Richard Hamilton, the owner of Deep South Taco, supports Sheriff Tim Howard. There’s nothing whatsoever wrong with that – he is free to support whomever he wants.
In fact, he has hosted fundraisers for Howard in the past, and intends to host another one in the near future. He even cuts Howard a deal, with a $1,600 in-kind contribution for food showing up in Howard’s campaign coffers.
There’s nothing whatsoever wrong with that – he is free to support whomever he wants.
Hamilton is tight enough with the Howard that he became a “Reserve Deputy Sheriff”. I have no idea what that is, but there’s nothing whatsoever wrong with that – he is free to support whomever he wants.
The Buffalo chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America is organizing a boycott of Deep South Taco because of Hamilton’s closeness with Howard. The DSA cites its vehement opposition to Howard in this viral Facebook post and similar Tweets:
I represent the County in matters involving the Sheriff’s office, so I take no position whatsoever with respect to the DSA’s boycott of Deep South Taco. I have, however, been holding a one-family boycott of that place for a couple of years, but not proselytizing about it then or now.
Back then, I followed Hamilton on Twitter and noticed him starting to Tweet some rather hateful, ignorant stuff, claiming that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama hated America; real dense and stupid dittohead garbage. I called him out on it directly at the time, and he didn’t seem to get it.
Maybe just stick to cooking? RT @rlhchef: @FoxNews Nope. But she wont care. She cares so little about America, its people or its laws
He argued with me about it, and I paraphrased his outlook this way to him: “I’m opening three new restaurants. Also, did you know Hillary Clinton hates America?” and suggested that it isn’t a great motivator for Democrats to patronize his establishment(s). Of course, anyone else is free to use the owner’s political viewpoint as a reason to visit more. That’s the interesting thing about a business that holds itself out as open to the general public taking a strong partisan political viewpoint – you’re going to alienate some, but attract others. It’s a tricky equation, especially when you’re talking about a local chain of hipster neo-taco joints.
Then last year, someone on Reddit tried to shame the owner of Jay’s Artisan Pizzeria (the best – only – true Neapolitan pizzeria in all of WNY) for Tweeting a negative review of Deep South Taco. I waded in the thread, noting that I had gone a few times but ultimately decided not to anymore because I don’t like the owner. Hamilton argued with me there, but the ultimate irony was his whinging about a negative review when he isn’t shy about offering his own.
Hamilton and I have had each other blocked on Twitter for a while, but this week, as this DSA thing came to a head, I noticed that Deep South Taco blocked me, too, merely because someone tagged me in a boycott Tweet that I had completely ignored. Again: I never, ever urged other people to not eat at Deep South Taco; when called out, I simply explained why I won’t: that’s it. Well, getting blocked triggered this “leftist”. Here’s what I tweeted about it:
I guess the DSA boycott caused people to inundate Deep South with one-star Facebook reviews, and people began making “harassing” and “threatening” calls. Threatening and harassing people are crimes, and never acceptable. Well, last night this popped up in my Facebook feed:
I did a bit of hunting to find out where this was coming from, because I follow and am friends with several of the principals at CBW and I know they don’t take partisan political stances, and would never call for a boycott or criticism of another business. Here’s what I found on the Facebook wall of Deep South’s owner. It’s down now, but was up for quite a while – every word of it either a lie or some #MAGA bullshit.
I found others that were similar, and it caused people to leave one-star reviews on CBW’s Facebook for literally no reason – because of a lie that someone decided to vomit on the Facebook wall belonging to the owner of a local hipster taco stand who has a problem with “illegal” immigrants.
One would suppose that Deep South would address the widespread criticism of its owner’s overt support of our controversial Sheriff with something more meaningful than, say, tacit approval of a boycott of a beer company, based on lies and defamation.
Someone on Twitter wrote this to me after my rant the other day:
@DeepSouthTaco i live in hamburg and have never visited your store. now, thanks to @buffalopundit tweets, i look forward to visiting soon.
And you know what? I am completely fine with that. Good for you. (Not a store, but a restaurant, but whatever.) Enjoy your taco! https://t.co/sojtgdtYPk
So, never let it be said that I ever urged anyone not to eat at Deep South Taco.
The owner has defended himself against the recent criticism by suggesting that he’s not in business to reject anyone who wants to rent out his spot for an event, including the Sheriff. That’s fine, but it wouldn’t be a big deal (or as big of a deal) if his restaurant was merely being hired out for a fundraiser at whatever the market rate is. Our taco man, however, gave over $1600 in free food & drink donations to the campaign in question, and this shows up in the sheriff’s disclosures.
This isn’t about a business simply renting out the space and providing paid-for drinks and food – there is a significant donation here to the campaign, which is the same as cutting a check for that amount.
A business is free to discriminate against someone for their political views, but it’s generally a stupid thing to do, so it doesn’t come up much. Being black or a woman or Latino is not something a person can change, and that’s why the law treats certain minorities as a “protected class” against whom a business that’s otherwise open to everyone cannot discriminate. There is a pending case right now on a similar topic arising out of a bakery’s refusal to make a cake for a same sex wedding.
It’s not that the campaign selected this restaurant and is enjoying all the same food and service that would also be available to any other member of the general public, but instead that the restaurant is friendly with the campaign and cutting a deal for them. Otherwise, there’d be calls to boycott every place that campaign held every fundraiser, and I don’t see that (yet).
