Michele Johnson from Broadway Fillmore Alive! invites people to join her tomorrow (Saturday April 1st) at 10:15 am at 97 and 99 Germain as Sam Hoyt & Marc Coppola make a major announcement about demolition funding.

I got an email today from some outfit called “Newstex“, which says it wants to syndicate my content, with a possible monetary payout:

Our company, Newstex, is an aggregator or wholesaler of real-time news, content and commentary that serves customers in the financial, government and entertainment markets. Newstex adds value by aggregating hundreds of digital news feeds from publishers and standardizing the content by adding industry-specific data, stock ticker symbols, keywords and other categorization fields. Newstex clients integrate Newstex’s products into their commercial and proprietary applications for delivery to end-users via the Internet, wireless devices, proprietary networks and dedicated terminations.

We believe that the inclusion of your blog would be a wonderful complement to Newstex’s offering and would like to discuss the potential for licensing it. All we require is a full text of every post via RSS. We pay you a 30% royalty of the gross revenues based on your royalty pool participation for each product your posts are included in and we maintain a hyperlink to your homepage in our dateline. With little effort on your end, you benefit with added exposure, as well as generating revenues for your blog. Examples of licensed blogs include: The Conspiracy to Keep You Poor and Stupid by Donald Luskin and Economic Principals.com by David Warsh.

I’ve never heard of it, and the agreement asks for my SSN or EIN. Which I ain’t giving out to someone who sends me an unsolicited adhesion contract.

Has anyone who isn’t quite as suspicious as I received this?

Click it. Tom Toles gets to the heart of congress’ ethical issues.

HT NYCO

Remember when Tokasz forced the Legislature’s hand and basically blackmailed it into giving the City and other municipalities $12.5 million per year in sales tax revenue, or else they wouldn’t approve the final penny tax hike?

Here’s one of my posts from that time. Here’s another. Go read ‘em.

That’s definitely not the kind of thing you want to have fall on your lap when you’re in the midst of fixing an historic county budget crisis.

The legislature struck a deal whereby Tokasz and other Albany lawmakers promised to funnel $12.5 or so in State money to help plug the gap.

Specifically, as you’ll recall,

Whether all of that will add up to $12.5 million is up in the air. Tokasz and Volker have promised, according to Giambra, to “hold the County harmless” and make the money up to the County. Dr. Barry suggested that the County get a firm deal from the State.

If they’re not holding the County harmless on this thing, now’s the time for the leg to start making very angry noises at our Albany reps. They were duped. Bamboozled. Punked. Pwn3d.

But let’s interject some levity:

George Holt hailed this “great day” for the City of Buffalo, evidently not realizing that many of his constituents pay property taxes to the County of Erie.

Not as great as, say, a Texas basketball camp getting thousands of dollars in Erie County member money, but a great day, nonetheless.

So, back to the sharing. Everything’s all set, right? It’s all a wash, right?

Not so fast.

While tax hikes balanced the 2006 budget, county leaders initially needed to find about $40 million in savings so they could keep taxes flat in 2007 and start restoring reserves. Then Assembly Majority Leader Paul A. Tokasz, D-Cheektowaga, State Sen. Dale M. Volker, R-Depew, and other state lawmakers from Erie County forced the county to share $12.5 million more in next year’s sales tax income with cities, towns and villages - as other counties in New York have done.

The state lawmakers promised to help funnel $12.5 million in state money back to Erie County to cover its loss. But with the new state budget about to be completed for its April 1 start, county officials see only about $500,000 they had not expected. “At the moment, we have no agreement on anything that would fill this $12.5 million hole,” Hartman said.

Paul and Dale strike again. What a manipulation.

What Esmonde says:

We saw another reason why this week. The Senecas want our pauper city to spend $6 million on sewers, signs and better roads around its proposed downtown casino. There may not be much we can do about it.

The 2001 tribal-state compact says that the city’s meager cut of the casino take is partly reimbursement for “costs incurred in connection with services provided to [the casino].” Like, say, fixing the roads around it.

It’s another reminder of how little say the public had in so big a deal. George Pataki signed the Indian casino pact and lawmakers OK’d it. Albany gets a nice cut of the gambling take, the Senecas rake in the winner’s share and the city slowly realizes it got the short end.

Now the guy with the short stack has to fix roads for the high roller. Talk about busted.

The State gets most of the (non-Seneca -ed.) casino money.

Let. The. State. Fix. The. Bloody. Road. Its. Damn. Self.

My car is at the shop today to get fitted for some new summer shoes (plus two warranty issues, new wipers, and a new rear emblem). This means that I was without my Sirius for a couple of rides I had to make on this 70+ degree March (!) Buffalo day.

