Author: buffalopundit

Occupy the Senate

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Had the Occupy movement not captured headlines, and had its messages not engendered sympathy from a middle class that has been systematically harmed by the axis of money and politics, then it’s possible that the Buffett Rule – a change to the tax code that would ensure that millionaires whose income comes largely from investments pay taxes on that money at a rate similar to that earned on other income, like business profits or regular wages. It’s named after Warren Buffett, the billionaire whose income comes largely from his myriad investments, who lamented that his secretary pays a higher tax rate than he. 

Last night, the Senate took up this change to the law, and it never made it to a vote. A single Democrat voted to block it, and a single Republican voted to bring it to the floor.  The Republicans filibustered, and the Democrats didn’t have the 60 votes needed to pass this legislation. (It’s high time to abolish the Senate filibuster, because the Constitution has been systematically circumvented – by both sides – to require that every legislation receive a supermajority for passage. This is unconscionable.) Without the threat of filibuster, the Buffett Rule would have passed the Senate 51 – 45. 

The bill would impose a minimum 30% effective federal tax rate on those with adjusted gross incomes above $1 million, although it phases in for those making between $1 million and $2 million.

Taxpayers subject to the Buffett Rule would still get a break for charitable deductions and could count both the income and payroll taxes they paid when calculating what they would owe

There’s nothing about that plan that should make Republicans reject it. Frankly, it makes sure that the wealthiest Americans don’t avoid paying taxes through an impossibly large, byzantine system that is specifically geared to lend loopholes to those who can afford them. 

The Buffett rule isn’t even controversial. 

It’s supported by 72% of Americans; of those, 53% of Republicans back it, and 70% of independents do, too. Unfortunately, it’s supported by only 2% of Senate Republicans; it’s only controversial among those whom the 1% have paid to oppose it. 

Americans don’t think the rich should get special breaks that regular folks don’t get, yet the Republicans in congress have made class warfare – by the rich against everybody else – a platform plank, and they’re shouting “socialist” at anyone who points it out. Problem is, it’s not working, and they’ve just selected someone who directly benefits from the failure of the Buffett Rule to be their nominee. 

This should be fun. 

The Coopers, Formerly of Lovejoy

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Let’s dispense for a moment with the “it’s the people” canard about why Buffalo is great – the City of Good Neighbors. 

The reality is that some people are great and neighborly, and others aren’t. Buffalonians are no more or less great or neighborly than any other Americans. Sorry, but you’re not special. 

This comes into stark view as we find out about the violent racist harassment that drove a Black family out of Lovejoy last week. When you have a lost generation of people who can no longer rely on steady industrial work in now-dormant or departed facilities, you get anger and resentment. Young, angry, and resentful people develop irrational hatreds and sometimes act out on them. 

That socioeconomic fact is, however, no excuse. The Coopers of Lovejoy have every right to live wherever they please, without fear of constant harassment from small-minded racists. The Buffalo News stories (here and here) about the issue were well done and provided extraneous details, such as the muttering of racial epithets within a News photographer’s earshot. 

Neighbors thought the family was a “gang” because, well, the Coopers are a large Black family. 

We shouldn’t be tolerating pogroms in 2012 in Buffalo, and another matter comes into stark view. Where is our political leadership on this issue? Rich Fontana is the city councilman from Lovejoy, and he laid blame on the victims. 

“The family was originally harassed, but when they called in other family members for protection, they turned the situation upside down, and they became the aggressors by sending two Lovejoy youths to the hospital and robbing fast food delivery people,” Fontana said. “After that, I got involved and told both sides to stop the aggression. It was calm until 4:30 this morning.”

Cooper took issue with Fontana’s assessment.

She said that white youths and adults threw rocks and bricks at one of her sons and a nephew, prompting family members to fight back, adding that it occurred after months of racial slurs. “It wears on you,” she said.

As for the allegations of fast food thefts, Cooper said no one at her home ordered the pizza or Chinese food and that no one on her porch attempted to take it.

