Indifference
I don’t really give two shits whom Obama or McCain picks as a running mate.

Consider the Source(s)
I believe that the leaking of a barrage of alleged e-mails between Sam Hoyt and his former paramour(s) to embarrass Hoyt a few weeks before the election undoubtedly originates from City Hall.

When You’re a Jet, You’re a Jet all the Way
Hoyt’s “Sharks” to Brown’s “Jets” are hitting back, but for now it’s far below the radar. There are rumors being floated that if true would be, in many people’s opinion, far more scandalous than the revelation that Hoyt cheated on his wife.

Party of One
As I indicated yesterday, the State BOE now reports that Jack Davis has filed 890 pages and 6 volumes of petitions to get himself listed in November on the “Save Jobs and Farms” party ballot. I hope that each page was worth every penny.

Labels
Illuzzi is getting hammered right now on WBEN. I suspect that the fact that the News and TV media have referred to him as a “blogger” bothers him more than anything.

A number of people who read my site also probably read Illuzzi’s, so it might come as no surprise that Illuzzi has been demanding Hoyt’s resignation from the Assembly race in a particularly ugly way - he has been posting emails that Hoyt exchanged with a legislative intern back in 2003 and 2004. Liz Benjamin makes the point that the legislative rules against fraternization with interns did not come into effect until 2004 (hi, Mike Cole!), so there was nothing technically illegal about Hoyt’s dalliance(s). They were a moral failing on his part, and he addresses the allegations today:

“Recently, accusations and slurs have been made online about my personal life; and like a lot of things on the Internet, much of it is false.

Here’s what is true. Several years ago, my wife and I had a difficult time in our marriage. Since that time, my wife Connie and I have worked hard to put this behind us, and believe the episode to be a painful but private matter best left in the past.

While my past actions were unfortunate, and for which I have expressed to my family my sincere apology, one blogger has alleged that official rules or laws were broken. That simply is not true.

It’s sad that my political opponents have chosen to resort to the lowest tactics by dredging up a private matter from years ago just 21 days before an election. The timing is no accident. They would rather wallow in this type of politics than debate the challenges that face our community.

I am disappointed, but frankly, not all that surprised given the players involved. I leave this in the voters’ hands. It’s my view that the people of Buffalo and Grand Island face more pressing issues than this. My family, who are more important to me than anything, has gone through a great deal to put this in the past where it belongs.

We ask only for the privacy that any other family would be granted under these circumstances — nothing more, nothing less.”

Huge improvement over what was there, no?

Here’s a video interpretation of this thread.

At noon today, I’ll be joining the BNE’s Tom Kucharski and Buffalo.com’s Evan Parker Pierce today at Buffalo.com to chat about the recent Forbes article declaring Buffalo to be, like, the most dyingest city, like ever.

There are so many angles from which to approach the Forbes listing, including regionalism, taxation/business climate, cross-border issues, unemployment, white flight from the city and region flight south and west, etc.

Is the city dying? No. Is the region dying? No. But they’re shrinking and seems to be no political will to plan for a smaller and still-shrinking population or to really fix the fundamental problems that keep us flailing.

But we do have a shitload of fresh water, which isn’t going anywhere.

Then again, maybe it’s all about the calendar:

From Buffalo Business First:

According to documents filed with the Buffalo Planning Board, Chef’s is seeking approval for a 1,734-square-foot expansion — mostly on the Chicago Street side of the building — to make way for a new handicapped accessible entrance, larger kitchen and the installation of the drive-through window.

I love how Chef’s facility is a mish-mash of buildings added on to the original, and I’m even happier to see that it’s doing well enough to merit a big expansion.

Photo by Fallingstar at Flickr

And the State, in turn, will pay the “host communities” of the Senecas’ three WNY casinos.

$57.3 million in slots revenue was sent to Albany - $2.8 million of that came from the temporary Buffalo facility. The host community for the Buffalo casino is to get over $708,000 from that. The problem is - who is the host community? Naturally, the city and county are already fighting over that issue. Sometime down the road, it’s estimated that the Buffalo facility will earn $7 million per year for the host community.

Can Brown and Collins figure out what to do with the local share without going to court? Personally, I think the city is entitled to the whole thing as the host community. In the meantime, the permanent Seneca facility is rather quickly being added to the local skyline, with about 4 stories’ worth of steel already erected.

Federal Justice William Skretny will be holding a hearing on August 21st on the issue of whether the current, temporary facility should be shut down pursuant to his July ruling. If that was to happen, one would hope that the opponents would pay a bond into court to make the Senecas whole in the event the 2nd Circuit overturns Skretny’s decision.

