Category: Local Politics

Gia Arnold: Never Mind

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A few Wednesdays ago, Orleans County state senate candidate Gia Arnold ended her campaign because her marriage was falling apart. I wrote about it – and the odd pointlessness of her withdrawal – here. 

But last Friday – the day commonly reserved for politicians to release bad news – Ms. Arnold told the Buffalo News that she was back in the race. 

“When I made my announcement last week, I never fathomed the hundreds of texts, calls and emails that I received, almost all of which called for me to stay in this race and fight for truth, honesty and what is right for our Senate district. For me, telling the truth and being honest with my supporters and the citizens is the most important aspect of running for and representing the people, even if it means losing some support and not helping myself”

North Tonawanda Mayor Robert Ortt is also running in the Republican primary to replace retiring George Maziarz, and there’s no word yet on what Ortt thinks about “truth, honesty and what is right” for SD-62. 

There are about 3 weeks left in this primary season, and it boils down to: 

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3FnpaWQJO0]

 

Gia Arnold’s Bizarre Wednesday

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Gia Arnold is a 24 year-old wife and mother who decided in February to run for State Senate against George Maziarz. Introducing herself in her first Facebook post, she explained, 

That’s a nice introduction. She’s got a young family and a hard-working husband. Certainly, Ms. Arnold’s statements regarding high business taxes and “insurance” rates resonate with a lot of people, especially in the more economically depressed parts of the state.  Is this self-proclaimed libertarian suggesting that government intervene to affect private companies’ insurance rates, or is this about tort reform? Who knows? 

In her second post, she self-identifies as “working class” and laments the fact that the incumbent has been in office for 19 years, yet the burden on families and businesses continues to worsen. But it didn’t take long for this kind of crap to become the overarching – almost sole – focus of her campaign: guns. 

By March, she received the clown endorsement: 

And a few weeks ago, she showed up at an event wearing jewelry I haven’t seen at Reeds-Jenss. 

You get the idea. She knows her audience and she’s become expert at the fine art of pandering.

Maziarz’s Moreland Commission problems put SD-62 into play, and she suddenly found herself with a decent shot in a primary race against the mayor of North Tonawanda, Robert Ortt. She came out of nowhere, and her grassroots effort seemed to be paying dividends. 

Then, suddenly, she issued a bizarre statement in the middle of the night. She revealed that she had an extramarital affair that began less than two weeks ago, and made no apologies for it. She declared that she was quitting the race and gave out her personal cell phone number so that “constituents” could talk to her directly. (Ms. Arnold had never been elected to any public office and has no constituents). She was admitting to the affair out of sense of “integrity” and “honesty”. Laudable, but an answer to a question no one asked. Perhaps she was being blackmailed? Pressured? Or maybe she was just trying to wrest control of the narrative before anyone else got a hold of it. 

But quit the race? Who told her to do that? This isn’t a “people make mistakes” scenario – this is a “failed marriage ending”, and she doesn’t owe anyone any explanation about her personal affairs. If she wanted to control the message, then issue a press release at 4:59 on a Friday and let the news sink in over the weekend. Gauge the reaction and see whether you need to pivot on Monday. Instead, she threw the baby out with the bathwater, walking away from the campaign even though no one demanded that she do so. Her erstwhile supporter Rus Thompson’s reaction was to essentially say, “good riddance”. 

Albany, however, is a notoriously fetid cesspool. Gia Arnold – failed marriage and all – is small potatoes compared to what goes on there. She’s downright saintly compared to a lot of what goes on there. 

I don’t question her judgment viz. her extramarital affair because who cares; however, I think the hasty amateur-hour way in which she released the news and abruptly quit is evidence that her judgment is poor, and she’s not ready for prime-time. (As for the substance of her poorly articulated platform, let’s not even go there.) 

The news hit Wednesday morning. By mid-afternoon, she was on WBEN telling Tom Bauerle that she might reconsider dropping out, and, in an effort to further justify her new relationship and its affect on her campaign, spent extraordinary time and breath smearing her estranged husband. It went from odd to bizarre, as she explained how she started her affair on August 1st and decided to end her marriage by the 5th. 