The ride in, I just listened to whatever music station - I think Star 102.5 - was already on the radio.

The ride later, I put Bauerle on.

He was talking pretty casually about the dire need to put a fence up between the US and Mexico.

But not just any ordinary fence. Oh, no NO!

An ordinary fence would merely act as a barrier and deterrent; it would only help thwart illegals from coming here to bus your tables, pick your fruit, and clean your hotel room and other nefarious acts.

That’s hardly enough protection for the fatherla, motherlan, homeland.

Bauerle suggested electrifying the fence. That way, those pesky 20-year-old girls with dark features from the jungles of Guatemala could actually die trying to come here to do odd jobs.

I didn’t hear any similar talk with respect to the Canadian border, incidentally.

But the best was a caller at about 9:50 who had an even better suggestion than Bauerle’s. He suggested just shooting illegals as they tried to cross the border. Shooting them dead. With guns.

He didn’t elaborate as to whether the murder should take place before or after the illegals actually made a go of it over the electrified fence. Presumably, Mexico might have a problem if American bullets whizzed onto their property.

In any event, any rational, normal radio talk show host would have cut the caller off and called him what he is - a homicidal maniac. Bauerle? He just rolled with it, and praised the caller for “taking seriously” the grave “threat” to our “homeland” that Mexican laborers represent.

Bauerle’s the kind of guy who would give up just about every single one of his Constitutional freedoms for the sake of safety, methinks.

Because he must go through Depends like crazy.

The Erie County “control board” has lost its chair and vice-chair in recent months, and those slots have yet to be re-filled. The adult supervisors need a supervisor.

I guess we’ve found the one job more thankless than any other in town.

Joel Giambra going to Congress is about as likely happen as a ninety-degree day in Buffalo, in January.

How do you know it’s springtime in Buffalo?

It’s over 60 degrees. People are out enjoying the patios on Elmwood. Sunroofs are open. Radios are audible. (Notice it isn’t even April yet).

And, for me, summer tires and alloy rims replace snowtires and steelies. Friday, bitches.

How could I forget Fawlty Towers and Monty Python’s Flying Circus?

WNED played another “best of” compilation of skits tonight. Including one of my favorite Cleese/Chapman skits:

Beethoven, Mozart, Chopin, Liszt, Brahms, Panties…I’m sorry…Schumann, Schubert, Mendelssohn and Bach. Names that will live for ever.

But there is one composer whose name is never included with the greats. Why is it that the world never remembered the name of Johann Gambolputty de von Ausfern- schplenden- schlitter- crasscrenbon- fried- digger- dingle- dangle- dongle- dungle- burstein- von- knacker- thrasher- apple- banger- horowitz- ticolensic- grander- knotty- spelltinkle- grandlich- grumblemeyer- spelterwasser- kurstlich- himbleeisen- bahnwagen- gutenabend- bitte- ein- nürnburger- bratwustle- gerspurten- mitz- weimache- luber- hundsfut- gumberaber- shönedanker- kalbsfleisch- mittler- aucher von Hautkopft of Ulm?

Jen suggests a Bisons-themed BloggerCon (which would be the third iteration of that event).

According to the Bisons’ website:

The Buffalo Bisons are experts at helping you design a fantastic event for any occasion. There are a variety of food and party options, all at a discounted rate! A group of twenty (20) or more will receive a ticket price discount, recognition on the Bisons left field message center, plus a 10% discount in our souvenir store on the day of the game.

The “fridaynightbash!®” (evidently a registered trademark) includes:

…the pre game tent parties, highlighted by DJs or live music bands and food and drink specials. After the Bisons game, enjoy a spectacular post game fireworks show as the sky lights up with an awesome display of power and light.

Opening Day is Friday, April 14th, and if today’s weather is any indication….

So?

As I mentioned yesterday, Supreme Court Justice Scalia really is quite the character. And he lies, too. How happy and fun.

“The judge paused for a second, then looked directly into my lens and said, ‘To my critics, I say, ‘Vaffanculo,’ ” punctuating the comment by flicking his right hand out from under his chin, Smith said.

Vaffanculo means “go get fucked up your ass.”

So, rather than simply moving his hand under his chin to indicate “indifference,” which is what Scalia claimed he was doing in an open letter to the Herald, in fact Scalia flipped off the media and used a phrase in Italian that is incredibly vulgar, and that only reinforces the gesture not being a sign of indifference, but the gesture itself meaning “fuck you” in Italian.

While the gesture itself may be open to interpretation, we now have a witness who says that Scalia intended for that gesture to mean “va fanculo”. Did I mention he did it in church?

