Category: Uncategorized

Buffalo School Board member noticed pictures of President Obama during visits to public schools. These pictures were placed independently by teachers and principals for educational purposes. Paladino, however, decided he would introduce a resolution which, if passed, would amount to the school board mandating the placement of portraits of Great Leader Trump in every school.

Paladino initially made the request during the portion of the meeting when board members give committee reports, saying he represented the “patriotism committee,” which is not actually a board committee. He later presented it as a formal resolution, which ultimately failed to gain enough support from his fellow board members.

The board balked, 

“I think this is problematic,” said board member Theresa Harris-Tigg. “Now we are going to mandate, and force something, when it has been their prerogative.”

“Why do we care?” Paladino responded. “Why do we care what their prerogative is?”

Good attitude to have! Who cares what the individual teachers and principals want? The tl;dr for all of this is this: 

 

Franklin Graham – Billy’s son – is a big Donald Trump supporter. This week, he posted this: 

I watched “The Sound of Music” last night. What a great film! Why can’t Hollywood make wholesome, exciting movies like that anymore?

— Franklin Graham (@Franklin_Graham) December 20, 2016

My favorite part of the Sound of Music is how the male protagonist is vocally opposed to the incoming Nazi regime and coming Anschluss, and in the end devises a complicated plot to escape Nazi oppression by going into exile in Switzerland. 

But even more striking is this, from the New York Times, where it’s revealed that Trump’s nominee as National Security Advisor, Retired Gen. Michael Flynn, met recently at Trump Tower with contemporary Austrian Nazi Heinz-Christian Strache, who just overtly cut a deal with Vladimir Putin’s Unity Russia Party. 

The Sound of Music isn’t just about singing and wholesomeness, and the international faux-populist neo-fascist assault on western liberty is coming. It’s closer than you realize. Why is Trump’s National Security Advisor nominee meeting with Austrian Nazis? The one clear thing that Strache has in common with Trump is they would both agree to end Western sanctions imposed against Putin and his oligarchs in response for the war in Ukraine and the anschluss of Crimea. 

The irony is everywhere.  My only question is which one is Liesl and which one is Rolf? 

Back in May, Acting Erie County District Attorney Michael Flaherty accused local anti-toll gadfly and Paladino sycophant John (a/k/a “Rus”) Thompson of felony voter fraud. He was offered a plea deal to one felony count of false registration, which Thompson rejected. A grand jury then indicted Thompson in June on five felony counts.  Some outlets are now reporting that the Acting D.A. may simply dismiss the cases against Thompson, “in the interest of justice” [sic]. Thompson is scheduled to go to trial in January. 

This might, indeed, happen. It depends on whether you think Thompson knowingly and intentionally committed voter fraud, or whether you think he’s too stupid to know that he’s supposed to vote where he lives, as opposed to wherever he feels like. Take your pick – those are the only two choices. 

Let’s recap the salient facts:

1. In early October 2014, Rus’ wife, Julianne M. Thompson transmitted a note to the Erie County Board of Elections, stating, “[p]lease remove us from the Erie County voter roles [sic] & from the EC BoE mailings. We are moving out of Erie County.” 

2. Although Rus and Julianne Thompson moved to Niagara County in October 2014, Rus never registered to vote at his new address, and still appeared on the voter rolls on Grand Island. 

3. Among the requirements to register to vote in New York, one has to have resided at his current address for the immediate preceding 30 days, and “not claim the right to vote elsewhere”. 

4. The law is clear; you don’t get to vote where you work, or where you feel like, or where your “heart is”; you vote where you live. If you change your address, and plan on voting at your new domicile, you should notify the Board of Elections as soon as possible, but at least about 20 days before an election.  If you want to keep voting in the town from which you’ve moved, that might be possible, but it’s illegal. It’s voter fraud. After all, you don’t live there anymore, and you are no longer a constituent of many of the people for whom you’d be voting. After October 2014, Rus Thompson was legally ineligible to vote on Grand Island or in Erie County. 

5. Despite his ineligibility, Thompson voted in at least two elections on Grand Island in 2015. Specifically, on September 10, 2015, Thompson found himself absent from the voter rolls, and used an affidavit ballot, swearing that he currently resided at his former address on Grand Island. This was a lie, and he swore that everything on the “affidavit oath” was true under pains and penalties of perjury. 

 

After Thompson rejected the offered plea, his lawyer complained that the law was seldom enforced, and that at one time Susan B. Anthony had been prosecuted under that very statute.

Sidebar: she wasn’t. Thompson is being prosecuted in state court of alleged state crimes. Anthony was “prosecuted in federal court under federal law for violating” a New York state law prohibiting women from voting. Anthony voted in a district where she had no right to do so, because females couldn’t vote. Whereas Anthony committed a crime as a form of activism to highlight that women did not have equal rights, Thompson voted where he had no right to because he’s a bigshot on Grand Island and nowhere else. It is downright comedic to compare a disenfranchised female in the 19th century attempting to exercise her rights as a citizen, to a politically connected guy who inadvertently disenfranchised himself due to ignorance, arrogance, or laziness. 

Thompson’s apologists now cry “injustice” at the fact that law enforcement dares prosecute this flagrant violation of law. 

How many millions of Americans vote every year in places they do not literally sleep but where they have a business or a strong personal attachment? Consider all the students who are on campus who vote at their parents’ address. Or people with two residences. Or hundreds of thousands of others who moved but did not change their registration and voted.

