Opinion and Commentary since 2003
According to Buffalo Business First, I am the 196th most influential person in western New York. I broke the top 200, and – most importantly – came out ahead of the baby polar bears.
Thanks to the editors at Business First for including me. I’m honored to have been chosen, and to be included with such accomplished people in so flattering a list.
I don’t do this for accolades, but it’s definitely gratifying that people appreciate what I do.
Photo via @MichaelRCaputo at Twitter
The Buffalo News’ political columnist Bob McCarthy has fallen in love. Like the woman who married the Eiffel Tower, and Quasimodo’s love for the bells, McCarthy has a deep crush on Donald Trump’s private 757.
At first, poor Bob was sad. A promised tour of Trump’s jet didn’t materialize, so he was left to examine his love by transcribing the voice-over from a YouTube video. You could feel his disappointment. He recited its most intimate details – its $100 million cost; the fact that, like a trophy wife, it replaced a much older, less attractive 727. Bob lovingly quoted people who explained how Donald Trump spares no expense to surround himself with only the loudest and tackiest accouterments; gold plated things, silk things, personal bedroom with a desk, big screen TV, Rolls Royce Engines – the politics column took its writing cues from Robin Leach or 50 Shades of Grey.
Well, little Bob’s whining got him better than a tour of the plane, he went inside it; he got to ride it.
Dissecting the strategies of a statewide race around an exquisite oak table is exactly the kind of political scene you might envision involving a top Republican like Donald J. Trump, especially when he’s mulling a challenge to Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo.
But when the conversation takes place thousands of feet above New York State, aboard what he proudly calls “the world’s most luxurious airplane,” you get a sense of just how unique this campaign might be.
Oh, it’ll be unique, alright. Will Bob get to see the plane again? Its oak table – it’s so…exquisite. Giddy like a schoolboy, the man with the mustache and tan blazer is inhaling his surroundings. He’s mentally noting every detail, as if he was trying to design the setting of his every future dream. This gorgeous bird soars above the depressed landscape below. Look down at it – so common, so unluxurious; so unworthy of being under this plane.
So during a Friday afternoon interview with The Buffalo News aboard Trump’s $100 million Boeing 757 en route from New York to Buffalo, the Manhattan real estate mogul laid down his conditions in the clearest language yet.
The cost of that aircraft – that pricetag is Bob noticing the plane from across the room. A furtive glance; he smiles. The mighty 757 smiles back. It looks him up and down. It bites its lip. He hastily gulps his drink and looks away. What to do?!
Bob tries to regain his composure. His heart rate is elevated, and he’s playing out scenarios in his mind, while sitting in that plane and pretending to pay attention to Trump’s demands of complete party unity.
[State Repubican Chairman Ed] Cox, who attended the Salvatore’s event Friday evening and has clearly favored Astorino, continues to feel the brunt of Trump’s barbs. From his customary luxury seat around a small meeting table, glancing occasionally at the snowy landscape below, Trump on Friday dialed up his criticism of the chairman.
The luxury seat. What other sort would there be on this beautiful, gold-encrusted, silk-strewn beast? Oh, Trump. He doesn’t appreciate this plane, glancing down as he is at all the potential fracking sites, dreaming of ways to scar the upstate landscape. Bob isn’t looking out – he’s looking around. He is inside his love, they are in a warm and passionate embrace, and he has no time for snow or landscapes; no interest in the black-and-white winter tableau below.
“He’s a nice guy, but he hasn’t won anything,” he said, adding Cox is pushing Astorino because “he doesn’t know any better.”
“You’ll never see him in a plane like this,” he said of Cox.
So Trump in essence is inviting Cox to either climb aboard the Trump bandwagon – or in this case, the Trump 757 – or face what he calls an inevitable pummeling. Ditto for Astorino.
Wait a second. Trump’s getting wise to Bob’s shenanigans. Trump can see the passion in Bob’s eyes, and he knows that the plane’s heart is not fickle. No, N757AF loves Trump, and Trump loves it, and no two-bit reporter from some upstate hellhole can rend the two asunder. Not Ed Cox, and certainly not the likes of the News’ political columnist. But all the while, McCarthy is mentally scribbling “Bob N757AF” dreaming of a wedding day that will never come.
