Revitalize Buffalo update

Revitalize Buffalo plans another meeting 7 p.m. April 28 at the Delaware Park Casino.

"Are you tired of hearing about the decline of Buffalo? We are. Do you believe that Buffalo is a great city with an even greater quality of life? We do. We are Revitalize Buffalo. Instead of waiting for someone else to do something, we realized we needed to take action. Our vision is to help build a smarter and cooler Buffalo and to mobilize the bright, creative and hard-working people of Buffalo and the region. "One of the biggest challenges we face is the current view of the community. The perception desperately needs to be changed. Yes, we have problems with the economy and politics. However, there is no better time to get involved with revitalization. We are at a crossroads. Both the city and county need help getting out of the red and back in the black. "We are working on "building an urban experience.' We are going to link up a lecture series with an activity in the city. So for instance, we will have someone talk about the new biomedical campus being built downtown, how to get a job at the campus and then have a tour of the campus. We will also have someone speak to the large artist population and then visit art galleries in the area. "A larger focus of the group involves buying a building in the downtown area, revitalizing it and offering space to small businesses at low rent. Once one small business is successful, others will want to build around it. "There are ways to learn more about us. Come to our next meeting April 28 at the Delaware Park Casino. Check out our Web site at www.revitalizebuffalo.org and e-mail your thoughts and ideas to amy@revitalizebuffalo.org. We know there are hundreds if not thousands of closet Buffalo fans out there. Maybe you don't want to speak up because everyone else around you is complaining. Well, we need your voice. We need you to help us change the climate of the community."

Schedule permitting, I'll be there.

Raining on my parade

Aside from it being somewhat of a miserable day, my mood was further dampened by my one-year-old state-of-the-art automobile's windshield wipers and washers completely malfunctioning today. Windshield wipers are a pretty basic automotive amenity, and the technology behind them is pretty old and well-tested. Windshield washers are also standard issue on just about every car available in the world, and have been around for decades. Why, even my 1994 Honda Civic had intermittent wipers that never, ever failed to work as designed. Yet the wipers and washers on my 2004 European sedan have fritzed out on my. Hoo fucking ray.

WNY Progress Report - WHLD 1270am, Tue 4pm

The WNY Progress Report - WHLD 1270am, Tue 4pm has its own website.

Theocrats

Dear People of Faith: Our country is not supposed to be a theocracy. Please keep the religion where it belongs: in your homes and places of worship. Keep it out of government and policy. Love, BuffaloPundit

Time to huck the tea

I picture New York politicians - from every corner of the state - thinking and thinking and thinking about new things that haven't yet been taxed. Today's brilliant idea is NYC mayoral candidate Freddy Ferrer. He wants to tax stock trades if elected mayor. In response, the NYSE bought an e-trading firm, which can easily be based in, say, New Jersey. The link above is to the NY Post, and the writer's staccato prose is painful to read. But the points made are valid: just like shipping moved to Elizabeth many moons ago, what's to stop the NYSE from doing the same? It's just so stupid. (HT Upstate Blog, which doesn't have permalinks)

Dissing the media

The pressure must be getting to them. This morning, WBEN reported (but it's not on their site) that the Leg passed new rules for reporters yesterday. Reporters can no longer approach & report on the legislature while it's in session, nor can they speak with legislators while they're on the floor. Also, reporters can't hang around one certain exit, enabling media-shy legislators to slip out without having to answer questions. Hey - who are we to hold them accountable?

Extreme makeover

Dear Citizens of WNY: Here's what we need to do to stop the bleeding. Let's work together to make it happen. Love, BuffaloPundit

New York lagging behind

Dear People of the State of New York: We can do better. George Pataki is a miserable failure. Love, BuffaloPundit

From each according to his work rules ...

Tummy tucks. Hair transplants. Nose jobs. Breast Implants. Your tax dollars at work. At least they could kiss us while they fuck us.

"Cosmetic surgeries are driving up Buffalo's health insurance costs by at least $1 million a year as many uniformed employees, their relatives and retirees get tummy tucks, hair transplants, nose jobs, breast implants and other elective surgeries. Police officers, firefighters and other employees who retired before 1995 are eligible to receive the most costly coverage. Traditional insurance plans for families cost more than $14,000 a year, and Buffalo pays 95 percent of the tab for eligible employees who have at least four years of service. This is the same city that is cutting the size of its police force, closing firehouses and raising the garbage user fee to balance its budget.

Hey - from each according to his work rules & to each according to his demands. Excuse me. I'm going to be sick.

The adults are in charge

Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean someone's not out to get you. Did you think that the Clinton impeachment was merely payback for Nixon? You're right, according to octogenerian former adulterer Henry Hyde.

Republican Congressman Henry Hyde made some surprising comments Thursday on the impeachment hearings of President Bill Clinton. He now says Republicans may have gone after Clinton to retaliate for the impeachment of Richard Nixon. Hyde is stepping down after this term

Borrow & Spend

It's time for the national democrats to take a page from the Reagan playbook. The republicans have been demonizing dems as being "tax and spend"-ers since the 30s. The party operating under the name "Republican" has become the party of borrow & spend. Here's your fiscal conservatism:

The Senate on Thursday overwhelmingly approved $81 billion for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in a spending bill that would push the total cost of combat and reconstruction past $300 billion.

