Mychajliw, Dixon and the Violence Brigade

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It should not come as a surprise to anyone that in the era of Donald J. Trump, millionaire, American politics have become incredibly dumb and unconscionably threatening. There exists in the world zero excuse – none – to threaten violence or bodily harm on one’s political opponent. I don’t care if you’re a Democrat, Republican, or a member of some corrupt or washed-up marionette fusion party, under no circumstances is it ok to threaten someone over a political point of view. 

We come to learn this week that County Executive Mark Poloncarz has accepted a security detail from the Sheriff’s office due to threats he has recently received. The Buffalo News reports

On the Friday before St. Patrick’s Day, a suspicious package arrived at his office addressed to him as “personal and confidential.” It had been hand-delivered to his office and had no return address. Nothing inside turned out to be dangerous, but the incident put building security on alert, he said.

Fair enough. I understand that county resources are limited, and I have no doubt that Poloncarz accepted the security detail reluctantly at someone else’s recommendation. In fact, he tells the News exactly that. 

He accepted police protection upon the recommendation of Buffalo police, Erie County Central Police Services and the Sheriff’s Office, he said. That includes special transportation measures and two sheriff’s deputies who travel with him to his scheduled events, among other security measures that he declined to publicly discuss.

and 

He said he does not know how long he will continue to have the security. He hopes it is temporary.

“It’s completely changed how I have to go about my work routine and daily life,” Poloncarz said. “I’m not thrilled with it.”

Erie County Undersheriff Mark Wipperman said he could not elaborate on the details of the open investigation but confirmed the additional protection was recommended.

“Based off the recent threats made against the county executive, we believed a security detail was needed,” Wipperman said.

Also fair. I think that if an elected official received a credible threat of harm, he or she ought to implement whatever reasonable security measures law enforcement might recommend. Obviously he doesn’t need an armored car or a full motorcade, but being accompanied by deputies on the recommendation of the police seems reasonable for an elected official who by no means signed up to get threatened by Facebook trolls whose behavior escalates into potential assassin territory.

In that Buffalo News article, however, one prominent Republican and one member of the washed-up, marionette “Independence” fusion Party attempted to make political hay out of the protection of a fellow elected official. 

“If there is a credible threat to him and he is in need of security, then that’s fine, but I have questions,” said [County Executive candidate Lynne] Dixon, adding that she wants an update on the status of the investigation.

Ms. Dixon should have stopped at “fine.” Everything after that is irresponsible and macabre. 

Wipperman said the deputies, detectives and supervisors who are trained in dignitary and executive protection work come from different parts of the Sheriff’s Office.

“They are assigned on a rotating basis so that none of our normal operations and investigations are hampered,” he said.

On what basis is Lynne Dixon, a county legislator, in any position to demand an “update on the status of” a police investigation that does not affect her? Never fear, dear reader, because Dixon’s ghoulishness is dwarfed by Comptroller Stefan Mychajliw’s colossal grotesqueness. 

“I’m sure there’s a significant cost involved in removing these highly trained officers from their specific detail to protect the county executive like he’s the president,” he said.

Think on that for a second. Mychajliw is quite literally putting a price on Poloncarz’s head. This is professional-grade concern-trolling. I mean, is there a “cost” threshold that Mychajliw or Dixon can stomach to prevent a political rival, his loved-ones, and his staff from being harmed? If so, then why isn’t that being established? Why are the media dutifully transcribing these bloodthirsty sentiments without challenging them.

How much is too much, Stef? What is the most taxpayer money that can be spent to prevent the murder of the County Executive, Lynne? Somebody ask these questions. 

I call upon members of the Erie County Legislature immediately to introduce a bill that delineates the maximum amount of public money that can be spent to protect an elected official against whom a credible threat of violence has been made. 

From a practical standpoint, I believe that it’s smarter for Poloncarz to take security advice from professional members of law enforcement rather than from former journalists with no law enforcement experience who made names for themselves by wearing red parkas.

In February 2017, Mychajliw said he received threats from an inmate, believed to be mentally ill, who threatened to “exact revenge” against him with a gun. That led Mychajliw to apply for a concealed carry pistol permit and purchase a Glock at his own expense. The inmate has since been in and out of jail.

Poloncarz said Mychajliw should contact Central Police Services and the Sheriff’s Office if he has serious concerns.

Mychajliw said he contacted the sheriff when the issue first arose.

“I thought it would be silly to ask for 24/7 police protection,” Mychajliw said. “Our law enforcement should be used to fight crime on the streets, take drugs out of the community and fight the very serious opioid epidemic.”

Mychajliw here presumes that Poloncarz asked for police protection, and the very article in which he is quoted proves him incorrect. To put a finer point on all of this, Mychajliw amazingly does not consider the protection of elected officials from credible threats of harm to be “crime on the streets”. I’m pretty sure it is. His invocation of the “opioid epidemic” is clumsy politicization of all of this. Stefan Mychajliw’s office’s remit does not extend to telling law enforcement how to do its job. 

Wednesday morning, Mychajliw appeared on WBEN and took surprisingly pointed questions from Susan Rose on all of this. He parroted the propaganda he fed to the Buffalo News’ Sandra Tan, and demanded that the Rath Building’s security footage be immediately released so as to apprehend whomever delivered the suspicious package to Poloncarz’s office. 

Except there’s a problem with that. It wasn’t just the suspicious package. 

Five days [after the package was delivered], an incident occurred at [Poloncarz’s] house that prompted him to call the police. He declined to elaborate, saying he doesn’t want the information to harm the investigation or encourage copycats.

Mychajliw said nothing of that, completely ignoring so as to advance his sadistic narrative that Poloncarz is a spendthrift drama queen.

Mychajliw suggested that Poloncarz do what he did – get a concealed carry permit and then cross your fingers that cosplaying Hopalong Stef is better protection against lunatic cranks than foillowing the recommendations of law enforcement. Note that in Mychajliw’s case, he says he contacted the sheriff; the article does not go into any further detail, so we are left to wonder whether the department considered the threat against Mychajliw to be as serious or credible as the ones made against Poloncarz in recent weeks. Perhaps Mychajliw’s concealed carry permit wasn’t just some cynical political ploy to pander to the SCOPE/Abolish the SAFE Act crowd and was instead a well-considered and proportional response to the threat he received; by the same reasoning, perhaps Poloncarz’s reluctant acceptance of a security detail is a proportional and reasonable reaction to the threats he received. 

We are all just trying to be people in this society. If law enforcement had recommended that Mychajliw accept a security detail because some crazed leftist was making credible threats, literally no one would begrudge him that. When the security of public officials takes a back seat to cost, then the country is truly in a sorry state. If there is truly a “concern” about cost, then this could be handled quietly. The fact that it’s in the paper tells you that this is a political stunt and not a serious or credible concern at all. This is a Republican effort to make Poloncarz seem like he is taking something from taxpayers to which he is not entitled. Shame on Dixon and shame on Mychajliw. 

