Category: Local Politics

People’s Republic of Williamsville

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Dear Comrades! The proletariat of Williamsville have seized power and, through their vanguard party implemented an appropriate dictatorship to bring the bourgeois liberal order to its knees, defenestrate the nobility, and to implement a true worker’s democratic order. Raise the red banner! Cue the Internationale! Long Live the Glorious Revolution!

Or that’s just what the *checks notes* Village Mayor wants you to think.

“I’m just saying I’m embarrassed to be sitting up here with two trustees who, I will say, are nothing short of communists in their ability to vote ‘no’ on this opposition,” Rogers said. “Because this is exactly what we saw happening in communist China, where people were being taken from their homes against their will and placed into quarantine camps.”

Williamsville Mayor Deb Rogers

I’ve spent some time in communist countries and I can think of a few differences right off the top of my head that would disprove Deb Rogers’ theory about the Trotskyite scum people on her village board who oppose her:

  1. Williamsville has a multi-party democratic board of freely elected trustees. This does not happen under communism, where all political power is held by the ruling party, which sets up sham elections with slates of pre-approved party candidates and the electorate is forced to “vote” by checking a “yes” or “no” box. To my knowledge, this has not yet happened in Williamsville.
  2. Williamsville enjoys free enterprise whereby people are able to start and own businesses, exploit the working class hire people, and compete in the marketplace in an effort to make a profit. Under most communist regimes, private enterprise, if allowed at all, is limited to only the smallest mom & pop stores such as barber shops, small restaurants, jewelry, and art. If permitted, these businesses are forced to pay confiscatory taxes, their ability to hire people is severely limited, and direct competition with state-owned enterprises is strictly regulated if permitted.
  3. Williamsville has a free press and, to my knowledge, the editors and writers of the Amherst Bee are not members of the communist party for which the paper is the official organ.
  4. Williamsville has freedom of speech and all of the other freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution of New York and the United States. This is made evident by the way in which Comrade Rogers is free to utter the most obnoxious idiocy without fear of official government sanction therefor.

So we are clear, what Comrade Mayor Rogers is upset about is the idea that people who are suffering from a communicable, transmissible disease, might be ordered by the state to isolate to prevent transmission and epidemic at a place not their home. This is almost exactly like the outcome of the DDR’s Tenth Party Congress in 1981.

Presumably, based on this reported temper tantrum, Comrade Mayor Rogers might consider it to be “communism” for a school to send home a child with lice or strep; that it would be analogous to the Khmer Rouge emptying Phnom Penh of bespectacled citizens and sending them to die in camps for the state Department of Health to ask that people consider other people and take reasonable measures to avoid the preventable spread of infectious diseases, and that the state step in if they refuse.

The proper way for an aggrieved party to seek recourse against what it thinks is a governmental overreach is to file a lawsuit. Oh, look, there’s already one filed. Maybe the nominally “pro-life” bourgeois so-called “Republicans” are happy to have, e.g., an Ebola nurse running around town willy-nilly but that is unlikely to be in the best interests of public health. Then again, public health is a joke anyway, as we don’t have health coverage for every American, and no one gives a crap that we have a Covid positivity rate of 20% locally, or the effect that this has on immunocompromised people and on the economy generally. Glory to the People’s Martyrs who died so you could shop maskless at Target!

For the Village Board of the People’s Republic of Williamsville to pass (or reject) a resolution in opposition to (or support of) a state regulation is an utter and irrelevant waste of time that exists only to let someone grandstand. Comrade Mayor Deb Rogers got her grandstanding moment, and even hurled completely outlandish insults at a couple of trustees who were basically saying that, contrary to the opinions of Titoist bourgeois reactionaries, this was a colossal waste of time and effort. Just like Trotsky and Guevara would have wanted.

May You Live In Interesting Times

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The Covid-19 pandemic has taken over six million lives – one million in the United States alone. Since its outset, there have been an estimated 448 million cases of Covid-19 since late 2019. Fully 17% of those cases and deaths have been in the U.S. This is unfortunate, since the United States has only about 4.25% of the world’s population. We have overperformed in terms of death, misery, and illness.

The global pandemic has wrought havoc upon societies and economies throughout the world. Similarly situated advanced western democracies have all handled the pandemic in different ways, with varying results. As things began to re-open, economies heated back up again. As things began to re-open, some people did not feel comfortable or eager to return to their pre-pandemic jobs.

That post-emergency economic re-invigoration led to inflation not seen since the 80s. Putin’s criminal war to obliterate and subjugate Ukraine is only going to exacerbate everything, although energy prices seem to have stabilized, for now.

Three million refugees have fled Ukraine, most of them to Poland, and in lesser volume to Hungary, Slovakia, Romania, and Moldova. All of these countries (except Moldova) are in the European Union and are our NATO allies.

Putin thought that he and his active measures over the past 7 years had adequately fractured and weakened western countries, their politics, their economies, their societies, and their alliances. NATO, he thought was weak. The EU, he thought, was feckless. But just as he miscalculated the Ukrainian people’s will to fight and avoid colonization and absorption, he similarly stumbled into awakening a sleepy west. The bickering EU is now united about Ukraine in an unexpected and perhaps unprecedented way. Not even during the Yugoslav conflagration and genocides did the EU act so forcefully and with such unity of purpose.

It was just a few years ago that Donald Trump was stating that NATO was extinct – an anachronism. Certainly, this vocalized doubt played right into the hands of Trump’s BFF Vladimir Putin, but like a lot of things of Trump’s, that hasn’t aged well. Putin managed to do in a couple of weeks what Trump could not do in four years – spur some recalcitrant NATO allies into spending a recommended 2% of GDP on defense. Even Germany sent weapons. Even Orban came on board.

The United Kingdom is doing its bit militarily. Its humanitarian response and willingness to accept Ukrainian refugees, however, is another story altogether. Having imposed sanctions upon itself through its disastrously idiotic, short-sighted, and Russian-spurred, racism-fueled Brexit, Blighty stands alone as a humanitarian afterthought in Europe. The Republic of Ireland, which is further west, smaller, and poorer, is doing more. The United States is completely absent on the Ukrainian refugee issue, to its shame.

This brings us to another issue – for years the same right-wing AM radio agitators have spewed vitriol at refugees fleeing failed Central American mafia states as an “invasion” of unwanted illegal aliens. I challenge anyone to explain to me the difference between a Honduran fleeing for his life from gang warfare, a Syrian fleeing for her life from ISIS or from Russian bombing, and a Ukrainian fleeing for her life from Russian bombing. I challenge these mentally deranged wretches to explain how a young family escaping a failed state in this hemisphere is an “invasion” while we see an actual invasion play out on TV every night in Ukraine.

