Author: buffalopundit

Merry Preetsmas

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Steve-PigeonOn the first day of Preetmas, my true love gave to me: a search warrant for Pigeon and Casey.

Thursday, May 28 at midday, state police and FBI agents executed search warrants at the homes of three prominent political figures: lobbyist Steve Pigeon, former Buffalo Deputy Mayor Steve Casey, and Representative Chris Collins’s chief of staff, Chris Grant.

All of this raises more questions than answers.

These raids seem to be the culmination of a two-year-long series of inquiries into the activities of Western New York Progressive Caucus, a campaign committee directed by Pigeon that was active in 2013 Erie County races. People in the know believe that the point of prosecutorial entry for all of this—in addition to the likelihood WNYPC bank records betray some skullduggery—has to do with improper PAC coordination with campaigns, and with possible phantom billings to campaigns. For instance, if you’re a politician and you have a huge warchest, you can’t spend that money for any non-political purpose. But what if you contracted with a printing shop to do palmcards or mailers, and money changes hands for work that’s never done? You send me a bill, I’ll pay the bill. The non-printing printer gets a kickback, the cash goes off into the ether, having been essentially laundered.

What other connections are there? Back in 2014, before the state took over the investigation, the county Board of Elections had subpoenaed several businesses that supplied the WNYPC, and some were less forthcoming than others. One in particular—Marketing Technologies—did not respond to a subpoena and the board had to move in Supreme Court to enforce it. At a hearing with Judge Troutman, a representative from Marketing Technologies claimed that he could not obey the subpoena for email records because they had been destroyed, but did provide invoices. In open court, he testified that his point of contact for the WNYPC mailers that his shop produced was Deputy Mayor Steve Casey. This was during a supposed “truce” between City Hall and Democratic HQ. Sources close to the county investigation reveal that David Pfaff’s name kept coming up in connection with mailers and the WNYPC’s BOE filings. Pfaff is now a staffer for Senator Panepinto, and one observer calls the effort to land Pfaff a job—any job—as “frantic”, raising questions about whether that frenzy had to do with placating a potential witness.

Go read this article about the Seneca Mall project, which seems to be at least part of the unifying thread with all of this WNYPC business. Now, why would the Syracuse-based developer of that West Seneca project, Scott Congel, need to engage the assistance and services of all of these politically connected people simply to build some sort of lifestyle center/shopping mall on a piece of derelict West Seneca property? Congel hired Steve Casey to run the project, Pigeon is a consultant, Golisano’s name was brought up when the site was suggested as a Bills stadium site—it doesn’t make any sense. One longtime political observer posits this explanation: Congel retaining Seneca Nation lobbyist Pigeon, and putting Casey on the payroll; getting Tim Kennedy re-elected as he battled Betty Jean Grant—why would that be necessary?

Moving the Buffalo Creek Casino to the I-90 mainline corridor.

In order to move the Buffalo Creek Casino to a more prominent spot along in West Seneca, you would need approval from the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and you would ultimately need sign-off from the Mayor of Buffalo and the Governor of the State of New York. That’s where Casey and Pigeon come in; both have influence where it counts. If you wanted to move the casino, you need buy-in, obviously, from the Senecas themselves. Pigeon now lobbies for the Seneca Nation, and don’t forget that the Senecas invested heavily in Kennedy’s own re-election campaign. From 2011—2013, Tim Kennedy’s campaign has been the seventh largest recipient of Seneca Nation money: ($73,850), and the proposed Congel project is what was until very recently Kennedy’s district. Kennedy wrote a letter opposing the idea of a non-Indian Finger Lakes casino. Although the West Seneca site is no longer in Kennedy’s district, he does maintain a rather active political profile in that town, and is close to the supervisor, Sheila Meegan. Meegan is the daughter of Christopher Walsh, a former chair of the West Seneca Democratic Committee, and considered to be a political father figure to Steve Pigeon.

The financial bonanza of a project of this scope and size would be huge for everyone involved. This doesn’t, however, explain why Chris Grant’s house was also searched.

This should be somewhat contextualized, so here’s just a small taste of the history at play.

In 2008, Steve Pigeon set up a PAC as part of an effort to oust political foe Sam Hoyt from the state Assembly. The PAC spent tons of money mailing horrible things about Hoyt to voters—the material was so inflammatory that it ultimately backfired, causing voters to sympathize with Hoyt rather than revile him.

In 2009, Pigeon and his benefactor/client Tom Golisano set up the hilariously misnamed “Responsible New York”, which brought about a coup in the State Senate and elevated convicted criminals Pedro Espada and Hiram Monserratte’s to its leadership. In 2010, a similar coup was executed in the Erie County Legislature, handing a majority Democratic body over to Republican then-County Executive Chris Collins on a silver platter. It was that coup that helped propel Tim Kennedy to the state Senate.

In 2013, Pigeon and erstwhile political commentator Kristy Mazurek set up the WNY Progressive Caucus.  It was set up as a PAC—the election law doesn’t use that term, but as an unauthorized committee, the WNYPC could raise and spend money to donate to specific campaigns, but was not allowed to coordinate with them, or spend money on their behalf. I called it “AwfulPAC”. In early September 2013, just weeks before primary day, the WNYPC paid for thousands of pieces of literature to be mailed to voters, slamming legislative candidates backed by party headquarters—most notably Tim Hogues, Betty Jean Grant, Wynnie Fisher, and Lynn Dearmyer. For example, one piece of WNYPC lit slammed Hogues for being a “Republican” and promoted the candidacy of his challenger, Barbara Miller-Williams—a woman who quite literally conspired with Republicans to execute the aforementioned 2010 coup.

WNYPC’s disclosures were not complete.  WNYPC’s financial recordkeeping was so sloppy that it seemed to be hiding potential illegality. The bricklayer’s union barely had the $25,000 the WNYPC reported to have received from them, and did not itself report any such donation. The WNYPC reported that State Senator Tim Kennedy had donated $40,000 from a long-defunct campaign account. The head of that bricklayer’s union retired just a few months ago.  For a time, it showed the PAC to be in the red—a big no-no. Disclosures came in late, were inaccurate or misleading, in one instance showing a donation from a different, long-dormant Pigeon-associated PAC, Democratic Action. What was odd about that purported $9,000 donation from Democratic Action was that it did not disclose any outflow of money during the same 2013 cycle, and had most recently showed a fund balance of $2,400 and a concomitant “no activity” report with the Board of Elections.

In the Erie County Sheriff’s race, the WNYPC candidate Dick Dobson embarrassed Bert Dunn on primary night. Dunn decided to waste his money and run on a tailor-made third party line, unsuccessfully. WNYPC abandoned Dobson, however, during the general election. There was an unaccounted-for $20,000 that was paid to “Buying Time, LLC” for Dick Dobson ads, which was later claimed to have been a payment reportedly made by AJ Wholesalers directly to Buying Time on the WNYPC’s behalf.  

Buying Time is associated with Governor Andrew Cuomo. So associated, in fact, that the New York Times reported that it was sniffing around Buying Time that prompted Cuomo’s office to begin interfering with the work of the shortly-thereafter-disbanded Moreland Commission on Public Corruption. 

