We are all Keynesians now.

(Article here)

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All are welcome.

I have been very laissez-faire about comments in the past, and I don’t intend to edit them or ban people or delete them unless legally actionable.

However, there are rules and they have been in effect for over a year. They are:

* Do not post threatening, harassing, defamatory, or libelous material.
* Do not intentionally make false or misleading statements.
* Do not offer to sell or buy any product or service.
* Do not post material that infringes copyright.
* Do not post information that you know to be confidential or sensitive or otherwise in breach of the law.
* Keep all comments relevant to the particular WNYMedia.net Site where the comment is being posted.
* Convergence Media Networks LLC will not accept responsibility for information posted in the Comments.

That list is linked to in the paragraph block right above the box where you leave a comment.

If you want to troll comments, I will call you out on it. If comments stop discussing the original post and on-topic comments thereto and instead devolve into ad hominem attacks and criticisms of the commenters themselves, I will remind you of the rules.

How exactly can I enforce this without stanching the free and open exchange of ideas that I cherish on this site? Damned if I know. But I’ll figure something out. I have threatened to shut the comments section down altogether. I almost think that’s better than editing them. I don’t want to have to babysit a bunch of adults.

I don’t understand how discussing a commenter’s alleged sexual proclivities or appearance is relevant to anything at all. So, I’m asking you all to keep it on-topic and cool the hell down. Think before you submit. KTHXBAI.

Ladies and Gentlemen….

…In this corner, we have the Democratic candidate.  Weighing in with a recent hard-fought primary and the backing of Responsible New York…

Jooooeeeeeeee Meeeeeeeeeesi!

…and in this corner, weighing in with 20 years in the Erie County Legislature, career politician,

Michaeelllllll Raaaaaaaaanzenhofer!

Mesi has challenged Ranzenhofer to three debates over the next eight weeks, so that voters can get to know the two candidates and where they stand on issues. 

Says Mesi,

“I believe that voters want new energy, new leadership, and a real plan that focuses on the issues our working families are facing today,” Mesi added.  ”For voters, the choice is clear: we can continue to elect career politicians who produce more of the same business-as-usual politics, or we can choose the change that we need, here at home and in Albany.”

That’s debating I can believe in.

The silliest of silly seasons is almost done, and I’ve said everything that needed saying with respect to the races Tuesday. I’m undecided on the DA’s race. So, this open thread is your turn to promote whom you’re voting for and otherwise argue with each other and insult each other’s mothers.

Frankly, I’m considering doing more and more open threads in an effort to keep comments under actual posts somewhat on-topic, but that’s to be seen.

Anyway, have at it.

UPDATE: Also, join WNYMedia.net and me on Tuesday, primary night, as we talk about the results and interview the happy winners and not-so-happy non-winners.

And this is great, as usual:

UPDATE 2: Ah, hell, I’m just going to keep posting crap to this if I find something interesting. This entry by FiveThreeEight argues that Palin isn’t a hockey mom - she’s a hockey agitator, and the Dems are playing her all wrong.

Initiators win, reactors lose. Expect adversity, because it’s built in. The fourth-line, no-scoring-talent, pest agitators (or as we now call them, “energy guys”) have a specific job. Skate in, take a cheap shot, make it after the whistle. Make it against the rules. Stir something up. Put a wet glove in the other guy’s face and rub it. Get the outrage flowing. Get the opponent not thinking about the game, get them thinking about your shenanigans. And what happens? The “victimized” team loses its composure, hitting back. The guy who hits second is always the guy who goes to the penalty box.

Watching Sarah Palin this week, and the reaction to her by both sides, and all the talk of hockey mommery, I realized that this is who she is. She skates into the corner, throws up an elbow, and the Democrats cry: “Foul!” Hey! She said Obama has never passed a major bill – this is an objective lie! Hey! She ridiculed community organizing the day after Service was the theme! Technically people should punish her by not voting for her over this infraction!

It’s whining, and whiners hit back second and go to the penalty box on top of it.

Sarah Palin is a person who by her own admission found out about the Iraq surge – the centerpiece of the McCain judgment argument – from television. Apologies to conservatives, but technically, objectively, inarguably, this alone makes her unqualified to be President. But we don’t live in that technical or objective world. Political campaigns – as distinct from policy and governance – are the NHL playoffs. It’s only about who survives the war of attrition to the finish line first. Is Brett Hull’s skate still in Dominik Hasek’s crease and was that same situation disallowed in every previous instance throughout that season? Yes, but so what? Dallas had a parade.