So, owners of businesses are free to hold whatever political views they want, and consumers have a concomitant right to choose whether to factor those politics into their decisions about spending money. I certainly don’t urge anyone to boycott Deep South Taco or – God forbid – Community Beer Works. On the contrary, consumers should be free to make those decisions on their own. But I do object to businesses – when called out on their overt and vocal support – tacitly promoting boycotts against other businesses that are built wholly on lies and falsehoods. I also object to businesses defending themselves with facts that are either inaccurate, or which omit key facts.
Someday, Republican / Conservative Fusion Party candidate for County Clerk Michael “Mickey” Kearns will tell you he’s a Democrat.
When that day comes, show him this.
Ask “Mickey” Kearns which Democratic values he holds.
Ask him about a woman’s right to choose. Ask him about same-sex marriage. Ask him about whether he’d allow unfettered ownership and possession of any and all firearms by any person present in the United States. Ask him to cite the jurisdiciction, law, statute, or regulation enabling a county clerk to have anything whatsoever to do with “illegal immigration” or abortion rights.
With this one flyer, Kearns has forever and completely foreclosed for himself the right to call himself a Democrat – centrist, liberal, or otherwise. He’s just a craven opportunist.
It was a sleepy primary election night, except for one thing: This is the way Pigeonism ends. Not with a bang but a whimper.
Buffalo Mayor
Byron Brown cruised to victory Tuesday night, easily defeating challenges from Mark Schroeder and Betty Jean Grant. Only about 26,000 Buffalo Democrats decided the whole thing for the remaining 90% of city residents. It’s almost comical to call that an election. In the end, because things are, generally, speaking, better in Buffalo since Byron Brown became Mayor over a decade ago, the challengers’ criticisms simply weren’t compelling enough for 10% of Buffalonians to make a dramatic change. Mayor Brown won with 13,346 votes or 51% of the vote. Schroeder received 36% and Betty Jean Grant received 13%. Expect, as they say, more of the same.
2nd Legislative District
Newcomer April Baskin, the endorsed Democrat, defeated former Buffalo at-large councilman Charley Fisher, newcomer David Martinez, and the Buffalo News’ endorsee, Duncan Kirkwood. Baskin pulled in 34% in that 4-way race to replace Betty Jean Grant in the Erie County Legislature. Politically speaking, Martinez and Fisher both had support from what’s left of the Steve Pigeon club. Literature the two campaigns sent out in the last few weeks was almost identical in form and content – identical, too, to literature that their star Kristy Mazurek sent out last year. You can see images here. There was an effort in LD-2 to turn not just Baskin, but Democratic HQ and Jeremy Zellner, into losers. It failed pretty miserably – their game didn’t work. Baskin, like Mayor Brown, will be unopposed in November.
Cheektowaga
In a 4-way race for three available town council seats, former local Bernie Sanders organizer Brian Nowak was the top vote-getter; an impressive rookie outing for a newcomer. Nowak worked hard on a shoestring and his message evidently resonated with the electorate. Deputy Supervisor Timothy Meyers received the 2nd-largest vote tally, with incumbent Jim Rogowski rounding out the top three. The big loser was incumbent Alice Magierski, who received about 44 fewer votes than Rogowski. It’s possible that 203 outstanding absentee ballots may swing some more votes to Ms. Magierski, but the absentee margin usually mirrors that of the election day total, making it unlikely that she’ll return to the town council. Magierski was stung by a negative mailer in the waning days of the campaign that outed her for “double-dipping”, receiving a state pension in addition to her councilmember salary. As it did in LD-2, Magierski’s loss deals yet another blow to what’s left of the Pigeonistas and Frank Max acolytes.
Hamburg
Jim Shaw won the Democratic primary for town supervisor, defeating Dennis Gaughan, who already has the Republican and Conservative fusion lines.
Republicans
Republicans seldom do primaries. By and large, they do whatever Nick Langworthy tells them to do, including last night in Amherst, where Langworthy’s wife will be on the November ballot for town council. The Republicans rely instead on getting themselves on the Independence and Conservative lines, and honestly who cares. These minor party lines exist to dole out jobs to their memberships and nothing more, acting politically as appendages or puppets of the Republican committee.
In a Buffalo News column Thursday, Conservative fusion Party boss Ralph Lorigo laments that “Erie County Democrats have abandoned the working class”. For the uninitiated, New York’s system of electoral fusion enables petty party bosses like Lorigo to wield political and – more critically – patronage power that is wildly disproportionate to the actual size of their party committees.
Lorigo’s column, which is little more than a poorly concealed piece of campaign literature for right wing county clerk candidate Mickey Kearns, is one big concern troll. That’s defined as, “a person who disingenuously expresses concern about an issue with the intention of undermining or derailing genuine discussion.” The Urban Dictionary’s entry is even more explicit:
In an argument (usually a political debate), a concern troll is someone who is on one side of the discussion, but pretends to be a supporter of the other side with “concerns”. The idea behind this is that your opponents will take your arguments more seriously if they think you’re an ally. Concern trolls who use fake identities are sometimes known as sockpuppets.
In his column, Lorigo purports to lament how the Erie County Democratic Committee, as led locally by Jeremy Zellner and Mark Poloncarz, has somehow “abandoned” the working class. Ralph Lorigo is no Democrat; he doesn’t speak for Democrats. He and his little reactionary club do not hold, espouse, or promote Democratic ideas or values. More to the point, his fusion party – a product of a pointless, fundamentally corrupt party system in New York – is no friend of the working class, Democrat or otherwise.
