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July 4, 2009


O's Saturday Web Address

PoliticsNY.Net: Breaking News: PALIN RESIGNING

"Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin said Friday she is resigning from office at the end of the month, raising speculation that she would focus on a run for the White House in the 2012 race.

The former Republican vice presidential candidate made the surprise announcement from her home in suburban Wasilla on Friday morning. She said she would step down July 26 but didn't announce her plans."Once I decided not to run for re-election, I also felt that to embrace the conventional lame duck status in this particular climate would just be another dose of politics as usual, something I campaigned against and will always oppose," Palin said in a statement released by her office.

"It is my duty to always protect our great state. With that in mind, my family and I determined that it is best to make a difference this summer, and I am willing to change things, so that this administration, with its positive agenda, its accomplishments, and its successful road to an incredible future, can continue without interruption and with great administrative and legislative success," she said." ###

A FEW THINGS

Our beloved Rosa Gibson has died ... God Bless her immortal soul! ...

Breaking News First: Joe Mesi has resigned his job as head of the State Senate Majority office in Buffalo tonight (Thursday). Sources say Mesi felt that the political unrest in Albany was undermining his efforts at moving forward with a positive agenda for the community. Mesi, who was once the top-ranked heavyweight contender during an undefeated ring career, is expected to reassess where he goes from here, but he is expected to stay committed to Buffalo and Western New York. ...

Justice Paula Feroleto ruled in favor of the State IP Committee Thursday. Feroleto in her ruling said that the authorizations & endorsements of the Erie County IP under Sandy Rosenswie are not legal given the State rules which take precedent; she ordered the BOE not to accept the authorizations. The State IP will make endorsements in Counties with a population of 750,000 or greater. An appeal is promised. Good luck with that the State IP rules were upheld by the NYS Apeals court. ...

"Former President Bill Clinton has agreed to headline a fundraiser later this month for Rep. Carolyn Maloney, the lawmaker representing Manhattan's posh Upper East Side who is planning to challenge Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand for the Democratic nomination. Clinton's decision to appear at Maloney's July 20 event in Manhattan is fresh evidence that the 2010 contest for Gillibrand's Senate seat could strain the allegiances of Democratic leaders in New York, and widen a rift between upstate and downstate voters." Published report ...

The Erie County Legislature voted to put one ballot question on downsizing before the voters in November from 15 to 13, 4 year terms from 2, the vote 14-0. Collins will veto!

Legislator Maria Whyte had her baby! Congratulations!

“The action the County Legislature took makes true reform a reality in putting the reduction of the Legislature to 13 members from 15 up to the voters of Erie County,” Chair Marinelli said.

“The Legislature both honored the work and effort of the 21^st Century Commission and makes reform a reality. We have continually cut the County Legislature’s budgets through legislative action, and we will continue this financial prudence.”

“This legislative body worked in a collaborative manner for the benefit of the entire constituency of Erie County to garner a compromise,” Legislator Miller-Williams said. “While it is not perfect, it is reform and we look forward to giving the people an opportunity to let us hear how they feel on resizing the Legislature. I will continue to inform and educate our constituency on the importance of understanding the referendum that will be on the ballot.”

The Erie County Legislature was originally made up of 20 members, was downsized first to 17 members and downsized again to 15 members in 2003. ...

Buffalo City Comptroller Andy SanFilippo announced Thursday that an audit of the Erie Basin Marina, operated by Brand-On Services, Inc., under a lease agreement with the city, has found a serious lack of internal controls in all revenue generating areas, prompting concerns about the accuracy of payments to the city under terms of the lease.

"While the vendor, Brand-On Services, should receive credit for the significant increase in sales at the Marina from 2004 to 2007, internal controls over these greater revenues is totally inadequate in all of the revenue generating areas," said Comptroller SanFilippo.

"We found deficiencies in recordkeeping in the purchase of food, in boat launching, in slip rentals, and in fuel sales," said the comptroller. "There was also a failure to maintain an up-to-date slip renters’ register. Taken in total, with revenue of more than $1.3 million during our audit period of May – October, 2007, the failure of Brand-On to address these problems (cited in a 2005 audit) is extremely troubling and there needs to be major changes in all areas going forward. I believe that as a result of this audit, those changes are being made." ...

The Syaed Ali matter that you are hearing & reading about is a Homeland Security investigation.

While this character filed a politically motivated lawsuit against the City the fact is this investigation involved numerous law enforcement agencies.

Please keep in mind this is the same idiot that claimed the Mayor's people sent out a number of inflammatory emails, later recanted. They claimed one of the worst low life, lying, degenerates I have met in my 13 years doing this Dick Kern is responsible for the emails.

There have been so many stories recanted by Ali & his web friends its getting close to being criminal; the reason people are being paid to print this nonsense. ...

RUMORS are circulating that Len Lenihan is planning on running three candidates for the 8 JD Supreme Court, Supreme Court Justice John O'Donnell, County Judge Shirley Troutman, City Court Judge Henry Nowak. All eminently qualified.

The person with the problem of course, if the rumor is true, is County Court Judge Shirley Troutman a Black.. This is going to be the same scenario that cost Judge Bob Russell the race two years ago. The only minor line she will get is the WFP.

With two exceptions, Sam Green & Rose Sconiers, a minority person cannot win in the 8th JD without a cross endorsement or four lines.

The IP & Conservative lines will go to O'Donnell, Nowak & Republican Justice Chris Burns. I believe O'Donnell is in play should the GOP nominate Williamsville Justice Jeff Voelkl & or Family Court Judge Pat Maxwell.

The bottom line is Lenihan will nominate (the 8 counties) Troutman in an attempt to bring out the Black vote for County wide candidates Comptroller Poloncarz & for Sheriff John Galscott.

In other words Troutman is being used miserably by Lenihan et al. ...

much more as the weekend passes

& so it goes ###

NYS SENATE LIVE

Friday: CONVENED & ADJOURNED

Gov Paterson both sides trying to work out an agreement; don't hold your breath. Session at 3:00 ...

Thursday: Just in from Comptroller Tom DiNapoli: he wants to withhold Senate pay, something that Gov. Paterson has been urging for more than a week. ...

Convened & Adjourned

"New York Democratic Senators: Buffalo-area Dems Antoine Thompson and Bill Stachowski earlier today had a press conference calling for the fellow upstate Republicans to join them and urge Gov. David Paterson to sign the Power for Jobs electricity subsidy that expired July 1 in the face of the Senate’s deadlock.

“If we don’t sign this today it will be a travesty,” said Thompson. Power for Jobs has been one of the better-known victims of the current Senate stalemate: according to the NY Power Authority it supplies low-cost power to 570 businesses and non-profits employing some 330,000, with many of the big recipients in upstate." ...

"Gov. David Paterson has elevated the Senate stalemate from a “conflict” to a “crisis. Paterson has issued proclamations for special session every day at 3 p.m. through July 6.   The Senate will be in Albany through the holiday weekend."

Paterson also called on Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, a Democrat, to withhold the pay of senators’ salaries. So far, DiNapoli has declined to take that step." ...

Wednesday: Convene & Adjourn ... Paterson will force Senate to convene through holiday weekend ... NYS Assembly ...

Speaker Silver says the Assembly will not send the bills passed by the Senate over to the Governor for his signature given the fact that the quorum is in doubt.

Meanwhile the Dems took a day off; the GOP used the time to repeat their June 8th arguments. ...

Smith vs Skelos: On the Panavan walk through

“Was the session valid? The answer to that question is yes,” said Malcolm A. Smith, the Democratic leader. “The other question is also, why would anyone go to disqualify the session given the significance of what we accomplished Tuesday?”

Senate Republicans had a ready answer for Mr. Smith.

“That is probably the most fraudulent, obnoxious, arrogant display of partisanship,” said Dean G. Skelos, the Republican leader, “and, quite frankly, a total disregard of the institution of the Senate that so many of us care about.” See state screen ...

Tuesday: 7:00 No action adjourned!

"The five-judge panel denied the GOP’s request for a stay of Judge Joseph Teresi’s order forcing the Senate to meet as a 62-member body, and not in two 31-member mini-sessions." The GOP we believe will appeal to the Court of Appeals. ...

Paterson called a special session for 7:00 PM tonight. However, we don't know if that will stand because there was not a 24 hour notice given to senators. Gov. says he won't sign any of the Bills passed by the Dems since noon! ...

12:00 The Dems are in session actually passing non controversial bills claiming a quorum of 31? Adjourned at 5:55 PM.

"Senate Democrats claim there they have quorum because Sen. Frank Padavan, R-Queens, walked in and out of the chamber and was marked present.

Senate Democrats are now moving through their active list for the regular session.

Padavan is talking to reporters right now, explaining that he was in the lounge and he was not present when Senate Democrats were standing for the pledge of allegiance.

He claimed that he passed through the chamber, but only before Democrats started session" TU ...

10:00 The session began with both sides present. Senator Skelos (R) stood to say the GOP did not recognize the presiding Senator; he then made a motion to adjourn. The Senate is adjourned taking no action on the non controversial bills. However, the Times Union is reporting the Dems will be back at noon? GOP says they will be in at 3:00 PM. ...

9:00 The Appellate refused to grant a stay that is why both sides were in Chambers. This is getting crazier by the day!

The GOP filed an appeal this morning. The Dems, taking control of Chambers this morning, plan on holding a session at 10:00 AM.  ...

Monday: The GOP promises an appeal to the Appellate Court, a stay would be automatic. If the GOP follows through all the time sensitive bills will expire. ...

Judge Joseph Teresi has ordered that all 62 senators must report into the Senate chamber, at the same time, for extraordinary session at 10 AM Tuesday.

The Dems convened & adjourned; however, Malcolm Smith announced all 62 members will be in session Tuesday at noon, no specifics. The GOP did the same after Skelos & Espada made a few remarks. Not clear whether the GOP will show at noon Tuesday. The GOP is demanding the Dems recognize the June 8th election 32-30 of Skleos to Majority Leader & Espada to President Pro Temp. ...

Sunday: The Senate Dems convened & adjourned! Ditto for the GOP! ...

"If they are going to continue in this juvenile fighting with each other and not even passing bills they agree on - I don't really know what else to do; but I am going to keep them there."  Governor Paterson ...

Saturday: Senate Dems convened & adjourned! Ditto for the GOP! ...

Gov calls special weekend sessions 1:00 PM Saturday - 6:00 PM Sunday ...

"Senate leaders are nearing a power-sharing accord to allow the chamber to move forward, according to a source close to the negotiations. The agreement would be in effect through 2010. There are a few remaining items left for the principals to agree on, but the leadership question seems to have been resolved.

The lineup:

President pro tempore: Democratic Sen. Malcolm Smith

Senate majority leader: Republican Sen. Dean Skelos

Vice-president pro tempore: Democratic Sen. Pedro Espada

Democratic conference leader: Democratic Sen. John Sampson

According to the source, the challenge now is convincing the fractured Democratic conference to go along with this agreement, which would maintain Smith as the top Democrat in the Senate chamber." Published reports ###

JosephIlluzzi704@aol.com

Supreme Court: The Meaning of Ricci

by Charles Krauthammer

The Supreme Court's ruling on the Ricci case -- that white firemen suffered illegal discrimination when a promotional test on which they did well was thrown out because not enough blacks did well -- will have no effect on Sonia Sotomayor's nomination to the Supreme Court. While overturned on Ricci, she is protected by the four dissenting justices who upheld the side of the case she had taken as a Circuit Court judge. Sotomayor was additionally helped by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's insistence on reading her dissent from the bench, as if to emphasize the legitimacy of her position -- and, by implication, Sotomayor's.

