Month: September 2013

Parking Spots Are For Proles

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When Carl Paladino goes shopping at the Eastern Hills Mall, he doesn’t have to park in actual “spots” like the rest of us rubes. Because he is a very wealthy and important person – far wealthier and more important than you or I, dear reader – he has a special license that permits him to park wherever he wants.  Although we must give Mr. Paladino credit for not occupying a spot reserved for the infirm and disabled, understand that he is,  by dint of his awesomeness, allowed to park even closer to the door than the infirm and disabled.

The person who posted this picture relates that she objected to Lord Paladino, as she saw him walk towards the mall, and that he replied that she should mind her business.

This person is not a nice person.

 

Public Sector Millionaires Wage Class Warfare on Poor

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For your Friday watching pleasure, watch a Democratic Congresswoman explain the rank hypocrisy of her Republican colleagues who lead lifestyles of the rich and famous on a sub-$200k salary thanks to lobbyists, etc. As these public sector millionaires (like Chris Collins) work to cut food stamps and do further harm to America’s working poor, including eliminating SNAP benefits for veterans. (Brian Higgins voted against it.)

In my district, California 14, we have about 4,000 families who are on food stamps, but some of my colleagues have thousands and thousands more,” said Speier. “Yet, they somehow feel like crusaders, like heroes when they vote to cut food stamps. Some of these same members travel to foreign countries under the guise of official business. They dine at lavish restaurants, eating steak, vodka and even caviar. They receive money to do this. That’s right, they don’t pay out of pocket for these meals.

Let me give you a few examples: One member was given $127.41 a day for food on his trip to Argentina. He probably had a fair amount of steak.

Another member was given $3,588 for food and lodging during a six-day trip to Russia. He probably drank a fair amount of vodka and probably even had some caviar. That particular member has 21,000 food stamp recipients in his district. One of those people who is on food stamps could live a year on what this congressman spent on food and lodging for six days.

Another 20 members made a trip to Dublin, Ireland. They got $166 a day for food.These members didn’t pay a dime. They received almost $200 for a single meal only for themselves. Yet, for them the idea of helping fellow Americans spend less than $5 a day makes their skin crawl. The families of veterans, of farmers, of the disabled, of the working poor are not visible to them, not even when they are their own constituents.

The Republican House of Representatives voted to literally take food away from working people. It now moves on to the Senate, where the bill will die a swift death. The balls on these guys. 

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUNzQGIXr3I&w=640&h=480]

Esmonde’s Exceptional Ethics

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Let’s get something clear, here. Donn Esmonde is a hypocrite. He is a semi-retired former-and-current City/Region columnist for the Buffalo News. Donn Esmonde thinks your kid deserves a quality education, including (but not limited to) charter schools; however, that right to a quality education miraculously ceases to exist, in his mind, at precisely the borders of the city of Buffalo. To Donn Esmonde, there is no greater sin in the world than the sin of “choosing to live outside Buffalo city limits.” The evidence for this was most starkly measured when he devoted two or three columns specifically to convince Clarence taxpayers to do genuine harm to the quality of that town’s school district. He succeeded in this mission. 

Make no mistake – the “Donn Esmonde is an ass” series stems directly from that, and if I wasn’t writing for Artvoice it would be named something profoundly more profane. Esmonde went on and on about the evil, greedy teacher’s union while failing to disclose that his wife belongs to one. He went on and on about how unconscionable it is for union workers to enjoy good wages and benefits, given that he and his wife have enjoyed union benefits for most – if not all – of their work-lives. He went on and on about these things without disclosing his own conflicts and biases. 

I don’t write about stuff in which I have a personal financial interest without disclosing it. 

Part of Esmonde’s shtick has been to promote the advent and growth of charter schools within city limits. In some instances, charters help kids in underperforming traditional schools to get a good education. In some instances, charters help the wealthy and well-connected families living within the city to provide their kids with a suburban school experience without packing up boxes and renting a U-Haul. In some instances, charters simply fail. 

