At the risk of drawing to him the attention he so craves, I will respond to Joe Illuzzi’s rant about the post three below this one, in which I reported that Stonewall Democrats of Western New York has endorsed Mickey Kearns for mayor. Outcome magazine reported that Mayor Byron Brown was ineligible for the endorsement under Stonewall’s rules because Brown advertises with Illuzzi, who Stonewall considers to be an opponent to LGBT rights.

Illuzzi responded to the post thusly:

I have just been told by an impeccable source that this entire Artvoice – Outcome scheme was orchestrated by Assemblyman Sam Lollipop Kid Hoyt & Artvoice scribe former Giambra Deputy Erie County Executive  Bruce Fisher.
In fact what we have here is Hoyt & Fisher using their resources, GLBT advocate Artvoice, GLBT Outcome & the  Stonewall Democrats,  to extort from political candidates a commitment not to advertise with PoliticsNY.Net or lose the Stonewall endorsement (which means absolutely nothing).
Please remember two years ago GLBT Outcome, Hoyt, et al., tried the same thing. This time they got dirt/scum bag Deputy Erie County Executive Bruce Fisher & GLBT advocate Artvoice to go along. Fisher not only writes for Artvoice but he is a neighbor & friend of Publisher Jamie Moses. Outcome actually writing that Hoyt was innocent of the charges laid against him with the NYS Assembly. Please recall the Assembly ethics committee found against Hoyt predicated on one of his very young vicitms testimony; later Hoyt admitted to at least one violation of his oath with a student. Hoyt was thrown out of the Intern program for his malfeasnace. The story is far more egregious than a simple affair with a student 15 years younger than Hoyt. But why inflict any more pain on his very young victims for making bad choices. Hoyt’s statement about protecting his family were all lies. He got caught with his pants down via his published emails. Bruce Fisher isn’t much better an ego driven dirt/scum bag, the Biblical fool. It is worth repeating other than Giambra I have not found one person in Giambra’s inner circle who does not say former Deputy Erie County Executive Bruce Fisher was the heart & soul of Giambra’s failed administration other than Giambra himself. …

On background a few days ago I saw Artvoice writer, former & all around dirt/scum bag former Deputy Erie County Executive Bruce Fisher huddled with Sam Lollipop Kid Hoyt at an Elmwood coffee house. Fisher is the central figure in the failure of the Giambra administration other than Giambra himself.
Artvoice this week under Editor Geoff Kelly’s by line does a hit piece on yours truly for my position opposing gay marriage (scroll down) using the same Stonewall questionnaire. I have always held back with respect to Artvoice because of my regard for Publisher Jamie Moses. I will write I was Artvoice’s principle source via the City Charter review 10 years ago & the original source when Moses decided to enter the fray with respect to the  Golisano/Sabres story a few years back. However, in this weeks’ edition, & I know this is Bruce Fisher not Kelly, Kelly starts quoting Hoyt’s favorite BI weekly or BI something “Outcome” in a personal attack against yours truly. I am very disappointed Moses would allow this to happen. I know Moses story! But you know what … so what … we’ll just let this one pass! …

So many inaccuracies. Here are a few:

1. Illuzzi was not AV’s primary source on our coverage of Buffalo’s charter revision process. How can I be sure? Because I wrote many articles in Artvoice about the Charter Review Commission, and Illuzzi and I have never met or spoken. My primary sources were Jim Magavern and George Arthur. (In an email, Joe said he spent time talking with another Artvoice correspondent on the issue. Okay, sure. But another journalist, if that’s what Illuzzi fancies himself, has never been a “primary source” for any AV article about local government.)

2. This was not a hit piece on Illuzzi. Just because his name is mentioned in a story, it does not follow that he is its subject. The subject was Stonewall’s endorsement. Pride goeth before the fall, Joe. (In his email, Joe continues to insist the post was entirely aimed at him.)

