The Big Losers are Grammar and Logic

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From the Buffalo News, here is the Buffalo Paladinoist Tea Party’s whimper of a “demonstration” that took place the other night: 

Seven or eight people with nothing better to do at 5pm on a weeknight than stand out in the cold and show pictures of guns and grammatically incorrect declarations to people. 

By contrast, the opening of a Popeye’s restaurant on Delaware Avenue yesterday saw a traffic nightmare and 2 hour-long waits. 

Of particular hilarity aren’t the gun huggers whining about the NY SAFE Act, bravely fighting off jihad and communism in the cold outside a Buffalo museum, but Carl Paladino himself holding up a sign reading, “no funding for dems”.  Here it is a bit closer, also via the Buffalo News: 

As I reminded you yesterday, Carl Paladino was until 2005 a lifelong Democrat. He gave the Erie County Democratic Committee $9,000 in just the past 12 months. He has donated hundreds of thousands to Democrats over the years, either directly or through his various business entities. He attended a fundraiser for Democratic Mayor Byron Brown in the last year.

Who’s the RINO now? 

Carl the RINO and Donny’s Shovel

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1. Tea Party Champion Carl Paladino: 

Who better to lead a protest than a perpetually incensed, elderly millionaire? What better thing to protest than “socializing” America? Who better to “send a message that RINO’s [sic] who support an elected Democrat…have no place in the…Republican Party”? How about the developer millionaire who was a registered Democrat for 31 years, until 2005, and who donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to convenient Democrats who were positioned to help his business goals? He attended a Democrat’s fundraiser just this year. Oh, and this from the Buffalo News: 

Speaking of Paladino, several of the 2010 Republican candidate for governor’s companies recently dropped $9,000 on Erie County Democratic Chairman Jeremy Zellner’s housekeeping account, according to campaign finance records. This occurs even after Zellner moved Democratic Headquarters out of Paladino’s Ellicott Square.

“I’m supportive of Jeremy’s efforts,” Paladino said last week. “When it comes to good government, it’s what we do. We support both parties’ central operations to do the right thing.”

Who better to lecture Patrick Lee and Anthony Gioia on who is and isn’t a “RINO” than a self-anointed tea party hero who has given thousands of dollars to Democrats in just the past year? 

2. Buffalo News Columnist Donn Esmonde: 

It’s called “objectophilia“. 

As I grasped your handle and cupped your lean, strong shaft of a body in my left hand, I silently celebrated all of the times, over all of the years, we had done this together.

Donn Esmonde, to his snow shovel. I think the shovel swore out an order of protection. 

3. Bonus thing to Read

From the Harvard Business Review, “It’s Not OK That Your Employees Can’t Afford to Eat“. 

It wasn’t that long ago that in most companies, especially large ones, a fair amount of time was spent worrying about whether the company’s practices towards employees were fair. One of the functions of human resource departments was to advocate for the interests of employees.

The motivation wasn’t entirely altruistic. Since WWI, employers figured they could keep unions out by giving employees virtually all of the wage and benefits they would have gotten from joining unions. Even without that concern, though, the leadership of the company considered it part of their job to strike a balance between the other demands on the business and the needs of employees.  They were one of the important stakeholders in the business, along with customers, shareholders, and the community around them…

…A family of four with one breadwinner is eligible for food stamps if they earn less than $2500 per month. That is the equivalent of a $15 per hour job and a 40 hour work week.  The government has determined that full-time workers earning less than that do not have enough money to feed their families on their own. If that breadwinner earns less than $16 per hour, they are also eligible for Medicaid assistance to provide healthcare. Depending on where they live, that breadwinner is also eligible for subsidies to help pay for housing.

Pre-haunting Scrooge is no way to go through life, and no way to run a country. 

With Apologies to Ludwig Bemelmans

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In an old house in Buffalo, covered with snow

lived a grumpy old man, with buckets of dough. 

With buckets of dough, he sent his notes

called the press, and shilled for votes. 

He smiled at the right and RINOs he mourned

and sometimes he’d forward equestrian porn. 

He left the house at half past nine in an X-5

in rain or snow – the angry one is Paladino. 

He likes dollars, euros, escudos – 

he shows up on Fox with Neil Cavuto. 

To the rhino in the zoo,

Carl just says, “fuck you!”

And no one knew so well 

how to scream or how to yell. 