Ricci left Sotomayor relatively unscathed. But not affirmative action. Ricci raised the bar considerably on overt discrimination against one racial group simply to undo the unintentionally racially skewed results of otherwise fair and objective employment procedures (in this case, examinations).

It's not enough for a city to say, as did New Haven, that it was afraid of being sued by black firefighters. The evidence was irrefutable that the tests were put together in a conscientious, race-neutral way. Not only were minority firefighters over-sampled in devising the questions. The designers established nine oral exam boards, each a three-person panel, each consisting of precisely one white, one black and one Hispanic. (Such is the extreme race consciousness that the Civil Rights Act, of all things, has brought upon us.) Nor will it do, as New Haven tried, to throw out a test on the pretext that another test with less racial impact might theoretically exist out there in the ether.

The defenders of the old racial order, led by Ginsburg, objected sternly, declaring that the white firemen "had no vested right to promotion." Of course they didn't, but they did have a vested right to fairness, to not being denied promotion because of their skin color.

Of course no one has a vested right to promotion. Isn't that why they gave those tests in the first place? Isn't that why for the last, oh, 125 years we have been using objective civil service exams to allocate government jobs not on the basis of right -- or patronage or favoritism or racially discriminatory advantage -- but on the basis of merit and job-related skill?

It's the Ginsburg dissent that, in effect, grants a vested right to promotion -- to African-Americans, simply because of their race -- and makes the frustration of that specious right the basis for denying promotion to white (and Hispanic) firefighters who had objectively qualified for promotion.

The major conundrum of the civil rights age remains. The 14th Amendment bans discrimination on the basis of race. But the Civil Rights Act, which bans "disparate impact" discrimination -- procedures (like exams) that yield racially unbalanced results -- affirmatively mandates racial favoritism to undo those results. The evil day will come, writes Justice Antonin Scalia in his concurrence, when this contradiction will have to be resolved.

He is right. For decades we have been finessing the issue with a mess of compromises, euphemisms, incoherences and pretenses such as banning racial quotas but promoting racial "goals." Anyone who has ever had to make hiring or admission decisions knows that this angel-on-the-head-of-pin distinction is 95 percent a matter of appearances, gestures and lawsuit-avoiding paperwork.

And yet we have muddled our way through, permitting a large dose of intentional discrimination to ameliorate past discrimination -- and present inadvertent imbalances -- without totally abandoning the ideal of colorblindness.

The result? At the near half-century mark of the Civil Rights Act, racial minorities have seen remarkable social advancement. The younger generation is infinitely more racially tolerant and accepting. We've made great racial progress. But the fundamental unfairness that underlies the racial spoils system continues to rankle. That's what animated the Ricci case.

We're 45 years beyond passage of the Civil Rights Act. We have a black attorney general and a black president. As with every passing year we move generationally away from the era of Jim Crow, it becomes less and less justified for the government to mandate "remedial" racial discrimination. Which is why in one of her last opinions, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said that "the Court expects that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary."

The import of Ricci, which raised the bar on reverse discrimination, is that it heads us once again toward that day -- and back to true colorblindness that was the original vision, and everlasting glory, of the civil rights movement.

July 3, 2009

PoliticsNY.Net: BUFFALO PUBLIC SCHOOLS

The Buffalo Public School District has announced the beginning of important partnerships with two key health care providers. This alliance will reinforce the District’s mission to keep students disease free in light of the spread of H1N1. The partnership between the B.P.S. and Blue Cross Blue Shield will provide 6,500 personal spray sanitizers for teachers in the District. More than 1,500 are being distributed now to staff that are teaching in the Extended Learning Opportunities program. The remaining 5,000 sanitizers, which are about the size of a yellow highlighter and are small enough to fit in your pocket, will be distributed to teachers in the fall.

"The best way to fight the spread of H1N1 is to maintain strong personal hygiene by washing your hands as often as possible and using hand sanitizers. We thank Blue Cross Blue Shield for providing pocket-sized sanitizers for teachers to keep classrooms disease free. These smaller sanitizers are a big help in stopping the spread of communicable diseases in our community," said Superintendent Dr. James A. Williams. ###

JosephIlluzzi704@aol.com

"GIVEN THE EVENTS IN ALBANY, AND THE UNCERTAINTY OVER WHEN OR HOW THE TURMOIL WILL END, I HAVE DECIDED TO RESIGN MY POSITION WITH THE STATE SENATE OFFICE IN BUFFALO, EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY.

I ACCEPTED THIS APPOINTMENT WITH THE BEST INTENTIONS, AND I’M VERY DISAPPOINTED THAT EVENTS IN ALBANY HAVE UNDERMINED OUR ABILITY TO MOVE FORWARD WITH A POSITIVE AGENDA FOR BUFFALO AND WESTERN NEW YORK.

AS A PROFESSIONAL FIGHTER, I WORKED HARD TO PROMOTE OUR COMMUNITY, WHETHER INSIDE THE RING OR THROUGH MY COMMUNITY AND CHARITABLE ENDEAVORS. I’M PROUD TO BE FROM WESTERN NEW YORK AND I’VE ALWAYS TRIED MY BEST TO REPRESENT OUR COMMUNITY IN A POSITIVE WAY. I WANT ALL MY FANS AND FRIENDS TO KNOW THAT JOE MESI NEVER QUIT AS A FIGHTER AND I WILL BE BACK TO SERVE MY COMMUNITY IN THE FUTURE.

I BELIEVE NOW IS THE BESTS TIME TO STEP BACK AND REASSESS THINGS, AND DECIDE WHERE I GO FROM HERE. BUT I STILL BELIEVE THERE IS MUCH WE CAN DO IN THE POLITICAL ARENA, AND MUCH THAT GOVERNMENT CAN DO, TO HELP US IMPROVE OUR COMMUNITY, CREATE JOBS, AND MAKE LIFE BETTER FOR EVERYONE. I INTEND TO CONTINUE TO DO MY PART TO BE A VOICE FOR CHANGE AND FOR A BETTER WAY. I WILL ALWAYS BE PROUD OF MY COMMUNITY AND THE PEOPLE WHO HAVE SUPPORTED ME, BOTH IN MY BOXING DAYS AND IN MY EFFORTS OUTSIDE THE RING."

JOE MESI

The Honduras Predicament

by Cal Thomas

Help me out here. President Obama immediately "meddles" in the affairs of Honduras, denouncing a military coup, the intent of which is to preserve the country's constitution, but when it comes to Iran's fraudulent election and the violent repression of demonstrators who wanted their votes counted, the president initially vacillates and equivocates. Are we expected to accept this as a consistent foreign policy? Even Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was reluctant to call the removal of President Manuel Zelaya a coup, if for no other reason than it would stop U.S. aid flowing to the impoverished Central American nation.

The fingerprints (or in this case the boot prints) of the Castro brothers, Venezuela's dictator Hugo Chavez and Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua are all over this. If one is known by the company one keeps, the specter of the Castros and their protege dictators joining President Obama in denouncing the Honduran military coup is not reassuring. Clearly Zelaya was the choice of the dictators to help spread "revolution" to America's back door. The coup is a setback for them, though perhaps temporary, depending on how much pressure "world opinion," which can be as fickle as some politicians' marriage vows, can assert.

One of the flaws in U.S. policy in this and in the Bush administration has been our commitment to elections as an end and not a means. Elections can put scoundrels in power and the election that elevates them is often the last one a country sees until the miscreants are overthrown. That has been true of Hamas in the Palestinian legislative elections of 2006, Germany under Hitler, as well as Ortega and Chavez, among others. The United States should be supporting electoral processes that put people in office who are committed to the rule of law and representative government.

The threat by Chavez to send his troops into Honduras ought to be another signal to the Obama administration that thugs can't be made nice by talking to them. So far, the world's tyrants have been unresponsive to Obama's offer of a new start and a pushing of the "reset" button, which Secretary Clinton famously offered Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. The word on the device she gave Lavrov was meant to say "reset" in Russian, instead, roughly translated, the word meant "overcharge."

Overly optimistic might be a better word to describe this nascent administration's approach to bad guys. They are getting the message, but it's a different one than President Obama hoped to send. The message is that Obama is weak and can be had.

It is one thing for a president to be liked, but in a dangerous world with dictators who have, or wish to acquire, nuclear weapons and by these and other means destroy the United States, it is better that an American president be feared.

Does this administration have a "Plan B" for dealing with thugs and dictators should their rules of social and diplomatic etiquette fail to produce their announced objectives? Suppose Kim Jong-il follows through on his threat to launch a missile at Hawaii on July 4? If he does and America shoots it down, what happens then? If missile defense fails (the administration and Congress are cutting the budget for a missile shield) and the missile hits Hawaii and kills a lot of people, what then?

Will there be strong denunciations, UN resolutions, or a rapid and devastating retaliation? Given this administration's commitment to "dialogue," I'm not betting on retaliation. More like handwringing and wondering aloud what we might have done to make them hate us, as we heard from many leftists following Sept. 11.

The administration is being tested on several fronts, as Vice President Biden predicted. Honduras is one of many challenges. Will the administration meet them, or retreat? We may know sooner than many of us might expect.

Sonia Sotomayor: So Much For Wise Latinas

by Ann Coulter

With the Supreme Court's decision in Ricci v. DeStefano this week, we can now report that Sonia Sotomayor is even crazier than Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

To recap the famous Ricci case, in 2003, the city of New Haven threw out the results of a firefighters' test -- which had been expressly designed to be race-neutral -- because only whites and Hispanics scored high enough to receive immediate promotions, whereas blacks who took the test did well enough only to be eligible for promotions down the line.

Inasmuch as the high-scoring white and Hispanic firemen were denied promotions solely because of their race, they sued the city for race discrimination.

Obama's Justice-designate Sotomayor threw out their lawsuit in a sneaky, unsigned opinion -- the judicial equivalent of "talk to the hand." She upheld the city's race discrimination against white and Hispanic firemen on the grounds that the test had a "disparate impact" on blacks, meaning that it failed to promote some magical percentage of blacks.

This strict quota regime was dressed up by the city -- and by Sotomayor's opinion -- as a reasonable reaction to the threat of lawsuits by blacks who were not promoted.

That's a complicated way of saying: Racial quotas are peachy.

According to Sotomayor, any test that gets the numbers wrong -- whatever "wrong" means in any given context of professions, populations, applicants, workers, etc. -- is grounds for a lawsuit, which in turn, is grounds for an employer to engage in race discrimination against disfavored racial groups, such as white men.

Consequently, the only legal avenue available to employers under Sotomayor's ruling is always to impose strict racial quotas in making hiring and promotion decisions.

Say, if the threat of a lawsuit permits the government to ignore the Constitution, can pro-lifers get New Haven to shut down all abortion clinics by threatening to sue them? There's no question but that abortion clinics have a "disparate impact" on black babies.

This week, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 for the white and Hispanic firefighters, overturning Sotomayor's endorsement of racial quotas.