Aside from Barbara Miller-Williams, none of Pigeon’s and Mazurek’s legislative candidates won in September 2013, so she used Michael Caputo’s PoliticsWNY.com to smear Wynnie Fisher, who had defeated Mazurek’s candidate, Wes Moore.  Apparently, Fisher and her neighbors don’t get along, so a story was planted accusing Fisher of being crazy.

The problem was that the letter from Fisher’s neighbors that was the purported source of the story was sent to Wes Moore at an address in Lancaster. But Moore’s campaign committee was based in the Nanulas’ offices in Clarence. The Lancaster address was a house on Doris Avenue where Mazurek was living, and which also served as the mailing address for WNYPC. There was, on its face, a smoking gun of coordination. How and why would Wynnie Fisher’s neighbors decide to send a letter to an address for Wes Moore that didn’t exist in nature?

In late September 2013, Tim Hogues and Betty Jean Grant, with an assist from anti-Pigeon transparency advocate Mark Sacha, filed a formal complaint with the New York State Board of Elections, accusing Pigeon, Mazurek, and WNYPC of various illegalities and violations of campaign finance law. After the Erie County Board of Elections resolved to investigate the complaint, it was turned over to the state BOE, which in turn appears to have turned it over to the Attorney General’s office and State Police. Once an investigation such as this is put into the hands of people outside of Buffalo, you know that the threat of shenanigans is decreased exponentially. Police interviewed several people at the county legislature, as well as at least a couple of the headquarters-backed 2013 Democratic candidates for county legislature. Subpoenas. Search warrants. Forensic accountants. If even a small percentage of the rumors you’ve likely heard are true, the banking records should tell all.

Make no mistake: The news of these search warrants being executed measures a 10.0 on the political Richter scale. It also raises more questions than answers:

1. How far back does this go? Could it go as far back as the 2010 Pigeon-engineered Chris Collins coup of the county legislature? The 2008 effort against Hoyt?

2. How far out does this go? Does it implicate the bricklayer’s union? Tim Kennedy? This property abuts Conservative Party chairman Ralph Lorigo’s—could he be targeted? Was it Seneca money that Pigeon marshaled to fund the PAC? There’s a reason the Buffalo News’ article about this project was penned by Bob McCarthy and not someone on the business or development beat. Could this reach the Governor? The other two men in that room are already under arrest.

3. Chris Grant? Maybe has to do with the 2010 coup? The Buffalo News reports that Grant and Steve Casey operated a printing shop together, but my sources tell me Grant and Steve Casey started a consultancy business that had more to do with voter data gathering and analysis. It had also been rumored that Grant worked on the mayor’s campaign in 2013, which would have put him in constant contact with Casey. Indeed, Collins and Grant attended a Brown fundraiser in 2009. Did you catch Collins’ dismissal of Pigeon in the Buffalo News?

“Anyone in Western New York knows that Steve Pigeon has never been a financial supporter of my congressional campaigns,” the congressman said. “Steve is a political operative who has been active in Western New York politics for decades. I was certainly aware there has been an investigation of him ongoing for some time.”

I mean, Pigeon only helped engineer the coup that handed you the county legislature in 2010, but let’s pretend you never heard of the guy. Also: note the limitation to “congressional campaigns” and the glaring omission of state office campaigns.

4. Kristy Mazurek, who acted as the WNYPC’s treasurer: Was her home searched? If so, why wasn’t it reported? If not, why not? She’s reportedly retained Joel Daniels to represent her, and one doesn’t do that lightly. Certainly if there are questions about financial improprieties and improper collusion, she would be a prime target. Is she cooperating with law enforcement? Has she already turned everything over?

5. Who else is implicated, directly or indirectly? NYSUT’s Mike Deely? Senator Marc Panepinto? Mayor Byron Brown? Amherst Councilman Mark Manna? What other candidates with ties to Pigeon and the WNYPC are being targeted? What about Tom Golisano and Pyramid’s Scott Congel? When BAK USA took Golisano’s money, and the owners were photographed with Pigeon and Mazurek, I had flashbacks to this Soprano’s storyline, it seemed that seedy to me.

6. Just last weekend, the Buffalo News’ Bob McCarthy dutifully transcribed Steve Pigeon’s purported rationale for leaving his job with a local law firm, noting that he is now the chief lobbyist for the Seneca Nation of Indians. Remember the West Seneca parcel Steve Casey now manages for Scott Congel was once floated as a site for a new Bills stadium before renderings went out showing off an entire mixed-use community? For his part, Congel was in talks with Pigeon’s clients, the Senecas, about bringing a casino to one of his Rochester properties in mid-2013, during the WNYPC’s heyday.

No one’s been arrested, but three simultaneous raids of the homes of prominent political actors underscores the seriousness and wide scope of this investigation. For the first time, motivated, disinterested, and aggressive action is being taken on serious allegations surrounding campaign finance in western New York. The limited Erie County BOE investigation has morphed into something that calls for the intervention of state and federal law enforcement, and one has to imagine prosecutorial ducks are already in a row long before this sort of action is taken.

Could this be the beginning of a deep clean of Erie County politics? Hope and change never seemed so close.

One Lancaster

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The controversy over Lancaster High School’s anachronistic, racist “Redskins” mascot was resolved by unanimous vote of that district’s school board. There was some outcry and protestation, and two of the most vocal opponents of the change were elected to the school board last week. The students, for their part, are in the process of selecting a new mascot via plebiscite.

It’s sort of how the world is supposed to work – controversy arises, a decision is made, the decision has consequences, the community moves forward, end of story.

One might say, “that’s the way the cookie crumbles”.

Indeed, someone did, in the Lancaster High School’s yearbook, and that page enabled race-baiting radio station, the voice of threatened white Buffalo WBEN to gain just a few precious extra minutes of a controversy that ended long ago.

A yearbook is generally assembled and written by students, who are overseen by faculty advisors. It’s their project, and is intended to, among other things, memorialize big events that happened during the preceding school year. It’s not a stretch to suggest that the mascot flap was a big deal and deserved some sort of mention in the yearbook. As long as a yearbook entry isn’t palpably obscene, profane, or otherwise objectionable, there would be no reason for something the students picked to be omitted.

The page has offended some of the more delicate residents of Lancaster because its heading is, “that’s the way the cookie crumbles”.  This breach of political correctness has Lancaster residents threatening violence.

One caller to WBEN’s Tom Bauerle called it a joke. “If my kid brought that book home, I’d take it up to (that school) and bash it over the adviser’s head. That’s what every parent should do,” says that caller.

Another caller says whoever wrote the headline wanted to divide the community again.

“The taxpayers and the students are owed an explanation, and should get the name of the person responsible for this,” says Debbie. “I don’t know what’s on the backside of the page, but if it’s something owners of the yearbook can live without, take that page, rip and out and leave it in the superintendent’s office.”

I mean, that seems reasonable. You’re so incensed by the abandonment of a racist team mascot that being reminded of it causes you to threaten violence – and the radio station re-publishes your threat on its website.