I had to post that, if for no other reason than the Buffalo reference.

If you take the time to write a blog post or blog comment that basically consists of the word “yawn”, then why bother posting it?

It’s sort of the same syndrome as writing “how cool is that?” when the implied answer is invariably, “not a whole lot”.

In the past 24 hours, I have had to delete or edit more comments than I’ve had to delete or edit in the almost 5 years I’ve been doing this site.

The rules are:

WNYM seeks to provide a forum for snarky opinions and open discussion. However, we do need to have some ground rules around this joint. In order to make our comments useful and interesting, the following guidelines have been established for comment users. In short; don’t act like a libelous or hate-filled tool and we’ll get along just fine.

Please refrain from posting false statements about people, and I’m also asking people to stop using real people’s names as their nicknames unless, in fact, they are that person. That means no more “Jack Davis” who isn’t Jack Davis; no more “Glenn Gramigna” who isn’t really Glenn Gramigna. Use whatever nickname you want, but don’t appropriate someone else’s real name.

Got it? Thanks so much.

The comments of my site has been all screwed up lately due in part to a program called Spam Karma that we were running. As its name suggests, people who posted comments could build up good or bad karma. Too much bad karma (language that looks spammy (e.g., “casino”), multiple links in comments too many times, etc.) and you’d have a hard time posting a comment at all from that IP. I also had several instances of people having their comments deleted automatically by Spam Karma ex post facto.

Let me assure you that I did not delete any comments, nor have I banned anyone from posting a comment on this site. If you have been affected by this in any way, I sincerely apologize. I do not delete comments at all. If I think they cross a line with respect to defamation, I will edit and leave evidence that I made the edit.

Spam Karma has been replaced with a different program, and hopefully I should be able to maintain some additional control over what it does.

As for the comments that sometimes wander off-topic, would a daily open thread be a good idea? I could even call it, “Mike Hudson’s non-sequitur thread of the day” or something.

If your comment is being blocked or stuck in moderation, feel free to send me an email (see sidebar). I have shut Akismet and Spam Karma off, so if it’s being blocked now, it’s nothing I can change right now. Try using a different email address, or omit any links in the comment. Posting numerous comments in rapid succession may pose a problem, too.

I’ll be taking your questions at Buffalo.com at 1pm today during lunchtime on a new feature over there hosted by Evan Parker Pierce

Update: sorry, had to cancel due to work. We’ll try again soon

UPDATE THE SECOND: Next Wednesday at 12pm.

Unfortunately for this week’s discussion, our spam filter is particularly harsh on the words “casino” and other terminology that is associated with gambling. If your comment is deleted or thrown into moderation, that is the reason. Shoot me an email and I’ll post anything that gets blocked. Sorry for the inconvienence.

From Kelly at Byzantium Shores, who has been doing this longer than I have:

BTW, Alan: your commenters are lunatics. When did that happen, anyway?

I’m not going to go all Buffalo Rising on everyone and start arbitrarily deleting or censoring people’s comments, but it probably wouldn’t kill anyone to pause and think before clicking “submit”.

China and Russia vetoed sanctions that were proposed to take effect against Zimbabwe’s regime in reaction to the recent violent and unfair runoff Presidential election. The sanctions included financial and travel bans on regime apparatchiks and an arms embargo. China and Russia did not want to hamper the efforts of Chinese and Russian arms dealers to sell weapons that the regime could use further to terrorize and brutalize its citizens.

(Background on the ship shown above is here)

I’m thinking of switching the blog up a little. I’m thinking of a new template and of making it a quasi-group blog, permitting certain invited people to post on a periodic basis. Mostly people who like to blog but don’t have the time or desire to maintain a blog full-time anymore.

What, if any, requests do you have with respect to a new template? I don’t want to do anything too dramatic, but I’d like to switch up the design a bit, modernize it to incorporate some new functionality in Wordpress 2.5.

One of the things we had on the old shit.0 white-on-black template was truncated posts that you had to click-through to read the rest of. I didn’t necessarily have a problem with click-through, per se - it was the overall lack of functionality I had with that template that frustrated me. And don’t worry - I won’t be reverting to that.

I write the blog for my own benefit, but am mindful of the fact that you read it and that you don’t want to wade through a bunch of crap. Thoughts you have go in comments and I thank you for them.

Apparently, the video is a 70s era promotional piece for AFSCME, but the voiceover guy recorded this “alternative” version of the script for fun. CAUTION: NSFW LANGUAGE.