Whatever. You do what’s right for your kids and their education if you care enough and have the means to do it. There’s no second chances, and you don’t have the luxury of waiting around for stuff to get better. You move to where schools are good, you apply for a charter school, you get your kids to take entrance exams for schools that need it, you go parochial or private, or you just stay put and try hard to make sure that your kid’s education – and every kid’s education – is as good as it can possibly be.  These are not just personal choices, but societal ones – as a general rule, we want well-educated kids because the alternative is horrible. For everyone. 

I don’t begrudge any parent’s choice regarding what he thinks is best for his kid. So, what does undisclosed bias have to do with anything? 

In 2000, Esmonde wrote a column about the Buffalo Niagara Partnership’s effort to help charter schools in Buffalo start up.  

The Tapestry Charter School was one of Buffalo’s three finalists, but didn’t make last month’s final cut. Tapestry’s Steven Polowitz said their grass-roots effort could have used a Partnership loan fund.

“I can’t say for sure it would have made the difference (in getting a charter),” said Polowitz. “But it would have eliminated a significant question.”

In 2007, he wrote a column blasting a tax incentive given to big-money waterfront condo owners. 

“This is not a marginal neighborhood where you’re trying to induce people to buy [with tax breaks],” said community development attorney Steven Polowitz. “How do you reconcile giving away the store for high-end condos in a coveted area?”

In 2011, Esmonde again pimped the charters as a way to bypass failing Buffalo schools. 

“Charters are the only option that lets you make the fundamental structural changes that give these schools the best chance for success,” Steven Polowitz said.

Polowitz is a longtime charter advocate who 10 years ago co-founded the successful Tapestry charter. He is now with Chameleon Community Schools Project, a nonprofit that develops charter schools. Polowitz laid out a charter turnaround plan for James Williams just before he left as superintendent. Interim successor Amber Dixon said she is open to the charter option. I think she — and the School Board — ought to be.

These seven schools need more than cosmetic surgery. That translates into — among other things — a longer school day; smaller class sizes; an expanded school year; more classroom aides; social workers and counselors on staff; and keeping the building open for everything from after-school tutoring to child care. It will not happen in a district where contract rules stifle options and slow-track change. It only comes with restriction-lite charters.

“You can interchange parts,” Polowitz said, “but if the fundamental structure remains, it won’t make much difference.”

In fairness to Buffalo teachers, counteracting the baggage of broken homes and battered neighborhoods these kids carry into the classroom is a near-impossible job. Schools, to some degree, don’t “fail”; they simply get overstuffed with desperately needy kids. Which is why it makes sense for hurting schools to be taken over by the academic version of a SWAT team: flexible, fast on its feet and able to use every educational weapon, from alternative curriculums to business partnerships.

If schools are reinvented as charters, kids stay in the same building. Teachers either move to another school or reapply for their jobs, likely with similar pay and benefits — but without seniority and job protection. Granted, charters are only as good as the people running them. But if you need change — and these seven schools are at cliff’s edge — charters are the Extreme Makeover.

In 2012, Esmonde effectively dedicated an entire column to Steven Polowitz hagiography. 

“We are concerned about education in the city,” said Steve Polowitz, “and have been for years.”

Polowitz is part of the pack of reformers who are trying – against all odds – to transform two of Buffalo’s 28 failing schools into public charter schools. The folks behind the nonprofit push are taking fire from a Board of Ed that has yet to grasp the enormity of its failing-schools crisis. On the other parapet is a teachers union determined to protect its ever-shrinking turf.

If every verbal blow the reformers have taken were a punch, Polowitz would be a walking bruise.

He is 61, a rail-thin attorney with silvery hair and impeccable school-reform credentials. Eleven years ago, he and four others founded Tapestry Charter School. It is arguably the most successful charter in Buffalo. The public charter school, which since expanded through high school, last year got 1,200 applications for 200 spots.

