The Moms for Liberty / Students First / Constitutional Coalition crackpots won nothing this year. For all their noise, hypocrisy, and bluster, they found out that “ban books” just doesn’t resonate as strongly as “unmask the kids.”
You may already know that a group of Trumpist blackshirt insurrectionists – so-called “Proud Boys” – were convicted of, among other things, seditious conspiracy by a jury yesterday.
Politico talked to the jurors and one set of quotes stuck out. One of the “Proud Boys” who stormed the Capitol in an effort to end American democracy and install Donald Trump as dictator-for-life was one Dominic Pezzola from the Rochester area. He was acquitted of seditious conspiracy, but convicted on other felonies relating to his violent attempt to end the USA.
To be guilty of seditious conspiracy, you and at least one other person working in concert must have planned to “overthrow, put down or to destroy by force” the U.S. government or bring war against it, or that they plotted to use force to oppose the authority of the government or to block the execution of a law.
“The first day we elected a foreman. After that, we all put out our initial impressions of the evidence. We all voted and most people saw the evidence pointed towards seditious conspiracy. By the second day, we had pretty much established guilty verdicts on the conspiracy,” he said.
Mundell said the group agreed that Pezzola was not guilty of seditious conspiracy because he wasn’t closely tied enough to Tarrio or the group’s leaders — Pezzola took the stand and emphasized that he had only been in the Proud Boys for a month before Jan. 6 and barely knew his co-defendants.
“Another factor was just that he wasn’t the brightest bulb on the porch. And may not have been bright enough to really know about the plan,” Mundell said. “So I said, well, poor guy. He should’ve listened to his father-in-law, who told him ‘don’t go.’”
So, there you have it, folks. Dominic Pezzola: too stupid to be guilty of seditious conspiracy; just stupid enough to be guilty of assaulting an officer, civil disorder, robbing a police officer, and obstructing a Congressional proceeding.
What fine, upstanding citizens these Trump blackshirts are.
The answer is no, we cannot be surprised. Trumpism and the MAGA movement, (which currently controls the entire Republican Party), is nothing more than a neo-fascist, eliminationist, nihilistic, strongman cult. I mean, these people are literally praying to Trump now, which goes well beyond the definition of “cringe.” He is not just their dictator, their king, their Leader – he is their God and deity.
If you didn’t get it before, perhaps you’ll get it now.
Michael Knowles is not a political philosopher or thinker. He does not share novel ideas worth anyone’s serious engagement. He is a propagandist whose sole job is to provoke the left.
That’s it – he exists to trigger the libs.
Or to make libs cry.
Or to troll the libs.
Whether or not he truly believes that “transgenderism” is a thing that should be “eradicated” is not especially relevant. So what if he does? So what if he doesn’t? It doesn’t matter – it took him in one week from a guy you never heard of to a local cause célèbre, strutting about the college towns of the western Great Lakes region telling 19 year-olds that women should stay home, barefoot and pregnant.
The second sentence is the giveaway – “despite the Left’s best efforts“. This tour is about getting the left on campus angry and out in droves. Knowles’ job is to provoke. YAF exists to provoke. There’s nothing here about how insightful and interesting his thoughts or speech are, is there? Just that they’re “in demand.”
While even banal grifters have free speech rights, let’s not kid ourselves about this being about the free exchange of ideas in a citadel of higher education. This is a traveling circus with a prime goal of pwning the libs and getting them to protest and look scary, with only a minor, tangential aim of preaching to a shrinking choir.
It is all designed to let depraved small-minded goons complain about students who hold wholly on-point signs cursing fascists, such as YAF and Knowles.
I do not use the term “fascist” lightly. Knowles has become prominent due to his declaration that the state of being transgender is non-existent and that society should not allow it. Knowles derives power and influence through denunciations of people different from him, whose experience he does not know, and essentially incites a pliant mob to join him in his hatred and derision. But his central thesis – that “transgenderism” is a novel phenomenon that requires “eradication” – the obvious parallels to Nazi rhetoric notwithstanding – is factually false. His defamation of transgender Americans is little more than a 21-st century Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
How would he react if someone called for the eradication from the public square of “conservatism?” Obviously, one cannot have conservatism without conservatives. It’s not really all that complicated, and his protestations are absurd.
