Paul Clark is going to definitely make an excellent County Executive, seeing as he can’t be bothered to proofread the animated little banner ad that he paid Joe Illuzzi several grand to post:

Click for full size

HT AK in comments

Illuzzi has been posting an occasional series of biting cartoons attacking County Executive candidate Jim Keane. They’re pretty facile, but this one frame made me do a double-take:

First off, I don’t think there’s any fairness in the allegation that Keane is affiliated with or a member of the Ku Klux Klan, so we can dispense with that little bit of defamation. But what really irked me was the “Uncle Tom Section” in the back.

One of the black individuals in that box says,

Ol’ James sure looks good in white, don’t he?

I mean, why not dress them up in full minstrel gear while you’re at it.

Vladimir Putin

Mads Mikkelsen as Le Chiffre in Casino Royale

With apologies to the late, lamented Spy Magazine.

On her stream/podcast, Michele Johnson will hold “activist hour”, featuring Bob Franke from the Grant/Ferry Association, Michael Gainer from Buffalo ReUse, Cindy of the Cazenovia St Block Club, Jessica B will talk about Buffalo Old Home week schedule of Events, and Michelle will update us on what Broadway Fillmore Alive is up to.

As an added feature, Michele will feature new music from TRONEZ.

Did you check out WNYMedia.net today?

Regular listeners of Christina Abt’s “Buffalostyle” show will recall the Mother’s Day show featuring, among others, Michelle Kasprzyk, whom Christina profiled here, and is in today’s Buffalo News.

The family is maintaining a blog about Mikey’s progress, but they still need in-home nursing assistance 16 hours per day.

Anyone who can help with names or information is urged to send an email to nurses@thinwires.com.

The City wants to install them at certain intersections, and the state legislature is balking; the bill is stuck in committee. I’m not a fan of traffic control cameras for two reasons.

Firstly, they take away the police officer’s discretion as to whether a ticket is given.

Secondly, they don’t target the offending driver; they target the car.

In a bow to some of the controversies surrounding red light camera programs, Buffalo has agreed that it would treat red light infractions as violations, like parking tickets, meaning that no points would be added to a driver’s license.

However, that means the car owner is legally responsible for paying the ticket, no matter who was driving at the time.

The city says it won’t photograph the driver but would record only the license plate from behind.

How soon before that’s amended to provide for it to be a no-points moving violation? Then on to points?

Build the roundabouts. They’re exponentially safer.

As of April 1, 2007, the Canadian Government’s GST rebate program is no more. You can still apply for the rebate on items purchased before that date, but everything bought since then is subject to the Canadian GST of 6%, and the Ontario PST of 8% on most purchases.

Erie County’s 8.75% sales tax is much more palatable than Ontario’s 14%, especially given that the Canadian dollar is almost at par with ours.

This means that it just got a lot better for domestic, local merchants.

The Buffalo News focused on the reasons why it’s difficult to attract big name chains to WNY, and that it has to do with moribund income growth.

On top of that, that weekly wage translates into a job that pays $35,828 a year, nearly $5,000 less than the $40,768 average nationally. That means workers in the Buffalo Niagara region are getting by on paychecks that are almost $100 a week smaller than the national average.

That may be, but those workers in the Buffalo Niagara region tend to have more buying power with that $36k/year than many of their peers. But those statistics become starker when you consider:

Without income growth, new retailers who move into the Buffalo Niagara market have to win their customers by taking sales away from the stores that are already here. Open a new store in a growing market like Phoenix, and a retailer can build a customer base partly from people moving into the area and customers whose per capita personal incomes are growing at close to the national average.

A retailer has to compete by offering better prices, better service, or both? I find it a bit hard to sympathize.

In a growing market, that rising tide puts a stiff breeze at a retailer’s back.

The reality here is that there isn’t much more money in the region now than there was in the mid-1990s. If you added up all the money people here make from their wages, the interest and dividends they receive, the Social Security they get and all other forms of income, it’s less than 1 percent more than it was in 1995 after you adjust for inflation.