Where are the Honduran children’s tanks?

Which apartment blocks in El Paso have the Guatemalan women shelled?

These same talk radio and neo-fascist cable news buffoons who equate refugees in the Western Hemisphere as “illegal invaders” almost uniformly express support for Putin. This is a topic briefly covered in this piece.

Let’s be honest – pluralist democracy is out of fashion with a solid third of the country. The Trump personality cult continues on, expressed by the types of people who are seemingly on the march right now in many corners of suburbia – the “freedom truckers” and anti-CRT/LGBTQ+ school board disruptors and OG Covid Deniers / Let’s Go Brandon / FJB / Trump desperados. They are united by a few key tenets, not the least of which include a desire to live under a one-party dictatorship with Donald Trump as president-for-life, and the rest of it amounting to “owning the libs.” While under Trump the “cruelty was the point” now they lazily defend the January 6th insurrection and abandon the principles upon which our government was founded, pledging fealty not to America but to the supreme leader.

To the Trumpists, the supreme leader is the country and the country is the supreme leader. Anyone else is a traitor shitlib communist who must be silenced or owned. This is not hyperbole: I am essentially paraphrasing what I hear from not a few current members of Congress.

On the other side we have the glib leftists who go out of their way to avoid condemnation of Putin and Russia and twist themselves like a pretzel to make it all about how NATO is bad. Literally a week or so ago there was a notice of a communist-led anti-NATO protest here in Buffalo that could not even be bothered to pay lip service to solidarity with Ukrainians – most of them working class people – who are being displaced or killed at the hands of a lunatic dictator. “No war” it said, demanding that NATO cut it out right this minute.

So, we have Putin’s useful idiots on the right, who would re-make America in Russia’s image. Nothing would own the libs more than a domestic version of OMON special police banning free speech or a megalomaniacal President-for-life having his mildest critics murdered, tortured, or exiled. And we have Putin’s useful idiots on the left, who do his bidding by blaming America for Putin’s invasion and demanding the weakening of the western democracies’ defensive alliance.

If the last few weeks have taught Europe any lessons, it is just how valuable NATO membership can be to avoid being bombed into the stone age by Russian bombs, missiles, and artillery.

We also have a unique phenomenon, mainly in nominally leftist journalistic cliques – I’m looking at you, Glenn Greenwald, Michael Tracey, and Buffalo’s own Matt Taibbi – that is the “anti-anti-Putin”. This hilariously transparent pro-Putinist, right-wing ethos plays itself out in podcasts and videos and Substack posts that do not directly demean the US or NATO or Ukraine, but instead attempt to be clever by demeaning shitlib opposition to Putin and his war. It is Elon Musk mocking the western world’s shock and horror at Russian war crimes. It is clumsy Assadist Tulsi Gabbard giving oxygen to Kremlin propaganda about biological labs. It is the jokes about Greenwald’s “whom I do not support” as echoed by the brilliant Times Pitchbot. The sane western world has no use for this sort of obvious nonsense. At least Trump has the self-awareness to be honest about his love of Putin.

Suffice it to say that it is not the same thing for Google to deplatform RT as it is for Putin to prosecute an anti-war protester for a felony.

One does not have to look too far in the past to remember what Russian oppression feels like to a Romanian, a Hungarian, a Czech or Slovak, or a Pole. Russian tanks rolled through Budapest and Warsaw and Prague all in the last 60 years. Ceausescu was as much a ruthless megalomaniacal madman as Putin. It is Ceausescu’s fate that Putin fears most.

In the few years starting in the summer of 1989, the peoples of Eastern Europe rose up to smash the relentlessly oppressive, illiberal regimes that imprisoned them. How did that start? Hungary – which was ironically then among the more liberal of the Warsaw Pact countries – threw open its border with Austria. This open door in the Iron Curtain resulted in Czechoslovaks and East Germans – who could travel within the Pact countries with relative ease – pouring through Hungary looking to end up in the west. By September it was reality, and within weeks this led to the fall of every communist regime in Europe, in their own time. In the intervening 30 years, Hungary, the DDR, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Romania, and Bulgaria all switched from secret police and command economies to the EU and free markets. Even Hoxha’s hermit Albania is free. Yugoslavia paid for its freedom in blood, and there remains a lot of unfinished business there.

The Soviet Union went away in 1991, and its results have been mixed. Ukraine has yo-yoed between emulating Poland or Belarus in terms of its connections with Russia. Like Croatia in the 90s, Ukraine’s future freedom and democracy is now being paid for in blood. It is no accident that the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia – all three of which shared SSR status with Ukraine in the old days – rushed to join the EU and NATO as quickly as possible. It is because these countries know that to be aligned with Russia is a mistake. These countries understand that Russia’s constant tug-of-war between what were once called the Westernizers and the Slavophiles remains unresolved, and as long as the latter has a shot at power, they remain under threat.

Stated roughly, Yeltsin was not really much of a Westernizer and Putin isn’t really much of a Slavophile, but each played one on TV. In reality, Russia simply traded one mafia state – based on allegiance to the Communist Party – to another based on fealty to the supreme leader. The USSR’s oligarchs didn’t have billions of dollars to spend on London townhomes and megayachts, but the Party’s apparatchiks and “nomenklatura,” enjoyed all of that era’s power, prestige, and perks, (save the occasional purge). The trappings of democracy were mere window-dressing. Russia’s current oligarchs have money and prestige linked directly to their relationship with Putin, and their willingness to serve the state’s needs when called. Never has political or economic power devolved from the Russian elite to the Russian people. Not after 1917, 1924, 1953, or 1991.

Perhaps now is the time for that to happen. Maybe this cataclysm in Ukraine will eventually lead to liberty and democratic change in Russia and her vassal states. Wishful thinking, but maybe Russia will someday decide that building up its own economy and infrastructure is preferable to conquering neighboring states that are minding their own business. Ukraine was never a threat to Russia, but the opposite is true, as we know from 2014 until today.

One hopes that Ukraine will come out on the other side of this war with its territory intact, its government free, and its ability to choose its associations and alliances unfettered by the preferences of malign exterior forces. There is no reason why Ukraine could not be like its western neighbors, but for Russian interference. Russia does not liberate, it subjugates.

When the history is written on this crisis, you’ll be grateful to look back and know that you were on the side of freedom and pluralist democracy and not on the side of neofascist imperialist personality cults. And to those who back the latter, the rest of us will remember.

