Author: buffalopundit

What better way to celebrate the Christmas season than to assail an idiotic thing that soon-to-be Trump ’16 NYS chair Carl Paladino sent around to his flock, and a ridiculous letter to the editor of the Buffalo News?

Carl and Marx

I tried to hunt down the opening quote, but the only place it shows up is on conservative blogs and sites re-printing this very post.

That quote I underlined in red for Marx: there’s no evidence that Marx ever wrote or said any such thing. At best, it appears to be a juvenile paraphrasing of Ronald Reagan’s, “freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction”. Karl Marx said a lot of things, but not too many on the subject of “freedom”. Indeed, when he did touch on “freedom”, it was within the context of class struggle and the relative freedoms of the proletariat vs. the bourgeoisie. If one looks back to the crises of capitalism that bookeneded the 1920s and, which exists in our post-2008 crash world today, we see that Marx warned of growing concentration of wealth at the very top of the social classes, and that this would lead to proletarian anger and revolt. To a certain degree, that explains the appeal of Trump and Sanders in a country that doesn’t go in for coups d’etat.

So, Carl Paladino kicks off his regurgitation of an email forward with a quote that Marx never said or wrote, but why bother checking?

The story goes on to explain how you can attract wild pigs by throwing free food at them, and then gradually pen them in while they’re busy feeding. This is a handy way to set up your anti-Obama analogy, and also to denigrate the poor and blame them for their own misery by likening them to wild animals. The email ends,

The young man then told the professor that is exactly what he sees happening in America. The government keeps pushing us toward Communism/Socialism and keeps spreading the free corn out in the form of programs such as supplemental income, tax credit for unearned income, tax exemptions, tobacco subsidies, dairy subsidies, payments not to plant crops (CRP), welfare entitlements, medicine, drugs, etc., while we continually lose our freedoms, just a little at a time.

One should always remember two truths:

There is no such thing as a free lunch, and you can never hire someone to provide a service for you cheaper than you can do it yourself.

If you see that all of this wonderful government “help” is a problem confronting the future of democracy in America, you might want to share this with your friends.

If you think the free ride is essential to your way of life, then you will probably not share this.

BUT, God help us all when the gate slams shut!

Quote for today: “The problems we face today are there because the people who work for a living are now outnumbered.”

So, let’s say you’re dying and in hospice, and it’s covered by Medicare. That’s you being a wild pig losing your freedom.

Perhaps you’re a cancer patient on a subsidized health insurance plan under Obamacare. You receiving chemotherapy covered by your health insurance, as opposed to million-dollar bills and medical bankruptcy: that’s you getting penned in with your free lunch.

If you’re a poor black kid who has the misfortune of being a student in the shoddily run school system over which Mr. Paladino presides, your education, your subsidized lunch, your Medicaid – that’s you losing your freedom. Freedom, I assume, to be uneducated and hungry.

If you’ve engaged in “estate planning” to sell off your elderly parent’s belongings to qualify her for Medicaid, in order that the state will cover a $50,000/month nursing home bill – you’re just a wild hog, too.

Did you notice the line about “tax exemptions”? I guess that makes Carl a wild pig, too, for every project he builds that gets an IDA grant, or pays a payment in lieu of taxes (PILOT)  instead of straight-up property and school taxes.

Paladino, however, modified that “quote for today” at the end in order to mimic a common right-wing radio trope:

You can pick at that all day – from the clumsy use of pronouns to the idea that some people vote in order to maintain their free ride through life. In a way, that might explain Mr. Paladino’s own political theater. This is a guy who wages childish verbal wars with alleged “RINOs”, but he’s all too happy to donate money to Democrats when there’s a freebie or benefit in it for him.

The KISS Dentist on Transgenders

Cheektowaga’s Eric Schroeder is better-known as the “KISS” Dentist on Harlem Road. He has strong opinions about what a school board a few towns away is up to:

The parents of the Hamburg School District should be outraged. For the School Board to take one minute to determine a “transgender” policy shows the lack of consideration to the rest of the students, parents and staff.