3. Illuzzi’s “impeccable source” is a liar. Neither Hoyt nor Fisher put me up to writing that innocuous blog post; neither of them is capable of steering me, or Jamie Moses, or any other writer at this paper to do anything. That they can is a fantasy concocted in the fertile, paranoid imaginations of Joe Illuzzi and possibly the mayor’s office. (Illuzzi’s response: “No! Geoff you are the liar!” Welcome to the schoolyard.)

4. Fisher is my friend and Jamie’s. He is not a neighbor to either of us. All of our addresses are simple to find, but I don’t think Illuzzi is big on fact-checking.

The first example suggests Illuzzi is deluded; the second that he is self-absorbed; the third that he will believe—and publish—anything anyone tells him; the fourth that he can’t be bothered to check if what he writes has any validity to it. Why then should anyone believe anything he publishes?

To borrow one of Joe’s favorite phrases: That’s rhetorical.

In which Buffalo Rising regurgitates statements from the Buffalo Niagara Partnership and Grassroots.

If this post is, as its title would indicate, simply a “Reminder to Vote,” then why not mention the names of the challengers? Why quote only two organizations that are endorsing the incumbents?

Even Peter Simon’s fairly tepid piece in today’s Buffalo News—which openly endorsed the three incumbents on its op-ed pages—acknowledges that there is opposition to those three, and even perhaps some nebulous, hard-to-report controversy about the way the Buffalo Niagara Partnership (”business interests,” Simon writes vaguely) pumped money into their campaigns. (Hard-t0-report unless you’re us, who took them to court, or Channel 4’s Rich Newberg, who picked up on it yesterday.)

Come on, BRO. If you’re endorsing a candidate, just say so and tell us why. Not someone else’s reasons. Your own.

A QUICK AFTERTHOUGHT: One of the commenters on the BRO post suggests the same critique could be made of Artvoice: Our coverage of this school board race has been good, the commenter says, but biased; we clearly oppose the three incumbents but have not explicitly endorsed.

Fair enough, I guess, though I would add that we are not biased for anyone. Most of our coverage has been about finances and process; it just so happens that that coverage (so far) has reflected badly on the incumbents and their supporters. We tend to think a change would do the school board good, but we’re not endorsing any one or any two or three of the challengers.

Yesterday, BuffaloPundit posted Warren Buffett’s less-than-enthusiastic assessment of the American newspaper industry, offered during Berkshire Hathaway’s annual shareholders meeting:

“For most newspapers in the United States, we would not buy them at any price…they have the possibility of going to just unending losses.”

The Buffalo News, which is owned by Berkshire Hathaway, neglected to include that comment in its account of its parent company’s annual meeting.

Today, however, the News managed to dig up and publish these comments from Buffett, his right-hand man Charles Munger, and his billionaire friend Bill Gates:

The ailing newspaper business got an endorsement Monday from three of the wealthiest men in America—Berkshire Hathaway’s Warren Buffett and Charles Munger, and Microsoft Corp. founder Bill Gates—as they talked business in Omaha with anchor Liz Claman on Fox Business News.

After Claman noted that Berkshire Hathaway has “a significant position in newspapers”—The Buffalo News and The Washington Post—and that this is “not an expanding and growth sector now,” it was Munger who first stepped forward in defense.

“We have this system where we have some investments that we don’t discard them because they’re declining,” Munger explained. “We have some things that we’re faithful to, that we’re married to, so to speak.”

And it was Gates who offered the best perspective on the Berkshire Hathaway newspaper holdings, acknowledging the many areas The Washington Post has entered and noting that “The Buffalo News has handled the challenges, working with their unions, and figured out how to move forward as well as any newspaper company.”

Most likely, Buffett recognized that it was in his best interest to temper what he’d said about newspapers over the weekend, given his stake in thr Washington Post and his ownership of the News.