The only appropriate response to learning of a credible threat of bodily injury against a fellow public servant is to ask “what do you need”. These Republicans would sooner see Poloncarz harmed than spend a dime on his protection.

I think the media should stop “both-sidesing” stories like this and instead probe why Mychajliw and Dixon are so eager to see harm come to Poloncarz and his family, friends, and colleages. 

Carl Paladino and the Czech Neutral Tourists

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On Wednesday morning, prolific e-mail author and equine pornography enthusiast Carl Paladino revealed that his biggest fear is apparently riding a subway car on a Friday afternoon in which he is the only white person. This is a reasonable conclusion to extrapolate from his latest email missive, which is nothing more than a vituperative attack on anyone not white. It is typical racist Carl “I’m not a racist” Paladino garbage nonsense that he keeps sending out, yet people still take him seriously as some sort of business leader or voice worth listening to. 

Paladino, the founder of Buffalo’s Ellicott Development, (which among other things rents apartments to people of various races, creeds, and ethnicities, and also operates a hospitality subsidiary that offers goods and services to diverse visitors to western New York), sent around a racist, Nazi piece of garbage email forward that is not only a poor translation from the Russian language, but is a completely false pack of lies. 

It is entitled “19 Pictures from Hell.” Hell being Paris. 

“France is Being Destroyed!” it blares, along with, “ANYONE DUMB ENOUGH TO BELIEVE THE PARIS RIOTS ARE ONLY ABOUT TAXES AND THE CLIMATE? TAKE A DEEP BREATH AND LEARN. ” The report is from:

“…neutral Czech Tourists in 2018 and still getting worse. The overwhelming abuse of the indigenous culture. Shame on those who welcomed such foreseeable destruction.”

When I did a reverse image search of these images, they all originated on Russian websites. Every one of them. It is an old Soviet trick to make the West seem extremely dirty and dangerous, and what better way to illustrate that then to stoke the racist fears of a largely homogeneous white society. 

What is a “neutral Czech Tourist?” What does “abuse of the indigenous culture” mean? I think Carl means white people; that there are parts of Paris that are not predominately populated by white people. He must hate Buffalo and New York City and just about any other place where people of different colors, creeds, ethnicities, nationalities, and religions live and co-exist. There are two images next – one shows armed police outside Notre Dame, and another shows *gasp* black, brown, and Asian people milling about on a busy street.

These people are literally not doing anything other than existing. But this is a hazard of some sort to Carl and his “neutral Czech” correspondents. 

The captions are, again, illustrative.

“We went there not so long ago, just go for the weekend. We bribed the price of tickets, unusually low, but we were not in Paris for more than 10 years…”We decided to refresh impressions, again inhale the French romance. The fact that the lowest price for Air France had alerted us, but nothing like this. “

We “bribed” the price of tickets?  None of this makes sense. Are they saying they bought cheap air tickets on a continent where one can routinely buy cheap air tickets, and that this is somehow evidence of the desireability of the destination? 

“The flight was fine, then we boarded a train that took us to the center, and it was there that we experienced the first shock: not only was the Northern station all littered with debris, there was not a white Frenchman! It shocked us to the core.”

Waitwaitwait. You mean to tell me you flew to one of the biggest cities in Europe and the station had litter? And there “was not a white Frenchman?” I’ve been to Paris. It’s not the cleanest city in the world, but then Zurich doesn’t have a reputation for romance and intrigue. That “white Frenchman” thing though. That’s interesting. What difference does it make whether you saw a black or brown Frenchman? France was a colonial empire, but I guess some people are good enough to conquer, but not good enough to allow to immigrate? So far the “neutral Czech tourists” whom Carl stans saw litter and black people. This makes Paris “hell”. 

Again. This is just racist garbage. But let’s continue.

Look! Black people selling tchotchkes on the streets of Paris! Black people sitting on the steps of a church! OMG PANIC!

Women in Niqab walking along the street throwing up a deuce? Two fingers? Peace sign? Oh, the humanity! People different from Carl minding their own business!

But let’s look at the next caption. 

“Furthermore, we hastily settled near the Sacr Coeur, where the situation seems to have been even worse.”

Oh, no. Whatever happened to our intrepid “neutral Czech” tourists? a mugging? A robbery? An assault of some sort?

“When we went down into the subway to get to major attractions, then suddenly we found out that in the car my wife and I – only white. It was Friday, about two o’clock in the afternoon!”

Quelle horreur! They were the only white people in a subway car at 2 in the afternoon! This, my friends, may be Carl’s biggest fear. Being a minority, given his well-documented animus towards minorities. 

There’s more. Here are pictures of trash and tents. Because brown and black people, right Carl?

The Louvre is deserted!  There are soldiers due to a state of emergency!  There are refugees! Muslims! 

The Louvre is so deserted you should buy your tickets online to avoid the line and guarantee a maximum 30 minute wait. It’s so deserted that lifestyle bloggers give you tips to avoid the hours-long lines

“On the streets of migrants crowd, full of shops, whose owners are refugees. Where did so many of them come from? At the Eiffel Tower – one. Check out all but covered from head to toe Muslim. This selectivity of the French. Landmarks around the tower teeming with hucksters of the African, Arab gambler, beggars from all over the world and pickpockets.”

Big city attracts poor people trying to hustle for a buck. News at 11.

There are more pictures. The top one has English signs. Paris? Doubtful. The middle one shows people dancing and playing drums. But they’re dark, so Carl is afraid of them. The bottom one shows migrants at Calais trying to LEAVE FRANCE to the UK. It’s not Paris.

Carl Paladino of Ellicott Development has more pictures for you, though. Black people. The black people are minding their own business. Or they’re poor. Or it’s a photograph taken from a news report about a street crime. They all look equally scary to him. 

“It was a terrifying experience. I can imagine what’s going on in Marseille and Calais where migrants already de facto set their own rules. In France, a civil war is brewing, that’s what I say. Therefore, I recommend not to go there – Farewell, beloved France! God forbid that we had something like this in the Czech Republic!”

Yes. God forbid the Czech Republic finds itself a magnet for people from another continent. The Czech Republic was never, itself, an imperial colonial power. It did not attract or absorb its conquered colonists, whose overseas homelands had legally become as France as Paris itself. They still are, if you go to Martinique, Guadeloupe, Saint Martin, St Pierre et Miquelon, Reunion, or other French overseas dependencies and départements

The last three images showing “more pictures of Paris” are below. The top one is a guy praying. He’s Muslim, so Carl Paladino of Ellicott Development reckons he’s bad. The middle one is a guy making a mess on a train. He’s black, so Carl Paladino of Ellicott Development reckons that’s “hell”.  