Democrats, Untie

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You read that right. Untie the hand you keep fastened behind your backs come election time. The other side fights dirty. They lie. They exploit deep prejudices and fears. They break the law, they break the rules. They make stuff up.

This is your 2021 election take. The analysis of what happened last night in Erie County, New York does not lend itself to easy or quick or lighthearted takes. (I have nothing to offer about any other races anywhere else in the world).

The right in this country is still poisoned by Trump and has jettisoned any pretense of holding policy positions in favor of sloganeering, jingoism, and culture war bullshit. To the extent that Democrats have an enrollment advantage here, it isn’t indicative of a monolith. There are a lot of racist, right-wing, Trumper, WBEN listening “Democrats” out there who just need to see the word “socialist” or a slogan like “defund the police” or be incited by the WengerBauerleBellavia axis of disinformation to vote (R) (or (R) adjacent, like BB).

Yes, it is good that Hardwick won but it should not have even been in question, based on the utter lack of a campaign from his opponent.

(On this point, especial and specific denunciation goes out to that narcissistic toxic avatar of reverse-Midas-touches, Nate McMurray and his dopey henchpeople. If McMurray has proven one thing it is that he has taken the pulse of some the fuck other place and applied it to WNY, and gets it wrong time and time again. Call me when he gets elected to something without the help of a local fascist or when he doesn’t defame good candidates like Kevin Hardwick by regurgitating Republican or Eagan talking points whilst simultaneously trying further to burnish some novel leftist bona fides.)

Yes, it is good that Hoak won and finally that horrific creep who ran against him is out of public office. Hopefully in perpetuity.

But turn to Garcia and Brown. It seems as if you can never run too far right around here and be punished, but if one runs too far left you get destroyed.

Garcia’s ad linking Walton and Beaty as two black female socialist cop-firers was nothing less than racist. It was not a dogwhistle, it was blatant. Brown’s messaging against Walton was similar. She is an “other”. She is not one of us.

“Never count a Buffalonian out” yelled the guy from Jamaica, Queens at a woman born in Buffalo who’s lived and struggled here all her life.

Beaty will literally abolish the police, said Garcia, despite the fact that she is police and outranked him at any given moment.

As to Beaty, if she loses, she was defeated by good old-fashioned racism and misogyny. She is head and shoulders more qualified than any of her opponents.

As to Walton, I think she ran a clean and issues-driven, people-driven campaign and she deserves kudos for that. Unfortunately, that works much better in a primary (especially if your opponent sits it out) than it does in a general. Once you challenge the establishment (writ large – not any specific one) in any way – everyone from developers to city employees – you’re going to catch hell and your path is much steeper. Brown played up people’s fears against Walton and it worked. She was not well-funded when he decided to run this write-in, and she lost an opportunity to define herself before her opponent did it for her.

But here’s what I want to be really really deeply taken in by Democrats in this area. The issue isn’t whether Jeremy Zellner fucked something up or whether the DSA people should take things over. That – and the people who continue to exploit any available factionalism – is an epic distraction that, itself, fucks us up.

The Republicans and the right in this region prove time and time again that it’s ok to just lie, defame, and break rule after rule. And? They are a monolith. Use city cops in your ads? Sure! City workers using city stuff on city time to help BB? Go for it! Kim Beaty the cop wants to abolish the police? Run it!

Beaty went negative against Garcia and brought up some obtuse stuff about his company being shady. Walton and WFP did their best to remind people of accusations and evidence of BB’s relentless and longstanding corruption.

OK, but if Democrats did what Republicans routinely do, we would (and should) non-stop over and over show violent images of the Trumper Q-Anon army storming the Capitol on 1/6 and linking Garcia (and Brown and Mychajliw and Dixon etc. ad infinitum) to the people who would overturn our elections and democracy itself.

Same with Walton – BB wants Republican help? He should wear 1/6 and Paladino’s racist words and all of it.

If Democrats want to win we need to take the fucking gloves off and stop pussyfooting around what these people are. Stefan Mychajliw? He’s a nazi. John Garcia? He’s a racist. Byron Brown? He’s a corrupt puppet of deep-pocketed developers. They all of them get support from the likes of guys who routinely refer to black people as less than human. All of them are in a symbiotic relationship with the people who would destroy America itself – the insurrectionists and the cop-killers and the traitors.

Fucking say it.

Mychajliw and Genocide

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There are eight stages of genocide, according to “Genocide Watch.” Among them are “us vs. them” classification of preferred and targeted groups and symbolization of the targeted group through imposition (e.g., yellow star) and the exploitation of stereotypes or unique cultural attributes.

We focus here on “dehumanization”

In this stage, the perpetrating power begins to equate the targeted group or groups to sub-human status. Members of groups are likened to animals, vermin, insects, and/or diseases. Dehumanization allows average people to overcome the normal human revulsion against murder. At this stage, hate propaganda is in print and other media are used to vilify the victim group. To combat dehumanization, incitement to genocide should not be confused with protected speech. This rhetoric is harmful and can lead to the killing of hundreds of thousands. Local and international leaders should condemn the use of hate speech and make it culturally unacceptable.

Just this week, Stefan Mychajliw thought it necessary within the context of a *checks notes* town supervisor race to play around a bit with some dehumanizing genocidal language. For a guy who once made a big deal about his family’s travails through the Holomodor and emigration westward and then northward, it would ordinarily be counterintuitive for him to take on the language of genocide perpetration. Yet, believe it or not, here we are.

It is not enough to ignore Mychajliw’s incitement. It is important to highlight it and to condemn it for what it is.

Those are two tweets sent from Mychajliw’s official, verified Twitter account (I urge you to report them to Twitter for targeted hate speech against a group) within a day of each other. Mychajliw is attacking his opponent for suggesting that it would be good to re-evaluate zoning regulations in the town to allow for more multi-family housing. Mychajliw’s reaction to this is literally to call this an “infestation”.

One does not talk about an influx of people as an “infestation” unless one intends to dehumanize those people in such a way as to direct hatred at them. After all, whom do you call for an “infestation”?

The exterminator.

This is not hyperbole. This is a local Republican who once had aspirations to serve as County Executive or in Congress suggesting that a zoning change to allow for minority or low-income people to move into a town is an “infestation”.

Mychajliw’s antics cannot be chalked up to culture warrior banter anymore. This isn’t funny. This isn’t something to take lightly or to disregard. It cannot be stressed strongly enough that we have here a local prominent Republican running for office who refers to entire classes of people – poor, minorities, immigrants, refugees – you name it – as parasites or vermin.