Students at college don’t generally consider themselves to be residents, and vote absentee back at their permanent address. Rus Thompson had been evicted from Grand Island in October 2014, and tried to vote their in September 2015 despite the fact that he was then domiciled in Niagara Falls. People with two residences have to declare one as their primary domicile for tax and voting purposes, and they can’t just arbitrarily switch between the two at a moment’s notice. Anyone who votes where they work, as opposed to where they live, is breaking the law. You register to vote where you are domiciled, not anywhere else. It’s not prosecuted that frequently because it’s black-letter law. The requirement that you vote where you are domiciled is not arbitrary, capricious, or any big surprise to anyone with the capability of reading the words on a voter registration form. 

Thompson says lawyers researching the case have not been able to find another fraud case of voting where you did not sleep that the Erie County District Attorney’s Office prosecuted. The only cases in New York State appear to be two cases where actual candidates (not merely voters) voted in places they did not live.  These were prosecuted with no one doing any jail time. Those cases were seen as politically motivated.

It’s been long established in common law that as long as a voter does not vote twice, “home is where the heart is” and a voter does not have to sleep every night in a locale to vote there. Thompson was registered to vote in Grand Island.

This is a novel legal concept: “home is where the heart is”. No, a voter doesn’t need to “sleep every night in a locale to vote there”, but where they vote is supposed to be their primary place of residence; their domicile. In September 2015, Rus Thompson received his mail at his home in Niagara Falls. By law, when he moved away from Grand Island he was supposed to do things like notify his insurers, notify the DMV to change his registration, change his voter registration, etc. Failure to do these things might result in, e.g., voiding your insurance policies. 

Typically, Thompson blames everyone but himself for his criminal behavior. It was former Grand Island supervisor Mary Cooke’s fault, he claims, due to some small-town vendetta the two have against each other. He blames the election inspectors who, in September 2015, recognized Thompson and suggested he vote via affidavit ballot, likely ignorant of the fact that Thompson’s name wasn’t on the rolls because; (a) he no longer lived on the Island; and (b) his wife wrote to the Board of Elections informing them of the family’s move out of the county. 

Honestly, I don’t really care what happens to Rus Thompson in this case.If he’s convicted, the facts and law justify that result. If the charges are dropped, or he is acquitted, it has no effect except to suggest that the domiciliary restrictions on voting are amorphous or non-existent. 

Ultimately, if the jury, judge, or prosecutors believe that Rus Thompson knowingly and intentionally voted in an improper venue, lying under oath that he lived in a place where he didn’t, he should be convicted of a crime – maybe a felony, if appropriate, but maybe some misdemeanor or lesser offense. If they think instead that Rus Thompson was too stupid or ignorant of the rules, and did this all by accident, then he might be acquitted due to the lack of requisite intent.

To prosecute a crime, the state must prove that the person committed the illegal act, and that he did so with the requisite mental intent. For instance, intentional homicide is called murder; accidental homicide is called manslaughter, and the two are punished differently because of the person’s mental state. Rus Thompson tries to blame some political enemy – whether Mary Cooke or Michael Flaherty – or some unsuspecting, well-meaning election inspector for his own bad acts. Rus Thompson committed the unlawful act: he lied under oath in order improperly and illegally to vote in a town where he didn’t live. The only question has to do with his state of mind at the time: was it intentional or ignorant? Malicious or stupid? 

How embarrassing. 

Trump Oligarch / Congressman Chris Collins believes that party political ends justify illegal, hostile means.

Collins told the Buffalo News’ Jerry Zremsky and CNN’s Alysin Camerota that the “truth came out” as a result of apparent Russian hacking of private emails, so it doesn’t really matter. You don’t have to read between the lines to get that he feels this way because his side gained political advantage therefrom. “We can’t change it”, so why bother investigating it, he argues. Sort of like how you can’t “change” what happened in Benghazi. Sort of how you can’t “change” Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server in her home. Sort of how you can’t “change” Obamacare, knowing that President Obama would veto any such effort, yet Collins’ congressional colleagues held a vote to abolish it on no fewer than 62 times. I guess you only need to “move on” and “accept” the results of something when you’re a Republican and the topic is the cult of personality you just elected President.

Hey, if it’s time to “move on” and “accept” the results, maybe Trump doesn’t need to go on a victory tour. 

Chris Collins doesn’t have a deep or complicated set of beliefs. Basically, he is against anything that President Obama or any Democrat is for. He exists to comfort the comfortable and aggravate the less fortunate, and he knows just what to say and do to cruise to easy re-election in the most conservative Congressional district in New York State. What I didn’t take him for was a … 

Well, you tell me. 

Reports indicate that Russian intelligence services hacked these email accounts and possibly others. The emails were then provided to DC Leaks and Wikileaks, which in turn published them. The Russians’ motives aren’t definitively known, but it doesn’t take much to conclude that the aim was to weaken Clinton and/or bolster Trump. It is telling that Donald Trump has consistently refused even gently to criticize Russian neo-fascist dictator Vladimir Putin, and Trump’s Secretary of State nominee, ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson, is very close to Putin. 

It seems almost as if Putin is the last and only prominent person Trump refuses somehow to demean. 

So Moscow Chris Collins, whited sepulchre that he is, struts upon a national stage and says that (a) he doesn’t agree with any investigation into alleged Russian hacking of private emails of the Democratic National Committee or Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta; and – more chillingly – (b) believes that the unredacted, unedited publication of private email correspondence is something about which he is “glad”. 

I’m saying thank heavens the revelations came out. The truth came out. You have to say: can you imagine an election won because of lies, deceit and underhanded despicable actions?

The palpable irony was evidently lost on the first congressman to support the candidacy of unrepentant liar and Twitter power-user Donald Trump. The entire Trump campaign was a Jenga set of lies upon deceits that Clinton couldn’t topple because of an email server. 