I think it’s all Clinton’s fault, personally.

HT Clouseau in comments.

I had promised only to apply the Kunz-Goldman mediocrity/mockability scale to her Monday columns, but this stood out today.

Mockability factor of 8.5. I know she can do worse.

It sticks out not just for its patent ignorance, but also because it follows her tried-and-true practice of filling a national or local news story in with a completely pointless personal anecdote. It’s a throwaway blog entry, at best:

Close encounters

Buzz misses Caspar Weinberger. He and Ronald Reagan made the world less scary.

OK. I’m done now.

You miss Cap Weinberger. A guy who lied to the congressional investigation into Iran-Contra, was indicted for it (multiple federal felonies), and subsequently pardoned. What a great fucking American.

He and Ronald Reagan made the world less scary, did they?

What, exactly, is less scary now as compared with, say, 1986? Do we miss the tight predictability of bipolar cold-war politics? Yeah, it was really difficult to fight proxy wars in Asia and Africa, knowing that mutually assured destruction with nuclear weapons rendered any hot war between the Soviets and us an impossibility. It was really difficult dealing with octogenarian central committee heads who died on an almost weekly basis.

The breakdown of the Soviet Union led to such “safety” as the war in Chechnya, a power vacuum in Afghanistan, conflict between Georgia and Azerbaijan, and Armenia. It led to the introduction of the words “Ossetia”, “Ingushetia” and “Nagorno-Karabakh” into the vocabulary of nightly news anchors. It threw all of the Soviet client states (including such wonderlands as South Yemen) into a chaotic power vacuum. If you thought the French were bad colonialists, they look downright competent compared with the Soviets.

Now, we have rogue states and non-state terrorist groups plotting mass murder of Americans over internet chat rooms and bulletin boards. Even if we wanted to negotiate with them, we’d have no one with whom to negotiate.

The Soviets never hurled multiple Ilyushins into the World Trade Center.

I’ll take 1986-era “scary” over this any day.

Here comes the pointlessness:

Luckily, we have a personal connection to the man. In 1990, our brother George was in London, and he saw a poster saying Weinberger would be at a bookstore, signing books, for two hours starting - then! George hurried to the store. Few people were around, and he recognized Weinberger. He said, “Mr. Weinberger, do you mind if I get my picture taken with you?” Weinberger, great diplomat that he was, graciously agreed. George was wearing his Buffalo Bills No. 12 Joe Ferguson jersey, and we still marvel that Weinberger, his mind no doubt on international affairs, resisted chatting about Buffalo or football.

Wow. What a fantastic anecdote. All it’s missing is an excruciatingly detailed description of that morning’s breakfast and the subsequent shitting of said breakfast’s waste materials.

Oh, and the former Bechtel VP, OMB administrator, FTC chair, and Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, and Secretary of Defense was never a “diplomat“. Much less a “great” one. For Christ’s sake.

(Updated the title. It was a bit obscure.)

With a tip of the hat to the Geek, check out some video of House Democrats finally finding their courage.

Several reps stand in front of an easel, bearing a poster with a list of recent Bush disasters/initiatives, and take out a big rubber stamp and show that the Republican House has just gone along with every damn fool idea that comes out of Rove House.

It’s going to be a very, very interesting campaign season for Dems this year.

Locally, Jack Davis formally announces today, and the Reynolds people are already attacking him relentlessly. Attaway to win the battle of ideas, guys. Davis was on Channel 2 yesterday and Scott Levin does this thing called the “Red Zone” or something, which sounds like an antipersperant. Davis looked a bit uncomfortable in an uncomfortable situation. He couldn’t figure out whether to look into the camera, or look at Levin. He also slipped and referred to Levin’s “listeners”, probably having been on radio all day.

Rookie mistakes. It’ll probably improve. Jim O is already predicting Davis wins.

Random Thoughts 101 has a poll up, asking people their 5 favorite shows ever.

His are, in order, Seinfeld, Family Guy, Cheers, 24, Pardon the Interruption.

Mine, in order, would be:

1. The Office (UK)
In any given episode, sublime, viciously biting, and cringe-inducing. Best TV ever.

2. The Amazing Race
Travel. Travel. Travel.

3. Seinfeld
New York City gets trendy, and people hang out and crack wise.

4. The Sopranos.
Easily the best drama ever on television.

5. Curb Your Enthusiasm.
Although I no longer have HBO, Larry David plays himself - a funny, pathetic schmuck. George Costanza moves to LA, gets rich and is married.

