Tag: Paul Dyster

Loanshark Politics and Other Things

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Endorsements will come tomorrow both in text and by way of a Trending Buffalo podcast I’m recording with Brad Riter and Artvoice editor Geoff Kelly today. 

In the meantime,

1. Donn Esmonde is still an ass – whether he’s touting Congressman Brian Higgins being a good guy for agreeing with Donn Esmonde, and embracing “quicker, lighter, cheaper” on the waterfront – because “fast, big & grand” is never, ever something to which any community should aspire. Good enough is good enough in Goodenoughistan. Also, Preservationist Tom Yots is a great guy because he’s going to help save a church that all of you – yes you – suburb dwellers single-handedly decimated with your flight from the neighborhood. 

2. Paul Wolf says that Niagara Falls’ trouble troika are being reasonable by asking questions about developer Mark Hamister’s $25 million + plan to develop a mixed-use hotel development near the Falls State Park. 

Asking questions is one thing. From everything I’ve heard from people who have been involved in politics for a long, long time, this city government is uniquely dysfunctional and corrupt. So much so that it makes any other dysfunctional and corrupt government entity look like Switzerland by comparison.

The reason why an appraisal is stupid here is that the city got the land for free, because there’s nothing on it whatsoever, and because it is surrounded by squalor, vacancies, and something that looks like it was airlifted from Fordham Road in the Bronx. The Falls are a couple of blocks away, but the culinary institute (which is not promoted in any way on any approach to the city) is directly across the street.

This is a city that has ceded acres of prime real estate to a NYC-based land speculator who is still patiently waiting to actually do something, and thus leaving acres of prime real estate empty and unattractive.

Niagara Falls Redevelopment redevelops nothing, and these three clowns sit there and ask nothing. Hamister comes to town (he owns and operates hotels, btw) with a plan and all they have to do is sell him a parcel of land for $100k and they get actual redevelopment.

Let’s kill that. Clearly, empty lots and vacant haunted wax museums are the highest and best uses for property in and around the neglected flash cube.

3. Marc Odien does a pretty good job connecting a lot of the disparate dots underscoring this season’s political double-dealing and corruption. It’s all about who gets to pick whom for patronage jobs, and it’s about bad people kicking money back to each other. This comes from the Facebook page of Falls Mayor Paul Dyster (I’ve shortened the links): 

One more time from the top if you missed links from the previous posts:

Top petitioner for Fruscione was Louis D. Turchiarelli, 3248 Seneca Street, Apt. 10, West Seneca, NY 14224. Six sheets of 25 each on 6/29-30.

On petitioner Louis: http://bit.ly/14y7HD5 & http://bit.ly/1ajCJO6

And on pollster father Don: http://bit.ly/17PpXCF

Father, son and firm Gia Consulting use same address.

Payment to Gia Consulting (could be for petitioning, push polling or both) from Sam Fruscione from 32 day pre-primary report ($1k): http://bit.ly/1evdpY6

Anderson and Chooklokian also use Gia.

Payment to Gia Consulting from WNY Progressive Caucus from 11-day pre-primary ($4k): http://bit.ly/15PP738

3248 Seneca St.–same address as Turchiarelli used on petitions.

From prisoner locator website: http://1.usa.gov/18OD8Vl : Served two years and was fined $1,500.

In case you didn’t click any of them: 

A man who had been active in Buffalo politics was sentenced Monday to two years in federal prison for threatening physical violence to collect a Rochester gambling debt.

Louis D. Turchiarelli, 38, of California Street, pleaded guilty to using extortion to collect an extension of credit. FBI agents arrested him last year after learning of threats against a Rochester man who owed $18,000 to bookmakers.

A former professional boxer, Turchiarelli had been a longtime Democratic Party activist in Buffalo before his legal problems. He resigned as the party’s West Side zone chairman about two months after his arrest. In September 2005, he ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic nomination for Erie County legislator in the 6th District. He also lost a 2003 primary contest for Niagara District Common Council member.

A federal judge in Rochester sentenced Turchiarelli to two years in prison and ordered him to pay a $1,500 fine, Assistant U.S. Attorney Brett A. Harvey said.

The three responsible question-askers on the Niagara Falls city council are retaining the professional services of convicts. Good government, it’s not. 

Dyster Refuses to Appear in Entercom Promotional Skit

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This morning, our local morning conservative advocacy radio station “News” radio station ambushed Niagara Falls Mayor Paul Dyster in-studio. Mohawk radio commentator John Kane was also in-studio because he happens to host a native American themed radio show on another Entercom-owned AM radio station, WWKB. (Kane’s is one of the only locally-produced shows on KB). Kane is outspoken in his support of Indian causes, and has been blisteringly critical of various New York State bureaucrats and elected officials. 

Dyster wasn’t told there’d be a debate, wasn’t told he’d be attacked or criticized, and appeared simply to discuss the deal the Senecas reached with the State yesterday, which will release $89 million in withheld Seneca casino payments to the City of Niagara Falls. 

As with all litigation and adversarial proceedings, the parties were not seeing eye-to-eye during the process, and things were done and said that have now been excused, forgiven, compromised, and set aside. With yesterday’s settlement, Cuomo went so far as to acknowledge that the state had done the Senecas wrong, and everyone walked away happy with the outcome. 

Except John Kane, who spent the morning seated next to the Niagara Falls mayor, accusing Dyster of having behaved horribly, and otherwise relitigating the last several years’ worth of conflict that another Indian Nation had been engaged in with the State of New York and City of Niagara Falls. Dyster hadn’t come there to be insulted or falsely accused. 

No longer a News outlet, WBEN has actively made itself and its fellow Entercom employee part of the story. 

My God, the mullet : news ratio is way too high at Entercom. But surely the bright and intelligent folks who listen to conservative talk radio have nothing but reasonable, conservative things to say about it all? 

Chris Clinton and Edwin Rajewski obviously don’t like DEMONcrats like Paul Dyster, but they go so far as to change Dyster’s name to “Dykster”, invoking a word used to express hatred and homophobia to homosexual females. That seems irrelevant, doesn’t it? Given WBEN’s penchant for reading idiotic Facebook posts on the radio, (including, but not limited, to the tragic sadness of having morning straight-news anchor Susan Rose reading “el-oh-el” over the air), why weren’t the “Dykester” comments given that treatment? 

But lo, here comes Erie County resident and anti-Maziarz, anti-Cuomo concern-troll John L. “Rus” Thompson – the first name in compromise and diplomacy. 

What I know is that you usually show enough deference to an elected official to let him know when he’s walking into an ambush on live radio. What I know is that it is bad form to relitigate all the real and perceived slights you’ve absorbed during an adversarial process in public, on the air, the day after a compromise settlement has been reached; especially if the person doing the relitigating wasn’t part of the dispute in the first place. 

Mayor Dyster could have sat there and taken insult after insult from some radio guy doing promotion on Entercom for his Entercom show, but he was not wrong in getting up and letting the station know that he hadn’t agreed to that.

UPDATE: to underscore that this was little more than an Entercom-generated publicity stunt for a show no one listens to, read Entercom operations director (and Susan Rose’s husband’s) obnoxious admission that Dyster was ambushed, and praising his radio host for turning himself and the station into the story.