BREAKING: Erie County Legislature Does its Job

Logo_ErieCo_tpKudos to the members of the Erie County Legislature for acting like grown-ups (for the most part), and reasonably negotiating a 2015 budget that will lower the tax rate to under $5.00/$1,000 of assessed value, and ensuring that cultural and library funding remains in place.

The Republican majority trimmed about $2 million from County Executive Mark Poloncarz’s original budget proposal, and $300,000 was added to protect culturals.

There was some acrimony at the start of the session, with the Democratic minority complaining that the Republicans had not provided a breakdown of its proposals to them in advance. The session likely took longer than it needed to because of that, but in the end the budget was passed unanimously.

I’m still of the opinion that county government, whose main job is to act as a pass-through for state funding, is superfluous and unnecessary.  Abolishing county government is something I’ve been talking about since the budget crisis from the last decade, but it’s no less relevant now. The vast majority of what the legislature does is mandated and ministerial. Do we need this entire stratum of government to debate the small percentage of stuff that’s discretionary?

Protests and Riots, Same as it Ever Was

In the week since a Missouri grand jury returned no indictment against Darren Wilson, the killer of Michael Brown, a lot of whitesplaining has taken place, mostly from non-lawyers who deliberately or ignorantly misapprehend what a grand jury is and how it works. That’s before we get to Darren Wilson’s unvetted story.

Here are three facts: there was no trial, there was no verdict, and Darren Wilson was not found innocent, much less “not guilty”.

In that time, there have been protests both peaceful and violent, and I’ve seen many commentators dismiss the rioters as “animals” and “thugs”, or worse.

Rioting, however, doesn’t happen in a vacuum.

From the Buffalonian, via Reddit, here is a summary explaining why African-Americans on Buffalo’s East Side rioted in the summer of 1967.

A preliminary report

Looking at and considering the reasons why people riot isn’t the same as excusing it or condoning it. But if we want to stop violence like that from happening again, perhaps we – as a society – could consider what’s working, what isn’t, and why the problems identified in 1967 persist so pervasively to this day.

The Ferguson riots didn’t happen in a vacuum. It doesn’t matter anyway, because even when African-Americans have the audacity to protest peacefully – whether in Buffalo, Los Angeles, or St. Louis – there will be white people around to remind them that they’re being uppity, and that it’s not at all their place.

Which is it? That they should protest peacefully, or that they should STFU and not protest at all because a “jury” reached a “verdict” that Wilson was “not guilty”?

People in Ferguson were angry there won’t be a trial. Courtesy of PBS Newshour, here is why there should have been a trial. Not a guilty verdict – just a trial.

Maybe that’s why people in Ferguson reacted violently – years’ worth of frustration, sparked by apparent and perceived injustice.

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Click to enlarge

 

Dino Fudoli: Leadership

dfThis is an astonishing interview from an elected official, where he talks over the anchors, gets upset, and calls everyone who got stuck in the Snowvember storm “irresponsible”.

The first thing you’ll notice is that Dino Fudoli talks really, really fast. The next thing you’ll notice is the astonishing content of what he has to say.

LET THE FREE MARKET MELT THE SNOW!

But seriously, this is what you get when you elect someone to government who thinks that government is “the enemy“.

Paladino Gets Cuomo Back

Remember last week, Cuomo trolled Paladino by using a picture of Paladino’s snowbound home to raise money for local charities?

It was, on its face, harmless – no one was attacking or criticizing Paladino, and not all that many people realized it was his house.

So, Paladino sent an email around, entitled “This Westchester House”, featuring a picture – poached from the New York Times – of Andrew Cuomo’s Mount Kisco manse:

This Westchester House - buffalopundit@gmail.com - Gmail - Google Chrome 2014-12-01 14.16.43

 

Of course, Paladino had to take a political swipe at Cuomo. It’s Carl being Carl®.

UPDATE: Don’t forget that Carl’s candidate, Astorino, only released one year’s worth of tax returns when he ran for governor this year.

Andrew Cuomo, by contrast, has released every single tax return he’s filed going back to 1992.  To answer Carl’s question re: “walk[ing] the walk”,

Mr. Cuomo reported $16,000 in charitable contributions, more than 4% of his income. All went to HELP USA, the affordable housing nonprofit he founded.

Carl Paladino never released a single year’s worth of tax returns when he ran in 2010.

What’s Up, Larry Quinn?

Courtesy of Sean Crowley at the B-LoEdScene blog, Larry Quinn made an ass of himself during a recent Buffalo Board of Education visit to the beleaguered Lafayette High School. Carl Paladino, of all people, comported himself professionally and respectfully, and stayed after the visit to try and smooth things over, leading to an unexpected thank you call from the Buffalo teachers’ union boss, Phil Rumore.