There are 287,000 registered Democrats in Erie County. Lorigo’s little club boasts 13,169 registered members. So, where does Lorigo get off lecturing the Democratic Party committee, its chairman, and its most prominent local elected official about Democratic values? The only reason he has any clout at all is thanks to a structural legal aberration.
The only reason a political club with 13,000 members has any pull at all is electoral fusion; it seldom puts up its own party members for election. Instead Lorigo’s group endorses a major party candidate – e.g., Mickey Kearns – who receives a “Wilson Pakula“, allowing him to run on the Conservative line, and those votes are added to the candidate’s total. In some cases, the vote is close enough that these cross-endorsements actually affect the outcome. The catch? LOL, when it comes to the so-called “Independence Party” and the Conservative fusion Party, that endorsement doesn’t come for free, or without strings. The connected get jobs.
I have been involved in Erie County Conservative politics for over 35 years, and have served as the chairman of the party for 23. I have never taken a salary, stipend or even a reimbursement from party funds for political activities. In addition, no government funds flow into my law office from any governmental source.
The power isn’t in receiving government funds, but in controlling jobs – the molten, glowing core of western New York politics. How many jobs does Lorigo’s club control? How many people in local, state, or county positions owe their livelihoods to Conservative fusion Party patronage? That is the proper metric, here, and it is conspicuously absent.
As chairman, I have worked with both Democrats and Republicans to endorse and elect people who care about Erie County taxpayers. My executive committee and I look at a candidate’s platform, record and the office sought. We never assume that someone’s party registration fully defines one; and we know that not every elected office legislates or creates policy.
What emetic pablum to suppose that someone running for office doesn’t “care about Erie County taxpayers”. Especially in any election since 2005’s red/green budget fiasco, which happened under Conservative fusion Party endorsee Joel Giambra‘s watch.
We work to apply our principles of smaller, smarter government to the candidates seeking our support. We then choose who will best carry that torch for the residents of Erie County. For the Erie County Conservative Party, this is not about party labels, but about principles. As long as I am chairman, that approach will continue.
More often than not, the Conservative fusion Party would conspire with Democrat Steve “the Splitter” Pigeon to endorse Democrats who didn’t have the support of Democratic Headquarters. Even if that person lost a Democratic primary, he still might appear on the ballot in November on Lorigo’s line, causing further worries for the endorsed Democrat. Pigeon is now gone, and his stragglers are beclowning themselves in the 2nd Erie County Legislature district race – a story for another time.
My relationship with Democrats is not in trouble. In fact, the top of our ticket this year is Democrat Mickey Kearns for county clerk. In the past, we were proud to support Democrats such as Jimmy Griffin, Paul Tokasz, Dennis Gorski and countless others. They were conservative, pro-life, taxpayer-focused Democrats.
Jimmy Griffin died in 2008. Paul Tokasz hasn’t been an elected official since 2006. Until he became a town justice in Cheektowaga a couple of years ago, Dennis Gorksi had been out of public life since 1999. Mickey Kearns may be a lot of things, but he’s no Democrat. You don’t run in 2017 with the endorsements only of the Republicans and Conservative fusion Parties and get to call yourself that. Apparently, Republican party chair Nick Langworthy’s bench was too shallow to support a genuine Republican candidate for county clerk to succeed Senator Chris Jacobs. So? Recruit an opportunistic “Democrat” with the dearth of accomplishments or ideas. There are some glaring omissions from Lorigo’s recitation of “Democrats I heart”: G. Steven Pigeon. I wonder why? Joe Mascia? Chuck Swanick?
Today’s Democratic Party leadership of Chairman Jeremy Zellner and Mark Poloncarz would reject those officials outright. It is clear that conservative values of any kind are no longer welcome at Erie County Democratic Party headquarters.
Lorigo’s closest Democratic friend Steve is in big federal and state criminal trouble, and Poloncarz won re-election in 2015 after having explicitly refused to seek or accept the Conservative fusion Party line. Which “conservative values” is Lorigo talking about, exactly? Is it Swanick’s homophobia? Mascia’s colorful racial outbursts?
In spite of the ever-increasing sprint to the extremes, the Erie County Conservative Party will remain true to our platform, right here in the middle with the majority of Erie County voters; people who believe in common-sense ideas like: taxes are too high; criminals belong in jail; police should be respected; law-abiding gun owners are not the root of our crime problem; plastic bags should be legal; and 5-year-olds don’t need to be taught about sex reassignment surgery in kindergarten.
“Taxes are too high” and this patronage club is part of the problem. “Criminals belong in jail” reads like a Dick and Jane book. “Police should be respected”, except when they violate the laws and constitution. Gun ownership isn’t at risk. Plastic bags should be “legal” and cost a nickel, because they don’t degrade and there are better alternatives available. Can you imagine you use “plastic grocery bags” as a rallying cry for a political movement? How pathetic.
Hey, Ralph Lorigo: please identify which Erie County school – public or private – teaches “5-year-olds” about “sex reassignment surgery” in “kindergarten”. I’d like to know the school, the textbook, and the teacher. Because it’s just gutter, hateful lies meant to get a rise out of the homophobes; literally, that’s all that is. And why haven’t you added why and how you pick and choose which pro-choice candidates you endorse, or candidates who support same-sex marriage? The idea that the Conservative fusion Party operates based on “principles” is laughable. The only principle is maximizing the quids for an endorsement pro quo.