But fascism is also about the wielding of authority and power in a way that oppresses those whom the regime hates – dissidents, LGBTQIA+ people, etc. Witness this exchange between a UB YAF female and a young man at a bulletin board. The young man was moving flyers around on the board because YAF supporters had deliberately covered up anti-Knowles flyers with Knowles event flyers. She launches into a belligerent diatribe against him and sticks her phone in his face, and he calmly explains what he’s doing and why. Her only retort is that her YAF flyers are “approved by [the Student’s Association] and his are not, and therefore his are not allowed on the bulletin board at all.
Leftist LOSES IT after being confronted for taking down flyers ahead of @michaeljknowles speech tomorrow night in Buffalo: "I don't care if I'm rude to you, you're a fascist. F*ck you." pic.twitter.com/9VYEEhEgpj
Do you get that? The “shall not be infringed” Constitutional absolutist crowd demands that speech applies only to them at all times, but to no one else unless officially sanctioned by SA. It is an absurd argument and he was right to be rude and flip the bird at her. Good for him and I hope he has a Venmo for a beer fund or something for standing up to this absurd person whining about her flyer.
That left wasn’t “angry.” She asked a direct question. In response, Knowles, who is not there to debate but to provoke, responded condescendingly and rudely to the student. He looks like an absolute shit, and the woman asking a question looks perfectly reasonable.
The right does not, in fact, demand free speech. That’s not what it’s about. They demand that you be exposed to their speech. This is why they whine incessantly about things like the “Twitter Files” and make up false allegations about artificially reduced conservative reach on social media. They think that the libs must be exposed to their fascist rants and incoherent ramblings and Catturd against their will. It is Elon Musk’s reason for being right now, and it is why Twitter is dead. Musk rehabilitated the Keks and the Pepes and the rest of the Nazis because “free speech absolutism” demands that libs be told that Jews are the devil and Black people should be enslaved.
As for YAF, I first became aware of them in the mid-1980s when I attended Boston University. The student body held a walkout from class to protest a University award of an honorary degree to a South African whom many deemed to be a Botha regime collaborationist, and to demand that the University divest its holdings connected to apartheid South Africa. YAF were there, taunting the students walking out of class to protest systemic racial segregation. Not a great look, but the look isn’t the point. We were the crazy pro-Mandela leftist students and it was all about provocation to get an angry response so they could say, regard the intolerant left, who cannot countenance some good-natured ribbing about their earnest opposition to apartheid.
Michael Knowles is a professional provocateur, and YAF is an astroturf group run out of Reston, Virginia. Founded in 1960, I see nothing in its constituent document about eradicating gay people or transgender people or pwnage of libs.
This is what conservatism has devolved into – not any sort of ideology or platform. It has morphed from a Reagan personality cult into a Trump personality cult and it demands that you move aside so that they can achieve cultural and political hegemony without actually earning it through persuasion or votes.
So, I do not for a moment want anyone to think that I disagree with the protests against Knowles and YAF and their hateful, bigoted provocation. I personally think that mockery is best. But provocateurs like Knowles and Yiannopoulos revel in the biggest and most confrontational crowds. That is the real win for them – the speech is an afterthought.
And it will forever be thus – while transgender Americans are desirous of a world where they can live their lives with dignity and without discrimination, there will be a population of morally depraved self-righteous professional provocateurs to make their lives a living hell over bathroom stalls.
People who make a habit out of lib-pwnership will call transgender people “pedophiles” and “groomers” because those are the slurs that helped to keep homosexuals oppressed for generations before.
I think trans people have always existed, do exist, and will continue to exist, no matter what some washed-up failed actor says. I think it is hate speech for someone to deny their reality and humanity and to call for their “eradication.” The failed actor doesn’t need to believe in transgender people or transgenderism – they exist regardless of his “belief.” The question is whether the failed actor would gladly direct the power of the state to outlaw them, oppress them, segregate them, or otherwise to terrorize them. In an interview with WBFO Thursday, attorney Heidi Jones identified this phenomenon as “stochastic terrorism.” It’s what “Libs of Tik Tok” Chaya Raichik is expert in.