Moscow Chris told the Buffalo News’ Jerry Zremsky, “[t]he election is over and Trump has won, and I think it’s time to unite the country and to say that Donald Trump is our president … The sooner we can move the entire country into recognizing the results of the election, the better.” That’s nice, dear. No serious person thinks the results of the election aren’t being recognized, and everyone acknowledges that Donald Trump is the President-Elect. Nevertheless, that doesn’t somehow obviate the need to ensure that every valid vote was counted, or to investigate the theft of private correspondence perpetrated by a hostile intelligence service masquerading as a country in order to influence our electoral process.

Our intelligence services accuse Russia of hacking into and stealing the private correspondence of private American citizens and organizations. Websites run by organizations with overtly friendly ties to regimes hostile to the United States then publised those private emails in their entirety, timing the releases to occur daily in the weeks leading up to election day. At best, it was all a contemptible violation of the privacy of people, many of whom have no political power whatsoever. Even if you believe in “transparency” – whatever that means – you can see how irresponsible and inappropriate this all is. 

.@RepChrisCollins: We shouldn’t investigate potential Russian hacking because what will that really accomplish? https://t.co/r7xzvTsHfw

— New Day (@NewDay) December 14, 2016

The Russians’ exact motives are still a mystery and up for speculation, but if you believe in things like foreign governments not interfering in our electoral process and online privacy issues, then this should be of paramount concern to you, regardless of party. When it’s your email or text message that Wikileaks releases, and/or when it negatively affects your preferred politician or political party, you’ll regret your nonchalance if you have a conscience and sense of decency.

Remember when Wikileaks released information about powerful governments that had been leaked to it by whistleblowers? The Podesta and DNC emails weren’t “leaked” – they were stolen. 

If you take Moscow Chris’ word for it, if his staffers’ Gmail and Yahoo accounts are stolen and published, he won’t demand any investigation and simply “accept” that the “truth came out”. Indeed, I call upon him and his staff immediately to provide constituents with the passwords to their email accounts; after all, transparency and “truth” coming out are more important than any right to privacy. Doing anything less would be against Collins’ own words. 

When Moscow Chris says, “thank heavens”, he’s expressing his schadenfreude – that prominent Democrats’ emails had been hacked and published, and this had adverse political affects. What if it had happened to the RNC or Steve Bannon? How would Collins react in that instance? 

Collins said the actions detailed in those emails – which show DNC officials favoring Clinton over her primary opponent, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, but that never directly implicate Clinton – “make Dick Nixon look like an altar boy.”

Interesting, because Nixon’s resignation was prompted by his covering up of a break-in to steal information from DNC HQ. This is only the second time in 50 years that the Republicans benefited at the ballot box thanks to the theft of information from Democrats, and Moscow Chris Collins not only endorses this, but ignores that it was a foreign attack. Until 2016, it was a given that Watergate and its subsequent cover-up were crimes. Now, Moscow Chris wholeheartedly endorses foreign cyberburglary in order to help Republican electoral chances. G. Gordon Liddy’s biggest mistake, it appears, would be his failure simply to retain the services of Soviet intelligence to execute his expletive deleted illegal wiretaps and break-in. 

Asked if he thought the DNC’s actions were more important than a foreign power’s possible meddling in a U.S. election, Collins noted that hacking is a common occurrence.

“It’s not for sure that Russia did this hacking,” said Collins. “The CIA seems to think so, the FBI not so much. But in the end the truth came out: the cesspool of Democrat committee actions.”

So, the political ends justify the illegal means. Moscow Chris quite brazenly puts partisan politics over country, here. Not just that – but he overtly applauds a foreign power’s theft and publication of innocent Americans’ private communications. Whatever the Russians’ motives, their actions brought about the result they sought, and we now have a pro-Russian oligarchy being organized to perhaps give Russia’s own anti-democratic, neo-fascist kleptocracy a run for its money. By simply ignoring how damaging this theft and publication was to the idea of online privacy and the integrity of our electoral process and institutions, Moscow Chris adheres to – and gives aid and comfort to – our enemies. Putting party over country, Chris Collins is, at best, only a nominal patriot. 

Convince me that it’s somehow too strong to call that treason. 

Uber and Lyft are app-based taxi alternatives that have become popular throughout the world due to their alleged convenience and lower cost. Uber and Lyft drivers are independent contractors, part of what’s called the “gig” economy of ad hoc work. These ridesharing services are illegal in New York State outside of the five boroughs of New York City, and legislation has been slow to progress in Albany. On Tuesday, the Erie County Legislature’s Republican majority caucus offered a budget amendment that would direct $100,000 to Visit Buffalo Niagara in order to fund some sort of undefined lobbying effort to legalize ridesharing in western New York. I’m all for Uber and Lyft, but using $100,000 in public money to assist two private companies with their marketing and expansion efforts is outrageous, and an insult to Erie County taxpayers. 

Uber and Lyft have already spent millions on lobbying efforts in Albany – what will Erie County’s $100,000 buy that Uber’s and Lyft’s money couldn’t? Who are the individual lobbying and PR firms that will be receiving this money and what are their relationships with county lawmakers? 

Assembly Democrats have blocked various bills for the stated reasons: insurance, consumer protection, fair competition; and for the unstated reasons: the influence of the taxi lobby and the plaintiffs’ bar. In a nutshell, the taxi operators don’t want competition because, upstate, they are generally horrible and need their exclusivity to survive, and the plaintiffs’ bar needs to be sure that (a) there is clarity on whom they can sue when there is an accident with injuries; and (b) that there is adequate insurance available in each such incident to make it all worth their while. 

