Buffalo Report Archive

A lot of sound and fury signifying nothing: Buffalo Common Council's peace resolution turns out to be a piece re$olution. Franczyk & Co. are afraid to say "let's not go to war," but they are shameless about using the war as an excuse to hustle for money. When's the next election? (19 March 2003)

Amanda Kosior: Joel Giambra's kids. It's not just politicians who pay the price for inappropriate public statements and dubious policy decisions, writes this 16-year-old student in one of Buffalo's magnet schools. Moreover, she says, the diversity offered by Buffalo public schools is a pretty good thing. (17 March 2003)

The real reason Joel Giambra said that dumb thing that got him into so much trouble last Saturday night. Giambra had a fine opportunity to show us his real character after last Saturday's gaffe. He did. That's the problem. (14 March 2003)

Bruce Jackson: Joel Giambra's mealy-mouthed hypocrisy. Erie County Executive Giambra started a flap when he told a group of parents and educators that he pulled his kids out of one of the city's best schools because they were afraid of black kids and he thought moving them to a suburban religious school would save them from racism. He's refused to apologize, and now he's issued a press release that makes the whole thing worse. (12 March 2003)

Buffalo Goons. The Buffalo Common Council, in a dazzling display of ego, vindictiveness, mendacity, conniving and all around smarminess, killed a peace resolution similar to the resolutions passed in the past 10 days by Los Angeles, Oakland, Denver, Atlanta, Chicago, Gary, Baltimore, Detroit, Jersey City, Syracuse, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Austin, Seattle, Milwaukee and well over one hundred other American cities. (6 March 2003)

Bruce Jackson: What I would have said to the Buffalo Common Council about the peace resolution before them on March 4 if I'd been allowed to speak which I wasn't because nobody at all got to speak about the resolution because eight members of the Council ganged up on the others and wouldn't let anybody talk about it. (6 March 2003)

Buffalo Common Council considering anti-war resolution. More than 100 cities have come out against Bush's Iraq war and Buffalo may soon join them. Buffalo's Common Council votes on this one this Tuesday. Here's the text of the resolution and the telephone numbers and email addresses of all Buffalo Common Council members. (updated 27 February 2003)(well: this got mooted out. They voted no. Bah.)

Bruce Jackson: Buffalo needs a mayor. The city is in free fall, Tony Masiello can't remember what political party he belongs to, the aspirants for the job are edging to the start line. We blew it last time. What do we have to do to avoid blowing it again? (6 February 2003)

Pimps and sharks: the real failures in the Hamister hustle and the Paladino push. Perhaps we shouldn't blame Mark Hamister and Carl Paladino for the way they try to scarf up public treasure and property. That's what people like them do. But what about the people who are supposed to be protecting us or keeping us informed—Joel Giambra, Tony Masiello, the Buffalo News—how do you explain their abdication of responsibility, and what shall we do about it now that we know about it? (10 January 2003)

Nancy Naples gets weird. Erie County comptroller Nancy Naples is hot to take over the Buffalo comptroller's office. The only problem is, the law won't let her do it. She's worked out a plan to sidestep the law and avoid a public referendum. The mayor's office seems happy to let her do it and the Buffalo News seems confused. (8 January 2003)

Is Buffalo's Proposition #1 racist? Some readers have written to say that Prop #1 is structural, not racist. Indeed. Now let's look at the political techniques of Prop #1's proponents... (3 November 2002)

The logic of Buffalo's at-large Common Council seats. Abolishing the at-large seats isn't an economic change; it is a radical restructuring of the system of checks and balances in Buffalo's government. Here's why the seats exist and the function they serve. (31 October 2002)

Spectator, Democrats? What Democrats? With Buffalo Mayor Masiello and Erie County Legislator Schroeder endorsing and playing kiss-kiss with Republicans, new county Democratic Chairman Lenny Lenihan must be dizzy trying to figure out what he's chairman of. (17 October 2002)

Buffalo election notes: It's silly-season in the City of Good Neighbors: Channel 7 takes a pass on Masiello-Pataki press conference in favor of Baby Joe's mock weigh-in at a sporting goods store, and the dirty money has started hitting the streets in support of City Proposition 1 (the one giving the Common Council to the mayor's office).(17 October 2002)

Buffalo Newswatch: Color-coded justice. How do we skew the news? Let me count the ways... The Buffalo News article seems to be giving you two sides of Judge John T. Curtin and his involvement in the Common Council downsizing and city redistricting dispute, but a close reading shows that some sides get a lot more space than others. And that a third side that should be there isn't included at all. (15 September 2002)