Sadly, if you agree with just one of those principles today, you don’t have a place in the Democratic Party of Zellner and Poloncarz.
They aren’t really “principles” as much as they are bumper sticker slogans. Lorigo’s club’s real principles might involve homophobia, criminalization of all abortion, and ensuring that everyone from children to the mentally ill have the unfettered right to possess a loaded gun; that is, unless, a candidate who opposes all or some of those makes a great offer or is an acolyte of Steve Pigeon’s.
I can’t help but think about the Democratic Party when I started 36 years ago. Back then, the majority of Democrats I encountered crossed party lines to support Ronald Reagan. Now, the party of the working class has been replaced by ivory tower elitists who hate anyone with a different opinion.
Ronald Reagan, whose policies helped to hasten the destruction of America’s middle class? For the record, Mark Poloncarz grew up in Lackawanna; his dad worked in a steel mill, and his mom was a nurse. Jeremy Zellner lives modestly in Tonawanda with his family; his dad worked in a car factory. Meanwhile, the Lorigo family practically runs West Seneca from its law office, hobnobs with Donald gold toilet 757 Trump and endorses Spaulding Lake’s own Chris Collins, and he’s sitting there talking about “ivory tower elitists”. This is utter madness, and the “different opinion” quip is nothing but projection.
Erie County residents vote for lower taxes, smarter spending and a government built to assist them with jobs, better roads and affordable services; all principles the Erie County Conservative Party champions.
LOL “assist them with jobs”. How true.
The leaders of the Erie County Democratic Party may have taken a hard left, but Erie County Democrats have not.
Being opposed to the Republican clone party that has close ties to Steve Pigeon and Carl Paladino isn’t a “hard left”. It’s common sense and decency.
The Conservative fusion Party purports to have principles, but it’s just an arm of the Republicans; a party so unpopular in New York State that it needs to control a bunch of extra fusion lines to win the occasional election. Its platform is made up of all the WBEN bogeymen – anti-choice, anti-LGBT, anti-gun control. It is the party that thinks “black lives matter” is a terrorist group and fully supports the Trump Administration.
So, is Lorigo’s relationship with Democrats in trouble? Quite simply, no such relationship should exist; it is right that he has to omit the indictees, the racists, and has to resort to Mickey Kearns and the deceased to underscore his purported bipartisanship. Democrats need to stop going to breakfasts with Lorigo, and they need to reject the Conservative Party fusion line. It is the antithesis of what is actually “conservative”. Meritocracy is anathema to it. Good government is beside the point – it’s about jobs.
The highest and best use of electoral fusion for Democrats right now would be to start a “Freedom Liberty Gun-Eagle” fusion party line to out-conservative Lorigo’s and further use the system to confuse voters.
Anyway, thanks, Ralph. Democrats are all set. You may speak for the reactionary hatred of some who can’t deal with gay people having rights, but we Democrats will fight for the working class by promoting univeral health coverage, protecting union membership, implementing a higher minimum wage, paid family and medical leave, and other policies and programs that actually help people, rather than facile talk radio slogans.
This Saturday September 9th from 10am – 1pm, the Buffalo & Erie County Public Library will be holding a “placemaking workshop” in order to solicit ideas for an upcoming reading park to be located adjacent to the downtown central branch.
Southwest Airlines and Partnership for Public Spaces recently awarded the B&ECPL a “Heart of the Community” grant to develop an outdoor Reading Park and outdoor space for free activities on an unused grass/sidewalk area next to the Downtown Central Library. The PPS will facilitate the workshop, to take place at the central branch this Saturday, and you can RSVP via email here.
For the balance of this column, let us assume that the New York State Thruway is a roadway for which exorbitant tolls remain necessary. Let us agree, for the sake of argument, that it is somehow acceptable to pay just under $20 to travel on an expressway from Transit Road to Yonkers Raceway. Entre nous, let’s concede that there is an especial joy in, say, driving 15 miles perhour under the posted speed limit as one truck takes five miles’ worth of roadway to overtake another, or how the rest areas inexplicably and unremorsefully shelter the only remaining Roy Rogers franchises in the known universe—detritus from a bygone era; the Fish that Saved Pittsburgh of fast food franchises. Face it—that “Fixin’s Bar” is so 1978.
Let’s forget, for a moment, that the Thruway should have been expanded to three lanes in each direction many moons ago, and how its speed limit should really be 70, if we’re being honest.
Instead, let’s discuss cashless tolling.
According to a source in the know, it would take about 24 months to completely transform the entire Thruway to cashless tolling. That means ripping down toll booths at every exit from Harriman to Ripley and replacing them with overhead transponder readers and cameras set up to snap license plates at high speeds. It is 2017, and the Thruway still employs human beings—paid in actual American money—to stand in a booth literally to operate an automated ticket dispenser for you, and hand you the toll ticket.
I don’t like to see people lose a job, but “ticket dispenser operator” is about as necessary for today’s Thruway Authority as “blacksmith” or “milliner”.
It was announced recently that the Grand Island tolls would switch to a cashless system. Downstate, New York has already implemented this at the Queens-Midtown Tunnel and the RFK / Triboro Bridge. Cashless tolls snap a picture of your license plate and/or read your EZ-Pass transponder as you continue to travel at regular highway speeds. The toll plaza bottlenecks and backups are eliminated, and the entire process is seamless. If you don’t have a transponder, you are billed by mail. It has been thus on Toronto’s 407 since the day it was built.