But the delivery workers filed police reports late Tuesday night, with one claiming an order of pizza and chicken wings was snatched from him and the other reporting that he managed to flee with the Chinese food before it could be taken.

So, the Coopers certainly didn’t find any help or sympathy from Fontana. It’s their fault someone pranked them by ordering food for them. It’s their fault they fought back against harassment. Yet that contradicts this: 

“I’m telling all the residents and every kid I can pull into my arms to stop the attacks, unless you’re attacked first. You do have the right to defend yourself, but don’t be the aggressor against anyone in the neighborhood,” [Fontana] said.

Well, too late. The Coopers moved away. Mayor Brown got briefly involved, but this was an opportunity for him to use his bully pulpit for good. Seeing no ribbons to cut, he has shown zero leadership on yet another critical issue facing the city. 

Good people are good, and bad people are bad – and they come in every hue, from every nation. One would have thought that, in 2012, we’d all be on the same page with that. And in Buffalo, we reserve our outrage for important matters, like footballers’ criticisms of our hotels and the giggles of a different Cooper – Anderson, of Manhattan. 

Happy Birthday, Romneycare!

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Six years ago, Massachusetts’ then-Governor Mitt Romney signed the Commonwealth’s universal health insurance act into law. Try as Romney might, there is no doubt whatsoever that Obamacare directly descends from Romneycare – it is the Massachusetts plan writ large and federalized. Six years is the half-life, apparently, where a conservative path towards universal coverage becomes socialism. 

But Romneycare has resulted in an almost 100% coverage rate in Massachusetts, and though not perfect, has been dubbed a success story. 

Yet the 2012 model of Mitt Romney has nothing whatsoever to say about Romneycare on its sixth anniversary in the middle of a Presidential campaign. It’s his most significant and marketable achievement, and he’s painted himself into a rhetorical corner to avoid drawing attention to the similarities between Romneycare and Obamacare.  They’re almost identical. 

Romney’s argument in 2012 is that he’s proud of Romneycare, but disagrees with the notion that every state be required to follow one particular model. It’s the cowardly Republican’s disingenuous argument – when in doubt, go with state’s rights. The problem is that the crisis – really the shame – of uninsurance and underinsurance is a national one, one that requires a national response. The problems of medical bankruptcies (handled exclusively in federal courts), and of the uninsured using emergency rooms for primary care, the cost of which is then shunted onto taxpayers are national, federal issues. 

If Mr. Romney even believes these things to be problems needing solving, he should present a plan to fix them. If he wants to be true to his supposed 10th Amendment feelings, the federal government could simply mandate that states reach universal health insurance coverage, and let them each come up with their own ways to do so. 

I eagerly await President Obama to call Mr. Romney on this particular bluff. 

Well, Happy Birthday, Romneycare. Thanks for setting up the system that the federal government modified to apply to the entire country!

 

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxZK0spa1yI]

Worky Work and the Worky Bunch

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Mitt and Ann Romney are liars. 

They would have you believe that they think being a full-time stay-at-home mom is hard work. They have attempted to re-frame Hilary Rosen’s criticism of Ann Romney in that way. 

But that’s not what Rosen was talking about, and the Romneys know it. 

They know it because just a few short months ago, Romney held a very different view of stay-at-home moms; well, the poor ones, anyway. 

But the attacks don’t gibe with comments Romney made just three months ago on the campaign trail. In January, Romney touted his proposal as governor of Massachusetts to raise the amount of work required of parents on welfare so that they could “have the dignity of work.”

The comment was uncovered and aired on MSNBC’s “Up w/Chris Hayes,” Sunday morning.

“I wanted to increase the work requirement,” said Romney in New Hampshire. “I said, for instance, that even if you have a child 2 years of age, you need to go to work. And people said, ‘Well that’s heartless.’ And I said, ‘No, no, I’m willing to spend more giving day care to allow those parents to go back to work. It’ll cost the state more providing that daycare, but I want the individuals to have the dignity of work.’”

