The State University of New York at Buffalo’s Shale Research and Society Institute (SRSI) has ended public access to its website, according to this post by the Public Accountability Initiative (PAI). A user name and password are now required to visit the site. PAI has archived most of the pages that were taken down overnight. Yesterday, PAI issued a scathing review of SRSI’s first report, showing it to be bad science and embarrassingly one-sided in tone. The report was authored by individuals with deep ties to the natural gas industry.

According to the secret SRSI website, the primary goals of the Shale Resources and Society Institute are to:

• Address environmental, economic, social, and legislative concerns related to shale gas and oil development.
• Build a well-informed citizenry through a base of community knowledge regarding shale gas and oil development, while carefully balancing academic and public education.
• Bring all sectors together to make intelligent decisions based on the best information available.
• Work with a diverse group of stakeholders.
• Train students in energy-related fields and prepare them to fill future leadership roles.

Facilitate potential economic benefits without damaging the environment.

Yet now, the public is barred from access?

This is the second SUNY shale institute website to vanish from the public eye after scrutiny. The first was located at SUNY College at Fredonia.

Bauhaus Salon of Design Opens in Black Rock

“Manufacturing beautiful people”

You may have noticed the vacant store front on Elmwood Avenue where Amiee N’ Amy Salon used to be. Across the street from Spot Coffee, right next to Campus Wheelworks, the salon had a prime location for over a decade, but now Amiee Kennedy of Amiee N’ Amy, along with Meghan Yea, have packed up and moved down to the growing Black Rock area. The new salon is called Bauhaus Salon of Design, located at 459 Amherst St. in Buffalo right near the Black Rock Kitchen and Bar, directly across the street from the 464 Gallery, down the block from the new Delish, and a short walk from Wegman’s. To set up an appointment call 716-877-2825 or pop in during Rediscover Amherst, Saturday, June 16th for their grand opening at 3pm. Stop in for food, drinks, and artwork by Jett Jaguar St. John.

I’ve heard it said that Buffalo is where good ideas go to die. I don’t think of it like that.

Buffalo is where good ideas are made to inhale chloroform, dragged around to the back of the abandoned house, and murdered by status-quo driven self-interest.

Buffalo in 2011 (and 2012) is besotted with the same problems, the same issues, the same concerns, and – strikingly – the same debates it had a decade ago.  Save one.

Regionalism.

Regionalism was murdered in 2005 after being debilitated by people who have an interest in maintaining the status quo, and then unintentionally killed by a politically beleaguered Joel Giambra; it was manslaughter.  After all, during the last few years of his 16th floor Rath Building tenancy, Joel Giambra was political poison. If he was for pink bunny rabbits and sun-shiny days, polls would show that 20% of WNYers agreed with him, while 70% hated bunnies and sunshine, and a further 10% didn’t know.

But as wrong as Joel Giambra was about a lot of things, he was right about one – that western New York needed to seriously consider the implementation of regional, metropolitan government. The champion of this idea was Kevin Gaughan.

Gaughan recognized that regionalism – a concept whose entry in the regional socio-economic-political discussion began through a forum held in 1997 at the Chautauqua Institution – was a non-starter due to its support from, and association with the toxic Giambra.  He turned his attention to another crusade – the “Cost“, which studied and determined that we ought to remedy a symptom of too many governments in WNY – i.e., too many politicians and appointees – and begin eliminating villages and downsizing town boards and other legislatures.  That has been met with some success, more failure, and bypasses the disease itself.

Yet those familiar with the internet’s Way Back Machine can still access Gaughan’s arguments for regional metropolitan government.

One of the opinions I’m most known for is the idea that county government ought to be abolished. It was done in 1997 in Massachusetts, which recognized that county government largely adds no value to the work already done by cities, towns, villages, and – most importantly – the state.

We have so many redundant and needless governments in western New York that the regional is factionalized and fragmented.  The Balkanization of western New York helps ensure that there is no unified plan – with a set vision, and a series of distinct goals – for moving a region into a 21st century reality.

We rely on the Sabres and the Bills to keep convincing ourselves that this is a major league city. It isn’t. Our infrastructure planning assumed that the City of Buffalo and Erie County would grow to a population of over 2 million people. It hasn’t; it’s shrunken. People clamor for change, yet moan about its actual implementation. As if by abolishing a village government you abolish the village itself and displace its people.