Here’s a dissenting voice: 

After all Polowitz and Co. are all ready running Tapestry Charter School, you know the one with the fewest students receiving reduced price lunches of any school in the city limits, the school whose students must have private transportation, wink nudge, and we know who that’s going to keep out of the lottery don’t we ? Essentially this guy and his crew are running a private school full of middle to upper middle class kids with the ever present charter spectre of “counseling out” a.k.a. “expelling” any kid who shows a learning, emotional or behavioral issue. If you can shoot fish in a barrel your aim doesn’t have to be all that good.

Who is Steven Polowitz? Damned if I know, except from these Esmonde columns, a guy who helped start Tapestry Charter School, and someone who is a “community development attorney.” Just, y’know, random school advocate guy. 

Random guy? 

Donn Esmonde and Steven Polowitz (and their wives) are co-owners of a property in Spring Hill, Florida, just north of Tampa. 

While Esmonde touts his city-resident cred, he co-owns a very suburban, very sprawltastic single-family home in a subdivision outside of Tampa, Florida. It’s unit 12 in that particular subdivision, and has a market value of around $86,000, but possibly as low as $75,000 – it’s okay, though – the mortgage is for $66,000. With an area of just over 2,000 square feet, the house was placemade in 2004 and began to matter for Esmonde and Polowitz in 2010.  The annual property taxes are a low $1,400, and the home has 3 bedrooms. Here it is: 

Could use some better landscaping. Maybe some flowers or something. 

Sadly, the previous owners bought the place for $210,000 – Esmonde and Polowitz got it for a steal, and the prior owner took a hit of $130,000 at the time – in fact, Deutsche Bank moved to foreclose on the property in 2009.  The previous owners were a husband and wife from Buffalo who owned a paving company here, and their 2005 mortgage was for $168,000 – twice what the property is now worth. 

I don’t care about Donn Esmonde’s sprawly vacation home, or that his kids went to an exam school (away from the riff-raff), or that he is a massive hypocrite who harbors a geographical animus towards children. But one would suppose that, if I was to write a glowing blog post about someone with whom I co-owned a vacation home, I’d let you guys know about it one way or another.

Donn Esmonde hates the suburbs, except when he lives in them.  

War on Poverty Pivots to War on Poor People (and other things)

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1. Congressional Republicans aren’t just satisfied to vote 41+ times to prevent all Americans from having affordable, quality health care. They aren’t just satisfied devising tricky, procedural ways to prevent subsidies for America’s conservative, market-based health insurance scheme from being funded. They are now focusing laser-like on the real culprits in America’s continued slide into Somalian-style libertarianism: working poor people receiving food stamps. 

Can you imagine? We feed the needy! We used to link farm subsidies with food stamps, because (a) compromise; and (b) food stamps are an indirect farm subsidy themselves. Clearly, this is something that the new plutocracy cannot tolerate. All of society’s ills stem not from, e.g., bank bailouts and corporate welfare, but from the working poor having a little extra help from the government so they can not only pay for rent and supplement all the expenses cut from school budgets, but also eat food!

…the House GOP proposal largely targets a part of the food stamp program that often serves the elderly and the disabled, who would have to resort to seeking food from already overburdened charities if the cuts actually became law.

“The food pantries are already struggling, and that’s where people are going to go,” said Kelly Ann Kowalski, director of Food for All, a Buffalo nonprofit that aims to address hunger in the community, in part by helping people sign up for food stamps.

As for the work requirement in the House bill, other than the seniors and the disabled, “there are few people who call us who aren’t working,” Kowalski said.

Republicans, however, see things very differently.

Rep. Chris Collins, R-Clarence, noted that the bill’s food stamp cuts are not aimed at the poorest of the poor. Instead, they’re aimed at parts of the food stamp program that allow people to qualify without an asset or income test.

“People are gaming the system,” he said. “People are saying that deserving, eligible people are going to get their food stamps cut. There’s no truth to that.”

