Opinion and Commentary since 2003
Regionalism and government downsizing advocate and attorney Kevin Gaughan will likely replace Lynn Szalkowski, and run as Democratic candidate for Erie County Comptroller against Stefan Mychajliw.
The decision will be made final later this week.
Erie County Comptroller candidate Lynn Szalkowski dropped out yesterday, the day petitions were due. Her name appeared on Democratic nominating petitions that have been circulated throughout Erie County for the past several weeks because she was the candidate whom the party had recruited to run. As it turns out, she had second thoughts and effectively dropped out of the race weeks ago. That posed a problem for the party, because the only way to keep the ballot line alive for November would be to keep circulating her petitions and then let a committee replace her when she formally drops out. That’s what’s about to happen in the next week or so.
Just about every news story everywhere has made the point that Ms. Szalkowski has suffered some personal tragedies in recent weeks, and that she may also have some sort of personal health issue. While her Facebook page shows her doing fun things with friends and her kids, that doesn’t necessarily mean she isn’t also tackling some sort of health problem. People live with chronic pain and disease all the time yet are still able to go out and maintain some semblance of a normal life – it doesn’t mean they also have the energy or will to go out and attend every chicken BBQ and every fundraiser and every debate as part of a grueling, months-long campaign for a countywide office.
So, when she dropped out yesterday, her putative opponent, incumbent Stefan Mychajliw, took to Facebook to comment on the situation. Before becoming Comptroller, Mychajliw was the owner of a public relations firm. As a public relations professional, I would likely counsel a candidate to take the high road, and leave the backhanded smacks and insults for surrogates.
In other words, Mychajliw’s Facebook post or whatever other public statement he made should have read something like this:
I am disappointed to learn that Ms. Szalkowski has decided not to accept her party’s nomination to run for Erie County Comptroller on the Democratic line. I am proud of my accomplishments over the last several months, and looked forward to a lively campaign on the issues. I wish Ms. Szalkowski and her family well, and look forward to running a positive campaign against whomever the Democrats select as their candidate.
Because, honestly, Mychajliw shouldn’t necessarily care who runs against him, or what the internal Democratic party machinations and intrigue might be. He is running to win in November, and he’ll take all comers, right?
Well, instead of some sort of gracious send-off, Mychajliw inexplicably spat this venom at the Democratic committee:
I don’t quite understand why this makes Mr. Mychajliw so upset, and why he didn’t so much as wish Ms. Szalkowski well, whatever his feelings are about the legal process that results from a candidate dropping out of a race. The party committee recruited Szalkowski, and it will now have to recruit someone else. It’s really six of one, half-dozen of the other, and Mychajliw’s Facebook excreta seems utterly classless to me.
Maybe Mychajliw’s office could trick a custodian into letting them into the locked basement room in the Rath Building where the Democrats keep all the Comptroller candidates.
GripeO is a Buffalo-based startup that is set to launch later this year, and it will let you turn your gripes about bad products and customer service into something positive – savings and discounts. It calls itself a “better way to complain”.
Right now, GripeO wants to hear your WNY-based customer service horror stories. By completing this survey and liking GripeO’s Facebook page, you’ll be entered in a drawing to win a $100 gift certificate to the WNY business of your choice. I’ll link to the results when they’re in.
While animal cruelty gets loads of column space and talk-radio time, human-on-human violence generally registers a shrug and a segue into which teenager the local sports franchise is going to shower with millions of dollars for throwing a ball or smacking a disc with a stick.
Last year, 50 people were homicide victis in Buffalo. Hoskins was convicted of 52 counts of animal cruelty. Those animals lived.
Like Esmonde’s other love, preservation (and, now, tea party politics), the local fascination with animal cruelty cases is built upon a mountain of white privilege. Esmonde is its weakest cheerleader – a pathetic, aging parrot of lazy WBEN topics.
That’s today’s edition of Donn Esmonde is an Ass™.
I’m not as concerned about the potential for governmental abuse of information as I am with actual government abuse of power. There are actual liberties being chiseled away by elected representative bodies, and when average citizens decide to speak up against it, they are physically removed from the legislative chamber.