Spectator says: Sidway stinks. Buffalo Mayor Anthony Masiello says the city is so broke it has to lay off firemen, policemen and all four at-large members of the Common Council. So how come he just turned over $2 million out of the city bank account to a small gang of private developers who won't even tell us their names? And what unannounced new event is about to cost even more Buffalo cops and firemen their jobs? Spectator, Buffalo Report's top secret agent, names the names and gives the numbers. (6 September 2002)

The Buffalo News responded to this piece by Spectator in an editorial on 7 September. Basically, they say, "Trust the mayor, trust the developers, and never mind that this is two million bucks of discretionary money desperately needed by people far more deserving than rich developers with a lousy track record who are now kicking people out of a working office building to convert it to a small number of upscale condos on which they will make a lot of money."You can read this piece of foolishness yourself by clicking here.

Room change for the Buffalo Common Council war. The fight moves from federal to state court, and whatever happens there won't be the end of it. But maybe we'll finally learn how many different maps David Franczyk really has and who's paying for the ad agency secretly working for the downsizing advocates. (19 September 2002)

Spectator: Now it's no votes at all. An arbitrator answerable to nobody has knowingly pushed Buffalo further into debt and probably given a death-sentence to the careers of several more Buffalo cops and firemen. We don't get to vote on the arbitrator but why, Specator asks, aren't the people we did vote for in federal court ending this taxation without representation? (20 September 2002)

Buffalo's Common Council flunks high school civics. No wonder so much foolishness comes out of City Hall. A Buffalo News reporter asked Buffalo's Common Council about the lawsuit filed in federal court opposing the redistricting and downsizing imbroglio. It turns out that the group who voted for downsizing and redistricting believes the courts have no right to examine anything they do. Megalomania or ignorance? Is it curable? (18 September 2002)

Buffalo NewsWatch: The war against James Pitts heats up. The Buffalo News makes up "facts" about James Pitts then editorializes about what it made up as if truth had any part of this. And we've got two months to go until the election! (2 September 2002)

Did the Common Council read its own Charter? A brief filed in federal court says the downsizing of the Common Council is illegal because Buffalo's Charter requires a two-thirds vote before legislation of this type can be put on the general ballot. If the applicants are right, it's back to the drawing boards for everybody on this one. (2 September 2002)

Will Jimmy's count count? The Erie County elections commissioners say too many of Jimmy Griffin's 21,129 petition signatures are defective, so Buffalo Mayor Tony Masiello doesn't have to face the voters, at least until the next time someone gets heated up enough to try to dislodge him by petition. Here are the numbers of qualified and disqualified signatures, the reasons for disqualification, and comments on the appeal now in process to get enough of those rejected signatures validated to get Masiello's fate on the November ballot. (2 September 2002)

Norman M. Bakos. A creative alternative. A 16-year veteran of the Common Council suggests a less crippling way to downsize. (2 September 2002)

Buffalo Newswatch: sins of omission. What with this creepy lovey-dovey relationship between the Buffalo News and downdown developer and local campaign contributor Carl Paladino? Why are they aligned against Jim Pitts? Why are they both so hot to restructure Buffalo's government? (26 August 2002). Plus a p.s.: they did it again on August 28—another lead that is an assertion masking as fact and another instance of Carl Paladino as the only representative of the Buffalo business community, making snotty remarks about James Pitts

At a brief 10:30 a.m., August 22, press conference in his city hall suite, Buffalo Mayor Anthony Masiello announced he was signing the Common Council resolution eliminating the position of Council president and the three other at-large seats, thereby sending forward for inclusion on the November ballot. His entire statement and a portion of the Q&A were broadcast live by WNED-AM. Here's a full transcript of that broadcast: Masiello's Press Conference. (23 August 2002)

I've been a college teacher for 35 years, so it's hard for me to read a text as full of misdirection, misperception and misinformation as Mayor Masiello's remarks at his August press conference without making marks all over it. Given that we're meeting here anyway, I thought I'd share them with you in Masiello's Press Conference (Annotated Version). (23 August 2002).

Buffalo in black and white: What happened at Waterfront School. Buffalo Mayor Anthony Masiello said his mind was made up on reconfiguring the Common Council, but the law said he had to listen to what the public had to say before he could formally ignore what the public had to say. Here's what happened on the evening of August 15, when the mayor who promised not to pay attention met the people who insisted on talking to him anyway. (20 August 2002.