Collins also noted that while the old farm bill is set to expire Sept. 30, the real deadline facing Congress is Dec. 31. That’s because farm programs are funded on a seasonal basis, meaning they’re already set for the rest of this year. In addition, he noted that food stamps are funded “on autopilot” and will continue even if the Sept. 30 deadline is breached.

What’s more, Collins said it’s important that the House pass the food stamp bill – which would be combined with a farm bill that it passed separately earlier in the summer – so that the House and Senate can move toward final negotiations on a new five-year farm bill.

Chris Collins, of course. He’s never met a poor he didn’t…. wait, he’s probably never met a poor, full stop.  (When was his last town hall meeting?) The Republicans hate everything except the very rich, now. 

2. Erie County’s Press Releasor-in-Chief Comptroller Stefan Mychajliw gets hit for taking dirty money from criminal Big Cancer, and the loss of staff – including the instigator of GarbageGate Teresa Fraas – leaves him not so much with “best and brightest” but with “nobody”. 

3. Season 2 finale of HBO’s the Newsroom, Will McAvoy is asked whether he is a Republican so he can maintain credibility when criticizing Republicans. He responds, 

No, I call myself a Republican because I am one.

I believe in market solutions and common sense realities and the necessity to defend ourselves against a dangerous world and that’s about it.

The problem is now I have to be homophobic.  

I have to count the number to times people go to church.

I have to deny facts and think scientific research is a long con.

I have to think poor people are getting a sweet ride.

And I have to have such a stunning inferiority complex that I fear education and intellect…in the 21st century.

But most of all, the biggest new requirement, really the only requirement is that I have to hate Democrats.

And I have to hate Chris Christie for not spitting on the president when he got off of Air Force One.

The two-party system is crucial to the whole operation.  There is honor in being the loyal opposition. And I’m a Republican for the same reasons you are.

I used to be a Republican, and I left the party in 2003, but it left me in 2000 when George W. Bush declared that his most influential political philosopher was “Jesus Christ”. So, when I criticize it relentlessly, it’s because watching its descent into a madness that has literally helped to destroy the middle class, I do so as if I’m watching a relative who’s become a schizophrenic, muttering nonsense to unheard voices, and refuses to get help. 

4. This is a great ad: 

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3S1zcbWkoM&w=640&h=480]

Tolerable Terrorism

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Another mass shooting by another lone lunatic. 12 lives – 12 families forever impacted. America? America shrugs. America doesn’t care. We have terrorism-scare-porn all day on the insidiously banal 24 hour cable news channels, and absolutely nothing will be done to try and prevent it from happening again. 

Because it takes a special mix of mental illness and access to firearms to plot and execute a mass killing. Luckily, we live in a country with unequal and iffy access to health care services – particularly mental health services, and which permits any person to build a Koreshian arsenal without much effort, thanks to ready access to enough firearms and mil-wank accoutrements to outfit a small banana republic. 

Neighborhood Watch

Neighborhood Watch

2012 saw seven mass shootings, including the mass murder of 20 1st graders. In a normal and healthy society, Sandy Hook alone would have been seen as excessive – something worth doing something about. Given remotely normal civic discourse, we would have taken serious measures at that time to help better balance the legitimate constitutional desires of people to feel safe in their homes and persons against others’ rights to be free from random mass murder. 

We had a discussion, and in the end America’s leaders decided against a weak and symbolic gesture because Barack Obama eats arugula, or something. The same forces that oppose even modest gun reform, oppose the first American effort to implement a market-based universal health care system – a system that might enable earlier and more effective mental health treatment and intervention for more Americans. 

For a week or so after Sandy Hook, the National Rifle Association – the gun manufacturers’ lobbying group – kept quiet, and people thought that was tactful. But when it spoke up, it added insult to the injuries suffered at the barrels of Adam Lanza’s guns. It told us that we need more – not fewer – guns in our society, and that we should spend hundreds of millions of dollars in schools, not on education, but on armament. In a time where communities are struggling to pay teachers, the NRA suggested that they all spend up on hiring gunmen.

