I’ll never understand the pure and unadulterated hatred many denizens of the right hold in their hearts for Hillary Rodham Clinton. With her rumored interest in running for the Presidency in 2008, Anti-Hillary groups are sprouting up all over the internets. By all accounts, she has acquitted herself with distinction as a United States Senator and has made significant efforts to work with Republicans on key issues. She has been praised by for her legislative bipartisanship by members of both parties

My favorite so far is “Stop Her Now”

STOP HER NOW is intent on revealing to the American public the TRUTH about just who Hillary Clinton really is. We’re out to expose her as a confirmed left-wing radical and life-long liberal who long ago sold her soul to the divisive, radical and ultra-liberal special interest groups who see everyone as “victims” and want to use your tax dollars and the power of the state to make things right.

As an experienced political chameleon, Hillary Clinton is already beginning a massive makeover campaign where she will try to make her look “mainstream” while hiding her extreme left-leaning agenda of government-run national health insurance, sky high taxes, and giving felons the right to vote.

Really? They’re running with Hillary being a promoter of felon rights? Alrighty then…

They have flash cartoons, jokes, and fun facts like this one:

Did you Know?
While serving as First Lady of Arkansas for twelve years, Hillary Clinton worked as an attorney for Arkansas corporations such as Wal-Mart?

The horror…the horr-uhhhhh.

So, would you vote for Hillary if she ran for President in 2008? If not, why not? If so, why?

Recently, Greater Buffalo Savings Bank made a significant investment into the emerging Connecticut Street area on Buffalo’s West Side.

They also are working with the BERC, WSNHS, and several other organizations to make a better Buffalo. They are committed to making Buffalo a better place to live, work, and play.

They also offer low interest loans on small principal to help the working poor afford to purchase homes and offer flexible rehabilitation loans to support rebuilding Buffalo one house at a time, and one block at a time.

I decided to support this great Buffalo business by moving my Checking/Savings accounts from HSBC to GBSB. I also decided to utilize their residential lending department for a home equity line of credit on my home. Everything was handled professionally, efficiently, and I’m proud to support a company who believes in this city as much as I do.

I just thought I’d share…

Last night, we took the WNYMedia.net cameras down to Erie County Hall to capture public comments on the proposed Erie County Budget for FY2007.

Now, I’m a little late to the recap of the event as Pundit has already beaten the issue into the a bloody pulp. However, I want to take a different whack at the proceedings…I’d like to talk about the “Save Our Libraries” cabal that was out in force at the hearing last night.

Take a look at that map. That is the map of B&ECPL locations throughout Erie County. All 37 of them.

37 libraries to support a dwindling population? Does this not seem a tad bit excessive?

Why is it that people feel it is necessary to have a library within walking distance or a three minute drive from their home? Why is it inconceivable that maybe, just maybe, we would improve the overall library experience by consolidating branches and reducing costs?

Of course, this is not the option that is on the table for the Erie County Legislature but, why isn’t it? Why are we always presented with a false choice of an overwhelmingly expensive option or a drastically reduced and ineffective option that makes no one happy? There are many municipal areas which effectively manage regional library operations on small budgets. Are we above benchmarking on their success?

I have this theory on the libraries and I think it would be great if one of our legislators (looking at you, Cindy) did a little legwork to research it a little further. It goes a little something like this:

Each city and town should pay for their own library staff, materials, and operating expenses from their own local town/village tax revenue. The local libraries can work together through a county entity to purchase new volumes and materials so they can achieve economies of scale. This is the way it is done in many other cities.

Libraries provide a valuable service to the community but to have this many of them is redundant and expensive. It also means that most neighborhood branches do not have the materials needed to provide a quality library experience to their customers.

The amount of libraries in a particular town should be determined by the will of the local people. If a citizen is unhappy with the number of public libraries in West Seneca, that citizen is free to move to Amherst which may offer better services. They will also pay a premium on their taxes for additional services.

Before I moved back to Buffalo in 2004; I lived in Oak Park, IL, a suburb of Chicago. Oak Park is the epicenter of liberalism, diversity, architectural snobbery, and general uppity nonsense in the greater Chicago metroplex. They also have one of the finest public libraries I have ever seen and a school system that is without par. As you might imagine, the tax burden in Oak Park is exorbitant and nearly doubles that of it’s neighboring suburb to the south, Berwyn. The good people of Berwyn choose to live where they do and make a tradeoff that includes a lower tax burden for a slightly lower quality of municipal services. People in neighboring towns are not forced to subsidize Oak Park’s spending with their tax dollars. Much like I, as a city resident, should not be forced to bear the burden of Amherst’s spending choices. We need to ask the towns of Erie County to bear the burden of their own services and utilize the county as a clearing house to achieve lower costs through consolidated purchasing.