In other words, the pie here is just about as big as it was a decade ago, while it’s 30 percent bigger nationally. That’s because we’re losing people, which reduces the overall amount of earnings here, while our wage growth lags behind as well.

Consequently, the pie in the Buffalo Niagara region was the 48th biggest in the country in 2005. Ten years earlier, it was the 41st biggest, according to recently revised statistics on personal income from the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

Indeed, as the region shrinks and its remaining population ages, we’re getting more of our personal income from government- backed programs, ranging from Social Security to a variety of social welfare programs.

That was the fastest-growing component of the region’s personal income over the last decade and those payments accounted for slightly more than 20 percent of the region’s personal income in 2005, up from just over 19 percent in 1995.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average annual salary in Buffalo-Niagara is $37,400. In Charlotte, it’s $39,710. In Cleveland, it’s $39,640. In Pittsburgh, it’s $36,700.

Based on that, we’re not horribly out of whack.

The metropolitan area’s cessation in the middle of our international crossings is somewhat artificial when it comes to matters economic. That’s why the DHS’s about-face on shared border management at the Peace Bridge, for example, is so troubling. There’s a market of over 5 million people within the Toronto area and Niagara Region.

So, is that information being conveyed when we sell ourselves to national retailers?

If there’s a market in downtown Buffalo for $400,000 - $700,000 condominiums (some with ginormous tax abatements), and there’s a market downtown for $600 - $1200 rental loft units, wouldn’t it follow that there’s a huge, untapped market for condominium units that cost between $70 - 190k?

It’s an honor. Test your url here.

HT Empire Zones

Rus Thompson’s efforts to get tolls removed from the north and south Grand Island bridges continue apace. Here’s an article about it from last week’s Buffalo News.

One thing for sure, looking at this picture, Rus doesn’t just want to get the tolls removed. He wants to kick their asses.

Buffalo Rising has started a petition in favor of he proposed Park Lane Tower condominiums at Gates Circle, proposed by Uniland.

The link to the petition is here.

My opinion on the project? Build it.

My opinion on the petition? How pitiful it is that a grassroots petition drive is necessary in support of a multimillion dollar project proposed by a huge local developer to build condos that I couldn’t afford.

You read.

I hope everyone is enjoying the long weekend, and taking a moment to remember our servicemen and women overseas who, along with their families, are sacrificing so much right now.

Yesterday involved puttering around the house, spot of shopping, and a cookout. Today we’re off to the T.O.

Last night we watched the season finale of Robin Hood. What’s so amazing about this iteration of the Hood legend is that it is simultaneously contemporary and a period piece. More than once the Sheriff of Nottingham (played by Lily Allen’s dad, Keith) has sounded a great deal like Dick Cheney. The finale on BBC America (DVD is out June 13th) was simply excellent and unique in that there was no real cliffhanger. To my mind, Mudge was the star of the show last night. Season two is currently being shot in Hungary and will begin airing in the UK in October.

In other news, stay tuned for WNYMedia.net 2.0, which should be up and running very very soon.

HT Indabuff.

On Sunday the 27th, the show opens up with 3 phone calls: Mindy Bockstein, Chairperson and Executive Director of the NYS Consumer Protection Board on the credit industry; Joe Bieron of the Orchard Park School Board on the passage of all local school budgets; and Joe Maciejewski, Director of Erie County Real Property Tax Services regarding patronage comments made by Erie County Legislator Kathy Konst last week.

10:30-11 will feature the lovely and talented Bob McCarthy, Buffalo News political reporter.

At 11:00 it’ll be party chair thunderdome with Len Lenihan and Jim Domagalski.

10am - 12pm Sunday on WBEN AM-930 and online at wben.com.

I seldom paid attention to American Idol this year, but the finale (which was otherwise destroyed by the likes of Taylor Hicks singing selections from Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band) did have one cool moment.

Blake Lewis didn’t win American Idol, but there’s no denying the kid is talented as hell. Here he is beatboxing with Doug E. Fresh. He’s a beatboxing virtuoso:

The Washington Post via Wired reports that a group of Canadian business leaders are lobbying the Abteilung Der Heimatsicherheit (Homeland security sounds so much better in its original German) over the decision to scrap shared border management at the Peace Bridge.

