on WBEN.

Click the link to see Barack Obama’s press release with respect to legislation he will introduce calling for redeployment of US troops from Iraq to commence by May 1, 2007 and be completed no later than March 31, 2008. It more or less tracks the bipartisan Iraq Study Group’s recommendations.

The thinking is, we invaded it. We got rid of the tyrant. We helped them set up a government. Now, we have a nascent civil / sectarian war brewing where we’re trying to separate Sunni Qaeda and ex-Ba’athist militias from the Shia Mahdi Army. Time for Iraq to get its own act together. Judging by recent events, it’s become the Shia revenge government rather than any sort of unity government. I figure that will go on for several years, and Iraq will be a failed state and eventually be partitioned among the Kurds, Shia, and Sunni. Heckuva job, Bushie.

As for Obama, TPM is right that this is quite the gamble.

There’s a hearing tomorrow at 11am before Judge Kevin Dillon (3rd floor of Old County Hall) (registration req.) on Holt’s motion for a temporary restraining order to get him back on the legislature while his case against the county is pending.

Should be an interesting hearing. No matter what Judge Dillon does, it’ll probably end up at the 4th Dept Appellate Division in Rochester.

Find Amy’s friend Charlie a job.

He’s looking for something in business development or marketing, but might take something that wasn’t a perfect fit to stay here. He’s bright, energetic, and willing to work hard…if he gets the chance.

According to the New York Times’ Empire Zone blog, the Assembly’s Democrats met behind closed doors to decide what to do re: Hevesi’s replacement.

“behind closed doors” being emblematic of the problem with Albany in general. Sayeth the Times:

They can suck it up, and pick one of the three comptroller candidates whose names were forwarded by the expert panel that their leader agreed to. Or they can go their own way by picking an Assemblyman for the post – humiliating the Democratic governor who agreed on the process with them.

I don’t see it as humiliating Spitzer. I see it as the Assembly upping the ante. I would also see that as the beginning of Shelly Silver’s fall from power, if not grace.

The Times Union reports that nothing was really accomplished. While Illuzzi has already announced that Tom DiNapoli “really wants the job” and that:

The Times-Union quotes the guy who is probably Illuzzi’s “source”:

Assemblyman Tom DiNapoli, D-Great Neck, one of the four remaining Assembly candidates for comptroller said there is a fair amount of “frustration” among the members for agreeing to a process that “didn’t make a whole lot of sense from the beginning.”

So far, that sounds like the only point of agreement among the Assembly Democrats, who haven’t yet gotten around to a vote on whether they should ignore the panel’s three picks and strike out on their own.

Gabe hit the nail on the head:

The DL&W is too isolated from the downtown urban fabric and too hidden behind the HSBC Arena. Having the market there would require too much dealmaking right off the bat. Start small then expand.

Instead of looking for a mega-complex of almost Transitroadian size in which to locate a downtown Flea Market, how about appropriating (with permission) a surface parking lot or something and start it small. Then, let it grow organically. We tend sometimes to have to have “big, successful, and now” when we should just start small and see how it goes.

He’s spending today’s 3 hours basically calling accused bike path killer Altemio Sanchez’s wife, Kathy, an enabler who shares some culpability with her husband. How could a wife be clueless about this, he asks. How could she continue to go to court to support him when he won’t even look at her?

Is there any evidence that she knew or should have known that Sanchez may have been a killer? Not that I’ve heard. At worst, she knew he was unfaithful - he has two arrests for soliciting prostitutes. But a killer? A rapist? I’ve seen or heard nothing whatsoever to lead to the conclusion - or even an insinuation - that she knew.

Assuming, therefore, that she didn’t know, I wonder what Bauerle’s getting at by spending so much time rubbing salt into her wounds? After all, she finds out her husband is accused of being a monster, he gets thrown in jail, her world is turned completely upside down. Now she gets a top-52 market radio host hurling crap in her direction? I’m sure she really appreciates it.

A woman called in to ask why Bauerle was piling on and putting Kathy Sanchez on trial. He maintains that it’s a “legitimate question”, and winds up doing what most bullying radio yakkers do - he cuts her off and calls on “stupid people” to stop calling his show.