The Buffalo market is special for the Thruway. Not Rochester, Utica, nor Syracuse get a special toll-free local area of the Thruway, but we do. That means, however, that through traffic has to pay up at Williamsville and/or Lackawanna. Neither of these toll barriers allow for any through passage at highway speeds—all traffic must stop or slow. Traveling west through the Williamsville toll, you have maybe two EZ-Pass only lanes—one at the extreme right, and another at the extreme left. 18-wheelers are allowed to use them both.
There has been talk in the past of extending the “free” zone of the Thruway west to include the Transit Road exit 49, but people between Clarence and Pembroke balked at the concomitent movement of noise and pollution; this despite the fact that one option was to put the plaza adjacent to a quarry which regularly uses dynamite.
At long last, someone is talking about bringing the Thruway kicking and screaming into the 21st century, with cashless tolling to eliminate the backups in Williamsville and Lackawanna. An initiative led by Congressman Brian Higgins would use money earmarked for toll plaza “improvements” and instead replace them with overhead transponder readers and high-speed cameras. New York’s “tolls by mail” infrastructure is already in place. Even if the change was just applied to the barriers that bookend Buffalo’s free Thruway section, it wouldn’t take much to add cameras at every other toll plaza to bill motorists by mail.
But switching just Williamsville and Lackawanna is stupid. Do it all, and do it right. Imagine the time and fuel savings—not to mention drop in pollution—by eliminating idling vehicles and plaza backups from the Thruway equation.
Don’t like the transponder system or bill by mail? No worries—here’s an alternative. In 2012, I wrote, “The 1950s Called: They Want Their Toll Road Back”, where I suggested that cashless tolling could be accomplished quite easily using the model used elsewhere in the world,
If tolls are to be maintained, the Thruway could take a hint from Toronto’s 407 and make toll collection something that’s done at highway speeds. However, that’s costly, and cars without a transponder pay an extra fee for the license-plate-photograph privilege. Instead, many European countries share the cost burden of highway maintenance through sales of stickers.
Police spot checks look for scofflaws. If caught without a vignette, the Swiss charge you a SFr 200 fine, plus the cost of a vignette. The Austrians will fine you €120 on the spot. Given that it now costs almost $20 to get from the Major Deegan to the PA line, a $10 sticker for 10 days’ worth of highway travel is a bargain. So is $40 for the entire year. Vignettes could be sold at welcome centers entering New York or leaving bordering states. They could be sold online, in advance, or, as they are in Hungary, even via cell phone text message. No more toll barriers, no more toll collectors.
In 2013, I found it downright unconscionable that there was no progress being made to introduce cashless tolling of some form on the Thruway, adding,
The reason why the Thruway Authority will never, ever change the toll plazas in Williamsville and Lackawanna has to do with the fact that western New York is a nonentity. No one from Albany needs to pass through here on their way to Erie, and so it doesn’t really matter all that much whether you’re sitting in unnecessary traffic at Ripley, Lackawanna, or Williamsville on the I-90.
It’s 2013 and completely unacceptable that we haven’t made use of the not-very-advanced technology that is available to permit EZ-Pass holders fly by the toll plaza at highway speeds. No EZ-Pass, you can pay cash at a booth located off the main road, like they do in Florida…There is no accountability, so there is no motivation or impetus to improve service to Thruway consumers. It is more evidence of the dictatorship of the bureaucracy under which we live in New York.
Cashless tolling is an idea that is long overdue. The New York State Thruway is ruled by a bureaucracy that is extraordinarily resistant to change, clinging to an outmoded way of doing business like barnacles to a hull.
Toll barriers are to driving what Roy Rogers is to fast food: a mediocre anachronism.
So, yesterday I finally got my meeting with Rep. Chris Collins. He agreed to meet with me in March, after I asked him on CNN’s The Messy Truth with Van Jones why he was willing to appear on the show but refused to meet with his actual constituents in a town hall setting. That brief interaction on CNN ended with him approaching me in the audience, shaking my hand, giving me his business card (his real business card, with his personal email, cell phone number and everything) and inviting me to contact him anytime to get our future meeting set up. After four months of intermittent attempts to schedule the meeting, I was contacted with very short notice and told that he would be free and in Canandaigua. I contacted Michelle [Schoeneman, candidate for Erie County Legislature), in hope that she could join me, but life conspired to prevent it, and I went solo.
The meeting was held in a conference room at the Ontario County Office Building in Canandaigua, and Collins was accompanied by two male aides, one of whom stayed the entire meeting while the other kept running in and out of the room. Collins came in, shook my hand, and took the seat across from me. I tried a little “break the ice” small talk, but he wasn’t interested. His affect from the start was cold and resentful, and the tone of the meeting was immediately adversarial.
The cameras are off, the audience is gone, and the real Chris Collins showed up.
During the first 15 minutes of the meeting we discussed the AHCA and the premature termination of grant funding for teenage pregnancy programs. The AHCA conversation went nowhere. When he commented that the individual mandate and taxes related to Obamacare were job killers, I smilingly responded something to the effect of “yet somehow the president managed to add one million jobs since January.” He visibly did not appreciate that comment, and shot me down with a comment about the medical device tax never having been implemented anyway and a snide, “you didn’t know that, did you?”