I hope American businesses are doing the same:

“Business groups like ours are really worried about the negative signal it sends,” said Maryscott Greenwood, executive director of the Canadian-American Business Council, which represents such major U.S. firms as Campbell Soup, Wal-Mart, United Parcel Service, Lockheed-Martin and Exxon Mobil. “One billion dollars a day flows across the U.S.-Canada border. Take all the countries of the E.U. together, and the Canada-U.S. relationship dwarfs it. Canada does more business with one company — Home Depot — than it does with France.”

As we already know, vocal local preservationist leaders have been tripping over themselves to denounce the Canal Side project. It’s an abominable crime to site a “big box” store on the most sacred plot of land on God’s green Earth.

Remember what happened to the Freelings?

We also know that Canal Side’s sacred triangle once housed brothels and saloons where much debauchery and crime took place in the grimy streets of this port city. Not for nothing Canal Street was called the “wickedest street in the world.”

Let us, therefore, raise a glass to historical accuracy. If we can’t agree on what should be done with Canal Side, I think we ought to take a cue from the people of Chatham, England.

Welcome to Dickens World, a theme park with a difference. If you thought theme parks were all about thrilling roller coaster rides, wolfing down hotdogs and cotton candy, and shaking hands with overgrown mice and goofy dogs, you’re in for a rude awakening. Dickens World recreates the filth, squalor, and even the unpleasant whiffs of Victorian London, the city in which Charles Dickens lived and breathed, and wrote so memorably about in “A Tale of Two Cities,” “Great Expectations,” and “Oliver Twist.” It’s less a theme park, and more a “grime park.”

If Disney World is the “Happiest Place on Earth”, the Canal District could become a reasonable facsimile of the “Wickedest Street in the World”.

I don’t understand why every anti-Bass Pro thing I read in the Buffalo News doesn’t sport that title. Because once you read the text, that’s not far from the point being made. The latest missive against the Missouri outdoor store comes courtesy of Cynthia Van Ness, Preservation Coalition President and Buffalo Issue Alerts moderator.

It was 2000, and in a breath of fresh air befitting the new century in a city long suffering from a stale, crony- based political culture, the Preservation Coalition of Erie County led a passionate grass-roots campaign to develop a historically sensitive Erie Canal district that honored the archaeological remains of a site known the world over.

Known the world over? I’m sure people in many places know about the Erie Canal district of Buffalo, but I doubt many people in other places do.

Our vision seized the imaginations of 15,000 Buffalonians who signed petitions calling for restoring the Commercial Slip and unearthing the original street network of Buffalo’s birthplace.

That particular sentence is the most important one in the entire piece. As I’ve written before, the fight in 2000 was about two things: street network and re-watering about 50 yards’ worth of the old canal terminus. The former remains in the Canal Side plan, and the latter has already been accomplished. The quaint seaside village recreation that was done in 2004 was not what the fight in 2000 was about.

Out of this participatory process, a consensus plan emerged with design guidelines respecting the Erie Canal harbor’s history. The 2004 plan, which won an award from the Waterfront Center in Washington, is under way, with the Commercial Slip rewatered, the bowstring bridge in place and the new Naval & Military Park Museum overlooking the slip.

“Respecting…history” is shorthand for, “build something new that looks kinda old, and put some plaques up here and there”. There was never a plan to completely recreate what was once there, and there’s nothing there now, so “preservation” is a misnomer. Again: the argument right now is over two competing historical re-creations; two somewhat different replicas of the old canal district. One being better than the other is a subjective matter.

Progress is there for all to see. The reconstruction of Central Wharf, scheduled for a ribbon-cutting later this year, has come to a screeching halt, postponed indefinitely due to pre-empting by a small group of unelected insiders.

Whoa, whoa, whoa stop right there.