We could maybe aspire to be like Jamaica or El Salvador – third world autocracies with massive income inequality where the building blocks of civil society are inept, corrupt, or both. Because more guns lead to more violence and killings. More guns don’t make a polite society, they simply make an arrogant and armed society – a society where it becomes much easier to bring about permanent retribution for even perceived slights. 

“A society that is relying on guys with guns to stop violence is a sign of a society where institutions have broken down.”

More guns means more killing – factually and statistically. Yesterday’s shooter apparently hit the gun fetish trifecta: Texan with a criminal record and a concealed carry permit. 

The Constitution gives people a right to bear arms, sure. But it doesn’t give you the right to own an arsenal big enough to fight the government. It was written at a time when the US had no standing army. We had no standing army because the Founding Fathers didn’t want one. So, every able-bodied male was a member of the militia. The purpose of the 2nd Amendment isn’t to give Gadsen Flag-wrapped idiots the means to overthrow the government, but to protect the government and the state from attack or invasion. 

Newsreaders’ TelePrompTers prompted them to wonder aloud whether the Navy Yard shooting was “terrorism”. When a lone gunman wanders the halls of an office building, shooting randomly at innocent people, that pretty much fits the dictionary definition. I think they were differentiating between “foreign/Qaeda” or Qaeda-inspired terrorism versus Sandy Hook / Aurora lone insane person. But the combination of poor mental health care, with easy access to guns is only going to bring about more random mass shootings. There is no doubt that these events are terrorism, in that they are random, senseless, and kill innocent victims. But this is terrorism we will tolerate. We won’t bomb anyone, Republicans will vote a 43rd time to repeal universal health care, and nothing will happen with gun laws. Because this is doubtlessly terrorism, but it’s the kind we have, as a society, decided we can live with. 

We have decided to live with it because we have decided that the right of people to bear unlimited arms is greater than the right of average people not to be shot. 

Shorter Esmonde

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1. Sergio Rodriguez is a swell guy, but he has no hope – a “sand castle has a better chance in a tsunami”. So, I will label his run for Mayor “quixotic” and otherwise dismiss him altogether, while doling out some faint praise. 

2. James Sampson is a wealthy and important person, and if there’s one thing I like, it’s wealthy and important people. He “aches” for the schools, and wants to change them. Don’t forget that my wife works for the school district, I sure didn’t bother to disclose it this week. Also remember that only the city schools matter, and suburban schools – and everyone in them – can go rot in hell. 

As always, Donn Esmonde is an Ass. 

“I Am Sickened By This”: Right Wing EmoCringe

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Here is a perfect example of knee-jerk, fact-free, emotional, feeling-based hatred of Obama. There’s something sickening, alright, but it isn’t the supposed absence of “enough flags for Rus Thompson to not become physically ill”. 

First: 

The outrage grows: 

WHERE IS THE FLAG? Our correspondent is sickened!

LOOK AGAIN! NO FLAG! OUTRAGE!1!

Voice of reason criticizes getting “crazy”:

Forget the fact that Obama has a flag on his lapel, for God’s sake. There’s a flag embedded within the Presidential seal on the bug on the screen. The apparent optics of having a flag in the shot is so important to Rus Thompson that he says he becomes physically ill at its absence. This is, people, utter and sheer insanity. 

Diagnosis: Acute Obama Derangement Syndrome.

Prognosis: Poor.

RX: 10mg Chillaxa PRN

Cuomo to Pigeon: Stay out of My Way in Niagara Falls

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Last weekend, Governor Cuomo attended the Bills game at the Ralph – the first home game under the new 10 year lease agreement. It was an open event, and lots of people came to see the governor, maybe get a picture, some grub, you know – hobnob. 

One of the hobnobbers who came up to Governor Cuomo was notorious political shit-stirrer Steve Pigeon. 