But it was this very idea, that raising children is not “work,” that started the Romney campaign’s “war on moms” attack against Democrats this week. Immediately following Rosen’s comments on CNN Wednesday night, the Romney campaign kicked into high gear attacking Rosen and defending motherhood as “hard work.”

So, which is it? Is motherhood itself “hard work” that provides women with the “dignity” thereof? Or is staying at home and working raising kids a luxury reserved only for those who can afford it? Is being a mom “hard work” for some, but not for others? 

Lying is nothing new in politics, but the frequency and easiness with which the Romneys do so is breathtaking. 

Oh, also – if you’ve been hustling to get your taxes filed and paid on time, you’ve accomplished more than Mitt Romney has. The unemployed multimillionaire corporate raider filed for an extension to submit his return.  His campaign said, presumably with a straight face, that they’ll file as soon as they have “all the information” needed to do so. He paid $3.4 million in estimated tax.  

Did Collins Recommend Closure?

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In reply to yesterday’s story about Chris Collins’ pledge to examine the Niagara Falls air base and Batavia VA center for “efficiency”, and go along with their closure if they weren’t up to Collins’ standards, Erie County Republican Chairman Nick Langworthy writes: 

The allegations that Chris Collins called for the closing of the Niagara Falls Air Reserve Station or any of Western New York’s VA facilities is preposterous. He did not say anything close to that. What he did say is that we should strive to have the best services and most efficient federal facilities possible in Western New York and that is the reason why they should stay open. There were over 100 people in attendance at the event. The crowd gave Chris Collins a resounding ovation and became very angry when it was announced that a press release had gone out from one of his opponents attacking Collins and grossly distorting his comments.

But Bellavia’s people were told that Collins threw a fit at the meeting when shown a Tweet from Michael Caputo / modified tweet from Bellavia himself:

[blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/#!/DavidBellavia/status/191175054195826688″]

A woman came forward to release the following press release midday Sunday, posted as a comment to the earlier piece: 

My name is Carrie M. Christman. I am a veteran of the United States Air Force and a Republican Committeeman from Brighton in Monroe County. On Saturday, April 14, I attended the Erie County Republican Roundtable where former Erie County Executive Chris Collins was a featured speaker. After his speech, I asked him a question about keeping the Batavia Veterans Administration Medical Center open and a follow up question about keeping the Niagara Falls Air Reserve Station open as well. He told me “you may not like my answer” and went on to say that these facilities must be examined for efficiency and forced to operate in a more cost effective manner. It was definitely my impression from his answers that if the Batavia VA and the Niagara Falls air base did not meet his efficiency standards that he may not consider keeping them open.

My take is, if there are inefficiencies – and I believe we all know that is a major problem with our government – we need to find out what are the causes for these inefficiencies. The solution is correcting the problem at the source. Let’s find that out, then we are on the right path to solving our nation’s problems.

So, there’s some dispute there over whether Collins said he’d close the facilities he deems “inefficient” using some undisclosed standard of efficiency, or whether Christman inferred closure from his remarks, although Collins never expressed precisely that sentiment. 

I submit that it hardly matters. 

When you’re dealing with the matter of providing medical services to veterans, or the duties carried out by the NY Air National Guard – only a cold, sick technocrat who has no experience with military matters or respect for veterans would first jump on the Six Sigma efficiency bus before wondering whether the institutions are adequately funded and staffed to carry out their duties. 

There is more to government than penny-pinching – especially when it comes to medical care for veterans. 

Six Sigma Collins on the Military

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Chris Collins, who is casually running to represent the newly-constructed 27th Congressional District in Congress, hasn’t learned his lesson. He is still trying clumsily to foist his technocratic Six Sigma nonsense onto anything and everything. 

Astonishingly, on Saturday morning Collins told the monthly Erie County Republican Roundtable that he would close the Niagara Falls Air Reserve Station and the Batavia VA Medical Center if they were not “efficient”. This calls into question what Collins considers to be efficient – the quality of care at the VA, or the military services provided by the air base versus their cost. 

