Isn’t it a completely different issue with the Grand Island toll bridge because the State is able to get federal funding for the 190 tolls? Have you researched this issue thoroughly?

I just did a seach on the NYS Legislature website. It seems that both Assemblyman Hoyt and Senator Copolla have introduced legislation to remove the Grand Island Thruway tolls.

http://assembly.state.ny.us/leg/?bn=A02556
http://assembly.state.ny.us/leg/?bn=S06965

I’m sure we’d have an easy time removing the tolls if the Thruway Authority wasn’t filled with George Pataki’s do-nothing patronage hacks.

The Dems might have patronage hacks, but it is quite evident that it is FACT that those on the Thruway Authority are in fact Republican patronage hacks.
I would also disagree with you that there are more Democratic patronage hacks. Being in charge of the State Executive branch has afforded them more opprotunity to have patronage hacks. This is not to say that the Democats are any more or less honest, they just haven’t had a chance.

Back to the Thruway Point. This is what you said:
So what’s the story with the Grand Island Bridges??
Where is the representation for the 144th assembly dictrict or the 60th senate district? The silence is deafening, it really is. What is Hoyt and Coppola tongue tied or are they just so wrapped up with the thruway authority they are afraid to come out publically to remove the tolls on the bridges.

Well, deductive logic would say, just by reading your little blog, that Copolla and Hoy have done nothing….that they are in fact scared to come out publically against removing the tolls. Well, they have introduced legislation saying that exact same thing. Maybe you could argue they haven’t pressed the issue enough, that they are working hard enough to round up the votes to pass the legislation. But, instead, you said they have done nothing. That makes you a liar. If I were either of them, I would demand a public apology for misrepresenting the facts.

It is clear by reading your blog, you care more about partison bickering than about fixing this region…and that type of leadership will not lead this area to prosoperity.

You are right…nothing gets done in this State due largely to the political bickering.
Reading your blog, I don’t see how you would be an agent of change in this area. Your website is nothing more than an attack on Democrats. Thats fine if thats your thing…go right ahead. But do it honestly. Have some dignity.
If you think your ideas are better, you wouldn’t have to misrepresent the facts.
I agree with a lot of what you write on your blog, but I take it all with such a grain of salt because it seems to only be against Democrats and it seems to be 90% attack with no constructive arguments.
You don’t seem to have any ideas other than Democrats are bad, Municipal Unions are bad, Republicans are good. I’d bet you couldn’t name three Democrats you like because you are so partison.
Why don’t you tell us, if elected State Assemblyman, what would you do differently than what Sam Hoyt has done on this issue to remove the Grand Island Tolls.

I’m not a lawyer, but my guess would be that the State Assembly person joining the lawsuit would not effect the outcome. The only reason why someone in that position would have done so is to score cheap points for re-election. Isn’t it a better strategy to have some people going outside the established system and some people working it from the inside?
The reason that a Republican has no chance, btw, in a gerrymandered Democrat State Senate District is because it is the only way the GOP can keep in control of the Senate is because they squeeze every Democrat in a District they can. The State Assembly, by comparison, has a ratio very close to the ration of Dem and GOP members within the State.
What do you mean Joe Bruno is no Republican. Isn’t he registered a Republican, the Majority Leader of the Republican State Senate no less? I usually define being a Republican as someone who is a registered member of the Republican party. Is there some ultra-special test that I don’t know about?
Republicans hold the Presidency, the Governor and the County Executive’s seat. They hold both the US House of Reps, the US Senate, and the NYS Senate. They were the majority in the County Legislature for 2 of the past 5 years. It seems to me that Republicans are to blame for the majority of NYS’s and WNY’s woes.
When you complain that the Democratic officials don’t represent the values of the majority of the people, which values do you speak of? Union-bashing? Gay-bashing? Fighting a woman’s right to choose what to do to her own body? Or maybe it is crazy anti-business initiatives like paying minimum wage workers enough so they can get out of poverty? Are these some of the values Democratic officials have that you assert the majority of people don’t have???