A few weeks ago, when the Maziarz news hit, I paid some attention to her and found some ugly stuff on her Facebook page that she hadn’t called out; namely, one guy going ballistic because she appeared somewhere where they had gold fringe on the flag (there is a wackadoodle conspiracy theory that fringe means we’re under martial law or some bullshit), and this on her campaign page, in a discussion about a White House announcement regarding disappearing bees: 

To her credit, she addressed it and deleted the nonsense. So, I don’t think she’s malevolent – just very wrong on the issues and very, very inexperienced. 

She didn’t have to quit the race, and she should have been more diplomatic about her husband Wednesday on the air. I think those two things call her judgment into question and disqualify her from public office, at least for now. The flip-flop on “I’m quitting the race!” to “Never mind!” was simply comical. 

I think back to when I was 24 – I was in law school – and I hand it to her for having the courage to run and put herself out there. But it’s just too early, I think. Go run for town board or county legislature. Gain some experience. Build a support base that’s deeper than “guns”. Learn. Teach. Build up your resume. Don’t rely just on ideology, but also on accomplishments. 

We need more people like Gia Arnold getting involved in politics – on the left and right. But please, recruit some professionals to help you with strategy, messaging, and policy and don’t just wing it.

DiPietro’s Campaign Finance Disclosure: Incomplete?

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In late April, Assemblyman David DiPietro held a fundraiser where a bunch of guns were raffled off. Because NY SAFE Act, and it was held in North Java in Wyoming County, where gun is the only issue that seems to matter, if WNY pols are to be believed. 

One commenter at the Buffalo News’ site said it was “great” and “standing room only”. They seemed to have a lot of fun unter dem Totenkopf. 

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Here’s the fundraiser’s flyer: 

 

So, where did the money go? How much was raised? How much did he spend?

DiPietro’s campaign committee filed its July campaign finance disclosure with the New York State Board of Elections, and it shows $14,000 individual donations through March – nothing in April or May. There’s a payment of $400 to the North Java Fire Company in February, but nothing in April or May. How much was raised and how much was spent? Where did the raffled-off firearms come from? Were they in-kind donations? If so, why aren’t they disclosed? Did the campaign pay for them? Not according to any disclosure. 

I’d love to hear a lot more from this guy about how Obama and Cuomo are totally lawless – right after he explains why he hasn’t disclosed campaign fundraising and expenditures after mid-March in his July report. 

 

Shorter Weppner: #BlameTheHelp

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In regard to “infected poors”, our intrepid candidate dons a new pair of clownshoes: 

You may remember Laura Yingling from a few weeks ago. Weppner chided Yingling  for soliciting photographs of blighted parts of the NY-26 district to “use against Brian Higgins on Twitter and Facebook”. 

Now, we’re meant to believe that the “infected poor” – actually, it read “infected poors” – Tweet from Weppner’s own Twitter account was actually published “accidentally” because Yingling thought it came from the Heritage Foundation.  

In other words, referring to unaccompanied minor refugee human beings as “infected poors” is ok, so long as the Heritage Foundation does it first?

Weppner then goes on to write about her love of Mexico, despite the fact that the unaccompanied minors at issue are not coming from Mexico, but through it, from places like Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador. Weppner does, however regale us with pictures of her and her husband enjoying Mexico, apropos of just about not a goddamn thing. Except perhaps to transmit the message, ‘some of our best friends are brown and speak Spanish.’ 

“Mariachi Kathy” Via Facebook

Unbelievable is that this is the third or fourth major embarrassment for the Weppner campaign.  First it was the Jerry Zremski piece in the Buffalo News where all of Kathy’s wild and wacky conspiracy theories came to the fore. She subsequently – quickly – scrubbed all evidence of her former, WBEN-cultivated self from the internet. Next, Weppner chided Yingling for the solicitation of blight photos, and now this. 

I went back to the article Weppner/Yingling linked to, and although a bunch of quite hateful people wrote shit about “extortion”, nowhere did I see the words “infected” or “poors”.  I call bullshit. 

For someone running for a serious federal legislative office, this is beyond bush league. I expect better from school board candidates, much less congressional ones. Why on Earth would someone vote for a person whose campaign stumbles from embarrassment to embarrassment, with the staff taking the fall for it? Why would you want to elect someone who makes “careless errors” that are vicious and insulting about young kids coming here for a better life? 