Trump has no problem dwelling on that “very nice life.” Watching a golf tournament on the 57-inch screen stretching across mid-cabin, he casually drops the fact he has won a string of club championships.
“I’m a good golfer,” he said.
But he also thinks the opulence that surrounds him could prove his point.
“People want to see success; I would like to show my financial statement,” he said. “I’m one of those guys who says let’s make a lot of money so we don’t have to cut, even though I know that last part doesn’t sound very Republican.”
Oh, how you’re teasing Bob. 57-inch screen in a plane? Not 56″ or 50″ – that’s for the lumpenproles toiling away 25,000 feet below. And it’s tuned to golf – something slow to help Bob calm down. Maintain, Bob. Maintain. Of course it’s golf – Bob’s new Boeing-built mistress knows what he likes. It understands him. It gets him. It’s like he’s re-born. Like the world is new. All it needs now is Steve Pigeon on its speed dial.
The plane landed in Buffalo, gracefully classing up a joint more accustomed to mere 737s and commuter jets. McCarthy had to leave his crush. Maybe he promised to keep in touch. Maybe they exchanged Snapchat usernames or followed each other on Instagram. Maybe Bob is liking all of the plane’s pictures on Facebook. OMG, he thinks, it’s totes adorbs.
But the $100 million lover with the exquisite oak, the 57 inches of lovin’, and the gold-encrusted seatbelts is gone now. As soon as humanly possible after leaving Salvatore’s, Trump and his plane – which has been compared to those belonging to Middle Eastern kleptomaniacal despots like Muammar Qaddafi – flew down to Palm Beach.
Oh, they’re soaking up the sun, Trump and that 757 beauty. But Bob’s waiting longingly for his reunion with his love.
Poor Bob. When Trump decides that the party isn’t unified enough and decides not to run, Astorino’s chartered turboprop is going to be so lame.
If this woman singing “America the Beautiful” in Arabic makes you angry, then you are a horrible and small-minded person
Last week, left-leaning horrible 24-hour news network MSNBC was forced to apologize for Tweeting,
“Maybe the rightwing will hate it, but everyone else will go awww: the adorable new #Cheerios ad w/ biracial family. http://t.co/SpB4rQDoAR“.
A staffer even lost his job over it.
MSNBC was right to bow to pressure from Reince Priebus and the Republican National Committee. It got it all wrong.
The right wing was actually outraged over an ad for Coca Cola, which featured people singing “America the Beautiful” in different languages.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=443Vy3I0gJs]
To sum up, if you are outraged or angry over this ad for a sugar water that is sold around the world, and is practically an ambassador for America itself, then be advised that you are a horrible and awful person, and I implore you to get help.
Here’s one Fox News hack:
Coca Cola is the official soft drink of illegals crossing the border. #americaisbeautiful
— toddstarnes (@toddstarnes) February 3, 2014
Here’s former Congressman and alleged crime perpetrator Allen West,
I am quite sure there may some who appreciated the commercial, but Coca Cola missed the mark in my opinion. If we cannot be proud enough as a country to sing “American the Beautiful” in English in a commercial during the Super Bowl, by a company as American as they come — doggone we are on the road to perdition. This was a truly disturbing commercial for me, what say you?
Well, it’s not as patriotic as beating a detainee or threatening to kill an Iraqi policeman, so maybe we shouldn’t take West’s word for it. And don’t forget to follow #BoycottCoke and #SpeakAmerican (yes, that.)
And these people are also supposed to be interested in buying Maseratis?!
I loved the hell out of that Coke ad, and I’m not offended or threatened by Americans who speak or sing in another language. In fact, I’m one of them.
(Assemblyman Ray Walter posted this to Facebook on Thursday…
Transportation Budget Hearing today. Tweet or FB me your questions for DOT and Thruway and I’ll try to get them in.#Budget2014
…Here are the questions I “Facebooked”):
1. Why do we need a Thruway Authority? In other words, why can’t the State DOT assume the duty to maintain the roads over which the Thruway has jurisdiction?