But all nine justices rejected Sotomayor's holding that different test results alone give the government a green light to engage in race discrimination. Even Justice Ginsburg's opinion for the dissent clearly stated that "an employer could not cast aside a selection method based on a statistical disparity alone."

Indeed, the dissenters argued that the case should be returned to the lower courts to look for some hidden racial bias in the test. For Sotomayor, the results alone proved racial bias.

The one advantage Sotomayor's talk-to-the-hand opinion has over Justice Ginsburg's prolix dissent is that brevity prevented Sotomayor from having to explain why quotas aren't quotas.

That was left to Ginsburg.

Liberals desperately want race quotas -- as long as quotas never come to their offices.

But they can't say that, so instead they talk in circles for 10 hours straight, until everyone else is exhausted, and then, when no one is paying attention, they announce: So we're all agreed -- we will have racial quotas.

Based on her lifetime of experience working as a firefighter, Ginsburg said: "Relying heavily on written tests to select fire officers is a questionable practice, to say the least." Liberals prefer a more objective test, such as race.

Isn't excelling on written tests how Ruth Bader Ginsburg got where she is? It's curious how people whose entire careers are based on doing well on tests find them so irrelevant to other people's jobs.

In the middle of a fire, it can either be a great idea or the worst possible idea to open a door. An excellent method for finding out if your next fire chief knows the correct answer is a written test.

Unleashing the canard of all race-obsessed liberals, Ginsburg observed that courts have found that a fire officer's job "involves complex behaviors, good interpersonal skills, the ability to make decisions under tremendous pressure, and a host of other abilities -- none of which is easily measured by a written, multiple choice test."

So does a lawyer's job. And yet attorneys with absolutely no "interpersonal skills" get cushy jobs and extravagant salaries on the basis of their commendable performance on all manner of written tests, from multiple choice LSATs and bar exams to written law school exams.

I note that Ginsburg has not shown any particular interest in rectifying the "disparate impact" of legal exams: She never hired a single black law clerk out of the dozens she employed in more than a decade as an appeals court judge. (Her hiring practices on the Supreme Court are a state secret, but I can state with supreme certainty that her clerks do not reflect the racial mix of Washington, D.C.)

But liberals think other people's jobs are a joke, so the testing must also be a joke. That is -- other than their preferred test: "Is the applicant black, female or otherwise handicapped?"

There is no test that can prove all things about an employee and so there is no test that can't be derided by the race-mongers. Which is exactly the point. Get rid of all tests -- except for lawyers who graduated at the top of their law school classes at Columbia, like Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Then liberals are free to impose racial quotas on other people's jobs without limit.

As crazy as this is, even Ginsburg and the other dissenters made a big point of pretending there was some flaw in this particular test. None adopted Sotomayor's position that unequal test results alone prove discrimination.

This suggests that a wise Jewish lady, due to the richness of her life experiences, might come to a better judgment than a Latina judge would.

July 2, 2009

Great Lakes Health, ECMCC and Kaleida Health

The Professional Steering Committee (PSC) of the Great Lakes Health System of Western New York delivered its clinical vision and recommendations for health services to the respective boards of Great Lakes Health, ECMCC and Kaleida Health.

The Great Lakes Health System of Western New York is the governing board overseeing the integration of ECMC and Kaleida Health.

The PSC, a group made up of primarily physicians from both organizations, was created as part of the binding agreement signed by Kaleida Health and ECMCC on June 20, 2008. The Committee consists of five voting physicians from ECMC and five voting physicians from Kaleida Health, as well as ex-officio members from nursing and the medical staff of both organizations, and the University of Buffalo.

Over the past year, the physicians have been working to develop a plan for clinical services and strengthened alignment between Kaleida and ECMCC.　Over 70 private practice and academic physicians from both organizations have been involved in the process.

These recommendations will now go through a feasibility analysis by both ECMC and Kaleida organizations and will be deliberated by the Boards of ECMCC, Kaleida Health, and Great Lakes Health. Together, the groups will need to formulate an operational plan, a timetable, and address various issues such as impact on labor, and to secure the funding necessary to make the physicians' vision a reality. The recommendations of the physician led Professional Steering Committee are as follows:

Cardiac Services - Transition all appropriate cardiac care from ECMC to the soon to be built Global Vascular Institute, while maintaining sufficient services and programs to support Trauma and the high volume of emergency room visits at ECMC.

Orthopedics - Create a new Bone Health Center at ECMC that will bring new subspecialists in Orthopedics to Buffalo in areas that are underserved, such as Rheumatology and Geriatrics.　 The new center will increase access for patients that will result in enhanced prevention and improved care for patients with bone health conditions. In addition, create a new, separate surgical area for orthopedics at ECMC that allows for growth and is both physician friendly and patient centered.　 Create and consolidate elective spine surgery at Buffalo General in conjunction with the Global Vascular Institute.　Maintain the orthopedic programs at BGH, MFS, WCHOB, DMH and Kline Road Ambulatory Surgery Center.

Solid Organ Transplantation Services - Consolidate the Transplant programs (kidney and pancreas). Locate the consolidated program at ECMC creating a Center of Excellence that will allow for future expansion of transplant services.

Critical Care - Create a Great Lakes Health transfer center that will allow for the seamless transfers of critical patients from outlying community hospitals.

Supreme Court: Equality on Trial

by Thomas Sowell

For the fourth time in six cases, the Supreme Court of the United States has reversed a decision for which Judge Sonia Sotomayor voted on the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals. If this nominee were a white male, would this not raise questions about whether he should be elevated to a court that has found his previous decisions wrong two-thirds of the times when those decisions have been reviewed?

Is no one supposed to ask questions about qualifications, simply because this nominee is Hispanic and a woman? Have we become that mindless?

Qualifications are not simply a question of how long you have been doing something, but how well you have done it. Judge Sotomayor has certainly been on the federal bench long enough, but is being reversed four out of six times a sign of a job well done?

Would longevity be equated with qualifications anywhere else? Some sergeants have been in the army longer than some generals but nobody thinks that is a reason to make those sergeants generals.

Performance matters. And Judge Sotomayor's performance provides no reason for putting her on the Supreme Court.

Although the case of the Connecticut firefighters is the latest and best-known of Judge Sotomayor's reversals by the Supreme Court, an even more revealing case was Didden v. Village of Port Chester, where the Supreme Court openly rebuked the unanimous three-judge panel that included Judge Sotomayor for "an evident denial of the most elementary forms of procedural due process."

Longevity is not the only false argument for putting Sonia Sotomayor on the Supreme Court. Another is the argument that "elections have consequences," so that the fact that Barack Obama won last year's elections means that his choice for the Supreme Court should be confirmed. This is a political talking point rather than a serious argument.

Of course elections have consequences. But Senators were also elected, and the Constitution of the United States gives them both the right and the duty to say "yes" or "no" to any president's judicial nominees.

It is painfully appropriate that the case which finally took the Sotomayor nomination beyond the realm of personal biography is one where the key question is how far this country is going to go on the question of racial representation versus individual qualifications.

Too much that Sonia Sotomayor has said and done over the years places her squarely in the camp of those supporting a racial spoils system instead of equal treatment for all. The organizations she has belonged to, as well as the statements she has made repeatedly -- not just an isolated slip of the tongue taken "out of context"-- as well as her dismissing the white firefighters' case that the Supreme Court heard and heeded, all point in the same direction.

Within living memory, there was a time when someone who was black could not get certain jobs, regardless of how high that individual's qualifications might be. It outraged the conscience of a nation and aroused people of various races and social backgrounds to rise up against it, sometimes at the risk of their lives.

Many, if not most, thought that they were fighting for equal treatment for all. But, today, too many people seem to think it is just a question of whose ox is gored-- or for whom one has "empathy," which amounts to the same thing in practice.

Clever people say that none of this matters because Republican Senators don't have enough votes to stop this nominee from being confirmed. But that assumes that every Democrats will vote for her, regardless of what the public thinks. It also assumes that alerting the public doesn't matter, now or for the future.

The standards for judging the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor are not the standards of either the criminal law or the civil law. That is, nothing has to be proven against her "beyond a reasonable doubt" or even by "a preponderance of the evidence."

Judge Sotomayor is not in any jeopardy that would entitle her to the benefit of the doubt. It is 300 million Americans and their posterity who are entitled to the benefit of the doubt when the enormous power of determining what their rights are is put into anyone's hands as a Supreme Court justice for life.

July 1, 2009

Making a Monkey Out of Darwin

by Patrick J. Buchanan

"You have no notion of the intrigue that goes on in this blessed world of science," wrote Thomas Huxley. "Science is, I fear, no purer than any other region of human activity; though it should be."

As "Darwin's bulldog," Huxley would himself engage in intrigue, deceit and intellectual property theft to make his master's theory gospel truth in Great Britain.

He is quoted above for two reasons.

First is House passage of a "cap-and-trade" climate-change bill. Depending on which scientists you believe, the dire consequences of global warming are inconvenient truths -- or a fearmongering scheme to siphon off the wealth of individuals and empower bureaucrats.

The second is publication of "The End of Darwinism: And How a Flawed and Disastrous Theory Was Stolen and Sold," by Eugene G. Windchy, a splendid little book that begins with Huxley's lament.

That Darwinism has proven "disastrous theory" is indisputable.

"Karl Marx loved Darwinism," writes Windchy. "To him, survival of the fittest as the source of progress justified violence in bringing about social and political change, in other words, the revolution."

"Darwin suits my purpose," Marx wrote.

Darwin suited Adolf Hitler's purposes, too.

"Although born to a Catholic family Hitler become a hard-eyed Darwinist who saw life as a constant struggle between the strong and the weak. His Darwinism was so extreme that he thought it would have been better for the world if the Muslims had won the eighth century battle of Tours, which stopped the Arabs' advance into France. Had the Christians lost, (Hitler) reasoned, Germanic people would have acquired a more warlike creed
and, because of their natural superiority, would have become the leaders of an Islamic empire."

Charles Darwin also suited the purpose of the eugenicists and Herbert Spencer, who preached a survival-of-the-fittest social Darwinism to robber baron industrialists exploiting 19th-century immigrants.

Historian Jacques Barzun believes Darwinism brought on World War I: "Since in every European country between 1870 and 1914 there was a war party demanding armaments, an individualist party demanding ruthless competition, an imperialist party demanding a free hand over backward peoples, a socialist party demanding the conquest of power and a racialist party demanding internal purges against aliens -- all of them, when appeals to greed and glory failed, invoked Spencer and Darwin, which was to say science incarnate."

Yet a theory can produce evil -- and still be true.

And here Windchy does his best demolition work.

Darwin, he demonstrates, stole his theory from Alfred Wallace, who had sent him a "completed formal paper on evolution by natural selection."

"All my originality ... will be smashed," wailed Darwin when he got Wallace's manuscript.

Darwin also lied in "The Origin of Species" about believing in a Creator. By 1859, he was a confirmed agnostic and so admitted in his posthumous autobiography, which was censored by his family.

Darwin's examples of natural selection -- such as the giraffe acquiring its long neck to reach ever higher into the trees for the leaves upon which it fed to survive -- have been debunked. Giraffes eat grass and bushes. And if, as Darwin claimed, inches meant life or death, how did female giraffes, two or three feet shorter, survive?