Hell, even though Weppner writes that Yingling tendered her resignation, we don’t know if it was accepted or what. Presumably, Yingling is still in charge of bravely re-Tweeting hateful bullshit she pulls out of the deepest depths of the ultra-right blogosphere under her candidate’s name. 

That “infected poors” Tweet went out because someone affirmatively cut it, pasted it, and hit the publish button. See below – they went so far as to add two hashtags to it, including #NY26. One would suspect that the person who did it bothered to read it first. One would expect that a candidate would have her name on a Google Alert, and find out that the “infected poors” thing was the subject of a post and might be problematic. 

Make no mistake – the “infected poors” Tweet was sent because someone liked it and agreed with it.  It was not a careless error – it was the deliberate and thoughtful endorsement of its sentiment. 

UPDATE: It looks like this is from where Yingling / Weppner got the “infected poors” line: 

Beats me how someone is too dim to figure out that “Populo Iratus” isn’t the same thing as the Heritage Foundation. 

This is what happens when a terrible, ignorant tea party candidate retaining the free services of an ignorant tea party activist. Hilarity would ensue, if it wasn’t all such a sad example of inhumanity. 

Are you an immigrant who sought refuge in America from violence or oppression? How about your ancestors? Denigrating foreigners as diseased subhumans is all too common throughout our history. Kathy from Williamsville is just letting you know how she really feels. 

Amateur-Hour Weppner can’t mariachi her way out of this one. 

Second-Generation Americans Against Refugees

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Once again, Tony Fracasso from the long-running broad-comedy show “SpeakupWNY” weighed in, this time on immigration, in my most recent Kathy from Williamsville thread. 

So Alan,

Do you support mass migration of people from other countries to the USA? Yes or No.

Do realize this cost the net tax payers tens of millions of dollars?

80 years ago when people immigrated to the USA they still followed the rules on the books plus we didn’t have the costly social programs we have today.

Like Derek Noakes loves animal videos on YouTube, Fracasso loves to demand “yes or no” answers and to use the phrase “net tax payers”. My response: 

Do I support “mass migration of people from other countries to the USA”? Absolutely. Immigrants like the Fracasso family helped make this country what it is today. Never mind that Italian immigrants found it hard to assimilate, were discriminated against, subjected to hatred and bigotry, and tended to live amongst each other in homogeneous neighborhoods, now Italians are considered to be just like our WASP founders.

Of course, it’s also a complete lie that immigrants are a net drain on the economy. For instance,

Via Buffalo Niagara Partnership

Immigration grows the economy and helps enhance local cultural vitality. Immigrants also create jobs for native Americans here in WNY:

Via Buffalo Niagara Partnership

So, if you’ll notice above, I pointed out to Fracasso that, 100 years ago, Italians were treated rather horribly by native-born Americans, and like new immigrants from Spanish-speaking countries, they found it tough to assimilate and kept to themselves in insular communities. Fracasso responds, 

That was then and this is now. To different scenarios. When are families came over a 100 years ago the country was in a different economic state. We also didn’t have the social programs we have now compared to 100 years ago. This has nothing to do with bigotry or hatred. Is that a tactic in the Democratic Playbook? When someone doesn’t agree with you call them a hater or a bigot?

I’m also rather sure the mass of immigrants that came over 100 years ago came into the states by following the laws.

Why do we have borders and laws Alan?

So, here’s my response: 

Right. YOUR playbook is to shout about how YOUR ancestors came here “legally” at a time when immigration from Europe was essentially unrestricted, save for the “not an anarchist” box that needed to be ticked before you could get tested for syphilis on your way through Ellis Island.

But when it comes to brown, Spanish-speaking tweens from Central America who are escaping social, economic, and political problems that are not dissimilar from, say, turn-of-the-century Italy, all of a sudden it’s an “invasion”. Yet you want to sit there and tell me that’s not bigotry or hatred – or that the bigotry and hatred that was hurled at Italian and Irish immigrants 110 years ago was not just as disgusting and sordid.

We do have borders, Tony. When was the last time you actually crossed the southern border? Have you ever crossed the Rio Grande or taken a day trip to TJ? Ever? Have you ever witnessed the interminable lines, super-tight security, and state-of-the-art anti-drug and human trafficking measures put in place at even remote crossings in the desert Southwest? Have you seen the miles and miles of barren wasteland out that way?