When you hire a graphic designer, if you ask him/her to make your logo bigger, expect to be mocked.

One company holds a monopoly on cab service at the BNIA, and evidently they all go home after midnight, regardless of whether there are more flights on the way. This leaves travelers SOL on arrival.

Hilariously, John McCain the foreign policy expert cribbed a good chunk of his recent speech on Georgia (the country) from Wikipedia. While some criticize his plagiarism, sourcing, and the irony of it all, Craig says that’s what it’s there for.

Jen says Obama/Clark.

Kelly appears cryptically to be announcing a hiatus.

Pick up a VW or Mercedes clean diesel, get an IRS alternative powertrain tax credit that could be as high as $3,000, depending on the vehicle.

The State Senate is going to pay attention to upstate and come up with an economic plan to get things back on track. No, really. This time they really mean it.

This blockbuster video is sure to have people talking for days. The revelations are simply astonishing.

Assemblyman Mike Cole says the “Legislature should get back to work“. That’s rich, coming from a guy who was censured for falling asleep on a female intern’s floor after getting too drunk at an Albany party.

Jim Heaney accuses the Brown administration of using spokesmen as a shield, enabling Brown & co. to evade difficult questions and public scrutiny.

Some valid points for sure, but for me they’re overshadowed by a lot of hyperbole that rises almost to the level of misinformation:

The New York Post is holding an “I Love NY” video contest, so please vote for this entry by Ben Porcari:

I Love New York - video powered by Metacafe

I’m still somewhat puzzled by the incessant desire to:

1. Add heavy truck traffic to a 4 or 6 lane at-grade boulevard;

2. Add heavy commuter traffic to a 4 or 6 lane at-grade boulevard;

3. Enjoy idling truck and commuter traffic at stoplights and intersections on an at-grade boulevard;

4. Ensure major backups on the not-yet-going-anywhere Skyway and on Ohio Street during rush hour, where traffic from those to approaches to the Outer Harbor comes together;

5. Make-believe that it is the bermed Route 5 that is hampering development on the Outer Harbor.

But if people want to do urban planning by lawsuit, that’s fine. The comments at Buffalo Rising naturally devolves into a city vs. suburbs debate, because it’s the evil “other” who are dictating planning decisions to solely benefit the mean, nasty suburban commuters into the city. The commenters want more land opened up for development on the outer harbor at $500,000 per acre. They say that this trumps commuter concerns.

Except it’s not as simple as that. It’s not just commuters who use Route 5. The area on the outer harbor south of downtown Buffalo is home to numerous industrial entities which all use that roadway to access the I-190. There is no viable alternative, unless you’re asking trucks to go down to Blasdell, access the Thruway, and pay a toll, all with $5.00/gallon diesel fuel. (That’s about a 10 mile detour). Or if you’re asking them to cut through at Tifft Street and rumble through South Buffalo’s residential streets.

Which is fine. No one brings up the trucks because even hemp totebags and Kashi get delivered by truck. It’s the commuters everyone comes out against. I think the city can just ask DHS to put up barriers at all city entrances and declare itself a sovereign state. It’ll work because, obviously, suburban commuters don’t contribute to the city’s economy. Right?

Also, cars are bad and people in them are meat-eating bad people.

A truck carrying 10,000 roosters overturned on the Thruway near the I-190 interchange today. Traffic was cocked up for hours.

Brett Favre was traded to the Jets. The invisible “r” between the “a” and “v” in his name stayed in Green Bay, however.

We have Free Buffalo, Free NY, and now we have Save Buffalo, a group that wants Byron Brown to give up his city owned car. You can sign its petition here. Perhaps Byron’s kid can give him a ride to wo…. watch out for the parked car!

Speaking of Free NY, Jim Ostrowski does what he always does when he finds people on the intertubes who don’t agree with him and treat him with less than the utmost respect. I haven’t figured out yet if I’m a griper or a sniper.

Mayor Byron Brown finally relented and ordered the city police department to provide all public information data in incident reports. Score one for the Buffalo News, which dragged Caseyesque omerta out into the clear blue sky.

When you see the headline, “Lawyer admits transporting prostitute across state lines for Jesters convention,” and you are “Lawyer” named in the article, you’re having a very bad day indeed.

In response to Forbes calling Buffalo a dying city, Buffalo Niagara Partnership capo Andrew Rudnick says that the region “is poised for greatness”. Rudnick also suggested that Buffalo was “resting” and “pining for the fjords“.

Seems the story has legs, and what’s really sort of significant from my perspective is the fact that Jim Heaney didn’t break the news in the paper - he broke it on his blog. Good for him for doing that.

The paper’s version of the story appeared today on the front page.