If you read the text of the offending yearbook page (seriously – re-read that – adults are whining to a radio station about a yearbook page) it’s promoting the Lancaster Educational and Alumni Fund (LEAF) and its efforts to combat the notion that Lancaster is a town divided over a mascot. Hopefully because of how childish and ridululous the preceding sentence sounds. As to the offending “cookie” crumble, one woman commenting on Facebook noted that,

School board had nothing to do with the “One Lancaster” shirt. It was created by a few well-meaning teachers (actually in favor of keeping the Redskins name) in an attempt to preserve the enthusiastic spirit and camaraderie for which their school had always been known. The “cookie crumbling,” while perhaps a poor choice of wording given the emotions surrounding this issue, was part of an overall yearbook “menu” theme. Not well thought out? Perhaps. “Slap in the face” intentions? Very doubtful. A little digging into the back story may have prevented another round of getting people on both sides riled up.

Tom Bauerle said it was a big “f u” to the “taxpayers” of Lancaster. Not so fast, I guess, since “taxpayers” aren’t the intended audience for a yearbook, and because it was simply a tongue-in-cheek continuation of the publication’s “menu” meme.

The bottom line is this. The people in Lancaster who supported keeping the racist mascot name denounced their opponents for being overly sensitive, politically correct, or worse. Yet they have a full-blown local media hissy fit over the use of the phrase, “that’s how the cookie crumbles”? You can’t have it both ways and denounce what you consider to be others’ hypersensitivity while being hypersensitive yourself. But as one of Lancaster’s new school board members says,

Some nominal adults in Lancaster – and at the local “newsradio” station – have some growing up to do.

Tale of Two Buffalos

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Photo by Joe Cascio via www.canalsidebuffalo.com

Photo by Joe Cascio via www.canalsidebuffalo.com

Things are happening in Buffalo. Good things. Renaissance-y things.

The county’s public art partnership with the Albright Knox has brought us the wonderful Shark Girl, Silent Poets, and You Are Beautiful.

Out of every 150 murders in Buffalo, there are no arrests.

The notion of “beer-related development” is a real thing, as we see from Big Ditch, Resurgence, and Community Beer Works.

Buffalo teachers have been without a new contract for 11 years, and picketed in front of Carl Paladino’s home. To his credit, Mr. Paladino bought the teachers pizza and took it all in uncharacteristically good humor.

Canalside is hopping, and giving people from all over the region an excuse to come downtown.  That waterfront area had been a dilapidated parking lot sitting in the shadow of a long-abandoned hockey arena.

The tower formerly known as HSBC boasted a 90%+ occupancy rate in 2005. Now, it’s 5%, and the building is in foreclosure – Buffalo’s most prominent distressed property.

Gondola over the Skyway! #Buffalove! Restaurants! Bike ferry! Buffalo leads the nation in nanogolf, foot golf, and “Bubble Soccer“!

A majority of Buffalo’s children live in poverty.

The state’s education department got around to replacing the feckless John King with MaryEllen Elia, a western New York native who was fired from her most recent job in Florida and may be a more test-obsessed “reformer” than her predecessor.

A great many residential rental and hotel projects have popped up downtown in recent years, thanks to historic tax credits. They have been credited with revitalizing long-dormant neighborhoods and reversing squalor.

The school district is in disarray, preoccupied with personal and political acrimony rather than education.

Anecdotally, we’re told that millennials hate cars and suburbs, and are choosing to move into the city, fueling its revival.

Since 2010, the City of Buffalo has lost 2,700 residents. The county, by contrast, has gained 3,800 residents in that time. Amherst alone has seen a gain of 2,400 people. This population growth in Erie County represents a reversal of 40+ years of decline, fueled at least in part by new immigrants to our area.

If you want real evidence of a regional renaissance – not the edifice of faux revival, or twee things to distract the well-to-do – but the actual, quantifiable and sustainable indicia of revival, look at the jobs data. Buffalo-Niagara has seen strong growth in private sector employment, and the upstate unemployment rate is lower than the national average at 5.1%. In just the last calendar year, 8,100 new jobs were created in our region.

We have a lot of work to do in terms of crime, education, and ensuring that our economic good times are widely applicable. We have schools to fix, neighborhoods to rebuild, and kids to educate. Blue bikes and paddle boats won’t lift families out of poverty – but jobs will.

Former Clarence Councilman Weiss Issues Threat Outside Elementary School Event

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Joe Weiss is a ThugHanding out palmcards outside of a polling place is one of the less controversial things one can do within the context of a campaign. Unless you’re in Clarence.

On several occasions, a pro-school group was given a stern talking-to because people were leaving palmcards around inside the polling place. Well, that’s nice, dear, but that’s not the problem of the people handing out the palm cards – it’s a problem for the people running the vote and they should be on top of that sort of thing.

Handing out palmcards is pretty much standard operating procedure outside of any polling place in any competitive race, and is explicitly permitted by law outside the 100′ exclusion area. It is incumbent on the people receiving the cards to follow the rules inside the polling place, but no one was electioneering inside or within 100′ of the polling place. Perhaps it’s time for the legislature or the Board of Elections to clarify the rule affecting a clearly protected 1st Amendment activity.

But the highlight of my day came as I was passing out palmcards as families were making their way from an elementary school track meet next to the polling place. I was chatting with two 15 year-old student volunteers when a taller man dressed like a fake lumberjack ambled his way right up to me. I asked him if he was on his way in to vote and he said that he wasn’t, and asked me what my name was.

I told him, and he came even closer – his body touching mine, ever so tenderly, and got right in my face. He declared that I had once told him to “go fuck [him]self” in an email a few years ago. I responded, “Did I?” He said, “Yeah.” I said, “Are you [former Clarence town councilmember] Joe Weiss?”  He replied, “Yeah. and I want to tell you to go fuck yourself”. I thanked him, never backing down from where I stood, and as he skulked away I added, “nice language around the kids.”

He stopped, turned, and said, “You know, I really should kick the shit out of you right now”.

I replied, arms outstretched, “Really? Go for it. Because I can’t wait to own everything you own.” His best reply was, “Yeah, it’s a lot more than you own.” and I replied by calling him a true treasure for the community.

This morning, I went through all of my email accounts. Not only have I never emailed Joe Weiss, I never sent an email about Joe Weiss telling him to “go fuck” himself. I never wrote anything – ever – to or about Joe Weiss suggesting that he “go fuck” himself. Here is a link to the only blog posts naming Joe Weiss that I have ever written. Here’s one more. None of them tell Joe Weiss to do anything to himself. I did call him “sinister” and that he was behaving in one instance like a “wanna-be mafioso”. Sort of like how he comported himself outside the elementary school track meet.

Clarence is lucky to have disinfected itself of this horrifically noxious juvenile – a despicable weasel who believes the rules don’t apply to him.

Pursuant to the Clarence Central School District’s code of conduct,

All persons on school property or attending a school function, including athletic events, shall conduct themselves in a respectful and orderly manner.

No person, either alone or with others, shall:

1. Intentionally injure any person or threaten to do so.

…All visitors are expected to abide by the rules for public conduct on school property contained in this Code of Conduct

It’s amazing that a grown man attending an elementary school event at a high school track would – like some street thug – threaten another adult with physical violence. Joe Weiss once famously said that the “masses are asses”, but I guess he was really just projecting all that time.