I don't have a problem with Afghanistan, and think that the war and reconstruction in that country were wholly justified. Iraq is a different story. Think of the good that $300 billion could have done here. In America.

George "I'm not Tom DeLay" Holt in action / inaction

The news coming out of the Erie County Legislature in the last few weeks is surreal. For anyone who has always wanted to visit a banana republic, c'mon down to Erie County. The only things missing are the palm trees. Back on March 4th, the legislature passed a budget package which included a reduction of staffer salaries. As of this day, those reductions have not been enacted. Channel 2 and I want to know why.

Mychajliw: 'How come the Legislature didn't start cutting staff salaries like it was supposed to be on March 4th? Legislator Denise Marshall: We still have not found out that answer. And we believed that was going to happen. Mychajliw: 'So correct me if I'm wrong, but Legislative staffers are still getting paid the same amount of money as they were the beginning of the year, even though on March 4th, there were thousands of dollars in cuts made? Marshall: That is true. That is true.' Since the Legislature did not bring up the furlough proposal for a vote, remaining Legislative staffers earning up to $91,466 a year are still getting paid the same. Mychajliw: 'The March 4th budget is really clear: salaries were supposed to be reduced but they weren't. Whose responsibility is that? Legislator Lynn Marinelli: The staffing falls with the Chair (George Holt).' Mychajliw: 'So, ultimately, wasn't it Chairman George Holt's call to reduce salaries starting on March 4th? Marinelli: Yes. Mychajliw: How come he didn't do it? Marinelli: You'll have to ask George. I'm the Majority Leader, not the Chairman.' We did try talking to Holt, who kept walking by our cameras at the Erie County Legislature. Legislature Chairman George Holt: No comments, sir.

We have a legislature chairman who is late on sales tax payments from his business, who is under investigation by the FBI for the crooked CBC deal, and who funnelled county taxpayer dollars (member money; i.e., pork) to his brother's Texas charity - money which was supposed to go to help Holt's constituency here in Buffalo. George Holt makes Tom DeLay look clean as a whistle.

Interesting Media Grad project

Hat tip to TheTalkArena.com. A grad student at UB (North) will do pretty much whatever you want on the remaining Thursdays (today & next week) in April. Chris Barr is available on Thursday It's for a media class and seems somewhat interesting, if not downright wacky.

Shocking!

What will we tell the children? "The time has come that the American people know exactly what their Representatives are doing here in Washington. Are they feeding at the public trough, taking lobbyist-paid vacations, getting wined and dined by special interest groups? Or are they working hard to represent their constituents? The people, the American people, have a right to know...I say the best disinfectant is full disclosure, not isolation." - U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay, 11/16/95

From Stalinism to Fascism in one day!

Well, some might argue the two are identical. The innocent American citizens of the Muslim faith who were detained at the Q-L bridge for the apparent crime of attending a Toronto conference entitled "Reviving the Islamic Spirit" have sued US Homeland Security. I know some think I'm beating a dead horse, but since this is the attitude that these people are up against, I'll keep on beating, thanks.

American Muslims detained at the border as they returned from a religious conference in Toronto sued the Department of Homeland Security on Wednesday alleging they were targets of ethnic and religious profiling.

The five Muslims, all U.S. citizens, say customs officials detained dozens of others from their conference in December, subjecting them to interrogations, fingerprinting and photographing. Four carried U.S.-issued passports; the other had a New York state driver's license, which is an acceptable form of identification at the Canadian border.

Quite honestly, a driver's license is acceptable form of ID, but it's not proof of citizenship, and anyone who crosses the border with merely a driver's license isn't being smart. You should bring along proof of citizenship; social security card, voter registration card, birth certificate, naturalization documents, e.g. But there's no excuse for detaining the passport holders. So, if not merely profiled for Muslim-sounding names or Hijabs, why were they stopped?

"In this instance, we had credible intelligence that conferences similar to the one from which these individuals were leaving were being used by terrorist organizations to fundraise and to hide the travel of terrorists themselves," said Kristi Clemens, spokeswoman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection...

...Sawsan Tabbaa, 43, an orthodontist in Buffalo, took her four children in the family van for their third trip to the conference, which featured imam Hamza Yusuf. Yusuf is a prominent scholar who visited the White House in the days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to pray with President Bush and endorse his plans for military action.

Tabbaa, who wears hijab, said that at 2 a.m. Dec. 27 she arrived at the border checkpoint where agents asked her about the conference and instructed her to wait inside the customs building. Inside, she said, "I saw all the people from my Islamic community."

Tabbaa, a Syrian-born naturalized citizen, said agents refused to let her leave unless she submitted to fingerprinting. After several hours, she said, a female agent escorted her to a room to demonstrate the procedure.