Windchy goes on to relate such scientific hoaxes as "Nebraska Man" -- an anthropoid ape ancestor to man, whose tooth turned out to belong to a wild pig -- and Piltdown Man, the missing link between monkey and man.

Discovered in England in 1912, Piltdown Man was a sensation until exposed by a 1950s investigator as the skull of a Medieval Englishman attached to the jaw of an Asian ape whose teeth had been filed down to look human and whose bones had been stained to look old.

Yet three English scientists were knighted for Piltdown Man.

Other myths are demolished. Bird feathers do not come from the scales of reptiles. There are no gills in human embryos.

For 150 years, the fossil record has failed to validate Darwin.

"The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontologists," admitted Stephen J. Gould in 1977. But that fossil record now contains even more species that appear fully developed, with no traceable ancestors.

Darwin ruled out such "miracles."

And Darwinists still have not explained the origin of life, nor have they been able to produce life from non-life.

The most delicious chapter is Windchy's exposure of the Scopes Monkey Trial and Hollywood's Bible-mocking movie "Inherit the Wind," starring Spencer Tracy as Clarence Darrow.

The trial was a hoked-up scam to garner publicity for Dayton, Tenn. Scopes never taught evolution and never took the stand. His students were tutored to commit perjury. And William Jennings Bryan held his own against the atheist Darrow in the transcript of the trial.

In 1981, Gould had this advice for beleaguered Darwinists:

"Perhaps we should all lie low and rally round the flag of strict Darwinism ... a kind of old-time religion on our part."

Exactly. Darwinism is not science. It is faith. Always was.

June 30, 2009

PoliticsNY.Net: SOTOMAYOR REVERSED

"The U.S. Supreme Court sided Monday with white firefighters in their workplace discrimination lawsuit, a divisive case over the role race should play in job advancement. In the split 5-4 vote, a majority of the justices ruled that the city of New Haven, Connecticut, improperly threw out the results of promotional exams that officials said left too few minorities qualified. Only one Latino and no African-American firefighters qualified for promotion based on the exam; the city subsequently decided not to certify the results and issued no promotions. A group of 20 mostly white firefighters sued, claiming "reverse discrimination." High court nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor heard the case on her federal appeals court last year and sided with the city." CNN ...

Madoff sentenced to 150 years for massive fraud scheme ###

A FEW THINGS

Dicker: "GOV. PATERSON'S top political adviser has met secretly with longtime Republican dirty trickster Roger Stone, who took credit for helping sink the governor's predecessor, Eliot Spitzer, The Post has learned."

Stone a friend & frequent columnist for this publication is often heard on Fred Dicker's Albany radio show as well.  ...

"Buffalo Bills owner Ralph Wilson is in no hurry to have his team play more than one regular-season game in Toronto. Wilson told The Associated Press on Sunday he'd prefer waiting "two or three years" to determine whether the northern experiment is a success before he'd consider reworking the contract reached last year with Toronto-based Rogers Communications. Under the agreement which runs through 2012, the Bills will play one regular-season and three preseason games in Toronto. Rogers officials have expressed interest in adding at least one regular-season game. Wilson says he doesn't know whether there will be another game there or not." AP ...

I had lunch with County Clerk Kathy Hochul & her associate Camile Brandon Thursday to catch up.

"Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria, Va., tops U.S.News & World Report's list of America's Best High Schools. The school, which focuses heavily on math and science education, bested more than 21,000 other public high schools in 48 states for the honor."

You ask what does this honor have to do with the County Clerk's office.

Well! Be patient & I'll tell you!

We always are talking about the Buffalo & WNY connections to national & international news, right?

The Vice Principal of Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology is Bob & Camile Brandon's daughter Heather, the Brandons live in Cheektowaga! ...

After lunch Thursday I headed over to the County Legislature: I agreed with Dems Wroblewski, Reynolds & Kozub vote, with the three GOP members, not to override the County Executive's veto of the "local law" creating a citizens Planning Board. I must say the Chairman Marinelli was working overtime to get that 10th vote during the floor debate to her credit; but it just wasn't the right time. Oh! by the way I thought texting during sessions is a no - no? One dissident legislator looked up at her & said "my phone is off."

What I do agree with most of the Legislature on is the loss of the CVB's Board Director Jennifer Parker & President Rich Geiger is a real shame. Geiger especially has done great work at the Convention & Visitors Bureau for 13 years.

Both Geiger, Parker & a number of Legislators understand that the County's convention business should be the heart & soul of our County's approach to marketing our area for our fair share of the billions in tourist dollars. What Geiger accomplished with that rundown convention center is nothing short of extraordinary.

CE Chris Collins approach to attracting our fair share of the billions in tourism dollars is venue specific, e.g., Bass Pro, architecture, etc. We believe his efforts should be centered around getting a new convention center built using this approach as the center piece of his economic development agenda with respect to tourism. Not to do so in my view would be a rare departure from the good judgment Collins has displayed during his first 18 months in office.

Collins says, "90% of his efforts will focus on economic development in his final three years of his first term." ...

All eyes are on the Legislature's vote on downsizing (see below). Looks like the vote will be 11- 4 for 13 from 15 & 4 year terms from 2. Tim Kennedy will vote for both his version 15 to 11 & the 13. Expect a Collins veto! ...

We believe the GOP can pick up at least 2 County Legislature seats in November possibly 3. ...

Dem County Chairman Len Lenihan just had his 2nd hip replacement surgery this week. He is doing fine according to all accounts, great news!

We want him in good shape to face the charges of racism that will be leveled against him from a number of different sources in the near future.

From sources on Lenihans watch over almost 7 years:

1. How many black men (democrat) serve on the Family Court? None.

2. How many black men serve on the County Court?   None.

3. How many black men serve on the Supreme Court? None.

4. How many black men serve on the Court of Claims? None.

5. He will not endorse Mayor Brown for reelection.

6. He did not endorse Antoine Thompson for his 1st run for the State Senate.

7. He has not endorsed Barbara Miller Williams for County Legislature.

8. He has 1 Black in his inner circle that has any sway at all on his decison making process.

I did not include City Court because it is one of the lower courts that Lenihan can't quite control with the City of Buffalo vote.

With respect to that vote many believe the City's minorities will not come out for Lenihan's County wide candidates, esp. Comptroller, as a result. ...

Looks like Cheektowaga police Captain John Glascott (D) is in the County Sheriff's race to stay. This will be an interesting contest. ...

You are invited to a Campaign Kick-Off Party in support of Ray Walter Erie County Legislator - 4th District Please join the Legislator, his family and friends at Brennan’s Bowery Bar & Restaurant 4401 Transit Road, Williamsville, NY 14221 Tuesday, June 30, 2009 6 – 8 p.m. $35/person $60/couple $150 Sponsor Pizza – Wings – Beer – Wine – Soda ...

& so it goes ###

JosephIlluzzi704@aol.com

On Race, the Slog Goes On

by George Will

WASHINGTON -- Although New Haven's firefighters deservedly won in the Supreme Court, it is deeply depressing that they won narrowly -- 5-4. The egregious behavior by that city's government, in a context of racial rabble-rousing, did not seem legally suspect to even one of the court's four liberals, whose harmony seemed to reflect result-oriented rather than law-driven reasoning.

The undisputed facts are that in 2003 the city gave promotion exams to 118 firemen, 27 of them black.

The tests were prepared by a firm specializing in employment exams and were validated, as federal law requires, by independent experts. When none of the African-Americans did well enough to qualify for the available promotions, a black minister allied with the seven-term mayor warned of a dire "political ramification" if the city promoted from the list of persons (including one Hispanic) that the exams identified as qualified. The city decided that no one would be promoted, calling this a race-neutral outcome because no group was disadvantaged more than any other.

The city's idea of equal treatment -- denying promotions equally to those deemed and those not deemed qualified -- was particularly galling to Frank Ricci, who had prepared for the exams by quitting his second job, buying the more than $1,000 worth of books the city recommended, paying to have them read onto audiotapes -- he is dyslexic -- and taking practice tests and interviews. His efforts earned him the sixth-highest score.

He and others denied promotions for which their exam scores made them eligible sued, charging violations of the Constitution's guarantee of equal protection of the laws and of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The city argued that if it had made promotions based on the test results, it would have been vulnerable under the 1964 act to being sued for adopting a practice that had a "disparate impact" on minorities. On Monday, the court's conservatives (Anthony Kennedy writing for the majority, joined by John Roberts, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito) held:

The rights of Ricci et al. under the 1964 act were violated. The city's fear of a disparate impact litigation was not unfounded, but that did not justify the race-based response to the exam results because New Haven did not have "a strong basis in evidence" to believe it would be held liable. There is such evidence only if the exams "were not job related and consistent with business necessity, or if there existed an equally valid, less discriminatory alternative" that would have served the city's needs but that it refused to adopt.

"All the evidence demonstrates that the city rejected the test results because the higher scoring candidates were white." The city's criticisms of the exam "are blatantly contradicted by the record." And "the city turned a blind eye to evidence supporting the exams' validity" (emphases added).

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, joined in dissent by John Paul Stevens, David Souter and Stephen Breyer, rejected the majority's conclusions root and branch. She cited a federal report from the early 1970s about discrimination in hiring firefighters, disputed even the "business necessity" of the exams' 60/40 written/oral ratio and defended the integrity of New Haven's decision-making -- rejecting Alito's concurrence, which dwelt on the rancid racial politics of the Rev. Boise Kimber. Alito concluded that "no reasonable jury" could find that the city possessed a "substantial basis in evidence to find the tests inadequate."

Scalia, concurring separately, said Monday's ruling "merely postpones the evil day" on which the court must decide "whether, or to what extent," existing disparate-impact law conflicts with the 14th Amendment guarantee of equal protection of the law. Conceding that "the question is not an easy one," Scalia said: The federal government is prohibited from discriminating on the basis of race, so surely "it is also prohibited from enacting laws mandating that third parties" -- e.g., a city government -- "discriminate on the basis of race." Scalia added:

"Would a private employer not be guilty of unlawful discrimination if he refrained from establishing a racial hiring quota but intentionally designed his hiring practices to achieve the same end? Surely he would. Intentional discrimination is still occurring, just one step up the chain."

The nation shall slog on, litigating through a fog of euphemisms and blurry categories (e.g., "race-conscious" actions that somehow are not racial discrimination because they "remedy" discrimination that no one has intended). This is the predictable price of failing to simply insist that government cannot take cognizance of race.

CAN REPUBLICANS WIN BACK THE BLACK VOTE?

By Frances Rice

“Why Is the Black Vote in the Democrats’ Pocket?” That is the title of an article by Juliette Ochieng which provides an analysis of why Republicans are having very little success attracting more blacks into the Republican Party.

Ochieng opines that blacks have been trained by Democrats to expect political parties to provide quid pro quo. In other words, while Republicans want to help blacks pursue happiness (teach blacks how to fish so they can feed themselves for a lifetime), Democrats want to provide happiness to blacks (give them a fish so they can eat for a day).

The Democratic Party’s strategy of using handouts to garner the black votes, while working to keep blacks mired in poverty, was described as “plantation politics” by President Barack Obama on page 147 of his book “Dreams From My Father”. As a result of the politics of poverty practiced by Democrats, including Obama, the firm belief is now deeply rooted in the black community that the government must "do something” for blacks.

