Shorter Donn Esmonde
Tim Tielman has transformed obstructionism into a successful protection racket, and this is good for Buffalo.
Tag: Buffalo
Lucky Buffalo
If you have 20 minutes to spare, please watch this compelling short by local filmmaker Rachel Stover.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tT_jsd7FwhQ]
Demolish the Peace Bridge
Buffalo and Detroit have a lot in common. They’re both big Great Lakes cities that have become shadows of their former selves. They share similar socioeconomic problems, similar planning problems, similar fiscal issues, and both harken back to the days of America’s industrial heyday.
But while Detroit is developing an image for being the heart of the American auto industry and making no excuses for it, Buffalo is instead relying on a more effete reliance on architecture, places that “matter”, and emotion to build its image in the 21st century. It’s the difference between these two videos:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKL254Y_jtc]
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MT11IdWPvfc]
Where one is brash and unapologetically so, the other is maudlin. While one looks forward, the other looks backwards. It is as stark a contrast between visions for rebranding similarly situated cities as you’ll find.
It’s time to demolish the Peace Bridge. Between Detroit and Niagara County, they’ve got it all under control.
For the “looking forward” crowd in Buffalo, one of the bigger embarrassments is the 20 year story of the Peace Bridge. Our cross-border traffic with Canada isn’t only important for importing and exporting goods, it’s somewhat important for travelers whom Buffalo is seeking to bring in from Canada to visit museums, eat at restaurants, and see architecture. The fact that – 20 years on – the Peace Bridge remains today on the American side almost exactly as it did in 1990 is a civic punch line.
We went from twin span to signature span to signature companion span to shortened signature companion span to, “hey, maybe we can build a larger inspection plaza to get traffic moving and reduce inbound backups on the bridge.” None of these is likely to happen. Opponents of the bridge are against expansion because several buildings – which the Peace Bridge Authority already owns – will be demolished to make way for it.
But one of the other characteristics that Detroit shares with Buffalo is a river crossing with Canada. While Buffalo wrings its hands over a bridge expansion, Detroit just approved construction of a new bridge to Windsor – and it’s even more controversial there because in Detroit a private company runs a bridge and is vehemently opposed to the competition. Bridging our connections to Canada – or improving the ones we have – may not be something that’s critically important now, but it’s something that would position Buffalo for future growth and expansion of cross-border trade and travel.
Congressman Brian Higgins has been fighting for Peace Bridge expansion, and released a statement yesterday that was practically chiding Buffalo for a missed opportunity – one that Mayor Brown is abetting.
Congressman Brian Higgins stood by the Peace Bridge in Buffalo and called on Western New York leaders, residents and businesses to join him in the fight against the inertia. Higgins used Friday’s announcement of a deal for a new international border crossing between Detroit and Canada as an example of how delays and obstruction are costing this community jobs and economic opportunity.
“While Western New York is finding ways to block, other communities are finding ways to build,” said Congressman Higgins. “The complacency and resistance to change that has been pervasive in Buffalo for fifty years will continue to cost us if we don’t act now.”
In an agreement between the state of Michigan and Canada announced June 15, the two governments will move forward on construction of a New International Trade Crossing between Detroit and Windsor, Ontario. As a part of the deal, Canada will fund Michigan’s share of the project, up to $550 million, toward the $2 billion span.
A study released by the Center for Automotive Research found that the Detroit project will create approximately 12,000 jobs per year during the 4-year construction phase and another 8,000 permanent jobs will be created in the vicinity of the new bridge and the greater region as a result of new economic activity.
Congressman Higgins, a champion for the addition of new capacity at the international Peace Bridge crossing between Buffalo, New York and Fort Erie, Ontario, added, “Incessant squabbling only leads to inertia. Be it the waterfront, the Peace Bridge or the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus, it is time to fight against the fight and together fight for progress and all the good that comes with it”…
…Higgins asserted, “Public infrastructure is a public responsibility. In addition to historically low rates of borrowing, the “cost acceleration” of delaying road and bridge repair increases by 500% after only two years. Put simply, a $5 million bridge repair project will cost $25 million in 2014. The time to rebuild America is now, actually right now.”