Perhaps as a perfect coda, the Clarence Republican Committee voted last night to endorse councilmember Pat Casilio for supervisor over incumbent David Hartzell, whom Weiss helped defeat Supervisor Scott Bylewski in 2011. I mean, that was quick. It also endorsed newcomer Chris Greene over incumbent Bernie Kolber. Evidently this is because Kolber, who had a Kathy Weppner sign in front of his office and has peppered his truck with all manner of anti-Obama bumper stickers (including, but not limited to, “Got a Birth Certificate?”) isn’t Republican enough.

As for Weiss, I will refer the matter to the authorities and the school, in the hope that Weiss is held accountable for his unreasonable and puerile conduct.

Suburban School Voters: Vote Smart Today!

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IMG_2912 - Windows Photo Viewer 2015-05-19 11.08.04There’s a light at the end of the tunnel as nervous parents, kids, and teachers cross their fingers and hope that school budgets are passed and that good people are elected to school boards throughout western New York’s rural and suburban districts.

Today is Tuesday, and the polls are open.

In my own town of Clarence, a dedicated and selfless group of parents have banded together since the bleakness of 2012 and formed a reasonable well-oiled campaign machine that we hope delivers us victory tonight. I don’t know what it is about Clarence that makes it so susceptible to last-throe gurgles from the tea party, but alas, here we are again. In my town we have four candidates for two open school board seats, and I always harken back to the blissful time before I had to pay attention, and recall that I always voted in favor of the school budget, but seldom knew whom to select for the board. This year, it was even more important because the differences between the pro-school and anti-school candidates is so stark.

Our group endorses and supports Michael Fuchs and Dennis Priore. Michael Fuchs is an incumbent and has served the district and its students and faculty well. He is against unsustainable cuts to educational opportunity for our kids, and wants to restore the district to its former excellence. He has worked for Rich Products for well over a decade, handling the finances of a huge local corporation. He has the skills, education, experience, and integrity to continue serving us well for the next 3 years. Dennis Priore is a longtime resident of Clarence and a former principal and school administrator. As a recent retiree, he has time, knowledge, experience, education, and skills to marshal in order to serve our district. He knows how budgets and union negotiations are made, and he has pledged to balance the needs of the students with the expectations of taxpayers.  They’re also the only candidates running for school board who are homeowners and school taxpayers. With a stake in the district and an investment in the community, they won’t let the students be further harmed by financial shenanigans or disastrous tea party austerity.

We’re hopeful.

But if that wasn’t enough, take a look at one of their opponent’s closing argument. (The other opponent is fundamentally unelectable). It perfectly distills all of the reasons why he is an unacceptable and noxious candidate for a school board. Uneducated, inexperienced, with absolutely no credentials or resume, this person is all bluster and no substance.

Let’s examine. (All [sic]).

Here are your CTA Endorsed Candidates for this election. The teachers union likes to say that they are “supporting our students” or “fighting for the children”. It’s just as absurd to say the Iron Workers fight for steel, the UAW fights for cars and the Operating Engineers fight for heavy equipment. The unions exist solely for the benefit of their members and their own interest. The school board exists to represent the people of this town. The CTA does not need representation on the school board. They have things like the Triborough Amendment in place to stack the deck against students and taxpayers. If you think that the endorsement of these candidates by the CTA shows that these candidates put students and taxpayers first, you are sadly mistaken.

It takes a special brand of malevolent cynicism to conclude that the teachers are full of shit when they say they’re fighting for the children whom they teach. It takes an even more special type of ignorant, noxious attitude to assume that teachers are just in it for greed – the same attitude as the Buffalo News’ editorial page or its union-member, married-to-a-teacher resident hypocrite columnist Donn “throw you under the bus” Esmonde.

Here’s the thing that Joe Lombardo doesn’t understand – mostly because he evidently never so much as received an associate’s degree after high school (his resume is a closely guarded secret he won’t reveal) – teachers didn’t attend 4 years of college and then an additional few years of postgraduate study to obtain their M.S. and teaching certificate in order to get rich.

If they wanted to get rich, they could have gotten an MBA and traded commodities, or become entrepreneurs. Instead, they joined a noble profession for which Joe Lombardo has no respect.

None.

Some 20-something punk kid who lives with mommy and daddy decides he doesn’t like unions or teachers, (or teachers’ unions), so he just accuses them all of being greedy pigs at the public trough, driving around in their Bentleys on their $60,000 median salaries, right? They couldn’t possibly be in it for the love of teaching or the thrill of educating and molding young minds, because that sort of notion is not one that Lombardo has any concept of.

An ironworker may be proud of the work that he or she does – constructing the skeletons of large buildings, and their union helps to ensure that they’re paid a fair wage and receive decent benefits for their labor. A UAW member is proud of the product that he or she helps to manufacture, and wants to make sure that they’re paid a fair wage and receive fair benefits for their labor.

A teacher is proud of the work that he or she does – educating the next generation of Americans. Educating the kids who will heal Joe Lombardo when he’s sick; who will represent him in court; who will manage or create the company he patronizes; who will entertain him on stage or screen; who will score a touchdown or hit a home run. You denigrate teachers, you denigrate the very foundation of our society.

The veracity of unions in our schools is really taking its toll on student opportunities and taxpayer’s wallets.

That is not a sentence that has any reasonable meaning in the English language. Which taxpayer’s wallet? “Veracity” means truthfulness.

It’s such a blatant and rampant problem that even polar opposites such as Governor Cuomo and myself, recognize what’s going on. http://www.nydailynews.com/…/andrew-cuomo-rips-teacher-unio… Don’t be mislead by two candidates and a group of people who have established that they stand with an industry that collects $220 million annually to perpetuate and expand a gluttonous and overly generous contract in the name of education.

Here’s the question they’ll never, ever answer: How much do you think is a fair salary for a teacher? What do you think are fair benefits for a teacher? How would you – as a school board member – make changes to the state laws governing teacher pensions? How would you work around the Triborough Amendment and beat the teachers into submitting to your austerity wage cuts and slashing of benefits?

85% of Clarence teachers are ranked as “highly effective” by the state.  On what insane lunatic planet does someone institute punitive wage and salary cuts against a workforce that regularly exceeds expectations? Shall we have an army of the worst teachers who can’t get a job anywhere else come and educate our kids for $10/hour and no benefits?

It’s been shown time in and time out, that they put themselves ahead of everyone else, while sacrificing opportunities for students.

I’ll say it this way: Joe Lombardo must not have ever talked to a teacher and actually asked them what their job entails. He assumes they show up at 8, leave at 3, take summers off on the Cote d’Azure, and spend the rest of their time making sure their BMWs gleam in the sunlight. I’ll say it this way, too: Joe Lombardo doesn’t know what the fuck he’s talking about.

School districts have lost all bargaining power because entrenched politicians are paid off to write laws where the union will always come out the winner.

And as a school board member in a small suburban district, you’ll do what about that, precisely? Start a coup?

As a taxpayer, a resident, a parent or a student, you only have two choices in this election tomorrow.