The next time Mychajliw sells you some story about how his grandpappy went AWOL from the Wehrmacht, ask him why he feels comfortable using Nazi terminology to describe his fellow Americans who happen to be less white or less well-off than he.

In his risibly facile Op-Ed, Mychajliw wrote,

What I have is a love for the promise of America, and a loathing for those who seek to destroy it.

Mychajliw should look in the mirror, and loathe what he sees glaring back at him.

ELECTION ’21: THE QUIET PART OUT LOUD

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Byron Brown is running a scorched-Earth campaign of lies and mud against India Walton, the woman who defeated him in the Democratic primary for Mayor of Buffalo. Brown’s campaign is seemingly managed by the Buffalo News’ editorial board.

Walton is the only Democrat in that race, and hers will be the only name on any ballot for that office. She has good and novel ideas about running a poor city that has been run by the current Mayor’s vast, entrenched political machine for 16 years. Despite hyperventilation to the contrary, Walton’s experience managing a large municipal organization is essentially equal to what Byron Brown’s was in 2005. Arguably more. (Citistat, anyone?)

In June, Democratic voters in the city of Buffalo decided it was time for a change, but Byron Brown could not be bothered simply to concede. He has instead aligned himself with the rich, the connected, and the right-wing. Faced with an end to his tenure that is earlier than he anticipated, but by no means premature, every chit and every favor is being called. In his desperation, he forgets himself.

But that is not what this is about. We are not here to contemplate Byron Brown’s alignment with the Buffalo power structure with which he has always had a symbiotic, mutually beneficial existence. Consider, for a moment, if the occupant of the mayor’s office put the least fortunate and powerful first. That is the inherent appeal of India Walton and what she stands for.

Instead, we have been treated to a crash education. What we have learned in the last several days is that the Republican Party in Erie County – the party of authoritarian cult and insurrection – has completely jettisoned any pretense of conservative small government values in favor of a platform of grift, lies, and racism. We are here to talk about nominal Comptroller candidate Lynne Dixon, sheriff candidate John Garcia and – of all things – Hamburg supervisor candidate Stefan Mychajliw.

As you may be aware, early voting in Erie County started on Saturday, October 23rd and runs through Halloween. (Polling places are listed here). I cannot urge you strongly enough to please vote for Kevin Hardwick for Comptroller, Kimberly Beaty for Sheriff, and Randy Hoak for Hamburg Supervisor. Hoak and Beaty each has an inspiring story, history, and platform. They are both exceptionally good and qualified candidates in their own rights. As for the office of Comptroller, few people know more about county government than Kevin Hardwick, and even fewer care as much as he about its proper functioning.

We are here instead to condemn the clumsy and stupid lies of Lynne Dixon, and to denounce the blatantly racist prevarication and propaganda from Garcia and Mychajliw.

Ken Kruly has covered Dixon’s rank idiocy quite well:

It is not unusual for some people in politics to drop scurrilous attack materials or ads near the end of a campaign when such action leaves little time for a responsible response from the candidate being attacked.  Such is the case with a mailer delivered today, Friday, October 22nd, the day before early voting starts.

Republican-Conservative candidate for Erie County Comptroller Lynne Dixon did just that today, sending out a mailer to Buffalo Democrats suggesting that her Democratic opponent, Kevin Hardwick, is a “pro-Trump Conservative.”  How ironic that is sent just as the Buffalo News on their website has posted an editorial endorsing Hardwick.  The editorial says that Dixon “sets herself apart from the current comptroller in style and temperament …”   NOT.

Ken Kruly in an email blog

Suffice it to say that Donald Trump is what finally convinced Hardwick to leave that fetid cesspool of a “Republican” party, and Dixon – (whose daughter Erin can, this year, spare me her semi-coherent, overwrought direct messages) – is the Trumper di tutti Trumpists. She offers nothing but lies and the Mychajliw continuum of failure, absence, and mediocrity.

Garcia is the successor whom long-embattled incumbent Sheriff Howard has hand-picked for himself. Just this past week, Garcia began airing this ad (FB). I won’t embed it here because I think that it is, frankly, evil.

It starts out with stock imagery of Black Lives Matter protests from 2020, which happened in the wake of the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May 2020. It portrays only images of rioting and cities burning with someone holding up a “defund the police” sign. The ad states that “socialism” is what brought about those images, which is laughably idiotic.

If we’re being temporally accurate, after all, the protests we saw in 2020 occurred under the current right-wing malign incompetence of Byron Brown and Tim Howard.

Predictably, the imagery in Garcia’s ad changes to a side-by-side black-and-white picture of India Walton (against whom Garcia is not running) and Kim Beaty. There are exactly two things about Walton and Beaty that are similar, and one of them is that they’re each the endorsed Democrat for public office. Garcia accuses Beaty and Walton of an intent to “dismantle the pillars of community protection in Erie County.”

So, are we to believe that Garcia has just randomly lumped in two completely unrelated candidates for office – both of whom happen to be women of color – to accuse them of planning to get rid of police departments? His ad says that you have to vote for him to prevent Erie County from becoming “another failed socialist public safety experiment.” Garcia’s inclusion of Walton in his ad is that old Republican standby of gratuitous fearmongering, misogyny, and racism. He sets Ms. Beaty adjacent to Ms. Walton to smear them both to his audience as women of color. The intended audience is racists and misogynists. Gotta turn out the base.

Garcia is implicitly endorsing excessive force and police brutality for people who like to see that sort of thing happen to minorities. With his racist lies, Garcia in one stroke disqualifies himself for any office whatsoever. Ever.

Now let us turn to Stefan Mychajliw, whose expulsion from the public sector will be especially gratifying. Mychajliw has all but abandoned the job for which taxpayers pay him big bucks in order to troll the libs on Twitter full time. His only platform is the culture war. His abandonment of his elected post has enabled him to traipse around the east coast cosplaying as a more ethnic Jim Jordan.

Mychajliw, who has lived in Hamburg for about two minutes, has literally nothing to run on so he attacks his opponent, Randy Hoak, as some sort of socialist. (I’m detecting a weak theme). But Mychajliw, who for a couple of years has been flirting with white nationalism, finally settled on a race to run – in Hamburg. But as the Buffalo News wrings its hands over India Walton’s qualifications, it ignores the fact that Stefan Mychajliw is barely qualified to be Stefan Mychajliw.

Now, at last, Mychajliw tells on himself. Pursuing white nationalist Trump voters is easier when you are one.