While amateur constitutional scholars and Infowars cretins conflate “rights” with “being a dick to a cop and seeing what happens”, this woman is a victim of governmental restraint of political speech. Good for Sarah Slamen, aka @VictorianPrude, and shame on @SenJaneNelson.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTqh7xNdrqM&w=640&h=360]
Interviewed later by a Daily Kos user, Slamen wrote that she was never given a reason why she was expelled before her allotted speaking time had elapsed:
There was no explanation. Senator Jane Nelson tried to say I was being disrespectful but how would she know? I barely got to give the complete performance review of every member on the committee. Pointing out that Sen. Donna Campbell is an ophthalmologist is not disrespectful when she asserts in a state hearing that she should be THE expert on reproductive health. What was disrespectful was the parade of anti-choice zealots and misogynists who got up for 13 hours and called women murderers, killers, promiscuous, thoughtless, and selfish. Not a peep from committee chair Nelson on those.
Texas. Freedom and Liberty, but only if you’re a right-wing zealot.
66% of Buffalonians like Mayor Byron Brown. That’s no surprise – he’s quite personable and likable when seen out and about. Yet 80% of Buffalonians think the school system is horrible (only 11% think it’s good).
Neither WGRZ nor the Buffalo News have seen fit to publish the full results of the poll, including crosstabs, and it’s not available at Siena’s site.
So, we’ll just have to wait for the information to trickle out the way that “real media” decide for you.
Because of electoral fusion, Rodriguez has the option to run on a minor party line. The established minor parties have, naturally, endorsed the incumbent. They scratch each other’s backs. So, Rodriguez has to mount a write-in campaign for the Conservative line, and may opt to pursue an independent nominating petition, which enables Rodriguez to create a one-off party line (think Jack Davis’ “Save Jobs Party” and Chris Collins’ “Taxpayers First Party”).
The independent party line is to be called the “Progressive Party”, according to this blog post, and would enable Rodriguez to reach out to Democrats (who outnumber Republicans 7:1 in Buffalo) without requiring them to fill in a GOP box on their ballot.
But notice this passage:
None of this, however, is sitting well with Erie County Conservative Chairman Ralph C. Lorigo, a strong Brown backer. The chairman said he likes Rodriguez, but the effort will not help his relationship with the often influential minor party.
“That could potentially destroy a relationship that can be built in the future,” he said. “It would be difficult to fight, but we would.”
Nothing like a minor party boss trying to intimidate and bully a hard-working, young Republican candidate for Mayor 0f Buffalo. That people like Ralph Lorigo have any political power whatsoever is the root of New York corruption and dysfunction. Ask yourself why the so-called “Conservative Party” might be backing the Democratic mayor instead of a Republican challenger. Ask yourself whether that’s based on principle or something completely not principle at all.
In a city where the only growth industry is crippling nostalgia, we must explore and exploit new sources of it.
I don’t necessarily want to discuss or debate my opinions regarding Edward Snowden and his slow leak of allegedly damning information about snooping and spying by various United States government entities. I think the reality of what the government does, and what Snowden has revealed, is far more complex in both scope, execution, and purpose than any of us realize; including Mr. Snowden himself. Instead, I want to discuss a statement he released Tuesday with the help of global transparency hypocrites Wikileaks.
In the last week or so, it has been revealed that Snowden deliberately sought employment with an NSA contractor in order to gather what he considers to be damning information about American spying. He had unique access in his role as a systems administrator or infrastructure analyst – in any event, a sort of superuser of the computer systems that American intelligence agencies use to spy on people. Not content with merely revealing NSA secrets concerning the collection of telephone metadata and storage of recorded content, Snowden has become a celebrity of sorts, cheered by myriad repressive regimes hostile to the US, thanks to his revelations about some of the ways in which the US spies on foreign nationals, governments, and entities.
A vehicle from the Ecuadoran Embassy at Moscow’s Airport
This isn’t a post to discuss the propriety of Snowden’s leak, or even necessarily to mock his amateur hour escape from Hong Kong, as he now finds himself unable to travel, stuck in the transit area of Moscow’s Shermeteyevo Airport. This is about his statement, which begins thusly,
One week ago I left Hong Kong after it became clear that my freedom and safety were under threat for revealing the truth. My continued liberty has been owed to the efforts of friends new and old, family, and others who I have never met and probably never will. I trusted them with my life and they returned that trust with a faith in me for which I will always be thankful.
Snowden is engaging in propaganda or has deluded himself into thinking that the government would sanction violence against him. I think he’s got a high enough profile that there’s unlikely to be any threat to his safety – merely to his freedom. He has, after all, been charged with a crime. I doubt he expected a parade.
On Thursday, President Obama declared before the world that he would not permit any diplomatic “wheeling and dealing” over my case. Yet now it is being reported that after promising not to do so, the President ordered his Vice President to pressure the leaders of nations from which I have requested protection to deny my asylum petitions.
