This is because in the United States, we prioritize the rights of an inanimate object – a gun – over the safety of children and schools. Our elected leaders cannot enact meaningful legislation or regulation to prevent this sort of thing from happening over and over again because the NRA – the lobby for the gun manufacturers – has weaponized the Constitution to enable and ensure that any idiot can – nay SHOULD – own military hardware.
It didn’t used to be this way.
This didn’t happen during the economic and political turmoil of the 70s. It didn’t happen during the coke-fueled 80s. It didn’t happen in the 90s.
Not like this, anyway.
I can tell you that I don’t feel free when my kid texts me that there are cops everywhere and that they are in lockdown and it’s not a drill. I don’t feel very free when my kid tells me that she’s scared. I can earnestly explain to you that I don’t feel like this is the greatest country on Earth right now at this moment because I have friends and family who live in other G7 countries and they send their kids to school and don’t have to worry about this.
I do not feel free having to worry about this. Why do the freedoms and liberties of guns come before the freedoms and liberties of my family? Why does my child not have the freedom from this sort of abject terror?
I do not run the @NeverNateinErie account. I do not know who runs it (although I have my suspicions). I reckon Nate and his duo of henchpeople think it’s mine but I swear and aver that it isn’t me and I don’t have time for it. But I follow and like that person’s very spot-on replies.
You should follow it, too, if for no other reason than Nate tried to get me canceled assuming it was me.
The population of people who know why I stopped tweeting in May 2020 is pretty small. Nate McMurray is one of them, and he is so low and dishonorable that he used it against me in an effort to silence me, this blog, my voice, and any scrutiny of his foundering campaign.
Congratulations, Nate or whoever made up that account. Consider me silenced.
Not much just a nominal Democrat hobnobbing with MAGA.
And if you want to know about hysterics just wait until you see the last text exchange I had with him. This guy is a massive hypocrite and he makes Trump look calm and collected by comparison.
On Thursday and Friday February 16th and 17th, Cheektowaga Councilman Brian Nowak interacted with County Executive candidate Nate McMurray.
The difference here is that Brian is an elected official and very well-informed. He knows what he’s talking about.
Nate isn’t and doesn’t.
Yet that doesn’t prevent Nate from being condescending to Brian in an absurd way. (click the image to enlarge)
Chances are slim that McMurray makes it past petitions to merit even a response from Poloncarz on a “debate”, but look at how he interacts with Brian, who points out that ego should take a back seat to achievement and defending past achievements. Nate has a lot of the former, few of the latter. But he is to be lauded for rendering himself unemployable except for a shaky entry into being a litigation attorney.
He immediately lunges at Nowak, making him out to be a Poloncarz shill by quizzing him on three bullet points on which he has fixated. Nowak responds, deftly. (Again, click to expand)
So, in response to Nowak, McMurray lashes out with feigned incredulity and then proceeds to insult Nowak, who responds by reminding McMurray that it is he who is running for CE, and again schooling him on the fact that governing involves myriad competing interests and associated minutiae.
Then Nate pivots to his love of IKEA (born from his Scandinavian travel, despite the fact that IKEA exists on every populated continent on Earth.) It is another McMurray flex – he’s better than you because he made more than you – is better traveled than you.
Nowak then reminds McMurray that the 14% poverty rate in Erie County is not caused by – or fixable by – one man. (Remember the other day I referred to McMurray’s declarations about poverty to be akin to Trumpism’s “he alone can fix it.“)
McMurray then again offers a non-responsive insult by claiming we have the “worst job market in the country” (citation, please), and that Buffalo “is the third poorest city in the country,” which really should be directed to the city’s government.
Then he asks, rhetorically, as if this is Nowak’s responsibility to answer, “what is the legacy of [Poloncarz]”? I personally think the legacy is to restore faith in county government. To deliver excellent results with a renewed focus on what matters to people. To be a responsible and capable steward of the public purse. To navigate through two negotiations with the Bills and a pandemic. To restore Erie County to fiscal responsibility, improve our credit rating, improve our infrastructure, and to ensure that county departments and services are constantly improving.