Buffalo in black and white: What people said to Mayor Masiello. Full texts of the comments by Arthur Eve, Andres Garcia, Richard Kern, Jeremy Toth, George K. Arthur, David Collins, Marilyn Hochfield and other fine citizens, politicians, rogues and scoundrels. (20 August 2002).

Masiello's Last Campaign. Do the dead outnumber the living in Jimmy Griffin's dump-Masiello petitions? Does Jimmy have any friends we don't know about? Is any of this legal anyway? (16 August 2002)
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The lead article in the Aug.10 web edition of CounterPunch, "Buffalo in Black and White," consists of material drawn from several recent Buffalo Report articles on the Common Council resizing fiasco and the way the Buffalo News has become a participant in—rather than observer of—that grim and divisive affair. The CounterPunch site receives 5-7 million hits per month. (10 August 2002)

The Buffalo Report Interview: James Pitts, president of Buffalo's Common Council, is at the center of the political firestorm over Buffalo government reorganization. Depending who you talk to, Pitts is the devil incarnate or the only senior elected official in the region with his head screwed on correctly and enough guts to stand up to well-heeled business interests.In this long interview, James Pitts tells why he thinks the loss of all four at-large seats will do Buffalo more harm than good, why the few specific Erie county regionalizing proposals that have been made thus far are scams designed to use the city as a mere tax colony, what is the real place of race in Buffalo politics, what he thinks the real job of a city legislator is, what he thinks of the Buffalo News, and a great deal more.(1 August 2002)

Truth to order on page 1. In side by side front page photographs, the Buffalo News portrays Joel Giambra as a kindly teacher and James Pitts as angry and ready to bite. Take a look at the pictures and decide for yourself: are they reporting the news or manufacturing it? (1 August 2002)

Racist Buffalo. Buffalo's minorities say the proposed reorganization of city government hits them especially hard. White advocates of the plan say those African-Americans and Hispanics don't know what they're talking about. Is it racism or misperception? (1 August 2002)

Spectator's notes.... Buffalo Report's top secret agent comments on politicians' salaries, politicians' incompetence, infectious Conehead Amnesia in Buffalo media, continuing amnesia in Mayor Conehead, and how the business community once again screwed the city of Buffalo. (29 July 2002)

How white big should Buffalo's Common Council be? Whites say the Common Council is too big and expensive; Blacks say it's all about keeping Blacks from having a fair amount of political power. Whites say they want to get rid of Jim Pitts because he's a menace to society; Blacks say those people want to get rid of Jim Pitts because he does his job well. Who's right? Where's the truth? Is anyone telling it? What questions have to be answered before we pull the levers in the polling booths this fall? (23 July 2002)

A response from Joe Golombek, Jr.: North Buffalo's representative on the Common Council, answers some of the questions asked in "How white big should Buffalo's Common Council be?" (1 August 2002)

Democratic pigeons and Mayor Conehead. Buffalo Report's top secret agent, Spectator, comments on leadership foolishness and betrayal in the Erie County Democratic Party and several key moments of administrative incompetence or just plain stupidity that recently-awakened former mayor Jimmy Griffin hopes you have managed to forget. (5 July 2002)

"Just a Democrat making the calls." So who was behind the "Save Our City" mailings and what did they really want? Here's Deborah Lynn Williams's report on the late-night phonecall she got when she tried to find out. (29 June 2002)

"Save Our City" starts the sneaky season in Buffalo politics. According to just about everybody, it was Erie County Democratic chairman Steve Pigeon who sent out that very expensive mud-slinging brochure to every registered Democrat in Buffalo. In case you missed it, here's a description. But questions remain: what does he really want and whose money was he spending and why wouldn't he put put his name on it? (26 May 2002)

Shortcutting Buffalo's Mayor. Buffalo's economy is in the tank and the mayor's primo solution is a Seneca-owned casino that brings the city bupkus revenue and takes a huge block of prime downtown property off the tax rolls. Some people are wondering if things will be better with the next mayor, and some are wondering if they really need to wait 3+ years to find out. A recall election may be more complicated than you thought. Here's what you need to know to decide. (15 May 2002)

Our Lady of Ever-expanding Mystery. What resolution did the Common Council really pass regarding the proposed 700-foot erection on the shore of Lake Erie? Who deleted the most ideological and offensive Whereas? What do a many-breasted Hindu goddess and Krispy Kreme have to do with this? Click here for access to the mystery... (1 May 2002)