The professional provocateur, to the extent he has any beliefs at all, would indeed use the power of the state to oppress and “eradicate” transgender people. And he would do it for pretty cheap money. And a small handful of Gen-Zers attending a public university are jumping up and down with glee over the oppression of peers who never bothered them even once.
I recently spent a vacation in Italy, where the trains run more or less on time and the high-speed rail network is extensive and genuinely fast. On a dedicated track, our train reached 250 km/h (155 mph) for lengthy portions of travel.
The Northeast and Southern Canada are uniquely positioned to benefit – and profit – from high-speed rail. The Amtrak Acela service running between Boston, New York, and Washington can, since a recent upgrade, reach speeds of 160 mph on certain portions of the journey. The fastest portion runs from New York to DC, while the portion between Boston and New York averages out at 66 MPH, which is only marginally better than car travel. This is because Acela shares much of its track with freight and regional passenger train services that cannot accommodate higher speeds. This is a huge missed opportunity.
Another missed opportunity is the linkage of other destinations with true high-speed rail, which is generally considered to be anything over 110 mph. New York – Albany – Montreal would work. Albany – Syracuse – Rochester – Buffalo – Niagara – Toronto would work. Toronto – Ottawa would work, as would Toronto – Montreal and Montreal – Quebec City.
Because it would be slower than driving, it is anticipated that this would result in a $33 million annual deficit. A plan NYS DOT rejected to implement 380 miles of new track to accommodate 110 mph trains would cost about the same and result in a smaller deficit, but it would still result in a 7 hour and 22 minute ride. Yet another rejected plan would introduce 280 miles of two electrified tracks accommodating speeds of 125 mph. The alternatives are discussed here.
The NYSDOT refused multiple requests for an interview and declined to answer specific questions regarding the over 456-page Environmental Impact Statement that was released in early February.
Yeah? No shit, so would I. I also would be too embarrassed by this to associate my voice and face with it.
State Senator Pat Gallivan is right when he tells WGRZ that it doesn’t make sense. Spending $6 billion to go as fast as a kid in a slammed GTI only to lose a ton of money is ridiculous.
What would make sense is to allow for 160+ mph Acela-type trains to make a trip from the Falls to New York City in 5h and 17 m, including stops. This beats driving and, for most people traveling between WNY and Manhattan, would be at least competitive with flying. (A flight involves security, check-in, (1hr) boarding, taxiing, deboarding, (1h 20 m) walking through the terminal (10 m), and transportation from LGA, JFK, or EWR to Manhattan (1+hr).
The extra capital expenditure to implement a truly modern and rapid rail system would be well-spent. It would enable easier commutes between New York’s upstate cities. It would get people and their cars off the Thruway, which inexplicably runs only 4 lanes in each direction for almost the entire stretch between Williamsville and I-88.
The proposed plan is a boondoggle and a failure. One of the reasons given for not considering ultra high speed rail is the supposed need for reconfiguration of stations and rights-of-way in the Albany – NYC corridor. You cannot tell me that densely populated Italy can figure this out, but New York cannot.
Or maybe just open up bidding for a privately run service, such as the Brightline in Florida or Brightline West in California. The latter will run at 180 mph and reduce travel time between downtown LA and Las Vegas to just over 2 hours. The trip from Orlando to Miami will take about 3 hours, saving at least 30 minutes off driving.
The cost to do ultra high-speed right is 27 billion dollars. That’s 188 F-35s. Maybe we should be looking at spending public money on things that benefit our public at-large.
Ever since the days of Joe Illuzzi’s website’s unabashed paid shilling for the so-called Independence Party and its then-chairman, a Springville barber, I have assailed the inherent corruption of electoral fusion.
This quirk – unique to New York and only a few other states – allows parties a mechanism by which to endorse another party’s candidate for office. The lore goes that Democrats are loath to vote for Republicans, and vice-versa, so if a major party candidate appears on a “Conservative Party” or “Independence Party” line, that is a convenient way to allow for easier ballot splitting. The Independence Party is gratifyingly extinct, but the Conservative Party still exists, and at least locally it is not known so much for its tenets, platform, or beliefs, as it is for influence.