In Chicago, you can search for crime information by street, by precinct, by crime committed, by date, etc. When you do, up pops a map showing the location, time, date, and manner of crime. Pick a random date (say, 7/27), and up pops a list of every crime reported that day. With a map. You can track where crimes are taking place and what kinds. It’s easy to use, easy to access, and provides useful information.

Buffalo needs something like that, and Joe Golombek has proposed it, but it won’t be implemented by an administration in which secrecy trumps transparency and fealty trumps merit.

Heaney was also interviewed by 103.3 the EDGE’s Shredd & Ragan, and the audio can be heard below (thanks to Shredd & Ragan and producer . I also heard Police spokesman Mike DeGeorge refer to Ragan as “sir” one too many times, and his “sensitive information” defense of why the police department withholds information was disingenuous, at best.

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Heaney will be on with Scott Leffler Thursday morning on WECK 1230, and he took my slot on the live chat at Buffalo.com, and you can read the transcript here at Buffalo.com.

From Forbes via Buffalo Business First, we are reminded that Buffalo remains one of the slowest growing / fastest shrinking cities in the country.

The intersection of disappointment and fatigue.

You’ve read in the past about Artvoice’s difficulty in wrestling information out of city hall and the requirement that the most routine request be handled via FOIL request.

Now, the Buffalo News is starting a big of pushback against the city for its attempts to maintain complete control over crime reporting in the city. After all, what happens if the garbage going into CitiStat doesn’t jibe with real life?

The News’ Jim Heaney details the problems, including:

Heaney concludes:

How we use the details contained in the crime reports was never an issue in discussions The News had with police and administration officials. Implied throughout this process it that it’s largely a matter that officials in City Hall and Police HQ don’t like some of the stories we’ve written and they’d like to see less crime news in the paper. And one way of doing that is making it harder for reporters to do their jobs. Limit their access to people, put less information in the paperwork.

This tactic runs counter to the trend nationwide, where a growing number of police departments are making more and more crime information available to the press and public, often via the Web.

Someone on Brown’s staff is a control freak, and either Brown is himself, or he’s going along with it because the conclusion was reached that it’s better to butt heads with the press and get criticized for it than to have genuine crime information published in the city. Why the administration chooses to try to make real problems just go away is anyone’s guess, but it is a disservice to the people of the city and region as a whole.

Ultimately, it makes the promise of CitiStat - transparency, accountability, competence, and merit - a joke.

Mary Kunz Goldman’s “family nut” gets a ticket:

Yesterday was a busy day away from a computer, and today promises to be somewhat similar. Nevertheless, here is a Fridayish post to prevent native restlessness:

1. Buffalo Locavore is a group blog that will talk about eating food grown and raised. Something tells me their going to be a bit behind the 8-ball when winter rolls around, but supporting local growers is a noble idea.

2. When I have a few free moments, I’m going to dive back into the archives of the Buffalo Evening News and Courier Express to try and find out from primary sources exactly who Margaret L. Wendt was, and what she wanted her well-funded foundation to support. If anyone’s done microfiche/film diving at the downtown library, drop me a line and let me know where to go, so I look like I know what I’m doing.

3. Jack Davis says that local produce goes unpicked, and that imports are not only dangerous, but foreign. Many farmers in the district complain that they’d sure love a legal guest worker program so they can hire migrant labor, but this falls on deaf ears as far as Davis is concerned. Davis also laments the fact that his money can’t buy him everything this election cycle:

Despite his name recognition and financial means, Davis acknowledges he’s not sure his save jobs-farms-industry message is getting across to district residents. Speeches are sparsely attended and the parades he’s been in get rained on, he said. His biggest people-drawing campaign event was an offer to make gas available at $1.50 a gallon at a Byron station one day last month and he can’t be sure his name stood out after the rush on cheap fuel.

“It’s hard to get people out and paying attention to the election; they seem somewhat apathetic,” Davis said. “There is a disadvantage in not having the (Democratic) endorsement, but I’m working my way around it.”

By paying off the IP, catchy jingles using antiquated music, and setting up websites designed to defraud the reader.

4. A great way to counter ridiculous negative campaigning isn’t necessarily to answer tit for tat, but to point at it and laugh. That’s what the Obama campaign is doing to McCain with this site.

5. The Empire Center for New York State Policy has set up a new website called “See Through NY“. You’re supposed to be able to search all kinds of databases to find out the cost of New York State government, but I’ve tried some searches about 3 times and found it to be non-functional for the time being.