Al Coppola was once a State Senator and most recently known for threatening to move the “Pan Am House” from Delaware Avenue to a location near the Peace Bridge so as to halt any demolitions. (Then-Assemblyman Sam Hoyt had some choice words in reaction to that scheme.
Coppola claims he’s now running as a Democrat to replace Mark Grisanti, and penned this article for Buffalo Rising. In short, Mr. Coppola argues not just for halting the expansion of the Peace Bridge, but for getting rid of it altogether. He also gets in a dig at the Peace Bridge Authority, arguing that they want to destroy a neighborhood to build a bigger duty free shop. It’s always best to demonize your opponent, rather than just argue your own point.
It wasn’t the idea of anyone alive to put an international bridge crossing smack next to a residential neighborhood, but that’s what we have. To argue about noise pollution or emissions now is to argue for its removal, not for the status quo. It may be time, therefore, to demolish the Peace Bridge and dramatically expand capacity in Niagara County to connect the 405 to the I-190.
A signature bridge is never, ever going to happen. Not in my lifetime, not in yours. Neither is an expanded plaza. Neither is the park that the New Millenium Group – which was once a big proponent of a signature span – was promoting.
The Ambassador Bridge to Black Rock? Not going to happen. No one’s going to build a plaza and new interchange on the US side with the Scajaquada and 190 right there, particularly given the fact that the push now is to downgrade the Scajaquada to a boulevard of some sort.
While an ideal crossing would be across the river just south of Grand Island, so that it would connect up with the I-290 and I-190, that disturbs residential neighborhoods in Canada.
Instead, we should completely jettison the Peace Bridge expansion altogether and instead increase capacity at Queenston-Lewiston. That single span gets a tremendous amount of truck and vehicular traffic, and recently received an upgrade to five lanes. The Q-L bridge provides direct access on both sides of the span to a major highway; the 405 to the QEW on the Canadian side, and the I-190 on the US side.
If there was any semblance of forward-thinking on the part of the CVB, it would already have been in talks to develop and construct a gorgeous visitor’s center that is run locally – not from Albany. Lease some Thruway property from the Authority and give border crossers a reason to come to a whole host of attractions in Western New York. The fact that there is no “Welcome to New York” or “Welcome to WNY” center on this side of the border underscores just how backwards and simple our supposed tourism promoters are. They’re at Thruway rest areas, but not at the border. How patently stupid; you have to wait until you get to Pembroke or Angola – well on your way out of the metro area.
There comes a time when you just say “enough”. The Peace Bridge project has spent ten years in environmental review, design review, and negotiations over the now-dead shared border management. We can sit and wait another few years for a new administration to change its mind, but it’s been almost ten years now that nothing tangible has happened. The preservation community has drawn a line in the sand as far as the neighborhood that would be adversely affected by a new plaza on the Buffalo side, and – let’s be honest – scary Al Coppola’s scary threat to move his shack to the west side is scary persuasive.
So screw it. Enough. Everybody wins.
Expand the Queenston-Lewiston bridge with a second, signature span across the Niagara River, right at the escarpment with a gorgeous view of the meandering river leading to Youngstown, and Lake Ontario beyond. Maybe two spans, and we demolish the Peace Bridge. This way, Niagara County can benefit from cross-border trade and traffic, and Buffalo can figure out ways to get Canadian visitors to make their way south from the outlet mall and west from the Walden Galleria.
Buffalo: Read These
Photo by Flickr user Sunny Hasija
1. It’s astonishing that racist behavior and actions like those described in this lawsuit could happen in WNY, by adults, in the past decade. If there’s a silver lining here, it’s that a federal court jury in Buffalo found this systematic destruction of a worker’s life absolutely abhorrent, and awarded tens of millions of dollars in punitive damages against the Luxembourg-based steel conglomerate that did very little to stop it, or punish the perpetrators.
