democrats triumphantly trotted out their most recent ex-occupant of the White House; the Republicans didn’t dare. (Indeed, Bill Clinton said more nice things about George W. Bush than any RNC speaker).  The only part of the Republican Party that has any enthusiasm is the tea party, and its enthusiasm is inherently negative. Negative in the sense that its entire ethos, such as it is, has to do with reversing the last 100 years’ worth of consumer protections, social safety net, and the other building blocks that make up a first world industrialized nation. 

Now, our friends at the Republican convention were more than happy to talk about everything they think is wrong with America, but they didn’t have much to say about how they’d make it right. They want your vote, but they don’t want you to know their plan. And that’s because all they have to offer is the same prescription they’ve had for the last thirty years:

‘‘Have a surplus? Try a tax cut.’’

‘‘Deficit too high? Try another.’’

‘‘Feel a cold coming on? Take two tax cuts, roll back some regulations, and call us in the morning!’’

Now, I’ve cut taxes for those who need it— middle-class families and small businesses. But I don’t believe that another round of tax breaks for millionaires will bring good jobs to our shores, or pay down our deficit. I don’t believe that firing teachers or kicking students off financial aid will grow the economy, or help us compete with the scientists and engineers coming out of China. After all that we’ve been through, I don’t believe that rolling back regulations on Wall Street will help the small businesswoman expand, or the laid-off construction worker keep his home. We’ve been there, we’ve tried that, and we’re not going back. We’re moving forward.

You don’t get to be part of the first world if you don’t feed the hungry, treat the sick, and help the needy. He brought our social contract as Americans back into play – a direct assault on the Randian “every man for himself” mindset that the right has begun to espouse. 

The DNC brought about a triad of speeches building up to last night. Michelle Obama’s speech contrasted her family’s story with that of Mitt Romney. Bill Clinton’s speech was an incredible upload of Democratic arguments. 

– Bill Clinton explained that, since 1961, Democrats are twice as good at creating jobs than Republicans. True.

– Clinton argued that Romney’s plan to cut taxes on the richest Americans would increase the deficit and obliterate the budgets for national parks, clean air, clean water, and education. True.

– Clinton said that the Republicans quadrupled the national debt under Reagan and Bush Sr., and doubled it again under W. Bush. True.

– Clinton asserted that the Obama economy has created 4.5 million private-sector jobs in the last 29 months. True.  

The takeaway from President Obama’s speech was shared responsibility, shared sacrifice, citizenship. Hope. Future. Forward. He has a duty to explain why everything hasn’t already turned around from the 2008 free-fall. I think he did that, with President Clinton’s help. He looked forward – restoring domestic manufacturing, reworking how we produce and consume energy to be less dependent on foreign oil, improving education, “nation-building” here at home, he called it. 

If we can spend a trillion dollars to build Iraq, we can do at least that here. 

The RNC spent a few days mocking hope and change – making fun of the President for not “delivering”, (whatever that means), and all but mocking people who believed in it in the first place. The RNC ignored the fact that the mess we’re still not completely out of, is one which they brought about through their failed policies. 

But even if you’re a Republican and disagree with Obama – is it really smart to denigrate the notion of “hope”? The RNC kept saying America was in decline – an assertion that any self-respecting national politician would never make. Well, if we’re in “decline”, wouldn’t change be a good thing? Their whole argument is flimsy nonsense. 

One of the big themes in this election is going to be Republicans reassuring businesses that “you built that”. To counter that, Obama last night struck a theme of you (collectively, America) did this. You don’t bring about change by giving up. 

As citizens, we understand that America is not about what can be done for us. It’s about what can be done by us, together, through the hard and frustrating but necessary work of self-government.

So you see, the election four years ago wasn’t about me. It was about you. My fellow citizens— you were the change.

You’re the reason there’s a little girl with a heart disorder in Phoenix who’ll get the surgery she needs because an insurance company can’t limit her coverage. You did that.

You’re the reason a young man in Colorado who never thought he’d be able to afford his dream of earning a medical degree is about to get that chance. You made that possible.