The Pigeon/Max/Mazurek “Mark Hamister is a con man” lit debacle in support of Sam Fruscione had just hit the news, and the copious volume of resultant stirred shit was actively hitting the fan by about September 6th – the Friday before that Bills game. It got so bad that Hamister had a press conference scheduled for that Friday to announce that the deal was dead, but an 11th-hour intervention by Governor Cuomo gave the hotel project a temporary reprieve. Whatever Cuomo said to the city council, Fruscione was claiming now to be in favor of the Hamister hotel – that he was just “asking questions”. 

Fruscione is one of a very special troika of city councilmembers in Niagara Falls who simply detest Mayor Paul Dyster. For example, in March of this year, they famously rejected a proposal that Niagara Falls join a binational, interstate consortium of Great Lakes cities with money donated by a Buffalo-based philanthropic foundation. Fruscione explained that the city is on a river, not on a Great Lake, ignoring the fact that the river connects two of them. 

So, on Sunday, Steve Pigeon – the man who set up and funded the PAC that sent out the “Hamister is a con man” mailer – went up to Governor Cuomo. I have heard from four sources who overheard the exchange that Pigeon approached Cuomo and apologized – I’m really sorry – to the governor for that mailer up in Niagara Falls. Cuomo shook Pigeon’s hand and shot daggers out of his eyes at Pigeon, and calmly but forcefully told him, “I just want that hotel built – stay out of my way.” 

A correspondent snapped the exact moment this happened. 

pigeon begs for forgiveness

 

Russia’s Concern-Troll

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Better Opinion Columnist than Donn Esmonde

Last night, a New York Times opinion piece penned by Russian President Vladimir Putin‘s D.C. based public relations and/or lobbying group hit the Times’ website. I’m not particularly concerned with his last-paragraph indictment of American exceptionalism, because frankly the Russian President would be expected to believe in Russian exceptionalism. Yet what he actually writes is that no nationality is special. Don’t believe it, given the existence of what can only be called the Putin Youth, which uses a mix of Russian nationalism and Soviet imagery to lend support to the regime. 

What Putin’s Times piece really amounts to is the most prominent concern-troll in history. Putin lecturing the US about international shit-stirring and democracy is like Kim Jong Un lecturing the world about prisoners’ rights. 

The United States isn’t perfect by any means. Its government isn’t perfect, either. But of the countries qualified to lecture the US on good government and democracy, Russia is in maybe the lowest third. Since 2000, Putin has been the de facto dictator of the Russian Federation. Ask Chechnya about his democratic peacekeeping. Look how he bypassed term limits by switching between the President’s office and Prime Minister. We’re led to believe that a former KGB agent is a champion of openness and liberty because he is harboring fugitive thief Edward Snowden while actually monitoring communications for political means. 

All the things the tea party right and ultra left criticize centrist Obama for being or doing, Putin is actually being or doing. But, you know, Putin hunts with his shirt off, and he’s tight with the guy who gasses his own people with Sarin, so it’s all good. How many bands critical of the President has Obama thrown into labor camps? How many businessmen has Obama exiled or killed/attempted to kill? How many state-owned industries has Obama “privatized” into the hands of his friends and supporters? Has Obama promoted the cause of LGBT rights in the last 5 years, or deliberately rendered homosexuality illegal? How come people like Edward Snowden, Glenn Greenwald, and their supporters don’t criticize the Russian surveillance state? 

Anyone – including my own Congressman – who has nicer things to say about Vladimir Putin than President Obama is being an idiot, pure and simple. Swallow the propaganda all you want, but don’t pretend like Putin’s Russia is the model for America unless you’re into neofascism, autocracy, tycoonism, and mass surveillance for political, rather than security, ends. 

Winners and Losers as #WNYVotes

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Winners

Dick Dobson: He appears to be the winner of the Erie County Sheriff’s primary against Bert Dunn, pending counts of absentees, etc. Dunn learned that money alone doesn’t buy you an election – you have to get out there, and you have to spend it. Dobson out-ran Dunn from day one, and he squeaked out a victory with only 500 votes or so separating them. Now, it’s on to defeat the anti-professional incumbent. (Micropolitically, this is a gold star for Frank Max and a bruise for Jeremy Zellner). 