You see, if you run something called the “Conservative Party“, which boasts only 15,000 or so registered voters in Erie County, you have very little clout, all by yourself. But if you cross-endorse, say, a Republican candidate, a general election win in a heavily blue Erie County thanks in part to lending your line means someone owes you something like a patronage job for a committee member.
When former Erie County Legislator Joe Lorigo won a Supreme Court election, the vacated seat is supposed to go to a member of the same party – the Conservative Party.
Ralph Lorigo – the Conservative Party’s Erie County chairman for thirty years, and Joe’s father – wanted the seat to go to Joe’s wife, Lindsay Bratek-Lorigo. (Bratek-Lorigo may be perfectly qualified, but her selection would raise questions about nepotism and electability that the Republicans would likely want to avoid.)
Although the seat must by law be filled by a Conservative Party member, the act of filling it remained within the control of the Legislature’s Republican minority. So, they started a process. Of all people, fail-Zelig Stefan Mychajliw – who has not won an election since 2017 – was angling for the seat. He has spent the last seven or so years sucking at his job, trying desperately to make headlines, cozying up to Chris Collins and Steve Bannon to get the NY-27 nomination, running for Town Supervisor in Hamburg as if it was some sort of referendum on being “woke”, and he has failed and lost every step of the way.
Naturally, not being complete fools, the Republicans saved themselves from selecting Mychajliw, who now contents himself podcasting with insurance salesmen.
But the fact that the Republicans did not automatically rubber-stamp Bratek-Lorigo made the Lorigo paterfamilias angry in a way that resulted in an unprecedented lecture of the Republicans on the County Legislature from – of all places – the public gallery. In urging the Republican minority to select Bratek-Lorigo, he urged them to consider the value of “inclusivity” and not just allowing these seats to be recycled to “old, white men”.
In literally any other situation, such a plea would be derided as “woke.” Where’s Mychajliw’s execrable Twitter when you need it?
Lorigo also reminded the three remaining Republicans that they all sit “with [his] endorsement,” and admonished them to “do the right thing” in a blatant, shocking, and explicit political threat.
The problem here isn’t the replacement process itself. While certainly the fairest outcome in such a situation would be a special election, life isn’t fair and the statute does not allow for that. Plus, we don’t do parliamentary-style “snap” elections, so such a process would be long and costly. Underscored here is the stupidity of fusion. It is a system that enables Lorigo to issue threats regarding Republican endorsements in an open forum, without a hint of shame. The loosey-goosey election rules enabled the Republicans to bypass the law and offer up a candidate who they perceive to be more electable than the Conservative’s choice.
All of this – from the explicit nepotism to the explicit threats – is indicative of just how systemically corrupt the system is. Face it – without electoral fusion, the Republicans simply would be picking a Republican replacement and Lorigo would not be in a position to make threats or issue ironic paeans to “inclusivity.”
The quickest fixes to make elections better and fairer is to abolish electoral fusion and to simplify ballot access.
The hilariously misnomered “Young Americans for Freedom” right-wing club has invited Michael Knowles – a right-wing polemicist angling to be a dollar-store Julius Streicher for Gen-Z – to speak at SUNY Buffalo. Knowles made headlines literally just this week by calling for the “eradication” of “transgenderism” from “public life entirely,” then whining about coverage that correctly interpreted this as genocidal.
Universities are places of higher learning and by their very nature they should default to the free and open exchange of ideas. This is especially true with state-owned universities, since any act of censorship has direct First Amendment implications. So, the question becomes whether an overt public call for genocide is enough for SUNY Buffalo to disallow Michael Knowles from spreading his eliminationist rhetoric here in Buffalo.
Thing is, probably not. Even the expression of morally depraved ideas cannot easily be silenced.
Instead, this will devolve into a lowest-common-denominator, dumb culture war issue-of-the-week with right-wing commentators decrying how the “intolerant left” is trying to cancel this poor guy who just thinks transgender people don’t exist and should be eliminated somehow. The right will quite overtly find itself defending the free speech rights of a barely-known propagandist who simply rejects the fundamental humanity and existence of an entire group of Americans.