Look at that last image. That’s quite obviously a guy on the NYC subway taking a piss. I guess that answers the email’s last question, “Is America Next?” I guess a guy pissing on the downtown 6 is evidence that Paris is “hell”.

Evidence: 

March 2010: Paladino’s racist and pornographic emails
October 2012: Paladino denies he’s a birther, but is birther. 
August 2014: Paladino’s homophobic reaction to a 419 scam letter
February 2015: Paladino rejects civil rights assessment of Buffalo schools. 
March 2015: Paladino threatens school board “sisterhood” with libel suit (which never came)
July 2015: Paladino demeans “damn Asians” at UB. 
July 2015: Paladino offers fake apology to “damn Asians”
July 2015: Paladino’s supporters: hey, he could have said, “damn Ukrainians”. 
July 2015: Paladino defends Joe Mascia’s n-word outburst
July 2015: Sandy Beach calls Paladino out on Joe Mascia
August 2015: Paladino digs a deeper hole on Shredd & Ragan. 
August 2016: Paladino claims Obama is Muslim. 
December 2016: Paladino wishes President Obama dead, likens the First Lady to a Zimbabwean gorilla. 
December 2016: Merry Carlmas!
March 2017: Paladino the White Nationalist
April 2017: Paladino spreads fake news
August 2017: Paladino’s True Colors
August 2018: Paladino defends predator clergy

Let’s not pretend that Carl Paladino of Ellicott Development is anything better than what he regularly shows us he is. This email? This email is just straight-up Nazi “white genocide” “great replacement” propaganda. It’s beyond concerning that Nazi propaganda is being spread like this by the owner of Ellicott Development, a large local landlord to various residents, businesses, and government offices, and the owner of a company that provides hospitality goods and services to visitors to western New York. 

Is This Thing On?

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The Trump Crime Syndicate is poised to close all 21 overseas offices of the Citizenship and Immigration Service. Immigrant visa applications will now be handled by already overworked consular offices, and this will result in delay and slowing of visa applications, family reunifications, and adoptions. The rationale is that the Trump Crime Syndicate is opposed to all immigration – legal or otherwise. This will please Trump’s “base”, which is all about keeping America white.

Tucker Carlson is no proletarian populist, but he plays one on TV. Carlson is also either a white nationalist, or a guy who is perfectly fine repeating white nationalist (read: Nazi) tropes and memes to his nightly audience of omniphobe boomer bigots. 

Where the living fuck are Tesla’s solar roofs? What are they doing in there? 

The people who used to ride with Steve Pigeon are out and about, trying to take over bits and pieces of Cheektowaga town government and circulating petitions for a Democratic County Executive primary. It’s nice that there are about 7 people nostalgic for the good old days of conspiring with the fusion parties to ratfuck endorsed Democrats. 

Speaking of which, fusion voting got some attention in the last few weeks because the Working Families Party – a lefty, union-funded fusion party that famously endorsed Cynthia Nixon over Andrew Cuomo last year – decided to mount a push to combat a Democratic push to abolish fusion altogether. Never mind that New York is one of only a few states that allow this practice, fusion voting is nothing but a way for political malefactors to cut dirty deals; e.g., endorsements in exchange for jobs. Fusion is what led to former Senate majority leader Malcolm Smith to go to jail. Fusion was the way Steve Pigeon colluded with Republicans to screw Democrats over. Fusion is what enables the criminal “Independence Party” enterprise to continue to operate and confuse voters. Sure, voting is too restrictive in New York and the system could use an overhaul, but fusion is not some sort of voting rights bonus. It’s a conduit for criminality and graft, and has been for some time. People with longer memories will remember how rumormonger Joe Illuzzi would sell ads to politicians as part of a package that would (a) prevent Illuzzi from printing nasty, false rumors about that politician; and (b) buy the Independence Party line from a Springville barber who ran its local committee. 

Brexit has turned into an utter shambles. With just days left before Article 50 triggers an automatic exit from the European Union, MPs yesterday rejected Theresa May’s clumsily negotiated exit deal for a second time. Brexit has turned out to have been brought about through what appears to be electoral fraud and cheating, assisted in part by Russians intent on striking back at the west for EU and US sanctions brought about in the wake of Russia’s illegal annexation of the Crimean peninsula. It is against this shambolic backdrop that New York’s worst legislator – David DiPietro – suggests breaking up New York into several states. After all, what better way to counter the utter moral and political bankruptcy of your political party and ideology than to basically do two mini-Brexits, and enable WNY to lose its downstate subsidy and become Mississippi-on-the-Lake. Re-drawing the political map to make WNY “redder than Texas” and poorer than Alabama. The rationale is, at least partly, an effort to force poor people who rely on programs like Medicaid to leave. 

We haven’t even talked about the Trump kids and their fake security clearances, or Trump’s relationship with Chinese sex traffickers whom he has allowed to sell rich Chinese access to Trump at Mar-a-Lago.

To Normal People, Rats are the Good Guys

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Michael Cohen, convicted felon and former personal attorney to President Donald Trump, is no longer in the thrall of Trump or the eponymous MAGA cult. Liberated through his admissions and pleas, Cohen is now free to tell the truth and “rat” the President out. In the past, Cohen lied to protect the President. He now has no such mandate. 

While the President and his cult assail Cohen for being a “rat”, they forget that, to law-abiding people, the rats are the good guys – the ones who turn state’s evidence to expose an organized criminal enterprise. Some assholes pulled the wrong message from The Godfather and Goodfellas. 

Politico published Cohen’s prepared Congressional testimony, and every sentence is a bombshell insofar as it confirns what we already know about Trump – that he’s a “racist”, a “conman”, and a “cheat”.

What a difference some cooperation with law enforcement, a conviction, and some genuine checks-and-balances oversight make. 

Instead of recounting each and every of Cohen’s revelations – he brings receipts for most of them, lest you accuse him of fabrication – I highlight one relevant to the Buffalo Branch Trumpidians. Cohen will produce inflated financial documents that Trump submitted to Deutsche Bank in an effort to secure a loan to buy the Buffalo Bills. 

Cohen is not directly accusing Trump of fraud, but the subtext is plain as day – in an effort to secure the Bills, (which the genuinely fracking-rich Pegulas bought for $1.4 billion in cash), Trump resorted to inflating his assets to secure a loan from the only bank left that would entertain his applications

Hell hath no fury like a “personal attorney to Donald J. Trump” scorned. 

Conservative Fusion Capo On Voting

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As the newly constituted New York State legislature takes up a package of proposed voting and voter registration reforms – including same-day registration and early voting – let us consider for a moment what Mike Long, the state Conservative fusion Party capo has to say about all of these hippies making it easier for citizens to vote. 

“I think voting is a privilege and it should remain in fact that you understand it is a privilege. It shouldn’t be made simpler,” Long said.

Which sort of explains why the right has worked so hard to disenfranchise targeted groups of people who would otherwise be statistically predisposed to vote on the left. 

