Opinion and Commentary since 2003
Shorter Buffalo News “influential people” profile of County Executive Mark Poloncarz: he’s excellent at his job and a hard worker, but some anonyms and tea party legislators don’t find him to be warm and fuzzy enough for their own needs.
I mean, seriously. If Joe Lorigo writes some pablum for the Bee, good on Mark for fisking it.
Back in October, my wife’s gynecologist Dr. Judith Ortman-Nabi advised her to undergo a colonoscopy due to a significant family history of colon cancer. Usually, people aren’t prescribed colonoscopies until the age of 50, which we haven’t yet reached. She went to the endoscopy center on Maple near Millersport. It wasn’t an uncomfortable procedure, but the sedation knocks you out for a day. Bad news – they found a polyp; devastating news – it was cancerous.
That commenced a particularly scary and difficult time. We had to find an oncologist. We had to find a surgeon. My wife returned to the endoscopy clinic, where they tattooed the area so a future surgeon would know from where the polyp had been removed. The area “looked clean” but we didn’t want to take the chance that it hadn’t all been caught. We were exceedingly lucky to discover Dr. Timothy Adams, a talented, young, and friendly surgeon who performs laparoscopically-assisted colon resection surgeries.
In mid-November, my wife underwent a successful resection surgery and we were overjoyed to find out that the section removed contained no cancer, and the bundle of lymph nodes that were removed along with it showed that the cancer had not spread. We had found it early – had we waited another year or until we were 50, the result would have been tragically different. Just this week, her oncologist, Dr. Frederick Hong, confirmed that all her bloodwork was normal.
Catching this early was the difference between a full and curative recovery, and something far worse. Just this week, Simpson’s co-creator Sam Simon revealed that he was diagnosed with colon cancer, but he hadn’t caught it in time. It had metastasized throughout his body, and he is told that he has months to live.
I am writing this because my wife is now committed to helping raise money for the Colon Cancer Alliance. On April 27th the 2013 Buffalo “Undy 5000” will be run in Delaware Park, and she and my older daughter will take part. She is raising money for colon cancer research via this page, and if I’ve ever made you think, laugh, or angry via this blog, I humbly ask you to donate whatever you can – however small. Your donation is 100% tax deductible. If you don’t or can’t, I understand, but I urge you to take colon cancer seriously. If caught early through a colonoscopy, it could be the difference between life and death. Here’s where the money that’s raised will go – to advocate, to promote and to expand access to screening, to educate, and for cancer research.
Every day is a gift. Thanks for reading and for considering this.
From the Glasgow Daily Record, we learn that,
LOOSE Women star Andrea McLean was offered a big movie break – and became an unwitting pawn in a multi-million tax scam.
The Scots former weathergirl was cast as a bisexual therapist in gritty gangster film A Landscape of Lies.
But she was unaware the production – which also featured equally unsuspecting former EastEnder Marc Bannerman – was being hastily shot to get the taxman off the conmen producers’ trail.
The fraudsters, fronted by redheaded actress Aiofe Madden, 31, had told the tax authorities her company, Evolved Pictures, were making a £20million film.
They hoped to claim £2.8million in tax credits and VAT repayments and had raked in £1million in tax credits before HMRC swooped and arrested them.
Then, in a farcical attempt to cover their tracks, they hastily recruited an unsuspecting crew and cast and shot their film in four months.
But the shoestring effort they produced for just £100,000 bore no relation to the ambitious plans they had submitted – and the taxmen saw through the ruse.
Yesterday, at Southwark Crown Court in London, bankrupt Iraqi building company boss Bashar Al-Issa, 33, was found guilty of two counts of conspiracy to cheat the public revenue.
His accomplices Tariq Hassan, 51, Osama Al-Baghdady, 50, and Ian Sherwood, 53, were each found guilty of a single count of conspiracy to cheat the public revenue.
Mr. Issa came to Buffalo in a flourish several years ago, buying the Statler Towers and pledging to restore them to their former grandeur. He sought no public money and was greeted as a hero. He pledged that he would build the tallest skyscraper in Buffalo just off Niagara Square, and proposed an underground parking garage under the square to accommodate visitors’ parking needs. He even promised that a speedboat he bought would be available for the use of Statler guests and residents.
Having renovated an elevator or two, he left town, selling the property at a loss in a flurry of litigation and bankruptcy filings, and his entire phony empire crumbled quickly around him.
While @newsradio930 was discussing the Bills prank call yesterday, at 4:12pm, the host admitted they have caller ID, odd. @buffalopundit
— GriZZly Adamczyk (@crazyiroquois) March 13, 2013
This past weekend, New York City Council Chairwoman Christine Quinn announced her candidacy for mayor. If she wins, she would be the city’s first female mayor, and first out gay mayor.