But why did the Buffalo News choose to strip these remarks of their context by failing to acknowledge the gloomy prognosis Buffett offered over the weekend?

http://www.buffalonews.com/145/story/661374.html

David Torke has a terrific series of posts going over at Fix Buffalo. He’s taking a critical look at Belmont Shelter’s $12.1 million plan to build 50 “rent-to-own” houses on the city’s East Side, in the Cold Springs neighborhood, scattered across 60 city blocks.

He questions whether scattershot new-builds are a good strategy for revitalization. He asks whether $240,000 per house is a bit too keen a pricetag for these sorts of properties in these neighborhoods. He suggests, and references, what a lot of other smart people have been saying: that we’d do better to focus our energies on preserving and rehabbing historic structures in tightly focused project areas, preserving the urban nature of the environment rather than swapping it out for a false sense of suburbia.

Torke is at four posts and counting. Start with this one.

Interestingly, someone who claims to be former board member of Belmont Shelter has been commenting on Torke’s posts, suggesting Belmont’s first loyalty is not to its housing mission or to its target communities, but to the bottom lines of the for-profit construction, development, and property ownership companies that are subsidiaries of the not-for-profit housing agency.

About eight months ago, I linked to a post on a Crystal Beach, Ontario online news and opinion site called the Strand that alleged shady dealings between the Public Bridge Authority and Town of Fort Erie officials in regard to the disposition of Fort Erie’s Mentholatum Building, which the PBA owned and had planned to lease to the town. I knew nothing of the matter, and still don’t—I don’t even know where the Mentholatum Building is. I figured I’d post what the Strand had written and see what folks thought. One guy responded, saying basically that the Strand was wrong and using unreliable sources.

Yesterday, eight months later, PBA manager Ron Rienas responded, too, by email:

Earlier this month the PBA sold the Mentholatum Building to the Boys and Girls Club of Niagara. The sale price was the same that the Peace Bridge Authority (PBA) paid for the building approx. 4 1/2 years ago.

The building was initially acquired by the PBA and used for Peace Bridge purposes to facilitate the reconstruction of the Canadian Customs Plaza. The PBA is required by Canadian law to provide facilities for the immigration/refugee function including facilities for an NGO that provides refugee services. As the reconstruction of the plaza involved demolition of buildings housing those functions we were obligated to provide alternative space. The Canadian plaza construction was completed in 2007 allowing these uses to return to the plaza enabling the PBA to dispose of the building.

As a public entity and in keeping with Town of Fort Erie plans to utilize the building for community purpose, the Board did originally offer the use of the building to Town for a $1.00/year lease but the Town would be required to pay all utilities, taxes, maintenance, etc. When there was opposition to that arrangement because it was incorrectly perceived as free rent competing with the private sector, the Board determined that it was simply not worth fighting to do something beneficial for the community. Accordingly the decision was made to sell the building but in keeping with the desire to maintain the building for a community benefit the PBA first offered it to charitable organizations before putting it on the open market. The Boys and Girls Club of Niagara acquired the property and will be using the building for its own purposes as well as leasing space to the Town and other community groups. The difference being that the capital cost of the building is now built into the rent structure costing community groups more money.

As for the other allegations in the article there was a full environmental assessment done on the building and no remedial environmental work was required. The elevator was repaired and there was  a roof repair – total cost I understood to be less than $10,000. The reference to the PBA giving “gifts ” is also not accurate as we continue, in the spirit of good corporate citizen, to make grants to groups and associations  on both sides of the river that meet pre-determined criteria.

This isn’t my bailiwick, so I’m not fact-checking Ron’s account anymore than I fact-checked the Strand’s. But I’d love to hear more from folks who know more about the issue.

First can the Buffalo Ruse. (Top story today: Byron Brown establishes Buffalo’s “Snow Fighting Command Center” in Raleigh, North Carolina.)

Now say hello ot the Buffalo Huckleberry. (Top story today: NFTA to acquire hybrid buses, genetically modified to have “the head of a giant fish and the ass end of a zebra.”)