Subsidy by the county only limits effective management and props up a system in which many citizens receive substandard service at an inflated cost.

I’m fairly certain that she doesn’t remember this but, the last time I brought this up to Erie County Legislator Lynn Marinelli at a public meeting, I received a 15 minute earful on the charter changes, state, city, and county laws that would require overhaul to make a regionalization of services possible. In commonfolk-speak, this translates into: “Your idea would require way too much effort so, I’ll just keep this hot button issue alive to drive turnout to the polls every year”.

Isn’t it time that we took a fresh look at how we apportion services and funding rather than watching interest groups beg for scraps at county hall?

In a short article about a secular think tank in today’s Buffalo News, a quote caught my eye and has had me shaking my head in disbelief all day…

A fifth of Americans believe that the sun revolves around the earth, and only 26 percent believe that life evolved through the process of natural selection

Excuse me? What the hell is going on in this country when this:

is a more reasonable explanation than this:

The creationist movement has been effective in devaluing intelligence, science, and research. It’s absolutely incredible to me that 74% of Americans believe in creationism…

A coworker of mine will argue until he is blue in the face that dinosaurs did not really exist and that carbon dated fossils were put here by God to tempt and test our faith.

What does that say about us and what we have become? What does it mean for our future?

After an extended, baby-induced absence, the weekly videos are found after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »

Craig at Northcoast would like us to focus on the “positives” in Iraq.

• The Ministry of Electricity now sends power to Baghdad for four to eight hours a day, and 10 to 12 for the rest of the country.

• Iraqis are now free to buy consumer items such as generators, which provide some homes with power around-the-clock.

I can’t say that if this story were more widely reported it would mean greater support for America’s continued involvement in Iraq, but it certainly wouldn’t be seen as the complete waste of time and lives that passes for the conventional wisdom these days.

Unfortunately, absolute chaos has enveloped many areas in Iraq.

Revenge-seeking militiamen seized six Sunnis as they left Friday prayers and burned them alive with kerosene in a savage new twist to the brutality shaking the Iraqi capital a day after suspected Sunni insurgents killed 215 people in Baghdad’s main Shiite district.

Iraqi soldiers at a nearby army post failed to intervene in Friday’s assault by suspected members of the Shiite Mahdi Army militia or subsequent attacks that killed at least 19 other Sunnis, including women and children, in the same neighborhood, the volatile Hurriyah district in northwest Baghdad, said police Capt. Jamil Hussein.

Most of the thousands of dead bodies that have been found dumped across Baghdad and other cities in central Iraq in recent months have been of victims who were tortured and then shot to death, according to police. The suspected militia killers often have used electric drills on their captives’ bodies before killing them. The bodies are frequently decapitated.

Forgive me if news about school openings, new bakeries, and consumer products seems a bit trite next to news of decapitations, militias burning people alive, and the death of hundreds every day.

In other news in Iraq, the Mahdi Army caused the closure of airports in Bara and Baghdad as well as the sea ports in Basra, shut down the Ministry of Health, and Sunni militia men killed 161 and wounded 257 in a string of car bombings that targeted Shiite strongholds in Sadr City.

“Counting those killed in Sadr City, at least 233 people died or were found dead across Iraq on Thursday.” Oh, my. Since Iraq is 11 times smaller in population than the US, that would be like the deaths of 2,563 Americans. On September 11, on the order of 2,783 Americans were killed, and several hundred of other nationalities.

But, let’s not focus on the negatives, right?

The Albany Times Union and several other local media outlets recently won a court case that requires the New York State Senate (La Cosa Nostra Bruno) to reveal in detail, their member items (aka pork projects).

Well the Senate released those numbers in the most useless format possible; 3200 pages of non-indexed, unalphabetized, and non-searchable scanned pages. Of course, this makes it infinitely difficult for citizens or media outlets to do much with the data contained in the reports. They also released it on one of the slowest media days of the year, the day before Thanksgiving.

Essentially, Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno gave a big “Va fungu” to the citizens of New York State.

You can read through the report that contains member items details from 2003-04 and 2004-05 by clicking here.

Be patient, the reports take forever to open as they are both more than 125MB long…I think the sizes of these files should tell you something about the dysfunction of state government.

BTW, I spent about 20 minutes scrolling through the report to find any mention of my former State Senator (Byron Brown) and any of his member items without any luck. If anyone has the time or patience to search through this (I’m looking at you Rus and Jim O.), let me know what you find.

As Pundit noted earlier today, the cries to save ECMC from imminent consolidation/closure have begun. Of course, this will soon be followed by cries to Save Millard Fillmore! Save Kenmore Mercy! Save St. Joseph’s!, etc. It will also result in press conferences and rallies like this one:

Why? Because New York State decided it was time to reassess just how many hospitals we need to support our dwindling population base. Hodgepodge has a competency in this area so, I’ll simply link to his description of the situation.