Yes, we have borders and they are reasonably protected, and here’s the reason why this is all about bigoted hysteria and not at all about facts:

While illegal immigration of kids 12 and under has shot up by 117%, theoverall number of people of any age crossing illegally is at a 40 year low, and even the number of kids crossing has dropped.

Most of the anti-immigrant hysteria stems from a conscious or unconscious belief that Obama is a foreign Manchurian candidate who is here to destroy America as we know it. If you don’t believe me, just look at Weppner’s own birtherite hysterics.

Furthermore, the kids are mostly from Honduras: “The fact that Hondurans represent the highest percentage [27%], followed by Salvadorans, makes clear that the major push factors are violence,” said Susan Terrio, an anthropology professor at Georgetown University who has interviewed dozens of unaccompanied immigrant children.”

“Invaders” my ass.

Yes, we do have borders and they’re being reasonably defended, and we also have laws. I don’t know why you’d so quickly invalidate your own argument, but the law states that undocumented unaccompanied minors cannot be deported before they have a court hearing – due process.

What you’re really saying is, “why won’t Obama disobey the law?

Here is a Forbes list of 7 myths about immigration: 

Myth 1: There are more immigrants than ever and these immigrants break the mold of previous waves.

Between 1860 and 1920, fourteen percent of the population was foreign-born. The average for the 20th century is 10-plus percent. The proportion is not different today—about 13 percent. Until the 1880s immigration originated in northern and western Europe but in subsequent decades they came from southern, central and eastern Europe, which was culturally, politically and economically different. Not to mention Asians, who arrived in significant numbers.

The difference seems to be national origin, not numbers. 

Myth 4: Present-day immigrants do not assimilate, unlike previous waves.

About forty percent of newcomers speak reasonable English anyway, but the three-generation pattern echoes that of previous immigrants: the second generation is bilingual but speaks English better and the third generation speaks only English. By the third generation, out-marriage is strong among immigrants. A century ago, seventeen percent of second-generation Italian immigrants married non-Italians while 20 percent of second-generation Mexicans marry non-Hispanics today (even though, given the numbers, it is easier for them to marry another Mexican.) Second-generation immigrants do better than their parents, as in the past.

That proves my point about Italians, supra. 

Myth 5: Low-skilled workers take away jobs, lower salaries and hurt the economy.

As producers and consumers, illegal immigrants enlarge the economic pie by at least $36 billion a year. That number would triple if they were legal—various studies point to a $1 trillion impact on GDP in ten years. Low-skilled workers fulfill a need by taking jobs others do not want, letting natives move up the scale. Without them employers would need to pay higher salaries, making those products and services more expensive. They have a tiny negative effect on wages at the lowest end that is offset by a rise in the wages of those who move up—the net effect is a 1.8% rise.

That’s right – even undocumented immigrants help to grow the economy. 

Myth 7: Immigrants don´t pay taxes and cost more than they contribute. 

Immigrants pay many local and state levies, including real estate and sales taxes, and about $7 billion in Social Security taxes. Between the 1970s and the 1990s they represented $25 billion more in government revenue than what they cost. They would contribute much more if they were documented. Most immigrant children have at least one parent who is a citizen, so counting all of them as part of the cost of immigration is deceptive. The welfare state was never a “pull” factor: until after World War II immigrants were not entitled to relief programs. Immigrants did not cause government spending to grow by a factor of 50 in one century.

These myths are further confirmed and expanded upon in this Washington Post article, and this article from the Southern Poverty Law Center. 

If people like Fracasso are so concerned about facts and the law, then it would likely behoove them to educate themselves not only about the facts about immigration – legal and not – and what laws apply. 

Immigrants do not harm or destroy America – they make America stronger. 

Kathy Weppner and the “Infected Poors”

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

On Tuesday, western New York’s most unintentionally hilarious congressional candidate left her mic’s windscreen at home, and held a press conference near the Peace Bridge to draw attention to things she’s largely made up about America’s southern border.