2. Remember that secretive millionaire wunderkind from Cleveland who bought some of the most expensive and exclusive houses in WNY, and was planning to buy and renovate several downtown structures? His name is Michael Wilson. He was a fraud, and his financial “empire” existed only in Wilson’s mind. He even created a phantom financial professional, complete with LinkedIn profile, to help dupe unwitting investors. Wilson has since been indicted by a federal grand jury and fled the country. His brother is awaiting trial, likely serving to attract Wilson back to WNY to face the music for his own misdeeds. When we talk about enterprise, investigatory journalism, Kevin Purdy’s compelling story should win an award – and it’s published in the Buffalo Spree. Who was Michael Wilson? Yet another carpetbagging huckster – reminiscent of the Simpsons’ monorail developer, Lyle Lanley – coming to western New York to promise us renewed relevance and prospective riches. All we have to do is, e.g., donate millions in money and land to build a Wizard of Oz theme park; or rely on the promises of a quixotic but charismatic Iraqi-Briton to miraculously complete only his second project ever, the renovation of the Statler Towers. Buffalo’s renaissance, when it comes, will come because of hard work, planning, vision, and good government. Silver bullets don’t work any better than earnest crowdsourcing.
3. Donnie Burtless from the local food blog Buffalo Eats interviewed retired Buffalo News restaurant critic, Janice Okun. It’s an interesting, short retrospective from someone who was once a pioneer.
4. I can’t figure out which one is more socially acceptable – being some level of excited about Nik Wallenda’s tightwire walk across Niagara Falls, or to denigrate it altogether.
5. Hey, folks – a new activist group called Effective NY wants a constitutional convention, and it’s run partly by YNN political host Liz Benjamin’s father.
Joe Arena on Obama, Boehner, and the Librul Media
Saw an odd Tweet Monday morning from WIVB (Channel 4) anchor Joe Arena:
It’s a news anchor (whose Twitter profile reads, “News 4 Morning Anchor. Part time Winging It Buffalo Style host and an all around heck of a guy! Buffalo · http://www.wivb.com“) yukking it up with conservative TV talk-show host Stefan Mychajliw over some “typical Barry” (meaning President Barack Obama) behavior, linking to a story in the Washington Post.
That story in the Washington Post amounts to a facile summarization of an interview that CNN’s Candy Crowley conducted with Republican House Speaker John Boehner. Apparently, Boehner claims to have a great relationship with the President (whom his caucus has gone out of its way to obstruct almost always), and that the current battle over the imminent doubling of student loan interest rates is made up.
But as is typical in Beltway journalism – and is missed here by the morning anchor on Channel 4 – there’s a critical follow-up missing. If you read the transcript of the interview, Boehner says this:
Democrats and Republicans for months have been working together to try to figure out a way to resolve the problem. And for the president to politicize this for his own re-election is picking a fight where one doesn’t exist.
The next words out of a quality interviewer’s mouth should be: how can you say a fight “doesn’t exist” when you yourself just said that the two sides have been working “for months” to try and resolve this particular issue? Crowley doesn’t ask it, Boehner doesn’t offer it, and here we have Joe Arena commiserating with Stefan Mychajliw about “typical Barry”.
Yes, typical Barry, pointing out that the Republicans are obstructing something to score political points against Obamacare.
But most “journalists” who maintain Twitter accounts that are linked to their employment as journalists go out of their way to avoid controversial political opinions. No one knows if Ginger Geoffrey, Aaron Besecker, Nalina Shapiro, or John Borsa is a Republican or a Democrat. No one knows what any of them thinks about “Barry” and his typicality.
Not to be outdone, Arena then Tweeted,
[blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/#!/joearena4/status/196946917882724353″]
Linking to this story, at the ultra-conservative “Newsbusters” site, run by the execrable “Media Research Council”, whose stated mission is, “Exposing and Combating Liberal Media Bias”. The story is about a speech that anti-bullying activist Dan Savage gave, where he essentially said, (as “Newsbusters” writes,)
…he said there are people using the Bible as an excuse for gay bullying, because it says in Leviticus and Romans that being gay is wrong. Right after that, he said we can ignore all the ‘B.S.’ in the Bible.