City Hall News has flow_chart that tracks who might replace who, from Hillary’s Senate seat on down (click to expand or follow the link—it’s an awkward shape):

The AP reports that Hillary Clinton met with Barack Obama in Chicago yesterday, adding fuel to speculation that she might be Obama’s choice for secretary of state. If that happens, it has long been rumored that Brian Higgins would be appointed to her Senate seat. (BuffaloPundit reports that rumor this morning. And again this afternoon.) I know a couple prominent businessmen who are working to make that happen, and who knows? Downstate Democrats will make that decision, but maybe it’ll come to pass.

If Clinton does go to Obama’s cabinet, and Higgins does take her Senate seat, then who fills Higgins’ spot in the House? Byron Brown has had his eye on Louise Slaughter’s seat, should she retire soon. But Higgins’ seat is probably safer for Brown (for whomever winds up in it, hypothetically). After the 2010 Census, upstate New York is likely to lose another representative in Congress, and Slaughter’s seat might be the one to go. It’s one ugly-looking district:

There has been another rumor that Brown, not Higgins, would be appointed to Clinton’s seat, but that seems nutball. Higgins’ seat seems a more reasonable aspiration for the mayor.

Who, then, would join Mickey Kearns in the race to replace Brown next year?

But it would be nice if it were.

Via the Data Stream, by way of Jon Winet.

UPDATE: There’s a print edition, according to a press release, and apparently it’s being distributed in NYC:

Early this morning, commuters nationwide were delighted to find out
that while they were sleeping, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan had
come to an end.

If, that is, they happened to read a “special edition” of today’s New
York Times.

In an elaborate operation six months in the planning, 1.2 million
papers were printed at six different presses and driven to prearranged
pickup locations, where thousands of volunteers stood ready to pass
them out on the street.

Articles in the paper announce dozens of new initiatives including the
establishment of national health care, the abolition of corporate
lobbying, a maximum wage for C.E.O.s, and, of course, the end of the
war.

The paper, an exact replica of The New York Times, includes
International, National, New York, and Business sections, as well as
editorials, corrections, and a number of advertisements, including a
recall notice for all cars that run on gasoline. There is also a
timeline describing the gains brought about by eight months of
progressive support and pressure, culminating in President Obama’s “Yes
we REALLY can” speech. (The paper is post-dated July 4, 2009.)

“It’s all about how at this point, we need to push harder than ever,”
said Bertha Suttner, one of the newspaper’s writers. “We’ve got to make
sure Obama and all the other Democrats do what we elected them to do.
After eight, or maybe twenty-eight years of hell, we need to start
imagining heaven.”

Not all readers reacted favorably. “The thing I disagree with is how
they did it,” said Stuart Carlyle, who received a paper in Grand
Central Station while commuting to his Wall Street brokerage. “I’m all
for freedom of speech, but they should have started their own paper.”

We understand the Yes Men are behind this.

August is a sleepy month, unless you’re a politician facing a primary in September or a political junkie who can’t stop handicapping the races.

If you’re one of those junkies—and if you hold your nose and read Joe Illuzzi more than once a week (no link; you know the way), then you know that you are—then you’re not interested in reading a candidate’s sanctioned site. You don’t want press releases and bromides. You don’t care about Michele Iannello’s 40 ideas in 40 days. (Why stop at the primary, Michele? Why not a good idea every day even when no election looms?)

You want the kind of analysis that’s often served anonymously, as at What the Sam Hoyt? (or WISH), a new blog whose author says “The City of Buffalo is in a dangerous position. Our new County Executive is openly hostile to the city, the Assembly Speaker is a downstater, and the new Majority Leader of the Senate is from Long Island…It’s time to hold our State Leadership to a higher standard…As we’re starting during the political season, we’ll also be pointing out hypocrisy and the generally bad ideas that come out of campaigns around this time.”

Godspeed, WISH.