The entire unseemly episode can be summed up in this Tweet, which is an actual thing put out by an actual candidate for Congress, whom the county’s Republican committee has actually endorsed: 

Again – to clarify – Kathy Weppner is not someone on the nativist fascist fringe of American right wing anti-immigrant agitation polity. She is in the mainstream of contemporary Republican “thought”. 

Here’s a picture that Weppner posted to Facebook and Twitter, showing one reporter – poor Mike Desmond from WBFO had to tread through this manure – and the optics are as stupid as the underlying message. The Peace Bridge has nothing to do with the problem on the southern border, and the influx of Central American tweens isn’t affecting western New York (here’s my article on the subject from a few weeks ago). 

Via Facebook

If you go to the article that Weppner tweeted, it’s from something called the “Daily Signal”.  Never heard of it. It’s apparently the ultra-right wing Heritage Foundation’s “Komsomolskaya Pravda” – the official organ of a powerful PAC and so-called “think tank”. It’s one big right-wing hissy fit, set down in pixels.

Nevertheless, if you read the article, it merely says that Guatemala argues that more American investment and aid would help to stem the country’s economic and social crises, and refugees would be less inclined to go North. A reasonable counterargument would be to point out the concomitant Central American political corruption and graft that renders such aid unhelpful. But there’s no ultimatum there – there is no Guatemalan threat to send more quote-unquote “infected poors” to the US if we don’t pony up $2BN. It takes a special type of horrible reading comprehension to read this article and reach the infected-poors-ultimatum conclusion. 

Here are the words that she strung together and shat from her mouth: 

Seventy percent of our border agents have been pulled off our borders and reassigned to do paperwork processing.  We know this because a border patrol agent is speaking out.

She actually cited a source – “Fox Nation” via Sean Hannity, which is neither news nor legitimate.  There’s absolutely no data or objective evidence to support the allegation, but this ostensibly serious candidate takes it on face value because Fox/Hannity.  

If the breakdown in the rule of law has created societies that are dangerous, and has caused parents throughout Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador to send their juveniles away, we should take note of this. We should not become a lawless country.

What does this even mean? What does she mean by “take note of this”? Why the pivot to the “lawless country” crack? 

Of particular importance is the rise of gangs in these lawless countries which bring kidnapping, extortion, human trafficking, drugs and gun violence to every community as their societies break down.

I’m starting to think that she is referring to the influx of Central American tween refugees will cause a breakdown in the US, and render it “lawless”. 

In 2012 there were 20,000 gang members in El Salvador, 12,000 in Honduras, and 22,000 in Guatemala.  According to the FBI in 2011 the United States had 1.4 million gang members.  That was three years ago.  So we have far more gang members in the United States than all of these countries combined.  Why are we perceived to be a safer nation?  We follow laws.  Our country follows laws. Our police officers enforce laws.  When police officers don’t obey the laws they are usually investigated and charged and tried and put in jail.

What we are doing now is lawless and if we continue down this path we will have a society that, over time, will begin to look exactly like these other countries.  We have immigration laws.  The President has decided not to follow them.

El Salvador has 6.3 million residents. Guatemala has 15.4 million. Honduras has 8 million residents. The United States, by contrast, has 317 million people.  These Central American countries are also significantly smaller in area, suffer crippling poverty with non-existent social services, and a history of corruption, dysfunction, and terrible infrastructure. The ways in which these poor countries are different from ours are many – to break it down for even a Weppner, they’re the third world, the US is the first world. 

Weppner is saying that accepting refugee children from these three countries will make the US become a third world corrupt backwater like them. That’s astonishing – look how little faith she has in the American system, and in our country’s 300+ year experience absorbing immigrants from all around the world. 

We have a Constitution that tells us how laws are supposed to be made and a President that puts his hand on a Bible and swears an oath to uphold our laws.  Our President is breaking that oath and our Congress is letting him.  Our Congress is the  body that has standing to stop the President from doing what he is doing on immigration. Selective enforcement of our laws is not allowed in our Constitution.

Actually, it is allowed, up to a point. But here, the President and Congress are enforcing the law that requires that refugees from non-border countries be detained and processed through our court system to ensure that they are not victims of human trafficking. This is the law, and it’s being enforced. 

