Tag: racism

This Post Matters

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1. George Zimmerman seems to have a thing for using a firearm to menace innocent, unarmed people. That’s a fetish that’s going to prove to be expensive. At a bare minimum, he seems to have a bizarre fetish whereby he tries to solve everyday interpersonal conflicts with a gun. A bit excessive, and, you know, someone could get hurt. He’s now charged with a felony and, ironically, this could finally enable the government to take this lunatic’s guns away. Even in Florida. This gun matters. 

2. There’s a fine line, I suppose, between a police department enforcing nuisance laws and blatant racism. The owner of Ying’s Wings and Things is accusing the Tonawanda police of targeting his restaurant’s DJ nights because they attract black kids. The police say the crowds are too noisy and rowdy. Like – oh, just about everything – attitudes about race in western New York are rooted firmly in the 50s, to everyone’s detriment. In the meantime, Ying should hire some security to keep his patrons safe, to keep parking lot nonsense and shootings to a minimum, and to document it all. This 18+ DJ night matters. 

3. Kaleida has a plan to redevelop the site of the former Millard Fillmore Gates hospital into a ~$60 million complex of housing, offices, and retail space including a large complex for seniors. It would attract hundreds into a city neighborhood now occupied by a nondescript, empty white box. There’s no damn way this goes smoothly. This lot matters. 

4. Looking for a Christmas gift for your kid? Depending on age-appropriateness, how about a construction kit of the Anne Frank House, showing how the secret Annex was connected to the house and kept hidden from the Nazis for most of the war. With shipping, it costs a little more than $50, but it’s cheaper than airfare to Amsterdam. This house matters. 

5. This idiotic incident will result in a lawsuit being brought against the rail-slider and the Bills and everyone else. Was a Bills Mafia dummy’s reckless tumbling from the 300s into the 200s – and onto another person – foreseeable? When a football spectator buys a ticket and takes his seat, does he assume the risk that someone might fall on top of him – is spectator precipitation a risk inherent in football? This is why we have lawyers and lawsuits. This jurisprudence matters. 

6. Rob Ford is now, effectively, the figurehead mayor of Toronto. Yesterday, the city council voted 37-5 to strip him of practically all his powers. As the drama unfolded, Ford was defiant and managed to, among other things, knock over a council colleague while charging towards a heckler. Of course, the conservative Toronto Sun gave Ford and his brother, Doug, their own TV show. This crack matters. 

Nation Is In Decline Because of Morons

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The Buffalo News gets letters. Every single sentence of this letter, written by a James Costa of Elma, Erie County, New York, USA, is a symphony of stupidity.

Mr. Costa is a retired teacher living in Elma, who once enjoyed hitchhiking, accepting handouts from hardworking Americans while he and his friend hoboed it across the country. He also used to troll the Topix Forum using colorful pen names such as “MILFMan”, and “Brillo Pad Head” where he enjoyed tearing into librulz. (His posts are deleted, but you can see many of them in others’ blockquotes.) But the person who posted as “Brillo Pad Head” also has fond memories of teaching – in the public school system – and the joy he got from that calling. Weird dichotomy.

Here is the letter from this leech retired hypocrite public pension-receiving teacher:

To fulfill its promise of social and economic justice, liberalism must transfer power from the people to government.

What is the government? What is the government but us – people? We live in a representative democracy, where we are given the franchise to elect people to do what they believe to be in our best interests. If the people do not think the politician is doing this, they are free to elect someone else. The power is the people’s. Always. We just don’t wield it as often as we might.

By selling the concept of redistribution of wealth as “fairness,” social programs are created and expanded to capture new classes of dependents.

Well, any system that taxes people to pay for public things is redistributing wealth. Which is to say, every functioning state taxes people to pay for public things. Social programs? Assuming the retiree here is a Medicare and Social Security recipient, he is directly benefitting from our social safety net. Not only that, but as a retiree from the public school system in New York, he receives a public pension that is completely free from state income taxation. You can’t sit there on top of a pile of public cash and whine about redistributive policies.

Under the pretext of ensuring “clean” air and water, government further enhances its power by destroying industries through crushing environmental regulations, thus swelling unemployment and welfare rolls.

Got that? Potable water and breathable air are no longer goals for which we should aim. It is not the right of the individual to breathe clean air or drink clean water that is paramount – it is the right of “industries” to ruin the air and poison the water that is of primary importance in this person’s addled mind.

Its “man-made” global warming claim is a ploy to boost taxes on all energy.