Buffalo City Hall savages Shakespeare Somebody should tell Mayor Masiello and the Common Council that it was during the worst of the Nazi air raids in WWII that Great Britain set up its Council for the Arts. The Brits said it's when things are really bad that you need the arts more than ever. Buffalo's pols seem to take the opposite view: when money gets tight, you toss the arts overboard first. Are they even educable? Don't they know you're supposed to toss the rats, not the arts? Well, in the interim, here's how you can help Shakespeare in Delaware Park get through what looks like a tough summer. (18 March 2002)

The arts crisis in Buffalo is real, so it's time for Tony, Joel, Al and Jim to stop campaigning, squabbling, preening, posturing and competing, and instead give us some rational and responsible government (26 April 2002)

Buffalo: City of Lousy Art. Can you believe it? The Common Council has unanimously endorsed a proposal to build a 700' Pro-Life pagoda on Buffalo's waterfront. $100 donors may (or may not) get their names inscribed and $1000 donors get a "beautiful signed certificate of recognition." The resolution says this will flood the city with pilgrims, who, presumably, will spend tons of money, and that will bring the city back to life. With resolutions like this, can the rebirth of the long-neglected Buffalo waterfront be in doubt? This occasions the first-ever Buffalo Report Design Competition. (7 April 2002)

Deepa and Preethi Govindaraj. The Repression of Lucy Ricardo. Jamestown's Lucille Ball was the first woman to run a major Hollywood studio. If you have cable, you can still catch her various series. Her character was a ditz; the real woman wasn't. Too bad they couldn't have gotten together now and then. (28 December 2002)

Jack Foran. The Latest from Carthage. A wandering scholar offers further thoughts on what George Bush might learn from what happened in Troy. (24 December 2002)

Happy New Year Before a War. Bill Sylvester on "Michael Casey's Poetry and Reception Theory" and William Sylvester on "Poems Blighted by Professors." (31 December 2002)

Bill Sylvester/William Sylvester. Trent Lott. The boys just couldn't wait for the next issue of BR on this one: our poet pair ponders the power of a few little words on one senator's career. (17 December 2002)

Bill and William in Falls Church, Virginia. The traveling poets Sylvester find curious letters about Henry Kissinger and Kenneth Starr in the Washington Post. (2 December 2002)

Modigliani at the Albright-Knox: a commentary by Buffalo poet William Sylvester (Modigliani and Buffalo's artistic vibrancy) and countercomment by Buffalo poet Bill Sylvester (Vibrancy? What vibrancy?). And you thought this only happened in movies about women with names from Genesis! (23 November 2002)

Buffalo poet William Sylvester has an insight at a peace dinner (Peace without rhetoric) and Buffalo poet Bill Sylvester says that William is maybe looking in the wrong place for answers (Peace without relevance). (23 November 2002)

George Dillmann: Michael Moore and the culture of fear. Why are so many Amherst residents who should know better afraid to venture into downtown Buffalo? The problem, says Dillman, may be in their heads rather than the city's streets, and Michael Moore's new film, Bowling for Columbine, suggests why. (15 December 2002)

Wrong way, Sidway. Here's a nice building on Main street that was doing perfectly well, thank you. All the tenants got kicked out so it could be developed. This is progress? (15 June 2002)

Bruce Jackson. Dull Sabres. We're getting a huge amount of pressure and hype from local politicians and the Buffalo News to subsidize Mark Hamister's purchase of the Buffalo Sabres. The Albany Times Union says the deal is a stinker all around. Here is some of what the Times Union had to say, and some of the questions the pols and the News aren't asking, but should be. (24 December 2002)

Deepa and Preethi Govindaraj: City of Buffalo Housing Initiative. The Govindaraj sisters continue their examination of innovative housing programs in Buffalo. This time they look at what the city itself is doing: if you can't force people to move in from the suburbs, give them an offer they perhaps won't want to refuse. (23 December 2002)

Buffalonian Hiram Pratt adds some important distinctions to the Govindaraj housing report, and argues that the program will have real meaning on when some powerful private corporations decide they want to join the city's effort. (24 December 2002)

James Bunn. Protesting Bush's War. How Buffalo participated in the UN's International Human Rights Day. (16 December 2002)

Deepa Govindaraj and Preethi Govindaraj: The Canisius College collaborative learning model. A UB freshman and her first-year grad student sister discover an innovative teaching program at Canisius. (1 December 2002)

Lydia Fish and Nancy Piatkowski: Two "spontaneous shrines" in Buffalo. People know what they have to do when a cop gets killed. (15 November 2002)