Courtesy Marquil at EmpireWire.com
Assemblyman Steve Katz (R-Yorktown) represents the 94th Assembly District, and is a Republican representing extreme northern Westchester and part of Putnam Counties. (He happens to be my parents’ Assemblyman). When confronted with a bill to send $60 million in state funds to renovate Ralph Wilson stadium, he said,
Manhattan Democratic Assemblyman Herman Farrell, Jr., (D-Washington Heights) the Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, brought up the examples of the Dodgers leaving Brooklyn and the Jets and Giants playing in New Jersey. A Democrat from Manhattan defending your hobby fandom against a Republican from the rural New York exurbs? Consider that, Buffalo.
Last week, I relayed the story that South Buffalo-based blogger Mike Blake wrote about, having to do with odd threats emanating from what can only be called the WBEN morning zookeeper and his virtual entourage of dummies – a pack of dubiously big-balled squadristi. Not content merely to brook no dissent on his radio program or on his popular, selfie-laden Facebook page, this person has lobbed threats against numerous people in recent days, including Blake’s brother, Patrick – a Buffalo firefighter.
Friends of a paranoiac fascist zookeeper lob poorly spelled threats at radio listeners
You see, Patrick called WBEN during the zookeeper’s show and joked that a backup on the 33 was due to someone having fallen asleep during that day’s program. It wasn’t a prank call – it was just a joke. Here it is, complete with Bauerle’s best Alex Jones impression:
http://podcast.wben.com/wben2/3887120.mp3
For those unaware, a listener (my brother) called Bauerle and reported that an accident on the 33 was caused by motorists falling asleep while listening to his show. That’s when things got strange. According to my brother, a man sounding like Bauerle, phoned him from a private number. In a whiny voice, he called him an A-hole and said he ruined his show with his phone call.
It didn’t end there. My brother then received threatening texts from people associated with Bauerle. One informed him that we “know a lot of people”…
This led to a barrage of insults from the zookeeper and his friends, and on Monday, Blake added some additional examples to the mix.
Evidence of a crime?
One of my favorites comes from someone whose daddy works for Verizon, and this Bauerle hanger-on threatens that daddy might shut off Blake’s paid-for Verizon contract.
Daddy is a regional guy! Daddy will shut you down!
Patrick Blake committed no crime, and broke no rules by calling in to a radio show’s call-in number to make a joke about the host. It wasn’t mean-spirited; it wasn’t even a “prank” call. What’s far, far more alarming is that the radio host’s ego is so hyper-fragile that a throwaway joke that he could have removed from air using the station’s delay became an obsession so stark that he didn’t just whine to Blake, but got other people to complain about how this somehow, magically, affects the radio host’s “livelihood”.
I corresponded with Patrick Blake on Monday, and he notes that most of the texts came from numbers marked “private”, as well as the Florida number shown above and a Texas number. None of these threatmongers have the stones to contact Mr. Blake by a phone number that can be traced or is otherwise evident, because they know they’re likely committing the crime of harassment. When Blake tried to call the numbers back, the calls wouldn’t or couldn’t go through.
While none of the messages or texts directly threatened bodily harm, they all demanded that he “back off” his one joke phone call “or else”. Blake believes that several of the messages came from people who were cops or had some other connection to law enforcement.
Blake says, “I called WBEN and told what was happening to a guy that said he was a manager. He told me it was above his pay grade and he would put me through to Tim Wenger. I left a message with him but never got a call back. After about 10 calls to my phone I called their *930 call-in number, and told them if they did not stop I would give out their address . After that i got a crazy text saying i had threatened to bring force against WBEN and my phone would be shut off. I never threatened anyone and this was after many calls to my phone.”
When I asked Blake whether he had kept any of the voice mails he received, he replied, “Most were just music like the Adam Sandler song “you’re an asshole” and some other song about “Jesus loves you but everyone hates you”.”
As I documented last week, the station’s program director and head of operations pretends that his morning host and his squadristi aren’t completely out of control.
The trucks, however, find themselves up against some intransigent lawmakers and some brick and mortar restaurants that believe they have the right to regulate and control what the trucks do and how they do it. Also on the agenda is expanding access to downtown Buffalo Place locations and freeing Canalside up to the trucks.
If you enjoy buying food from Buffalo’s food trucks, please come and show your support.
Because in the end, this isn’t about whether or not the law is fair for the trucks or fair for the restaurants – this is about you. This is about you telling the city, the trucks, and the brick & mortars – I like having a choice; I like the product that the trucks offer and I want more access to more trucks – not more restrictive access to fewer trucks. We’ve already lost the Cheesy Chick grilled cheese food truck due in part to the high cost of doing business across multiple municipalities in WNY.
Buffalo charges trucks $1,000 per year, while it costs a restaurant between $175 – 325 per year to hold a take out license. The city claims that it needs to charge trucks $1,000 per year because of the administrative costs involved, yet refuses to release a breakdown of those costs.
Ultimately, it might be time for a regionwide statute that is applicable to all municipalities in Erie County with a single fee paid. You want to encourage and help entrepreneurship in western New York? Then this should be the test case.