We are the ultimate hoarders; hoarders of pointless governmental entities that add no value to the civic equation. Why? Could it be as simple as my hypothesis – that there are too many people dependent on the maintenance of the status quo to permit change to be implemented?

It’s time for us, the people of Erie County and western New York, to start talking again about looking forward.  The governmental number and structure of the 50s needs to change, or this region will continue to decline.  The age of industry has given way to the age of knowledge and information.

The city of Toronto, Ontario is a municipal entity comprising over 2 million people. It has a directly elected mayor and a unicameral legislature made up of 44 councilmembers representing a geographical constituency. In 1998, Toronto and six surrounding municipalities joined, making up the amalgamated Metro Toronto. Buffalo also has a changed demographic reality, one that could do with some radical change.  You mean to tell me that 45 elected officials to handle a population of 900,000 isn’t doable? Western New York has 45 separate and distinct governments, comprised of well over 300 elected officials.

This is the first in a series, and it’s my hope that we can re-spark this discussion and come up with ways to implement and design this new reality for western New York. I sincerely think that by making this switch to metropolitan government is the best chance for lurching us out of a 50s growth & infrastructure mentality that has been an anachronism for decades. This is an idea that will be fought tooth & nail by those who benefit from our stagnated status quo, but some of their points will be valid and need to be addressed.  I hope to conclude with an action plan that will enable people to lobby, advocate, agitate, and cajole for this idea.

Downsize? Let’s downsize from 45 to 1.

Sometimes, old forgotten ideas are worth reviving.  Let’s do that.

The foregoing article was first published on March 8, 2011. Unfortunately, it didn’t really become a “series”, and that’s my own fault. Maybe by re-publishing it here, thanks to the archives of my old 2006 – 2011 posts that is now back online, I’ll remind myself further to pursue this line of thought and debate. 

Buffalo Fire Department by tark9

www.flickr.com More in Buffalopundit: AV Photo Daily pool

'55 Oldsmobile 88, Wheatfield, N.Y.

Passed this 1955 Olds 88 four-door many times in Wheatfield, but the sun was always at a crappy angle for a picture — until a couple of days ago. Another gem from the ’50s which puts today’s automotive color palette to shame. The 88 line was Old’s price leader, followed up the ladder by the Super 88 and the Ninety-Eight. See them all here.

— Jim Corbran, You Auto Know

A review issued today by the Public Accountability Initiative (PAI) skewers the “Environmental Impacts During Marcellus Shale Gas Drilling” report released just nine days ago by the fledgling UB Shale Resources and Society Institute (SRSI).

The review shows two of the report’s central claims to be false, and reveals that whole sections were lifted from an earlier pro-fracking report written by the same authors, without attribution. The earlier report was commissioned by the conservative Manhattan Institute—which receives substantial funding from energy companies like Exxon Mobil.

The report employs flawed methodology, biased language, and industry spin. It also relied on an artificial “peer review” process, according to authors Kevin Connor, Robert Galbraith, and Benjamin Nelson.

Using data included in the UB report, they bust the claim that major fracking-related environmental violations declined from 2008-2011. In fact, such violations increased 36% during that time period. The evidence is damning.

Calls and emails to UB spokesperson John Della Contrada, and institute co-director John Martin—seeking comment on the review—were not returned. SIHI co-director Robert Jacobi sent a brief reply: “The comments on the paper I will leave to the authors. A very small point: I am actually a consultant (senior geology advisor) to EQT , not employed in the usual sense with benefits and all that good stuff.” Jacobi, a UB geologist, is listed as being “on long-term, 85% leave” according to the department website.

The review also illustrates how the authors of the UB report are intertwined with the energy industry. Also, Martin is retired from the New York State Energy Research & Development Authority (NYSERDA), and collects a state pension from his 17 years there—as he mentioned in a pro-fracking presentation at UB last year.

Click here to read PAI’s “The UB Shale Play: Distorting the Facts about Fracking.” Funding for the report came from the 11th Hour Project of the Schmidt Family Foundation.