Of course, things like the VA and the air base are examples of Keynesian economic stimuli, and their closure would affect the economy-at-large. But Republicans seldom acknowledge their inconsistencies on this point. 

But the measure of whether we need a VA center in Batavia shouldn’t be cold, bean-counting “efficiency”, but whether it serves a public need. Government services don’t exist to make money, and we should hardly take away critical health services from GLOW-area veterans. Likewise, the fate of the air base should be dependent not on economics, but on military need. 

In a press release, Bellavia said, 

“While efficiency is quite important, effectiveness is by far the paramount goal of our national defense,” Bellavia said. “Mr. Collins clearly does not understand this and cannot possibly represent a Congressional district which includes one of the most important United States Air Force bases in the world.”

“Likewise, the quality of service Veterans Administration hospitals provide for our wounded warriors and retired military is the most important metric in the system,” Bellavia said. “Thousands of retired military and many wounded soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines reside in the 27th Congressional District. How would they get the medical care our nation pledged to them if Mr. Collins closes the Batavia VA hospital?”

“What will Mr. Collins do – wrap the air base and hospital in his vaunted Six Sigma values and close them if they don’t pass muster?” Bellavia asked. “Will he shutter Niagara Falls Air Reserve Station if the C-130’s don’t burn bio-fuel? Will the VA hospital have to meet the infamous standard of care of private HMO’s? While I agree we must always strive for cost efficient government operations, Mr. Collins’ slavish devotion to efficiency-above-all will surely destroy our military and veterans services.”

Chris Collins thinks that government serves the taxpayer – it was his mantra throughout his single term as County Executive. But that’s only partly true – while government owes a fiduciary duty to the taxpayer to not be wasteful, its real service is to those who are in need of services. We get worked up over a guy who allegedly defrauded $4,000 – but that’s less than a drop in a massive bucket of regional economic failure. Chris Collins’ IDA doled out millions in tax breaks, loans, and incentives to the connected – that we don’t examine or criticize, because we don’t understand it or bother to wrap our heads around the dollar figures or long-term success or failure of the process. 

The War on Women and Mothers 2012

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So, the war on women. Right? There’s a war on women. That’s what the media are telling us, that’s what politicians are talking about, that’s what’s been in the national news for the last month or so. 

This is new? 

Those with economic and political power have been battling women’s rights for centuries. Hell, it’s only been about 100 years since women were given a constitutional right to vote throughout the country. The Equal Rights Amendment – which would have strengthened Constitutional protections against discrimination – was never ratified or enacted. As Mad Men will sexily remind you, it’s only in the last 40 or so years that it’s become common or acceptable for women to pursue a career outside the home.

It’s only in the last few hundred years that common-law countries stopped treating women as chattel. 

America was built on paternalism and puritanism, and this country still struggles with basic womanhood. Locally, it’s only a few months ago that local ruin-hugging ex-columnist Donn Esmonde incurred women’s wrath by expressing the icky feelings he gets when he sees women breastfeeding – naturally feeding their children – in public.  We had a locally-sourced gubernatorial candidate who routinely shared misogynistic emails with captains of politics and industry.  

 Mitt Romney is saying that President Obama has been really waging a war on women, because the 2008 financial meltdown – which predated his presidency – disproportionately affected women in the workplace. Politifact says that claim is “largely false”.

This year’s traveling vaudeville act of a Republican primary season revealed that the GOP still struggles with the concept of women’s rights. As usual, they scrambled to out-oppose each other on any form of abortion rights. It got so bad that a debate over contraception that people thought was dead, revealed itself merely to have been dormant, as Republicans pounced on a rule of general applicability that required even religious employers to include contraceptive coverage as part of their health care plans.

While the right wing presented this as a fight over religious freedoms – part of the “Muslim Obama war on Christianity” meme – it came across as a battle over chastity.  The Republican id, Rush Limbaugh, crystallized it when he called Sandra Fluke a “slut” and “prostitute” because she explained how the cost of contraceptives was prohibitive for many people, including students.  