No, they shouldn’t be outraged at all. As a matter of fact, the parents in Hamburg should be relieved that their school board has the reading comprehension and critical thinking skills to see that the state Education Department’s gender identity policy protects not only the transgender and gender non-conforming students, but all students. You can read more about it at this post.

Children today are already horribly oversexualized, and allowing mixed sexes in bathrooms and locker rooms is just plain wrong. In any grade, there is no reason to let girls into boys locker rooms or boys into girls locker rooms. If this were done in any other public institutions, it wouldn’t stand. How does this stand in our public schools?

This gets back to one of the points I made in my earlier post: the people equating transgender and gender non-conforming kids to simple cross-dressers have it all wrong. Kids don’t just get to decide one day that they’re going to use a different bathroom or locker room. Hell, for all Dr. Schroeder knows, there might be a transgender male using the locker room at his gym as we speak.

Whether kids today are any more or less “horribly oversexualized” than any prior generation is, I suppose, up for debate. But if you equate bathrooms or locker rooms with sex, maybe you’re the one who needs to get right in the head.

This kind of sexual exposure is in line with endangering the welfare of a child and violates parents’ rights and responsibilities to their children. If I were a parent in Hamburg or any other district that put forth such nonsense, there would be the start of a class action lawsuit for endangering the welfare of my child.

“Endangering the welfare of a child” is a crime, not grounds for a civil action, much less a class action. If our dentist friend had bothered to read the text of the policy as it relates to locker rooms, he’d have found this: “[t]he district will allow a transgender or GNC (gender non-conforming) student to use the restroom and locker room that corresponds to the student’s consistently expressed gender identity at school. Any student requesting increased privacy or other accommodations when using bathrooms or locker rooms will be provided with a safe and adequate alternative, but they will not be required to use that alternative.” Did you see that text I highlighted there? ANY student. So, if a Hamburg student or parent has a problem with this, they can request an alternative.

Catering to one or a small group of people is bad enough. Now School Board members are listening to young children, full of confusion and raging hormones, rather than their own reason and the parents who pay school taxes.

You know, the fact that you pay school taxes doesn’t give you some license to override or decide every policy you don’t like. In this case, the Cheektowaga dentist does not pay Hamburg school taxes, as far as I can tell. Also, this isn’t up to the school board to implement; the board makes the policy, the administration carries it out. It’s up to the principals and teachers to figure out how best to implement the policy and make whatever accommodations are necessary in order to guarantee the comfort of “any student”. What the dentist would like to say, but doesn’t have the stones to, is that he thinks transgender is all bullshit. I don’t really understand why more people don’t just come right out and say that, rather than dancing around a lot of weasel-words worse than any lawyer could muster. After all, these are the same characters who think political correctness is leading to the destruction of western civilization.

I’d like so see my tax dollars go to educating the kids of today about our rich and exceptional history, the great things we have sacrificed and done for other countries and the world. Shifting the thought process to something as ridiculous as “transgenderism” in such young children is a disservice to all and needs to come to an end.

This guy made it through dental school? This is a policy to deal with an issue that already exists. It has nothing to do with the school curriculum; a curriculum that is replete with courses and credits dedicated to American exceptionalism.

In doing annual battle against anti-school crusaders in my own town, I see these sorts of semi-informed arguments all the time.  I see the elevation of tax payment to a level surpassing that of student, teacher, parent, or average citizen. I see the appeals based on misinformation. I see the vacant wishes that the school curricula would teach something already being taught whilst anti-tax sentiment cuts things like music and extracurricular activities.

No other government is required to submit its budget to annual scrutiny and plebiscite like this. Only schools. And here, where schools are being asked to carry out the law and ensure fair and equitable treatment for all students while balancing that against the needs and rights of a microscopically small minority, complete strangers take to the pages of the Buffalo News and excrete words that promote division, hatred, and discrimination.