Wynnie Fisher, Betty Jean Grant, Byron Brown: all of them defeated their opponents by more than 10 percentage points. Fisher and Grant were up against Steve Pigeon / Kristy Mazurek candidates and earn Jeremy Zellner gold stars. Indeed, Zellner’s clever effort at unifying the party through his unqualified endorsement of Byron Brown also earns him a gold star. Moore may be a headache in November assuming he’s on the Working Families line. 

Pat Burke: From South Buffalo bartender to winner of a legislative primary. No one gave Burke a serious shot until the day of the election, and it was all centered on turnout – if the South Buffalo portion of the district came out for Burke in a big way, he could eclipse Dearmyer and/or Zydel, the Cheektowagans. That’s exactly what happened, and while Dearmyer had a lead through the first half of the night, Burke came charging out of nowhere to take a pretty convincing lead. Chances are this won’t be over today, as all votes get counted, but credit goes to Burke, who ran without help from either the Pigeon faction or Headquarters, and claims to be independent of all of them. That’s great, so long as he doesn’t sell out to the Republicans. 

Barbara Miller-Williams: Quite possibly the worst transactional legislative horror show ever to jump out at you is leading incumbent Tim Hogues by just 20 votes. This is the woman who sold out to Chris Collins for a big chunk of money for the Colored Musician’s Club – her husband is on its board. With paid-off silence, she collaborated with the Republican dismantling of health clinics and other critical services for her poor urban constituency. She became the de facto head of a Republican legislature that was little more than a Collins marionnette, and if you watched Collins last night, he is one of those right wing scumbags who has nicer things to say about neofascist autocrat Vladimir Putin than his own country’s President. This race is going to be litigated, so it’s not over yet, but simply by making it competitive at all, Miller-Williams shows that she shouldn’t be counted out yet. Query why she’s still a Democrat, though. That’s what tens of thousands of dollars from Steve Pigeon and Tim Kennedy will buy you, though. 

Mary Giallanza Carney and Deanne Tripi: won the Family Court race. I generally stay out of judicial races. 

The residents of Niagara Falls, Governor Cuomo, and Mark Hamister: See below. 

Jeremy Zellner: Sure, he seems to have lost the Sheriff’s race, and the Hogues race is way too close to call – and Dearmyer didn’t pull it out against Burke. But Zydel, Moore, and Nixon all lost to HQ candidates, showing that he has political clout his opponents kept saying he didn’t have. 

Losers

Sam Fruscione: Niagara Falls voters had to select three, and they had four choices. Fruscione was the “beneficiary” of an inflammatory mailer that called Buffalo developer a “con man” – a criminal – and Fruscione skulked away from blistering questioning from Mary Alice Demler about it. He lost last night – lost big. He blamed it on anti-Italian “racism”. Someone should explain to Mr. Fruscione two things: 1. “Italian” is a nationality – not a “race”; and 2. You don’t get to glorify the mafia and mob violence by selling La Cosa Nostra paraphernalia and Stefano Magaddino t-shirts and then get to complain when people call you out for retaining the services of convicted loanshark extortionists. Chutzpah doesn’t even begin to explain the idiocy here. This guy was trying to play Mark Hamister, and when the Governor out-strong-arms you, your political days are numbered. 

Bert Dunn: As I mentioned above, he had all the money in the world and the backing of HQ, but you can’t force him to go out and spend it and do the work necessary to combat a hard-working opponent. I’m a prime dem and I got one piece of lit from Dunn, nothing from Dobson, but it came about 2 weeks ago, and the lackluster ads from Dunn showed up on TV just in the last few days. He waited too long and didn’t do nearly enough to secure what he apparently thought was a sure thing. It ain’t over ’til it’s over, but here it never really began. 