2. Assuming there is a satisfactory answer to #1, why can’t the Thruway Authority automate toll collection? This would save money for the Authority, and lost productivity and time for motorists.
3. How much does the Thruway Authority cost to operate every year as a separate entity, and how much of that is paid through tolls?
4. Similar to #2, but even if not fully automated, what reason exists to employ actual human beings to act as a middleman between a ticket dispensing machine and a motorist? Is there some magical forcefield that prevents motorists from taking a ticket themselves?
5. The toll barriers in Williamsville, Lackawanna, and at the PA border are inadequate for the amount of traffic they get during peak times in the summer. Will the TA institute a process to let motorists through toll-free during bad back-ups to alleviate traffic, and to prevent the poisoning of the air for nearby residents?
6. The TA operates the I-190, which handles most Canadian traffic. Why are the only tourism offices located at the Angola and Clarence plazas? Why is there no rest area / tourism office serving Canadians arriving on the Q-L, Rainbow, and Peace Bridges to spend money in WNY?
7. Also related to #2, EZ-Pass has the capability to collect tolls while traffic moves at highway speeds. Why is there no “EZ-Pass only” lane that lets vehicles go by at highway speeds at the major barriers in WNY?
8. It is my understanding that the tolls at Williamsville cannot be expanded due to lack of space. There has been a big push by certain towns (especially Vill of W’Ville) to move the barrier (if one needs to exist) back to somewhere between Clarence and the Pembroke exit. Why hasn’t this happened? What is the hold-up?
9. EZ-Pass transponders are operating throughout Manhattan. Why?
10. Is there any other system that might be implemented for the collection of tolls on the NYS Thruway that the TA has looked into? For instance, payment by mobile phone, payment of an annual, daily, or weekly pass to use the road, etc?
11. Will the TA raise the speed limit on the Thruway in rural areas between Albany – PA Line to 75 MPH?
12. The numbering scheme for exits on the Thruway is counterintuitive – many exits have been added and instead of re-numbering the system to accommodate them, the TA has just slapped an “A” at the end of the exit. Other states have implemented a system whereby the exit numbers correspond with the mile markers. When I wrote to the TA 10 yrs ago about this, they claimed that they couldn’t make this change because the road actually follows the I-87 and then the I-90, but this makes no sense. After all, the exit numbering scheme sequential along these two roadways, and the mile markers begin at 0 at the Deegan/Yonkers line and ascend along the I-87, continuing to the I-90. The Transit Road exit in Depew should be 415.
That’s all I’ve got for now.
UPDATE: Assemblyman Walter got to ask some of them. Here’s what the Thruway guy said:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTAYzASHjmI&w=640&h=360]
I know you’ll enjoy your time at the Republican fundraiser at Salvatore’s Italian Gardens – its design sensibilities match your own. Not to mention there will be well-heeled Republican donors willing to shell out $100 – $500 to see and possibly meet you, as well as a ragtag group of not-so-well-heeled Republican activists demonstrating for your benefit outside in the parking lot.
During the last few weeks, desperate New York Republicans have figuratively fellated you so sweetly and slowly, never breaking eye contact as they lovingly, sloppily caress your manhood. The official local party organ has given you a ton of sketchy massages with happy endings this week.
It’s so wonderful to be so loved; to be feted and worshipped like a God. It’s like every western New York Republican is doing their best Princess Leia impression: help us Obi-Wan Trumponi; you’re our only hope.
I read with interest the local political reporter’s story about your 757 aircraft. I especially enjoyed the part where he transcribed a portion of the voice-over from a documentary about it. Reporting!
You are their God because you embody the ideal of Homo Republicanus. You’re wealthy beyond belief, and everything you do is done to excess. You’re on your second family, but at least you never kept it secret, unlike the last Republican to run for governor, who took to the radio this week to explain how much of a “family man” you are. How he arrived at that conclusion is a mystery. You detest Obama and gleefully call him an ineligible Communist. You can’t stand Andrew Cuomo and know you can defeat him, but you demand some sort of unity in the Republican Party as a prerequisite to running. This is clever, because a few county chairs and perhaps the state committee may oppose you, and this would give you an out. You’re a well-known brand, but because of your outspoken tea party politics, you’re not a particularly well-liked one. You hate the idea of people having access to affordable health insurance, your personal morality doesn’t match the party line, and you’re often combative and rude.