It’s the Christmas season – the holiday season, really, if you think that Jews, Muslims, and people who celebrate Kwanzaa count. I would hope that cour community could do a better job of celebrating peace on Earth and goodwill to all people than by transmitting nonsense such as that reproduced above.

The 1st Amendment is a shield against governmental interference with speech, but it can also be wielded like a clumsy, blunt sword by people looking to make a quick buck or attain some level of notoriety without doing the work needed to earn it.

Among the menagerie of western New York media outlets is one so irresponsibly full of shit, so palpably and unironically packed with lies and falsehoods, that it doesn’t deserve even the ignominy of this piece. Aside from being mostly fictitious, poorly spelled, clumsily written (e.g., “profuse” and “profound” aren’t synonyms) gibberish, it has a title that lends itself a sheen of credibility such that the unwary can think they’re reading something legitimate or trustworthy.

This week, hundreds got suckered. Even famed education activist Diane Ravitch:

Doubtlessly, loads of people are salivating over the possibility that Andrew Cuomo might be next on U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara’s hit list; however, there are glaring errors that should have immediately rung the bullshit bell for someone of Ravitch’s stature.

Feelings. 

Federal prosecutors don’t make decisions about bringing corruption charges against a public official – much less a sitting Governor – because they “feel” anything. Bharara isn’t going to prosecute Andrew Cuomo because he “feels emboldened” after winning a conviction against Silver “on all of seven” [sic] corruption charges. The jury didn’t convict Silver because of a public “appetite” to see corrupt officials go to jail; they convicted him because the prosecution presented evidence and testimony that proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Silver had committed these crimes. The jury, as the finder of fact, then applied the law per the judge’s instructions, and found Silver guilty. Federal criminal prosecutions don’t hinge on a jury’s attitude, or on a jury’s measurement of public sentiment – they are determined by evidence and the law. To suggest otherwise is ignorant.

Phantom Anonymous Sources

Three sources “confirmed” this? Who are they? Why did they choose to be anonymous? Why did the author choose to grant them this anonymity? Where do these people work, and how did they attain the necessary information needed to “confirm” anything? Do they work with prosecutors? In the administration? Are they staffers? Legislators? Law enforcement?

Have a Cursory Knowledge of Law and Procedure

Prosecutors like Mr. Bharara, by the way, don’t “indict” anyone. Grand juries indict. The prosecution presents evidence and testimony to a grand jury, which then determines whether probable cause exists to charge the target with a crime; if yes, it returns an indictment and the defendant is arrested and charged. Here’s a link to the grand jury indictment of Sheldon Silver. The U.S. Attorney controls the process, but he doesn’t have the foresight to determine the date on which an indictment may come down, nor is he guaranteed of an indictment at all.

Also, January 1st is a holiday and January 2nd is a Saturday. Grand juries aren’t going to be in court to indict anyone on either day. It’s all fantasy.

If you’re unable to confirm “widespread rumors” that other people may also be indicted, then it’s wholly irresponsible to name them. That’s defamation.

Details Matter

“Thought to be guilty”. Is this real life? Maybe say someone accuses him of obstruction of justice, or something along those lines, but guilt is determined by a jury after a trial, not by a blogger. What actions did Schwartz take “in the hours immediately following Bharara’s confiscation of Moreland Commission documents?” Bharara had to subpoena the Moreland documents – he couldn’t just “confiscate” them, and Schwartz is accused of meddling in the issuance of a subpoena to “Buying Time”, a media firm that Cuomo’s campaign had used, as well as generally interfering on and monitoring the Moreland Commission’s actions.

If Schwartz is accused of somehow not complying with a federal subpoena, or destroying evidence, that’s something that likely would have been raised by prosecutors by now.

One of the three sources is an Albany insider? Then I’m going to guess the three: Al Coppola, a guy who once parked Carl’s car, and Joe Mascia.