Now, he’s got some FBI profiler on the phone, and he’s running through his crackpot assumptions and theories.

Albany - is it getting any less dysfunctional under Governor Spitzer?

There’s a battle royal brewing between the two most powerful Democrats in New York State politics - Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and the Governor.

Hevesi’s replacement is to be chosen by the state legislature as a whole, which has a Democratic majority. Therefore, we’re deep in Silver country.

Predictably, therefore, Silver has been pushing for an Assembly Democrat to be selected.

What Albany chose to do is set up a panel of three ex-comptrollers (city and state) to help winnow the field down to (up to) five finalists.

The panel selected only three finalists, none of whom are Assemblypeople. The pushback on this started almost instantly. Governor Spitzer told the legislature to abide by the decision and pick from the three finalists, Howard Weitzman, Martha Stark and William Mulrow.

Silver has made some noise about completely ignoring the panel’s recommendation and picking whomever he wants. Spitzer apparently realizes that he’s in the midst of a war. For instance, today Spitzer was to give a speech and reporters were given an advance copy that read:

One of the core features of our new Four Year Investment Plan will be to establish universal access to quality pre-kindergarten education – something that has been a priority of Speaker Silver for many years.

Except, when he delivered the speech, he omitted the second part of that sentence - where Silver is complimented.

The New York Times has endorsed Nassau County Comptroller Weitzman, and warns Silver:

With reform starting to take hold, at long last, in Albany, it would be a disturbing slide backward if members of the Legislature abandoned the process in order to pick one of their own. We hope that they choose from the fine list of finalists, and that their choice is Mr. Weitzman.

Sheldon Silver, Joseph Bruno, and Eliot Spitzer agreed to use the panel of three “wise men” to help select a Comptroller candidate. There was no guarantee that the finalist/s had to come from the legislature, nor should there have been. The panel interviewed about 18 candidates and selected the three best ones. Not the three best legislators, but the three best candidates. As Capitol Confidential notes,

Silver really is in a bind here. If he goes along with the panel - and Spitzer - he risks mutiny among the members of his Democratic conference, who are already angry at the speaker for agreeing to the panel process in the first place when the state Constitution clearly gives the Legislature the power to pick the next comptroller.

But, if Silver sides with his members and bucks the panel, he not only risks a war with the state’s most powerful pol (Spitzer), but also the wrath of newspaper editorial boards like the one at the Times, which has been championing reform of Albany for years.

Albany - is it getting any less dysfunctional? The governor picked a fight with Shelly Silver. That in itself is pretty great. Better still is the probability that the governor will prevail.

You are cordially invited to join the Buffalo Old Home Week family at Allen Street Hardware Café, one of Buffalo’s coolest bars on Wednesday, January 31st at 6:30 p.m. for the first Happy to Be Here Hour of the year!

Grab every Buffalo Booster you know and come share the community spirit to celebrate all that is great about Buffalo. And if you have been having trouble getting your hands on the hottest tickets in town, we will be raffling off tickets for a Buffalo Sabres home game with the proceeds going to Revitalize Buffalo and Buffalo Old Home Week.

These gatherings are a great way to meet others who share your passion for our fair city. There will be plenty of Buffalo energy. Enjoy the high spirits and rich stories of people who have come from or wandered all over the nation and the world and found that Buffalo is where they want to live.

There will be no shortage of warm and enthusiastic people to meet, so even if you come alone and do not know a soul, you will leave with new friends and new connections. There will be plenty to talk about! Starting this month, we will be featuring individuals and businesses that have chosen to live, work and play in Buffalo. We will hear their stories, find out why they chose to be here, why they plan to stay, and what they are doing to enhance the community. And you never know, these same terrific tales may just show up on TV, radio or in print over the next several months. But that is another initiative and we will share the details of it with those in attendance. Of course, we will also be making some important announcements about upcoming Buffalo Old Home Week events!