Rick Zydel: This was Pigeon’s and Max’s and Mazurek’s big, marquee race – the one they were going to embarrass HQ with. Zydel came in to unseat longtime incumbent and legislative majority leader Tom Mazur. Mazur decided to bow out. Well, HQ may have a bit of mud on its face this morning, but not from Zydel – from Pat Burke, who came out of nowhere with the apparent win. Zydel was Zy-done from minute one, and Lynn Dearmyer was consistently ahead of him all night until city results started gushing in. 

Wes Moore: Another hand-picked Pigeon guy, Moore was setting up to challenge the sleepy incumbent, Terry McCracken. McCracken dropped out, Moore had a head start, yet an unknown from Alden named Wynnie Fisher trounced him – a win for Zellner and HQ. 

Kristy Mazurek, Steve Pigeon, Frank Max: Ask anyone Mazurek has come into contact with in the last year or so, and they’ll tell you that soon after her candidate David Shenk lost dramatically to Stefan Mychajliw in last year’s Comptroller’s special election, that she was going to go to war with HQ and Zellner. She was there earlier this year, unironically sporting a red armband as the Max people tried to strong-arm their way to a chairmanship victory. She told anyone who would listen that she was going to single-handedly run candidates for the legislature that she picked, and that they would all win and embarrass Zellner and HQ. She threatened to blackmail and bully opponents, and that she would release embarrassing information about them. She set herself up as a kingmaker without a kingdom. She latched on to Frank Max first, because they had interests in alignment with each other. Steve Pigeon came into the picture with gobs of cash. Stories have already come out about how questionable the sources of cash are – and more stories are coming.  In the last week or so of writing about the “WNY Progressive Caucus PAC“, I have heard several remarkably similar stories from completely unrelated people, explaining how even a hint of disagreement with Mazurek invites a blistering “do you know who I am” and “do you know who my father is” response from her, with demands of “who are you working for”, harassing phone calls, and even firings over social media. You don’t build an army by burning bridges. Pigeon proves yet again that his negativity crosses a line and ends up helping his target, more often than not. It happened in the Falls, and in the Zydel, Moore, and Nixon efforts. Steve Pigeon is exceptionally good at formenting chaos and stirring shit, but he is palpably bad at the whole “winning elections” thing, at least locally – and the people who end up aligned with him turn out to be just horrible, more often than not – not sure if that’s organic or learned. As an aside, I’ll note that the one Democratic candidate for Cheektowaga town board whom Max’s organization did not endorse – Diane Benczkowski – received the most votes last night. 

Bernie Tolbert: A campaign that was relentlessly negative once it started up way too late to gain any traction. It was clear that the people advising Tolbert weren’t paying attention to the polls that showed widespread contentment with Byron Brown and the job he was doing, because they kept hitting him with negativity and pointing out minor things like Brown’s sudden attention to vacant eyesore buildings or having cops walk a beat in Allentown. Tolbert never got a chance to define who he was, and so Brown didn’t have to pay him any attention. People couldn’t “believe in Bernie” because they didn’t quite understand why Bernie was running, or what he’d specifically do differently from Brown. Brown pretends like he ran a clean race, but he had surrogates go out and hit Tolbert. In the end, Tolbert’s campaign seemed reactionary and petty while Brown was cool, calm, and collected. 

Tim Kennedy: Through his affiliation with the Mazurek PAC, and his apparent $85,000 in reported donations through two campaign committees – one of which has been closed since 2011 – he lost big-time last night. He has pissed of HQ, Higgins’ people, South Buffalo, the Governor, and some other very powerful people. He is up for re-election next year, and he is about to get called out for apparent election law violations. There will be a coalition of entities united against him next year, and he’s going to need a lot of money and a lot of luck to win re-election as a Democrat in his district in 2014. 

You: Because really, no matter who wins or loses, everything ends up being transactional nonsense and little of it ever translates into good government. 

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