But are we to believe that you’ll relinquish control of your companies to go to work in Albany, of all places? Let’s not forget that being governor isn’t some side gig you can do part of the day, and then traipse off to Manhattan to run an empire of tack. Politics is perfect for you, but if you win, you’d have to govern. The key to effective governing is compromise. Are you ready for that? I know you have experience cutting deals with business rivals, but can you translate that into policy? And what do you know of real people’s genuine problems? You don’t hear much from the 99% while ensconced in Trump Tower, or vacationing in Mar-a-Lago. Billionaire problems aren’t my problems, or most people’s.
Also – that thing that Cuomo said about extremist right-wingers? You know that he was talking about right-wing politicians, not average people. You also know he was right about what extremist rightists believe; Paladino’s electoral outcome is something you might be able to surpass, but not enough to beat Andrew Cuomo. You are so far on the right-wing fringe with your politics that you’ll do great up here where the people aren’t. But downstate? Your politics suck and a great many people there already think you’re a bit of a nouveau-riche prat.
Your visit to Buffalo tonight is the biggest speed dating event in WNY history. I think it’s great, because the disappointment will be so deep when you inevitably drop out because of work obligations, the fact that your lifestyle doesn’t need the headache of public scrutiny, or because you’ll have to disclose your financials and be expected to satisfy certain ethical obligations.
Have fun at Salvatore’s! They have great steaks!
Love, BP
I’m disappointed that the (716) Bistro won’t have 40′ TV screens and is settling for 38-footers. Perhaps I’ll file a lawsuit to block the proposal. My favorite part of the reveal was this paragraph, which was in the Buffalo News:
The restaurant’s walls will be decorated with graphics that tell the history of the numbers 7, 1 and 6 throughout the history of sports. Its bathrooms will feature mirrors that have TVs embedded within them. And, in addition to the 38-foot TV screen, there will be 55 more big-screen TVs throughout the restaurant.
Watching the embedded mirror TVs after taking a piss is all well and good, but what about during the piss itself? Can we expect supraurinal plasma screens? What about on the inside of the doors to individual stalls? Going number 2 can take minutes rather than seconds, and patrons can’t miss a minute of sports action! Will the hand dryers have TVs?
Who knew that Tully’s was a restaurant decor trend-setter?
But seriously, I don’t have a problem at all with a big hotel/hockey/restaurant project across from the First Niagara Center and Canalside, and down the block from Helium. It’s high time that area became the city’s entertainment district, and as much as we can make fun of the acid-washed dream that is (716), let’s be clear on one thing – HarborCenter is the Bass Pro project, (without the public cash).
Although it won’t be selling waders, rods, reels, and shotguns, it is a large-scale, expensive destination project that will attract people year-round. The (716) restaurant isn’t going to be fine dining, nor is anyone pretending that it will. It will likely feature a wide panoply of the finest deep-fried dishes, making you wish you owned the exclusive Pitco Frialator distributorship for western New York. It’ll be an over-the-top mega-sports bar to which people will drive 30 minutes to ignore their friends and get drunk while watching – and screaming to – an endless bank of TVs, wearing $120 hockey jerseys, and hopefully not drive home.
It might not be your cup of tea or mine, but what HarborCenter is doing is, on balance, a good thing for Buffalo.
Courtesy Marquil at EmpireWire.com
(It’s a movie. Click the arrow).
The state of the union is conflicted right now, and it’s because we don’t have a House of Commons anymore, but two Houses of Lords. We’re being led by the noses by a pack of wild millionaires and billionaires, few of whom know or care about real solutions to real problems. Of course, the so-called “tea party” is nothing more than the willing lumpenprole army for monied interests, so we can’t even get “tea party” right.
What I did at the end of my day yesterday was give myself a raise of $110/month.