Weird, because Collins has been so vocal about that medical device tax, you’d have thought it had not only been implemented but had been at a rate of 200 percent.
I moved on to teenage pregnancy prevention issue. This conversation started with me prefacing that, although we are probably on opposite sides of the reproductive rights issue, this might be an issue where we have some common ground. He responded that if I believed in partial birth abortion which equals murdering babies, then we most certainly were on opposite sides.
Whoa, whoa, whoa. Who said anything about “partial birth abortion”?
I told him that I understand why pro-choice activists don’t agree to any erosion of abortion rights fearing it led to the elimination of ALL abortion rights, but that my personal convictions around reproductive rights led my advocacy for legal, accessible first trimester abortion that was subject to no further regulation than any medical procedure would be. Collins actually agreed. I was so surprised that I repeated, “So you agree that abortion in the first trimester should be legal and accessible?”, and he replied, “yes.”
LOL RINO.
This was such a shocker to me that a Republican congressman was expressing support for abortion rights, any abortion rights, that I just said something along the lines of not expecting that to be an area of common ground, but still glad that we had identified at least the one! I then pivoted to the teenage pregnancy prevention funding, and his first response was that it was an HHS issue, so it wasn’t in his purview to fix, although he agreed it was a worthwhile endeavor to support. I responded that it was my expectation that as a congressman it was in his purview to advocate for his constituents and lobby the executive branch for restoration of the funding. He agreed, and asked me to send him a list of providers in the 27th who were recipients of the funding. I thanked him sincerely, and commented again that it was great that there were things we agreed on.
So, that exchange was actually—on its face—somewhat productive. Collins agreed that first trimester abortion should remain safe and legal, and agreed to look into reinstating teenage pregnancy prevention program funding through HHS.
Heartened by this initial success but knowing that time was running out on the meeting, I said that I next wanted to talk about Charlottesville and the tenor of political discourse since the election. BOOM: the affect that was cold and resentful turned to outright hostile and demeaning. The next ten minutes felt like some kind of crazy fever dream, and Collins did almost all of the talking, getting increasingly heated as he did so. It was just so clear that I became a target for all of his frustration and anger over the billboards and the protests and the letters to the editor. There were A LOT of things said, so for brevity’s sake I need to dispense with the narrative and just share some bullet points:
Regardless of your political persuasion, there is no doubt that political discourse has been dismal. There are certainly culprits on both sides (Louise Mensch and Claude Taylor stand out as rhetorical bullshitters, and the so-called “antifa” paramilitary-without-portfolio does no Trump opponent any favors), but the president of the United States has revealed himself to be the troll-in-chief, seemingly existing to do whatever is best guaranteed to piss off liberals. That seems to be the sum total of Trumpism. But Charlottesville—that was the work-product of only one side.
What happened in Charlottesville was quite simple: The “Unite the Right” rally was an effort to bring together Trumpist trolls, the Klan, various and sundry Nazi wannabes, and other white nationalist/identitarian groups. There was a very thinly veiled pretext at play: to oppose any effort to remove a statue to Robert E. Lee or to rename the plaza where it sits. But really what it amounted to was an orgy of hatred and violence fueled by ignorant, phony white resentment.
Confederate monuments and statues exist to commemorate acts of high treason and white supremacist chattel slavery. If you doubt this, go and read the constitution of the Confederacy, especially Article IV and Article I § 9. Then go and read the “Cornerstone Speech” that the CSA’s first and only vice president, Alexander Stephens, gave in 1861: “Our new government is founded upon exactly [this] idea; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery—subordination to the superior race—is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.”
Back to Sutton’s meeting with Collins, who seemed triggered by mention of Charlottesville.
He stated that he is against white supremacists and the KKK, but supported First Amendment rights.
This is all fine, but note the invocation of the First Amendment. We’ll come back to it.
Collins repeatedly referenced the protests against himself and the president. He said that “you guys haven’t stopped marching around with your signs since the election.” I replied that we were exercising our First Amendment rights and that I was among those protesting his agenda and carrying signs. He replied, “yeah, you and your sign filled with lies.”
What about First Amendment rights? “Marching around” with political “signs” is among the most strongly protected types of speech in existence. It doesn’t matter whether he thinks the signs contain “lies”. All the more reason, frankly, for this representative of the people to meet with people and listen to them—especially the ones with whom he has disagreements.
He said that “you guys and your protests” are the reason why he now has cameras outside all of his offices. He also accused us of drawing chalk outlines on the sidewalk outside his house in efforts to threaten and intimidate him, so I was a hypocrite for wanting civility in our political discourse.
Chris Collins is opposed to Obamacare, voted for Trumpcare, and is opposed to universal health coverage. People die from lack of care—or the inability to pay for it. Maybe he could listen to people who, unlike him, are not millionaires and have issues with the affordability of not just healthcare but health insurance. Chris Collins has offered exactly zero reasonable alternatives to Obamacare in order to expand affordable health insurance to more Americans. All he’s done is vote to repeal Obamacare dozens of times, only to fail miserably to actually repeal it when actually given the chance. To call that failure is an insult to failure.
He said that the ethics accusations were lies and fake news perpetuated by “you guys.”
Weird, that. The Buffalo News reports that the ethics investigation has taken a “more serious” turn just this week. The Office of Congressional Ethics referred the matter of Collins’s stock trades in an Australian penny stock to the House Committee on Ethics. I guess it’s more than just “fake news”.