This is all speculative BS, completely devoid of facts or journalistic integrity, that merely hurls accusations of crimes around at people. “Longtime Albany insider” could mean anything and nothing. Ultimately, the article is fantasy pushed as fact, yet its falsity is evident from its lack of a basic understanding of how the criminal justice system works. It’s like spreading a rumor that Brian Higgins is leaving Congress – completely false with no basis in reality; someone’s wishful thinking. Yet what’s Higgins to do? Dignify that with a denial and response? Hire a lawyer and spend thousands to sue?

Remember the old quip: a lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.

Social media isn’t real life.

I think people tend to forget that from time to time. In a lot of ways, what people post to social media isn’t necessarily the truth, but life and opinions glimpsed through various filters.

Last week, Erie County Legislator Joe Lorigo took to social media to demand that Mark Poloncarz, “reverse his stance” on welcoming Syrian refugees to Erie County. I reacted to that in some detail in this piece. There, I was wrong about something very important that shouldn’t be overlooked. I wrote, “[w]atch Monday as his colleagues in the majority caucus inevitably echo his clarion call; people with no say over the matter demanding that another guy with no say over the matter do something.”

That’s not at all what happened.

Indeed, Lorigo was silent pretty much all week in advance of a meeting of the legislature that took place Thursday. He had a surrogate or two battling valiantly in his corner on social media all week, but there was nary a peep from other high-ranking Republicans or elected officials, with the notable exception of Republican Legislator Kevin Hardwick, who told WBEN that “[t]o shut the door on these people doesn’t seem like a very American thing to do. You’re balancing your own security versus what you should do as an American. It’s a difficult thing to balance.”

No one backed Lorigo. There were whispers all week about saving face; saving Lorigo from himself. Amendments were offered that toned down the more outrageous rhetoric in Lorigo’s resolution, and the legislature ended up voting to hold an information session, rather than agreeing to hold a three-top public hearing circus.

Brian Brown-Cashdollar – speaking for himself and not in his official capacity as the Development Director for Buffalo’s International Institute, one of several local refugee resettlement agencies – wrote an open letter to Lorigo on Friday, 

…if you expect to be treated seriously, then you should conduct yourself in a serious manner. Security concerns addressed by serious people are handled quietly. If you were sincerely concerned about the safety of your constituents, you would have contacted the County Executive privately. You would have approached Homeland Security and the State Department privately and inquired about the threats posed by refugees being resettled to the Western New York.

You would have learned the sad migration taking place in Europe has nothing in common with the refugee resettlement process in the United States. And increasingly it’s looking like it had nothing to do with the attacks in Paris either. You would have learned that refugees coming to the US are more rigorously screened than any other population of arriving immigrants. You would have learned since 9/11 there have been approximately three instances where the security professionals had concerns about the adequacy of the screening procedures, and they quietly slowed, limited, and after 9/11 temporarily halted the admission of refugees. You would have learned that procedures were adjusted and resettlement resumed, bringing much needed talent and energy to our communities. This has always been handled responsibly, respectfully, and discretely.

That gets to the heart of the matter – is any of this out of genuine security concerns, or is this all about politics? We know that a very slight majority of Americans say they support admission of Syrian refugees through the resettlement program, and Congress just passed a bill halting any refugees from being resettled in the United States from Syria or Iraq until some as-yet-undefined security assessment is certified as to every one. Never before – not after 9/11, nor in 2011 – has the refugee resettlement process or the admission of refugees been so starkly politicized.

In large part, this politicized hysteria over Syrian refugee resettlement in the United States is designed by conservatives to promote two distinct threads: 1. that Democrats are willing knowingly to put Americans at risk (although the supposed rationale is never articulated); and 2. that Obama is an un-American foreigner more concerned with _____ than _______. The second is an old yarn that dances in step to the traditional explicit and implied charges that Obama is fundamentally not “American” enough. The first echoes the charges brought against people who opposed the Iraq war – that they were un-Patriotic; that they were traitors. It’s a short walk from “freedom fries” to today’s reflexive, reactionary hysteria.