As always with conservatives, they’re punching down at one of the most defamed, misunderstood marginalized populations around.
Michael Knowles tells CPAC that "there can be no middle way in dealing with transgenderism. … Transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely." https://t.co/57hJF4frgqpic.twitter.com/szvnC1qWrP
I see all the different attempts to silence, cancel, or otherwise to protest UB and Knowles, but honestly what is the best way to combat this genocidal clown? Personally, I would find great satisfaction if Slee Hall was literally filled with people who just laugh hysterically at his every pronouncement and condemnation. Point and laugh at the absurd right-wing blue check who says this with a straight face:
According to the event flyer, Knowles is going to give a speech about how “radical feminism destroys women and everything else.” That’s an oldie but a goodie. Radical feminism – in this day and age? What is this, a Limbaugh bit from 1993? When there’s big bank to be made calling overtly for extermination? Pretty lazy for this guy to take student money and fall back on passé right-wing greatest hits such as “women are men’s property and not individuals with free will.” Maybe they can get Andrew Tate to Skype in from his Romanian jail cell.
Honestly, the best argument for keeping Michael Knowles off campus is that he’s really really bad at this.
This banal, provocatively unbuttoned twit claims that some amorphous “they” is “encouraging” transgender people to “mutilate themselves” to be more like the gender with which they identify, and that this is incompatible with the “radical feminist” idea that men and women are the same. His argument is that normal people are inconsistent when they argue that, on the one hand, e.g., both women and men can be good at math or science, while simultaneously agreeing that “transgenderism” exists as a thing in the world.
This is what passes now for conservative thought? That the left’s belief that a person’s sex chromosomes or genitals don’t affect their abilities or intelligence is somehow incompatible with a belief that in some they might adversely affect how a person interacts in life and how they feel? I mean, what’s one more depressed or suicidal closeted transgender person to YAF and Michael Knowles, right? As long as they don’t have to refer to someone who looks, e.g., vaguely masculine as “they”, it’s worth it, right?
We know all about genitalia, Michael. They don’t affect one’s abilities or intelligence any more than skin pigments do. This UB speech is nothing more than a warmed-over reactionary EIB microphone eruption. Whatever it is, know that it will be as boring as it will be stupid. UB should shut this speech down because it is so fundamentally dumb as to defeat the purpose of higher education. Of what use is a “free exchange of ideas” when the idea itself is so facile? YAF and Michael Knowles, when “conservative intelligentsia” emphasizes the “moron” in oxymoron.
“Transgenderism” is the weasel word Knowles concocted to allow him to feign outrage and demand retractions from entities which rightly characterize his language as explicitly genocidal. He claims that he is not calling for the eradication of transgender individuals or the transgender community – but of “transgenderism.” He claims that “transgenderism” is some sort of ideology, but that’s not how he really defines it. What he is saying is that the state of being a transgender person is not something that exists.
“I don’t know how you could have a genocide of transgender people because genocide refers to genes, it refers to genetics, it refers to biology,” Knowles said on The Michael Knowles Show. “And the whole point of transgenderism is that it has nothing to do with biology.”
“Nobody’s calling to exterminate anybody because the other problem with that statement is that transgender people is not a real ontological category,” he added. “It’s not a legitimate category of being.”
See? It’s simple. Since being transgender is “not a legitimate category of being,” it’s ok for UB’s YAF chapter and Knowles to call for the extermination of the very idea of “transgender,” which by definition, (to anyone with a brain sharper than that of a garden slug), includes transgender people. Not being able to countenance people different from him being happy in their own skin, this is Knowles’ last answer. It’s his “final solution,” if you will.
Knowles isn’t clever. He’s just another in a long line of amoral but media-savvy people cashing in on hate. He justifies his eliminationism through a somewhat novel feint – by simply declaring that transgender is a made-up thing that does not really exist. He’ll sue you if you correctly decipher what he’s saying. He doesn’t have to say that transgender people are Untermenschen – they are Niemalsmenschen; not inferior, but non-existent and the bare idea of them is fair game for extermination. What if Knowles decided that “Catholic” was a wholly made-up thing that does not exist in nature. His argument would be that it was not actually genocide for someone to call for the extermination of Catholicism because (1) no one said “Catholics,” per se, and (2) etymologically, Catholicism is a belief and not “genetics” or “biology.”