He said that the press attacked him for calling Sheldon Silver the antichrist and evil, and that he didn’t even know Silver was Jewish. I said that I didn’t think characterizing political opponents that way was helpful and that I expected my elected officials to model better behavior than that.
My goodness, Collins’s run-in with Sheldon Silver was years ago. Interesting he’d bring that up, unprovoked, within this context. Sutton is exactly right that maybe politicians referring to other politicians as evil devils isn’t productive. Or…
He said that I was a hypocrite who voted for “that lying, cheating scumbag Hillary Clinton.” I responded to him that invective like that was unnecessary and harmful, and belied his interest in unifying Americans.
The last thing I said to him was, after trying to make the case for being more accessible to all his constituents, “How can you really represent me if you won’t listen to me?”
Here’s the kicker:
His response was delivered with utter contempt (and this is verbatim), “I represent the 72% of people who voted for me. You didn’t vote for me.”
Secondly, there are 477,200 registered voters in NY-27. Collins received 220,885 votes. That amounts to 46 percent of eligible, registered voters. According to Collins’s own logic and math, he truly only represents the 46 percent of eligible voters who bothered to turn out and vote for him. This means that fully 54 percent of the eligible voters in NY-27 are unrepresented. Not only that, but the total population is 713,175. So, if Collins only represents the people who voted for him, it stands to reason that only 30 percent of the residents in NY-27 enjoy Congressional representation. Does this mean he only gets paid 30 percent of his Congressional salary? Or that he is entitled only to 30 percent of the federal health, pension, and other fringe benefits he might otherwise receive?
For Collins to tell a constituent that he doesn’t represent anyone who didn’t vote for him is indicative of two things: 1. He is unfit to serve anyone; and 2. He is an arrogant personage whose continued involvement in WNY politics soils all of us.
Immediately after that utterance, his one aide popped into the room and said that he needed to leave the meeting. Collins got up from the table, and walked out of the room without a backward glance. No hand shake, no thank you. His other aide asked if I would be following up with the list of providers receiving the teenage pregnancy prevention funding. I was still so stunned that I couldn’t do any more than look up and nod at him. He left the room, and I stayed to jot down some quick notes and quotes I didn’t want to forget, and then I biked home … As soon as I got home, I called Michelle. The first words out of my mouth were, “We are really getting to him.”
“We” being the “Citizens Against Collins” group that has protested Collins at his various offices and raised money to buy billboard space to shame him for his refusal to hold public meetings.
Before the meeting, I was really excited to have this opportunity to just exchange some ideas and possibly find some common ground with Collins. I truly believed that we were just two Americans who love our country but who have different ideas about how to solve problems, and that his bluster and invective against folks more liberal than he were more for the benefit of the cameras and his base. At best, I hoped that my friendly demeanor and respectful, reasonable arguments would telegraph to him that I saw his humanity and that, in turn, he would see mine. I really thought, on the basis of our shared American values, I could convince him that our resistance represents political engagement that benefits our Republic and was worthy of his applause, not his condemnation. At worst, I thought it would be a meaningless half hour in which my concerns would be answered with measured political doublespeak and condescending civility. Instead, my congressman told me that he will not represent me because I didn’t vote for him. My congressman called me a liar and hypocrite who voted for a scumbag. Never in a million years did I think I would be treated with the insulting hostility and contempt that I experienced. I wasn’t treated like a human being, much less a constituent. I was treated like an enemy, and it saddens me that that is the state of the nation today.
Welcome to Collins country. “Collins for our Future”—a future of rude, arrogant, entitled multi-millionaires.
As crappy as it felt to be on the receiving end of that much hostility, I am proud of the way I behaved and unapologetic for my idealism. Yes, it is clear to me now that my civility was wasted on Chris Collins, but it wasn’t a waste to me. Chris Collins supports a president and policies that run counter to fundamental American values and that will hurt his constituents and lead to the destruction of our environment. Collins’s behavior and hateful rhetoric yesterday were unprofessional, unbecoming, and incompatible with representative democracy. For those reasons I will work hard to ensure his defeat in 2018 and 45’s in 2020. But I will do so modeling the behavior and rhetoric I want to see from others, eschewing hateful and divisive speech and personal attacks. I hope you all will join me. To the fair-minded people we hope to convince, our integrity and decency will be as powerful a source of persuasion as our reasoned arguments. And when we win, we will have the satisfaction of knowing we did it in the sunshine, and not the gutter.
The Public reached out to Collins’s office Monday morning. Sutton’s version of events was copied and pasted, and these three questions asked:
1. Is Sutton’s account of the meeting substantially accurate?
2. If there are inaccuracies, can you please identify them and offer the Congressman’s account?
3. Can the Congressman please explain or elaborate on this statement, which Sutton says she is quoting verbatim: “I represent the 72% of people who voted for me. You didn’t vote for me.”
Neither Collins nor anyone from his office responded.
Return confederate flags to a South Carolina courthouse, said plaintiff Russell Walker. It’s about heritage, said the man who let loose “Martin Luther Coon” on live TV.
Over the weekend, a large group consisting of neo-nazis, Klansmen, and other “alt-right” white nationalists converged on Charlottesville, Virginia ostensibly to protest the possible removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee. Lee was the general of an army fighting for a country that had betrayed and seceded from the United States to preserve the right to buy and sell black people as chattel. Query whether we should replace confederate statues with ones honoring the victims of its inhuman feudal ethos. (Note: I will not capitalize the word “nazi”. It’s not a mistake.)