Democrats have been running black communities for the past 40+ years and turned those communities into economic and social wastelands with their failed socialist policies. Yet, Democrats have the gall to blame Republicans for the deplorable conditions caused by the Democrats. Democrats also accuse Republicans of doing nothing to help poor blacks – a charge that resonates with victim mongers.

However, since the beginning of the so-called War on Poverty, over $ 9 trillion has been spent on poverty programs. According to the Washington Post, in one year alone under President George W. Bush, over $500 billion was spent on over 80 poverty-related programs, with little movement in the poverty needle. The problem with black poverty is not money – and it is not the Republican Party.

Notably, only 25% of blacks are poor and living in those dilapidated neighborhoods run by Democrats. The remaining 75% of blacks are prosperous and living in the larger society.

Shamefully, Democrats consistently fight efforts of Republicans to help poor blacksliving in Democrat-controlled neighborhoods get out of poverty. Most egregious is the fight by Democrats to keep Republicans from providing school choice opportunity scholarships so that black parents can get their children out of failing schools. The money belongs to the people, not the buildings controlled by the teachers’ unions that are supporters of the Democratic Party.

Further, Democrats, aided by liberal journalists and teachers, hide information about black poverty that is embarrassing to Democrats. For instance, after the Civil War, blacks left the plantations run by Democrats with little more than the ragged clothes on their backs.

Today, the combined wealth of blacks is over $1.4 trillion – up from the $644 billion in 2005 – a staggering figure that is equivalent to the GNP of the world's 16th largest economy. This is an incredible, historic achievement.

Whenever Republicans attempt to point out that it is the Democrats who are keeping those inner-city blacks mired in poverty, Democrats resort to playing the race card, falsely accusing the Republican Party of being the party of the racists who denied blacks civil rights during and prior to the 1960’s .

The blatant use of race-baiting by Democrats to win the black vote is why any strategy to attract blacks back into the Republican Party must include not only a focus on economic and social issues, but also information about the true history of civil rights.

The NBRA Civil Rights Newsletter that is posted on the Internet at: www.NBRA.info provides information that helps set the civil rights record straight. Referenced in the newsletter is an article published by the Claremont Institute entitled "The Myth of the Racist Republicans".

Included in the newsletter are additional references such as "Unfounded Loyalty" by Rev. Wayne Perryman, "Wrong on Race" by Bruce Bartlett and "A Short History of Reconstruction" by Dr. Eric Foner, a renowned liberal historian.

Perryman wrote his book after conducting years of research and then sued the Democratic Party, demanding an apology for that party’s 150-year history of racism based on the Democratic Party's “States Rights” claims. The Democrats admitted their racist past under oath in court, but refused to apologize because they know that they can take the black vote for granted.

It is frustrating to observe how most black Americans continue to support the Democratic Party, in spite of that party’s reprehensible history of racism and socialism that have caused so much harm to blacks. As author Michael Scheuer stated, the Democratic Party is the party of the four S's: slavery, secession, segregation and now socialism.

At one time in our history, almost all blacks were Republicans because, since its inception in 1854 as the anti-slavery party, the Republican Party has always been the party of freedom and equality for blacks. Studies show that today, still, most blacks share the values of the Republican Party.

Those same studies demonstrate that most blacks are very conservative and do not share the values of the Democratic Party that supports same-sex marriage, partial-birth abortion and banning God from the public square.

In order to keep blacks from voting their values or for Republicans, every election cycle, Democrats preach hatred against the Republican Party and get blacks to cast a protest vote against Republicans, and not a vote for Democrats.

The message that Democrats gives to poor blacks is despicable. If you remain poor, uneducated and vote for Democrats, we will celebrate your victimhood. If you get a good education, get a good job and vote for Republicans, we will denigrate you as "acting white”, a "sellout”, an "Uncle Tom”, a "House Negro”, a "House N-word", a "Lawn Jockey”, and worse. Democrats talk tolerance, but practice intolerance, castigating any black person as a “traitor” to his or her race who does not toe the liberal agenda line.

When black Democrat Juan Williams wrote his book entitled "Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead-end Movements and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America" that exposed the deplorable conditions in black communities, Williams was denounced on national TV by another black Democrat as a "Happy Negro".

Brazenly, on the left-wing Internet website called "The News Blog," Democrats posted a doctored photograph of then Maryland Lt. Governor Michael Steele (now chairman of the RNC) when he was running for a Senate seat, depicting Steele as a "Simple Sambo" with a blackened minstrel-style face, nappy hair and big, think red lips. The cartoon caption read: “Simple Sambo wants to move to the big house”. This contemptible racist stereotype is the same one Democrats used to demean black men during the era of slavery and segregation.

In addition to other outrageous racist images of Dr. Condoleezza Rice produced by several Democrats, cartoonist Jeff Danziger depicted Dr. Rice as an ignorant, barefoot "mammy", reminiscent of the stereotyped black woman in the movie “Gone with the Wind” about the slave era black woman who remarked: "I don't know nothin' 'bout birthin' no babies".

This is the type of racist stereotype Democrats used to demean black women during the era of slavery and segregation.

Democrats now love Gen. Colin Powell, but spewed out racist attacks on Powell before he endorsed Obama and embraced the liberal agenda of higher taxes and a bigger government to provide poverty-producing handouts to blacks.

A video was shot by WKRN Video Journalist Beau Fleenor at Tennessee State University in Nashville, Tennessee that shows Al Sharpton demeaning Gen. Powell and Dr. Rice, when Sharpton was asked to give his opinions about whether Powell and Rice were “House Negroes".

An article that appeared in a Portland, Oregon paper was one of many exposing how hardly a ripple of protest was made by black Democrats when Harry Belafonte publicly denounced Gen. Powell as a "House Negro".

The denigration by Democrats of blacks who identify with the Republican Party makes it nearly impossible for the Republican Party to attract blacks into the party, and for black Republicans to get elected to office in black communities.

Yet, Democrats have the temerity to point a finger of blame at the Republican Party for there being so few blacks in the Republican Party and for there being so few black Republican elected officials. Notably, the few black Republicans who get elected to public office do so in largely white Republican districts.

Those black Americans living in the Democrat-controlled neighborhoods who want to get out of poverty should seize control over their own destiny and stop voting monolithically for Democrats who use “plantation politics” to buy their votes while keeping blacks in poverty.

Democrats will forever maintain a ”lock” on the black vote, for as long as black Americans – including prosperous blacks who sympathize with poor blacks – continue believing the myth that the Republican Party is a racist party and clinging to the false notion that poor blacks are “victims” who need government handouts to survive.

Frances Rice is a retired Army Lieutenant Colonel, a lawyer and chairman of the National Black Republican Association. She can be contacted at:  www.NBRA.Info

June 29, 2009

PoliticsNY.Net: SWINE FLU CLAIMS 2Nd LIFE OF BUFFALO STUDENT

We pray for the soul of this child who is with God & Jesus Christ as I write.

We pray for all of those afflicted & in this event those they leave behind. ...

"A 9-year-old Buffalo girl died of swine flu Saturday day -- the second Buffalo School District student to die of the disease in a week. Maya Harden, who died just after 9:30 a.m. Saturday in Women and Children's Hospital, had been on life support. She was a fourth-grader at the Charles Drew Science Magnet School 59." ...

The child Matthew Davis, an eight-grader at the school Harvey Austin School 97 on Sycamore Street.

Lucretia Belton, the boy's mother, told Channel 4 her son suffered complications from swine flu including pneumonia and MRSA, that his kidneys were failing and he was being kept alive by machines.

Buffalo School Superintendent James A. Williams issued the following statement on the boy's death:

"On behalf of the Buffalo Public School District and the Buffalo Board of Education our deepest sympathy is extended to the family of our beloved student. We ask the Buffalo community to remember the student, family, friends, and loved ones in their thoughts and prayers. We have assigned grief counselors to Harvey Austin Public School 97 on Monday morning to provide the necessary support for students and staff."

Philip Rumore, the president of the city teachers union, issued the following statement on behalf of the district's teachers:

"Our hearts are broken and go out to the family of the student. Let us all be resolved that we are going to do everything that's humanly possible to make sure that no other child goes through what this child and his family has gone through."

There is a 9-year-old girl is also in Women & Children's with the H1N1 virus, in critical condition. She is a student at the Charles Drew Science Magnet School 59." ###

JosephIlluzzi704@aol.com

Don't Be Deceived

by Bill O'Reilly

It seems every day there is another example of media deception in America. With the Fourth of July approaching, it is well worth remembering why the Founding Fathers gave the press special privileges. They wanted journalists to report honestly, to give the folks accurate, unbiased information so they could make informed decisions about who should hold power. Many of the Founders, like Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, didn't much like the press, but they understood that, for a democratic Republic to work, voters need honest information.

Unfortunately, the vision of a free and honest press is fast disappearing in America. Let me give you yet another vivid example. This week a poll by The New York Times asked: "Would you be willing to pay higher taxes so that all Americans have health insurance?"

Fifty-seven percent said they were willing, 37 percent were not willing, and 6 percent had no opinion.

So, according to the Times, Americans overwhelmingly want government financed health care. That's what the poll says, right?

But if you read all the way down to the bottom of the poll, you see another question. "Who did you vote for (in the presidential election)?"

Forty-eight percent said Barack Obama, and just 25 percent answered John McCain. The rest, 19 percent, did not vote. Wow, that's almost two to one for Obama.

But the popular vote tally in the election last November was 53 percent for Obama and 46 percent for McCain. Wait a minute. That's a lot closer than two to one. Apparently The New York Times skewed the polling by offering the questions to mostly Obama voters. I'm shocked they supported higher taxes for federal health care, aren't you?

This kind of dishonesty is not uncommon in the media. The Times says its poll is "scientific." Sure it is. Scientifically stacking the deck.

I believe very few people read the entire poll before digesting the health care headline. The result is a flawed perception of what the American public really wants. The folks may indeed support Uncle Sam paying some heavy medical bills, but this poll is not a reflection of anything other than a New York Times deception.

By the way, CBS News also had its name on that poll.

As a media guy who wants accurate information, that kind of stuff tees me off. As soon as the pollsters learned that most of the respondents were Obama people, they should have thrown the results out. But the Times ardently favors national health care and a huge federal government. So the con played out.

The most frustrating part about this is that nothing can be done. The Times has an ombudsman, but he's a joke, and no outside agency has any power over the paper. It can pretty much do what it wants, and does.

It is true that the Times and some other media outlets, most committed left, are on the brink of bankruptcy. The liberal papers say the Internet is to blame, and that's partly true.

But the folks are beginning to understand that the informational fix is in. What good is "all the news that's fit to print" if the news is bogus?

The Times might want to poll that question.

June 28, 2009

The Voice Claims Another Victim

by Cal Thomas

The first thing that should be acknowledged about South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford's admission to an extramarital affair is that it could happen to any of us. That is not an excuse (and no, it has not happened to me, or to my wife). Every married person has heard the voice; the one that says you deserve something "better."

Gov. Sanford should have been familiar with the voice because of the Bible studies he attended. The voice began seducing humanity a long time ago. It told our first parents that they needed more than the perfection of Eden. The voice told them that God knew that if they ate of the tree of knowledge of good and evil they would be like God. But they already were like God, because they were made in His image.

Stick with me you secularists and non-literalists, because there is a point to be made for you, too.