You’re the reason a young immigrant who grew up here and went to school here and pledged allegiance to our flag will no longer be deported from the only country she’s ever called home; why selfless soldiers won’t be kicked out of the military because of who they are or who they love; why thousands of families have finally been able to say to the loved ones who served us so bravely: ‘‘Welcome home.’’

If you turn away now— if you buy into the cynicism that the change we fought for isn’t possible. well, change will not happen. If you give up on the idea that your voice can make a difference, then other voices will fill the void: lobbyists and special interests; the people with the $10 million checks who are trying to buy this election and those who are making it harder for you to vote; Washington politicians who want to decide who you can marry, or control health care choices that women should make for themselves.

Only you can make sure that doesn’t happen. Only you have the power to move us forward.

Government and policies are what you make of them, as citizens. The choice has become quite stark, as the corporatist reactionist policies of the opposition becomes more and more expressly hostile to the interests of average Americans. 

It was a subdued speech that finished strong, and if the theme of citizenship wasn’t getting through to you, the closing song was Bruce Springsteen’s “We Take Care of Our Own”. 

The reasons why I support this President are myriad – I support expanding and improving education so that we can compete with Europe and China.  I support reducing our dependence not only on foreign oil, but also expanding our use of alternative energy so that we lay the foundation for future sustainability of our energy needs. I support a foreign policy that is less bellicose and more rational. I support expanding medical insurance to all Americans. I support equal rights for LGBT Americans, and marriage equality. I support re-working our immigration laws so that law-abiding undocumented workers have a path to citizenship, so that we have a proper guest worker program for certain industries, and so that we get better at attracting and keeping skilled, educated immigrants we’ve always welcomed. I support clean water, clean air, and not befouling our environment. I reject the idea that people who choose not to “believe” in objective scientific fact can somehow dictate what the rest of us do, believe, or teach our kids. 

But as I stand here tonight, I have never been more hopeful about America. Not because I think I have all the answers. Not because I’m naïve about the magnitude of our challenges.

I’m hopeful because of you.

The young woman I met at a science fair who won national recognition for her biology research while living with her family at a homeless shelter— she gives me hope.

The auto worker who won the lottery after his plant almost closed, but kept coming to work every day, and bought flags for his whole town and one of the cars that he built to surprise his wife— he gives me hope.

The family business in Warroad, Minn., that didn’t lay off a single one of their four thousand employees during this recession, even when their competitors shut down dozens of plants, even when it meant the owners gave up some perks and pay— because they understood their biggest asset was the community and the workers who helped build that business— they give me hope.

And I think about the young sailor I met at Walter Reed hospital, still recovering from a grenade attack that would cause him to have his leg amputated above the knee. Six months ago, I would watch him walk into a White House dinner honoring those who served in Iraq, tall and 20 pounds heavier, dashing in his uniform, with a big grin on his face; sturdy on his new leg. And I remember how a few months after that I would watch him on a bicycle, racing with his fellow wounded warriors on a sparkling spring day, inspiring other heroes who had just begun the hard path he had traveled.

He gives me hope.

I don’t know what party these men and women belong to. I don’t know if they’ll vote for me. But I know that their spirit defines us. They remind me, in the words of scripture, that ours is a ‘‘future filled with hope.’’

And if you share that faith with me— if you share that hope with me— I ask you tonight for your vote.

If you reject the notion that this nation’s promise is reserved for the few, your voice must be heard in this election.

If you reject the notion that our government is forever beholden to the highest bidder, you need to stand up in this election.

If you believe that new plants and factories can dot our landscape; that new energy can power our future; that new schools can provide ladders of opportunity to this nation of dreamers; if you believe in a country where everyone gets a fair shot, and everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same rules, then I need you to vote this November.

America, I never said this journey would be easy, and I won’t promise that now. Yes, our path is harder— but it leads to a better place. Yes our road is longer— but we travel it together. We don’t turn back. We leave no one behind. We pull each other up. We draw strength from our victories, and we learn from our mistakes, but we keep our eyes fixed on that distant horizon, knowing that providence is with us, and that we are surely blessed to be citizens of the greatest nation on earth.