Back in 2000, when the first fight was being waged, it was between the gubernatorial appointees at the Empire State Development Corporation, and a group of preservationists which included media and political types. Everyone involved was a member of a “small group of unelected insiders.”

In 2007, we have the members of ECHDC who were appointed by the duly elected governor. On the other hand, we have…? Pot, meet kettle. Don’t go down the small-group-of-unelected-insiders path unless you’re part of a large group of elected outsiders. No one elected Tielman, Van Ness, or Esmonde to wage war against the ECHDC. At least I can point to accountable, elected officials who populated the ECHDC itself.

Back-room, old-boy-network wheeling and dealing, which has crippled Buffalo for decades, once again rears its ugly head.

Sorry, didn’t the 2000 battle end in a consent decree? “Back room…wheeling and dealing” is sometimes shorthand for “mediation, compromise, and settlement.”

A big-box outdoors store and a suburban strip mall developer have been handed the most globally significant land in Buffalo, with million-dollar subsidies.

That small triangle of land is the “most globally significant land in Buffalo”?! Really?

This deal violates a legal agreement that this community hammered out and was successfully implementing. It fleeces taxpayers and sets a terrible precedent for every other national retailer eyeing Buffalo, who can also demand corporate welfare.

Bass Pro isn’t getting a penny of taxpayer money in its pocket. We are building the structure for them, and that permits the public to maintain control over what it looks like. I think that’s a good thing. The legal agreement wasn’t hammered out by “this community”, it was hammered out by lawyers for the state and lawyers for the Preservation Coalition. That represents, what? A fraction of one percent of the “community?”

The out-of-scale Bass Pro and ramp garage footprint obliterates our intimate cobblestone streets and trivializes the nearby New England Block, which housed Dug’s Dive, a likely refuge for fugitives escaping slavery. For the sake of tackle boxes and parking, we cheapen Buffalo’s role in one of the great moral achievements in American history.

Bass Pro and a garage “obliterates” the street? How so? The plans I’ve seen maintain that streetscape that PresCo fought so hard for in 2000. Are the cobblestone streets any less “cobblestone” or “streets” because of Bass Pro or the parking lot?

The “For the sake of tackle boxes and parking” line stinks of little more than anti-retail snobbery. I’d love to see the reaction from preservationists if someone suggested plopping a Larkin Admin Building replica on that site. Big box? Yep. Out of scale for the area? Yep. Holy Grail for local preservationists? Yep. Heads would explode.

But Bass Pro is an easy target. How many times have you seen one opponent or another irrelevantly bring up Wal Mart in any discussion about Bass Pro on the waterfront? No one has accused Bass Pro of engaging in the business practices that Wal Mart is known for, so that’s unfair. What all that amounts to is represented by a simple equation:

Bass Pro = fishing & hunting = NASCAR = rednecks = poor dentition = Wal Mart.

It’d be funny if it weren’t tragic, because upstream is empty land on the water’s edge, close to existing parking, that better suits a big-box retailer. We can have a vibrantly urban, historic, walkable canal district of museums, shops, apartments and cafes lining 200- year-old cobblestone streets and we can have a Bass Pro. The Webster block has been “shovel ready” for 50 years.

Why lie? You’ve made it crystal clear that you think Bass Pro is an evil taxmoney monster, so why now suggest where else it should go? Would you still oppose the Canal Side project if Bass Pro were moved to another block but Benderson was going to construct the quaint museums, locally owned fair-trade shops, apartments, and cafes? Why aren’t “bars” and “restaurants” included in that laundry list?

Preservationists are often called obstructionists, a pejorative label we accept in honor of all the obstructionists that Buffalo needed when the Larkin Building was demolished, when Humboldt Parkway was sacrificed, when “urban removal” destroyed neighborhoods and when other wrongheaded backroom deals were carried out.

See? OMG! Larkin Building!!

Comparing Canal Side to 50s and 60s era urban renewal is incorrect. Comparing the empty weeds and gravel of the historic block with the Larkin Building is incorrect. Comparing apples and staplers is incorrect.

Photo by MJ Worthington.