I have tried to use Uber on two occasions: once in New York when I couldn’t find a cab, but it was a busy Friday night and a ride from 32nd and 5th to 23rd and 10th was subject to Uber “surge” pricing, reflecting increased demand. The ride would have cost me about $100. I walked. I considered it again in Las Vegas, but ordinary cabs were so ubiquitous that I just grabbed one of them without any issue – I even used my phone to pay the fare. Uber and Lyft are, to me, nice things to have; they are, however, by no means the legislative compulsion priority that local Republican politicians in particular believe them to be. If this was such a manifest necessity, you’d have thought that someone would have cracked down on our crap taxi industry and instituted some better consumer protections. If ridesharing was such a profound need, you’d expect perhaps our public transportation network to be improved in both quality and reliability. 

But the world is changing, and people demand the right to be driven around by a stranger in a para-taxi. It seems to me that Uber and Lyft are a great idea for Buffalo in particular and upstate generally. They’ll let motorists earn a few extra dollars, they’ll enable people to fill in gaps in our taxi and public transportation systems, they’ll improve mobility for anyone with a smartphone, data plan, and credit card, and they’ll maybe encourage people to not drive after they’ve had too much to drink. To repeat: I am in favor of Lyft and Uber operating outside of New York City, but everyone needs to be protected – especially the consumer and the driver. 

If you examine this objectively, politicians ought to get this legislation right. After all, if you’re going to legalize a form of paid cyberhitchhiking, you need to solidify where liability rests, how much insurance there will be, and other issues affecting the rights of consumers and drivers alike. If you have a car and decide – today – to take fare-paying passengers around, your insurance wouldn’t cover you. You have violated the terms of your policy and increased the risk without your insurer’s consent. Things like this are important and need to be legislated and regulated. If you’re a driver, it’s important so that when you cause an accident and someone sues, you don’t lose everything you own. 

Uber and Lyft have spent over $2 million lobbying Albany to expand into upstate New York, and they’ve spent even more marketing. If you have Uber on your phone, when you fire it up in Buffalo it invites you to sign an online petition. Earlier this year, Uber marketed itself by delivering free ice cream throughout Buffalo, and every news outlet reported on it. That’s all well and good: again, I am in favor of Lyft and Uber having the right to operate upstate. 

But it is unconscionable for the legislature to throw $100,000 of our money at VBN in order to pay some as-yet-unnamed lobbyist or PR outlet in order to duplicate Uber’s and Lyft’s own efforts. This involves Albany, so one has to assume that it’s corrupt at its core. So, who’s making out here from this manufactured pseudo-crisis? Lobbyists who wine and dine Albany electeds. This is designed so that, when Lyft and Uber are inevitably approved for upstate service, they can claim an unearned victory. A friend wrote on Facebook, 

Here’s an alternative: how about spending $100,000 lobbying for comprehensive ethics reform so that special interests and money don’t dictate what goes on in Albany? Break the cycle. Stop buying into this nonsense.

and 

Step 1: manufacture problem. 
Step 2: Solve problem. 
Step 3: Take credit for solving problem.

This is someone lining someone’s pockets with public money to grandstand on the pretext of helping a private company with its marketing budget. I can’t think of a bigger waste of money. We have so many problems and social needs in this community that could benefit from a sudden influx of $100,000, and a private ride sharing app isn’t one of them. If this is so important, Legislators or VBN could have set up a GoFundMe and solicited donations from individuals to fund some sort of pro-ridesharing lobbying/marketing push. 

Here’s a better idea: call every Democrat in the Assembly, tell them you live in Buffalo and you really need Lyft/Uber here, and that if they don’t legalize them, you’ll fundraise for whomever primaries or runs against them next time around. 

Canalside is unfinished. Like Benjamin West’s portrait of the American delegation to the 1783 Peace of Paris, the parts that are done are great, but it remains in a sort of perpetual limbo. A recent Buffalo News article underscores how the current “lighter, quicker, cheaper” fetish has left us with a Canalside that fails to live up to its potential as a year-round attraction. The blame for that runs wide and deep, and the project is held back to this day because of it. 

To examine Canalside today, we ought to do so within its recent historical context, and the insufferably political one-step-forward, two-steps-back progress on the Inner Harbor. This brings us, inevitably, to Bass Pro. 

Like so many things we Buffalonians pay attention to, the Bass Pro story enjoyed quite the arc from hope to joke. When Buffalo Mayor Anthony Masiello and Governor George Pataki ironically donned camouflage and pre-Trump red caps to make the big announce in 2004, fully 12 years ago, Canalside didn’t exist and the whole area was asphalt and weeds. 

New Buffalo

In July, Buffalo News columnist and public school opponent Donn Esmonde opined that the “demise of Bass Pro was [the] turning point for New Buffalo“. This is oversimplistic propaganda. Coming from Esmonde in particular, it’s patent narcissism.

First off, there is no consensus on even whether a “new Buffalo” exists, much less when and how it came about; to conclude that it had to do with Bass Pro is absurd. Let’s start with basics: the city of Buffalo’s population continues to shrink. An estimate from May 2015 shows a slowing of the loss of city residents, but a loss nonetheless. Since the 2010 Census, the population has shrunk about 1% per year. By contrast, Erie County’s population grew by a fraction of one percent. The city’s population peaked in 1950 and has been in decline ever since – most dramatically in the 1970s. A lot of that has to do with improved mobility, automation, a shift from regional to global economies and free trade, de-industrialization, and the completion of the St. Lawrence Seaway. “Old” Buffalo of rust, decline, shame, and the butt of jokes has been palpably transformed into something that at least feels better, even if the data don’t all agree on objective economic or social improvement.

