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.

Buffalo Rising has posted Brian Davis’s Facebook page response to Jim Heaney’s front-page analysis of his personal financial history in last Sunday’s Buffalo News. Shame on me for not beating them to it: A friend emailed this to me on Monday, but I honestly thought it was a joke:

Happy Easter! I just wanted to take this opportunity to say, “thank you” to all of you whom shown support and offered words of encouragement as I have endured major public scrutiny over the last 8 weeks. Recognizing, that as a “Public Official”, public scrutiny is something I must deal with and at the same time be held accountable.

The most recent article published in the Buffalo News was filled with slander and inaccuracies and put me off as a “Deadbeat”.  Everyone that knows me know that if there is nothing more important to me, my kids are my pride and joy! I proud my myself on knowing this to be a fact and more importantly, knowing that I place my kids before my own selfish needs. More importantly, to see nonsense published makes me wonder who they are talking about, where did this info come from and why did it make front page of the newspaper?

Well let me tell you, this info is attributed to the Democratic Party, one developer, and the news repeated role in trying to pick their own elected officials to represent what is known as districts commonly represented by “blacks!” This is evidenced by the successful attempt to rid the Buffalo Common Council of representatives like, James Pitts, Charley Fisher and Beverly Gray and now the methodical attempt to rid the City of Buffalo of myself and MAYOR BYRON BROWN.

I refuse to allow this to go any further and now have vowed that I will be fighting back, speaking the truth, letting everyone who cares to know what is really going on regularly. Equally important I will be re-doubling my efforts to make the Ellicott District (City of Buffalo) the best district in the City of Buffalo. We can not allow for those that had a small monopoly on this city continue to play these games, choose our Mayor AND Councilmembers or pimp our communities any longer.

THE FIRST THING THAT I AM ASKING IS THAT ALL THOSE THAT HAVE A HOME DELIVERY OF THE BUFFALO NEWS CALL 842-1111 AND CANCEL YOUR
SUBSCRIPTION OF THE PAPER.  IF YOU ARE IN FACT READING THIS EMAIL, YOU HAVE INTERNET SERVICE AND YOU CAN READ THE NEWS ON-LINE FOR FREE. SHOULD YOU NEED TO PHYSICALLY READ THE PAPER, YOU CAN PICK IT UP AT ANY STORE OR BUY FROM AGENTS STANDING ON MANY OF THE CORNERS. THESE FOLKS GET A % OF THE MONEY THEY TURN IN. YOU CAN HELP IN THIS SMALL WAY TO KEEP THESE AGENTS EMPLOYED AND TAKE MONEY OUT OF THE NEWS POCKET!

This is a very small way you can stand up for your community, show your support for progress and send a clear message to the news that their lies, slander, attacks, and control will no longer be tolerated.

When calling the news to cancel your subscription, let them know that you have had it with their attacks on your community and I encourage you to get 3 others to do the same. WATCH WHAT THIS SMALL DEED WILL DO TO STOP THE NONSENSE OF THE BUFFALO NEWS, I PROMISE!

That “one developer,” I assume, is Davis’s nemesis, Carl Paladino. Paladino has long complained about Davis’s failure to file campaign finance disclosure forms with the state, and he certainly has little positive to say about Davis as a public servant, but to my knowledge Paladino never spread stories of the sort that Heaney found: the failure to pay child support, the suspension of his driver’s license, a suspended campaign account, a litany of bad checks, tax liens, etc. None of those stories came my way from folks in Len Lenihan’s Democratic headquarters, and I don’t think anyone whispered these stories into Heaney’s ear, either. They’re public records. If Heaney and I have anything to apologize for, it’s not digging up this stuff earlier.

It’s typical of Buffalo’s politicians to spin criticism as politically motivated. Davis says he’s going to start “speaking the truth” in regard to these matters. I’m eager for him to begin. He’s been ducking my phone calls and emails for more than two months on these issues alone.

UPDATE: Bill Trezevant, the once and future contender for the Ellicott District Council seat, who wrote the Common Council asking for an investigation into Davis’s behavior, responds to Davis’s insinuation that these revelations are racially motivated attacks:

“Attacks on Me and the Mayor are from the Democratic Party…They are attacks on Black Districts”…

This is the last straw.  The days of Race Wars should have been over when my white Polish mother married my Black father in 1966 when their marriage was illegal under state law.  We as a community have got to come together and say that we want a better tomorrow.  Not one based on race, not one based on gender, but one based on who we can all be, regardless of color.