Next month, a state commission is likely to recommend the closure of one or more area hospitals (as well as a number of others across the state). Members of that commission have, incidentally, included the leaders of the major local hospital systems - including Kaleida Health, Catholic Health System, and ECMC. You may not realize that when you hear the rhetoric about this being an initiative pushed down by “people in Albany.” Anyway, the state legislature would then take an “up-or-down” vote on the entirety of the commission’s recommendations.

The rumor mill is running amok already. Most believe that the recommendations will include the suggested closures of St. Joseph’s Hospital in Cheektowaga, Millard Fillmore Gates Circle in Buffalo, and DeGraff Memorial in Tonawanda, as well as the consolidation of ECMC with Buffalo General Hospital at the emerging Buffalo-Niagara Medical Campus location downtown.

Hodgepodge comes to the same common sense conclusion that most objective observers do; hospital closures are an economic necessity.

the stark reality is that we have too many hospitals and too many beds in Western New York today. The city population is a fraction of what it once was (282,000 versus over 600,000 in 1950) and the county population is stagnant.

Capacity utilization at local hospitals hovers just in the 55-60% range. This compares to a benchmark of ~85% that most hospitals nationwide target.

The math works out to about 3.23 beds per 1,000 people in Erie County. While this is not way off 3.3 in New York state overall - it’s considerably higher than the 2.7 in Illinois and 2.0 in California, similarly densely populated states (based on reports done by the Kaiser Family Foundation). So what we have are too many beds - too many of which lie empty.

Having so many hospitals in the local area amounts to increased private medical premiums and higher Medicaid rates. Two things that are handcuffing the economic climate in Upstate New York. However, does the state really have the right to force a private business to close? If so, under what authority?

Closing the hospitals will indeed be a bitter pill to swallow, however, it will result in an avalanche of advertising revenue for local radio and television stations as SEIU 1199 will begin airing non-stop fear-mongering spots about your Little Billy not having access to quality care. Good times ahead…

Mrs. Geek and I are having a great time with the new baby and we appear to be on the verge of some sort of schedule.

With that being said, snarky and sarcastic commentary on events both local and national will return tomorrow.

I’ll be back with more details tomorrow or the day after but, I wanted to share a few pictures of my brand new baby boy, Cole.

Cole is our first child and was due on 12/6/06, so his arrival on 11/16/06 was a bit of a surprise. Although he was three weeks early, he weighed in at a healthy 7lbs. and 9oz while measuring 21″ long.

He was greeted by over a dozen visitors on his first day and is now very sleepy.

He’s perfect in every way.

“Buffalo Bloggers: Repopulating Buffalo, One Baby At A Time”

Cole hangs out with the family dog

Cole reacts to the news that JP Losman did NOT suck against the Texans today.

errrr, make that Minority Whip.

Yup, Trent Lott appears to be the new GOP Minority Whip. His exile in the political desert after some racially charged remarks appears to be over.

“I want to say this about my state: When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over all these years, either.”

Since Thurmond had explicitly supported racial segregation in the presidential campaign to which Lott referred, this statement was widely interpreted to mean that Lott also supported racial segregation. Lott had attracted controversy before in issues relating to civil rights. As a Congressman, he voted against renewal of the Voting Rights Act and opposed the Martin Luther King Holiday. Lott also maintained an affiliation with the Council of Conservative Citizens, which is described as a hate group by the ADL, NAACP and SPLC.

I, for one, am glad to see that the Republicans have learned from the royal ass-whipping the received in the 2006 elections and are selecting fresh faces with broad appeal to leadership positions…

Not much on this issue across the Buffalo blogosphere so, I figured I’d kickstart the conversation…

A Shirley Avenue couple were surprised when they lost their home to an emergency demolition following the Oct. 12-13 snowstorm.

They were even more surprised when they got a bill for about $40,000 from the city.

“It’s overwhelming,” said Isabelle Carrington, “It’s a tragedy. It’s like you have nothing. You’re homeless, and then you get hit with this enormous bill, and it’s like, “Where does life begin again?’ ”

We know there was a fire and the building was determined to be unsafe for entry but, it seems that the demolition order was handed down and executed upon in an inordinately expedient manner. This is Buffalo, after all.

A fire marshal at the scene declared the home structurally unsafe to enter, said Richard M. Tobe, commissioner of the Department of Economic Development, Permits & Inspections. Tobe’s office then bid out the emergency demolition the day after the fire and got two responses - one for about $35,000, another for around $60,000.

“Within 48 hours, a neighbor called and said our house was being torn down. Days later, we get this other bill from the city for $40,000. It’s just unbelievable.”