But in this case we bow our heads to Larry Quinn, Bob and Mindy Rich and everyone who gave away our place in history to Benderson and Bass Pro. In the “obstructionism” game, they make us look like rank amateurs.

Again: if the identity of the developer and the anchor retailer were different, I’d bet the outcry would be minimized. Benderson is an easy target, and Bass Pro (as we’ve already outlined) is equal to Wal Mart.

We can build a quaint lakeside replica (which, incidentally, in no way, shape, or form would resemble the dirty, nasty, rough-and-tumble of the 1800s canal dock district) and invite 10,000 Villages and locally owned hemp retailers to come in. But who’s going to build the buildings? And who’s going to come? I don’t think the Erie Canal terminus is as globally known or cared-about as Cynthia suggests. But because it was there, the street grid and canal terminus will be restored.

Apart from that, all we’re talking about is historical interpretation.

Will tourists from the Falls come down to see a quaint little lakefront village and have a cup of coffee and a stroll under the Skyway? I tend to doubt it. As I’ve said before, the vast majority of tourists come to look at things, buy things, and eat things. If you’re marketing to the millions who come to that gorge 20 miles from Buffalo, give them something to do, for God’s sake. You can’t eat a meal on green space unless you bring it yourself. Green space doesn’t pay any tax. Apartments aren’t a tourist draw, and there are loads of cafes in Niagara Falls and Niagara-on-the-Lake already.

But if you market the area as a shopping and entertainment destination, part of which (that one triangular block) replicates the history of the old canal district, people will be drawn. Add a very sought-after national retailer as an anchor which can, in turn, attract other popular retailers that might otherwise balk at the opportunity to site next to the Marine Drive Apartments, and you have a recipe for success.

We can, indeed, have it all. Historical re-creation and contemporary commercial success.

I don’t want any stinkin’ rookies running government.

While I understand Watson’s point about not wanting rookies to, say, operate on you or build your car, I think the workings of government are not so specialized that someone who can figure out a way to get elected can also then figure out how the job is done.

What people are tired of is the same faces coming back year after year in spite of occasional crises in management and a general crisis of population and economics. Sometimes new ideas should be given a shot, new people given an opportunity to introduce new ideas.

Good government is hard, but it’s not brain surgery.

I read it so you don’t have to.

1. The Sabres lost. Tickets for HSBC cost a lot of money. Even for Genesis tickets. Mary plays piano.

2. Mary says the son of a musician for the BPO is precocious. He performed at a BPO concert dressed in “his usual Republican jacket and tie”, because evidently Democrats don’t wear jackets and ties. He’s also a cutie pie.

3. Mary re-introduces the word “fie” to contemporary English whilst describing a kickball loss.

In other news, adults play kickball.

4. The Bible makes an appearance thanks to the use of the word “Prelapsarian”. Mary devotes an entire paragraph to a headline she saw in House & Garden, which she probably saw while waiting for her piano lesson to start.

5. Since the Senecas are going to start charging the state for things, Mary wants to bill the state for things that offend her. Such as,

I was getting nervous there because booze didn’t appear until the very end. But with the Biblical reference and the use of the adjective “Republican” in connection with one’s wardrobe, I think we have a 9.0 trifecta.

If you haven’t checked out Christina Abt’s show, Friday’s your chance with its new time:

Memorial Day is fast approaching and for many this holiday weekend marks the official kick-off to WNY’s summer season.

However since its inception in 1868, the true purpose of Memorial Day has been to honor the men and women who have defended the United States in our country’s wars and conflicts.

In tribute to those who have fought under the banner of the American Flag, this week’s Buffalostyle will feature WNY veterans who have endured combat situations in World War II and The Iraqi Conflict, as well as a New York City police officer involved in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attack.

Music for the show will spotlight patriotic tunes penned in honor of those who served and the Stars and Stripes for which they fought.

Tune in Friday at wnymedia.net during Buffalostyle’s new time slot of 7 to 8 pm for this unique show. Call in at 886-9696 or email your comments and questions to buffalostyle@wnymedia.net.