One day Carl stood at the door

of the former Maltese ambassador. 

He had helped a man named Brian

whom he had defamed on a sign. 

Everybody had to snarl. 

Everyone was pissed at Carl. 

To Astorino and to Trump, 

Carl would not be such a grump.

Carl had threatened, cajoled, and whined, 

he’d run on the Conservative line. 

But Skelos and Kolb were the big priority, 

for his microscopic tea party minority. 

Good night, all you teabaggers, 

and thanks for your drama! 

Now go back to hating

that Kenyan n0bama!

Now, let’s turn out the light

and close the door. 

That’s all there is, 

there isn’t any more. 

 

 

Wear the Right Shoes

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Get yourself some snow tires. 

Your pickup or SUV? Its 4 or all wheel drive will help you get un-stuck, and it’ll help you get going on some slippery stuff. Its ground clearance may occasionally help you ford a river or drive over a big snowball. But its mass is such that it makes it especially difficult to stop. 

Your anti-lock brakes? They’ll help you avoid a skid by automatically applying and releasing the brakes in quick succession, but they won’t help you avoid an accident if you’re going too fast. 

Or if your tires suck. 

Last night’s commute in Buffalo was your typical afternoon first-snow crawl. Just about every route was packed in or going at a reasonably safe, slow speed. This is good. But if you have crap tires, or even decent all-weather tires, you might as well put skates on the bottom of your car, because they won’t cut it in this weather.

The best of all possible worlds? AWD or 4WD with snow tires. If you have a Subaru or AWD Audi with a good set of snows, your car will be bulletproof in the ice and snow. But the big secret is that you don’t need the extra cost, heft, and maintenance that comes with powering all four wheels, not in WNY, where the roads generally get cleared pretty well (unless you’re unlucky enough to try to drive on a secondary road in the city of Buffalo up to a week after a major storm. For some reason, the city itself is unwilling or unable to plow all of its streets within a reasonable time).

Get yourself some snow tires, instead.

For instance, some local tire stores will store your summer tires in the winter, and vice-versa. For free. Go in, pay about $100, and they’ll do the switchover, usually installing snows in November and summers in April. You extend the lives of both sets of tires, and you’ll have the appropriate shoes on your car.

You don’t wear flip-flops in 6″ of snow. You don’t wear snowboots when it’s 80 degrees out. Why do that to your car?

In some countries, snow tires are mandated. This is a smart idea and something that snowy climates should seriously consider. Driving is no joke, and if you’re hurtling a 2-ton piece of rubber and metal down the street in a snowstorm, other drivers should have some semblance of assurance that you’re appropriately equipped. Snow tires are different from summer or all-weather tires in that they use a softer rubber compound, and feature deep sipes that literally help the car dig into the snow and ice. The best set I ever owned were Finnish-made Hakkapeliitta 2s, which rendered a car that had no traction control into a snow tank.  I always had to get them online, which is a hassle, but I haven’t not put snow tires on a car since my second winter here. You can get a set of Blizzaks, which are very good, or whatever your local tire shop offers, which will be fine, too. 

You can’t leave them on all year, because the rubber compound only works well in the cold weather. But if you, for instance, go from no snow tires on a slippery day to snow tires, you’ll be astonished by the difference in traction you have. Not just start and stop traction, but especially lateral traction, when you’re turning. Traction / stability control will help, too. 

We’re known for snow. We get snow. You drive in it. If you enjoy having control over your car in the snow, ice, and slush – the ability to start, stop, turn, and drive with some modicum of safety – pay your local tire guy, car dealer, or mechanic a visit. Maybe go to Tirerack.com or some other online retailer.

But whatever you do, get yourself some snow tires. 

Read Dasani’s Story

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Dickensian Squalor in Contemporary New York

There was a lot of jokey-snark Sunday night as Twitter was trying to guess what the New York Times’ big blockbuster story was going to be on Monday morning. A Times editor had Tweeted that a game-changing story was coming, but offered no hints. 

The story itself is a heartbreaking one about a bright and energetic 11 year-old girl who lives in poverty and squalor with her family in a dilapidated, uninhabitable city shelter.  We follow her to school, we examine her home, we look at her parents and their obvious problems in such a way that eschews cheap judgment and instead gives us a window into the crushing poverty, desperate need for help, jobs, and education that families like this need. 