Psychiatrists explain that married people tire of one another after 10 or 20 years (it used to be seven years, as in that Marilyn Monroe/Tom Ewell film "The Seven Year Itch." Must be inflation.). Good marriages are the result of hard work. Forsaking all others is more than a wedding promise. It is a daily denial of one's lower instincts. Temptation is everywhere. The key to overcoming it is to realize you are fighting an adversarial force that wants to destroy you, embarrass you and cause ridicule to be heaped on the God you claim to worship.

One can make excuses about power and loneliness and starting out as a friendship that develops into something else, as Gov. Sanford rambled on about, but one can't explain adultery. It is what it is and the person who commits it should be calling on God for mercy, not the voters for understanding.

I once asked evangelist Billy Graham if he experienced temptations of the flesh when he was young. He said, "of course." How did he deal with them? With passion he responded, "I asked God to strike me dead before He ever allowed me to dishonor Him in that way." That is the kind of seriousness one needs to overcome the temptations of a corrupt culture in which shameful behavior is too often paraded in the streets.

There was a time when a divorce would disqualify someone from public office. Now people admit affairs and expect to stay in office. "It's just sex," said defenders of Bill Clinton. One might as well say, "it was just a gun" that killed my spouse. Adultery wounds in ways a bullet cannot. One can potentially heal from a bullet wound, but a shot to the soul and to the trust that must be central to any marriage is nearly impossible to repair. The wounded spouse always wonders, "Will he/she do it again?"

A relationship most promise to venerate "until death us do part" is damaged by adultery, whether it's a TV evangelist, a politician or a regular Joe who violates the marriage bed. In fact, we rarely even use the word "adultery" anymore because it sounds so, uh, biblical, and those teachings and commands long ago fell out of fashion, though they work for those who embrace them.

Any man who claims never to have had thoughts of straying is a liar. Any man who has sought the help of God and other men in helping him to honor his marriage promises to his wife and children is a hero, especially in today's morally exhausted culture.

I miss Paul Harvey and his acknowledgement of those who had been married 50, 60, even 70 years.

Those people are my role models. I'm sure they heard the voice, too, but they told it to get lost and it did. Pushing against weights builds up the body, pushing against the voice builds up the soul and improves a marriage. You can never take a marriage -- or the voice -- for granted; it's always on the prowl looking for new people to destroy.

Erie County Republican Chairman Jim Domagalski

PART II: GOP SLATE PRIMED WITH REAL WORLD EXPERIENCE

Erie County Republican Chairman Jim Domagalski is hoping his party’s slate of private sector-based candidates will give the GOP and County Executive Chris Collins more clout in the County legislature, now controlled 12 to 3 by Democrats, after voters cast their ballots in November.

“We really have an excellent slate of candidates,” said Domagalski during a recent interview. “They are the kind of people who have a real job to go to, kind of citizen legislators, who want to serve the public.”

Domagalski says the entire slate of GOP candidates, including the three incumbents, has a private sector base, either from the business world, academia, or the media, emphasizing that none of the candidates is a career politician.

“The challenges right now are so important with respect to jobs and businesses and tax burdens,” said the chairman, “and it’s great to have people who know how to meet a payroll or create a job and who don’t rely on a government check to support their families.”

The GOP challengers include television reporter Lynn Dixon in the 12th District; Amherst restaurateur Amherst Councilmember Shelly Schratz in the 14th District; Canisius College professor and broadcaster Kevin Hardwick in the 10th District; businessman Kevin Curtin against Chairwoman Lynn Marinelli in the 11th District; business owner Dino Fudoli in the 5th District; real estate agent Brian Wirth, grandson of the late state lawmaker Sandra Lee Wirth, in District 9; accountant Ted Morton in District 8; incumbents John Mills (business owner), Ray Walter attorney and Ed Rath energy industry.

“All our candidates support downsizing [legislature], cutting salaries of legislators from $42,500 to $27,000, and term limits,” said Domagalski, who believes Collins’ record as county executive will help win votes.

“I know it is difficult to knock out incumbents,” said Domagalski, “but Collins’ agenda of cutting costs, and getting rid of the control board has made a significant impact and I think the taxpayers are ready to support more private sector people.”

The GOP leader says Republican Comptroller candidate Phil Kadet comes from the same private sector mold, having worked for 30 years as a private accountant, including a dozen years as managing partner of his firm.

“Our slate, with a theme of professionalism and private sector knowledge, will give voters a clear choice,” said the chairman. “Right now the legislature can override the county executive’s vetoes, and Chris needs help.”

Domagalski said he expects Collins to work together with the party on all aspects of the upcoming election campaign because “we have a good partnership with him.”

As for the Albany stalemate in the State Senate, Domagalski says it has reached a level of dysfunction that even for Albany is higher than normal.

“We really need radical change, and it’s time for both parties to reset their focus on the taxpayers, like we have in Erie County with Chris Collins,” said Domagalski. “I wish they would focus on families, small businesses, and taxpayers, the obvious areas of common ground for anyone with common sense.”

ERIE COUNTY GOP CHAIRMAN JIM DOMAGALSKI

PART I: TAKEOVER WAS NEEDED, GIVES GRUDGING NOD TO PIGEON




It looks like in the wake of the Albany coup there are some strange political bedfellows, as in Erie County Republican Chairman Jim Domagalski and former Erie County Democratic Chairman Steve Pigeon.



Pigeon, the choreographer who engineered the takeover of the State Senate by Republicans while on assignment from an angry and disappointed Tom Golisano, drew this comment from Domagalski on Monday:



“I’ve always had a great deal of respect for Steve’s political skills and abilities,” said Domagalski, “even though I don’t always agree with all of his politics.”



There you have it. The local leader of the Republicans offering faint praise for the former Democratic chief following the stunning change of power in the State Senate with two dissident Democrats joining 30 Republicans to wrest control from the Democratic majority and Malcolm Smith.



Domagalski says what happened is the result of a disastrous six-month run by the controlling Democrats, “a disaster even by Albany standards. The idea that one-party government could increase spending $12.5 billion in their budget, increase taxes and fees by $8.5 billion in the middle of a severe economic recession, is mind-boggling.”



The GOP leader says one-party rule has resulted in policies that have pushed high-profile people like Golisano and Rush Limbaugh to leave the state.



“But what’s more troubling,” says Domagalski, “are the small businesses and families who are deciding to do the same thing because there is no connection between realities faced by taxpayers and what the government has been doing. “



Domagalski says Golisano and some Democrats saw the one-party-rule disaster and abandoned ship to go to people who will help middle-class families and businesses, saying, “Now the burden is on the Republican-led coalition to do that. And in the first 24 hours, they are making reforms that are long overdue, and hopefully they will go beyond institutional legislative reforms and reform how government spends money and taxes families and businesses.”



The Republican chairman says New York State is at a tipping point, about to fall apart, unless radical change comes.   Domagalski states it’s now about parties, but the need for people to come together.



Will the Republican takeover hold up?

“The legislature can elect its own leadership,” says Domagalski, “and it is no different than when Jim Jeffords switched from Republican to Democrat in the U. S. Senate during the early ‘90’s, changing the balance of power. I see nothing illegal in what they did. And unless the governor has something specific, I don’t see how this won’t hold.”



Domagalski has his own horse to ride these days, County Executive Chris Collins who has been making noise around the state in GOP circles.



“Chris Collins will be the first to tell you that the job is to reform Erie County government and he been doing that very well,” says Domagalski about his rising political star. “His first two years have been very successful, capped by the control board reverting to advisory status, and following through on his promises, unlike many other politicians.”



Domagalski says he has been getting calls from Republicans around the state asking whether he can get Collins to come and speak and tell the story of Erie County because here, “we’re surging against the tide.”



The chairman says Collins supports Rudy Giuliani for governor, “but if Rudy doesn’t run, a lot of people will look at him. Would he do it? I don’t know, but his performance certainly warrants consideration.”



The GOP also likes their horse in the county comptroller race against Democrat Mark Poloncarz.



As we’ve done in the past, we’re offering voters a clear choice, says Domagalski. Republicans are backing accountant Phil Kadet to steward county finances, saying the CPA and former managing partner of the accounting firm Lumsden & McCormick for 12 years, has the necessary background for the job.



“Mark is a nice guy,” says Domagalski, “if that’s what they (public) want, they should re-elect him. If they want a pro with 30 years of experience, we’ve given them a clear choice,” adding he believes Kadet would act independently and not be tied to party headquarters like the current comptroller.

"BUFFALO ON THE MOVE AGAIN"

Shortly before the campaign kick off began I was invited back stage to say hello to Byron. I said, Byron here we are again four years later. I suggested the margin should be 70% this time; he said with a smile on his face, "75%, Joe". ...

Mayor Byron Brown surrounded by hundreds of supporters & well wishers announced his candidacy for a 2nd term as Mayor of Buffalo Saturday morning at St John the Baptist on Goodell Buffalo, NY.

Assemblywoman Crystal Peoples hosted the event for the 2nd time. She introduced all of the dignitaries in the crowd,  special guest Congressman Steve Israel from Long Island (Israel joining Responsible NY's Steve Pigeon for Buffalo wings & pizza tonight), Deputy Mayors Steve Casey his wife & two lovely children, Donna Brown & her beautiful daughter, DA Frank Sedita, City Court Judge Bob Russell & wife Bonnie, Legislators Betty Jean Grant & Barbara Miller Williams, Cheektowaga Democratic Chairman Frank Max & associates Jeff Whiting & Paul Piotrowski, West Seneca Chairman Dan McParlane, GRASSROOTS Chair Geraldine Ford, Al Thompson, Florence Johnson, Arnold Garner, Mark Croce, Cliff Bell, Dr. Henry Taylor. My friends Tim Clark, Peter Savage the old & young, Jon Dandes, Mike Darcy, & special mention my pal Hormoz Mansouri, et al.

Peoples then introduced her colleague Assemblyman Mark Schroeder who got the crowd on its feet with an old time fire & brimstone speech. Schroeder said maybe the democrats in the room should part company with the County Democratic Committee & have their own endorsement session. He also mentioned the Buffalo Niagara Partnership as another group that should fish or cut bait, paraphrasing.

Peoples then introduced another South Buffalo favorite Legislator Tim Kennedy. Kennedy really roused the crowd in his passionate support of Brown.

Next it was Councilmen Demone Smith & Joe Golombek's turn followed by NYS Senator Antoine Thompson.

Thompson introduced Congressman Brian Higgins, another southee, who talked about his great fondness for the Mayor; he continued by introducing Mayor Byron Brown to the crowd who by this time was on its feet cheering BROWN BROWN BROWN!!!.

The crowd was sincere in not only its political partnership with the Mayor but their affection for him & his family.

Brown chronicled the successes of his first term which are many & significant, reducing taxes, crime prevention, development, etc. We will link his remarks & pics later.

Brown of course gave great credit to his wife Michelle. He went on to recognize his mother in law; mentioning in the same breathe his mother, the day before Mother's Day, who he lost a few short years ago.

Mayor Byron Brown thanked all of his supporters & wished all you Mother's out there a Happy Mother's Day! ###

JosephIlluzzi704@aol.com

MAYOR BYRON BROWN

CITES PROGRESS IN MOVING BUFFALO FORWARD



                                                                     Congressman Steve Israel Long Island



Mayor Byron W. Brown announced his candidacy for a second term as Mayor of the City of Buffalo. Surrounded by his family, government, civic and faith-based leaders, the Mayor pointed to several accomplishments over the past 3 ½ years, while stating that more work remains to be done.