The shock-horror is that Savage actually used the phrase “bullshit”; as if high schoolers have never heard that term. But the more salient point is that Savage is objectively correct. Not only do conservatives and their Christianist allies rely heavily on certain cherry-picked passages in the Bible to morally justify their homophobia and hatred, but Savage is also absolutely right that we can “ignore” it.
Why?
Because the Bible says that homosexuality is an abomination. You know what else the Bible says are abominations?
- haughty eyes
- liars
- unequal weights & measures
- a woman wearing her boyfriend’s jeans or shirt
- arrogant people
- incense
- adultery
You k now what the Bible says is perfectly hunky dory?
- Slavery (Exodus 21:2-6)
- Sex Slavery (Exodus 21:7-11)
- Beating your slaves (Exodus 21:20-21)
- Rape (Deuteronomy 22:28-29)
- Murdering a rape victim (Deuteronomy 22:23-24)
You can believe whatever you want. I don’t really care. You can think whatever you want. I don’t really care. But if you’re a journalist and you’re using a Twitter account that identifies you as being an anchor for a straight news program, you should probably Tweet your opinions about “Barry” and that durned librul media on a separate account.
As to Arena using a Channel 4-branded account to provide political commentary on national issues, I sent an email to WIVB News Director Joe Schlaerth this morning, noting that this post would be published after 5pm. I received no reply.
Buffalo: Arbor Day 2012
On St. Patrick’s Day, they say, everyone’s Irish.
On Dyngus Day, they say, everyone’s Polish.
It, therefore, follows that on Arbor Day, everyone’s a tree-hugger.
In the wake of Anderson Cooper’s fit of giggles over the Dyngus Day traditions, Ted Shredd and Tom Ragan discussed on their morning radio show on 103.3 WEDG-FM how Buffalo had a unique knack of taking B-list “holidays” like Dyngus Day and turning them into a veritable fiesta.
Really, all you need to do is add beer and make it fun.
In turning to secondary and tertiary holidays, the boys settled on Arbor Day. The mission of Arbor Day and the Arbor Day Foundation is: “We inspire people to plant, nurture, and celebrate trees.”
Really, it’s perfect. First of all, you don’t have to belong to any faith to love trees; it’s a thing that transcends race, gender, ethnicity, national boundaries, and body image. Trees use carbon dioxide to give us the oxygen we need to breathe. We use trees make cool stuff like high-end dashboards in foreign luxury cars, baseball bats, desks, rulers, bookshelves, houses, etc., ad infinitum. When we don’t want to jinx something, we knock on wood. But above all, trees give us shade and just overall pretty up the joint.
And another thing – it’s better to be #1 at a second-rate holiday than #2 or 3 at celebrating a top-tier holiday, AMIRITE?
Arbor Day is next Friday – April 27th, and Shredd & Ragan will be hosting Buffalo’s first-ever Arbor Day festivities, complete with food, beer, games, prizes, and a parade – all taking place in Buffalo’s Historic Arbor District near Franklin Street and the site of the oldest tree in Buffalo.
The parade begins at 8am next Friday morning from Fat Bob’s, which is the headquarters for the event.
It’s not just an excuse to take a B-list holiday and make Buffalo’s celebration of it the biggest in the country. It’s also an opportunity to highlight some of the people, businesses, and groups who work to improve Buffalo’s environment. There will be tree-themed bar games: Show your shrub (take a cell phone picture of the shrub in front of your house, “best” wins a prize), a leaf eating contest, tree races, moment of silence for the October Storm, and even the tree man of Buffalo might make an appearance.Green Options Buffalo, the Clean Air Coalition, and other local environmental groups have been invited. The proceeds from the bar and sales of souvenirs will go to benefit the Olmsted Conservancy.
For more information, check out Shredd & Ragan’s website, their Facebook page, or follow #ArborDayBuffalo on Twitter.
//
Food for Thought
Two additional items I came across this morning:
1. Rod Watson’s column in the Buffalo News is fantastic. It succinctly breaks down our civic outrage, and how we prioritize nonsense and largely ignore really important stuff.