Someone leaked something to Stefan, and he pulled a quote so out of context it is almost meaningless. Stefan’s point here is clear, however – it is to scare whitey, full stop. Mychajliw, perpetually out of substance or ideas, accuses Hoak of – what, exactly? Respecting America’s diversity?

The Buffalo News got a hold of the elected Comptroller and he tried unsuccessfully to backpedal.

When asked if he has any problem with people of color moving into Hamburg, Mychajliw said, “No. That question should be asked of Randy Hoak. He’s the one who brought up the issue in this race.”

No. Mychajliw outs himself as having a problem with people of color moving to Hamburg, and he is trying to pander to other townsfolk who do. Most likely, it’s both. If, as he claims, Mychajliw is for diversity, then why would he cherry-pick part of something Hoak said that is pro-diversity and then attack him over it? The supposed logic only works if you’re a moron and a fraud.

The list of reasons to relegate Mychajliw to the private sector is deep and wide. His campaign disclosures reveal unpopularity and incompetence so significant that it likely crosses the line into illegality.

No wonder his own family members won’t vote for him. The people closest to him know what he is.

Between Dixon’s defamation, Garcia’s racism and misogyny, and Mychajliw’s no-show, no-ethics race-baiting, WNY can do much better with Hardwick, Beaty, and Hoak. It seems like this year is a unique opportunity to leave a lot of really bad prejudices and malign politicians behind.

India Walton Story Ideas For the Buffalo News

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P1012065

A neighbor heard from someone that India Walton once drank a beer.

According to the neighborhood grapevine, Walton once spoke with a person who, years later, committed a crime.

A cop phoned in an anonymous tip because he heard from a colleague that Walton once drove 35 in a 30 zone.

A political opponent illegally gained access to Walton’s credit report and phoned in that Walton had missed a credit card payment one time years ago.

A woman in Tonawanda heard from her cousin that Walton once defended herself against false and scurrilous accusations at work and clearly did not know her place.

The friend of an acquaintance of a Lancaster man says he once heard a rumor that Walton had the nerve one time to question a white man’s judgment.

Steve Pigeon, awaiting sentencing, never heard of India Walton.

The ghost of Joe Illuzzi complained that Walton wouldn’t buy an ad on his site and didn’t pay off the head of the Independence Party for an endorsement.

One guy overheard someone at Ralph Lorigo’s weekly breakfast say that India Walton is a dirty commie.

A Conservative Party apparatchik / city worker with a secret home in Cheektowaga was on his fifteenth coffee break one day when he overheard someone say that India Walton ripped the tags off her mattresses.

A former boss who wishes to remain anonymous reported that India Walton did not, in fact, avoid the Noid.

The head of a city department heard from his neighbor that the neighbor’s girlfriend’s husband once saw India Walton cross Delaware Avenue against the light.

Byron Brown, Grassroots, and the Conservative Party have a lot of informants and had put together a comprehensive and dirty opposition playbook against India Walton but never thought they’d have to use it.

The hedge-funder landlord of India Walton overheard from neighborhood chatter that India Walton let someone with a lot of friends stay in her home.

I hope I’m doing this right.

The Fatigue Election of 2020

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Joe Biden is the perfect general election candidate for our time. He is known. He is kind. He is experienced. He is empathetic. He is smart. He is moderate. He is the hard reset that this country so desperately needs.

It goes without saying that the Democratic Party could have nominated a quarter-pound of ham for President, and that thinly sliced cold cut would offer a more positive vision and plan for America over the next four years than the current occupant of the White House.

We have endured a relentless, constant, chronic geyser of bullshit spewing from Donald Trump over the past 5 years, but that’s not the only thing shaping and defining our zeitgeist. The potent, toxic mixture of grievance and cruelty that fuels the American right is as exhausting as it is ugly. We are all of us Joseph Welch, expressing publicly how fatigued we are by the endless stimulant-fueled shower of hatred, lies, and cruelty that falls from Trumpworld like volcanic ash. Whining about things hasn’t helped. Neither has blaming Black people, Jewish people, immigrants, feminists, LGBTQ+ people, Latinos, Hispanics, Asians, Mexicans, China – good God, it’s enough.

It’s enough.

The pandemic is the icing on the cake. It is Trumpworld’s downfall. It lays bare the fundamental lie.

We all know that the Obama Administration, which had its own experiences with infectious diseases, left behind a literal pandemic playbook and an office staffed to take charge when necessary – the Directorate for Global Health Security and Biodefense at the National Security Council. The Trump Administration got rid of it in 2018. Now, the United States ranks among the worst countries in terms of its response to the novel Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. We have almost unlimited community spread in many places, the federal government has failed, and plans only to continue its policies of failure for the foreseeable future. Over 220,000 Americans are dead and this is a massive public health catastrophe, not to mention the economic destruction that has taken place as a result of our feeble, third-world quality response.

This all started in mid-March. It is now the end of October, and you still can’t get a Coronavirus test on demand for any reason and have reliable results within the day. We’re instead still relying on travel bans and quarantines when testing and tracing is key.

The most glaring failure? The federal government’s response was so deliberately inept and poor that mask wearing is now a political statement in some places, and we are left with a situation where the lives of people in North Dakota are effectively less valuable than the lives of people in New York. That shouldn’t be. Everyone in America deserves the same protection from uncontrolled community spread of this virus, and history will forever condemn us for allowing some places needlessly to suffer while others benefited from competent government following science.

In late October 2020, our Trump fatigue intersects neatly with our Covid fatigue. Most Americans have simply had it with the bullshit geyser and the manufactured drama. We’re not interested in this season of the Apprentice anymore.

Everyone’s life is upended in some way, you can’t just not “let it dominate your life” because that is literally impossible. It dominates our lives. You can’t really go out and do stuff like you used to, you can’t travel literally anywhere, and everyone is still hunkered down, waiting for a truly effective treatment protocol or a vaccine. (On the bright side, flu cases will be hopefully down this season as more people are masked and distanced than ever before. Also get a flu shot).

The outcome of the Presidential race won’t fix everything, but if Biden wins (and I think he will), it will reset the federal government to being at least minimally competent again. We will implement a Covid strategy that values every American life equally. We will restore good relations with our allies and keep a closer eye on our enemies. We will reintroduce the rule of law and eliminate nepotism in the White House. Our government will listen more closely to experts and science, and the deniers will be relegated to their fringe websites and YouTube channels where they can freak out about – and consume themselves with – lizard people and Pizzagate 2.0. Hunter Biden won’t matter because Hunter Biden won’t be paid a public salary to be a Presidential aide.