As he mansplains genocide, Knowles ignores that one cannot have what he calls “transgenderism” without there being transgender people. Whether or not he believes in them is irrelevant, but his argument can be boiled down to: he cannot call for the extermination of that which does not exist.
The Daily Wire’s Michael Knowles accused the left of attempting to “radically change American culture” through immigration in order to “flood this country with people who will — are more likely to support them politically.”
The normalization of professional Fox-hit pundits calling for the extermination of transgenderism-wink-wink-we-all-know-what-he-means is part of this pogrom.
The pogrom itself seeks to completely eradicate and eliminate from America anything and everything that is not explicitly heterosexual and cisgendered from public life, pushing it underground.
Why? Mostly because right-wingers are so deeply triggered by the idea of people not like them being happy; calling someone by their preferred pronouns. The thing that is evident to anyone with an even passing, casual knowledge of history is that pogroms are about violence, expulsion, and murder. There will be more and worse acts of violence against drag queens and gay people and transgender people. People like Knowles don’t think this is enough – they want this elimination and violence to be state-sanctioned, systemic, and final.
They will tell you to your face they don’t want to exterminate transgender people while they’re measuring the camps for bunks.
UB doesn’t have the power to silence Knowles the way Knowles would silence transgender Americans, female Americans, gay Americans, and whomever else he targets. We have the power to ridicule and condemn him and his hosts.
When someone deletes a Twitter account – the official term is “deactivate” – one typically has thirty days within which to reactivate the account and to restore it to its most recent published state. It is also possible for a person simply to change their username, and unless you know the new account name there is no easy way to determine whether this has happened.
It is also possible to download one’s Twitter data before deactivation.
Sometime in late February, Republican County Executive nominee/candidate Chrissy Casilio-Bluhm deactivated her “ChrissyCaBoom” Twitter account, wherein she offered her deep thoughts having to do with Hunter Biden, the Covid hoax, the January 6th ANTIFA false flag, and the secret death of Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin, among other whackadoodle right-wing social-media fueled conspiratorial nonsense.
The voters deserve to see it all in its brightest Facebook-fed, misinformational splendor. We need to see this material. It has become an issue in this race, and her efforts to make it go away are only making it worse.
Anything less than that is a deliberate cover-up, and the local media need to treat it as such.
It is a person undertaking to represent others in an effort to make their town, district, city, county, state, etc., a little better.
It is a process by which these people seek elected office.
It is a battle of ideas.
It is a battle of personalities.
It is, by necessity, adversarial.
It is an appeal to various people and constituencies that they should support you with their action, their money, their voices, and votes.
In Erie County, politics is oftentimes messy and, even more frequently, stupid.
Erie County Republicans are predictable. This is a small-c conservative area, and they win elections mostly through appeals to people’s fears, anger, prejudices, and whatever right-wing trope is floating around talk radio or Fox News at the time. Ask one of them to define “woke”. Ask them if every gay person is a “groomer.” Ask them what the existential threat is from drag brunches. Ask them about January 6th and when they stopped believing in democracy and the peaceful transfer of power.
Twitter is garbage, blogging is dead, and our local media are so risk-averse that seldom does anyone really drill down on the sheer madness taking place.
THE RIGHT
The Republican candidate for County Executive is Chrissy Casilio-Bluhm, a former neighbor of mine. She is a professional in public relations, mother to three children, and wife of a pharmacist. Ordinarily, a perfect resume for a person running for office who is dependent on suburban votes. She’s one of you.
Except when we get to the conspiracy theories like whether Damar Hamlin really died and has been replaced by a double.
Or whether Covid was all a big hoax.
Or whether elections are rigged.
Or whether the January 6th coup attempt was an Antifa plot.
Or whether an online furniture retailer trafficked in children.
Mrs. Casilio-Bluhm has a Twitter account that has been locked at least for a few weeks. Up until mid-February, the bio read as follows:
As of this week, the highlighted text and the paid-for Twitter Blue blue check is gone.