Richard M. Tobe, commissioner of the Department of Economic Development, Permits & Inspections, claims that the demolition order was given in the midst of the state of emergency declared after the October storm and that was the source of the confusion and lack of communication with the owner. However, the city didn’t seem to have a problem finding the owners within a few more days with a $40K demolition bill.

It seems to me that all across the east side, there are homes that are unsafe to enter while posing a significant risk to public health and safety. However, those homes don’t always have owners with insurance policies that can reimburse the city for demolition costs.

Now, the family has no home, no clothes, their belongings were destroyed during the demolition, and an empty lot where their home once stood. Their insurance policy is balking at the exorbitant demolition costs. If their insurers pay the tab for the demolition, they won’t have any money with which they can rebuild their home…they still have a mortgage and a home equity loan on the property. While the city is promising help on finding a new home, they will still have to borrow to pay for it. Thus, they would have two mortgages on their demolished property and a third on a new home.

What do you think about the city’s action on this demolition order? Were they too hasty? What should these people do now that a fire and the Buffalo bureaucracy have destroyed their lives?

Eliot Spitzer and his merry band of transition officers visited Buffalo today. As expected, Dr. Feelgood was here doling out the drug of choice for upstaters, hope. He found a citizenry that is jonesing for a dose of the “Big H”.

During the campaign, he had taken a swipe at the Empire State Development Corporation under Gov. George E. Pataki, saying the agency was “finally going to know where Buffalo is.”

Today he said a leader of the agency would be based in the city: “The E.S.D.C. should be focused on Western New York.”

The governor in Albany controls a budget of $114, $115 billion dollars. Reigning it in is important, but spending it wisely is also important… The projects that we’re talking about here require capital, The state should not be parsimonious in rebuilding what has been one of the greatest cities in our nation.

As Pundit reports, NYS Assemblyman Sam Hoyt (D-144) is rumored to be the upstate leader of the ESDC. Be still my beating heart, another career politician put in charge or economic development? That sounds like a boffo plan!

While you might assume that I take a 100% negative view of this development, I don’t. It is indeed a positive sign that Dr. Feelgood is interested in the problems that plague upstate and will no doubt take action to see that we make progress.

The problem I have is the type of progress that is almost inevitable. As I said the other day:

I also find that Spitzer talks of job creation and economic development quite a bit, and I do not think he knows what it actually means. Well, he understands it as Democrats and Pataki Republicans do, in that economic development sources from government action. State controlled development corporations, tight regulation, focused spending on government incubators, university development, empire zones, incentives, and giveaways of state money, etc.

Unfortunately, I believe he will open a branch office of the ESDC in upstate New York, focus on STAR credits, expand empire zones, and generally involve government further into the business cycle.

Why? Because he’s a Democrat and that’s what they do. It’s high-minded and well-intentioned but fatally flawed as a business development strategy. It’s anethema to the entrepreneurial spirit that once made New York State a bastion of industry.

It’s great that Spitzer made a stop in Buffalo and is aware of the scope of our problems. It’ll be even better if we see real progress.

The Buffalo Museum of Science is gearing up for the 30th anniversary of the infamous Buffalo Blizzard of 1977.

With the 30th anniversary around the corner, the museum is hoping area residents will loan their blizzard memorabilia to the museum to include in its winter-themed exhibit, “Snow,” running Nov. 18 through Feb. 25. Already, the museum has received T-shirts, mugs, a board game and other items, said Susan Swiatkowski, communications manager.

Now, many people disagree with me but, I think we need to celebrate our weather, even if it means talking about one of the most infamous blizzards in American history. Evidently, the good folks at the Museum of Science think so as well.

The larger exhibit will include a snow lab where visitors can test their design skills; play with model toboggans and snowball catapults and experiment with ice. The museum is also pulling from its collection polar bears, penguins and other items to show how animals and people have adapted to snow and cold climates throughout the world. And of course, the display will include original photographs and journals from the Bentley Snow Crystal Collection of Wilson Bentley, the first person to capture snowflakes through photography. Other winter photography from the Science Museum Camera Club will also be on display.

“We’re going to totally transform Hamlin Hall, our main exhibit hall, into a wintry wonderland. Anyone can come inside, take their coats off and play in the snow,” Swiatkowski said. “Everything here will have a science theme, but will be fun-based so they can come and play and learn at the same time.”

I was only three years old in 1977 so my memories of the blizzard are pretty limited. I vaguely remember that my Father was snowed in at his office in Downtown Buffalo and my Mother was snowed in with my brother and I for several days. My rememberances are pretty uninteresting so, I’m hoping that my readers can spice this up with their memories of one of the most significant events in Buffalo history.

So, what memories do you have to share?