That’s right. Michael Fuchs and Dennis Priore, if you’re in Clarence. They’re the only two candidates who are campaigning on a platform of stronger schools, rather than demonizing the very teachers who help make our district what it is today; they’re the only candidates who don’t refer to teachers as “gluttonous,” or use the pronoun “they” to describe these educators who repeatedly and consistently go above and beyond for our kids; They’re the only candidates who aren’t pitting “us” against “them”.  Literally – read Joe’s thing again. It’s all resentment, class warfare, and visceral hatred of teachers, and the notion that they be remunerated fairly. They’re the only ones who aren’t afraid to put their resumes out there for the public to review and assess.

I don’t know how much more a ragtag grassroots team of fed-up parents can do to mobilize for a school vote, and we’ve done everything we can think of. We can only hope our district gets out of this unscathed, and that similarly situated districts have equally positive outcomes.

Fingers crossed. Knock on wood.

Pity Poor Donn Esmonde

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Colin Dabkowski 2015-05-15 05-41-10Brad Riter, David Anderson, and I recorded a podcast on Thursday over at Trending Buffalo, where we examine and discuss the recent slew of Facebook videos from disgruntled Buffalo News staffers over their contract negotiations.

Anderson took issue broadly with the entire, “we’re asked to do more with less” argument, but I reserve my ire for Donn Esmonde, who has the audacity to whine about his pay at a paper from which he took a buyout and was then re-hired part-time. I reserve my bile and vitriol for Donn Esmonde, whose ruddy Robert Redford looks and Long Island accent are as annoying and grating as his hypocrisy. Long-time readers will recall that, two years ago, Esmonde denigrated and mocked Clarence teachers for earning pay and benefits. He portrayed them as greedy bastards who should basically make what a McDonalds burger-flipper makes.

You can listen here. It’s filled with expletives. So sorry. 

The Illusion of Albany

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3menI’m expounding a bit here on conversations I had Wednesday with people in the know. Recent events in Albany, namely the indictments of former all-powerful Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and the indictment of former also-powerful Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos, have given hope to some that U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara is power-washing Albany’s filth and corruption, and that things might actually change.

Others lament just how little clout western New York has in Albany, and that with the exception of fawning attention from a governor who wants to add “turned Buffalo around” to his resume, we get scant attention from our state government, save the odd ribbon-cutting.

As for the former, consider that new speaker Carl Heastie and new senate leader John Flanagan are widely rumored simply to be puppets of their respective predecessors. Consider why it was that, at a secret meeting, Senate Republicans chose a fellow Long Islander to replace Skelos, over a Central New Yorker. Even Cathy Young of Olean backed Flanagan in exchange for a vague guarantee about changing the totemic NY SAFE Act. The Bronx’s Heastie, too, shares a general geographical similarity to his predecessor, Manhattan’s Lower East Side’s Silver. Nothing has changed but the faces and names – it’s all just transparent artifice and fakery.

Indeed, Flanagan has already told people not to expect any more of what Albany desperately needs – ethics reforms. Whatever mild reforms Albany made in recent months are too little, too late as it is, and an effort to close the notorious LLC loophole, which allows individuals to bypass campaign giving maximums, has died in committee.

More to the point, the quashing of Senator Dan Squadron’s bill to close the LLC loophole is courtesy of WNY’s own Senator Mike Ranzenhofer, who killed it in his corporations committee.

As for WNY’s lost clout, consider that any outsider coming here to campaign or raise money must tiptoe through a field of dog crap in order to do so. There is quite literally no way to come into WNY outside the area and not offend one of our many “mean girls” factions. Like middle school, you have to have pre-selected a clique, and be especially aware of whom you meet with first, because presumably all of this minutae matters to someone. When the hopeful pol boards his JetBlue flight the hell out of here, his shoes are encrusted with dog excrement.

There is nothing new under the sun, and there is no reform or significant change coming. Albany will stay corrupt and corruptable until there is some underlying incentive to undertake serious and widespread reforms – structural reforms like abolishing electoral fusion and eliminating the LLC loophole. Western New York will continue to argue amongst itself and fight over scraps, because anything else would seem too effective for our collective taste.

5 Years Later, Tea Party Wants to Re-litigate Carl’s Emails

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news_0The tea party have decided to come after me. Bereft of ideas, strategy, or success, this ragtag grouping of political nobodies have decided to accuse me of a “fraudulent email scam”, going on to suggest that I “admitted” to having “fabricated” some emails way back in 2009 in order to do some sort of political harm to then-Deputy Mayor Steve Casey.

All of this is so outrageous and untrue as to be defamation per se, insofar as it specifically accuses me of fraud.

It’s quite odd that this is coming up now, and I can only attribute it to the fact that Jul Thompson is friends with the woman who is running the effort to kill Clarence schools. The post accuses me of perpetrating a fraud; i.e., that I somehow manufactured and concocted Carl Paladino’s XXX-rated and racist emails from 2010. The post was posted Monday to a tea party blog run by Jul Thompson, the wife of Carl’s driver, John “Rus” Thompson.

Immediately after the post was brought to my attention – around 1pm Monday – I called Rus’ cell phone and left a message. I have not heard back. I also left a comment at the blog post; it remains unpublished, stuck in the moderation queue, (note that the time stamp is wrong, and I likely posted it at 1:27 pm).

I posted a quick response yesterday to buffalopundit.com, but let me be clear: I am a lawyer. To fabricate emails and accuse anyone else of sending them would, frankly, put my license to practice law at jeopardy. I don’t put my livelihood at risk for anyone or anything – not to bring down Carl Paladino or Steve Casey or Byron Brown or Steve Pigeon or anyone. So, let’s operate under this singular assumption:  Jul Thompson is a liar. While I may be a public figure, she is accusing me of fraud – a crime – and that is libel per se.

Here is my reply to the false and defamatory blog post: 

Have you ever known someone who leaves a wake of destruction behind them? Case in point, Alan Bedenko, liberal blogger, formerly wrote for ArtVoice, then left with Jeff Kelly and other staff to write for The Public, another liberal rag.

*Geoff Kelly. But never mind.

I sat with a friend today and shared with her my frustrations over my inability to persuade Carl Paladino’s Campaign for Governor in 2010 to answer the ridiculous charge that he was a racist, which were predicated upon emails Bedenko fabricated to “take him out” of the race against Andrew “2nd-Amendment-be-damned” Cuomo. As I attempted to provide her with some documentation to that effect, I found this little gem below, that I had never seen before. I had, at the time, shared the article from the Niagara Falls Reporter in which Bedenko had admitted to having fabricated some emails to sully the reputation of then (real) Mayor of Buffalo Steve Casey.

Let’s be 100% clear here. I have never fabricated any emails to sully the reputation of Steve Casey, or of Byron Brown. I have never fabricated any emails to anyone, anywhere, and I have never fabricated any emails about – or from – Carl Paladino.  Anyone suggesting that I did (or that I would) is a liar. 

I am prepared – at any time – to produce the emails in question to anyone, provided that my source’s identity remains protected. 

I don’t know the author but he is spot-on.

[I omitted here a lengthy paean to Carl Paladino, the savior and messiah of the Buffalo School system].