_{H&HS
helps Pataki campaign and sticks it to Kaleida health.
The $30 million of federal money George Pataki promised would
save Children's Hospital doesn't exist, and H&HS held
off announcing it until the polls closed. Even when they
have a lock those guys can't play it straight! (November
6, 2002)}

William Sylvester: Sloppy abstractions and the wrong war. After listening to a very smart speech by Congressman John LaFalce at a Buffalo antiwar rally, poet and philosopher William Sylvester reflects on the ease of war and difficulty of pacifism. (22 October 2002)

Thomas Robinson, A war of words. Buffalo area labor leaders want the Buffalo News to end its unbalanced coverage of organized labor. (17 October 2002)

Editorial Moonlight at One News Plaza. The managing editor of the Buffalo News has written a sugar-coated book for the Business Council of New York State that undercuts some of his own reporters' best work and may very well help George Pataki's reelection campaign. What's going on down there? (15 October 2002)

Taking the pledge. The socialist minister who wrote the Pledge of Allegiance couldn't include the word "equality" because his boss disliked women and African-Americans. "Under God" was a 1954 McCarthyite insert resulting from a Knights of Columbus campaign. It ain't writ in stone.

Updates: It turns out Common Council President James Pitts was right: the maps used for reapportionment were all screwed up, (Room for Change in the Buffalo Common Council War, BR 19 September). Mayor Masiello is going to veto the local law changing the district boundaries, and the Common Council will have to vote all over again. Nothing is going to change, since the 7-6 split along strict racial lines remains cast in cement. Developer Larry Quinn put tire stops in the parking lot of his 655 Main Street office building, so cars no longer make Quinn's Alley (BR 15 March 2002) inaccessible to wheelchairs and people no longer have to walk through it in single file. The lights Quinn promised to put up in the alley last spring as part of his deal with the city finally went up last week, just in time for last Friday's Curtain Up!, but they're not on his building. They're on the Youth Hostel next door, which means they're stuck paying Quinn's electric bill. Doncha wish you were one of the mayor's pals and you could get a public organization to pick up your utility bills too? Things had a better aroma at Children's Hospital: after two years of agitation by staff, families, patients and visitors (see Kafka in Buffalo, BR 15 August 2002 for the original report), the city replaced the pedestrian crossing signs and crosswalk markers on September 26.

Deepa and Preethi Govindaraj. The Buffalo housing initiative at Canisius College. In case Spectator's Sidwayreport bummed you out about City Hall's loopy development perversions, here's a really nice story: Canisius College, working with Fannie Mae, the M&T Bank and Hunt Real Estate, has a new program that will help Buffalo become more stable and more livable. (6 September 2002)

Kafka in Buffalo. City workers repaved Hodge Street and destroyed the crosswalk markers between the parking ramp and the hospital. The street became a dangerous speedway, so anxious parents called the engineer in City Hall who is in charge of such matters. He doesn't take telephone calls. They called the mayor's hotline. The operator hung up on them. They called the mayor's office, which promised that everything would be fixed immediately. Nothing was done. Finally, the boss of the city's Department of Public Works, Parks and Streets said a study would have to be done to determine if there was a need for the crosswalk that had been destroyed by the city's Department of Public Works, Parks and Streets. Franz Kafka is otherwise occupied, so Carol Malmin tells the story. (17 August 2002). Plus four letters about Carol's report: Tip Putnam on his efforts to fix the same problem, Deborah Lynn Williams on another fit of Streets Department disfunction, Ted Pelton on another important street sign that went AWOL, and Walter Simpson on a missed opportunity for great street theater.

_{Hooray
for Sam Hoyt! Fooey on New York!} _{Assemblyman Sam Hoyt
just gave Shakespeare in Delaware Park $50,000 for equipment,
an echo of his season-saving gift of $50,000 to Ujima
Theatre on August 1. It's not his money of course, it's yours—part
of the $108 million New York legislators get to give away to
organizations of their choice every year. Sam parcels that
money out usefully and wisely. Many of his colleagues do neither.
Is this any way for us to be keeping key organizations going? (16
August 2002)}

Private sector, public money. Buffalo's economy goes deeper into the sewer while some of Buffalo's corporations are making more money than ever, often on the basis of sweetheart deals with or loans from public agencies. So what are the rich and powerful doing to help the community? A Buffalo Report reader sums it up. This letter touches on some of the same fiscal marvels Peyton Randolph mentions in "Who's Entitled." And the two guys don't even know each other! (15 May 2002