In New York State, early voting starts today – October 24th and runs through November 1st. The polling hours and locations for Erie County are here, and you can vote at any of them. If you applied for and received an absentee ballot, send it in. If you changed your mind and want to vote in person, discard the absentee ballot you received.

I am hopeful that this will be a big year for America to turn a positive corner. Election Day is Tuesday, November 3rd. If you didn’t vote absentee or early, that’s your chance – in Erie County polls will be open from 6am – 9pm. Every vote counts, even in New York. Lots of downballot folks are relying on you. People like Monica Wallace, Karen McMahon, Jacqui Berger, Pat Burke, Sean Ryan, Bill Conrad, Brian Higgins, and Nate McMurray are depending on you to turn out and turn up.

how it ends

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Some have said that the United States is engaged in a cold civil war. I don’t think that’s true. The depth of Americans’ political divisions has ebbed and flowed since the founding of this country; there’s nothing new under the sun. Certainly social media and the manipulation of bad information has complicated matters, but I have faith in the numbers.

Let’s begin with this: Donald Trump is a fluke. He won in 2016 thanks to a lot of good luck and white grievance. But ever since January 2017, his approval has rarely approached 50%. Only about 40 percent of Americans can tolerate his antics, and really only about 1/3 of Americans are considered to be his base. That means 60-ish percent of Americans have had a negative view of Donald Trump throughout his Presidency, and it really hasn’t been all it was cracked up to be.

Fatigue has set in, sure. We are sick of worrying about the various ways in which the President and his entourage of malignant grifters, malcontents, fascists, and unqualified kin can embarrass themselves – and our country – seemingly minute by minute. On the night of October 1st, each successive news cycle lasted about 30 minutes as we learned in quick succession how Hope Hicks had Covid-19, Melania Trump had cursed out migrant children her husband had caged and also Christmas itself, and then that she and the Donald had also contracted Covid-19.

But good God, the fatigue – 2020 is the longest year and over 200,000 Americans have died from this virus. Many of those deaths were needless and preventable. The federal government’s response to Covid-19 has been weak and feckless, leaving states to fend for themselves. The problem with this strategy is that some states take it seriously and others don’t. If having a country means anything, it should mean that the health of someone in North Dakota is taken as seriously as the health of someone in Vermont. Covid-19 and its relentless path of destruction through America should, alone, disqualify the current administration from being re-elected. That’s before we get to literally everything else.

Are you better off today than you were four years ago? Are you more proud to be American today than you were four years ago? Do you think that the last four years have restored some long-lost greatness to America? Do you feel confident that the federal government is looking out for you?

Soon after Trump came down that escalator in Trump Tower to denounce Mexicans in 2015, I have referred to him and his movement as neo-fascist in nature. (Here, here, and here). He is not an ideologue or thinker – he is a huckster. He’s a snake oil salesman. Rather than offer a positive plan for a renewal of American greatness, he raised the black flag of aggressive nativism and used it as a sword to attack anyone not white and not Christian and not sufficiently loyal to him. If you want to know the genesis of the current state of unrest over black lives and police militarization and white supremacy, look no further than the White House. We like to think that government – even when it does things with which we do not agree – at least has our best interests at heart. Not anymore.

Does a Muslim in Trump’s America feel safer than she did in 2014, before he announced his candidacy? How about a black person? A non-Cuban Hispanic or Latino person? How about a gay kid or a Sikh physician? Rather than competently address real systemic economic and social problems, Trump and his coterie of bandits have plundered our treasure and pitted American against American in ways that are fundamentally sickening. He and his nativist, protectionist, racist, authoritarian brand of politics is weak and decent Americans reject it.

Trump isn’t unique to this country, however. There are mini-Trumps in power here and there. Poland, Hungary, Turkey, Brazil – they all have their own flavor of ultra-right anti-democratic nativism. But those are developing countries. Alas, so is the United States. Our economy is in shambles. Our health care system is broken and stupid. Our politics are disgraceful. Our discourse is poisoned by foreign interlopers and domestic trolls. Fake news gets international attention before the truth has gotten its socks on.

Trump cares about one thing: Trump. He is a wannabe dictator and a reflexive fascist. He is a last gasp, however, of boomer white grievance and history will look upon him unkindly.

In a way, the future of this country is really up to the sixty-ish percent of us who haven’t completely lost our minds. The future depends on those of us who know Q-Anon is utter garbage, and who cherish the notion that America isn’t a nationality so much as it is an idea, and that idea is subject to change from time to time. The America of 2020 is very different from the America of 1920, and one has to imagine, (or, at least, hope) that the chaos and turmoil of 2020 will lead to a reckoning of sorts.

We’re at a crossroads. If you want to simplify it all, you could say we can choose light or we can choose darkness. Right now, it’s dark out. Without getting deeply into it, many in 2016 saw our choice as one of differing shades of gray. But we know now. The differences are stark. We need to hit a hard reset; we need to unplug the country and plug it back in again. After that, we’ll need a truth and reconciliation commission of sorts to purge ourselves of our hateful and divisive binge.

We have a short attention span in this country, but don’t ever let anyone tell you that it’s going to be easy to lift this country up from the place it is now. This is going to be difficult, but it is the only way. America has always been an aspirational place – a place that believed in equality and freedom and opportunity even when those things were denied to significant swaths of her population. That sixty-ish percent of us who really believe in that, (rather than the Greenwood Americans who pay it mere performative lip service), recognize our past faults and want to move the country in the direction of those aspirational goals.

What I’m trying to say here is that we won’t get to the promised land by smacking marionette effigies of Andrew Cuomo with the butt end of a fake rifle. We won’t rediscover our unity of purpose by electing craven opportunists to office. Law and order without justice is fascism, and we need to be honest about that. Police should walk a beat, not beat peaceful protesters. Police need to be part of the community, not fighting a war against it from behind their tanks and shields. We’re better than Donald Trump, or at least we should strive to be. We’re better than Trumpism and its hatred of science, history, facts, and immigrants.

I am voting for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris not because they are the perfect antidote to Trump and his malicious reign, but because they are the hard reset that this country needs.

But beyond that, I am going to make sure that my memory of Trump is long, and that the people whose reactions to him ranged from apologia to toadyism pay for it politically, in perpetuity.

This country used to be, if not perfect, at least a place that was looked up to in the world. That is no longer the case. We are, at best, pitied. As Trump emulates his favorite dictators, our reputation in the world is embarassingly diminished. We have spent four years antagonizing our allies and cozying up to murderers. I’ve had enough, and 60-ish percent of you have, too.