Outside Counsel as a fly on the wall:

I’ve had some beauts over the years, but this guy Moussaoui has got to win the Worst Client Ever Prize. “Me and the Shoe Bomber, that was the plan. Sure, we’re like this, me ‘n him. And before that, I was on the grassy knoll. Yeah, that’s the ticket.” Can you imagine what the witness prep must have been like? “Uh, Mr. Moussaoui, you weren’t even born when McKinley was shot. You’ve never even been to Buffalo.”

I was talking with a friend of mine today about how bizarre it is that I live here now.

Every so often, I meta-post about moving to Western New York, but on a sixty-degree March day when everything seems to be going your way, that topic comes to the fore.

It struck me today - and I had never thought before of it in this way - that if someone had told me in 1999 that within 10 years I’d be living in, of all places, Buffalo, and that I’d have a wide circle of great new friends, and that I’d be writing for fun and for money, I’d have thought they were smoking rock.

Hell, if someone had told me in 1999 that today I’d consider myself a liberal, I’d have thought them crazy.

And life is weird that way, how things change. How good times wax and wane.

Because I consider right now to be a good time. Shit be waxin’.

Although I’m generally a cynical bastard, I am seeing a lot of good things happening in this region. I am seeing a lot of good in people I know and meet.

I grew up downstate, and that’s always going to be “home”. I still feel extraordinarily comfortable hopping Metro North into town, and getting around on the subway. I love being there and instinctively knowing my way around. I love the sights, sounds, and bustle of that City.

When I lived in Boston, I used to kid myself that it was a more sedate version of New York. But it’s not. There was a joviality and friendliness that New York has, which Boston lacked.

In New York, people break balls. In Boston, they break noses.

That’s a joke, but it’s shorthand for my perception of the two places.

And although Boston was only 3 hours by car from the New York metro, I never really felt like it was home. I never really assimilated into that City’s culture. Perhaps that’s partly due to a lack of effort on my part, but I’m somewhat of a different person in 2006 than I was in 1996.

Buffalo is something different. In its own way, it’s welcomed me with open arms, and although the place I grew up is a good 8 hour drive away, I feel more at home here than anywhere I’ve lived since leaving Westchester.

So, thank you, Buffalo. And thank you, Buffalonians.

Thanks for this amazing place.

The Buffalo Gun Club on Maple in Amherst is sold to Benderson, which wants to put up a “lifestyle center”, which is shorthand for a mall that looks like an old-fashioned main street.

There’s one called Legacy Village in Cleveland. Check it out.

The commenters at BR (which is breaking its own rule by highlighting an Amherst development) are, predictably, in fierce disagreement with the idea of a lifestyle center, and westcoastperspective himself calls it a “fancy strip mall”.

Yes, but this is Western New York. We’re used to just plain old strip malls. We’re not talking Gates Circle, here. We’re talking UB North. It’s already overrun with strip malls.

Put something up in Amherst that mimicks urban design, and it’s a step in the right direction.

One of the first things that creeped me out when I moved here was hearing the ignorant prattling of people on Sandy Beach spewing hatred at the City. I don’t like it when City folk do the same at the suburbs, either. We’re in this together, folks.

HT to Figmo at Buffalo Rising, this announcement is a good news trifecta.

Firstly, it represents an adaptive re-use of an existing structure within the City of Buffalo. On the East Side, no less.

Secondly, Sodexho is bringing 160 jobs to the City of Buffalo.

Thirdly, $22 million renovation at 22 Grider. $22 million.

Justice Scalia. What a character.

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, in a scathing letter to the editor of the Boston Herald, accused the newspaper’s staff of watching “too many episodes of the Sopranos” for interpreting a hand gesture he made at a cathedral as obscene.

The Boston Herald reported Monday the justice made “an obscene gesture, flicking his hand under his chin” in response to a question about whether lawyers might question his impartiality in matters of church and state. The incident occurred after he attended Mass at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross.

Scalia says it wasn’t obscene at all.

…but dismissive. Scalia said he had explained the gesture’s meaning to no avail to the reporter, whom he referred to as “an up-and-coming ‘gotcha’ star.”

To back his interpretation of the gesture, Scalia in his letter quoted from Luigi Barzini’s book, “The Italians:” “The extended fingers of one hand moving slowly back and forth under the raised chin means ‘I couldn’t care less. It’s no business of mine. Count me out.’”

But the reporter didn’t describe the extended fingers of one hand moving slowly back and forth under a raised chin. He said that Scalia “flicked” his hand under his chin. To “flick” something is not to move something slowly, nor “back and forth”.

Scalia said in the letter, written to Executive Editor Kenneth Chandler, that the reporter leapt to conclusions that it was offensive because he initially explained his gesture by saying, ‘That’s Sicilian.’”