Bernadette Medige. Flying to Children's Hospital. Physicians at Children's Hospital say a helipad would save lives. People who know about helicopters say they won't make much noise, they're safe, and there won't be that many of them anyway. A few neighborhood residents are trying to block the helicopter service. What are the real issues and what are the likely benefits? (16 July 2002)

Kaleida Health's new board of directors: plus ça change...Kaleida Health has picked a new board of directors—but it's only half new. They say they won't do the electing until June 25, but here are some of the names, and some speculation on the consequences for Kaleida and still-endangered Children's Hospital. (4 June 2002)

Dale St. Arnold tells why Catholic Health System walks alone. When it comes to interviews, Catholic Health System boss Dale St. Arnold is perhaps the most elusive corporate official in town. But intrepid Buffalo Report roving reporter Diane Christian tracked him down in a suburban synogogue and posed one of the key questions he'd long avoided answering. (1 June 2002)

McGuire's moat: managing the press at Kaleida Health. Kaleida's new chief Bill McGuire may be a breath of fresh air in Kaleida's corporate swamp, but he's ringed by PR pros dedicated to making sure he doesn't say anything they don't want him to say and talking only to reporters who will write what they want written. These emails show the flacks at work. This sad story is redeemed by an extraordinary letter from Carol Malmin. Read it and you'll know why none of us can quit fighting mediocrity and venality in the health care systems. (15 May 2002)

Who got what in the Children's hospital deal? A 14-hour marathon negotiation session in NYC produced the memorandum of agreement that ended the Children's Hospital war and brought a grinning Governor George Pataki to Buffalo. What does the MOA promise and how many of those promises have any substance? Here's a point by point analysis of the whole document. (15 April 2002)

Speechifying at the Children's Hospital love feast. Governor George Pataki, union official Dennis Rivera, State Assemblyman Sam Hoyt, Erie County Executive Joel Giambra and seven other people talked to a packed auditorium on Wednesday, April 3. But what, if anything, did any of them really say? And what was the event really about? (13 April 2002)

Physicians and parents in Women and Children First, Kaleida officials, and the president and staff of a union spent all day and part of a night hammering out the agreement that kept Children's Hospital alive. It brought George Pataki to town for the love-in described elsewhere in Buffalo Report. Here's the full text of their Memorandum of Agreement.

Happy Daze on the Elmwood Strip: There was a love feast at Children's Hospital. Does anyone know what it means? (3 April 2002)

The Parents of Kaleida's Children: A Conversation. You want to know what Kaleida Health bought with the $2.1 million it paid Florida's Hunter Group for that big fat consultant's report? Not the management and financial analyses, which got all the attention in the daily press. They knew most of that beforehand, or would have if they'd listened to just about anybody.What Kaleida really bought was diverting everybody's attention away from the quality (or lack thereof) of medical services Kaleida provides its customers. All this talk about Kaleida's blood-red bottom line has made it harder and harder to get a word in edgewise about Kaleida's anemic performance. In this issue of Buffalo Report,four parents of very sick children talk about the kind of service they've gotten from Kaleida and about Kaleida chairman Gerald Lippes's plan to shut Children's down and tuck it into two currently unused floors of Buffalo General Hospital looks like from their point of view. (1 April 2002)

The Public Ethics of Bryant Prentice III . What gets a guy in more trouble: selling real estate to a non-profit corporation when he's chairman of the board or writing a letter justifying it to the Buffalo News? (21 March 2002)

The Hunter Report (minus the parts Kaleida didn't want you to see: two chapters, all the appendixes, a lot of individual pages here and there, and a few hundred lines Magic Markered-out.)

The Niagara Square Rally to Save Children's Hospital: A whole lot of people (including some very articulate and passionate physicians, one hockey player, two quarterbacks, one astonishingly articulate and passionate and angry mother – but, notably, no mayors or county executives) ask how long can Kaleida stonewall? (3/4/02)

Kaleida Wars: Kaleida Health has begun an expensive ad campaign designed to shout down the Children's Hospital physicians. Is this the Peace Bridge War all over again? How sick is Erie County health care and are they contagious? (3/1/02)

"Why your health care just got worse": the Erie County health care mess, the Kaleida spiral, and the fatal flaws of the Hunter study. This originally appeared in the now-defunct Blue Dog on February 7, 2002.

Hospitals at the Edge/Children's Hospital 3 articles on the original proposed High Street move and 4 on Buffalo health care now, including interviews with U.B.'s health affairs VP Michael Bernardino and then Kaleida chief John Friedlander.