At the January Happy to Be Here Hour you will meet Buffalo by Choice resident Michael Gainer, who has decided that this city is the best place to live, work, and play. He chose to move to Buffalo just 14 months ago, and already has made an enormous impact on the city. Among other endeavors, this roll-up-your sleeves guy has founded Buffalo Youth Corps to guide his work with disadvantaged youth, and is proactively promoting the reuse of the construction materials, especially those generated during demolition. Come hear his fascinating tale — from Erie to Boston to Buffalo, and around the world with Patch Adams — and meet the kind of can-do, creative classindividuals who are deciding not only to make Buffalo their home, but to make it better place, as well.

At the suggestion of a writer, Buffalo Rising is investigating the creation of a weekend downtown Flea Market. The model is the Chelsea Flea Market in New York. Buffalo Rising looked at the DL&W behind HSBC, which has about 70,000 SF of space. Chris Byrd suggests the Broadway Market, which has 100,000 SF of space.

Nothing wrong with a flea market - but I’d like it to more closely resemble this:

Bashar Issa is a rich young Iraqi-Briton from Manchester who may be Buffalo’s savior, Buffalo’s latest disappointment, or something in-between. Buffalo Rising was quite literally following Mr. Issa around during his trip to our area last week, so something that was intended to be kept quiet made it instead to its “City” section. Oh, well.

Mr. Issa visited the Central Terminal.

Mike Miller writes:

The restoration of a complex the size of the Central Terminal will take years and will only start with a viable business plan. From where we began in 1997, with a dollar, a dream and a 500,000 square foot monster to clean, few people would have given us a chance to be back on the map again and in discussions with an interested international developer. Ours is definitely the story of “the little engine that could”.

I am more convinced than I have ever been that nothing is impossible. As evidenced by some of the comments on the BRO post, there are still those who don’t believe that the terminal can or even should be redeveloped. Luckily for us, Bashar is not one of them.

The revitalization of Buffalo and the restoration of its treasures does not, and should not, end on the east side of Elm Street. Of course, the Terminal presents its own set of challenges that aren’t shared with, say, the Statler. But people will go to the Terminal for the right reasons. Let’s don’t say it can’t be done before it’s even been tried.

OTOH, we can always laugh at the Manchester Evening News’ mistaking Buffalo for New York City.

Wow. I mean, wow. Right down to the improper use of apostrophes.

The Islamic fascism native to the Islamic Republic of Iran as well as other Islamic theocracies is the 21 century version of Hitler’s Mein Kampf – the torch of this template of fascism was simply passed from the Nazi’s to the Wahabbi leaders of Islam.

“[T]he torch of this template of fascism was … passed”. The Sunni Wahabbists are lumped in with the Shia who run Iran, as if they’re two peas in a pod. Iran is an oppressive theocratic state, but it’s no Nazi Germany. Not by a long shot. To say that it is is to cheapen the memory of the victims of the Nazi holocaust.

Due, in part, to America’s handling of Islamic terrorism spanning multiple administrations, the number of hostages held by Islamic terrorists has risen to 300 million people in the U.S., plus the entire population of Israel and the rest of the free Western world over the last 26 years. Unbelievably, some of the very same terrorists responsible for the taking of our Americans in 1979 are, unfortunately, still sucking air, some even leading countries and winning awards.

I don’t feel like I’m held hostage - do you? I certainly won’t let myself be figuratively “held hostage” by a bunch of religious extremists in Baghdad or Teheran any more than I’d let myself be figuratively “held hostage” by a fearmongering guy with no visible means of support.

This article, for instance, is all about fearmongering, conjecture, assumptions, logical leaps, and non-sequiturs.

Can someone please provide me with Mr. Hagmann’s credentials?

Incidentally, I notice that Weenie and the Butt Mr. Bauerle has reverted his opening string of humorous copyrighted clips to a prior iteration. There’s a Family Guy clip, the opening few notes of Wild Cherry’s “Play that Funky Music, White Boy”, and it goes on from there.

The irony of Bauerle using any American Dad or Family Guy clips is that those shows mercilessly and constantly lampoon people like…Bauerle. Especially Stan Smith - the half-witted, xenophobic, knee-jerk protagonist in American Dad. Maybe Bauerle is hiding an alien that sounds like Paul Lynde.