If I had a million dollars… I would sue the pants off of Alan Bedenko, challenge him to take a lie detector test and let him perjure himself in a court of law. Carl Paladino is one of the finest men I’ve ever known, and he, students and families of the Buffalo Public Schools and the people of New York deserve far better than being lied to by a nutcase on a liberal jihad and held hostage by the race-baiters of the School Board and the Buffalo Teachers Union. It’s a rare bird with “intestinal fortitude” that would subject himself to the outrageous and unrelenting bogus accusations of racism. We who know Carl, know that he is making an enormous sacrifice committing himself to this otherwise impossible task. He has given up his precious time, reputation and personal comfort because he cares so deeply for raising the level of achievement and providing a better future for the residents and families of the City of Buffalo. Jul Thompson Founder, TEA New York

Jul: Presumably Carl can provide you with the filing fee to sue me. I mean, you wouldn’t have standing to sue me, and Carl’s well past the one-year statute of limitations to do so. If I had fabricated those emails – you know, the racist, pornographic emails that Carl had sent and forwarded, including the one showing a horse having anal sex with a human female – why didn’t Carl go ahead and sue me back in 2010? 2011? 2012? 2013? Go ask any of Carl’s bigshot buddies whether he sent them. Ask Jamie Moses. Ask Larry Quinn. I can give you more names, if you want – names of people who might not necessarily be public figures. Email me at buffalopundit[at]gmail.com and I will give you a list of the names of people who received the pornographic and racist emails that Carl sent. Any time.  The reason why Carl never sued me? He sent them. They’re his.

Mrs. Thompson went on to regurgitate a 5 year-old blog post from a guy I contacted on Twitter yesterday. Here is the relevant exchange:

Could some of the Paladino e-mails been forgeries? This, and other questions, that the Albany press refuses to ask by Jerry Myrle Fuller Sunday, April 18, 2010 (Note: Most of you know that I am not a reporter by trade or training, and that my area of expertise is meteorology, so if this reads like a first-person journal entry, that is part of the reason. It seems to flow a little better that way.) By now, most of you have heard about the e-mail leak from a liberal blog known as wnymedia.net that purports, in big letters, to be displaying the scandalous “racist and sexist e-mails” put forth by Buffalo developer and Republican gubernatorial candidate Carl P. Paladino. Immediately I became suspicious. The article asserted that the e-mails were real with all the authority of a Facebook chain message. So, I did some research. Initially, this article was going to be a plain old rant about how this state seems to treat upstate politicians with a lot less respect than downstaters, pointing out the curious parallel between this and Chris Collins’s alleged “lap dance” comments that were unverifiable and blown way out of proportion, killing his proposed campaign for governor. It is no coincidence that both came from Buffalo, and it is also no coincidence that it has been decades since the state of New York has had a governor from the upstate region. However, I began to notice something: while for a few days, it appeared that Paladino’s campaign would indeed go down in flames, as would-be supporters ranging from Curtis Sliwa to Mark Williams disavowed him over the controversy, something funny happened: Paladino’s die-hard supporters rallied around him harder than ever. Paladino has a strong cult following, with passionate and outspoken supporters– something I really don’t see outside the political class for Lazio or Levy. They began to see the outrage over the e-mails as over the top. This led to wnymedia.net trying to push its rebuttal and insist that Carl Paladino was a dirty racist unfit for the office of governor of New York. So, I looked into wnymedia.net– specifically Alan Bedenko, the man who portrays himself as “buffalopundit–” to see who this guy was. To put it bluntly, he’s an ambulance chaser (i.e., an auto injury attorney) who joined the Democratic Party in 2003. Having sporadically read his commentary, he’s always been fairly strongly liberal. This was relatively mundane information, but then I stumbled on a little item from the Niagara Falls Reporter (a local alternative tabloid in the Niagara Falls area) that had something eerily familiar. The article dates to February 2009 and stems from an unrelated e-mail feud between Sam Hoyt and Buffalo City Hall (my emphasis added):

Well, let’s get one thing clear. The author admits that he’s no reporter, and boy is he right. I defend people against whom lawsuits have been brought. I am not an “ambulance chaser”, and haven’t done plaintiff’s personal injury work since 2001. Indeed, even accused drunk drivers know this!

Anyhow, here the author embedded the text from Mike Hudson’s Niagara Falls Reporter:

Big catfight in Buffalo last week between amateur bloggers Alan Bedenko of Buffalo Pundit and Glenn Gramigna of New WNY Politics, precipitated by the self-important Bedenko’s decision to publish what he even said was a series of fraudulent e-mails purporting to have been sent between some top aides to Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown last summer. Clearly, the e-mails were meant to slander and defame the people at Buffalo City Hall. Why Bedenko, who is an attorney in real life, chose to publish them is anyone’s guess. Enter Gramigna, who openly speculated that — since Bedenko was the only one to publish the lurid e-mails — perhaps Bedenko in fact had been their author. Actually, the theory makes a lot of sense. The e-mails were shopped to various news outlets last summer, and my impression was that they were created in response to the publication by the Niagara Falls Reporter of another series of e-mails between the married state Rep. Sam Hoyt and a young and comely Albany intern he was carrying on with. The Hoyt camp openly accused Brown’s first deputy mayor, Steve Casey, of being behind the leaking of the Hoyt e-mails — which were genuine — and Casey, perhaps coincidentally, figures prominently in the admittedly fraudulent e-mails published by Bedenko. Also perhaps coincidentally, Bedenko was a strong supporter of Hoyt during the last election cycle, has been a consistent critic of the Brown administration and was, after all, the only one to publish the garbage. Anyway, he phoned Gramigna “in a rage” and, being a lawyer, claimed his rival to be guilty of defamation. For his part, Gramigna is every bit the clueless lump comedians make fun of when discussing bloggers, and immediately posted a retraction. One question remains: Who did write the slanderous and potentially damaging e-mails Gramigna ascribed to Bedenko? Bedenko vehemently denies he wrote them, of course, but who knows?

Glenn Gramigna was being paid by one Syaed Ali, who is widely thought to have been the author of the emails in question, and had no proof other than “open speculation” that I wrote the emails, because Chris Smith published them. Makes perfect sense, right? It’s logic for idiots! But be clear: nowhere in any of these articles have I “admitted” to having forged anything; on the contrary, I vehemently denied that I wrote them then, and I vehemently deny I wrote them now, because I didn’t write them. I didn’t even publish them.

Alan Bedenko has a history of questionable e-mail “leaks” that pre-dates the Paladino e-mail flap. As I understood it, reporters are supposed to check the reliability of their sources before quoting their allegations as fact– something that did not appear to happen when these e-mails were leaked and subsequently went viral. Considering that I’m pretty sure wnymedia.net isn’t on most of the Albany press members’ must-read lists (their articles rarely show up on the major blogs), I’d venture to say there was also some shopping going around with the Paladino story as well.

What “history of questionable e-mail “leaks”? The Syaed Ali stuff? Hell, you can go right here and read all about that, from that time. Here is the article I wrote about Gramigna immediately after he published his “speculation”, and I expressly threatened to sue him. It should also be noted that I never published the emails in 2009 – it was Chris Smith who did so.