This article in Salon, which skewers the United States’ idiotic, backwards, counterproductive border policy with Canada, is must-reading for any Buffalonian.

A snippet:

It’s terrible for trade,” he said. “NAFTA was supposed to be so we were all strong — 450 million of us to compete with those guys in Europe. If you go to Europe, it’s wide open. The borders here are not open, but were getting that way. If 9/11 hadn’t happened, it would have been laxer. Seventy-five percent of the time, when I took a bus to see the Tigers, we just breezed through. Now, they stop the bus and board it.”

Like many other Canadians, Mastronardi finds the restrictions insulting. Proudly multicultural, Canada is scrupulous about minority rights. To American border hawks, that makes it a haven for radical Muslims. In February, Chertoff told the New York Daily News that “more than a dozen” potential terrorists have tried to infiltrate the United States from Canada. According to a DHS report, Canada harbors “known terrorist affiliate and extremist groups, including Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Armed Islamic Group of Algeria.”

Mastronardi scoffed at the idea that the Canada was a haven for radical Muslims. “You’ve got eight million Muslims. We’ve got, what, 800,000?”

This February, I made a trip around the Golden Horseshoe, a cultural and economic region that encompasses the western bell-end of Lake Ontario, from Toronto to Rochester, N.Y. The two sides of the Niagara River have been getting along splendidly ever since the War of 1812 ended. Ontario has the wineries, the Shaw Festival, and the best view of Niagara Falls. New York has the Walden Galleria. The Buffalo Sabres depend on Canadian hockey fans; the Bills are so popular in Canada that they’ll be playing games in Toronto next year. Canadians also cross the border to ski in western New York and fly out of Buffalo-Niagara International Airport.

At Fort Erie Race Track & Slots in Ontario, a popular destination for Americans, Sue, a gambler from Buffalo, was lingering by the slots. “I just carry my birth certificate,” she said. “I got asked coming across. It’s a lot harder going back. They’ll look in your luggage. I saw a group of 80-year-olds, and they had their bags open. It’s not like they’re al-Qaida.”

and

I visited the Soo three years ago. Even then, the border was a serious issue. The DHS would have been a source of derision, with its fleet of Turtle-waxed SUVs and its speedboats churning the river, if it hadn’t make a quick run to Canada such a pain in the ass. “They’re not fighting terrorism,” griped the wife of a Canadian tour boat captain whose business was suffering. “They’re fighting tourism.”

Canadians think the United States has gone all Rambo since 9/11. I found that out on the International Bridge Walk, which starts at Lake Superior State and ends across the river. One morning, I fell in step with David Orazietti, the local member of the Provincial Parliament. Orazietti’s uncle had been captain of the first Lake Superior State hockey team. As a boy, his Pee-Wee hockey squad played in Michigan. So he was worried that a Fortress America would estrange the Soos. The new border-control measures mean that Americans are practically being told to stay home, he said.

At the Canadian end of the bridge, we walked through the border booths, no questions asked. A welcoming committee garlanded us with maple-leaf flags.

This summer, bridge walkers will have to bring birth certificates to celebrate the closeness between the United States and Canada. Next year, passports or the equivalent. It doesn’t make sense to Leisa Mansfield, director of the Sault Chamber of Commerce.

“When you think that the 9/11 attackers were here legally, I doubt a passport is going to protect us against terrorist threats,” she said.

And that’s the point. All of this is sound and fury, signifying nothing. The federal government figures any threat - however minor - must go to eleven, and it has acted accordingly. Octogenarians get searched. All this helps to further retard economic development in border areas like Buffalo and Niagara Falls. It’s bad enough we hamstring ourselves with a despicable state government and lackadaisical county officials. It’s bad enough we keep clinging to past glories rather than plan for future goals. It’s bad enough the state has made itself inhospitable to both business and residents. At least Buffalo is next door to America’s largest trading partner, right? At least Buffalo has all that water, right? Well, the water’s still there, but we’re treating Canada like Mexico, which is disproportionate to the threat.

If we had an ounce of forward thinking, we would, through a bilateral treaty, harmonize entry requirements for Canada and the US. DHS would work in conjunction with Customs Canada at points of entry throughout North America, and border requirements between the two countries would be abolished.

Imagine if we actually installed high-speed rail between a borderless Western New York and Southern Ontario. Hell, you could commute to Toronto from Buffalo or Niagara Falls.

There is so much untapped potential in this city, looking forward. But we have no brand, no goals; instead, we cruise along in an easy mediocrity, and constantly consider what could have been while ignoring what should be.