Unemployment is down, population loss seems to have stabilized, and people feel better about the region than in previous decades. Those of us in the area who have some amount of disposable income exalt in the new restaurants, shops, and startups in town. The #Buffalove is palpable as we witness art installations near the grain elevators, the rejuvenation of our waterfront, Hertel, Grant, and Elmwood are always changing and improving the quality of life for our cognoscenti. But you’re not generally going to have a rennaissance while shrinking. Bass Pro was not the cause of Buffalo’s decline, or its years-long civic and economic depression. It was, at best, a symptom of its time. 

When Bass Pro was announced in 2004, there weren’t a lot of blogs. There was no Twitter, no Facebook. There was no real social media to speak of. Only kids used MySpace. That year Buffalo Rising began publishing online and a periodical, devoted to promoting good news about the City of Buffalo. Making Buffalo feel good about itself was a difficult task, but Buffalo Rising was at its forefront, never straying from its narrowly defined mission. Indeed, “New Buffalo” was a term that Buffalo Rising’s Newell Nussbaumer and George Johnson popularized, making it the centerpiece of their effort. As Buffalo Rising focused on economic good news, WNYMedia.net and its array of writers and podcasters focused on a broader range of subjects touching on Buffalo’s suburbs, its neglected and struggling outer neighborhoods, and its diseased political culture. 

The turning point for New Buffalo was the adoption of online communication and debate, which later blended into social media. Credit is also due to Old Home Week, Jay Rey’s and Charity Vogel’s “Revitalize Buffalo” series that the Buffalo News published in 2004, and the grassroots offshoot organization that activist Amy Maxwell spearheaded. Not, as Esmonde claims,the rejection of an anchor tenant for Canalside. Esmonde writes,

Any road-to-revival capsulation that credits CEO-laden state agency boards, elected officials (with rare exception), or corporate power-brokers confuses cause with result.

Esmonde then goes on to quote and offer plaudits to Howard Zemsky, a CEO and corporate power-broker who sits on state agency boards. There is very little sunlight, the grand scheme of things, between Zemsky and former state agency/Canalside CEO powerbrokers Larry Quinn or Jordan Levy. They’re all well-off, well-connected political and business bigshots. Zemsky gets the high fives from Esmonde despite the fact that Larkinville is a suburban office park surrounded by a sea of surface parking. Quinn now fecklessly moistens a Paladino-aligned seat on the school board, and Levy has gone on to help kickstart the successful incubation and promotion of entrepreneurs and startups through 42 North. In Esmonde’s world, Levy’s philanthropy and activism merit no mention despite the fact that they strike at the heart of Buffalo’s long dilemma: industry and manufacturing are largely gone, so now what? 

Bass Pro: Plans A-C

At first, Bass Pro was going to be the anchor of an Inner Harbor entertainment district, and the plan was for it to be sited in a renovated Memorial Auditorium. Over the course of years, we lived through a meaningless memorandum of understanding (MOU), debates about the use of public subsidies, then-County Executive Joel Giambra refusal to sign the MOU, then changing his mind, then whether we should use one-shot tobacco money, and whether sales tax rates should be hiked. We made it through Governor Pataki’s creation of the Erie Canal Harbor Development Corporation at Brian Higgins’s urging, the naming of Canalside and the first 30-day deadline for Bass Pro to commit, which turned into a 60-day deadline, which turned into no deadline. For a period of time measured in years, the Bass Pro / Canalside project remained “imminent“. As the NYPA reauthorization moved forward, we reassured that Bass Pro’s secretive executive clique was uniformly and constantly in a state of perpetual excitement of the deal being done.

January 17, 2007 was supposed to be the final day for Bass Pro to commit to the Aud, but it never happened. The whole fiasco became emblematic of Buffalo’s pathetic pursuit of silver-bullets to rejuvenate itself. As the Aud project fizzled, the city decided instead to rip down the unused and largely unusable Aud. Bass Pro and the ECHDC then turned their attention in early 2007 to the Central Wharf, right down to the imminent- signed – deal and flyover animation.

At the top of list is the historic Central Wharf, across Scott Street from the Aud, directly on the Buffalo River. The approximately 1.5-acre site, adjacent to the recently rewatered Commercial Slip, is being eyed for a store that would resemble an original, early 1800s commercial structure.

Suddenly the local preservationist cliques went to war, threatening lawsuits even before any plan had been finalized or formalized. ECHDC then-Vice Chairman Larry Quinn led the pro-Bass fight as opponents of the nascent plan polluted the process with catchy, knowing buzzwords and false accusations of taxpayer giveaways, suburbanization, all summed up best by the word, “big box“. Quinn took the opposition on. Never mind that the structures that once sat on the Central Wharf were, in fact, big boxes. 

Reasonable and unreasonable discussions galore were had about this downtown shopping mall. In any event, the Bass Pro on the Central Wharf idea was dead before it was ever born, a victim of propaganda and demagoguery as “chain stores” replaced “big box” as our civic bête noire. It also died thanks to the hubris and arrogance of the people entrusted with power, money, and leadership. Quinn had set forth the central wharf plan as a fait accompli, and set about doing what he does best – proving himself to be the smartest guy in the room, even when he isn’t. 

Throughout the process, people wondered why ECHDC wouldn’t simply put in utilities, cobble the streets, and auction off parcels with very stringent use and design guidelines. Why isn’t that being done now? Could it be because people want to put their fingers on the scales when it comes to who gets the development deals? Maybe they can hire Alain Kaloyeros to handle the RFPs. 

But Bass Pro was the project that wouldn’t die. When Quinn’s big box on the wharf failed, ECHDC pivoted in October 2007 to a plan C – a new-build on the site of the demolished Aud. Discussion ensued, and by 2008, Bass Pro was pleading with Buffalo to hurry things up, already. The project was up for public comment and was going to cost $500 million. Suddenly we had a “pre-development agreement”, which roughly translates as “nothing”, then more nothing, and more nothing, and angry nothing, all going through three governors in six years, generating little more than news reports, renderings, and animations.