Quinn was reportedly dismissive and rude to teachers and staff at the school, and Crowley contrasted Paladino’s reputation with Quinn’s,

…now that we’ve seen Quinn’s petulance — saying of the faculty “I only came here as a favor to Carl I didn’t want to meet with these clowns” his disdain for working people, calling teacher leader Pat Foster “an idiot” you can be sure Larry will make some half hearted obligatory attempt to reign in his tongue. But we all know better. A guy like Quinn is not going to negotiate these waters with grace or skill. He’s going to be spending a lot of time out of his boat getting bounced around in the rapids. The peek he gave Buffalonians of his true self at Lafayette is just the beginning of Larry Quinn’s unraveling. Carl tried to apologize away Quinn’s boorish antics when pressed about it by a news reporter. He admitted Quinn was rude and unprofessional in his dealings with school officials and teachers. He then tried to slip a card from his sleeve hoping nobody would notice describing the performance as “a bad hair day.” He should have said “That’s just Larry Being Larry.”

and from the News’ account,

Teachers also said Quinn acknowledged attending the meeting only out of respect for Paladino, who had asked him to come, and even said to Paladino, “Why would I want to go there and talk to those clowns?” He also reportedly referred to a teacher and BTF representative who had left the room as an “idiot.”

Finally, Quinn questioned [Principal Naomi P.]Cerre’s leadership in front of her staff, pointing out that the district clearly has qualms about her leadership since the administration did not grant her tenure this year, instead only offering her an extension of her probation.

 

Even Carl Paladino was embarrassed,

Paladino, however, did not disagree with Rumore’s account of what transpired and agreed that Quinn’s behavior was “rough” and “harsh.”

“It wasn’t pretty,” said Paladino, who described Quinn’s behavior as an exercise in self-induced frustration. He added that Quinn’s remarks were not badly intended and chalked up his behavior to “having a bad hair day.”

After Quinn left, Paladino said, he stayed behind and worked to smooth over hurt feelings. That earned him a thank-you call from Rumore – a first-of-its-kind event for two men with a history of animosity.

Paladino said he was so surprised to hear from Rumore that he initially thought someone was pulling a prank on him and demanded to know if it was really the BTF president on the phone.

Rumore said he was genuinely appreciative that Paladino listened to Lafayette’s presentation in a thoughtful and open-minded manner.

What bizarro world is this?

“He actually was there to listen,” he said, “and the teachers felt he was really interested in what they had to say.”

Wha? After the News pressed Quinn on the matter, he gave a classic ‘sorry, not sorry’.

“If I offended anybody, then I was probably stupid because I know we’ve got a big fight on our hands with people who don’t want to change anything,” Quinn said. “So it’s my fault. My point is, I should be smarter than that.”

Well, you were elected to be smarter than that, so your conclusion is spot-on. You were elected to be a trustee for the school district, and these people may be answerable to you, and they may be employees of the entity you serve, but they’re fallible human beings who are doing their best under difficult circumstances.  One thing they probably don’t need is a preening, monied, rookie know-it-all to tell them all how badly they all suck, and how they’re all idiots.

Quinn signed up for a job that puts him in the same damn boat as all of those teachers, students, and administrators.  If he doesn’t like they way others are rowing, then he should take the oars himself.

Lake Effect Ice Cream Holiday Gift Packs

Every year, my friends at Lake Effect Ice CreamLEIC do a special holiday bundle featuring four extra-special, one-off pints for pick-up in mid-December. If you order before this Friday December 5th, you’ll get a special bonus gift (could be a poster, could be a gift certificate, could be your own bespoke flavor).

Order now at this link: http://mkt.com/lakeeffecticecream

Pickup dates and times are as follows:

-Thursday, December 18th from 4-8pm
-Friday, December 19th from 5-9pm
-Saturday, December 20th from 9-3pm.

This year’s flavors sound incredible:

The Nog
Extra sweet cream, fresh nutmeg and Vietnamese Cinnamon, blended with Bulleit Kentucky Bourbon Whiskey. A hint of spiced rum gives it a little extra “warmth.”

S’mores and Hot Chocolate
Hand toasted marshmallows and chocolate chunks with bits of Platters’ milk chocolate-crusted cinnamon and sugar graham crackers, swirled into Lake Effect’s amazing Frozen Hot Chocolate Ice Cream.

Chevre and Figgy Pudding
The ice cream for the core of this flavor is a unique, ultra-rich, chevre ice cream. The true star of this flavor, however, is Lake Effect’s brown sugar and butter sauce that they blend together with freshly pureed black mission figs.

Candy Cane Parfait
A creamy and delicate peppermint cream ice cream, with folded-in small pieces of candy canes. Lake Effect then created a house-made candy cane syrup to use in between the ice cream layers in each pint. All pints are packed parfait style with their syrup between the layers. Last, each pint is topped with a dusting of crunchy candy cane pieces.