In New York, you can vote early starting on October 24. Do it. Take advantage of it. Since Trump is threatening to foment a coup over mail-in voting, don’t give him the satisfaction and vote in person if you can. If you are voting by mail or absentee, don’t trust the defunded USPS and get your ballots out as soon as possible.

Let us toast our fellow Americans whom we have lost to war and disease. Let us toast to an America that can do and be better than all of this.

A Candidate Scoffs

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The 60th Senate District: is there something in the water? Are the fumes from the NOCO tanks near the South Grand Island bridge getting to people? Senator – now Judge – Mark Grisanti was elected to represent that district twice – until the tea party ousted him in an almost comically outrageous fit of pique. Was it about gun control and the SAFE Act, or was it about his change of heart on same sex marriage? It doesn’t much matter, because the ingenious political machinations from the tea party resulted in liberal Democrat Marc Panepinto now occupying that seat. 

Think about the sheer stupidity here. The tea party thought Grisanti was too liberal of a Republican – a “RINO” – that they engineered a win for a genuine liberal Democrat, instead. 

The tea party’s preferred candidate was Kenmore attorney Kevin Stocker, who is now likely eligible to have the word “perennial” precede the word “candidate”.  Stocker beat Grisanti in the primary, but lost in a four-way race, and all but told head tea party derpegist Rus Thompson to pound salt. 

A decade ago, Panepinto was firmly in the Sam Hoyt / Len Lenihan camp of the oft-squabbling Democratic Party. Now, however, he is perceived to be more closely aligned with the breakaway Democratic faction whose figurehead is Steve Pigeon. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that Panepinto finds himself challenged for the Democratic nod. Under normal circumstances, he should be fine. He’s got the power of incumbency and the support of big labor – especially NYSUT, the state teachers’ union. Challenging him, however, is Parkside community activist Amber Small. 

The winner of this contest will get to run against multimillionaire developer, closing time changemaker, and County Clerk Chris Jacobs. 

This being New York, however, we have to pay some minimal attention to the almost criminally fraudulent fusion parties. The Independence Party is neither independent nor a party, having no principles or manifesto. Statewide, it backs whomever it thinks will win. Locally, in the past few cycles, its endorsements have almost universally mirrored the GOP slate. So, in WNY, the IP has become a GOP front group, designed to trick people who think they’re voting for “independent” candidates. It’s an elaborate fraud designed to trick the poorly informed.  

The Greens don’t do fusion, so that leaves two sides of the same coin – the Working Families Party and the Conservative Party. 

The WFP exists so that the more self-righteous left has a party line to select. Think union stewards and everyone you know on Facebook whose posts have become insufferable all-Sanders all the time. If you’ve ever uttered the term, “corporate Democrats”, the WFP is for you. Its principles and platform are not especially flexible or centrist. They begrudgingly backed Governor Andrew Cuomo’s re-election bid, but the true believers really wanted Zephyr Teachout. 

The Conservative Party purports to have principles, but it’s just an arm of the Republicans. Gosh, one might think that the Republican Party is so unpopular in New York State that it needs to gerrymander districts and control a bunch of extra fusion lines to win the occasional election. Locally, the Conservative Party is run by attorney, power broker, and professional breakfastist Ralph Lorigo. His party hands out endorsements, and his party committeepeople get jobs. It has backed Democrats occasionally – again, depending on likelihood of success, and that jobs might result. Its platform is made up of all the WBEN bogeymen – anti-choice, anti-LGBT, anti-gun control. But it has endorsed pro-LGBT or pro-choice Democrats when it’s suited them. 

Lately, the Conservative Party has been known for its deep bench of candidates, like not-ready-for-primetime Assemblywoman Angela Wozniak and vulgarian Joe Mascia. 

Which all brings us to the relationship that Democrats have with the Conservative Party. Quite simply, one shouldn’t exist. In 2015, Mark Poloncarz somewhat publicly refused to solicit the Conservative endorsement. He didn’t need it, and he didn’t want it. I have, in the past, urged Democrats to reject the Conservative Party fusion line because it is the complete antithesis of everything for which Democrats are supposed to stand. More specifically, the Conservative line has been used in deals between Lorigo and nominal Democrat Steve Pigeon to back candidates who would not be loyal to Democratic county HQ. For instance, in 2012 Pigeon and Lorigo backed the Senate candidacy of homophobe Chuck Swanick. 

This all brings us to the current Senate race. Amber Small is challenging Marc Panepinto for the Democratic nomination for SD-60. She made a bit of a splash by “scoffing” in a press release at any suggestion that she might seek the Conservative line. This is significant because Panepinto is telling everyone who will listen that Small is a DINO who will align herself with the Independent Democratic Caucus, which backs the Republicans in the state Senate and gives the GOP their majority. So, she needs to beat back the IDC smear. 

So, it’s somewhat ironic, then, that Panepinto would be openly courting the Conservative line. One would suspect that County Clerk Jacobs would more quickly win that slot. Small explained that, “The Conservative Party is anti women, anti LGBT, anti environment, and anti reasonable gun safety laws.  I will never sacrifice my progressive beliefs to curry political favor and campaign contributions. I am running for State Senate to focus on bettering our communities and providing the 60th district with the resources we deserve.  I am a Democrat, and I am committed to providing every child with a quality education, fighting for the rights of women and families, protecting the environment, and creating economic opportunity.  I think the residents of this district are fed up with Albany insiders and the games that they play.”

So, it’s pretty straightforward. If you believe in the things in which Democrats are supposed to believe, you eschew the Conservative line. 

Small said, “I’m a progressive Democrat with progressive Democratic values and that’s something the voters need to know.” 

The last time around in SD-60, the Conservatives didn’t run a fusion ticket, but a placeholder, who got almost 7,000 votes just by virtue of the “Conservative” label. That candidate did no campaigning and had no money. While Lorigo points to this as proof of his party’s clout, it really means that almost 7,000 people voted for a candidate who had the word, “conservative” next to his name even thought they didn’t know anything else about him. That’s how fusion works – it’s a trick. It’s a scam. It is about patronage, and it’s the very root of Albany and New York political corruption. In 2014, it drew votes away from Stocker and ended up helping Panepinto. Think of it as a non-endorsement endorsement. 

All candidates should reject the phony Conservative and Independent lines, and fusion should be repealed. If these minor parties want to run candidates, run them. A system that relies on trickery should end. But most importantly, no Democrat should solicit or accept the Conservative fusion line, ever. 