By 2010, Bass Pro was a hilarious afterthought about which no one cared anymore. While Buffalo was awash in “fish or cut bait” jokes, people were still debating what to do down there. On July 21, 2010, Brian Higgins imposed a 14-day ultimatum for a final agreement with Bass Pro. Next came a lawsuit, before Bass Pro finally put everyone out of their misery and announced it was never coming to Buffalo, ever.

In the interim, Bass Pro’s main competitor, Cabela’s, opened a store on Walden Avenue in Cheektowaga. Just this year, Bass Pro acquired Cabela’s, meaning western New York will have its Bass Pro after all. The whole protracted drama was bookended by Masiello and Pataki donning flannel on the one hand, and Carl Paladino invoking Marx and ACORN on the other, and a lot of typical failure in between. Reading through my WNYMedia.net commentary from 10 years ago, we were reasonable when necessary, snarky when not. We were hopeful, skeptical, informed, cynical, interested, and offered the community a forum to debate the whole thing. The conclusion? When it comes to discussion of development in Buffalo, don’t bet against the cynics.

Canalside After Bass Pro

Since that time, ECHDC pivoted to the “lighter, quicker, cheaper” “placemaking” alternative to development. In 2011, this led to the historic opening of “Clinton’s Dish”. 

picture shack pictures

It’s all very nice, but ultimately placemaking is a scam. The group of people who demanded the Canalside “pause” also persuaded ECHDC to retain the services of Fred Kent from the Project for Public Spaces (at public expense), in order to explain how benches and triangulation would solve all the problems. As a result of this extended delay, we have literally seen the Webster Block go from asphalt eyesore to HarborCenter. Meanwhile, Canalside has the nice replica canals used for summertime and wintertime recreation, some temporary structures, and grass. We have the ice bikes, we have the truss bridges, we have Shark Girl, and we have the boardwalk. 

But this is all a betrayal of the original promise of Canalside. Indeed, the very people who vehemently opposed the Bass Pro “big box” on the Central Wharf in 2008 demanded that ECHDC instead follow the 2004 Master Plan. OK, fine – they won and Bass Pro went away. So, when do we get this? 

More to the point, when the Buffalo News reports on the new toilets and lawns, why aren’t the 2004 Master Plan proponents opposing that as strongly as they did the Bass Pro Central Wharf idea? Far be it from me to suggest that we should court some new big box or chain store. But when we take visitors down to Canalside, everyone agrees that it’s just great; everyone loves to take a selfie with Shark Girl, and do the handful of other things available. People enjoy that its “flexible lawns” can be used as a concert venue. But it wasn’t supposed to be just that. It was supposed to be more – something not too dissimilar from, say, Boston’s Faneuil Hall Marketplace area. Placemaking enthusiast Mark Goldman had this to say to Donn Esmonde in 2011, 

“It is not just people having picnics, it is good economic-development strategy,” Goldman added. “You start small, and it snowballs. By next summer, you’ll see private businesses lining up to come down—instead of asking for big, fat subsidies.”

Lighter, quicker, cheaper. Already, it’s working

It’s 2016. Five years later, there are no “private businesses” lined up “to come down”. It is, alas, “just people having picnics”. So what are we discussing now? Toilets.  

In March, the “Buffalo Waterfront Heritage Coalition” had a great idea, but we never heard more about it.

This works! It’s waterfront-y and heritage-y! This truly reflects what the Central Wharf looked like during its industrial heyday. So, where is it? When will ECHDC let this thing just happen? 

Not anytime soon, it appears. 

But we don’t have Bass Pro, we don’t have Explore ‘n More, and we don’t have any major construction at Canalside; we instead have a major announcement of permanent bathrooms that will, presumably, be unlocked and available for use at all hours. We will get the solar powered carousel championed by former Erie County Legislator Joan Bozer. Also, 

… the summer concerts [will be] relocated to a permanent performance stage on the Central Wharf.

On the backdrop of the stage will be a facade depicting the 19th century Union Steamboat Company. And facing it will be a pavilion that’s a ghosted structure meant to recall another 1850s-era canal district building. The building will serve as a shelter for shade, activities and entertainment.

Permanent stage? Ghosted replica facade? When did the 2004 Master Plan turn into this? 

Who loves the ill-conceived jumble of disused lawns and a “permanent stage” with a ghosted faux-cade? Mark Goldman, the guy who strong-armed the ECHDC to hire Fred Kent and gave us “placemaking” in the first place. 

Who doesn’t love seeing a “heritage-based” stage show on a windy 10 degree F day in February? What happened to this? 

Transforming the Central Wharf at Canalside into some sort of permanent concert venue is a devastating mistake. If anything, it cements as permanent and perpetual a “flexible lawn” with Adirondack chairs, which was supposed to be a “placemaking” stopgap. When you look at the renderings from the 2004 there is a noticable absence of green space. Because it’s a city and this is its downtown. If you look at the renderings from the Waterfront Heritage Coalition, there are no big empty lawns. Instead of Buffalo’s Faneuil Hall, we’re planning a summertime concert venue/lawn-cum-frozen wasteland exposed to lake winds. We already have a summertime waterfront concert venue – disused though it may be – at LaSalle Park. 

Buffalo is now in its second decade waiting for something more permanent to be done around Canalside. Look at the 2012 renderings from Brian Higgins’ Flickr account shown above – see the people? They’re there because there are things to do. Not just selfies and skating, but food, drinks, shopping, art, and crafts. Maybe offices, apartments, and hotels. The possibilities are exciting, but not as long as we’re stuck with ghosted facade stages that placate the naysayers. There are no implements being used right now to construct anything seen in the renderings shown above. Canalside’s promise remains years away. 