The choice this year is even clearer than it was in 2004 or 2008. In retrospect, the 2000 election was the most important in recent memory. Now that the wars it brought about are winding down, the 2012 election sets the stage for a crucial debate about the direction of our economy, our government – our very civilization. We don’t fix what’s broken, educate kids, clean up the environment, move forward with energy, strengthen Social Security and Medicare, and lift citizens up by drowning the federal government in the bathtub

I didn’t need Obama’s DNC acceptance speech to help make up my mind to vote for him, but it was good to be reminded of the reasons why. 

Brian Davis: Convict

Brian Davis. Timothy Wanamaker. 

They’re the ones who got indicted and convicted of criminal wrongdoing in connection with the One Sunset debacle a few years ago. 

So far. 

Sentenced to a year in jail yesterday by a federal judge, Davis argued for leniency by pointing to the bad press he’s received from the news media in town. You know – news reporting

One Sunset was famously funded by the Buffalo Economic Renaissance Corporation, featured a friend of the mayor’s as owner, and failed spectacularly within about a year, leaving a trail of unpaid bills. Owner Leonard Stokes clearly had no clue how to run a successful restaurant/bar business, and suddenly Councilmember Brian Davis got caught paying the place’s rent, bouncing checks on landlord Kevin Brinkworth. It was all bizarre – Davis had never disclosed any interest in One Sunset in any disclosure. 

One Sunset received $80,000 from BERC, $50,000 from the ECIDA, and $20,000 in community block grant money to fix up a facade that wasn’t bad to begin with.  Jim Heaney, now running the Investigative Post, ran the story for the Buffalo News, and found that public money continued to be infused so the business could tread water – up to $160,000, $90,000 of which was unaccounted-for. $39,000 in inventory and furniture went missing. Mayor Brown? He set up the environment that led to One Sunset, and fired City Hall employee Michelle Barron for “managing” the place into the ground. She was just a scapegoat. As it turned out, Mayor Brown was closer to Stokes than he originally let on, and everyone at City Hall dummied up about everything. 

Davis left office after it was discovered that he had diverted campaign cash to his own wallet, while this conviction was still under investigation. Make no mistake – Davis was a Grassroots protege of Mayor Brown’s. It got to the point where the satirical Buffalo Ruse published a “questionnaire” for prospective Davis replacements

Question 2: What one fact about the One Sunset restaurant scandal convinced you that the whole thing was perpetrated by our shameful Mayor Byron Brown?

Question 3: if you were the FBI, what other guilty members of the Brown Administration would you investigate and why?

 The whole thing blew up BERC itself, so that business development is now handled through the Buffalo Urban Development Corporation and the Buffalo Urban Renewal Agency. Timothy Wanamaker, the city’s former economic development chief, hasn’t yet agreed to spill everything he knows about the city’s involvement with One Sunset, but it’s an ongoing thing and I don’t think the book has been fully closed on the corruption that led to a quite literal theft of public money by elected and appointed government officials who owed a fiduciary duty to the public with respect to those funds. 

Tick tock. 

 

 

Cryptic Billboard on the 33: Lost Bet?

I’ve driven past this billboard several times, and finally managed to snap a quick picture of it. I posted it to Facebook and Twitter, asking, WTF?!  It reeks of a political hit mailer, and it’s clearly not selling anything. 

I received a bunch of speculation, but one answer seems plausible, and was repeated a few times by different people. The guys in the picture lost a bet, and this is what the winners selected as their “punishment”. If anyone knows the story, or knows who they are, or what the bet was over, I’d love to know. 

$1.6 Million Missing From Possible Cancer Cure

This article from the Telegraph is somewhat heartbreaking. Sitting in a freezer in the middle of Sweden is a virus that has been proven to target and kill cancer cells – and cancer cells only. The only side-effects are mild flu-like symptoms

It is a fact of human biology that healthy cells are programmed to die when they become infected by a virus, because this prevents the virus spreading to other parts of the body. But a cancerous cell is immortal; through its mutations it has somehow managed to turn off the bits of its genetic programme that enforce cell suicide. This means that, if a suitable virus infects a cancer cell, it could continue to replicate inside it uncontrollably, and causes the cell to ‘lyse’ – or, in non-technical language, tear apart. The progeny viruses then spread to cancer cells nearby and repeat the process. A virus becomes, in effect, a cancer of cancer. In Prof Essand’s laboratory studies his virus surges through the bloodstreams of test animals, rupturing cancerous cells with Viking rapacity.