Direct link to the video at Channel 4 is here.

This year, my wife and I both turn 40 years of age. She goes first - today. To my beautiful wife who loves me and keeps me sane, Happiest of Happy Birthdays.

Also, when I first moved here, there was a little crew of four of us at work who used to have lunch together just about every day in this little windowed conference room in our office. We’d read the paper and talk and laugh about, well everything. As of tomorrow, they’ll all be gone ‘cept for me. I wish the other three all the best and miss mocking the News’ trivia quiz and perusing the real estate transactions and obits.

By Paul Wolf  (www.buffaloideas.com)

I along with 350 others attended a presentation today by Harvard Professor Edward Glaeser. You may recall that Glaeser wrote an article recently titled “Can Buffalo Ever Come Back?” with the sub title of “Probably not- and government should stop bribing people to stay there.”

Glaeser’s point today was that Buffalo can be a successful City, but that people focus on the wrong things to measure the success of a City. Success in Glaeser’s opinion is not about increasing population or about putting up new shiny buildings. In fact an abundance of buildings relative to people is the hallmark of a declining city.

Glaeser received his greatest applause when he stated “Population growth is not the right measure for success. the right measure is how well a city is delivering basic services and providing a quality of life.”  

The core advantage cities had in the past was providing the transportation of goods to a dense population at an affordable price. The core advantage for cities today according to Glaeser is connecting skilled people with ideas and entrepreneurs.

Following Glaeser’s presentation a panel consisting of:

Anthony Armstrong (Local Initiatives Support Corp. (Lisc)

Paul Buckley, (President of a local business Applied Sciences Group)

Robert Gioia (The Oishei Foundation)

Cynthia Zane (Hilbert College)

spoke about how they think the success of a City should be measured. The items mentioned were:

- Lowering the poverty rate

- Lowering the literacy rate

- Having an Elmwood Village in every neighborhood

- An above average high school graduation rate

- The ability for anyone who wants a job to get one

- A diverse mixture of small and large business

When asked where Buffalo should focus first, Glaeser stated schools and education. The bottom line is that successful cities have people with skills and ideas. It was pointed out that WNY has 100,000 students attending 22 colleges and universities. However the higher education community needs to improve their connection with the business community.

What constitutes a successful City in your opinion? How do you think the success of a city should be measured?

Posted by Kevin Hardwick

As a card carrying member of the “vast right-wing conspiracy,” I don’t fancy myself voting for either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama in November. Even so, I find myself growing increasingly annoyed at the chorus of people suggesting that the Democratic superdelegates should automatically support Obama because he has garnered more pledged delegates. That’s not their purpose! The superdelegates are supposed to guide the convention and help them avoid another George McGovern.

After watching the entire debate last night on ABC, I am more convinced than ever that Hillary Clinton will give Democrats their best shot in November. Although Obama did a more than adequate job of defending himself on the Reverend Wright and bitterness questions, I think that Hillary cleaned his clock on the substantive issues in the second half of the debate. Too often, Obama has reminded me of the student who didn’t do the reading and tries to BS his way through the answer.

On the other hand, whether I agree with her or not, I must admit that Hillary comes off as well-prepared. Despite the fact that her campaign has done a terrible job of selling its importance, it is apparent to me that experience does matter. In another four or eight years Barack Obama might have the experience to provide better responses to policy questions at the debates. That, coupled with his charisma and his extraordinary speaking ability, would make him an extremely attractive, almost unbeatable candidate for president. In the meantime, however, the superdelates should do their job - they should vote for Hillary.

By Paul Wolf (www.buffaloideas.com)  

I read an article in Sunday’s Parade Magazine that according to a 2004 U.S. Government Accountability Office study 61% of American corporations, including 39% of large companies, paid no corporate income taxes between 1996 and 2000.

Last year, corporations shouldered just 14.4% of the total U.S. tax burden compared with about 50% in 1940. With corporations paying less, individuals are paying more in taxes.

The article pointed out that in their defense businesses say that U.S. corporate tax rates are the second highest in the developed world, making the U.S. less competitive. On the other hand a study from the nonprofit group Citizens for Tax Justice determined that becuase of loopholes, the corporate tax burden in the U.S. is actually the world’s third lowest when measured as a percentage of gross domestic product.

As I understand it corporations are required to disclose the amount of federal taxes they pay, but they are not required to disclose the amount of state taxes they pay. With the tax filing deadline just the other day, what do you think about these statistics?