Right. No wheeling and dealing – just handed over to face charges will do nicely. Ecuador – which is harboring accused sex offender Julian Assange in its UK Embassy – is all, “Snowden who?” After seeking asylum in Putin’s Russia, Snowden withdrew that application after Putin said Snowden could stay, as long as he stopped harming the US. In reality, Snowden would be Putin’s big bargaining chip in any future negotiation with Washington over anything important to the Kremlin.
This kind of deception from a world leader is not justice, and neither is the extralegal penalty of exile. These are the old, bad tools of political aggression. Their purpose is to frighten, not me, but those who would come after me.
Your passport – and Snowden’s – clearly states that it remains property of the government at all times, and the State Department retains the right to revoke anyone’s passport, especially when they’ve been charged with a federal crime. I’m hard-pressed to believe that Snowden is so naive as to think that Washington would continue to let him have freedom of movement when he’s a wanted fugitive.
For decades the United States of America have been one of the strongest defenders of the human right to seek asylum. Sadly, this right, laid out and voted for by the U.S. in Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is now being rejected by the current government of my country. The Obama administration has now adopted the strategy of using citizenship as a weapon. Although I am convicted of nothing, it has unilaterally revoked my passport, leaving me a stateless person. Without any judicial order, the administration now seeks to stop me exercising a basic right. A right that belongs to everybody. The right to seek asylum.
Interesting construct, there. Notice the use of the plural voice after “United States of America”. Something united is singular. Setting style aside, the US does indeed grant asylum to people who fear persecution at home due to their race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion. Snowden is none of these things and has a tremendous amount of chutzpah to equate himself with someone escaping military dictatorship in Burma, nationalist harassment in Bhutan, or sectarian violence and chaos in Iraq. Snowden is just another lawbreaker.
Snowden conflates citizenship with possession of a travel document. No one has rendered him a stateless person – he remains a citizen of the United States until such time as he formally renounces it. He has merely lost his right to use a travel document because he is a wanted fugitive. Without papers, the only country to which he can now travel is the United States, unless some third party provides him with a temporary travel document such as a laissez passer, which the United Nations issues to some of its personnel. Russia could feasibly treat him as a refugee and issue an identity card for Snowden to use to travel to a third country, but it has not formally granted him entry to Russian territory. Snowden’s best chance to remain “free” is for some third world despot to grant him some form of asylum leading to immediate citizenship and a passport. Reports are that Snowden has applied for asylum to 20 countries, and so far has been met with rejection. He withdrew his request for asylum in Russia, because of Putin’s conditions.
In the end, Snowden is not a persecuted person. He is a common fugitive accused felon and is not entitled to the rights and privileges associated with “asylum”.
In the end the Obama administration is not afraid of whistleblowers like me, Bradley Manning or Thomas Drake. We are stateless, imprisoned, or powerless. No, the Obama administration is afraid of you. It is afraid of an informed, angry public demanding the constitutional government it was promised — and it should be.
I am unbowed in my convictions and impressed at the efforts taken by so many.
Edward Joseph Snowden
Monday 1st July 2013
Snowden has a background as a CIA agent who operated in Europe. Yet for someone supposedly knowledgable about spycraft and the surveillance capabilities of the US government, this seems so amateur hour. He’s now got Wikileaks writing press releases for him, and he effectively proclaims himself to be a martyr for a larger cause. I don’t think the Obama Administration is afraid of Snowden or Manning. Everyone knows the US spies on other countries. Everyone knows we engage in complicated diplomatic issues on an hourly basis all over the world.
There is certainly a debate and discussion to be had about the surveillance state and the way in which it is overseen and operated. I find somewhat persuasive the arguments commending Snowden for giving us more information about the scope and methods of the surveillance. But I do not think that Snowden’s “leaks” about American spying on foreign persons or governments is at all helpful, and find that to be particularly galling. He’s the contemporary version of the Cambridge Five – laptops replace the one-time pad – but instead of giving information to another country (although they probably got all of it anyway), he’s leaking what he can through the media.
I don’t think Snowden is a hero or a villain, but I do think he should stop whining and face the consequences for what he’s done.
He’s not subject to persecution – just prosecution under the law.
On Friday, Cuomo is pretty awesome, and he pulled out of this argument with the Canadians just at the right time, because he’s pretty awesome.
On Sunday, Cuomo is an obstructionist punk who is horrible, and he caused a big fight with the Canadians, because he’s an obstructionist punk.
Shorter Esmonde’s week in Cuomoland?
When it comes to Peace Bridge and plaza expansion, I will feign interest in its progress, because my own positions on these topics swing around more than a drunken octogenarian driving the wrong way on the I-190 in the middle of the night.