We should just change its name to the Voter Privilege Act and get it over with. 

Everybody Panic New York is Losing Population

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New York State is losing population!

That was the story that blared on the morning newscasts in Buffalo Thursday morning. The Buffalo News, too. Why, we lost loads of people!

OK, yes, New York State lost population.

We lost a net 48,500 people over the course of one calendar year.

Business propaganda outlet “Unshackle Upstate” leads with this on Facebook, where angry online commenters go angrily to comment online: 

(What good is a media Facebook page or comment section without a sea of Thomases and Amys leaving their “KKKING CUOMO” comments, interspersed with the bolded “I made money doing online surveys” spam.)

Unshackle Upstate’s Executive Director is former Chris Collins staffer Michael Kracker, and its board is made up of the heads of four upstate Chambers of Commerce – including the Buffalo Niagara Partnership – and an Albany-area building trade lobby. It has a particular agenda, which one commentator in 2016 at City and State characterized as

two storylines. First, that upstate is the oppressed captive of downstate interests who abuse and neglect it. Second, upstate’s considerable economic troubles are the result of high state and local taxes, high state and local spending and business over-regulation.

…then added…

The problem is that both storylines are provably false, if evidence-based policy is your goal.

Oppressed and abused upstate? Untrue. Upstate is the beneficiary of a massive economic subsidy paid for by downstate taxpayers. The reliably right-wing and honest Empire Center has said, “New York’s state revenues are disproportionately generated in New York City and its suburbs, resulting in a net transfer of income to upstate.” To use a downstate expression, it’s not chopped liver. For every dollar upstate pays to the state, it gets back about $1.60. The opposite can be said for downstate: For every dollar sends to Albany, downstate gets back roughly 90 cents.

Well, what about those high taxes, high spending and over-regulation? The best way to measure that is to compare those communities in New York where taxes, spending and regulation are higher, and those where they are lower. Guess what? New York City and its suburbs have much higher local and state taxes, much higher government spending and much tighter regulation. Those economies are booming, and not just in the financial sector. Upstate communities with low taxes, low spending and low regulation continue to contract economically. Even the Federal Reserve, which carefully monitors this stuff, has weighed in. It just released statewide economic data with bad news for upstate: “little to no growth in the center of the state.” For downstate, good news: “New York City is experiencing strong job growth, with most of it coming, surprisingly, from outside the financial sector.”

That’s a set of home truths that few in western New York’s media landscape are willing to tell you, because it so fundamentally violates the central tenets of upstate victimhood and martyrdom. 

Anyhow, 48,500 people out of a total population of just under 20 million. That’s ~0.2% of the state population. Not exactly the panic-red-alert trigger that everyone needs to freak out about, and that the propagandists and the media will massage and exploit to generate clicks. (It’s also not liberal over-reach). 

I watch WGRZ Channel 2 most mornings, and they led with this story. They quote two people: a Census Bureau demographer, and E.J. McMahon from the conservative pro-business Empire Center. But McMahon himself reveals two important points: 

and

So, to the extent this undramatic 0.2% net population loss is a problem, it’s mostly a downstate problem. Granted, taxes in New York are higher than in other states, but if out-migration is mostly from downstate that’s just math – overwhelmingly, most New Yorkers live in downstate. But I can think of loads of reasons why someone would move out of the five boroughs of New York City, Westchester, or Long Island that have nothing whatsoever to do with taxes. Traffic, population density, the sky-high cost of real estate (and concomitantly high property taxes), a crap subway system, long commutes all could contribute to this. Hell, I saw routine rush-hour traffic jams on the 684 from Danbury, CT to White Plains earlier this year. No one has time for that. The Hutchinson River Parkway from the 287 to Pelham is almost always a parking lot now. I’d move too.

But look at that map again: Louisiana, Mississippi & Wyoming – these not exactly what anyone would consider to be high-tax states. They’re losing population too. So, the “taxes” meme doesn’t necessarily work here. 

 

This is nothing new – media outlets typically will regurgitate data from right-wing think-tanks with little or no analysis. For instance, the right-wing Tax Foundation’s annual ranking of states by “business climate” routinely places New York near the bottom of the list. Republicans rant and rave about every annual release as a revolving door of justification for their proposed policies and agenda. For 2019, population-losing New York is number 48. Population-losing Louisiana is number 44, But population-gaining California is even worse than New York at 49, and snowy, population-gaining Minnesota is 43. Population-losing Mississippi has the 31st worst business climate. 

McMahon says most of New York’s out-migration is from downstate, and to places like Connecticut and New Jersey. Those two states are numbers 47 and 50, respectively. Incidentally, “Taxachusetts” is number 29. 

For 2019, the state with the best business climate is Wyoming. In case you forgot from the preceding paragraph, Wyoming is one of the states seeing a drop in population. Indeed, this is the third consecutive year that Wyoming’s population has dropped, and the number is 1,200, leaving a population of 577,737 – like New York, also a drop of about 0.2%.  But this is in a state that has only a little more than half the population of Erie County spread out over 97,914 square miles versus Erie County’s 1,277 square miles. 

Next, let’s look at the Empire Center’s data for the entire state. Here is the population tracker for 2010 – 2017. Notice that most losses are from reliably Republican rural counties while notorious Democrat tax-and-spend hellholes like Buffalo, Ithaca, Rochester, Albany, and the tri-state area all have population growth. 

So, while the Unshackle Upstate people are already ON IT, before everyone from Ed Cox on down starts bleating on about New York’s taxes being the proximate cause of some dramatic exodus from New York, note that this year’s drop is an improvement over last year, and obviously based on myriad factors. 

So, if people are moving out of the state that’s 48th-worst in taxation and moving to the state that’s number 50, taxes can’t be the reason. There must be something else. If you look at the map of states, and then the map of New York, you notice that West Virginia, for instance – a mostly rural state with a declining mining industry – sees people moving out, and so do New York’s rural counties. The places that have done a bad job adapting to a post-industrial world are doing poorly – e.g., Chautauqua and Jefferson counties, while the places that are doing a bit better within this new reality see people moving in, like the Capital District and Ithaca. Massachusetts – once derided for its liberal tax and spend policies now shows a gain in population and a reasonable business climate. In 1997, it abolished county governments altogether and now taxes and spending are handled in and through Boston with no unfunded mandates. 

I’m not saying taxes aren’t an issue in New York. You’ll find they’re an issue wherever you go – from Nevada to New Jersey. But the reasons why New York is losing population overall can’t be dumbed down to “hurr durr taxesandspending” like the media and propagandists would have you believe. There are far deeper systemic problems at play – especially in the cesspool of New York politics. The places that are adapting to a post-industrial status quo are faring better than the places that aren’t. 

Allow yourself to believe that – every once in a while – complex issues do not necessarily lend themselves to sound-bite condemnations and declarations. And the more people grasp at the easy-but-incomplete answers, the longer it will take to fix what’s ailing New York’s rural counties.