I don’t know of one section of this city that believes it is “a Black District” or “White District” or “Red District”, but rather as one district.  A district with common hopes, common dreams and common goals.  Mr. Davis after seven years of division now says that the scrutiny on him and the Mayor are because they are “black”, rather than because of what they have done and not done is a slap in the face to every citizen of Buffalo.

I need not go further, except to say that when one is guilty they usually deflect and seek to move the heat to another subject.  In this case, Mr. Davis is trying to do just that.  Mayor, when will you speak out?

Once upon a time, Trezevant and I had harsh words with one another over AV’s treatment of the stewardship of Transfiguration Church on Sycamore Street. He eventually came to convince me that we’d been unfair to him and his partners in that long and star-crossed rehabilitation project, a subject we will revisit someday. In the meantime, I take no position on his candidacy for Davis’s seat, whenever it might be contested. But I agree with him entirely that the suggestion that race motivates reporting on Davis’s financial irresponsibility is absurd and desperate.

I thought I was just hung over.

But Newell Nussbaumer has done me in. The Buffalo Ruse has the story:

Buffalo’s Nussbaumer Charged In Killing Spree, Vandalism

Published: February 6th, 2009

By Frank Brutus

Buffalo native Newell Nussbaumer was apprehended in Los Angeles yesterday after he and his dog, Censor, went on a cross-country killing and vandalism spree that authorities are calling “one of the most violent and cold-blooded attempts to undermine every major newspaper in America” that they have ever seen.

The founder and editor of BuffaloRising.com, a hard-hitting online newsmagazine that features unbiased restaurant reviews and stories written by reporters who ask the tough questions, Nussbaumer was observed by LAPD officer Frank Poncharello placing stickers on Los Angeles Times newspaper boxes that said “Why Waste Your $ On The LA Times When You Can Get All Of Your Real News For Free At BuffaloRising.com?”  Witnesses say that when Poncharello asked Nussbaumer what he was doing, the haggard-looking assailant pulled out a Magnum .357 and pointed it at the officer, shouting, “I’m saving the world from bad journalism!”  Before Nussbaumer had time to fire his gun, Poncharello’s partner, 32-year LAPD veteran Theo Kojak, wrestled the suspect violently to the ground and subdued him.

Officers responding to the scene were horrified to discover 7 dead bodies stuffed into the trunk of Nussbaumer’s Chevrolet Cracker.  Six of the victims were managing editors of prominent U.S. newspapers and the seventh body was identified as Geoffrey Kelly, a contributor to a little-known weekly alternative newspaper in Buffalo called ArtVoice.  Also recovered were thousands of BuffaloRising.com stickers that police say Nussbaumer planned to affix to “every paper box from New York to San Francisco” in hopes of increasing the web traffic to his hard-hitting on-line news site that Nussbaumer had claimed receives “over 1 million hits per day” in literature distributed to his advertisers.

The family of slain New York Times managing editor Jill Abramson, one of the first of Nussbaumer’s victims, issued a statement calling Nussbaumer “a coward who, because he couldn’t stand well-written and concise articles that competed with his own skewed world-view, has stolen our beloved Jill from us and from the rest of the world.”

As of late this morning, authorities in Los Angeles were still trying to determine why Buffalo native Kelly was included as a target on Nussbaumer’s list of prominent American editors.

Buffalo Rising has apologized for its short-lived campaign to discourage folks from reading Artvoice (see post below).

So you think Buffalo has a hard time figuring out what to do with its waterfront, do ya? Mad that we can’t just build a signature bridge, huh? Madder still that we can’t just knock the Skyway bridge down? Furious with obstructionists who don’t want a Bass Pro Shop? Livid about the ice boom? And don’t even get you started about all the blind, misguided fools who can’t see that a huge casino downtown will turn our city around?

Yes, my friend, you do in fact have all the answers. If only you were in charge, by God, some things would get done.

Take Buffalo Rising founder Newell Nussbaumer. There’s a guy who gets behind a cause. The passive beach down on the waterfront would never have been there without his commitment. But Newell knows the wisdom of that old Bob Dylan song:

Time passes slowly up here in the mountains,
We sit beside bridges and walk beside fountains,
Catch the wild fishes that float through the stream,
Time passes slowly when you’re lost in a dream.

In fact, the waterfront has been a hot topic for at least sixty years, as evidenced by this award given to Rose Marie Vilardo, a 1949 student of Grover Cleveland High School who addressed the timeless question: “What About our Waterfront?” Check out who the President of the Buffalo and Erie County Planning Association was in 1949.

Now, Newell, I must ask you the tough question: Are you a vampire?