It also describes the insane class divide where homes within spitting distance of the shelter and adjacent projects now go for a million dollars; where a fancy new wine shop offers tastings across the street from a liquor store where the clerk sits behind bullet-proof plexiglass. 

Please read all five parts of the story, which will take you on an emotional roller coaster, and consider whether, in our zeal for austerity, we’re causing more problems than we’re solving. 

Some “richest country in the world” superpower we are. 

Political Mandela

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Nelson Mandela was released from prison in 1990 – 23 years ago. He had spent the previous 27 years in prison because he fought a brutal and unjust, racist regime. When he was released, and when apartheid was dismantled soon thereafter, he ascended to power. Although South Africa has been wracked with the sorts of socioeconomic problems that are exquisitely difficult to overcome after so many years of statutory leftover colonial racist inequality in rights, citizenship, and wealth, he sought only peace and reconciliation between whites and non-whites. Everything had been segregated – by actual and implied force – and nothing was equal. Black people lost their citizenship altogether. There was what we now call “ethnic cleansing” throughout postwar South Africa.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrBCgiFhmNA]

Despite all of that, Nelson Mandela sought no retribution or tit-for-tat expulsions; he worked tirelessly to return South Africa to all her people, and to bring justice and civil rights to all. 

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aopKk56jM-I]

By doing good, and by seeking a just reconciliation, he showed the world how people should act. 

Was he a terrorist? Why, because the violently racist government oppressing him and his people said he was? Because the group to which he belonged would resist the brutal Afrikaner minority rule? He never killed anyone, never threatened to hurt anyone. The apartheid terrorists considered him a terrorist.  He was as much a terrorist as the Minutemen or the real tea partiers in Boston Harbor.

Was he a communist? Who cares? Did he establish a Marxist-Leninist dictatorship of the proletariat when he came to office in South Africa? Did he set up a president-for-life kleptocracy like his neighbors in Zimbabwe? Did he seek to antagonize his former enemies, setting up years’ worth of civil war – a state of being not unknown in sub-Saharan Africa? Did he pick idiotic territorial fights with neighbors, assign himself the rank of “Marshal” and show up at military parades in epaulets, adorned with unearned medals? 

None of these things. He was a true freedom fighter. A man whose entire world was about making a South Africa that would serve all of her people equally. He served one term in office. He waged no wars. He sought no revenge. He believed in democracy, freedom, accountability, and inclusion.

In 1986, a bipartisan bill here in the US was presented to President Reagan for consideration. The Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act would have set up a series of sanctions against South Africa and her regime and economy. It was first introduced in 1972, but not seriously considered until 1985. The House and Senate conferenced out a compromise bill to restrict travel and trade with South Africa until apartheid was dismantled. 

President Reagan vetoed the bill. He said that mild sanctions against one of the most unjust and brutal regimes in the world were “immoral” and “repugnant”. Dick Cheney voted against sanctions. Jesse Helms filibustered the bill, just as he had filibustered an earlier bill to bring about a Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday. Strom Thurmond voted against it. All the racists were against this effort to bring justice to an oppressed black minority. 

Reagan’s own in-house racialist, Pat Buchanan, helped the Gipper explain to the American people that these African National Congress blacks were just gunning for a race war. (Buchanan’s legacy : virulent racism and gutter anti-Semitism). 

Nevertheless, a Republican-led Senate overrode Reagan’s veto. While the Heritage Foundation pimped the whore of an idea that Mandela was the real menace, and Grover Norquist was advising pro-apartheid student groups in South Africa on messaging, even Mitch McConnell was a rational moderate. 

While the Republicans were dragging their feet, the Democrats were leading the fight against apartheid. In 1985, Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) went on a tour of South Africa that included a visit with Winnie Mandela to discuss her imprisoned husband. Upon his return, Kennedy introduced the Anti-Apartheid Act that eventually became law. In July 1986 hearings, then Sen. Joseph Biden (D-DE)  thundered at Secretary of State George Shultz: “I’m ashamed of this country that puts out a policy like this … I’m ashamed of the lack of moral backbone to this policy.”

As it became clear that constructive engagement was failing, even moderate Republicans began to shift. Sen. Nancy Kassebaum (R-KS) and Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN) broke with Reagan and argued for a sanctions program. Eventually, in 1986, the Senate passed the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act with enough votes to override Reagan’s veto. “I think he is wrong,” said Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), explaining his break with the administration. “We have waited long enough for him to come on board.”