Apparently, Limbaugh and his followers confused the use of female contraceptives with the way men use Viagra – as if Fluke was having so much sex, she couldn’t afford to take the pill each time. Again, it was semi-informed, ignorant men trying to control a narrative over something they barely understood. 

Yesterday, Arizona – the most tea partyish of the tea party states – passed an insane law that has nothing to do with science, health, or safety, but is called the “Women’s Health and Safety Act”. I remember 20 years ago, people would debate the morality and legality of abortion by discussing when life begins – conception? Viability? Some other time? Well, Arizona has firmly decided on “some other time” – namely, life begins at the end of the pregnant woman’s last menstrual period. The state will not only artifically re-configure nature itself, but will also attempt to bully and coerce women into not undergoing an abortion – a perfectly legal medical procedure that enjoys specific legal protection. 

[blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/#!/KagroX/status/190591900334559232″]

And so we turn to Hilary Rosen – someone I’d never heard of before this week – who clumsily accused Mitt Romney’s wife, Ann, of never working a day in her life. Rosen has since apologized, and explained that her words were poorly chosen and she meant to underscore the fact that the Romneys lived a multimillionaire’s life and have absolutely no real-life understanding of the struggles that regular, middle-class people have. 

One could make the argument that Ann Romney’s laudable choice to be a stay-at-home mom is a “choice” that a great many American families don’t have the luxury to consider.  Just like most American families don’t have the choice to participate in the “rarified world of upper-level dressage“. 

The right pounced on Rosen, and much of the left establishment criticized her, as well. But the Catholic League – a detestable religio-fascist collective led by horrible person Bill Donohue – had this to say: 

[blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/#!/CatholicLeague/status/190427506904539136″]

I don’t even understand that. Is Donohue criticizing adoption itself as being less than proper, natural motherhood? Is Donohue saying that adoptive parents don’t “work” in raising their kids, but that biological parents do?  Remember the story I wrote about the school assembly, where some Catholic cleric derided adopted kids as “sociologically unstable”? Why are Catholic leaders attacking adoption and adopted kids?  I think for Donohue, it has more to do with simple rank homophobic hate, as evidenced by this Tweet, from later the same day, which goes to this post from Kristen Becker: 

[blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/#!/CatholicLeague/status/190059203518410752″]

Planned Parenthood said this: 

[blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/#!/PPact/status/190551328555143168″]

Ann Romney wrote these Tweets: 

[blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/#!/AnnDRomney/status/190262588163100672″]

[blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/#!/AnnDRomney/status/190428549105188864″]

No, only some women get to choose their own path. A great many women can’t afford to do that. In the meantime, we ensure that people like the Romneys only pay a 15% income tax rate on their non-payroll investment income. Entitled? If Romney was a Democrat, Republicans would be deriding stay-at-home motherhood as just another socialist welfare entitlement program. 

[blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/#!/KagroX/status/190554001295687681″]

Hilary Rosen took to Twitter to directly address Romney: 

[blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/#!/hilaryr/status/190272145568440320″]

[blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/#!/hilaryr/status/190272730128592896″]

The whole thing could be solved quite simply. If, as Romney says, women are “entitled” to make the choice, then they should be entitled to make the choice. If the Republicans are now suggesting that motherhood is real work, it’s time for the federal government to make funds available to supplement household incomes in order to enable every American family to make the same choice that the Romneys were wealthy enough to make. The median annual income for a woman working full-time in America is just over $33,000. The federal government should expand social security to give women a choice to claim annual stay-at-home benefits equal to that figure, with annual cost-of-living adjustments.  If we’re for school choice and vouchers, we should be for this. 

Obviously, that’s never going to happen – we as a society can’t even agree on whether or not people should have universal access to quality health care without the fear of going bankrupt. Michelle Obama wrote, 

[blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/#!/MichelleObama/status/190469503161860096″]

There’s been a war on women going on for centuries. It’s still a big part of our society. I don’t think Mitt or Ann Romney are this generation’s catalysts for changing that shameful problem. 