The gang Los Zetes [sic] is now migrant smuggling as part of its day to day operations.  Coyotes will promise three attempts to smuggle family members with families taking mortgages out on their homes to pay for it.  When the coyotes fail they gain the deeds to the homes either themselves or for the criminal enterprise they work for. This leaves families and children homeless in their countries. Minors are abandoned on their journey or thrown off moving trains when they cannot pay increased demands.  Many girls are raped and abused.   

Horrible. But what’s your point?  Also, is anyone as astonished as I with the 6th grade book report prose?   

We have heard much about the unaccompanied minors.  In 2013 90% were teenagers and in 2014, in the first 8 months 84% were also.  My grandfather was 16 when he got on the boat in Cork, Ireland by himself and came to the United States.  Legally.

I don’t know what year her grandfather came to this country, but if it was before the mid-1960s, it’s ridiculous to compare today’s immigration laws to prior years. 

Of the 51,000 unaccompanied minors 88% have already left HHS custody and  are no longer tracked and free to roam our country.  How will we know if they go to school?  How will we know if they are immunized before they are sitting next to our children?

This is just sheer racism and rank ignorance. 

Immunization rates in El Salvador and in Guatemala are above 90% of children, just like the USA.  In Honduras, it’s right around 90%.  

In 2014   55,000 entire family units have come here illegally and there is still five more months left this year. 

Now the white house has requested emergency funds and Congress may vote on that before recess.  The problem is that emergency funds must meet criteria.  We have laws.  They must be used for sudden, unforseen and temporary problems.  We have known about this problem since 2012 when non governmental agencies and church organizations began reporting this. Texas Governor Rick Perry wrote to President Obama reporting a 90% increase in minors arriving in Texas in 2012. We have had two years to address this and have done nothing.  In 2012 the White House negotiated for temporary housing at Lackland Air Force Base but did nothing to stem the tide.  This is obviously not unforeseen, sudden or temporary.

What would she have us do differently? 

Each person coming here illegally will get taxpayer funded lawyers and have hearings with immigration judges appointed by the President and paid for by us.

“We have laws.” 

Seventy-one percent of households headed by illegal immigrants receive at least one welfare program.  57% of all immigrant families receive at least one welfare program. How will we afford this?

They receive an entire welfare program?! Weppner cites an anti-immigrant group for this statistic. You guessed it – it’s bullshit. From this list: 

MYTH #3: The nation spends billions of dollars on welfare for undocumented immigrants.

FACTS: To the contrary, undocumented immigrants are not eligible to receive any “welfare” benefits and even legal immigrants are severely restricted in the benefits they can receive.

As the Congressional Research Service points out in a 2007 report, undocumented immigrants, who comprise nearly one-third of all immigrants in the country, are not eligible to receive public “welfare” benefits — ever.

Legal permanent residents (LPRs) must pay into the Social Security and Medicare systems for approximately 10 years

before they are eligible to receive benefits when they retire. In most cases, LPRs can not receive SSI, which is available only to U.S. citizens, and are not eligible for means-tested public benefits until 5 years after receiving their green cards.

A 2007 analysis of welfare data by researchers at the Urban Institute reveals that less than 1 percent of households headed by undocumented immigrants receive cash assistance for needy families, compared to 5 percent of households headed by native-born U.S. citizens.

A 2007 analysis of U.S. Census data by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities makes clear that it is the U.S.-born, U.S.-citizen children of undocumented immigrants who are eligible for programs such as Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program

(SCHIP). The analysis found that, between 1995 and 2005, the share of low-income, non- citizen immigrant children (either undocumented or legally present) who received Medicaid or SCHIP dropped from 36 percent to 30 percent.

Weppner continues: 

They will all be qualified for Obamacare through a loophole that Brian Higgins voted for in HR 3962.

This Obama economy is contracting.  Despite what you read in your newspaper, employment participation is at an all time low at 62.8 %.  Unemployment rates may appear to be lower but it is because people have dropped out of the workforce and no longer plan on working.  If we do not get Americans working again we will not be able to pay the interest on our debt of over 17 trillion dollars.  Last year our Federal Government needed to borrow 680 billion dollars to pay bills and it continues to spend.  How will we pay for all of these new welfare recipients?  

Texas alone will spend 12 million dollars a month on its’ [sic] National Guard effort to try to secure its’ [sic] borders.