The sanctions went through. Companies divested. Apartheid was repealed in 1991. Non-racial elections were held in 1994. Nelson Mandela was elected President. 

http://static.c-spanvideo.org/assets/swf/CSPANPlayer.swf?pid=150197-1

Peace, justice, and equality. Seems like a good foundation for a country’s ethos and jurisprudence. 

The Trump Gambit

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Yesterday a junket of desperate Republicans met with noted Birther and tack merchant Donald Trump, urging him to run for governor of the state of New York against Andrew Cuomo. Among them was local political consultant and public relations maven Michael Caputo and birther tea party freshman Assemblyman David DiPietro. 

In this episode of “let’s recruit the rich guy“, the Republican left on the sidelines is Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino, a solid Republican executive with wins under his belt, but little name recognition outside of downstate.  Astorino also doesn’t plaster his name on all kinds of stuff or have a billion dollars, nor is he the Sarah Palin of billionaires. But New York State Republicans are not beneath screwing the guy who earns something in favor of the self-funding rich guy. Right, David Bellavia? 

New York State has a population of just under 20 million people, almost half of whom live in the five boroughs of New York City. Add a million from Westchester, 1.5 million in Suffolk County, 1.4 million in Nassau, 317k in Rockland, 375k in Orange, and 100k in Putnam, and you have about 13.5 million of 19.5 million residents living within the immediate New York City metropolitan area – people who largely have no use for Albany or upstate in general, not to mention western New York. 

Trump’s especial brand of anti-Obama birtherism plays well for like-minded fellas like David DiPietro and his tea party cohorts. While much is being made of the duration of yesterday’s meeting, and the fact that Trump is no longer ruling anything out, this may have something to do with Trump’s new feud against Attorney General Eric Schneiderman. Schneiderman’s office recently brought a $40 million fraud lawsuit against something called “Trump University” – or as the AG called it, a “nationwide scam” and  bait & switch fraud. Trump just this week filed an ethics complaint against Schneiderman, citing the prominent case of Argle v. Bargle. 

Really what this amounts to is recruiting a richer, downstate-friendly Carl Paladino. Trump is just as plainspoken, just as filled with scandal, just as flawed as our local loudmouth developer, but the difference is that Trump has name recognition downstate, to whom Paladino was a profane stranger, and Trump has actual friends in downstate media – even the NY Post was against Paladino. 

Donald Trump is the dream candidate for the angry, defeatist white male upstate voter with a “repeal NY SAFE Act” lawnsign because to the WBEN listener Rus Thompson set, Cuomo is the devil, and Obama isn’t even human. They aspire to be just like Donald Trump, and they love that he thinks like they do – and he has the money and name recognition to not care what anyone thinks. His downstate bona fides explain why he’s being wooed. 

Donald Trump would accomplish nothing in New York State. He would do nothing for education, for the poor, for upstate’s economic malaise, for Buffalo, or for anyone except the tea party and the ultrarich. I will also bet you that part of the strategy is a fusion party line or two, meaning that Trump would take advantage of the single-most corrupt process in New York politics. 

The headlines yesterday should have read, “Lawmakers to Massage Trump Ego, Trump Reacts Favorably”. 

Sense of Place, For Real

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While the Buffalo Niagara Convention & Visitors’ Bureau is busy attracting geriatric architecture nerds to come and look at cornices and decorative concrete, the Buffalo Niagara Enterprise is doing this: 

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMx6MO1IZCc]

There is no mention of “sense of place” or that “this place matters”. There is no talk of “for real“, or Buffalo being more authentic than other places. There is a complete absence of talking heads praising our unmatched street grid or making completely ignorant claims about Buffalo having the only water sunsets west of the Pacific. The CVB’s “For Real” series of videos, hosted by local musician Nelson Starr, are better at showing off the people and things to do in the region, but the signature pieces are pedantic and verbose. 

What this simple video from a local business development agency does that the CVB hasn’t been able to articulate is what makes Buffalo different and attractive. Yes, I realize that it was developed for a wholly different purpose and a completely different audience. But the message and its delivery are matter-of-fact, and emphasize people having fun in our natural and built environments; not the environments themselves. 

Nice work, BNE. You made Buffalo seem like a nice place to live, work, and play. 

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