Lucky for you I live in Crystal Peoples district then.

Which union abuses exactly? Health and safety requirements?

What unhealthy gay agenda? Marriage? or does guy on guy butt-sex offend you?

I won’t either respond to women killing her own child…

What is wrong with raising the minimum wage? Particularly in the retail industry - do you think Walmart, Target, K-Mart, etc. will leave the area if they are forced to pay $9.00 an hour…or do you think they will just raise their prices a few dollars? That way, maybe our taxes will go down because their workers will not be on public assistance - and lets face it, we all can afford to pay a $50 for a DVD player so their employees can feed their families!!!

Jack, if it wasn’t for demagoguery as your source of knowledge, what would you do?
You’re whole argument for the minimum wage is so easy to destroy.

You first assume that Wal-Mart, Target, K-Mart all will all be affected by the minimum wage.
Last year . Lee Scott, Jr., the CEO of Wal-Mart publicly called for an increase in the minimum wage. Now how can that be? An evil exploiter of workers turned into a selfless champion of the proletariat? Hardly.
Wal-Mart pays its employees wages almost 50% higher than the federal minimum wage.
Increasing the mandatory federal minimum wage wouldn’t even affect them.
But it would affect their small, weaker competitors; you know the small mom and pop operations, the grocery stores, even Target and K-Mart. They all start employees at minimum wage or higher, but less than Wal-Mart pays.
It’s the oldest trick in the book, using government regulations to harm your competitors.
The result of arbitrary minimum wages set by your pure of heart government demagogues actually results in less competition and less jobs for those people you think you are helping, namely teenagers and the poor, especially minorities.

Furthermore, let me quote myself, something I wrote on another blog:

Aside from the economic fact that an arbitrarily set minimum price on labor hurts those people who it professes to help by pricing a small minority of people out of the market for entry level jobs or making those jobs disappear completely, the minimum wage is a political red herring. it is a sort of largess that politicians can hand out and coerce certain employers to pay for, making them appear noble and caring to their constituents.
There’s nothing more politically useful than tugging at the heartstrings of the inattentive voter, to divert the eye from the real problems that the politician would rather not face head on.

Jack, it’s immoral for a 16 or 17 year old to work? What gives you the moral prerogative to decide for other people whether they have the right to work or not or too decide what’s right for society? When I was 16, I worked part time to pay for my car and buy stuff. That’s what being a teenager should be about, learning how to handle responsibility and learning working skills.
You’d have every kid hanging around on street corners or finding some less than honest method of making a buck because some prohibitionist decided that it’s immoral for them to work.

So, you know that capitalism is based on competition and innovation. GOOD.
But then again you are more than happy to use government to make it harder for competition and innovation. BAD!
Of course you don’t care what happens to a family business, what is it to you? It isn’t your sweat and blood that built it, or you that watched some government do-gooders tax and regulate you out into the poor house. The politically connected businessmen love the likes of you, you’re willing to help them destroy their competition and make themselves richer.

I’m not advocating shifting the cost to the government for anything. Government doesn’t belong in the charity business, or any business for that matter. Everything they touch becomes a wreck, be it healthcare, energy, education or the poverty business.
You can always tell when the government has its paws in something, prices always skyrocket, service is pathetic, product is in short supply, and the taxpayers and the customers are poorer. The only people that truly benefit are the bureaucrats and the cartels they create.

Statistics! Show me the statistics. Most economists agree that the minimum wage causes more unemployment, but statistics can not alone prove it one way or another. It depends on what kind of data you use, or whether the data is even valid. Can statistics show you the un-seen?
Statistic can’t show you the jobs that no longer exist because of the minimum wage or the jobs that would exist if it wasn’t a crime for 2 people to enter into a purely voluntary contract at a negotiated price.

I changed the subject??? What thread are you reading, look at the names.

Where has Hoyt been all these years???? 14 years in the assembly and now and only now does he come out against the tolls. A minor blip in the screen, this is only because the people are now starting to be heard. It’s only taken forever and a day.