“I come here today determined to continue the progress we have made over the past 3 ½ years,” said Mayor Brown. “In that time, we have reduced the city’s crime rate, cut property taxes, eliminated government waste, built record budget surpluses, successfully negotiated several union contracts, started the process of returning cars to Main Street, ensured that all city employees receive a living wage and resolved the long-standing Hickory Woods controversy.”

“I will continue the great partnerships with people like those who have joined me on this stage and continue the collaborations that are beginning to improve opportunity for all Buffalonians – but I am not done carrying out the programs and policies that I know will make the City of Buffalo a better city to live, work, invest and raise a family,” said Mayor Brown. “I am here today to formally declare my intention to seek another term as your Mayor of the City of Buffalo.”

Among the accomplishments of the past 3 ½ years, Mayor Brown cited the creation of CitiStat Buffalo, his Administration’s public accountability initiative that has changed the way business is done in City Hall. In addition, the launching of the Mayor’s Zero Tolerance law enforcement effort brought in a new, crime fighting strategy including the highly successful Mobile Response Unit, the reestablishment of the Cold Case Squad, installing surveillance cameras in high crime areas and, most importantly, putting new police officers on our city streets.

“With the recommended city budget I sent to the Common Council last week, I have cut the property tax rate four straight times. All totaled, I have reduced the tax rate for residential properties by 12.5% and 14.9% for commercial properties,” stated the Mayor. “I’m proud of that and I will continue to fight for our city’s property owners, which includes our demolition and rehabilitation agenda for the thousands of vacant buildings that threaten the quality of life of our residents and the stability of their neighborhoods.”

Mayor Brown highlighted progress has in his Administration’s continuing crime fighting effort, which has brought an overall 7% reduction in crime between 2005 and 2008.

“It is clear our Zero Tolerance strategy is working,” said the Mayor. “In fact, between 2006 and 2008 the men and women of the Buffalo Police Department reduced homicide by 50%. Those responsible for violent crimes are being relentlessly pursued and brought to justice by the dedicated officers of our Police Department. Every year during my tenure as Mayor, the Buffalo Police Department’s success in solving homicides has increased, reaching 89% in 2008.”

In the area of economic development, Mayor Brown highlighted several initiatives, including the city’s First Source Agreement program, which works with businesses investing in Buffalo and offers a service of providing trained and qualified city residents for job opportunities created by new businesses.

“My Administration has created a new program for businesses investing in Buffalo to hire city residents – as a result 146 city residents have new jobs,” remarked the Mayor.

“With the benefit of the growing Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus, we are moving ahead with our plans to make Buffalo a national center for electronic medical records. This will create 550 new jobs. This summer I am creating 25 summer youth positions for city youth to work in these 21^st Century jobs.”

The Mayor stated that his Administration will direct federal stimulus funds to projects like energy conservation improvements to city-owned buildings with $2.7 million in new funding. It is estimated that this project will create nearly 100 new “Green Collar” jobs for city residents.

“I intend to continue to fight for additional stimulus funding to create more jobs to build on the progress we have made,” said Mayor Brown.

The Mayor concluded by reemphasizing his continuing outreach to the residents of Buffalo, meeting directly with them to listen to them, hear their concerns and enact programs and policies that will meet their needs and expectations..

“From Black Rock to Hamlin Park, Central Park to Kaisertown, the Old First Ward to the West Side, and North Buffalo, the City of Buffalo is a collection of neighborhoods that have contributed to our city’s strength,” said Mayor Brown. “I know this firsthand because I have met with block clubs in every section of our city and our residents deserve the best that we can offer.

“Make no mistake about it – we are making progress. But I will not rest on these successes; there is still more work to be done. And that’s why I am running for another term as your Mayor of Buffalo. I love Buffalo and its people. I know that we have made progress in many areas and there’s more work to do. It has been a great privilege and honor to serve you as your Mayor and I am ready to pursue a second term to finish the work we started 3 ½ years ago and continue the progress we have made in creating hope and opportunity for every Buffalo resident!"

LEAD - FOLLOW - OR GET OUT OF THE WAY

by Joseph J. Illuzzi

Leaders that put public policy predicated on the pubic good should lead - followers to support their policy initiatives - those whose interests are vested in partisanship or personal gain should simply get out of the way.

I believe one man put it this way: "Government by the people - for the people"

This Union was founded on God's biblical principles, infallible - unalterable.

The absolute & unequivocal "Right to Life" from conception.

The term "reproductive rights" as related to a woman's reproductive rights is an oxymoron, a convoluted misnomer; the same applies to "homosexual marriage".

The only Being with 'reproductive rights' are the Creator, NO exceptions.

Marriage is a trust in God between a man & woman, NO exceptions.

The absolute value of every human being's life regardless of circumstance.

Our foundation, the bricks & mortar, commonly known as the "traditional family" & inherent values therein, not two men or two women, this an abomination according to God's Word.

Families are living in an atmosphere of uncertainty & fear.

Families are losing their homes en masse, heads of households losing their jobs, their quality of life mitigated to the point where they long for the good old days; the good old days being six months ago.

This Union's economy was founded upon a free & open market system, supply & demand.

The stimulus being the genius of the American people, not handouts, bailouts & socialism couched in stimulus packages for corps. or financial institutions whose doom has become a self fulling prophecy predicated on greed & short term results. Let market forces determine outcomes not government!

What we have here readers is a corruption of the principles both social & economic upon which our Union was founded & the inverse relationship between the two.

We as a Union must find our way back; paradoxically tearing down those institutions, corp. & otherwise, that have made our Union a shadow of our stated ideals.

Whether it be Federal - State or County government it is time for real non partisan leadership to deal with this "black hole"; which is this social & economic meltdown. There is no doubt a connection between the two!

Tough choices have to be made; government cannot continue to be all things to all people, now this would be "change".

MALES IN BUFFALO UNEMPLOYED

The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Center for Economic Development conducted a study of 36 large American cities, the percentage of Black men between the ages of 16 and 64 without a job is 51.4%, the highest in the country

The study found 25.3% of white men living in Buffalo were out of work, the nation's second highest joblessness rate. Buffalo also ranked 2nd highest, behind Detroit in the disparity of blacks and whites without work. The study also found Buffalo remains one the most segregated cities/regions in the country.

The reason why Buffalo is the most often cited city/region when these studies are completed is the failure of our school system. Less than 50% of Black males get a High school diploma. The reasons: Racism & the Political climate & the inverse relationship between the two. ###

White Pen & Paper - Black Eraser (Hispanics other minorties other than Asian have to be included in our thinking) Redux first published 2003

by Joseph J. Illuzzi

Imagine being born into a wealthy family, having everything life could offer, then all of the sudden its all gone for one reason or another. You realize your parents never prepared you for the culture shock of having to make a living on your own! You lack the skills as a result of not having the appropriate educational background to move fluidly from an environment of relative stability to one of uncertainty. Thus you find yourself with no money, no job, no prospects.

Now if you are white & living in Erie County in the 60’s and 70’s, you probably would not have to deal with these kinds of issues and this metaphor would be lost on you. But if you're Black and lived in Buffalo, you most certainly were/are confronted with these issues! After Bethlehem Steel, et al., began downsizing, eventually closing its doors; heavy industry, the resulting well paying jobs, for the most part became of the history and folklore of this County/City.

Blacks in the main, woke up and realized something was wrong. Whites seemed to be moving into other areas of employment with little or no difficulty. Whites were able to maintain a reasonable standard of living. While Blacks found themselves in the social and economic abyss, a real conundrum.

The reasons: While both Black and whites were working at Bethlehem Steel, et al., times were good. There existed ‘economies of scale’ in both the white and Black areas of the City.

No one was paying attention because everyone had a job. Blacks realized in a very short period of time, after things changed, there was one unique difference, among many differences, between them and their white counterparts, schools! The schools in the Masten, Fillmore, and Ellicott Districts, were in no way equivalent to the schools in the Delaware, North, South, and Lovejoy Districts. The teachers in the classrooms seemed not to be the equivalent or as focused as those in the white districts. The school buildings in the Black Districts always were in a state of disrepair. The manor in which supplies, e.g. text books, were distributed seemed to favor the white districts, thus the great revelation.

There was a great divide between the Black and white experience in the classrooms of the Buffalo School District. Blacks, in great numbers, in fact were/are an uneducated, underclass, in the City of Buffalo and Erie County. Not only not educated on the same level as whites but regulated to specific geographical areas of the City with little ability to move up and out, especially in the 50’s and 60’s. Blacks certainly did not move to Amherst or Cheektowaga. As a matter of fact there were signs put up, "No N..... Allowed."

I know that sign was posted at Pine Ridge and Genesee in Cheektowaga. I know because in 1963 the DiFiglia family moved from East Delevan & Humbolt to Floral in Cheektowaga. So our Blacks friends & I would travel to Cheektowaga to use our best friend Frank's pool, quite an education. The name DiFiglia might not ring a bell. Does the name Michael Bennett mean anything to you; he wrote Chorus Line, etc. His real name is Michael DiFigilia. Antidotally, Basketball Hall of Famer Bob Lanier grew up in the same neighborhood. We used to tease him in grammar school because his feet were so big! We went to St Francis De Sales, Bob to PS #74. Back to the point: This racist behavior led to the great social upheaval in the late 60’s, rioting in the streets etc. I know because a round or two went thru my bedroom window at East Ferry & Fillmore next to Colson's gas station.

However, while Blacks around the country seemed, on the surface, to become more socio-economically mobile, in Buffalo and Erie County the Black circumstance remained stagnant. Blacks remained an uneducated, underclass. Here it is 2003 (08) … Buffalo and Erie County remain the fourth most segregated County and City in the Nation. Buffalo the 2nd poorest City in the Nation. Buffalo with a high school graduation rate far below the other Districts in Erie County. Now the result of all this is many Blacks in the city were/are unemployed. The lot of a Black child was and remains severely impeded.

Not only because of the upheaval, for many reasons, in the home, but the political climate, and the failure of the Black leadership during this era. White Democratic politicians found race an avenue for election and reelection in Buffalo, esp. by separating the races, i.e. separate & unequal, some referred to the behavior as, "polarizing the City along racial lines."

The political problem was exacerbated because Black leaders told their constituents to vote one way, Democratic. The reason Black leaders told their constituents to vote one way? Black leaders found, most Democratic at the time, they too could be elected and reelected as well, number one. Number two: Get wealthy pimping all of the poverty programs of the late 60’s and 70’s.

The ramifications: Grassroot Blacks remain to this day an underclass in Buffalo & Erie County.

Unless things change dramatically in our attitudes, the body politic, esp. the classroom; the Black experience in Buffalo and Erie County would not and did not change. Albeit, there are obvious marginal improvements in the lives of some Blacks in the City/County. This is to say: Things are changing but the results of decades of socio-economic disparity remain the same for many, if not most, Blacks living in Buffalo and Erie County. There remains a plethora of very serious issues for administrators in the Buffalo School District. Also, it goes without saying teachers in the classroom via discipline and performance etc.