I guess she is no longer fiscally conservative nor socially moderate. It is utterly unconscionable that this Twitter account is restricted given that she is now running for office. I have no doubt that it is being sanitized of embarrassing nonsense that plays well with other “Catturd” reply accounts, but not so well in a broad general election.
Mrs. Casilio-Bluhm is undoubtedly an excellent and devoted mother, loving spouse, and great at public relations, but the Damar Hamlin conspiracy-mongering alone is disqualifying for public office.
As to her alleged social moderation, here is an exchange she and I had in Spring 2022 under a post that former Congressman Chris Jacobs published to Facebook touting his anti-abortion bona fides. My original comment was posted to Jacobs, who was, at the time, a big proponent of abolition of Covid restrictions.
I repeat: local media, I beg of you, ask a Republican who utters the term to define “woke.”
Anyway, Chrissy Casilio-Bluhm is no newcomer to politics. She is the daughter of the town supervisor. Her family company is her business’ landlord. She earns PR business from Republican campaigns. The Erie County Republican Committee chairman said,
“As a mom trying to run a business, she knows the struggles that families try to deal with everyday, and certainly as an Erie County taxpayer knows we’ve got to do more to make this county more affordable.”
Clarence has among the lowest taxes in Erie County and those taxes pay for, among other things, roads, a DPW, and a great school district. Erie County property tax rates have gone down steadily for years, and sales taxes have remained the same. I am a well-off person and I would never claim to know the struggles of people who do not know where their next meal is coming from or how they will make rent or whether their kids will have a bright future. Anyone living in a brand-new custom-built home over 3,000 square feet and an estimated value of over $808,000 has been served pretty well by Erie County and its current County Executive, and can hardly be seen to complain about property taxes or other costs of living.
Republican politics right now is absolutely batshit insane, fueled by fear and hatred, triggered by anything that isn’t heterosexual, white, or a pickup truck. There is no ideology left, just an endless parade of phobias and grievances, promoted by a lying, pliant media ecosystem populated by smug performative “conservatives” broadcasting exclusively for smug performative “conservatives.” Trump broke the Republican party and what was left of small-c conservatism, and there’s no way back. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, Donald Trump, Matt Gaetz, and Paul Gosar are all of you and vice-versa.
The Democratic Socialists are good at tactics, bad at strategy. It was one thing, for instance, to defeat a Byron Brown in a primary when he didn’t even try, but not much worked once he started to try. Their online presence is pretty juvenile, their positions seldom amount to little more than sloganeering, and they do not have a tendency to build consensus through cooperation or compromise, and that makes up a huge part of governing, if not politics. One cannot argue with or reason with zealots.
Erie County Democrats have, in the last 5 years or so, become quite adept at avoiding factionalism. This is a refreshing change from the preceding 25 years. Now, they need to get better at messaging. The Democratic Party is a big tent party that serves many oftentimes competing constituencies. It is messy by design. You don’t have to like any Democrat or the party committee or anyone leading it or on it. But they do the hard work that goes into growing the party and getting people elected.
I first met Mark Poloncarz in 2003 when he was campaigning for John Kerry and I was campaigning for Wes Clark. The party coalesced around Kerry for the 2004 election, and Mark’s interest in politics, his leadership skills, his intelligence, and his ability to talk to people from any town, any class, any race propelled him to elected countywide office as Comptroller. And a damn good Comptroller he was, getting in there in the wake of Joel Giambra’s Red/Green budget fiasco, and continuing his tenure through Chris Collins’ tumultuous, disastrous one term as County Executive.
John LaFalce and Mark Poloncarz are the only two Democrats ever to have defeated Collins in a contested election. LaFalce was, at the time, the incumbent, so Poloncarz’s unexpected win in 2011 was a true upset.
Since then, Poloncarz has been a stable and strong executive, restoring funding to culturals and acknowledging their importance to the people who live here. Every year, he has delivered a small surplus or a small deficit that is easily plugged with the use of prior years’ surpluses. He ensures that Erie County gets the Medicaid funding it needs to keep its citizens safe. He expects hard work and professionalism from the people who work for Erie County. He was an excellent steward of our public health during Covid, and worked hard – against loads of opposition – to try and prevent people from avoidable disease or death.