From that article: UPDATED: Gramigna has retracted what he wrote, and what his source told him. That’s appreciated, but still horseshit. Apart from this morning, when I called him in a rage, I can honestly say that I’ve never exchanged a single word with Gramigna, despite having helped him promote his dreck-laden site when he started it. His business model is: get local politicians to buy ads, print positive crap about them and negative crap about their opponents. Look for an alternative to completely decimate that business model, coming soon. If I had written the offending emails – which I didn’t – I would have reprinted them last summer, when they were originally sent. They are alleged to have been sent by Mr. Gramigna’s newest advertising client, Syaed Ali. But I didn’t print them last summer. Indeed, I alluded to them a couple of times only in an off-handed manner. I had theories as to who might have been sending them, but someone in law enforcement somehow landed on Mr. Ali, and he alleges that he was subsequently placed into custody and that his belongings have been confiscated. I’ve gone on record saying that, if what Ali said is true, it’s a grave injustice. Furthermore, if I had sent them, I wouldn’t have pimped them to mainstream media – I would have posted them on my site contemporaneously so that the TV and other reporters would give me linkage and credit. But I didn’t write them, I wouldn’t have written them, I have nothing to gain from writing them, and never in my wildest dreams would ever conceive of writing something like that about anyone, much less an elected official. For Gramigna, acting apparently as a conduit for the flailing Ali, to even suggestthat I was behind those emails is a disgrace – and a defamatory one, at that. I have my disagreements with the Brown administration – I don’t like their secrecy, I don’t like their sense of entitlement, I don’t like their Machiavellian machinations to try and upset ECDC and its endorsed candidates, and I don’t necessarily think that they do the best job for Buffalo. That doesn’t mean I would ever stoop so low as to spread vicious, defamatory rumors about him or his officials.

I am not trying to claim that the entire thing is an absolute hoax. Paladino himself has acknowledged that at least some of the e-mails in question were in fact authentic. Many of them, knowing Paladino’s public persona and admitted racial insensitivity, aren’t even all that surprising. However, there is the question that if Paladino in fact did not author some of these alleged e-mails, why did he not come out and deny them? The best answer that I can give is that Michael Caputo didn’t even try to do so. Caputo, after the e-mail controversy broke, stated repeatedly that “We’re not sure about the authenticity of the emails, and we don’t care. I’m not even going to comment on the emails. It’s not something I care to look at.” He has characterized the leak as a “liberal Democrat blog smear” and has declined to delve into the details.

Carl is a lawyer. It doesn’t matter what Caputo did or didn’t say. Carl had until 2011 to go ahead and sue the crap out of me if the emails were frauds. I’m just a middle-class lawyer/blogger and he’s a multimillionaire. Why didn’t he just sue me if it was false?

There could be lots of reasons. The biggest is that they’re provably genuine. Next would be that bringing that lawsuit would have opened up Carl’s own reputation to scrutiny. He knows better than to subject his reputation to the discovery process. Lots of reasons.

As for Syaed Ali, the idea that I wrote emails accusing Byron Brown of being gay is so palpably riduculous and false that Gramigna himself retracted the allegation. Mike Hudson didn’t because Mike Hudson knows how to write a story without crossing over the lines of libel, and didn’t directly accuse me of anything. Jul Thompson is a liar, and “Tea New York” is liable for her defamation. 

I don’t know yet whether I will pursue legal action, but I do know that I now – after 5 years – have to establish, once and for all, the authenticity of Carl Paladino’s emails. That means I now have to produce the emails in an unredacted format, and journalists and laypeople will be perfectly free to inquire of these judges, appointed bureaucrats, elected officials, prominent businesspeople, and developers whether Carl Paladino sent these racist, pornographic, and offensive emails. Given Mr. Paladino’s current status as an elected member of the Buffalo school board, and given the controversy over his ongoing battle with a predominately African-American minority on that board, I don’t know that the timing of this is something that he welcomes, but either way, he has the Thompsons to thank.

Who Fears the Mighty PTO?

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debateniteAre you now, or have you ever been, a member of a PTO?

Most parents even of schoolkids pay scant attention to their local Parent-Teacher Organizations. They are oftentimes 501c3 non-profits that fundraise to pay for library books, school supplies, and extras that the regular school budget won’t – or can’t – accommodate. They do this through tax-deductible donations earned through dances, activity nights, collection of boxtops and store receipts, and through the sale of books, wreaths, coupon books, gift cards, and other small items. One random local PTO’s mission: “Our organization is committed to improve, enhance, and assist the educational and social processes in our school.”

We’re not talking revolutionary communism here. We’re not talking about Spartacists. These are moms and dads enhancing school life. 

PTOs are run by small groups of selfless and involved parents. As a 501c3, PTOs can engage in issue advocacy, but cannot endorse, support, or fund any individual political or school candidacies. A PTO can ask people to vote yes for a school budget, but cannot recommend votes for particular board candidates. Likewise, a PTO (or any 501c3) can host a candidate forum, so long as all candidates are invited and the process is objectively fair; questions or time are not biased against any one candidate. There is no requirement that the individual PTO members be impartial – merely that the process is fair and that the PTO hasn’t made an express endorsement. We’re not picking a jury here.

A few weeks ago, the Clarence High School PTO copied & pasted – shared – to Facebook something from a local pro-school advocacy group that contained an express endorsement of two candidates. It was a mistake, and it was deleted when brought to their attention. That PTO wasn’t necessarily endorsing the Keep Clarence Schools Great statement – merely sharing it. You know – the whole “RT ≠ Endorsement” thing on Twitter. Nevertheless, it raised the appearance of impartiality in the board races and should likely not have been done.

Next Tuesday, there will be a candidate forum hosted and moderated by members of two different, elementary school PTOs. The High School PTO is not at all involved. The entire program is organized and hosted by the school district, and the program was going to go out of its way to be fair to all four board candidates – two pro-school, two anti-school running for two seats. It bears repeating that neither of the elementary school PTOs posted anything anywhere that could be construed as endorsing any candidate for school board.

One candidate for the board, Joe Lombardo, Jr., pounced. He filed this grievance to the district office:

The PTO has shown that it is a biased group unable to equitably moderate this forum. They have publicly endorsed and opposed candidates on their Facebook page as seen in the attached photo. This creates and unfair and an unreasonable situation for myself and Jacob, especially when the PTO is creating its own questions. In addition, their endorsements and opposition of candidates violates 501c(3) law. I have advised the Erie County District Attorney’s Office of this matter. Based on the above points, I herby file a grievance in order to seek another moderator who can prove to be unbiased. Perhaps we can get a moderating panel from the Erie County Chapter of the League of Woman Voters or a chapter from a surrounding town. I feel their performance in the past has been excellent.

Regards,

Joe Lombardo

We need to examine this point by point.

The PTO has shown that it is a biased group unable to equitably moderate this forum.

There exist six PTOs in the town district – one for each school. None of them are affiliated with any of the others, except insofar as each is a “PTO”. Two of the elementary PTOs were to moderate the forum. The High School PTO, which Lombardo believes to be “a biased group” was not slated to be involved with the forum in any way. So, although arguably the HS PTO may have shown “bias”, the elementary PTOs hosting the forum did no such thing.

They have publicly endorsed and opposed candidates on their Facebook page as seen in the attached photo.

“They”? Which “They? One PTO re-posted the text from another group, and clearly labeled it as such. It was a mistake, but ultimately harmless. Note Lombardo’s use of the singular number in his first sentence, and switch to plural in the second. Are all local PTOs to be held accountable for the actions of one? Or does he think there’s only one PTO? Questions, questions.