Preetsmas Update: Mazurek and Pfaff Guilty

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His own felony convictions may have finally ended Conservative Fusion Party operative Steve Pigeon’s yearslong operation to ratfuck western New York Democrats. It’s fair now to call it a crime syndicate. Since Pigeon’s indictment, remnants – stragglers – leftovers have popped up to give the old playbook a try, but in the last few cycles these irrelevant candidates have made no impact whatsoever. Long gone are the days where some shadowy committee would pop up seemingly out of nowhere with six figures’ worth of funding at the ready to destroy and obliterate endorsed Democratic candidates, to considerable Republican and Conservative fusion Party glee.

On Tuesday, two of Pigeon’s top lieutenants pleaded guilty to election law misdemeanors in connection with the rampant fraud and illegality surrounding 2013’s Western New York Progressive Caucus, a/k/a “AwfulPAC”. Pfaff and Mazurek were sentenced to a one-year conditional discharge – a punishment barely registering a figurative slap on the wrist, and unlikely ever to meaningfully deter some budding future criminals from illegally coordinating PAC business with campaigns in the future. 

According to admissions made by the defendants at the time of the plea, from August 2013 through September 2013, Mazurek and Pfaff knowingly and willfully attempted to engage in illegal campaign coordination while acting on behalf of the Western New York Progressive Caucus, an unauthorized political committee, in regard to the nomination for election of an Erie County Legislature candidate in the September 10, 2013 primary. Campaign coordination is a crime under the Election Law. The crime is committed when a person knowingly and willfully, solicits, organizes, or coordinates the activities of an unauthorized committee with the activities of a candidate or the candidate’s agents and where the expenditures made by the unauthorized committee on behalf of the candidate exceed the contribution limit for the candidate’s race. 

On behalf of the Western New York Progressive Caucus, Mazurek and Pfaff sought input from an Erie County legislative candidate with respect to campaign literature and a photo shoot. Western New York Progressive Caucus paid expenses on behalf of the candidate that exceeded the $1,476.50 contribution limit of that race by over $16,500. 

Pigeoning: pi·geon·ing ˈpi-jən-iŋ: (n) the action of using money and influence, oftentimes pushing the election law envelope, to actively sabotage and undermine the Erie County Democratic Committee.

Mazurek entered a guilty plea to an attempted violation of Election Law section 14-126(5), a class A misdemeanor; Pfaff entered a guilty plea to attempted violation of Election Law section 14-126(3), a class B misdemeanor, today before Hon. Donald F. Cerio, Jr., in Erie County Supreme Court. 

The Western New York Progressive Caucus was created by G. Steven Pigeon and Kristy Mazurek in August 2013 as an independent expenditure committee designed to support Democratic candidates in the 2013 Democratic Primary.   

In 2013, Pigeon, Pfaff, and Mazurek created the AwfulPAC in order to raise money and operate campaigns on behalf of several candidates, including Dick Dobson for Sheriff, and Erie County Legislature candidates Rick Zydel and Wes Moore. Pfaff and Mazurek admitted through their plea that they illegally and improperly coordinated PAC and campaign activities and fundraising. Acting Attorney General Barbara Underwood said that the AwfulPAC was created to “skirt the law”. 

I am having a hard time reconciling the clear illegality with the extremely light sentences here. I don’t know how these people can do what they did and get away with it. Small consolation we can call Mazurek and Pfaff convicts. New York voters deserve better. 

Cheap Dishonest Shots at Bob McCarthy

mccarthys

On Saturday afternoon, Erie County’s elected Comptroller tweeted the following: 

I didn’t really have to click through to the linked-to Buffalo News article to know exactly who wrote it and what it was. But, I’m a glutton for punishment, so…

I don’t begrudge Mychajliw – one of the most camera-thirsty pols in town – his puff piece. I’m trying here to understand how the Buffalo News can allow itself to be a platform for unilateral, unchecked propaganda, here masquerading as a news story about an ambitious elected who is ostensibly ruffling feathers in his own party. 

But I got an interesting reaction from one of McCarthy’s former colleagues; someone who runs a non-profit that does investigative journalism locally: 

Has Heaney explained why my “cheap shot” was “dishonest”?

Not yet. Not to me, not to the several other people who rose to defend my terse take.

This isn’t some new, haphazard observation I make with no evidence just to throw rhetorical stones. I have for years pointed out McCarthy’s dependable, friendly stenography for powerful conservative males and his dismissal of females, Democrats, and political figures coming up through the ranks. 

In 2014, for instance, someone – most likely East Aurora political consultant and renowned shitposter Michael Caputo – arranged for McCarthy to accompany Donald Trump on his private 757 to Buffalo. There was a big Erie County GOP fundraiser being held at Salvatore’s and Trump was the marquee guest. McCarthy’s resulting column was pitiful and risible. I mocked it at the time, likening McCarthy’s frequent descriptions of Trump’s gilded plane to objectum sexuality. Passages like: 

Dissecting the strategies of a statewide race around an exquisite oak table is exactly the kind of political scene you might envision involving a top Republican like Donald J. Trump, especially when he’s mulling a challenge to Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo.

But when the conversation takes place thousands of feet above New York State, aboard what he proudly calls “the world’s most luxurious airplane,” you get a sense of just how unique this campaign might be.

and 

So during a Friday afternoon interview with The Buffalo News aboard Trump’s $100 million Boeing 757 en route from New York to Buffalo, the Manhattan real estate mogul laid down his conditions in the clearest language yet.

and 

Trump has no problem dwelling on that “very nice life.” Watching a golf tournament on the 57-inch screen stretching across mid-cabin, he casually drops the fact he has won a string of club championships.

“I’m a good golfer,” he said.

But he also thinks the opulence that surrounds him could prove his point.

“People want to see success; I would like to show my financial statement,” he said. “I’m one of those guys who says let’s make a lot of money so we don’t have to cut, even though I know that last part doesn’t sound very Republican.”

McCarthy challenged nothing Trump said; his attacks on State GOP Chairman Ed Cox were met with nothing. No comment from Cox, nothing even to vet whether or not Trump is a good golfer. It was just raw, uninterrupted Trump proclamations, and a star-struck McCarthy writing it all down, with frequent allusions to Trump’s opulent lifestyle and gold-plated things. 

Fast-forward to this year’s Collins-McMurray race, just a few weeks ago I again criticized McCarthy’s careful efforts to promote the profile and propaganda of male right-wing figures. On just one Sunday, the Buffalo News published no fewer than three ridiculously one-sided, Republican-friendly McCarthy pieces. One – amazingly – about Chris Collins’ indicted son’s wedding still being on. Another was a glowing profile of Chris Collins himself – front page of the Sunday paper. Finally, echoing the 2014 ride-along on the Trump jet, Caputo (probably) set McCarthy up to interview fascist wino Steve Bannon on his limo ride back to Prime Aviation, where the nominal populist would catch his private jet back to Teterboro. Like the coal miners do. 