As one might expect, people came to the college town to launch counter protests against the nazis. These weren’t antifa black bloc rioters smashing Starbucks’ windows because capitalism is at the root of racist fascism, and to smash one is to smash it all; but regular people who were disgusted that their town had become a magnet for nazis.
When it becomes wrong to protest nazis, then we’ll know that political correctness has, indeed, run amok.
It all culminated when a 20 year-old nazi from Ohio adopted the means and method popularized by ISIS-inspired jihadist terrorists in France and the UK – he rammed his Dodge Charger into a crowd of peaceful counterprotesters, then backed it up and rammed over some more. The nazi motorist murdered a woman – a 32 year-old paralegal named Heather Hayer, and injured over a dozen more. The nazi who murdered her stands charged with second-degree murder. This representative of the master race hasn’t the means to afford his own lawyer, so he must rely on the state to fund one for him. The public defender’s office was conflicted out because of personal ties to other victims of the nazi’s ISIS-inspired attack.
Charlottesville is home to the University of Virginia, a school that hipster nazi Richard Spencer attended. Spencer befriended Trump adviser Stephen Miller when they both attended Duke University about a decade ago.
In the aftermath of what had transpired in Charlottesville, the Public and I reminded Buffalonians of our own white nationalists here in our region.
My March 14th article discussed an email that local elected school board official Carl Paladino had sent, which contained this image:
I wrote at the time, “Carl Paladino, an elected school official, thinks murder is funny.“
In the wake of the murder of Heather Hayer, who was killed by a nazi plowing his vehicle through a group of protesters, I’d be wholly unsurprised to see Paladino express his white nationalist glee at the news.
On Monday, Carl Paladino posted something to his public Facebook page. He likely thinks it’s a funny joke and all us extreme leftists should lighten up and tolerate racist jokes like we tolerate things like immigration and multiculturalism, but in the wake of the fashy haircut hipster citronella fascists’ march ‘n murder in Charlottesville, it is unbelievably tone-deaf.
In Michigan, Carl quips, a guy with 100 guns and 100,000 rounds of ammunition would be called, “the last white guy still living in Detroit“. Because Detroit, like the Buffalo school district Paladino oversees, is predominately African-American. That is the punch line to that part of the joke: a white guy in Detroit would need that much firepower because of all the blacks. We know this because of the use of the adjective, “white”.
It makes sense to pause here as a reminder that white nationalist “pride” is comically weak stuff. If you’re white, it’s nothing more than an accident of birth – it’s not an achievement, or the result of any effort. If all you have to be proud of is your whiteness, maybe it’s time to accomplish something meaningful with your life. If all you have to be proud of is your whiteness, you’re not proud of anything at all.
Carl Paladino swears up and down to all and sundry that he’s not racist – you’re racist. He controlled a majority on the Buffalo school board for two years, and his only achievement was to worsen the dysfunctional circus atmosphere there. Hey, at least he has “being white” to be proud of. He is part of a board that oversees a school district as diverse as, e.g., Detroit, and he jokes that this sort of ethnic or racial diversity is something against which white people need to arm themselves.
Carl Paladino has established time and again the myriad ways in which he disqualifies himself from – and is unfit to – oversee any school district, much less one whose kids overwhelmingly don’t look like his own. His racism, veiled thinly if at all, is something that rational, fair-minded people need to reject and shun. If anyone needs to see Paladino’s attitudes towards black Americans, it’s Mary Ellen Elia, who is now deliberating what to do with Paladino vis-a-vis the Buffalo school board.
None of this is new.
March 2010: Paladino’s racist and pornographic emails October 2012: Paladino denies he’s a birther, but is birther. August 2014: Paladino’s homophobic reaction to a 419 scam letter February 2015: Paladino rejects civil rights assessment of Buffalo schools. March 2015: Paladino threatens school board “sisterhood” with libel suit (which never came) July 2015: Paladino demeans “damn Asians” at UB. July 2015: Paladino offers fake apology to “damn Asians” July 2015: Paladino’s supporters: hey, he could have said, “damn Ukrainians”. July 2015: Paladino defends Joe Mascia’s n-word outburst July 2015: Sandy Beach calls Paladino out on Joe Mascia August 2015: Paladino digs a deeper hole on Shredd & Ragan. August 2016: Paladino claims Obama is Muslim. December 2016: Paladino wishes President Obama dead, likens the First Lady to a Zimbabwean gorilla.
Last weekend, the Niagara Falls water department released some sort of fetid, black effluent into the Niagara River near the Falls. The Buffalo News referred to it as a “Black Sewage Plume”, which sounds like it should be a character in a song.
In the olden days, someone would have written “The Ballad of the Black Sewage Plume” by now. When you sing or recite this – whether out loud or in your head – consider it in the manner of Roger Miller singing about Robin Hood and Little John in the 1973 Disney version of Robin Hood.
Down below the cataracts,
up in Niagara Falls,
People started worrying
and placing lots of calls
They called the cops and rangers,
their hearts were filled with doom
from witnessing Niagara Falls’
Black Sewage Plume
The sewage oozed and stank
and the tourists got upset.
They watched it as it blanketed
Niagara’s riverbank