I think that’s a swipe at “cap and trade” – a conservative-invented, market-based system of reducing emissions and pollution which the conservatives abandoned when Obama decided he thought it was a good idea, too.

When Obamacare is fully implemented, costs will skyrocket, services will be rationed, quality care will nosedive and meddling bureaucrats will gain unprecedented control of our lives.

Says the guy receiving free or massively discounted, taxpayer-provided single-payer public socialized medicine.

Recently the formerly great city of Detroit has declared bankruptcy. This tragedy is a microcosm of a national trend.

Hm. Not really.

Having intentionally created these proliferating economic time bombs, heroic liberalism will magically appear deus ex machina to save the country with loads of fiat money and new regulations.

Someone intentionally created a 60 year decline in the city of Detroit, whereby its population plummeted, abandoning it to move to the suburbs? Also, Mr. Costa seems to be a fan of the gold standard, which we abandoned two generations ago.

For decades liberals have been laying the foundation for a socialist America: They’ve demonized religion, polluted the airwaves, corrupted childhood innocence, sabotaged education and aborted millions of babies.

Polluting the airwaves is bad, but polluting the air is good. I don’t know how liberals have “demonized religion” or “corrupted childhood innocence” or “sabotaged education”, and I’m pretty sure people of all political persuasions have aborted all those babies. I’m guessing this guy has a problem with Hollywood, and maybe some other things perhaps reflected by his “Brillo Pad Head” pseudonym used in other fora.

They’ve weakened and demoralized the military with mixed genders.

Where is the evidence of that? What does he mean “mixed genders”? Women in the military? Gays in the military?

They (with complicit Republicans) have opened our borders to illegal aliens, further burdening our economy.

Immigrants – documented and undocumented – are not as massive a drain on the economy as people suspect.

They’ve promoted class envy and fomented racial hatred.

Says “Brillo Pad Head”.

They’ve smothered free speech with PC, and targeted the Second Amendment.

PC is political correctness – the notion that, e.g., if you say or write something that’s racist, you should be humiliated and criticized for it. PC is the notion that you should be accountable and responsible for what you write – for instance, Mr. Costa enjoyed referring to autistic kids as “retards” in the Topix exchange linked-to, above.

Welcome to the Utopia of “fundamental change.”

James Costa

Elma

You should immediately return your next Social Security check to the government, reject your next pension payment, pay the state taxes on what you’ve already received (that tax benefit is a direct subsidy from the taxpayers of New York), and forevermore pay every medical bill in cash and never submit to Medicare again.

Communication Breakdown

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On April 28th, the Buffalo News’ editorial page offered up its recommendations in the upcoming school board races. One of the most intensely watched races is that of developer and tea party gadfly Carl Paladino. While the News expressed support for Paladino’s proposals for fixing the school board – many of which are totally reasonable – it would not endorse him. 

But we won’t endorse Paladino, either. He insists that he is not racist, but he shows no comprehension that the emails he forwarded not only suggest that – and powerfully – but that they would be painful and insulting to thousands of minority families and students in the district he wishes to serve.

While he is, in some ways, the candidate this district has needed, we cannot lend the weight of this page to a candidate who still insists those vile emails were funny. No one is perfect and it is always necessary to allow people their failings, but in life, there are some bright lines. Paladino crossed this one.

Nevertheless, it seems all but certain that Paladino will win this race; the South Buffalo neighborhood supported him overwhelmingly in his 2010 campaign for governor. If he does win, it will be his chance to prove that he is not racist.

He could go a long way toward showing that by acknowledging the despicable nature of those emails.

These emails (NSFW). 

To be clear, I read that editorial very carefully – it’s not condemning Paladino for sending the emails, but instead for not acknowledging that they were disgusting, misogynist, and racist. There’s no question he sent them around, but he can’t just say, it was stupid, it was wrong, I’m deeply embarrassed and sorry. He’s like Otto from A Fish Called Wanda. 

So, what does Paladino do? He blasts some more emails out calling the News and its editorial page writer Dawn Bracely names. 

That’s not enough, though.  Paladino pal Larry Quinn had to chime in, too. 

Both of these guys need to take some remedial reading comprehension classes. Perhaps a lesson in humility wouldn’t hurt, either. It must be nice to be so righteously indignant over a perceived slight. It’s also easy to see all the answers for Buffalo’s failing schools from atop a mountain of white privilege. 

Ironic Criminal is Ironic

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Remember this guy? He was all over Channel 4 and the Shredd & Ragan show: Shredd & Ragan show about a month ago, expounding on how black people were ruining the old First Ward, etc.  How minorities should stay on their own side of town and not “wreck” South Buffalo neighborhoods.  