"She just grabbed my hand and [began] fingerprinting it," Tabbaa said. "I was just forced to do it. She grabbed my hand."

Gosh, it swells me with patriotic fervor to know that Homeland Security would rather detain and fingerprint law-abiding citizens who look different than actually conduct an investigation into the conference which alarmed them so. It's bad investigative work, bad police work, bad public relations, bad protection, bad decisions, and otherwise bad, incompetent, and stupid. The real threat isn't from Muslim Orthondontists day tripping to Toronto with their kids, it's from overzealous, uninformed, undertrained, poorly supervised Homeland "Security" people. A real terrorist could have slipped by undetected while these GI Janes and Joes gave extra scrutiny to the dentist. I wish the plaintiffs luck.

The Soviet Socialist Republic of Erie County

CОВЕТСКИХ СОЦИАЛИСТИЧЕСКИХ РЕСПУБЛИК ИРИЙ КОУНТИЙ Our own Erie County Legislature has employed a common Stalinist/Orwellian trick - when the actual history is messy, just alter the record! Why, I'd not be surprised to find Al DeBenedetti's face airbrushed out of future photos of the leg. Specifically, to quote the Snews:

"Without comment days ago, the Erie County Legislature approved the sanitized minutes of its late-night session of Dec. 8, when members ramming through a 2005 budget turned their collective back on their own rules. The Legislature's record of that night, now official, makes no mention of the procedural errors that triggered a trio of lawsuits, one of which continues. "

And who, might I ask, was behind the messiness in the first place? Why the hack's hack, Chuck "don't call me a Democrat" Swanick and George "I plead the 5th" Holt. They set aside Leg rules on December 8th to ensure that a $1.1 billion budget for a governmental body that we don't even objectively need gets passed asap. What with Holt's office refusing to pay rent on certain legislators' offices, one almost feels like Cusack, Ranzenhofer, DeBenedetti (et al) are today's Zinoviev, Trotsky and Kamenev.

Adelphia Sold

Adelphia was sold to the Time Warner / Comcast joint venture. Good. I never liked Cablevision.

Lawyers, Guns & Money

Hi there. I'm for gun control. I think anyone who wants to own a gun should have to be licensed, take a safety course, and pass a test. Especially for guns capable of easy concealment. If you need a license to own a car, etc. Which means that, assuming that this guy was properly licensed under whatever current scheme we have, the guy in this story is why people should be permitted to have guns. Good for him.

Cheesecake Refinery

I'm very partial to a bunch of chain restaurants that don't exist here. Chief among them are the Cheesecake Factory (which I call refinery), and California Pizza Kitchen. I also like Chevy's and Bertuccis. My all-time fave is probably the Border Cafe in Cambridge & Saugus. A Trader Joe's would be nice, too. I'm such a geek that I've actually sent emails to some of the chains, begging them to come to WNY. So far, no luck. But my luck might be changing. Craig comments on an article about a possible (and needed) $50 million expansion at the Walden Galleria. Pyramid wants to create a village-style entry and add some hitherto-unknown restaurants to the mall. (To get an idea of what they're probably after, check out the Eastview Mall in Victor (near Rochester)). Among them is the Cheesecake Factory. I don't want to get into Craig's whole Bass Pro commentary. Instead, I have two words: Avocado Eggrolls.

Rochester - T.O. Ferry update

Rochester's Democrat & Chronicle has a cool update on the CATS ferry, which has been bought by the City of Rochester and should be up and running again by this summer. Last year, Toronto didn't really seem to give a shit; its terminal building consisted of a few trailers, there was little publicity; most of which trashed Rochester. It seems that everyone involved has learned some valuable lessons from the CATS' original and short-lived demise.

"As opposed to last year, when the launch of the international service piqued little interest in Canada, the atmosphere surrounding the ferry this year is markedly attentive... ...A joint Rochester-Toronto task force was formed to make sure the mistakes of the past weren't repeated. For example, the task force — comprising representatives from Rochester, Toronto, Toronto Port Authority and the province of Ontario — has focused on issues such as Canadian customs and publicity for the ferry. The task force has also reached out to Tourism Toronto and the Greater Rochester Visitors Association. Officials declined to provide details about upcoming marketing campaigns, but said the strategies would be announced soon. Rochester also has benefited because CATS — which engaged in some tough negotiating in its effort to make a profit — is out of the way. "I am not saying that CATS was necessarily wrong in their stance, but as private sector people, they had little patience for the style and pace of governmental deliberations," Rochester Mayor William A. Johnson Jr. said. "The city was able to capitalize on that frustration, and immediately establish good working relations with all of the key government players." Another major advantage in the eyes of Canadian leaders was the hiring of Bay Ferries Ltd., an experienced Canadian company that runs three ferries in eastern Canada and Maine. CATS had no experience operating a vessel. "The hiring of Bay Ferries was the single most important thing they could do for the stabilization of the service," said Lisa Raitt, president and chief executive of the Toronto Port Authority. "This is a company that has a track record."