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Today’s Things

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1. The best thing to come out of yesterday’s Anderson Cooper / Dyngus Day flap? The Buffalo Outrage Twitter account. Check it out next time Buffalo gets indignant over real and imagined slights from national figures. 

[blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/#!/BuffaloOutrage/status/190103345762025472″]

I’d like to note that the point I made in my post about it yesterday – about my misgivings over the geography of the Dyngus Day festivities – was underscored by the fact that the Dyngus Day organizers held their faux-anger-at-Anderson press conference at Redlinski’s, which is not in the Broadway Market anymore, but instead located on Walden Avenue in Cheektowaga. I was pleased that the organizers didn’t overdo the outrage, and instead took it all in good humor and invited Cooper to the 2013 festivities. 

As for the geography, upon some reflection, I do enjoy the use of the Central Terminal as Buffalo’s unofficial convention center – the convention center that is architecturally gorgeous and begging to be used. But parading through a devastated community that hasn’t been Polish for decades still seems borderline insulting, and that’s what I object to. If Polonia is so great, why’d all the Poles move? 

2. What happens when a cow walks into the road and causes an accident – can the cow’s owner be held liable for negligently allowing the cow to roam around freely? Not in New York, and the Third Department’s Appellate Division took an unusual step and referred a case to the Court of Appeals, asking the state’s highest court to change the law. 

3. George Zimmerman, who shot and killed unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin was charged yesterday with 2nd degree murder. The case is rapidly becoming something of a circus, complete with the involvement of despicable judgment debtor Al Sharpton. At its core, however, the question of whether Zimmerman’s killing of Martin was justified is one a jury should decide – not the police.  In Florida, 2nd degree murder does not require premeditation; instead, a person is guilty if he commits a homicide, “with a depraved mind showing no regard for human life“. To my mind, when Zimmerman made the decision to exit his car to chase Martin – who was not committing any crime – he forfeited any right to a self-defense justification. Being black, wearing a hoodie, and looking at the overzealous neighborhood watch guy funny don’t justify homicide.  

Either way, both Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman deserve this to be a fair trial by an impartial judge and jury. 

4. Last week, Capital New York’s Reid Pillifant published excerpts from an interview he conducted with Gingrich supporter Carl Paladino. Some key passages from the pride of Buffalo: 

“Unlike these other pussies that are saying, ‘Oh, we don’t want to have a brokered convention, oh’—they’re a bunch of pussies, OK? Those are the ones that are the establishment boys that think they’re still viable with the people. They’re not viable with the people anymore. Those are the control boys. All they’re about is keeping the status quo and the status quo is not real anymore for the Republican rank and file nationally.”

and 

Paladino also criticized Romney for his offshore investments, which the Washington Post reported yesterday still aren’t fully known, because the campaign is utilizing an obscure exception in federal ethics laws.

“Yes, he may be doing it in the letter of the law, in hiding his money overseas, to not pay taxes to the government that he now wants to run,” Paladino said. “Sounds sort of like [Jeff] Immelt at G.E., you know, they hold all that money offshore and, ‘Oh, I’m an American.’ He’s not an American anymore. He’s a fucking two-faced cock-sucker that shipped the x-ray division over to China last week.” 

Paladino is on a kick to grow his power statewide, and I don’t recall him using such colorful terminology on the record when dealing with local or regional matters. Part of me thinks it’s too bad, because that sort of language is seldom appropriate, but never more so than when talking about our local political establishment. 

5. Thursday in at the Square will be permanently moving from Lafayette Square to Canal Side.  More room, nice location, something to do by the water – everybody wins. 

6. Adding to the groups the Republican Presidential nominee is happy to alienate and offend, the homophobic National Organization for Marriage endorses Mitt Romney for President. NOM’s Twitter account was hacked yesterday, with hilarious results. 