Anyone who thinks there hasn’t been positive change between 2012 – 2023, as compared with 2000 – 2011 is lying, an idiot, or was simply absent from the area. Anyone with even a passing, hearsay recollection of Mssrs. Giambra and Collins know how much better, more competent, more responsive, and more people-focused our county government is now.
That’s why we don’t necessarily need some quasi-informed cowboy spouting off about undefined “change” because that sounds a lot like 1999 speaking. “Challenging authority” is for loudmouth adolescents, and is not a positive for its own sake. It really underscores the fact that the driving force that informs McMurray’s candidacy is score-settling and grievance. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the nuts and bolts of running a county government.
As Nowak, notes, “Only the guy who isn’t rowing has time to rock the boat.” *Chef’s kiss.*
…if two individuals in the same tax jurisdiction live in properties with the same values, they pay the same amount of property tax, regardless of their incomes.
Anyhow, Nate here used to be the supervisor of a small town, so he knows how this works – yet again, he’s assuming you don’t and that you’re dumb and gullible. The county, after all, does not set the assessments – the towns do. The county merely sets the rate, which has gone down continuously as property values appreciated.
And those taxes pay for all of the things that County Executives actually oversee, as opposed to international rail and state projects.
Caveat: I am a member of the BECPL Library Board.
The County Executive – the County – doesn’t run the Library system. They help to fund the library, but they don’t get involved in day-to-day operations.
As for the disruptions, those were a topic for discussion at yesterday’s meeting and the administration is dealing with that situation, which is far too complex than some tweeter calling the libraries “places of violence and disrepair” in order to politicize something apolitical.
Finally, Nate keeps saying Buffalo has the “worst job market in the country.”
I would love to see a citation to that purported fact. Maybe it’s just “vibes.”
The only change Nate McMurray would bring is a return to fiscal irresponsibility, relentless politicization of apolitical things, settling of scores, endless grievance, and a lot of time wasted on stuff that has nothing to do with running a county.
Korea, Singapore, Denmark, and the United Kingdom. These are Nate’s examples of better, “free”, cheaper healthcare.
It’s true, Korea’s system is an excellent universal healthcare scheme. It is essentially a single-payer system.
Singapore, however, is not a single-payer system. It is a hybrid that puts an emphasis on health savings accounts and is currently a darling of American conservative commentators and think-tanks. So, using Singapore to extol the virtues of a proposed NYS-based single-payer plan is bullshit.
Finally, the UK and her NHS. It is Britain’s pride and joy, which has been weakened to the point of crisis by a decade and a half of Tory rule, marked first by its disastrous austerity programs, followed by the autosanctions of Brexit and a concomitant exodus and resulting shortage of nurses, doctors, and aides. If anything, the Tory gutting of the NHS is a perfect example of the perils of government-run and taxpayer-funded single-payer schemes. (This is before we get into the fact that the UK also allows for a private healthcare market outside the NHS, which Canada, for instance, does not allow).
Weird, isn’t it, that Mr. Binational-let’s-run-trains-in-a-NY-Ontario-Schengen didn’t mention Canadian Medicare?
Anyhow, one of the biggest mistakes that proponents of single-payer plans commit is to call it “free.” It’s not free – it’s paid for through taxes and fees. European countries have higher rates of income taxation and value-added sales taxes help to fund their social services. Sales taxes in some European countries exceed 20%. In Ontario, the HST (used to be GST and PST) is 13%. It’s 15% in the Maritimes and Quebec (which still separates QST and GST).
New Yorkers are taxed quite highly already, and we have full and robust implementation of Obamacare and Medicaid expansion. While universal health coverage is a longstanding platform plank of Democrats, there are many different ways in which this might be accomplished. It is not a stretch for people to be wary of what a Republican-led State Senate or a Republican governor might do to implement austerity on a single-payer state plan if for no other reason but to establish that it doesn’t work.
Heard of Geely? It’s a Chinese care company that owns Volvo and Lynk & Co, which are poised to go all-electric in a few years. BYD is not in the American market, which is why “no one here ever heard of them.” Although they had a presence at the NAIAS a decade ago, BYD is not about to enter the American market, and if it did, it would likely have to build cars here. But, seriously, what’s the point of this particular brain-fart? I mean, people are already on it, guy. You’re reacting to something on Twitter that people in authority are already doing. Go have a Chips Ahoy and go home.