Order today!

Erie County’s D-LAN and Right-Wing Stormtrolls

Logo_ErieCo_tpDuring the Snowvember / Knife storm, some municipalities made complaints about county or state aid, and there was a concerted push on local Squadrismo Radio (traffic, weather, and sedition on the tens – these guys, who think it’s cute to assault & batter former First Ladies), to criticize elected officials (all of them Democrats) for, e.g., not getting small town side streets plowed as soon as people would have liked. There was some legitimate debate over the speed with which the Thruway was closed, and how quickly people were freed from their cars, but as we discovered later on, when Cuomo allegedly criticized the National Weather Service’s forecast, there was ample warning of a historic snow event on Monday night into Tuesday.

All of a sudden, personal responsibility goes out the window when there’s a Democrat available to criticize. The WBEN Snowtrolling was amazing and unprecedented.

County Executive Poloncarz sent a warning about the storm to his disaster response team on Sunday night, and by all reasonable and impartial accounts, they performed admirably; “real leadership”, the Buffalo News called it.

But some towns have been complaining about the lack of county plows, despite the fact that they apparently had not bothered to use the decade-old computerized system to request them. In 2004, the County implemented the “DisasterLAN” or “DLAN” system for municipalities to use to request – and the county to coordinate – disaster response, including county plows.

The DLAN system is specialized for disasters and is heavily used around New York State, he said, but ignored by many Western New York highway officials.

“The problem was that only one or two people even knew about the system,” he said, despite county insistence upon its use.

Even conference calls proved inconsistent, he said, with Boston never participating in the daily planning and Orchard Park “hit and miss.”

The county executive pointed to Lake Avenue in Hamburg, a hard-hit road visited by Cuomo on Thursday. It was inserted into the DLAN system because of the volume and underlying ice pack, and therefore became a priority.

“The county knows how to use it, and 95 percent of the towns know how to use it, but not all did,” Poloncarz said. “If those people don’t utilize it, we can’t help it.”

And Lancaster Village Mayor (because we totally need a village overlaying a town government) Paul Maute “never heard of” DLAN, which is apparently everybody’s fault but his own, despite the fact that it’s been used for 10 years.

According to both Fudoli and Hoffman, halfway through the storm they became aware that in order to receive resources such as additional plows and other machinery, they had to use a Web-based system called DLan, but they had little success in doing so.

“The entire storm we were told we had equipment coming,” said Hoffman.

“We never heard of DLan until a couple of days into it,” added Maute.

According to Fudoli, requests submitted by Lancaster employees were not fulfilled, but the system repeatedly labeled them as “completed.”

So, there’s a computerized system that’s a decade old that works perfectly well, but a few highway superintendents don’t understand or use it, so it’s everybody else’s fault that, e.g., the Town of Boston didn’t get a call from the County, or the Mayor of Lancaster never heard of the county’s disaster system. How about using the DLAN or picking up your own phone? All you need to use DLAN is a connected browser. Personal responsibility gone, waiting for big government to bail them out.

Lancaster Supervisor Dino Fudoli learned that he was supposed to use DLAN “halfway through the storm”, but he was a legislator for the entity that set up and runs DLAN – Erie County?! 

That’s before we get to the concept of there being 7 feet of snow on the ground as another 2 feet dumped down just a couple of days later. You can’t just snap your fingers and get every side street in WNY plowed out overnight under those conditions.

Another meme that’s popped up has to do with how Governor Cuomo was preening for the cameras when he showed up with his entourage (read: cabinet) to stay in WNY for several days to help coordinate storm clean-up and response.

Right. Photo-op. Except that Governor Cuomo did exactly what any rational person would expect a governor to do – show up and offer state aid, money, and manpower to get the Southtowns up and running again. Had he not showed up, these same people would be whining about how Cuomo abandoned WNY again.

Cuomo is an arrogant downstater who doesn’t brook much dissent and is rude to the press and critics, plus he took some guns off the market and limited how many bullets can go in there, so he’s been likened to Hitler.

If you want to criticize the speed with which the Thruway closed, or how he came across poorly when talking about the weather service, that’s fine. But hammering the governor for showing up at a disaster area and ordering that help be given? Don’t be a dick.

Dan Ward: Republican Honorable?

Amherst Democrat Dan Ward received an interesting invitation from the local Republican committee.

Not only did it misspell the surnames of a longtime Amherst Republican pol, and a sitting Supreme Court Justice, but it also mistook Dan Ward for his brother, Dennis. (The Republican Party cross-endorsed Dennis Ward for Supreme Court back last month.)

Dan decided to have some fun with this.

Dan Ward: Republican Honorable?

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