If ECHDC is satisfied with satisfying Mark Goldman, that’s not good enough. It has the power, money, influence, and ability to do something with these parcels right now. Subdivide them and make them ready for development. Sell them. Enough with the “designated developer” nonsense to reward campaign donors. It can grow organically – it doesn’t need to be a Benderson project or a Ciminelli project or an Ellicott project. It can be all or none of those. 

Let’s aim higher than toilets, lawns, police substations, and bullshit phony stages. We can do better than this, and it doesn’t even take much imagination to do it. Canalside is better than just a venue for the Buffalo News to take 200 pictures for a Buffalo.com “Smiles at” clickbait featurette. We’ve been patient. Give us what we’re waiting for.

Insufferable leftist poster child Glenn Greenwald finds himself exalting in his role as unlikely scold for the Democratic Party – an organization to which he does not belong, located in a country in which he does not live. Greenwald is, in real life, the sort of blame-America-first-next-and-last commentators who conservatives blame all Democrats of being. 

He has published a missive to his “Intercept” website, where he nags Democrats for, basically, being upset that they lost the election, despite the fact that Hillary Clinton so far as a 2 million vote lead in the national vote tally.  The post in question bears a title that perfectly reflects Greenwald’s verbose arrogance: The Stark Contrast Between GOP’s Self-Criticism in 2012 and Democrats’ Blame-Everyone-Else Posture Now. Do you even headline, bro? 

The thesis, naturally, is right there in the title itself; Republicans critically examined the reasons why they lost the 2012 election, while Democrats blame everyone and everything under the sun. Greenwald, a prominent Putin apologist, uses as his first salvo the Democrats’ anger at Russia’s hacking, meddling, and connivance with Russian intelligence outlet Wikileaks to influence the election. He doesn’t really say it didn’t happen – he’s just hectoring the Democrats for talking about it. Because to Greenwald, privacy is of paramount importance when, e.g., the NSA is examining metadata in suspected terrorists’ communications, but something casually to be ignored when it involves the theft and publication of hundreds of thousands of private emails from and between members of a political party and campaign. 

Here’s why Greenwald is a propagandist, and not even an especially good one, at that. From his article:

This Accept-No-Responsibility, Blame-Everyone-Else posture stands in stark contrast to how the Republican National Committee reacted in 2012, after it lost the popular vote for the fifth time in six presidential elections. RNC Chairman Reince Priebus called Mitt Romney’s loss “a wake-up call,” and he was scathing about his party’s failures: “There’s no one reason we lost. Our message was weak; our ground game was insufficient; we weren’t inclusive; we were behind in both data and digital; our primary and debate process needed improvement. … So, there’s no one solution: There’s a long list of them.”

The RNC’s willingness to admit its own failures led to a comprehensive 1oo-page report, issued only a few months after its 2012 defeat, that was unflinching in its self-critique. One of the report’s co-chairs, GOP strategist Sally Bradshaw, warned upon issuance of the “autopsy” that “public perception of our party is at record lows. Young voters are increasingly rolling their eyes at what the party represents and many minorities think Republicans don’t like them or don’t want them in our country.”

Check the links and check the dates. It is now November 23rd – about 2 weeks since a cataclysmic election day. Here are the salient takeaways:

1. The RNC’s navel-gazing “autopsy” came out in March 2013 – fully four (4) months after election day 2012, and two months after Inauguration Day. 

2. When Romney lost to Obama in 2012, it was as much a shock to some conservatives as Clinton’s loss was to progressives. They didn’t see it coming. The only difference is that the polling accurately predicted Romney’s loss, but Republicans convinced themselves that the polls were somehow “skewed”. In 2016, the polls were pretty accurate. The losses in the key states Clinton gave up – Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin – were razor-thin, and she is now 1.5% – over 2 million – votes ahead of Trump in the national vote. 

3. To suggest that conservatives weren’t pissed off and engaged in a rage-fueled blame-game in November 2012 is a ridiculous re-write of history. For example, 

• Ann Coulter, November 7, 2012: Don’t Blame Romney: “Indeed, Romney is one of the best presidential candidates the Republicans have ever fielded. Blaming the candidate may be fun, but it’s delusional and won’t help us avoid making the same mistakes in the future.”
• Daily Caller, November 7, 2012: Romney blasted after loss for not campaigning as a conservative: “Republican leaders behind the epic election failure of 2012 should be replaced with leaders more in tune to the conservative base of the Republican party.”
• Huffington Post, November 9, 2012: Conservatives Struggle To Explain How Mitt Romney Lost 2012 Presidential Election: “The blame game began almost immediately, as Republicans looked to determine how a vulnerable incumbent like Obama had found a pathway to reelection.”
• NPR, November 12, 2012: Who Gets The Blame For The Romney Loss? The Tea Party Has A Theory: “According to leaders of the Tea Party and others on the right, the reason why the GOP suffered on Nov. 6 is because Romney was too moderate.”
• Human Events, November 12, 2012: Don’t blame social issues for Romney loss: “Republicans’ post-election loss ritual of scapegoating and finger pointing has begun, and, as is almost always the case, conservatism, and in particular values issues, is getting the bulk of the blame.”

 4. As Greenwald points out in his piece, the Republicans’ 2013 navel-gazing was a big waste of time, because four years later they nominated a bombastic gold-plated man who eschews ever recommendation contained therein about inclusivity and outreach. 