7. I just saw the first pro-Romney SuperPAC ad on Channel 4, from the “Restore our Future” PAC, so named because apparently Kenyan Indo-Muslim Socialist Usurper N0bama has taken it away. 

8. The right wing hates not only Obamacare, but also Social Security. The 2008 financial meltdown apparently taught them nothing at all.

9. Turns out, James O’Keefe’s and Hannah Giles’  prostitution “sting” of ACORN wasn’t too far off the mark – problem is, Andrew Breitbart was the pimp, and O’Keefe and Giles were the whores. 

10. Here is Anderson Cooper putting himself on the Ridiculist after yesterday’s giggling fit over Dyngus Day. 

 

http://i.cdn.turner.com/cnn/.element/apps/cvp/3.0/swf/cnn_416x234_embed.swf?context=embed&videoId=us/2012/04/12/ac-ridiculist-giggle-fit-2.cnn

It’s nice when people can have a sense of humor. 

Anderson Cooper Reacts to Dyngus Day

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Here, TV’s Anderson Cooper learns about the “traditions” of Dyngus Day, which Buffalo is very proud to host every year. Cooper’s reaction is quite appropriate, all things considered. It’s an odd celebration, because for all intents and purposes Buffalo’s East Side Polonia has been reduced to almost nothing in the past few decades. Once a year – around Eastertime – Buffalo’s Polish diaspora converges on its old neighborhood to celebrate a community that’s left, and a heritage that has been diluted. It’s always that way with immigrant communities – time brings assimilation and old traditions become excuses to binge drink in abandoned buildings.

Consider why Buffalo hosts its Italian festival on Hertel Avenue, and not on Grant Street, where the Italian immigrants largely lived during the first half of the last century. 

The Dyngus Day festivities and their ancillary events take place in what is now a very poor neighborhood with little hope and less opportunity.  There are myriad non-profits, volunteers, and caring people who work tirelessly and with little or no remuneration to try to make life better for those neighborhoods and their residents.  I don’t know how you turn blight around when there are no jobs to be had, but it seems to me that the annual drink-fest taking place in a neighborhood that Buffalo’s Polish community has abandoned seems disturbingly superficial and crass, given the human suffering that happens there during the remaining 364 days of the year. 

So, instead of drinking mass quantaties of Tyskie, join or contribute to Buffalo ReUse, follow community news at Broadway Fillmore Alive, or volunteer to help preserve the Central Terminal.   

http://i.cdn.turner.com/cnn/.element/apps/cvp/3.0/swf/cnn_416x234_embed.swf?context=embed&videoId=bestoftv/2012/04/11/ac-ridiculist-dyngus-day.cnn

Not Just Parking Lots Anymore

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Washington, DC is a thriving, bustling city filled with people and money. Even after business hours, the streets are filled with cars, the sidewalks are filled with people, and there are street-level businesses doing good business. 

One of the things to remember about historic preservation is that many of these older buildings don’t have underground parking garages, and to make them even remotely economically feasible, you need to provide parking for tenants, guests, and residents. New builds can hide the parking underground – old buildings can’t, and we have nothing in place to require it to happen. So, we maintain a sea of surface parking that we complain about endlessly, but we seldom come up with ideas to actually change that around. 

Our city municipal parking garages are inadequate, antiquated, and ugly. Forget smart parking – in most lots, you can’t even pay without cash. We don’t have a comprehensive civic, urban plan to turn the surface parking into shovel-ready lots while concentrating the daily influx of cars into designated, well-designed, modern parking garages. 

But here’s a homework assignment for Buffalo. DC’s Mount Vernon triangle was, until recently, a blighted shell of a neighborhood made up largely of cheap parking for commuters. Now? It’s re-making itself into a thriving community thanks to its proximity to downtown businesses and attractions. It’s “not just parking lots anymore“. 

So, that’s Buffalo’s homework assignment – to learn a lesson from places like Mt Vernon triangle; to take its blight and turn it into something attractive and exciting. It doesn’t matter if a building is new or old – what matters is what’s inside them. 

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