The Rigas family and the Buffalo News: giving hagiography a bad name. The News has another page-one above-the-fold three-hankie puffpiece about one of the Rigases. Warren Buffett says CEOs who get caught eating their companies should be punished, so how come his newspaper is giving these guys soul-kisses? (30 June 2002)

Time to end the Rigas pity-party. What's with the three-hanky newspaper coverage of the tribulations of the Rigas family? That powerful father and the Harvard law, Stanford law Wharton Business School sons planned everything they did – except getting caught at it.They got rich on and played fast and loose with other people's money, screwed thousands of working stiffs out of their investments, cooked the company books, took credit for gifts paid for by other people, and made most of Buffalo's city government look like idiots (they had a good deal of help there, we must admit). They're not the sweet baronial family in the big mansion on the hill looking out for the village folk, and this is no classical tragedy. They're corporate clones of the Enron bastards – and it's white-collar crime. (11 June 2002).

Welfare for the rich and corporateThe welfare rolls are down—but not if your name is Rigas and you make the right kind of nice-nice with Tony Masiello, Joel Giambra, and selected state officials. Here are the facts, never fully revealed before, about what our elected and appointed officials tried to give away to the family from Coudersport. If the Rigaseshadn't gotten caught playing funny-money with family debt and corporate balance sheets, your tax dollars might be part of the fiscal mess currently being investigated by the SEC. (21 April 2002)

Adelphia's fabulous MOU The memorandum of understanding, secret until now, that spells out what the state, county and city, promised to do for the Rigas family. (In downloadable RTF format.) (21 April 2002)

The cover letter from Empire State Development Corporation senior counsel Steven J. Matlin to Alan DeLile (president, Buffalo Economic Renaissance Corporation) and Laurence Rubin (commissioner, Erie County Department of Environment and Planning) that came with the year-late and misdated final text of the MOU, and five-month late letter from ESDC listing the dollar amounts of Adelphia's 15-year tax break. (Downloadable RTF format) (21 April 2002)

The five-month late letter mentioned in the previous paragraph detailing Adelphia's 15-year tax break. (Downloadable RTF format.) (21 April 2002)

Adelphia Alchemy. Medieval alchemists said they could turn lead into gold but they never quite delivered. Modern-day alchemists work with pieces of paper. The Rigas family forgot to tell anybody that it had kind of, well, mingled a few billion dollars of family debt with Adelphia Communications Corporation debt, so last week the stock tanked, the company is under investigation by the SEC, and the prospect of that pretty new high-rise office building in downtown Buffalo grows dim. And Common Council President James Pitts, who was excoriated for trying to get everybody to go slow on the Rigas's sweetheart tax and funding deal, may have been the only guy in City Hall who appreciated the wizards' sleight of hand. (13 April 2002)

Diane Christian, Sex rules. The key issue the Church hierarchy hasn't confronted or is working hard to avoid in the priestly pedophilia scandal, says Diane Christian, SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor at UB and formerly a nun for nearly eight years, is that sin may be the Church's business, but crime is dealt with by other agencies entirely. The church may forgive the priests' sins, but it has no legal power to get them out from under a lot of grim felonies. (11 June 2002)

Edward Said: Palestinian elections now. All the players– among them Arafat, Sharon, Bush, Israelis, the Palestian people – say there should be a Palestinian election now. The problem is, each of them seems to have a different reason for wanting the election and hardly any of them want or will accept the same outcome. This thoughtful examination of the various positions and plea for reason by Columbia University professor and former PLO Central Committee member Edward Said was sent to Buffalo Report by UB English professor Mark Shechner, who tells us why Said's remarks are important.Prof. Shechner also provides web links to key Arabaic and Israeli newssources. (17 June 2002)

Maxine S. Seller: "A response to Edward Said's 'Palestinian elections now,'—and to Mark Shechner, who sent the article to Buffalo Report." Maxine S. Seller, professor of Educational Leadership and Policy at UB, says Said's argument is flawed and one-sided, and she offers three reasons why. (21 July 2002)

Will NFTA let Niagara Falls fly? NFTA owns Buffalo International Airport, which is thriving, and Niagara Falls International Airport, which is on life-support. The Cintra deal, which nearly everybody hated, collapsed. What now? (15 June 2002)