Margaret Sullivan puffs the News’ soon-to-be substantive and “dynamic” web presence, which will inter alia permit News reporters to blog and otherwise update breaking stories on its site. Much like Boston.com has done for, oh about eleven years.

That’s great and I eagerly await the News’ foray into 21st century publishing. Most of her piece centered around the business aspect of the decision. Union vote. What Mr. Buffett has to say about it all. The younger generation are more attuned to new media than old, so a bigger web presence was inevitable. Buffaloi has a nice take on it all.

Then this paragraph:

And, while I’m hardly an unbiased party, I am convinced that newspapers provide something critically important that other media often do not: depth, thoughtfulness, investigative skills and an enterprising (rather than reactive) approach to news.

All of it true. The part I’m not thrilled with is “enterprising (rather than reactive)”. Every single blog in this town - whether it’s political, personal, sports-oriented, or other - takes from personal experience. If Bfloblog watches a Sabres game and reports on it (which it does religiously), how is that different from what the News does? If I go to a Legislative meeting, or I live-blog a debate, or Geek and Watchdog attend a Reynolds presser or I go to an ECHDC meeting and then report on it, how is that significantly different from what the News does?

It’s not. It’s as enterprising as anyone, as proactive as anyone. With blogging, we can incorporate citizen journalism with commentary and punditry. Yes, sometimes we do pull stuff out of the News and react to it. This very post is a case in point. But oftentimes, we provide actual coverage and commentary that rivals anything the News does, and especially anything the electronic media do. We’re unfettered by space and time restrictions, and we’re no dummies.

In any event, I wish Ms. Sullivan and her paper well in their new endeavor.

HBO Tonight at 10.

Here’s a clip from episode 1 from season 2 where Andy (Ricky Gervais) gives Patrick Stewart a copy of his script, and Stewart pitches his own script to Andy. It’s unexpectedly hilarious.

…and I’ve seen everything.

And a clip of Andy (Gervais) directing Keith Chegwin in a hilarious scene.

This article hammers home a very important point.

Electoral fusion - at least as practiced in New York - is inherently corrupt, and should be abolished as soon as practicable.

Red’s take here.
Dan’s take here.

I’d like to know why that story was relegated to Saturday’s paper?

We sometimes like to point to Erie, PA as being the model for what Buffalo could be. After all, their retail, property, and other taxes are much lower than WNY’s. Enviably so.

But evidently, according to EriePressable, they have problems very similar to ours.

Which raises the question: if it’s not just the taxes, then what?!

The York Staters are toying with the whole “upstate secedes” notion, (a notion which, on balance, hurts upstate more than it helps it). But they’re soliciting ideas for an upstate flag. Check it out here.

If Canada can have a maple leaf, certainly we should have a snowflake or something?

This Sunday, the Professor will host terrorism expert Michael Scheuer (Canisius ‘74) by phone at the top of the show. My understanding is that he has actual credentials and is unaffiliated with the folks at the Northeast Intelligence Network.

Jim Ostrowski will be in-studio from 10:15 until 11:00, talking Catholic Church, Brian Higgins, and probably Catholic school closings, knowing Jim.

I personally think that WBEN has taken the Higgins / Church controversy and slapped it, beat it, and left it for dead. But three entire Bauerle shows probably isn’t enough to get to the real meat of the matter. Also - evidently Jim Ostrowski has more “name recognition” than Buffalo Pundit or Buffalo Geek. I’d love to pick Tim Wenger’s brain on that.

From 11-noon it’ll be former Buffalo Mayor and prospective EC Executive candidate Jim Griffin, live in-studio.

That’s 10am on WBEN 930-AM and online at WBEN.com.

The County Comptroller’s office reviewed the 2003 deal whereby the County’s holding center replaces the Buffalo Police Cellblock:

Erie County Comptroller Mark C. Poloncarz today issued a review (the “Review”) of the 2003 City of Buffalo’s (”City”) cellblock agreement (the “Agreement”) with Erie County (”County”), which review found that during the first forty (40) months of the Agreement, the County’s costs exceeded City payments by $1,662,266.