“From watching too many episodes of the Sopranos, your staff seems to have acquired the belief that any Sicilian gesture is obscene _ especially when made by an ‘Italian jurist.’ (I am, by the way, an American jurist.),” he wrote.

The Herald had referred to him as an “Italian-American jurist.”

Boy oh boy. This jurist makes an obscene gesture. In church. It gets reported (and he told the Herald not to, by the way, because Scalia gets to tell the press what to do). He then makes up some bullshit story, and implies that the Herald has some sort of anti-Italian bias. Baby.

I always thought that flick meant “go to hell”. Or “ma va fanculo.”

Maybe it’s part of the Opus Dei secret handshake.

The NYS budget deadline is Saturday, and WGRZ is reporting that a $112 billion budget is on track to be approved on time for the second year in a row. It’s got $2 billion more than Pataki had proposed.

Tax-free week would be abolished, because the state’s 4% sales tax on clothes would be gone. People may also get a property tax rebate of $300 - $800 based on STAR. There’s also a child tax credit for parents of kids aged 4-17 (parents of infants and toddlers are, evidently, SOL).

Everyone is focusing on the timeliness of the budget and these few gimmes. I wonder how much stuff is in there that’s just going to screw us in the long run.

Procedure vs. substance. Which one matters more to you?

*Caution. Very bad language ahead. Don’t say I didn’t warn you*

A poll says that people experience more cursing now than they did before. I happen to like profanity. Here’s an excerpt:

Nearly three-quarters of fucking prude-ass “pay fucking attention to me” Americans questioned last week - 74 motherfucking percent - said they encounter profanity and shit in public frequently or occasionally, according to a completely fucking useless Associated Press-Ipsos poll. Two-thirds fuckin’ said they think people swear more than they did 20 Goddamn motherfucking years ago. And as for, well, the gold motherfucking standard of foul words, a healthy 64 percent of assholes polled said they use the F-word _ ranging from several times a day (8 percent) to a few times a year (15 percent).

At least, that’s how I read that story.

Many of you know I live in the town of Clarence. A nice little corner of Sprawlivania. Lots of green space, lots of parks, lots of subdivisions.

Yesterday, we held a referendum on whether Clarence will implement a townwide garbage district. Currently, residents can choose from among three different carting companies. The cost is over $300/year, give or take, the service is somewhat limited to the number of cans you can put out at any one time, and other restrictions exist, as well. Plus, with three companies out, you get three weekdays’ worth of garbage trucks and separate recycling trucks rumbling down the streets.

The proposal would have permitted the town to hire, through competitive bidding, one private garbage hauler which would serve the entire town on the same day each week, with few restrictions on service and a halving of the annual price for the service.

Town taxes would have increased by about $160/year, but obviously we’d no longer have to pay that $300 to the companies we have now.

Random Thoughts 101 reports that the referendum was unsuccessful. He says:

The garbage referendum was shot down Tuesday night in the Town of Clarence.

Just like in the Town of Hamburg last year, voters basically said “don’t mess with my trash.”

I’m confused about this because both municipalities claimed they would not be making money if the referendum was approved and that residents would actually save money in the long run.

I think this is a statement on government and the lack of trust people have in their elected officials and a lot of it seems to have stemmed from the 2005 Erie County fiscal crisis.

Agree? Disagree?

I disagree. I think it had a lot to do with the fact that Clarence is a pretty conservative town, and has an aversion to taxes, period. It wouldn’t have much to do with trusting electeds and government, because the referendum (assuming people bothered to read it) was clear that a private company would be retained.

What probably killed it was the snowbirds. Evidently, when they go to Florida for the winter, they can halt (and not pay for) their garbage service up here. So, for them, it was either a wash or a bit cheaper to keep the current arrangement.

Money’s money. I’d much rather pay the town $160/year than pay BFI $330/year. I don’t care if you call it a tax or not.

Ken Mehlman sent a memo out admonishing Republican congresspeople to remain loyal to, and not criticize, the President. Evidently, Bush still enjoys good approval ratings among Republicans, although only about 1/3 of all voters think he’s doing a good job.

3. The President is seen universally as the face of the Republican Party. We are now brand W. Republicans. The following chart shows the extremely close correlation between the President’s image and overall ratings of the party.

And I think it’s great. I definitely think that Republican candidates should wrap their arms around and embrace Bush and his policies this election season.

Things like immigration reform and Dubai Ports world will help keep some Republicans away, while helping to increase Democratic turnout.

Read the whole memo after the jump. (HT Americablog)
Read the rest of this entry »