Cuba Libre: George W. Bush goes a-whoring. The president's staff insists his Castro-bashing public speech and similar speechifying at a ticket-holders-only $25,000-a-plate dinner in Miami Monday had nothing to do with his brother's current reelection fight or George's own in 2004, or with the heat the White House is taking for ignoring signals that Bin Laden was about to do something evil. Nah, how important can a few hundred thousand votes one way or the other in south Florida be to a national campaign, and why would the president want to give the public something really silly to think about? (22 May 2002)

It's not just drunks, owners of ATV's who don't know how to get beyond the suburbs but who want to run in the woods anyway, and other idiots proving something, now and then who tear up the grass and grind up the topsoil in Delaware Park. Sometimes it's Buffalo city workers, taking lazy shortcuts. Take a look. (21 April 2002)

Quinn's Alley: How do you get from Washington Street to Main Street and back now that Larry Quinn and his partners replaced Michael Bennett Way with a dark and narrow alley? (3/1/02)

Attica Redux.It's been more than 30 years since State troopers and prison guards shot up Attica's catwalks and D-yard, slaughtering 29 prisoners and 10 prison guards and staff. Two years ago, some of the surviving convicts and their families got reparations from New York state for unnecessary deaths and inexcusable tortures. Survivors of the slain hostages and some of the hostages who weren't shot to death by troopers and guards are now saying, "What about us?" In this election year, it's a good bet that George Pataki is going to give them four of the five things they hope to get. (May 15, 2002)

NY Court of Appeals says Mahoney trumps Pataki New York's capital punishment law, says Buffalo attorney Mark Mahoney, has the most radical reform ever attempted in that whole sorry field: provisions to make sure that those the State wants to kill have adequate legal representation. Governor George Pataki tried an end-run around the courts and legislature in an attempt to disable that reform. By a unanimous vote, the Court of Appeals said Pataki was out of bounds. (8 May 2002)

City's Hall's Tax-the-Arts-War Update. After all the public opposition to the city's decision to tax artistic events that community groups provide to the public free, the City of Buffalo decided to charge Shakespeare in Delaware Park a one-time-this-season tax of $500, rather than a tax for every performance. Good corporate citizen Univera Healthcare came to the rescue and paid the tax (and underwrote a few scholarships for SIDP's high school program as well). Hooray for them. But how sad for the rest of us to live in a city where the Mayor and Common Council look upon the arts as something to suck money out of rather than something worthy of support. This kind of mindless punitive taxation is eating the seed corn and is so misguided it defies understanding and transcends contempt. You might remember it the next time one of those politicians or political organizations comes sucking around for a campaign contribution—write a check, but send it to an arts organization instead.

Feeding the hungry arts There IS something you can do about Tony Masiello's starvation diet for the arts.... (8 May 2002)

Howard S. Becker: Jazz Places. Becker, the dean of American sociologists and an accomplished jazz piano player, gave a lecture and a concert in the Albright-Knox auditorium on March 23. Here's what he said in the talking part. (1 April 2002)

_{Emanuel Fried: Paranoid in Korea.
Buffalo's venerable labor activist and playwright reminisces about American
political weirdness in Korea 55 years ago, ponders American political foolishness
in Korea now, and reminds us that even paranoids have enemies. (7 June 2002)}

The terrorism report George and Condoleezza forgot to read. The Library of Congress prepared a report in 1999 listing the major terrorist agents and organizations, their probable targets in the U.S., and the technologies they were most likely to employ. For example, one sentence reads, "Suicide bomber(s) belonging to al-Qaida's Martyrdom Battalion could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives ((c-4 and semtex) into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) or the White House." Neither George Bush nor Condoleezza Rice looked at the report. Would last September have been any different if they had? Decide for yourself: click here for a further note and a link to the report itself. (18 May 2002)

Roxanne R. Amico: We are all Palestinians. What are those women in black doing at the corner of Elmwood and Bidwell every Saturday at noon? (3 April 2002)

Tsunami. A conversation with Buffalo chef Mike Andrzejewski about his terrific new restaurant on Kenmore Ave. (15 June 2002)

Bruce Jackson and Emile de Antonio: Harvey Matusow: Death of a Snitch : His lies helped keep Joe McCarthy in business. Some years ago radical filmmaker Emile de Antonio visited Buffalo and Matusow was one of the people he talked about. Adapted from the book on de Antonio's Buffalo visit to be published by UB's Center for Studies in American Culture. (3/15/02)

The real reason Joel Giambra said that dumb thing that got him into so much trouble last Saturday night. Giambra had a fine opportunity to show us his real character after last Saturday's gaffe. He did. That's the problem. (14 March 2003)