Meanwhile, SRSI’s presence has quietly been scaled back at UB Partner’s Day, scheduled for June 13. According to this archived page, Martin and Marcy Werth of Ecology and Environment were scheduled to give a presentation at the event. Not anymore. Given the institute’s train-wreck of a debut this past week, wanting to keep a low-profile is perfectly understandable.

“The errors in this report really undermine its conclusions. The degree of bias and extensive ties to the natural gas industry suggest that UB is being used as an academic front for industry misinformation,” said lead author of the PAI study, Kevin Connor.

The review concludes: “Will the University at Buffalo and its parent system, the State University of New York, continue to participate in this deception?”

That’s a good question.

Layers!!11!

Birtherism is the right-wing fever-dream that won’t die. For Democrats and independents, it’s long gone from being puzzling to hilarious – especially since the President released his “long-form” birth certificate in April 2011. The theory? Usually it comes down to Obama being a secret Muslim, Kenyan-born, Manchurian candidate, set up since birth in 1961 by a communist cabal intent on destroying the United States. Like the Romney campaign, this wing of birtherism still lives deep in the heart of the Cold War. 

Less insane birthers claim merely that Obama can’t be a “natural-born” citizen because under the law as it stood in the 18th century, one could not be “natural-born” if one’s father was not a citizen at the time of birth. Of course, that’s not the law in the United States. The 14th Amendment confirmed that any person born on American soil is automatically and by birthright a natural-born citizen. So, that theory’s out the window. 

The less inventive birthers insist that Obama’s certificate of live birth wasn’t proof of anything, despite the fact that writing on the document itself indicates that it is “prima facie evidence of the fact of birth in any court proceeding“.  So, to shut the thing up once and for all, the White House released the long form birth certificate, pictured above. 

Of course, these people immediately accused the White House and/or Hawaii of falsifying the birth certificate, analyzing the PDF version of it for “layers”, (as if the PDF wasn’t merely a scanned image in a particular format of a physical document). The “layers” theory was handily debunked here. 

There are still dummies all over the internet claiming that Obama is a foreign-born usurper and that everything is phony. In the most tea-party prone state in the Union, Arizona, a whopping (sarcasm – ed.) 1,200 emails were sent to Secretary of State Ken Bennett, (who – totally coincidentally – is also the Arizona co-chairman of the Romney campaign), to demand that Hawaii confirm Obama’s eligibility before the President is allowed to be listed as a candidate on the November ballot there. 

The emails between Arizona and Hawaii are utter comedy, but ultimately Hawaii did send a verification to Arizona, which you can see here. It seems pretty legitimate to me, even if it is a PDF and likely has LAYERS!

But for some reason, the Romney campaign has not yet answered claims that the likely Republican nominee is, in fact, a unicorn.  You see, Arizona was chasing down Obama’s eligibility, and claiming to Hawaii that it had a duty to do so. It would therefore follow that they had a duty to chase down Romney’s eligibility.  After all, Romney’s father may not have been born in Kenya, but he was born in Mexico. But Arizona hadn’t contacted Michigan, and had no plans to do so.

So, if a mere 1,200 angry, xenophobic, conspiratorial emails can get Arizona’s Ken Bennett to conduct a birther investigation, then certainly 15,000 emails will be more than persuasive for Mr. Bennett to conduct an investigation into the shocking, un-contradicted claims of Romney’s alleged unicornhood. 

The Republican rush to appropriate and placate the tea party is going to start coming back to haunt it – the tea party, which is at its core little more than a reactionary movement that facially opposes “spending” but never really coalesced for some reason until 2009. I wonder what that reason might be? 

After all, here’s a chart that shows a comparison of the growth in government spending between the Obama administration and other recent Presidents. (It starts with 2010, because the 2009 budget was passed in 2008 under President Bush). 

If conservatism is about smaller government, shrinking the federal budget, and lower spending, it would perhaps seem as if our political labels may be, quite frankly, reversed. The deficit? It wasn’t caused by spending – it was caused by a dramatic reduction in revenue during the 2008 downturn. 

But the longer we blama Obama for outrageous “spending” and for not being “natural-born”, the longer we’ll just keep going around and around, not really solving any big problems, but instead punting and making them worse for future generations. 

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