Until yesterday, I had been paying Time Warner Cable almost $200 per month for two DVRs, digital channels, turbo high-speed internet, and HBO. On Facebook, Kevin Purdy wrote about his experience cutting his monthly expenses by, among other things, cutting out cable to its bare minimum. I called Time Warner and discussed with three reps during one call about reducing my monthly bill to under $100. You’d have thought I had called about partitioning Europe or drilling down the details of the Dayton Accords.
As it was, I yesterday unceremoniously relinquished two DVR units with associated cords and remotes at the Time Warner office downtown. I have retained high-speed internet at about $60/month (it gets cheaper when you add bundles!), and channels 1-22 (which, given the digital signals the TV reads without a cable box, is not precisely accurate). No more 24-hour mind-numbing cable news. No more HBO. No more Travel Channel or Duck Dynasty or Pawn Stars or Storage Wars. I have local channels and a decent internet signal.
And with that, I pay Hulu Plus about $8.00/month and I pay Netflix another $8.00/month. I have access on Hulu to almost every basic cable show I enjoy (South Park, Daily Show, Colbert), back episodes of Family Guy and the like, and loads of British comedies and series, which I enjoy.
With the PBS App on my Apple TV, I am well into season 3 of Sherlock, which WNED has put on hold until February. With Vevo the kids and I can watch actual music videos. With iTunes, I can buy or rent movies that the streaming services don’t have. But they have a lot. If I have a hankering for 24-hour news, Apple TV has Sky from the UK. If I need the Weather Channel, it’s on Apple TV. Hulu has Spongebob for the kids, and I’ve been binge-watching Peep Show and That Mitchell and Webb Look on Netflix and Hulu, respectively.
Channels “1-22” costs about $19/month. If I wanted some of basic cable, (channels 23 – 98) I’d need to rent a box and pay another $56/month. That’s ok.
$110 in my pocket every month is well worth it. Now, if only I could bump my unlimited family plan for 3 smartphones and 6 GB of data down from the $220/month it is now.
Maybe he just hates everything “common”
My Congressman was desperately interested in hearing my input about education and the Common Core standards that are slowly being transformed from an initiative to improve and enhance education and student expectations for the 21st century into a communard bete noir. Because Common Core was implemented during the Obama Presidency, Collins is automatically against it. Because many people are concerned about its testing protocols, Collins is interjecting himself into an issue about which he has never spoken before, and about which his ignorance is palpable.
Why was Common Core implemented? Because employers were concerned that High School students were unprepared for the job market – a pretty basic and fundamental issue.
The initial motivation for the development of the Common Core State Standards was part of the American Diploma Project (ADP).
A report titled, “Ready or Not: Creating a High School Diploma That Counts,” from 2004 found that both employers and colleges are demanding more of high school graduates than in the past. According to Achieve, Inc., “current high-school exit expectations fall well short of [employer and college] demands.” The report explains that the major problem currently facing the American school system is that high school graduates were not provided with the skills and knowledge they needed to succeed in college and careers. “While students and their parents may still believe that the diploma reflects adequate preparation for the intellectual demands of adult life, in reality it falls far short of this common-sense goal.” The report continues that the diploma itself lost its value because graduates could not compete successfully beyond high school, and that the solution to this problem is a common set of rigorous standards.
Why implement it nationwide? So that a kid in Alabama meets the same standards as a kid in Vermont, and so that no kid is shortchanged. But to Chris Collins, this is communistic hogwash. Here’s the press release that followed the call:
Jan 27, 2014 Press Release Thousands of district constituents participate in discussion about new educational standards
Congressman Chris Collins (NY-27) talked to parents about Common Core today as part of a district-wide telephone town hall meeting. The new educational standards are currently being implemented in New York State. Common Core is widely criticized for forcing students to learn skills necessary to perform well on tests as opposed to actually learning critical material.
Thousands of NY-27 constituents participated in the town hall to learn more about Common Core and voice their concerns about how the new standards are impacting their children.