We must decide whether we are going to be a country of laws.  If we have no borders then we are not a country. 

A rote regurgitation of fascistic nativist anti-immigrant rhetoric, and let’s throw in a bunch of other nonsense into the stew of words. I’m surprised #Benghazi didn’t make a guest appearance. 

Our Constitution gives Congress the duty in section 8 of our Constitution to “Provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions.”   If you watch the nightly news, you  know that there is an invasion going on in our country. A mass migration that we are not ready for and will have devastating effects on our country.

We don’t have a militia anymore. We have a standing army and National Guard. This is not an invasion, because it’s not a foreign army attacking the United States. It’s frightened, poor kids looking for a job and a better life. Just like Weppner’s grandfather. 

Brian Higgins is on the wrong side of this issue.  He has voted against funding for a border fence in HR 60-61, and HR 26-38.   Mr. Higgins has voted in favor of sanctuary cities in House Amendment 294, and other sanctuary policies in House Amendment 288 to HR 28-62.  He voted for the e-verify system and then voted against an amendment to fund the e-verify system so employers could ensure they are hiring people who are legally in our country, HR 54-41.  Mr. Higgins voted against the amendment to require implementation  of the entry exit system, HR 44-37, and voted against authorizing the use of military to assist in border functions in HR  1815 . He voted for amnesty in HR 24-14.  All of these votes have setup [sic] the problems we face today. This is not even a complete list.

Right. It’s Brian Higgins’ fault that three third-world countries are awful and kids are trying to escape them. 

If violence in your home country is the deciding factor in whether this president allows you to freely come across our border illegally, without consequence, then we need to send a message to every Christian living in a Muslim country to come on ahead, because they are being slaughtered as we speak.   How does one group win the Obama lottery of immigration and another does not?  What about the violence in our inner cities that continues to be ignored? What about our children here in Buffalo who are being gunned down in our streets? 

Well, actually, if a Christian from the Middle East can get on a plane and arrive in this country and seek refugee status, they’re welcome to do so.  In fact, anyone who can establish that they’re the victim of religious or political persecution is welcome to apply for refugee status. It’s even easier in Canada, and they have free medical. So, yeah. 

I wonder what Weppner’s glorious solution to inner city violence is? 

The latest insanity is that we will have a program that will cost 47 million dollars over the next two years, and we will go to Honduras and process juveniles there to give them refugee status and transport them to this country.  This status allows them to go on public assistance immediately.  This doesn’t even make sense in a country that cannot meet its’ [sic] bills. 

If that program is successful we will expand it to the other two countries.  So the President , as a policy, will bring the illegal immigrants here under his orders.  He is breaking his oath of office. 

Doesn’t it make sense to pre-process refugee claims at our consulates abroad, rather than burden the Border Patrol with this? Doesn’t it make sense to issue refugee visas to people who qualify for that status before they get to this country, rather than spending millions to detain and process them in our courts, after the fact? 

We are in a very dangerous time in the history of our country and sitting back and hoping the next two years go by quickly is not going to cut it.  

As Americans we need to have laws that keep America strong and safe and free.

We need to have secure borders.  We need more processing staff so our border patrol agents can do their jobs.   We need to process people quickly that are coming across our borders illegally so they can be returned to their home countries where they can fill out the paperwork to apply for legal entry into the United States.  We need to decide on a number.  Currently it is around a million immigrants that legally enter our country each year.  If we decide on two million we must require self-sufficiency from those immigrants so that we are not adding to the burden of the American taxpayer.  We need to treat all humanely while they are briefly here. 

 Word salad. 

God Bless you,

God Bless Western New York

And God bless the United States of America.

May she be a beacon of freedom and strength for all the world to see.

Except for you “infected” brown “poors”. You all can just stay home and die, for all she cares.  

By the way, since this is a 2 year-old issue, what did Kathy Weppner have to say about the Central American kids seeking refugee status back in 2012 on her WBEN radio show? 

Oh, right. 

She scrubbed from the internet all existence of her radio show, and anything she wrote prior to March 2014. 

I’ll bet there was a lot of this, though: 

 

UPDATE: WELCOME, WONKETTE READERS!