Congratulations, Secretary Collins

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History will remember that until early 2016, Chris Collins was a largely irrelevant GOP congressional backbencher. Safely ensconced in an almost loss-proof suburban/rural Republican district, all he had to do was continue to be white, rich, and Republican in order to cruise to re-election. Having been a failed one-term county executive, he bought himself one last plaything – a seat in Congress. An American peerage.

But on a rainy Wednesday in late February 2016, Chris Collins became something more sinister and dangerous than just a casual Obama-hating millionaire seat-warmer. He joined the Trump bandwagon.

His protestations notwithstanding, Mr. Collins has bought himself Mr. Trump’s views about Mexican immigrants, Muslim visitors, Trump’s cut & spend tax plan, and building walls.

Until a few days ago, First Class Chris Collins had supported Jeb Bush, who found himself utterly unwanted by the Republican primary electorate in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada; Trump had swept all but one. Given that the Erie County Republicans had recently chosen Trump in their straw poll, and with our Palinist bizarro-intelligentsia, led by Carl Paladino, firmly in Trump’s barnyard, Collins decided to go with the hometown favorite. After all, Trump came to Depew to raise money for the ECGOP quite recently.

Collins, however, was out on his own on this one. The relatively shoestring Trump campaign isn’t equipped, really, to deal with a bunch of elected officials’ endorsements. The Republican establishment is likely to coalesce behind Marco Rubio, who has emerged to take Jeb’s place as the safe alternative. But some people who value loyalty don’t like that Rubio ran when it was Jeb’s year; Jeb was Rubio’s mentor.  Chris Collins, for all his faults, is a guy who values loyalty.

Collins’ move as the first GOP congressman to openly back Trump took some balls. He hasn’t been a memorable or effective congressman – he’s just a solid vote for whatever the Speaker wants. There was an almost Frank Underwoodian tactical brilliance behind this move to make Collins’ 2016 more exciting. By making this announcement, Collins has suddenly, single-handedly, forced the hand of every Republican in the House and Senate to pick a side.

Vote your district, vote your conscience: just don’t surprise me. Well, Collins surprised them. He surprised the entire Washington GOP establishment. He surprised the Trump campaign – Donald Trump called Collins personally Wednesday to thank him.

Collins took a leap of faith here – he might crash on the cliffs below, or sail gracefully into the best move he ever made. Time will tell, as we move towards an almost MMA-style brawl between two of the most ruthless campaign apparati in contemporary American politics. This will be a showdown so epic that both sides had better prepare for an inevitable recount process.  It’ll be 2000 all over again, and Roger Stone’s Brooks Brothers rioters will be suited up for Trump.

But this is Chris Collins we’re talking about – anti-net Neutrality, anti-consumer protection, anti-birth control, SNAP abolitionist, and condescending prat, so let’s examine his campaign statement.

CLARENCE, N.Y. – Calling for an “end to business as usual” in Washington, Congressman Chris Collins (NY-27) today announced that he is endorsing Donald Trump to become America’s next President.

As if anyone really cared whom Collins would be “endorsing”, or whether Trump needed or wanted this “endorsement”.

The end of “business as usual” in Washington is code for two things:

1. that Chris Collins is up for re-election in 2016, and he wants to ingratiate himself with the suburban and rural upstate Republican voters who will almost certainly overwhelmingly back Trump in the coming election; and

2. if Trump wins, Collins wants a cabinet position. Secretary of Commerce? That’d look good on the Wikipedia entry.

The reactionary, nativist, populist, authoritarian right is ascendant, after all. Collins knows which way the wind is blowing, and he wants to make sure his voters – and the Trump campaign – know he’s with them on this.

“Donald Trump has clearly demonstrated that he has both the guts and the fortitude to return our nation’s jobs stolen by China, take on our enemies like ISIS, Iran, North Korea and Russia, and most importantly, reestablish the opportunity for our children and grandchildren to attain the American Dream,” said Congressman Chris Collins.  “That is why I am proud to endorse him as the next President of the United States.”

Trump has made this demonstration by, e.g., firing Omarosa on S01E09 of the Apprentice, manufacturing the tchotchkes and schmattes bearing his name in China, and cowering at the intimidating might of Fox’s Megyn Kelly.

The line about the American Dream is typical Collins. If you navigate to his official Congressional page, his idiotic “vision” statement is still up there, that “the United States of America will reclaim its past glory as the Land of Opportunity, restoring the promise of the American Dream for our children and grandchildren.” Imagine the gall of this apparently self-made millionaire suggesting that the American Dream is a thing of the past – he lives it. I live it. The entire region is awash in new economic activity through our startup culture and the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus. We are still the land of opportunity, and the American Dream remains a real, present thing. To suggest otherwise is ignorant, insulting rubbish.

We don’t need to make America great again; America is great now.

“The results of Barack Obama’s failed presidency have been devastating.  America is no longer seen as the world’s leader.  Our jobs are gone.  Our middle class is struggling.  And, the federal government has grown too large and wastes too much of our hard earned money,” added Collins.  “The last thing we need is a third Obama term which we would get with either Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders.”

Private sector jobs are up and government jobs are down. Government has grown large bipartisanly – under Republicans who fight trillion-dollar wars of choice, as well as under Democrats who dramatically reduced the ranks of the uninsured. Neither Bernie Sanders nor Hillary Clinton would be a “third Obama term”, but that doesn’t matter. Collins’ people and the Trump campaign believe it to be so, and faith trumps evidence or knowledge. This is Collins’ cover letter for that job in the Herbert Hoover Building. Don’t think Trump and his team haven’t taken especial notice of this.

“We need a president willing to make the tough decisions necessary to restore our country to greatness.  I believe Donald Trump is the man for the job, and I am proud to provide him with my support.”

Both Trump and Collins share a strong private sector background.  Before entering public service, Congressman Collins was in the private sector for over 35 years where he built a successful career as a businessman and entrepreneur.

Both as an Erie Country Executive (New York) and a Member of Congress, Collins has advocated running government like a business. “If we want to get our nation’s economy growing again and deal with the daunting fiscal issues threatening America’s future, it’s time to say no to professional politicians and yes to someone who has created jobs and grown a business,” added Collins.

“America has the potential to once again become the land of opportunity.  Donald Trump understands the importance of American exceptionalism, and has the unique qualifications to make America great again,” concluded Collins.

Cover letter. Dear Mr. Trump, I’m just like you. I also think Obama is yucky, and I know you’ll make America more friendly for us one-percenters. Enclosed please find my very pro-business CV, and I look forward to a Six-Sigma-efficient confirmation hearing. Yours, etc., Chris Collins.

The question then becomes, if (God forbid) Trump wins in November, who will run in the special election for NY-27?

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