Despite the fact that Bannon insulted McCarthy’s entire profession as the “opposition party”, (McCarthy didn’t try to rebut this slander), the News scribe dutifully transcribed and spat back at his readership whatever propaganda Bannon wanted out there. No facts were checked, no claims were vetted. He just wrote it all down. Example: 

“Man, [Trump] knows China,” Bannon said. “He knew chapter and verse in 2010 about China. I can’t have that conversation with five guys in Washington. They wouldn’t understand what he was talking about.”

I think anyone who pays even casual attention to the Trump Administration knows that Trump may be many things, but he’s no policy wonk. 

Let’s turn back to what noted local journalist Jim Heaney characterizes as my  “dishonest cheap shot” at McCarthy’s “analysis” of Stefan Mychajliw’s involvement with the Collins campaign

Mychajliw, 45, emphasizes his ubiquitous presence on the campaign trail was aimed at preserving the district for Republicans, and that he worked for other candidates too. But he acknowledges his interest in Washington.

Mychajliw was the Zelig of this congressional campaign season, popping up at opportune moments to shed the “Comptroller” mantle and do a quick-change into a Bannonist neo-fascist spitter of malignant talking points. Literally one day he was using transphobic language to insult County Executive Mark Poloncarz, and the next he was on the radio, falsely accusing Democratic Congressional candidate and Grand Island Supervisor Nate McMurray of threatening him. 

After Collins’ indictment, Mychajliw was loudest among the faux-alt-right crowd ready to enter the fray against McMurray. I wrote, 

The campaign strategy has already been polled and formulated. All they have to do is plug in an avatar for the carefully crafted pro-Trump/anti-Pelosi messaging that attacks family man and in-house corporate lawyer—Democrat Nate McMurray—as some sort of antifa radical. Mychajliw, especially, is trying to paint McMurray as some sort of Marxist guerrilla rebel leader slightly to the left of Che Guevara who will feed you a Venezuelan existence. Imagine: a supporter of Donald Trump’s robotically parroting someone else’s talking point about McMurray’s demeanor. To call it insane would be an grave insult to insane people. 

With his oddly aggressive table reads of this season’s script, Mychajliw pivots awkwardly from his putative 2019 Erie County Executive race by simply replacing “Poloncarz” with “McMurray.” Mychajliw tells you absolutely nothing about what he’s for, except one thing: Donald Trump. They love to invoke Nancy Pelosi, who has as much influence on the average Western New Yorker’s day-to-day life as, say, the Ancient Aliens guy, but these people need to play to the WBEN-listener rubes who hate Democratic women from the coasts, for whom they have choice one-word nicknames. 

Not a word of that is inaccurate. QEMFD. But here comes Bob McCarthy, raising Mychajliw’s profile and setting him up for his special election when Collins gets sent to the slammer. 

But after Collins re-entered the race on Sept. 17, Mychajliw shifted into support mode for him and others. He accompanied Assemblyman David J. DiPietro of East Aurora on his rounds, helped town justice candidates and spent several nights a week working the phones for others – earning political chits that may be someday redeemed.

Imagine the hubris of Stefan Mychajliw – largely unknown outside of Erie County – lending his clout in support of DiPietro and Collins out in the rural counties. This junket as DiPietro’s and Collins’ obedient travel companion was wholly self-serving – Mychajliw hasn’t been a journalist for a decade. His name is not a household word in the easternmost parts of NY-27, and if he’s going to run for NY-27 again, he needs to raise his profile. 

“It was a real eye-opener, to be able to talk to voters every day,” Mychajliw said. “It will make me a better candidate in the future, no doubt about it.

“We’re ready to do it now if the opportunity presents itself,” he added.

Oh, I’ll bet it was. I’ll bet you are. 

Again, let’s go back to Jim Heaney calling me out for my “unfair cheap shot”. Here’s a quote from McCarthy’s Mychajliw piece: 

After raising more than $100,000 in three months for the county campaign, he was already aiming at Poloncarz as a “vulnerable, out-of-touch, liberal extremist.”

“He’s more interested in banning plastic bags, the Paris climate accords and allowing grown men to use the same bathroom as my daughter than anything else,” Mychajliw said in July. “I think Mark has totally checked out.

“I’m telling friends and supporters to stay tuned,” he added.

I think that – apropos of literally nothing – pull-quoting and composting Mychajliw’s most dishonest, transphobic, and outrageous attack on Poloncarz and allowing it to fester there on the page, unchallenged, is dutiful transcription of right-wing talking points. It is a pattern, and it should be pointed out. Oh, sure, McCarthy got on the horn to Paladino, who was pissed at Mychajliw for cutting the line in front of him for the opportunity to run for the Collins seat, but he cleaned it up by running this: 

“I don’t think anyone should begrudge me for wanting to advance a political career,” he said, noting that the local political world “blew up” following Collins’ Aug. 8 indictment.

“Everyone’s plans changed that day,” he said.

Mychajliw is an excellent retail politician, but as Comptroller he doesn’t set policy. He has never, ever served as a representative. He’s never passed or drafted a law, and he’s never really had to set forth a platform of policy positions because that’s simply not what a comptroller does. Call me crazy, but the newspaper reporter might have pointed out that fact. So far, Mychajliw’s only policy is to talk shit about other politicians who take strong stands on policy, and regurgitate things fed to him by campaign consultants. 

And it’s not just Republicans – McCarthy has also been a reliable mouthpiece for Conservative fusion party operative Steve Pigeon. Seriously. Click that link and read that piece I did during the Preetsmas series, as the walls closed in on Pigeon and his collaborators. I wrote,

As recently as May 24th, the Buffalo News’ political columnist, Bob McCarthy, dutifully did Steve Pigeon’s bidding, producing an opinion piece that amounted to faithful stenography of a longtime source’s spin. In this case, it was Pigeon spinning about why he had ended what had until recently been a likely mutually beneficial relationship with a Rochester-based law firm. Pigeon told McCarthy it had nothing to do with any investigation — but the state and federal raids came literally four days later. 

But don’t take my word for it. Ask Angela Marinucci, a Democrat who ran for Erie County Clerk this year against political opportunist Mickey Kearns, 

This is from Marinucci’s expanded comment: 

…let’s review how the Buffalo News treated our race:

I sat in front of the Buffalo News Editorial Board, made up of four 50+ year old white men for 35 minutes explaining my plans for the Clerk’s Office & my opponent’s fiscal irresponsibility. I quoted, without notes, exact statistics & Ed Board comments FROM THE BUFFALO NEWS to show how the office was being mismanaged.