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JR8NBOn1WY0]

Turns out, the proud South Buffalo racist guy is William Shanahan, and he’s not only in jail, he’s a convicted felon. 

“Scheme to defraud” in the 1st degree involves a systematic, ongoing effort to defraud or obtain property under false pretenses from 10 or more people, or fewer depending on the value of the property and the age of the victim. This is a class E felony. 

Robbery in the 3rd degree involves “forcible stealing” through the use or threat of physical force on a person to take his belongings. According to the New York State Penal Law, this is a class D felony.  

Irony is a guy who complains about “the minorities” and their crime ruining neighborhoods, yet is a convict himself. 

Buffalo: Read These

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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.  

 

Disrespect Your Opponents, Town, Selves

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A few weeks ago, a story hit about a black family being all-but run out of Buffalo’s Lovejoy neighborhood. 

This week, we have the Clarence Middle School girls’ lacrosse team suspended and punished for apparently hurling some ethnic/racial slurs at their opponents during a lacrosse game against Sweet Home. While there seems to be an allegation and multiple denials, we’ll never know precisely what was said or by whom.  

In fact, I’ve heard from kids who attend the Middle School that it was Sweet Home kids who were calling Clarence girls – some of whom on the lacrosse team are Black – names. Based on that, perhaps Sweet Home should also suspend its team. 

Both events are absolutely deplorable. This sort of behavior – this sort of thinking – is completely unacceptable and inexcusable in 2012 America. The Lovejoy harassers of the Coopers operate under the same hateful mindset as a girl who would yell “ni**er!” at any opponent in a game. I know we can never be free from racial animus, but it’s important to point it out and criticize it when it happens. 

Kids aren’t born racist; it’s something they learn from their parents and their peers. These incidents remind us that racial animus and ignorance transcend geography, wealth, and class. 

But in comparing the Lovejoy incident and this Clarence story, there are two stark differences – in the community response to hatred.  While neighbors and politicians in Lovejoy went out of their way to downplay the abuse of the Coopers, and try to pin as much blame on the victims as possible, the Clarence school administration immediately punished the lacrosse team. Although no one admitted to having hurled racial epithets at the team from Sweet Home, the Clarence school superintendent said, “[w]e determined there is evidence to believe that the allegations have merit.” 

A four-game suspension isn’t the end of the world. It isn’t jail or a school suspension. It’s a time out, during which these girls will learn that it’s completely inappropriate – even when engaged in two-sided trash talking – to call someone a “ni**er” under any circumstances. Or any racial epithet, for that matter.  These girls aren’t even in high school, and they’re learning a very important lesson about what is and is not acceptable in a civilized society. If we’re going to take this seriously, then let’s take it seriously. 

Trayvon Martin: Reality Check

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[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5OiLQjUcOU]

That’s police surveillance video taken about 4 hours after Trayvon Martin was shot & killed. It shows George Zimmerman at the Sanford Police Station, in handcuffs, before his release. He doesn’t look too hurt here. At all. So, let’s examine the right-wing and racist freakout over Trayvon Martin and the outrageous attacks on him and his character. 

So far, nothing has been revealed to rebut the fact that the police expressly instructed George Zimmerman to not chase down Trayvon Martin.

So far, nothing has been revealed to rebut the fact that Trayvon Martin was completely unarmed at the time of his killing.

So far, nothing has been revealed to rebut the fact that George Zimmerman used deadly force to “defend” himself against a young kid armed only with snacks, who was trying to defend himself against a predator who had hunted him down. It’s quite likely that in Trayvon’s mind, this crazy man who chased after him could have been trying to rob him. Or kidnap him. Or worse. If anyone had a right to self-defense, it was the teen who was being attacked by the so-called, self-proclaimed “neighborhood watch” captain. 

By the way, when you’re part of a “neighborhood watch”, you’re supposed to watch. If you see something, you call the cops. You don’t play Batman. 

When this thing goes to court, all that crap about Trayvon’s school conduct, Zimmerman’s past arrests, and other extraneous nonsense is not going to be in front of a jury. What happened that day in that gated community, will. Based on that, I hope Mr. Zimmerman has a fantastic lawyer. 

Not to be outdone, Buffalo’s most reactionary and unentertaining Brian-the-dog-from-Family-Guy impressionist has this to say on his Facebook page: 

Funny. I own three or four hooded sweatshirts. None of them look like this. I guess wearing a hooded sweatshirt is exactly the same as being in the Klan, and clearly people who wear hooded sweatshirts deserve to be shot and killed when armed with Skittles. 

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