We have resettled refugees for years without incident – we have accepted refugees from enemy countries like Lebanon, the Soviet Union, and from war-torn, terrorist-filled places like Iraq. We’ve taken them in especially from places like Vietnam, where our own involvement helped bring about the crisis. Even in the very rare instances where someone turned out to be bad, no bad acts occurred. The edifice that the anti-immigrant populists have erected is emblazoned with, “Daesh will infiltrate the Syrian migrants”. This is true; however, as I wrote earlier, the legal, regulatory, geographic reality for migrants in Europe is completely different for those selected for resettlement in the United States. In fact, it can be argued that Daesh/ISIS, as currently consitituted, did not even exist when the current refugees arriving from Syria first applied for resettlement. It is also palpably true that terrorists don’t have to – and won’t – wait to undergo a strenuous and lengthy refugee resettlement process to enter the U.S. when anyone with a Belgian or French passport can travel here as a tourist without first obtaining a visa.

The people who have left Syria in the last few months and who are now applying for refugee status are not yet in the U.S., and won’t be for two years while their identities are ascertained and their security risk determined. Clearly, people whose identities can’t be verified won’t be let in. The refugee resettlement program is to a great extent handled here in the U.S. by faith-based organizations. The Catholic Bishops and the Evangelicals have already condemned the ban on – and scapegoating of – refugees from Syria, some of whom are Christian, many of whom are intact family units. They don’t endure 2 years in a refugee camp in Jordan with their kids just so they can come here and be part of a sleeper cell.

If people think that there are security holes in the vetting process, that is, I suppose, news to everyone who does this on a daily basis. If genuine concerns exist, certainly a pause – much less an outright ban – is not necessary for intelligence agencies to do something more to make changes or enhancements to the process. Some of the more extreme suggestions I’ve seen online or heard on local hate radio – for instance, that we round Muslims up in camps, or deport them, or require them to be registered with the government and carry a special ID, are downright anti-American and on their face violative of the Constitution.

Local AM talk radio has been unlistenably irresponsible and packed with lies. Tom Bauerle said that there were no families among the Syrian refugees – that it was all men of military age. That’s not true. I heard that these refugees are “pedestrian blitzkrieg”. That’s not true. I heard that this is an “invasion”. That’s not true. I heard that Muslim countries weren’t taking them in. That’s not true – in fact, Turkey has taken 2.2 million refugees, and Lebanon has taken 1.1 million. Jordan is sheltering 1.4 million. When Tom Bauerle – who has spent the better part of the week as a human thesaurus re-expressing how he doesn’t want Syrian refugees, “in my country” – has to admonish regular caller “Rambo Jim” to cool it with the Holocaust boxcars-for-Muslims scenarios, you know that a rhetorical, political, legal, rational, and human line has been flagrantly crossed.

Towards the end of an obnoxiously reactionary week, people on a Southwest flight had a fellow passenger detained prior to a flight because he committed the crime of speaking Arabic. The pizza maker was chatting with a friend and someone felt “uncomfortable”. The man called police, and was ultimately allowed on the flight. He also committed the crime of holding a white box, and had to prove to his fellow passengers that he was flying with baklava. He shared it with these people.

Pizza shop owner Maher Khalil emigrated from Palestine 15 years ago. He says he had never experienced discrimination before the incident Wednesday at Midway International Airport.

“We came to America to have a better life,” Khalil explained on Friday. “Everybody in America is from different countries. I’m one of them. I’m an American citizen.”

…”I swear, I never had that feeling before,” Khalil said. “I felt like we’re not safe no more in this country. Because I’m Arab, I cannot ride the airplane? The person who complained is the one who should be kicked out, not me.”

We’re on a precipice – the question is whether we jump or begin walking this anti-American madness back.

Europe has taken under 300,000 refugees, and France has re-stated its commitment to take 30,000 of them in spite of last week’s attacks. The United States was on track to accept 10,000 of them (propagandists are accusing Obama of 10x or 30x that). The screening protocol is well-documented, multi-faceted, and extremely thorough. They work in conjunction with local resettlement programs. The refugees we see in Europe – the ones described on the radio as an “invasion” – come from Syria to Europe by raft or by land. They can’t do that to reach the U.S. It’s turned out so far that exactly zero of the Paris attackers was Syrian – all of them were French or Belgian and could, ostensibly, board a flight to the US on any given day, without a visa.