But for the time being, please show your support for your favorite food trucks. They need it, and the city’s lawmakers need to understand that this isn’t only about the trucks and the restaurants – it’s about you.
While our most dysfunctional Congress continues to debate whether we should repeal Obamacare or not, every single other industrialized nation in the contemporary, modern world goes about its merry way having long ago settled the question, “should all our citizens have access to quality health care on demand, regardless of ability to pay?” The American inability or unwillingness to answer that question in the affirmative with some semblance of unanimity is a failure.
Obamacare is by no means perfect – neither ideal nor, perhaps, even wanted. But it is the great liberal compromise, adopting a conservative way to health insurance reform as its own. Indeed, it seems to be the only way Democrats seem to win lately on national issues – adopt the conservative thinking, and wait for the conservatives to pounce with furious indignation disguised as opposition.
The very poor and children receive health insurance through Medicaid. The old receive health insurance through the wildly efficient and popular Medicare program. The rest of us, the ones in the middle, are seeing coverage dwindle and cost go up, and we’re told by smugRepublicans that it’s Obamacare’s fault despite it being a year away from full implementation.
CNN looked at the perpetual American political crisis over healthcare and one conclusion is that we manage disease instead of preventing it. But suggest that people should eat healthier, and you’ll be denigrated as the soda police, as New York Mayor Bloomberg has.
The issues are cost and access. Medicare is extremely efficient and popular. It is a single-payer health insurance scheme that one pays into throughout their work life and is an “entitlement” insofar as you’ve paid for it, like Social Security. Expansion of Medicare to all Americans is the easiest, most rational way to ensure universal coverage for not only managing disease, but also preventing it. Canadians have liberty, too – liberty from medical bills for routine health care, and the myths that Canadians die while queueing up for services are just that – myths. Canada’s systemis not perfect, either, but it is more perfect than what we have. The British system would be less of a political headache, because it allows for private physician and clinic alternatives – something Canada forbids.
So, given that every industrialized pluralist democracy in the world offers its citizens some form of universal health care access – as many different models as there are nation-states – why is it that we as Americans move in baby-steps into some sort of conservative plan involving health insurers and mandates? Why not just expand Medicare to all persons of every age, and make health insurance become something truly private and competitive, where you can buy enhanced coverage of some sort on an open market? In other words, if you need cancer treatments that would otherwise cost millions of dollars, you’ll never see a bill. If you want your hospital room to have a spa in it, you can pay extra for that.
Our revolution was fought to replace a colonial feudalism with bourgeois meritocracy. Expanding health care to all Americans, including the middle class, is something we’ve discussed as a country since the end of World War II. People still, however, go bankrupt from medical bills in what is billed as the greatest superpower in Christendom. It is that – not the notion of “socialized medicine” – which is the disgrace.
South Buffalo-based blogger Mike Blake relates the following story:
In response to a traffic accident on the 33 Expressway, my brother called in and said the accident was caused by a motorist falling asleep while listening to Bauerle’s show. Instead of simply moving on, Bauerle went on a long rant in response to the call. I’m not an expert on talk shows, but it seems like the exact opposite of what he should have done. I get negative responses to my site all the time. But the last thing on my mind would be to dignify them with a response.
Bauerle then took it an unnecessary step further by forwarding my brother’s phone number to his friends. They in turn sent him threatening texts. Very strange and bizarre that any member of the local media would do something like this, especially in an age where it is so easy to document and trace everything. In fact, here is one of the threatening texts Bauerle had one of his people send…
Apparently, WBEN’s morning zookeeper spent about 10 minutes of Thursday’s show not only acknowledging that Blake’s story is true, but by expressing pride that his “friends” would threaten a caller who made a joke, and that they “hold a trump card” of some sort. Of course, if you give out your phone number and ask for phone calls, some of those calls may make fun of the host. This wasn’t even a prank call – there was no Baba Booey moment – this was just a joke.
Is this a perpetual middle school where every real or perceived slight is met with harassment and threats?
When asked, WBEN’s program director/operations manager, Tim Wenger, shrugged.
The discussion got bogged down in a specific issue – whether WBEN’s Telos system displays caller ID information for the host. That’s not the issue. Perhaps the screener had the caller ID information and relayed it to the host some other way. The issue is that the person who made a joke on the air received a threat that the radio host acknowledged on the air as having happened. When confronted with that information, we get an argument about caller ID from the station’s PD – any responsible manager would be appalled that an employee had threatened a consumer of their product.
WBEN’s host is out of control because the station is out of control – between 4 hour-long gun rally infomercials and 4 hour-long Carl Paladino for school board infomercials, the station has abandoned any sense of journalistic ethics or propriety and become nothing more than a right-wing advocacy group, and one that encourages belligerence from its staff.
Pat Blake should be able to make a joke without fearing threats of bodily harm. If so much as a hair on his head is misplaced by another, the radio host, the station, and its corporate parent all share liability and deep pockets.
By the way, the screener hits *69 at Entercom.
Welcome to the third world.