6. Radovan Karadzic got a shave and a haircut in advance of his arraignment before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in the Hague. The political and philosophical mastermind behind the 3+ year siege of Sarajevo and the Srebrenica massacre will be appearing pro se, will drag out the trial, and will hopefully rot in Scheveningen penitentiary for the rest of his wretched, hateful life.

7. Sam Hoyt has proposed that the Niagara Falls Bridge Commission merge with the Peace Bridge Authority. Chalk up one more effort to merge redundant levels of government agency that will most certainly fail.

8. One thing anti-immigrant xenophobes need to be reminded of is the fact that immigrants bring awesome food ideas to their new countries.

Bruce Jackson doesn’t return emails. The Wendt Foundation doesn’t return phone calls. We are mere peons who do not merit a response, as we are little more than reactionary online purveyors of rumor, defamation, and innuendo. The only person who has put himself out there to speak on behalf of casino foes is Joel Rose, who appeared on Bauerle’s show with Kevin Hardwick today.

So far, what we’ve learned is that:

I am not an expert on any of this, but it would seem to me that if money is being paid from a non-profit, tax exempt organization to a non-profit but not tax exempt organization, there may be an issue there. At what point, if any, does the money become taxable? Where did the money go once it left the Network for Religious Communities?

As WNYMind said, every time the Wendt Foundation gets to keep, tax-free, its capital gains, it derives a public subsidy. We have a right to ask these questions, and we have a right know the answers, without regard to whether or not we are anti-casino, pro-casino, or otherwise.

Also see what Buffalo Geek has to say about his call to Joel Rose on Hardwick today.

Question: Does my inquiry into the spending of Wendt Foundation money somehow magically make me a supporter of the Seneca’s Buffalo Creek Casino?

Answer: Of course not.

Here is my record on the issue of the Seneca Casino.

Here is what I wrote earlier this month concerning my current indifference to the Seneca Casino in light of Skretny’s ruling:

I have to say that my thinking on the casino downtown has morphed from ignorance to opposition to indifference … So, I’m now indifferent. If it’s blocked, great. If it goes up, great. Either way, my day won’t change. But if I’m leaning in any one direction, I’d say build the damn thing already. Build it nice, build it big, and build it in such a way so as to maximize pedestrian entry and egress from the property. By cooperating with the Senecas, we can help make it a project that is integrated into its surroundings, rather than an island surrounded by a sea of useless parking.

Hardly a ringing endorsement, wouldn’t you say?

Here is what I wrote in my original “swiftboating” post about the Wendt Foundation:

The Wendt Foundation paid $2 million to fund the legal fees for the casino half-sorta-victory last week. Two million dollars. That’s a lot of scratch, and frankly I had thought that the lawyers had donated their time towards this effort. I’m taken aback that there was an expenditure for this….

…Imagine if $2 million had gone towards an actual charitable cause that actually helps the underprivileged. Although I agree wholeheartedly with the notion that a sovereign exclave should not be carved out of Buffalo’s downtown to facilitate gambling that can’t be subject to state or local taxes, I don’t care about the morality of this, and I don’t care whether it’s a “good” or “bad” deal for the city any more than I care whether the heavily subsidized, money-losing Hyatt is a “good” or “bad” deal.

But this interview between Bruce Jackson and Joel Rose pretty much underscores the fact that the whole “sovereignty” issue is a technicality that stands in the place of “we know so much better than you”. And they got $2 mill from a local charity to pay legal fees rather than an actual charitable effort.

Oh, well.

You see, for me the sovereignty and exclave was what I was most opposed to, because I thought it was a cynical work-around the state constitution.

Casino opponents? They equate criticism and questions about Wendt with casino support. My 2 year old comes up with less facile conclusions than that. Their reaction has taken many forms, but all of them have one central underlying theme, which can be summarized as:

STFU! How dare you question the Wendt Foundation?

I will tell you one thing. Through all of this, I’ve lost a great deal of respect for casino opponents and their George Bushian “not with us, you’re against us” mentality.

With apologies to Mad Magazine and Al Jaffee.

The interviews recorded will be kept in the Library of Congress, and may be played on NPR.

Jay Tokasz did a story on the Wendt Foundation imbroglio today, and got people to call him back, evidently.

The foundation bought the Harrah’s shares in 2003 for $2.8 million, according to its 2007 tax return. The stock was sold in May 2006 for a total of $4.9 million — a 75 percent return in less than three years.

Wendt’s three trustees agreed to finance the lawsuit in January 2006, and the foundation so far has funneled $1.9 million through the Network of Religious Communities, one of the plaintiffs, for legal expenses.

The trustees were unaware of the Harrah’s investment until a periodic review following their decision to fund the suit, said trustee Robert J. Kresse.

Investment advisers, Groesbeck Investment Mana