***

Poloncarz stated, “Recently my office completed an audit of the operations at the Erie County Holding Center. During that review we uncovered evidence that the County was not being sufficiently reimbursed for all services it provided for maintaining the City’s booking and cellblock function. In fact, the County’s costs for the Buffalo cellblock function exceeded the City’s annual $936,794 payment by a total of $1,662,266 during the first forty months of the Agreement.”

“Furthermore, we found that absent any renegotiation of the City’s annual payment, the County’s costs for the next six and one half years of the Agreement could exceed the City’s payment between $5,591,783 and $10,395,246,” noted Poloncarz.

The Review also noted that the City has regularly failed to adhere to the terms of the Agreement by making late quarterly payments to the County.

A deal going sour, and they pay late, to boot.

“This Review demonstrates the need to renegotiate the Agreement in order to reduce the County’s growing losses from operating the City’s cellblock function. I call upon the Sheriff’s Office, working in conjunction with the Giambra Administration, to immediately commence renegotiation discussions with the City on this Agreement.”

For Giambra’s county/city merger regionalism idea to ever, ever get off the ground, people need to be convinced that actual savings will result. First the parks deal, now this. I’d say it’s never, ever going to happen.

Steel has a post up on Buffalo Rising that I was sort of dreading reading.

It involves parking in downtown versus parking at the Eastern Hills Mall, and has an interesting graphic of the Eastern Hills Mall’s footprint superimposed over downtown. It’s quite interesting, but I don’t thing Steel pulls the trigger on the point he’s trying to make. Here’s the comment I left:

For years now I’ve called this phenomenon the “Bendersonization” of WNY. There is a perception that there is no parking if one can’t park within eyesight of one’s destination. If you want to park and go to Dave & Buster’s, I can guarantee you a spot from which you can see that restaurant. If you want to park and go to Empire Grill, you may have to park around the corner. Or down the block. In which case, some people will just move along.

I’m not saying that’s good - just how it is.

Steel says:

Spend money and energy to make it a no brainer for stores to open downtown. Until downtown is vibrant the entire metro area will be looked on as a declining backwater by outsiders.

When my dear WNY Coalition for Progress suggested in 2005 that downtown be given a special sales tax status - as a sort of reverse Empire Zone - to encourage people to shop there, and in turn hopefully prompt businesses to locate there, we were sort of ridiculed because it wasn’t “fair”. But think about it.

The suburbs have loads of cheap real estate available to build big malls and parking lots. How can the city compete?

Have the state and/or county waive part of its sales tax take for a certain, designated zone downtown. 8.75% in Tonawanda, but 6 or 7% in the City of Buffalo for, say, 10 years. That would be a great incentive to get retail interest back downtown.

As for the parking issue - it’s no longer a question of capacity (there’s plenty), it’s a question of planning (there isn’t any), or even technology (we’re years behind). Smart parking, coupled with a comprehensive parking plan that would enable the city to maintain a well-designed, properly spread out network of municipal garages that are not ugly, but are convenient would be a great start. Parking downtown is generally ugly and haphazard, but as long as we have what amounts to a bus-only transit grid in this region, parking does need to be addressed as a genuine issue.

Now, I know the sales tax idea is unfair to businesses outside the downtown core. But who ever said life was fair? Downtown has practically no retail. Hell, the Main Place Mall can’t even keep Waldenbooks next to a tower full of lawyers. But if the sales tax downtown was at Pennsylvania levels, that would get people down there. Get people down there, and you get retail development down there. It’s government helping the chicken-and-egg syndrome disappear. No, it’s not fair at all. No more than Empire Zone tax breaks are fair for businesses who locate in those designated zones. No more than IDA incentives are fair for businesses who make certain seldom-enforced promises. It’s already being done - just not for retail.

George Holt sounds more and more desperate and pathetic, really, as he tries to blame everyone but himself for the situation in which he finds himself today. Channel 4’s Rich Newberg reports:

Holt’s words to us were that “this is a political lynching. 50 years ago,” he said,” they would have hung me.”

Or “hanged”. Really - would the Erie County Board of Managers of 1956 have “hung” George Holt for having pled guilty to filing a false tax return? Is this a “political lynching” any more than it is a “legal lynching”? Of course not. Any thinking, rational person knows that this isn’t at all what this is about. This isn’t about race at all, and each time he suggests otherwise is another nail in his political coffin.