When the Buffalo News endorsed my opponent, they wrote 2 sentences about me – belittled me by calling me a “rookie” & referring to my COLLEGE internships from 15 years ago while praising my opponent’s demonstrably false claims about how he’s running the Clerk’s Office.

Here is how this “rookie” with the college internships contrasts her experience with Kearns’: 

I am a published attorney, graduate of a Tier 1 law school, running for a quasi-legal position who earned the endorsement of our Lieutenant Governor, our County Executive, no less than 7 local town Supervisors / Mayors and 2 Council Presidents, numerous town board members across the county, and many community leaders. My opponent ran on being a former garbage man career politician who was an “independent” voice in Albany because he flip flopped party loyalty so many times.

When Marinucci turns to our mustachioed hero, watch out. 

This morning Bob McCarthy wrote a column once again belittling me. He claims that my opponent won with a “hefty cushion” & said my “last-minute” ads feature me “flipping pancakes”, with no mention of my qualifications which featured prominently in my ads. Apparently, math isn’t Mr. McCarthy’s strong suit. I outraised my opponent & my campaign was able to finance a 2 week TV ad buy as well as a substantial digital buy, more than double what my opponent was able to buy (spending every dollar in his campaign account) – but he did put is smiling face on a racist Willie Horton-style political mailer.

“Reporting” such as this encourages the worst among us. Failing to even acknowledge my credentials is part of the reason why a man commented “Stay home & raise your kids” on an article from the Buffalo News just three days ago saying my race was too close to call. It’s part of the reason why I receive comments & messages on my campaign FB page saying things like “hell no!!!!!!!” & “the only thing going for you is that you’re a woman.”

THIS is why it matter that we have women in positions of power. Shame on Bob McCarthy & shame on the Buffalo News. I am disgusted.

It’s true that I took a “shot” at McCarthy, but the debate here is whether that shot was “cheap” and/or “dishonest”. There’s my explanation; there are the facts that inform my opinion that Bob McCarthy is a dutiful Republican stenographer. Meanwhile, Jim Heaney hasn’t responded to anyone’s request that he explain precisely how my critique of McCarthy was cheap or dishonest. 

Maybe it was Heaney’s unexplained, undefended shot at me that was both cheap and dishonest. 

The #NY27 Count So Far…

ny27

It might be time for The Buffalo News, Channels 2, 4, and 7, WBEN, WBFO, and Spectrum News all to re-visit whether anything is decided in the race for NY-27 between indicted incumbent Republican Chris Collins and Grand Island Supervisor Democrat Nate McMurray. 

On election night, McMurray somewhat clumsily gave a non-concession concession speech, but quickly retracted any such notion after the results showed that Collins maintained an extremely narrow lead in the unofficial machine count. As of right now, Collins is leading McMurray 134,251 to 131,341, a margin of only about 2,910 votes; 49.5% to 48.4%. 

But what happens on election night isn’t necessarily the final count, and that’s becoming quite evident in NY-27. The provisional and absentee ballots cast are not included in those unofficial election night results, and those are just now starting to be counted in the counties to the east of Buffalo. So far, in Ontario and Monroe Counties, sources indicate that the absentee ballots are skewing overwhelmingly pro-McMurray, by double-digit percentage points. I’m told that this has resulted in an overall ~11% narrowing in Collins’ lead – about 320 votes or so. Both McMurray and Collins have lawyers on hand at every canvass to fight for every vote. 

But reports are that there are 18,000 absentee ballots left to count in Erie County alone throughout WNY, and many don’t get touched until Tuesday November 20th. 

Erie County accepted absentees postmarked by November 5th, and military ballots are accepted through the 19th. All election day provisional and machine ballots will be sealed & sequestered on Friday. On Monday, candidates may review all unopened absentee ballots and applications. Objections must be made by 5 pm that day. On Tuesday, Nov. 20 the Erie County BOE will begin opening absentee ballots. On Wednesday, Nov. 21, the final canvass begins. 

So, let’s do some quick & dirty math for those 18,000 outstanding absentee ballots. Let’s assume that to be the number, and let’s assume that they follow the same pattern – about a 15% McMurray lead. 

This is sheer speculation, but indulge me: let’s say the absentees run 65-35 for McMurray;  so the Democrat pulls in 10,350 and Collins racks up 7,650. Add those figures to the unofficial machine counts from election day, and you’re left with Collins’ lead diminishing to 141,901 to 141,691, or just about 200 votes! 

Also, remember that the absentees were largely sent out well before the ostensibly pivotal Trump robocalls on election eve. To the extent that motivated unenthused Republicans to vote, that doesn’t apply to these absentee voters. 

All of this means that it becomes quite clear that Nate Mcmurray has a clear shot at an incredibly narrow victory. There is a path here, and it seems so far to be rather well-paved.

[POST UPDATED to reflect that it is 18,000 absentees throughout the district, not just in Erie County] Stay tuned…

Nate McMurray for Congress

Nate McMurray for Congress (@Nate_McMurray) | Twitter 2018-11-04 18-27-19

Election Day is Tuesday November 6th. Please vote to send Nate McMurray to Congress. 

Nate McMurray is the smartest and most exciting new Democratic politician I’ve seen in this area in a long time. 

This election is, in part, a referendum on Donald Trump and his Republican Party’s chaotic tumble into a nihilistic, eliminationist, and authoritarian movement. There are myriad reasons to be angry and concerned about the direction of the country. The economy may be humming along, for now, but what good is a 3.7% unemployment rate if you’re living under a kakocracy? When tariffs are imposed, violating contracts we’ve entered into with other countries, those are Republican taxes and they’ve already killed not a few jobs. The Trumpian movement is generally billed as some sort of anti-elitist populist movement, but Christopher C. Collins is at the summit of the local Republican suburban elites, and has been for at least 11 years. 

It takes a special sort of either cynicism or stupidity (or both) to perceive and promote Christopher C. Collins as some sort of pro-Trump avatar – a spokesman for the working man, battling against the big-city, coastal elites. 

Regardless of your political affiliation, I ask you please to vote on November 6th for Nate McMurray.

This year, in this race, we have a genuine opportunity to elect a good and smart person to Congress, and to expel someone whose cynicism is eclipsed only by his criminality and lack of any ethical or moral principles. 

Christopher Collins was a lousy one-term County Executive, and he’s been a worse Congressman. He’s been seen on CNN more than he’s been seen in the district. 

Nate is a regular guy from North Tonawanda who hasn’t forgotten where he came from. He grew up poor, worked hard, got an education, went abroad, and bettered himself. He is the embodiment of the American Dream that people used to talk about hopefully, back before the dark times. Before the Empire. (j/k)

He has done better than the generation that preceded him. 

McMurray lived for several years in South Korea, and has a unique perspective as a western New York re-pat who worked for years to open Asian markets up to American exports. He came back to work as in-house counsel at Delaware North, ran for Grand Island town supervisor, and won. He has shaken things up there, and that has, predictably, ruffled some establishment feathers. 