“There are few issues as important to the future of our country as the education of our children,” said Congressman Collins. “Unfortunately, in today’s world, too many of the decisions surrounding our children’s education are being made by government bureaucrats far removed from the classroom. I believe strongly that parents, teachers and local school leaders know what is best for our children. Common Core is a typical one-size-fits-all approach generated by big government bureaucrats.”
New York State adopted Common Core standards in 2010. Across the country, 45 states have begun Common Core implementation, but recently ten states, including Massachusetts, have started to rethink or delay their participation over growing concerns from parents, educators and students themselves. States were incentivized to participate in Common Core by the federal government through grant money available as part of the American Recovery and Restoration Act (federal stimulus).
During the telephone town hall, parents voiced concerns about the student testing standards, mandated curriculum, and teacher/school evaluations tied to test results as dictated by Common Core. Joining Collins for the town hall was Neal McCluskey, Associate Director of the Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom.
“We should all want our children to be college or career ready following high school graduation and we should be willing to raise our standards to achieve that goal,” continued Collins. “But Common Core is about churning out students as test takers, not inquisitive students excited about learning.
By forcing students to spend their K-12 years arduously focused on test talking, we will never develop our next generation of leaders, educators and entrepreneurs. That is sad for our children and our country.”
Collins continued to urge parents and educators to raise awareness of Common Core and push for changes to its implementation, if not full repeal. Parents with questions about Common Core are encouraged to contact Congressman Collins’ office.
Well there it is. It wasn’t so much to let parents vent concerns as much as it was an opportunity for some guy from a libertarian think tank to propagandize to a conservative constituency. Was there a principal from a school in the district on the call? Was there anyone there who wasn’t there to promote an agenda, but had actual practical experience to offer? Was there anyone there with an advanced teaching degree? This less than a year after the school district that covers Collins’ own home underwent a brutal and painful budget process last year – one that saw tons of young, dedicated educators unceremoniously fired and myriad programs cut. Chutzpah is the word.
Who got to participate in the call? I’m not on Collins’ mailing list, despite having subscribed at least twice. So, yesterday, while my wife and I were at work, we got this call:
http://blogs.artvoice.com/avdaily/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/collinscall.mp3
Well, I wasn’t at home. I was at work working. Even though I knew about the call ahead of time, thanks to some local media reporting, I couldn’t participate because I was at work working on work so that I can bring home an income and, among other things, donate money to the school foundation set up to help fund programs that were cut last year.
#CommonCore is about as consistent with #schoolchoice as Bloomberg is with all-you-can-drink Coke #NSCW
— Neal McCluskey (@NealMcCluskey) January 27, 2014
Common Core may be susceptible to demagoguery because it sounds ominous, is new, and because the state of New York’s implementation of its standards was as abrupt as it was inept. Tons of kids came home last year having been tested against standards that weren’t taught during the school year, and they got bad scores. But when I talked to my youngest’s school principal and teachers about the new standards, they were universally enthusiastic about it. The new standards will not only ensure that the right things are being taught, but they will have an ability to track how kids are doing in real time, and divert extra help where it’s needed.
This isn’t about rolling back Common Core. This is about outlawing public education in this country. This is about codifying a fundamentally unfair, tiered education system whereby the poor and middle class receive vouchers enabling their kids to attend de-funded, decontented, tertiary quality schools; the upper middle class might be able to kick in extra for parochial or second-quality private schools; and the millionaire class can afford whatever they damn well please, and have their precious snowflakes’ private educations subsidized by the poor and middle class. It is the very definition of class warfare – by the wealthy against the not-wealthy. This is about the slow dismantling of every progressive goal this country has ever achieved – public K-12 education, social security, unemployment insurance, Medicaid, Medicare – anything designed to help average people and the elderly enjoy life. This is a war being waged by millionaires and billionaires against you and me.
It is a war against the American Dream itself.
So, if people were hosting a genuine conversation about Common Core and its standards and implementation, that would be great. But that’s not what Collins was doing. He timed the “discussion” so that working parents could not participate. He did not advertise it nearly well enough. He did not have a balanced discussion, but instead propagandized with the help of libertarian school choice advocates (read: public school opponents).