There exists no compelling reason to replace him.
He does not think that Damar Hamlin is dead and that a body double is running around pretending to be him.
He does not believe that Wayfair was trafficking in children or selling adrenochrome.
He does not believe that January 6th coup was an Antifa false flag.
He does not believe that elections are rigged.
In the end, what Poloncarz is good at is marshalling finite public funds to ensure that as many of the different needs of as many possible Erie County communities are served in a fiscally responsible way. That means paving rural roads and funding Medicaid. That means helping communities to pool redundant resources, making sure that health needs are fulfilled, that seniors have rewarding recreational activities, ensuring that parks are usable, that traditions are upheld, that libraries stay open, that roads are plowed and salted, that emergencies are planned for and reacted to, taxes are collected, lawsuits defended, environment protected, police and sheriffs have the tools they need to fight and solve crime, etc.
And when Erie County messes things up, Poloncarz is accountable and works to ensure that mistakes are not repeated.
The County Executive does not exist to single-handedly end poverty, but his office works to ease the burdens on our poor, and to cover heating costs, and to expedite the handling of state and federal programs that exist to provide health care, housing, and food to the poor.
The County Executive cannot turn Erie County into Ontario’s Golden Horseshoe or a Toronto suburb.
The County Executive cannot cajole Nike or Ikea or Costco into doing anything. If anything, the county will offer incentives to companies that promise to bring good-paying jobs. And if they go back on that promise, he’ll claw back those incentives because no one gets special treatment.
The County Executive did not single-handedly murder “50” people during the Blizzard of 2022, nor is he in charge of regional rail planning or advocacy. One erstwhile candidate insulted Mark Poloncarz by claiming he never “said a word” about trains. Literally read his reaction to a vote on where the Buffalo city rail station should be and tell me he never thought about it or said a word.
One person ran for County Executive for less than a month and then quit in a petulant 25-tweet statement, the subtext of which was that he knew no one would volunteer to help him obtain valid signatures of 2,000 out of the 285,000 registered Democrats in Erie County. It’s interesting how when one decides to wage war and insult an entire institution, that the rank and file who do the actual work that keeps the institution running are the ones who decide you’re not worthy of their help, time, work, and money. It’s easy to selectively edit secretly recorded audio to make your enemies look bad, but why wouldn’t you just release the whole thing? It’s easy to feign victimhood at the hands of the big bad old party which is, in your estimation, so well-organized in its malign corruption that it will prevent you even from running for office, but simultaneously so incompetent and inept that it cannot win elections or improve our region.
McMurray is widely viewed as a credible force in the Democratic Party, especially among left-leaning progressives attracted by his views throughout his campaigns.
I don’t know where that’s coming from. I don’t know a single Democrat who would, after this month’s string of tantrums, give McMurray the time of day. Left-leaning progressives may agree with some of what McMurray claims to believe, but I have seen far more mockery of him than anything else.
This is because in the United States, we prioritize the rights of an inanimate object – a gun – over the safety of children and schools. Our elected leaders cannot enact meaningful legislation or regulation to prevent this sort of thing from happening over and over again because the NRA – the lobby for the gun manufacturers – has weaponized the Constitution to enable and ensure that any idiot can – nay SHOULD – own military hardware.
It didn’t used to be this way.
This didn’t happen during the economic and political turmoil of the 70s. It didn’t happen during the coke-fueled 80s. It didn’t happen in the 90s.
Not like this, anyway.
I can tell you that I don’t feel free when my kid texts me that there are cops everywhere and that they are in lockdown and it’s not a drill. I don’t feel very free when my kid tells me that she’s scared. I can earnestly explain to you that I don’t feel like this is the greatest country on Earth right now at this moment because I have friends and family who live in other G7 countries and they send their kids to school and don’t have to worry about this.
I do not feel free having to worry about this. Why do the freedoms and liberties of guns come before the freedoms and liberties of my family? Why does my child not have the freedom from this sort of abject terror?