 

Weppner Disavows 912 Blight Exploitation Strategy

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Last week, I posted about 912 activist and Kathy Weppner volunteer  Laura Yingling’s search for pictures of blight that she could “use against Brian Higgins on Twitter and Facebook”. 

Evidently, Weppner is not completely shameless! She sent the following, and Yingling forwarded it to her Glenn Beck fan site. 

Well, to be specific, Weppner didn’t instruct Yingling to tell her dummy battalion to not take pictures of blight to use against Congressman Higgins – she merely asked Yingling to make it clear that Weppner didn’t ask for it and isn’t part of Weppner’s “campaign plans”. 

You see, Weppner is too busy running a “dignified” campaign on “issues” like universal firearms access and scrubbing all evidence of her pre-2014 internet existence. 

Weppner Campaign Seeking “Not So Nice”, Incidental Blight Photos

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Blight. It’s a problem throughout Buffalo, WNY, and much of upstate and the rust belt. You can literally go anywhere in North America and encounter some abandoned buildings, ugly graffiti, vacant properties, and blight. 

But now a woman running for Congress against Brian Higgins wants to turn blight into a campaign issue. 

On Wednesday, Laura Yingling, the tea party “activist” and Glenn Beck “9-12” acolyte running Kathy Weppner’s campaign sent out a mass email to her entire list, entitled “Brian Higgins the Waterfront Czar”: 

That’s literally only about half of the “to” list. 

Here is the body of the email: 

Interesting, right? It’s a great way for Weppner to stoke class and racial fear and hatred. Also, it ignores and exploits the fact that Higgins now happens to represent the cities of Buffalo and Niagara Falls – places that have more than their fair share of blight. Hell, even Grand Island has that dilapidated and creepy old Dunlop office building near the north bridge. 

The current NY-27 couldn’t be more different from what it looked like before 2013, when it had a much larger suburban and rural component. Indeed, I’m willing to bet that the picture that Yingling sent around was not part of NY-27 before 2013. 

The current boundaries are also +13 Democrat, so you know, good luck. 

This is dumb politics and dumb campaigning. Showing off blight resulting from decades of regional economic failure isn’t relevant to Higgins’ time in office.  But dumb campaigns play to dumb people and know only the lowest common denominator. 

You get the idea. This parody account on Twitter captures the dumb beautifully. 

I’ll issue a challenge to all outlets in WNY: Every single time Weppner tries to get you out to an event for free media, ask her why she scrubbed her entire web and radio history from the internet, and when we can expect to see it back online. 

Sheriff Howard Underpaid, Like Schoolteachers

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Sheriff Tim Howard beclowned himself again by taking a job working security for M&T Bank.  On top of that, he even did the sort of thing that’s supposed to really piss off the WBEN right in western New York: he used his county take-home vehicle to get to and from work at the bank. 

But Howard is shameless, and whines that the work was, like, really fulfilling and totally cool. It was also paying him $50/hour. 

If this was merely the first time Howard did something embarrassing, corrupt, or stupid, it’d be bad enough. But as the News points out, 

It’s hard not to conclude that this is simply another episode of the sheriff’s pattern of poor judgment. That deficiency was on display when the jail was plagued with prisoner suicides; it was on display in the aftermath of jail escapes, including that of Ralph “Bucky” Phillips; and it was on display last fall when he pitched for votes by promising not to enforce the state’s new gun law known as the SAFE Act. This is a law enforcement officer who has shown he is without any sense of the propriety his high office demands.

It is true that Erie County’s sheriff is woefully underpaid. Howard’s salary is just $79,000, a ridiculously low figure given the importance of the job to county residents. Incredibly, Howard is paid $32,000 a year less than his undersheriff, Mark N. Wipperman, though it’s fair to say that Wipperman does a better job running the department than his boss.

But if money was a motivating factor for Howard, the answer wasn’t for him to cheat taxpayers of a full-time sheriff by moonlighting as a bank detective. It was to petition the County Legislature and county executive for an increase in pay, and then to rally support for the point. Most sheriffs, though perhaps not this one, could have made a strong case for a higher salary.

Better yet, if the Sheriff’s salary is so “low” at $79,000 (I really need to remember that line the next time some half-baked asshole attacks public school teacher salaries), Mr. Howard can simply resign and go to work for M&T full time.

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