This creates and unfair and an unreasonable situation for myself and [fellow anti-school candidate] Jacob [Kerksiek], especially when the PTO is creating its own questions.

All <sic> by the way. The offending High School PTO was not “creating” any questions. It wasn’t even involved. Again, two different, elementary school PTOs were involved in drafting questions in consultation with the district office. There were safeguards put in place to ensure that the questions were uncontroversial and generic; questions that any board candidate could expect and should be able to answer. But if the High School PTO’s mistake ruined it for the two elementary school PTOs, why not explain how? Note the singular number for “the PTO”, and watch how the next sentence takes a simple matter and turns it up to eleven:

In addition, their endorsements and opposition of candidates violates 501c(3) law. I have advised the Erie County District Attorney’s Office of this matter.

Holy mackerel.

Yes, if a PTO endorsed or opposed a candidate, it would be violative of 501c3. But this instance was, at worst, an accidental re-printing of another group’s endorsement. The offending Facebook post was clearly marked as that of another group. It’s not the end of the world, and it won’t threaten the High School PTO’s 501c3 status.

It especially won’t be threatened because the Erie County DA prosecutes state crimes, not de minimis violations of federal tax statutes. But note the switch back to the plural number – are all PTOs to blame? Just one? Guilt by association by virtue of their shared use of the initials PTO?

And what is to be gained here? The DA isn’t going to arrest or prosecute the PTO. I suppose the IRS could investigate, but what’s it going to do? Revoke the high school’s non-profit status? That might happen if the PTO had raised money for candidates, but it didn’t, so cui bono? If the HS PTO can’t fundraise as easily because donations aren’t tax-deductible, that hurts the students at the high school – no more, no less. We have here the jaw-dropping, extraordinary spectacle of a putative school board member seeking to indirectly do harm to schoolkids.

Based on the above points, I herby file a grievance in order to seek another moderator who can prove to be unbiased.

Who will conduct the voir dire? Seriously, though, as a practical matter the elementary school PTOs did nothing wrong, so the claims of “bias” are ridiculous.

Perhaps we can get a moderating panel from the Erie County Chapter of the League of Woman Voters or a chapter from a surrounding town. I feel their performance in the past has been excellent.

The League of Women Voters (note the spelling) doesn’t have a Clarence chapter anymore, and has stopped moderating candidate forums for school or town elections. Indeed, the last candidate forum was hosted by the same elementary school PTOs as this year, and no one had a peep of a complaint about it. One would expect someone so interested in the schools that he would run to be its trustee to have attended it, and been aware of that. One would also expect a putative trustee to know that there exist more than one PTO, and that the misdeeds of one do not taint the others.

You know what the PTO moderators are there to do? To stop this sort of childish behavior: 

They sat in the front row on candidates night… They had either the Bee ad with our pictures and write ups, or the district budget paper… I think it was the Bee though… They had Joe [DiPasquale] and me crossed out (our pictures that were in the paper with big red x’s)…when we talked especially when I talked Danica would stick out her tongue, Joe made faces… all rolled their eyes and shook their heads whenever we spoke and held up the paper with our pictures crossed out. I should have ignored it but even when I wasn’t speaking they just stared at me and instead of me looking away I stared back and got into a staring contest. Mind you I just had been diagnosed with whooping cough and had a 103 fever. So it was an all out perfect night. The administrators were sitting about 7 rows back and never saw this going on.

The behavior being described is that of Joe Lombardo, Jr., his girlfriend, and his father. That’s right; the guy complaining about the propriety of two PTOs handling a candidate forum because of the behavior of a third PTO, in 2013 himself engaged in fundamentally infantile taunting behavior during a school board candidate forum, cruelly targeting two people whom he didn’t like. The level of hypocritical butthurt is almost as high as the level of obnoxiousness.

You would think that the district would inform this candidate that he has his facts wrong, and invite him to show up or not – whatever. Instead, they are bending to his demands and the questions that the elementary school PTOs had compiled will be thrown out. In their stead, audience members will be submitting their own questions via index card, and will be randomly selected by the same moderators who were originally scheduled to oversee the proceedings.

Here is what Lombardo told the Clarence Bee:

“The PTO has no business putting their hands in it,” he said. “I am still trying to get a commitment from the league to do it, but time is an issue.  For future forums they need to find an unbiased moderator.”

The PTO has no business putting their hands in “it”; “it” being the candidate forum that the PTO hosts and sponsors. If Lombardo can’t take the heat and perceives PTOs to be his adversary, perhaps he shouldn’t be running for school board.

UPDATE: He still doesn’t get it. Two PTOs are sponsoring and running this PTO candidate forum. 

Perhaps if the UN brought in peacekeepers, that would placate this candidate.

Riots in Buffalo: Thugs? Animals?

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polishRiffing a bit off the Baltimore riots, and, by extension, l’affaire Airborne Eddy, local historian Cynthia Van Ness brought some interesting news reports to light on Thursday.

But before we get specifically to that, you’ll recall that “Airborne Eddy” Dobosiewicz likened Baltimore rioters to “animals”—specifically baboons in a Merseyside safari park. He said, “My intent was to kind of jolt everybody into reality. We’re doing bad things out there, folks, and the world is spiraling out of control.” How that justifies his selection of one specific group of human beings to be labeled “animals” remains an open question, but as a purveyor of local nostalgia and lore, surely Dobosiewicz must be aware of his own people’s history of rioting?

Did he not know that Buffalo saw Polish riots? In April 1898, the “air was full of flying stones” from an “angry, vicious mob” of Polish Buffalonians. Were they “animals”, Eddy?

Or how about this story from 1894? Jewish merchant Louis Gertzman shot Bernard Renkowski, the Polish guy robbing his store. In response, neighborhood Poles descended on Gertzman’s store to exact revenge, breaking doors and windows, and ruining Gertzman’s stock. Were these Polish rioters, who were supporting the robber over his victim, “animals”?

How about this near-riot at St. Adalbert’s because its priest was replaced with someone the local population didn’t like? Animals, Eddy?

I mean, it’s not the same as protesting the apparent police homicide of a man in their care and custody, along with years of systemic and entrenched racism and inequality, but this group of Polish Buffalonians – 200 to 300 of them – rioted at the Broadway Market in 1893, looting food from merchants. They were out of work—hungry and poor (today we denigrate the poor and hungry as “animals” when they rob, steal, or riot). *Gasp*, “We’re doing bad things out there, folks, and the world is spiraling out of control”

My goodness. These Polish are thugs! So must have been these Italians and Irish engaged in a “race riot” in the streets of Buffalo ca. 1894. If only their mothers could have come out to beat them about the head and neck on national TV to show that the best response to senseless violence is child abuse!

Before you lower yourself to the level of pointing your finger at “those people” and denigrating them as “thugs” or “animals” – or worse – maybe take a moment to learn about the history of your own people, or the difficulty that oppressed minorities and immigrants face in a country that really wasn’t—and isn’t—set up to make things too easy for them. Walk a mile in someone else’s shoes before you take a fateful leap and deny them their humanity. In doing that, you just might expose your own inhumanity.

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