When McMurray jumped into the NY-27 race, it was clear that he had the smarts and the qualifications. So did other candidates, but Nate had also actually ran for – and won – a race. He understood the dynamics of a tough campaign, and had the chops to make waves and get his name out there. He’s also someone who isn’t a hyper-partisan. He works with people from all walks of life, and from all political viewpoints to achieve goals for the common good. It doesn’t matter if it’s a Republican idea or a Democratic one, as long as it’s good. 

The job of a representative is to represent his constituents. That’s difficult to do if he doesn’t make himself available to hear them out. 

I have long said that there’s no sense in running a partisan left Democrat in the Reynolds/Collins district, because that’s not the kind of district this is. There’s no sense, for instance, in running an anti-gun Democrat in a gun-friendly place. It makes no sense to run someone who is reflexively anti-Trump in a district Trump won by double digits. To that end, McMurray fits the bill. He has made many progressives upset with his centrist positions, but McMurray’s pitch this year is a simple one. It’s not about the party label, necessarily. It’s about merit. It’s about the rule of law. It’s about the sort of representative the people in the 27th district deserve to have speak for them in Washington. 

Nate’s not part of some Pelosi mob or Antifa or any of the other stuff Collins has tried to scare people about. I mean, Collins backed Trump. Trump won. Collins has been in Congress for several years. What the hell is he so angry and afraid about? Why can’t he say one positive thing about himself or his record or his President? 

McMurray’s pitch is quite compelling, especially in a district that Chris Collins and Chris Lee before him treated as personal fiefdoms to which they were entailed.  Chris Lee held “telephone town halls” where friendly pre-screened questions were filtered through to the politician, and the whole thing was tightly stage-managed. Never did he show up during the Obamacare debate to listen to his constituents, or to explain to them his thinking. 

Maybe it’s time to stop letting the Erie County Republican Committee select one ethical disaster after another to send to Washington. (Shout-out to Batavia’s David Bellavia, a hyper-partisan but comparatively honorable alternative, whom the Republicans found new and unique ways to overlook and disrespect). 

A Congressman should be accountable to his constituents – not just one November Tuesday every two years, but all the time. McMurray has pledged to hold a town hall meeting somewhere in the district – in person and not censored – every month if elected. McMurray calls it his “transparency pledge“, and he will also release his public schedule in advance to the public, and to introduce a bill requiring candidates to debate their opponents. 

It’s obvious that if the Democrats take the House, NY-27 will be better served with a Democrat in office than Christopher C. Collins. 

The biggest issue facing the average American in NY-27 isn’t some racist scaremongering about immigrants, but things like nstead health care. As Trump and the Republicans erode Obamacare, it has become crystal clear that some other solution is needed to ensure that every American gets the care and coverage he or she needs, without regard to ability to pay. Literally every other industrialized democracy has this figured out, but America has been dithering with this since World War 2. Britain has its NHS, Canada has its Medicare, but Americans still pay exorbitant rates to private companies whose bureaucracies are redundant, and ration care when they’re not resulting in medical bankruptcies.

When you see those milk jugs collecting money at the checkout counter for people’s health care, that’s not a heartwarming thing – that is a moral and ethical (if not medical) disaster. People should not have to rely on alms to pay for chemotherapy or any other care. Not kids, not adults, not seniors – no one. Americans should not have to have anxiety about how they’ll pay for care they and their loved ones need, and GoFundMe is not a substitute for a federal healthcare policy. 

Christopher Collins has voted repeatedly to not only take away or worsen your health insurance coverage, but he has expressly voted for a bill (he never read) that would repeal protections for pre-existing conditions. Nate McMurray will not do any such thing, and has advocated for a single-payer health coverage system to replace the ridiculous, anachronistic, and poor patchwork of coverage that Americans rely on. 

Christopher Collins voted to give himself and his friends at the club massive tax cuts, and this has exploded the deficit. The Republicans propose to pay for this by destroying Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. 

As far as tax policy, this is sheer depravity. 

I could recount and link to all of the negative things I’ve written about Christopher Collins: the articles are many, and the language is salty. But he deserves as much consideration and thought as he has given his vassals and serfs constituents as Lord Collins, Earl of Spaulding representative.  

Think instead on this: not once has Christopher Collins – a man who is under arrest and in custody for 11 felony counts set forth in a federal indictment – asked you for your vote. His every advertisement, his every pronouncement has been to personally destroy Nate McMurray, a guy who’s just running to do better than Collins. 

Chris Collins hasn’t asked you for your vote, because he thinks he deserves it without having to earn it. 

Not once has Christopher Collins set forth his record of achievements that would justify re-election. There’s no mailer or TV ad explaining just what a great job Collins has done for his constituents – or the country. 

Chris Collins isn’t bringing up his record, because the only record he’s got now is a criminal record. 

You would think that Chris Collins – a mad too cowardly to debate his opponent, to scared even to answer questions from High School students – could look his constituents in the eye and make some sort of pitch. Hey, I know you’re not sure about me, but I’ve worked hard for you and your vote matters to me. There won’t be any such ad – no such pitch. He hasn’t worked hard for you, and your vote doesn’t matter to him. He expects it. He expects to win. He is favored to win, despite the fact that the government accuses him of being a crook and a cheat and a liar. 

I’ve seen some Republicans on Collins’ Facebook page respond to critiques having to do with the indictment by saying, “innocent until proven guilty”. Right. Save that for the trial. This is politics, and the accusation itself is bad enough. The same crowd that screams “lock him [or her] up!” at the bare mention of any Democrats’ name – ostensibly for the crime of being a Democrat – has no standing to whine about the presumption of innocence. 

What other crimes do Collins supporters think befit a public official? 

Seriously, I ask that question because if a Democrat so much as sneezes weird, these people turn it into years’ worth of congressional investigations, but they’re willing to vote for a crook because he won’t take away their guns? 

Nate McMurray won’t take away your guns. He isn’t a fan of the SAFE Act. Every story the Republicans have fed you about McMurray being anti-Second Amendment are lies. 

In fact, Nate McMurray still retains his right to bear arms. Chris Collins relinquished his when he had to turn in his passport. 

The point here is that the job of a Representative is to serve the people – not just to do the constituent services piece, but also to help formulate federal policy, draft laws, and to listen. Christopher Collins has never listened to any non-Republican, and he’s seldom listened to anyone who hasn’t paid to be in his presence. Nate McMurray listens to people regardless of their political affiliation, because he wants to serve responsibly and responsively

I think it is especially important for a Democrat representing the 27th to stand there and hold himself accountable to his Republican constituents. I know Nate McMurray is up to the task, and that he won’t let us down. More importantly, I know that Nate McMurray genuinely cares about the direction of WNY because he has kids to raise here. He has work to do here. He wants to be a partner with Brian Higgins to ensure that the federal government is working for us, not against us. 

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