Perhaps the most craven local political hypocrite of all is Representative Chris Collins. When asked about halting the resettlement of Syrian refugees, he said, “I’d rather err on the side of safety. Safety first, second and third.”  When confronted with the fact that the perpetrators of the Paris attacks held Belgian passports, he said, “he didn’t want to disrupt international travel. ‘One thing we can’t do,’ he said, ‘is overreact in a way that would make ISIS very happy.’”

The problem is that the scapegoating of Syrian refugees – including Kurds and Christians – makes ISIS, “very happy” indeed. More importantly, our gun laws are so lax that, so far, 2,043 people on the FBI’s terror watch list have been legally allowed to purchase guns in this country. “The National Instant Criminal Background Check System, which is used to clear gun purchases, is not cross-referenced with the FBI’s list of potential terrorists.” Republicans, backed by the NRA, have consistently failed and refused to close this significant loophole, thus putting the lie to all of their self-righteous bleating about security.

In response to that, Collins says it’s a “red herring”, and that, “[i]t goes back to the liberal left’s thought that you can legislate against bad people.” Sort of like voting for a “pause” to re-assess the security and identity process used to resettle Syrian refugees in order to prevent terrorists from gaining entry to the U.S.

If we’re assessing risks, the greater risk is that our domestic intelligence services don’t know enough about Belgian or French terrorists whose passports enable them easy travel to the US. The risk isn’t from families awaiting resettlement screening, but from disaffected, unemployed Belgian youth of Algerian or Moroccan extraction who are on a French watch list but not an American one, and who hold a passport from a visa waiver country. What we should be doing is growing our intelligence sharing with European allies and shoring up our surveillance, human, and signals intelligence as it relates to anyone seeking entry to the United States via any means.

But from a political standpoint, I don’t think that conservatives pushing the refugee-scapegoating meme have property thought out how this all affects their position on gun control generally. In the wake of myriad recent mass shootings, gun control advocates have called for strengthening of our background checks, closing of loopholes, and uniformity of regulations in order to better prevent bad people from obtaining firearms. While the overwhelming majority of gun owners are law-abiding and responsible, we should put controls in place to protect Americans from preventable gun violence. The NRA and other gun advocacy groups oppose any tightening of these regulations as violative of a legally inaccurate, absolutist interpretation of the 2nd Amendment.

But if we have to implement stricter background checks on Syrian refugees to protect against the small number who might seek to do us harm, mustn’t the same argument be valid when it comes to reasonable gun control measures?

While everyone was paying close attention Thursday to a county legislature debating amendments to a toothless piece of irrelevant paper, everyone overlooked something that passed unanimously. The Legislature authorized County Executive Poloncarz to enter into a contract with the NYS Office of Indigent Legal Services to accept a state grant of $1.35 million, and to contract with the Erie County Bar Association’s Volunteer Lawyer’s Project to deliver the servcies anticipated under that grant.

The grant specifically expands the county’s ability to provide legal representation in criminal and family court matters to indigent non-citizen, immigrant persons in Erie County. This specific grant is put in place to ensure that indigent defendants are represented adequately where criminal and immigration matters intersect.

What this means is that, on the same day that the county legislature wasted time responding toothlessly to a remote possibility that refugees might commit bad acts, it expressly authorized the use of state funds to represent immigrants who were already accused of actually having commited them.

Ultimately, the blood libel that Democrats or liberals are willing to put Americans at risk is beneath our discourse, and the time for politicizing security fell from the skies 14 years ago.

We can do a hell of a lot better than what’s happened over the last week. In response to terror in France, we succumbed to fear and unfounded political reaction. In 1941, FDR declared that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. In blaming the victims of ISIS for ISIS’ crimes, we indict the very notion of what America is supposed to be, and for what it is supposed to stand.