He went on to say, “This is racially and politically motivated. It’s about a lame-duck County Attorney and a lame-duck County Executive, and about people who want to become the County Executive.”

The sine qua non of Holt’s expulsion is his filing of false tax returns, his intentional or knowing withholding of sales tax revenue from the state and county, and his guilty pleas therefor. If “race” caused him to break the law, then that’s for him to sort out on his own. But the community’s reaction to his lawbreaking has nothing whatsoever to do with race.

The Buffalo News has more of the backstory:

Before Holt pleaded guilty, his lawyers vetted the question of whether he would have to resign, and they were certain he did not. Also, prosecutors were letting him remain in office, though he had to repay the $20,000 plus almost $18,000 more in interest and penalties. He was expected to do so before sentencing March 9.

So one of his lawyers Thursday vowed a legal challenge to Rubin’s opinion and sent a letter to Marinelli telling her Rubin is wrong.

“Mr. Rubin makes critical and obvious errors,” wrote Mark J. Mahoney, arguing that Holt’s guilty pleas to two misdemeanor charges of filing a false sales tax return do not indicate that he intended to commit fraud.

“Fraud is a very specific kind of offense which involves intentional and purposeful deception in order to unlawfully obtain (or keep) property,” he wrote. The charge Holt admitted to would apply to any material misstatement on a sales tax form, such as the date it was signed or the name of the taxpayer.

“Intentional fraud,” Mahoney wrote later, “is a world apart from a mere misstatement of a material fact, even if “willfully’ made, which may have nothing to do with depriving others of property,” he said.

Holt has another legal recourse: withdrawing his guilty pleas to undo his conviction and then standing trial.

“I don’t think that’s necessary,” Mahoney said. “Because they’ve got it all wrong.”

Holt would never do that, because his ultimate conviction after trial wouldn’t help the matter. In fact, it would merely underscore the propriety of expulsion. He shouldn’t have pled guilty unless he was guilty - that’s why judges hold an allocution when the plea is entered. Judge Kloch hasn’t yet sentenced Holt, incidentally.

He admitted “willfully” filing two false sales tax reports from 2004.

If a lynching there is, he lynched himself. If this is in any way racial, it’s his animus - not anyone else’s.

I wonder, can the people of the 3rd Legislative district get back the $25,000 in basketball camp member item money that found its way down to Texas, but was intended for the people of the district? That’d be great.

Incidentally, the District 3 website is vacant. The good ol’ days are cached here.

Terry McAuliffe wrote a book. The Syracuse Post Standard reviewed it and pulled out an interesting tidbit:

His political memoir, which went on sale this week, was listed at the top of Barnes & Noble’s best-seller list Wednesday. “What a Party! My Life Among Democrats: Presidents, Candidates, Donors, Activists, Alligators and Other Wild Animals” details both the role McAuliffe has played on the national political scene and his beginnings in the Democratic stronghold of Syracuse. It includes a description of a city position during the administration of Mayor Lee Alexander that McAuliffe recalls as the best job he ever had. As a teenage master of ceremonies for the parks department’s summer concert series, McAuliffe said he got paid for a full 40 hours but only had to work a few nights a week. “My dad helped me get the job,” said McAuliffe of his late father, former Onondaga County Democratic Committee Treasurer Jack McAuliffe. “He was the king of patronage and proud of it.”

Syracuse is NYCO’s beat, and she says:

I don’t know. Maybe this fond reminiscence is amusing for a gold-plated member of the political elite, but for people in Syracuse being forced to open their papers and read this crap when even members of his own party know very well that ordinary citizens are being taxed to death and suspect at least some of it is going for patronage, fraud and waste… it’s not very funny at all.

We have to stop rolling out the red carpet for these people just because they’re famous. Enough celebrity politics — or, in McAuliffe’s case, wannabe-celebrity politics.

She adds that McAuliffe is Hillary Clinton’s campaign spokesman;

…she’s letting him run around New York State on a book tour, allowing himself to be quoted in the local papers like this, when Eliot Spi