Unfortunately, the man behind this discovery needs – and doesn’t have – about $1.6 million to handle the health and safety regulatory paperwork needed to start human clinical trials. 

Swedishly uninterested in profiteering, devoted only to the purity of science, Magnus and his co-workers on this virus have already published the details of their experiments in leading journals around the world, which means that the modified virus as it stands can no longer be patented. And without a patent to make the virus commercial, no one will invest. Even if I could raise the £2 million (I want only the best version) to get the therapy to the end of phase II trials, no organisation is going to step forward to run the phase III trial that is necessary to make the therapy public.

‘Is that because pharmaceuticals companies are run by ruthless plutocrats who tuck into roast baby with cranberry sauce for lunch and laugh at the sick?’ I ask sneerily.

‘It is because,’ Kjell corrects me, ‘only if there’s a big profit can such companies ensure that everyone involved earns enough to pay their mortgage.’

If you donate $1.6 million, you can have the potentially historic cancer-killing virus named after you. If you want to donate against that sum, donations are being accepted at The Oncolytic Virus Fund, Box 256, SE-751 05 Uppsala, Sweden. 

Finally, given the tenor and content of the health insurance debate in this country, this should not go unnoticed: 

…Uppsala University Hospital, a European Centre of Excellence in Neuroendocrine Tumours. Patients fly in from all over the world to be seen here, especially from America, where treatment for certain types of cancer lags five years behind Europe.

Sweden has a redistributive socialist universal health care system – among the best in the world.  It is a point of pride for the country that equal access to health care ensures a healthy population. The United States can’t even agree on that goal yet, much less the means with which to attain it. 

Kennedy vs. Romney

Edward Kennedy (D.MA) at the National Institutes of Health

courtesy Flickr user NIHLibrary

The 1994 Senate race in Massachusetts between Mitt Romney and Teddy Kennedy was utterly amazing to watch first-hand. For all his flaws, Senator Kennedy was a brilliant politician who was able to connect with voters in an awe-inspiring way. I remember watching every minute of this debate, and passed by the Faneuil Hall venue a few hours or so before to see a sea of people with Kennedy signs and a smaller lake of people with Romney signs taunting each other back and forth. Romney gave Kennedy his first real re-election scare that year, and the Senator re-recruited a lot of the people who helped get him there in the first place – and keep him there after the death of Mary Jo Kopechne on the bridge to Chappaquiddick.  

The Senator turned his campaign around during this debate, which showed that he was still the feisty lion of the Senate, and that he shared Massachusetts’ voters’ values. A little less than a decade later, Romney returned from Utah to become governor after some lackluster performances from Governors Cellucci and Swift. 

In 1994, I got to see Senator Kennedy speak to a packed, enthusiastic audience at an IBEW hall in Waltham, MA. He was bounding with energy, and the crowd loved every minute of it. It’s not too often that hard-working, blue-collar workers are given honor and respect anymore in contemporary America. Kennedy gave them that, and he fought his entire career to ensure that America’s workers had the health care, social security, and freedom from want that we all deserve as citizens of a first-world nation that doesn’t always act like it. 

At the DNC last night, a video tribute to the late Senator was shown, and this clip was a big hit: 

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-e0qKMaLoY]

Honoring Labor

Labor Day is the day set aside to honor work and workers. From the Department of Labor:

Labor Day, the first Monday in September, is a creation of the labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers. It constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country.

Chris already posted the 1956 message from Young Republicans to the labor movement, which praised organized labor, urged union members to attend meetings, and asked them to vote Republican. Here is what the Republican House Majority Leader wrote yesterday. It’s cloud-cuckoo land. 

 

1 2 3 4