Greenwald concludes, 

But as is true of anyone who wants to reverse their own failures, Democrats need to accept responsibility and blame, and stop pretending that they were just the victims of other people’s failures and bad acts. They’re not divinely entitled to support from voters, nor to an unimpeded march to victory for their preferred candidate, nor to a press that in unison turns itself into Vox or a Saturday morning MSNBC show by suppressing reporting that reflects negatively on them and instead confines itself to hagiography. In fact, this entitlement syndrome that is leading them to blame everyone but themselves should be added very near the top of the list of self-critiques they need to begin working promptly to address.

The time will come to examine what the Democrats did wrong as a party, as an apparatus, from its grassroots to its summit. That time, however, will come soon enough. We haven’t even reached Inauguration Day, and Greenwald expects Democrats – who had to run not only against Donald Trump, but against the FBI, Wikileaks, Putin, 30 years’ worth of anti-Clinton smears, and a Clinton-averse media – to just dummy up about the very real blockades they encountered and engage in a thoughtful self-examination about, e.g., how their messaging didn’t appeal to white working-class people in the rust belt, or how they didn’t adequately exploit rural and suburban grievances. 

Greenwald dumps a bulldozer’s worth of salt into a gaping wound, with false information that he’s manipulated to underscore a finger-wagging spin. About what you’d expect from this propagandist.

On Monday, Erie County Legislator Pat Burke (LD-7) introduced a proposed ban on conversion therapy. “Conversion therapy is an abusive practice that attempts to change the sexual orientation of a minor from homosexual to heterosexual it is sick and should be against the law,” Burke said. 

Being gay isn’t a disease in need of a cure, and “conversion therapy” is little more than pseudoscientific torture. It’s been shown instead, “to lead to mental illness, drug use, homelessness, self-harm and suicide — especially in kids and teens.” Among others, the American Psychological Association, American Psychiatric Association, American Academy of Pediatrics, the National Association of Social Workers have condemned conversion therapy as especially harmful to minors. 

In New York, agencies have taken administrative action to protect LGBTQ youth by barring insurance coverage for conversion therapy, and making it unlawful for state-licensed mental health providers to provide conversion therapy to minors. The practice itself is not illegal, however. 

According to Snopes, Vice President-elect Mike Pence once pledged to seek federal funding for conversion therapy while in Congress. 

The allegation dates back to 2000, when Pence was running for Congress. His campaign web site at the time touted his call to add a stipulation to the Ryan White Comprehensive AIDS Resources Emergency (CARE) Act, a 1990 law providing funding for HIV/AIDS treatment for patients living with the disease lacking either the income or the necessary insurance to pay for it on their own:

“Congress should support the reauthorization of the Ryan White Care Act only after completion of an audit to ensure that federal dollars were no longer being given to organizations that celebrate and encourage the types of behaviors that facilitate the spreading of the HIV virus. Resources should be directed toward those institutions which provide assistance to those seeking to change their sexual behavior.”

Although he didn’t say so outright, the position has been widely interpreted as signaling Pence’s support for “gay conversion” therapy, which seeks to “cure” patients of being attracted to members of the same sex.

“Conversion therapy” involves, among other things, electrocuting kids to train their behavior, like dogs, to fear and avoid homosexual thoughts and behavior. As recently as this year, the Republican Party platform contained this: 

We support the right of parents to determine the proper medical treatment and therapy for their minor children.

Legislator Burke’s proposed law is, therefore, named the 

Prevention of
Emotional
Neglect and
Childhood
Endangerment.

Remember when Donald Trump told his supporters to vote on November 28th? Lots of people opposing him pounced on that error, posting memes to Facebook and Twitter reminding Republicans to vote on that incorrect date. I don’t find that funny. 

I hate trickery like that, because it’s a lie, it’s unfair, and it preys on people’s ignorance. Playing by the rules is better, (which is perhaps a big reason why the Democrats are in decline.) It, therefore, follows that responsible Republicans would avoid promoting or posting false information about how and when Democrats would vote for Clinton. But in the days leading up to the election, a meme urging (more like “reminding”) Democrats to “stay home” and vote “by text” for Hillary Clinton circulated among the less responsible, more vicious corners of the right wing web. 

The meme in question was cleverly designed to look like an official missive from the Clinton campaign – it had the right font, the right color scheme, and looked at first glance to be completely legitimate to the untrained and poorly informed eye. 

As it happens, an elected, sitting Republican Assemblyman posted and shared this false meme to his then-public Facebook page. David DiPietro (A-147) is credited, in part, with getting Donald Trump involved in politics in the first place. He was one of the travelers in the ring-kissing junkets from Buffalo to try and convince Trump to challenge Cuomo in 2014. 

So, this is what this sitting Assemblyman – someone you’d expect to be a responsible adult – posted, 

Spreading this kind of misinformation and lies is unbecoming an elected official. People who act as the people’s representatives should be above petty stunts that would disenfranchise even the stupid. If you’re not in the tea party, he doesn’t represent you – he doesn’t even purport to represent you. Shame on David DiPietro, the seat-moistener who represents guns and stupidity more effectively than he represents people. 

Oh, by the way, 

Among the members of the Trump coalition are the Klan and neo-Nazis. It’s one thing to read about – or think about – the Neo-Nazi convention held this past weekend in Washington, DC, but it’s a whole other thing to actually see and hear it. Watch Nazi chieftain Richard Spencer “hail Trump, hail the people, hail victory” and question the humanity of Jewish people. 

This is 2016. 

This past weekend, Donald Trump had the time and inclination to take to Twitter in order repeatedly to denounce Saturday Night Live and the cast of Hamilton. 

Donald Trump has not, however, found the time or desire to denounce or reject – even mildly – the Nazis who literally hail his name.