Part of the lingering problem is during the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s most teachers in the classroom were middle class, white, and female, not trained to deal with children with such horrible discipline problems. Problems became much worse as a result of changing dynamics in the home, i.e. single unemployed parents, drugs, crime, and the resulting violence, not to mention teen pregnancy and infant mortality. The ramifications from this behavior, in the aggregate, found its way into the classroom. To this very day the denial of the reality of these issues by media, many of our private sector and political leaders is also a problem that weighs heavily on our ability to redress these issues.

The fact is 26% plus of the adult population, Blacks and Hispanics for the most part, in Buffalo do not have high school diplomas. The illiteracy numbers among all minorities in the City is very troubling. Unless we deal with this phenomenon, things will never change. Just stop and think! Ask yourself why taxes are so high in NYS and Erie County? The answer is quite simple because we are paying for our sins of the past, reparations? Not as a result of slavery; but our benign neglect of a race of people, esp. children in Buffalo and Erie County, over the last decades. Thus our welfare costs, e.g., Medicaid. The cost to taxpayers for public safety, the resulting cost to build and maintain prisons. Every cent we pay in taxes one way or another, except for the obvious, e.g. the infirmed, elderly, goes to the Masten, Fillmore, Niagara, and Ellicott Districts for one entitlement or another.

This is a multi generation crisis that took decades to reach the current state of the Buffalo School District.

Is there a quick fix, NO.

But it remains an imperative that this broken school district be fixed!

Publisher Joseph J. Illuzzi

Interview conducted by John Maggiore

PoliticsNY.Net "The Magazine" hard copy this is one of our exclusive covers. Rated one of the five best magazines in NYS by Bacon's. Did I mention we have been quoted numerous times in national publications like Roll Call, Rothenberg, et al. I was the political TV analyst for five years on Crossroads. Countless TV & radio appearances all the way back to Clip Smith WGR 550 in 1998-99 as recent as opening Hardline with Hardwick's first three shows on WBEN 930 last year.

Roll Call Magazine Washington DC

ON JOE ILLUZZI

"This is the opposite of what usually happens. PoliticsWNY.com (PoliticsNY.Net), a popular Web site on politics in Western New York, has spun off into a glossy magazine. PoliticsWNY.com (PoliticsNY.Net) The Magazine, debuted this month with a cover story about New York state Sen. Byron Brown (D), who is hoping to make history this year by becoming Buffalo's first black mayor. The magazine, which is free, is published by the Web site's impresario, Joseph Illuzzi, and promises to include in-depth features not found on the Web site - which will continue generating its daily dose of political tidbits.In a letter to readers, the editor promised that the monthly magazine would offer "the real news mixed with some straight talk, and leavened with a little rumor and some humor." ###

PoliticsNY.Net, formerly PoliticsWNY.com, formerly the Illuzziletter.com, is in a way a throwback to the 18th century – when anyone with access to a printing press could publish a newspaper to pamphlet, mixing news with opinion, sometimes publishing anonymously, like the Federalist Papers or Common Sense. But the advent of the Internet adds a 21st century dimension to the enterprise that Hamilton, Madison and Jay could never have imagined.

Illuzzi’s beginning as a publisher was distinctly Thomas Paine-like.

Illuzzi: It started as the Illuzzi Letter in 1996. I had a mailing list of seven people. From there the mailing list grew to a few hundred, and in 1998 the cost of producing the mailing – I was doing it once a week or once every two weeks – was around $1,000 per month; thanks to my parents for the help getting started. So I had to find an easier way to get my message out. I decided to go online.

The online version of the IlluzziLetter.com started in October of 1998 with the heading, “Hello World”. The name change to PoliticsWNY.com came in 2002 PoliticsNY.Net in 2004). I hired an editor & web designers. The rest is history.

Q: Now it has come full circle, now you have a printed magazine again.

Illuzzi: Right. It’s kind of an odd thing. We did it like Roll Call magazine in Washington, D.C., but came full circle. Media as a rule would do a hard copy, then go to the Internet. Well, we did a hard copy, went to the Internet, and now we’re back to the hard copy, “The Magazine”.

Q: How are both of them doing?

Illuzzi: Very well. With the website, we started out in October of 1998. The first month we did 700 hits; we did 4.5 million hits in (August) of this year. I began selling ads for the web site in 2000-2001. Our web publication is read around the world, our magazine around the state & in Washington D.C. Our corporate revenue is in the $100’s of thousands. Our goal is to break the million-dollar gross revenue plateau within two years.

Q: How would that compare to other online publications?

Illuzzi: The Buffalo News is the “Goliath” in the area. Comparatively we’re doing pretty well. As far as other websites, we are the only political web site of note in Buffalo, Erie Country, upstate New York (NY). There is no real competition for our market in Erie County/Western New York. We intend to be the political publication of record north of New York City. As a matter of fact we will have a name change to reflect our goal. The PoliticsWNY.com, formerly the IlluzziLetter.com, will become or is as of this publication PoliticsNY.net.

Q: How has the Internet transformed the way politics are reported?

Illuzzi: I think Warren Buffett said it best. Paraphrasing, I no longer look to print media for my news; I go right to the Internet because it’s fast and cheap. It doesn’t cost me anything.

To that extent the Internet has revolutionized the news business – not only the political component but the entire business.

Q: Do you think of the online version as a blog or something else?

Illuzzi: You can call my editorials blogs. Now my critics refer to my, as some like to say, “ranting and ravings”, as blogs. We have original copy and original interviews on our website 365 days a year. No other website, other than the Buffalo News, can make that claim. (Of course we published "The Magazine.)

Q: You don’t adhere to mainstream media journalism standards?

Illuzzi: Well, I don’t know that mainstream media journalism standards apply to the Internet. My approach and our original slogan was, “the truth will set you free”. We tell it like it is (excuse the cliché). To the extent that that’s not classic journalistic behavior, so be it. It gives me a format to express my views. The punctuation isn’t always right. The spelling is sometimes a little shaky. But when you update whatever number of times per day, reading 50, 60, 70 news items covered in daily local, state, national and international news, you’re doing this quickly and mistakes are made. I don’t want to sound too defensive. It’s the immediacy and necessity of being first in a very competitive environment via radio & TV. The Buffalo News is handicapped because the paper has a 24-hour turnaround time.

Q: In addition to articles and commentary, you publish rumors and press releases in the online version. What is the value in publishing those?

Illuzzi: Everybody loves a good political rumor or bit of gossip. However, I rarely publish rumors. That charge is a nonstarter. When I publish a rumor, the item says in quotes, “rumor”. If it’s gossip, I write, “gossip”. That’s usually a claim of my critics, that I publish rumors. The problem is that when I get information, they’re not rumors. I get information straight from the horse’s mouth. I get information from the best of sources – the people involved in the story. It might seem like a rumor because some of our stuff, as we publish it, seems so impossible. But as 90% of my readers over the last nine years (12) – those who are being honest – will tell you, what I publish today might seem bizarre, crazy and couldn’t possibly happen. For example: The Giambra budget debacle, or the highway garage scandal, or the deli terrorist story – seemed impossible (Bills playing in Toronto ... Hoyt ... Stone/Spitzer ... We have broken just about every major "political" story in WNY in the last six years). But in a short time the truth of our prose became quite apparent. Our muckraking story became front-page fodder for the Buffalo News or the lead for radio & TV news. I can tell you that TV, radio & the News journalists have made it clear – PoliticsNY.Net is one of their first reads every morning.

Q: What’s your response to criticism about accepting paid advertisements from some of the same people who are being covered?

Illuzzi: What’s new? Who doesn’t cover paid advertisers? Dr. (Satish) Mohan (a candidate for Amherst Town Supervisor) would buy half-page ads in the Buffalo News and they would cover his campaign. Again, what’s new here? The problem with our critics is that we’ve made an art out of it. We found a way to make a considerable amount of revenue. I have to laugh when some of our critics say you shouldn’t be selling your magazine covers. A number of publications sell their covers. The people pointing fingers do not have expenses exceeding $15,000 a month. Please do not forget that we are consultants as well as putting out the publications. The little trip to the mailbox with seven copies has turned into PoliticsWNY.com Incorporated (DBA PoliticsNY.Net), with multiple shareholders.

Illuzzi later expanded on this point, asserting, “We have never endorsed a candidate predicated on the amount of money they have spent on our site”. In fact, Illuzzi often endorses opponents of his own advertisers and publishes ads from multiple candidates for the same office. The confusion is that we offer free fundraiser ads for clients. We also post our clients’ press releases. We only post the relevant press releases of non-advertisers.

Q: Do you consider yourself a journalist?

Illuzzi: Yes. I have nine (12) years of experience writing & publishing news. I have a staff of writers. I’m involved in a corporation that publishes news in a political website and magazine. People look to me for their political news. To that extent, yes, I am a journalist. Do I have a degree in journalism? No, 90 hours of college study. This during years of self-inflicted turmoil & a couple of rounds with the judicial system decades ago.

Now everybody is a journalist. Bloggers – 90% plus of them don’t have journalism degrees. But bloggers are admitted to the White House press conferences. The Internet has opened the door. In the same vein, how many TV & radio commentators have journalism degrees? Some do, most don’t.

(The legal definition: An individual who gathers & disseminates news on a regular basis for public view. We certainly meet that standard & then some in spite of what Hoyt says.)

By the way, the reason why we are so well read is that if we didn’t do the job, people wouldn’t read us. That’s another misconception out there. If we were just publishing rumors and gossip, by definition of those words, people wouldn’t read us. We publish facts and reality. Our accuracy rate is in the 99th percentile. Nobody else, including the Buffalo News, can say that.

Let me mention as well that there is a great misconception out there that if you advertise your website &/or get a number of mentions on TV & radio, etc., your numbers grow concurrently. Not true! Take it from me – the only thing that pushes stats & revenue is credibility, word of mouth. Believe me when I tell you that. I should know!

Q: Where do you see both the website and the magazine in ten years?

Illuzzi: I am glad you said ten years. I have completed 10 marathons & 1 triathlon, so I know what it means to be in it for the long haul. The web site continues to grow. There was a leveling off somewhat (in readership) over the summer. I think people locally were just tired of the events in the county over the past several months. Albeit, we have expanded our reach throughout the 8 counties & the state, both in our news coverage & revenue sources. We are read in Washington, D.C. We have had 7 national mentions (plus) in the last couple of (few) years. We have a staff of great free-lance writers in Tony Farina, Ken Hamilton ... (John Maggiore .. Judy Einach past tense)

Readership is growing again now that we are in the election cycle. (4.5 million hits in August - 160 Gbs of Bandwidth for our SINGLE page format) I see the Corporation continuing on the web, growing our advertising base, continuing to be the first in political news – the first and accurate. “The Magazine” is a hit (suspended for the moment). Things are looking great!

Things had BETTER look great. I have an fourteen-year-old daughter, Sarah. She likes that allowance! I was in the room when she was born, never missed a dental appointment, 90% of of her ortho appointments (cash by the way!) made 99% of her doctor appointments, never missed an open house or parent-teacher conference, never EVER failed to provide for my child including all of the extras!!! Sarah is one very important reason why, when things looked bleak, I carried on.

I give all credit & thank God & His son, Jesus Christ, for His blessings on our endeavors.

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Always First For Local, State & National Political News