2. This story from the BBC details how Jewish composers imprisoned in the Theresienstadt concentration camp during World War II wrote music in cabaret style – music that has been largely forgotten, until now. A show in Tel Aviv features that music, which was recovered almost archeologically through interviews and demonstrations the organizers conducted with about 20 survivors from that camp. The survivors say that the finished product faithfully recreates what the music sounded like at the time. It’s a testament to the human spirit even at its most hopeless.
Oh, My God
Photo by Flickr user W Alex Fisher
Consider this scenario:
Antoine Thompson returns to Albany, replacing Tim Kennedy.
Byron Brown goes to Washington, replacing Brian Higgins.
Tim Kennedy moves into the 2nd floor of City Hall, replacing Byron Brown.
All of these rumors are floating around town, gaining steam. So my question is, are we living a Stephen King novel?
The Coopers, Formerly of Lovejoy
Let’s dispense for a moment with the “it’s the people” canard about why Buffalo is great – the City of Good Neighbors.
The reality is that some people are great and neighborly, and others aren’t. Buffalonians are no more or less great or neighborly than any other Americans. Sorry, but you’re not special.
This comes into stark view as we find out about the violent racist harassment that drove a Black family out of Lovejoy last week. When you have a lost generation of people who can no longer rely on steady industrial work in now-dormant or departed facilities, you get anger and resentment. Young, angry, and resentful people develop irrational hatreds and sometimes act out on them.
That socioeconomic fact is, however, no excuse. The Coopers of Lovejoy have every right to live wherever they please, without fear of constant harassment from small-minded racists. The Buffalo News stories (here and here) about the issue were well done and provided extraneous details, such as the muttering of racial epithets within a News photographer’s earshot.
Neighbors thought the family was a “gang” because, well, the Coopers are a large Black family.
We shouldn’t be tolerating pogroms in 2012 in Buffalo, and another matter comes into stark view. Where is our political leadership on this issue? Rich Fontana is the city councilman from Lovejoy, and he laid blame on the victims.
“The family was originally harassed, but when they called in other family members for protection, they turned the situation upside down, and they became the aggressors by sending two Lovejoy youths to the hospital and robbing fast food delivery people,” Fontana said. “After that, I got involved and told both sides to stop the aggression. It was calm until 4:30 this morning.”
Cooper took issue with Fontana’s assessment.
She said that white youths and adults threw rocks and bricks at one of her sons and a nephew, prompting family members to fight back, adding that it occurred after months of racial slurs. “It wears on you,” she said.
As for the allegations of fast food thefts, Cooper said no one at her home ordered the pizza or Chinese food and that no one on her porch attempted to take it.
But the delivery workers filed police reports late Tuesday night, with one claiming an order of pizza and chicken wings was snatched from him and the other reporting that he managed to flee with the Chinese food before it could be taken.
So, the Coopers certainly didn’t find any help or sympathy from Fontana. It’s their fault someone pranked them by ordering food for them. It’s their fault they fought back against harassment. Yet that contradicts this:
“I’m telling all the residents and every kid I can pull into my arms to stop the attacks, unless you’re attacked first. You do have the right to defend yourself, but don’t be the aggressor against anyone in the neighborhood,” [Fontana] said.
Well, too late. The Coopers moved away. Mayor Brown got briefly involved, but this was an opportunity for him to use his bully pulpit for good. Seeing no ribbons to cut, he has shown zero leadership on yet another critical issue facing the city.
Good people are good, and bad people are bad – and they come in every hue, from every nation. One would have thought that, in 2012, we’d all be on the same page with that. And in Buffalo, we reserve our outrage for important matters, like footballers’ criticisms of our hotels and the giggles of a different Cooper – Anderson, of Manhattan.
Today’s Things
1. The best thing to come out of yesterday’s Anderson Cooper / Dyngus Day flap? The Buffalo Outrage Twitter account. Check it out next time Buffalo gets indignant over real and imagined slights from national figures.
[blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/#!/BuffaloOutrage/status/190103345762025472″]
I’d like to note that the point I made in my post about it yesterday – about my misgivings over the geography of the Dyngus Day festivities – was underscored by the fact that the Dyngus Day organizers held their faux-anger-at-Anderson press conference at Redlinski’s, which is not in the Broadway Market anymore, but instead located on Walden Avenue in Cheektowaga. I was pleased that the organizers didn’t overdo the outrage, and instead took it all in good humor and invited Cooper to the 2013 festivities.
As for the geography, upon some reflection, I do enjoy the use of the Central Terminal as Buffalo’s unofficial convention center – the convention center that is architecturally gorgeous and begging to be used. But parading through a devastated community that hasn’t been Polish for decades still seems borderline insulting, and that’s what I object to. If Polonia is so great, why’d all the Poles move?
2. What happens when a cow walks into the road and causes an accident – can the cow’s owner be held liable for negligently allowing the cow to roam around freely? Not in New York, and the Third Department’s Appellate Division took an unusual step and referred a case to the Court of Appeals, asking the state’s highest court to change the law.
3. George Zimmerman, who shot and killed unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin was charged yesterday with 2nd degree murder. The case is rapidly becoming something of a circus, complete with the involvement of despicable judgment debtor Al Sharpton. At its core, however, the question of whether Zimmerman’s killing of Martin was justified is one a jury should decide – not the police. In Florida, 2nd degree murder does not require premeditation; instead, a person is guilty if he commits a homicide, “with a depraved mind showing no regard for human life“. To my mind, when Zimmerman made the decision to exit his car to chase Martin – who was not committing any crime – he forfeited any right to a self-defense justification. Being black, wearing a hoodie, and looking at the overzealous neighborhood watch guy funny don’t justify homicide.
Either way, both Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman deserve this to be a fair trial by an impartial judge and jury.
4. Last week, Capital New York’s Reid Pillifant published excerpts from an interview he conducted with Gingrich supporter Carl Paladino. Some key passages from the pride of Buffalo:
“Unlike these other pussies that are saying, ‘Oh, we don’t want to have a brokered convention, oh’—they’re a bunch of pussies, OK? Those are the ones that are the establishment boys that think they’re still viable with the people. They’re not viable with the people anymore. Those are the control boys. All they’re about is keeping the status quo and the status quo is not real anymore for the Republican rank and file nationally.”
and
Paladino also criticized Romney for his offshore investments, which the Washington Post reported yesterday still aren’t fully known, because the campaign is utilizing an obscure exception in federal ethics laws.
“Yes, he may be doing it in the letter of the law, in hiding his money overseas, to not pay taxes to the government that he now wants to run,” Paladino said. “Sounds sort of like [Jeff] Immelt at G.E., you know, they hold all that money offshore and, ‘Oh, I’m an American.’ He’s not an American anymore. He’s a fucking two-faced cock-sucker that shipped the x-ray division over to China last week.”
Paladino is on a kick to grow his power statewide, and I don’t recall him using such colorful terminology on the record when dealing with local or regional matters. Part of me thinks it’s too bad, because that sort of language is seldom appropriate, but never more so than when talking about our local political establishment.
5. Thursday in at the Square will be permanently moving from Lafayette Square to Canal Side. More room, nice location, something to do by the water – everybody wins.
6. Adding to the groups the Republican Presidential nominee is happy to alienate and offend, the homophobic National Organization for Marriage endorses Mitt Romney for President. NOM’s Twitter account was hacked yesterday, with hilarious results.
7. I just saw the first pro-Romney SuperPAC ad on Channel 4, from the “Restore our Future” PAC, so named because apparently Kenyan Indo-Muslim Socialist Usurper N0bama has taken it away.
8. The right wing hates not only Obamacare, but also Social Security. The 2008 financial meltdown apparently taught them nothing at all.
9. Turns out, James O’Keefe’s and Hannah Giles’ prostitution “sting” of ACORN wasn’t too far off the mark – problem is, Andrew Breitbart was the pimp, and O’Keefe and Giles were the whores.
10. Here is Anderson Cooper putting himself on the Ridiculist after yesterday’s giggling fit over Dyngus Day.
It’s nice when people can have a sense of humor.