$150 bucks for not cutting your grass, fines up to $1500 bucks? Ya know I thought the parking ticket blitz a couple years ago was bad but this is down right insane. Couple years ago the Cops were complaining that they needed a raise and their contract was already approved yet no being honored. They ticket cars as fast as the parking meter expired.. There was such an out cry from citizens and visitors the protest stopped. This year as you will see is completely hypocritical from the city of Buffalo’s point of view…

Read these quotes from my good friend Joe Golombek…

Not all Council members agree that the city should go easier on violators.

“I don’t want there to be warnings. I want more people to get tickets,” said Legislation Committee Chairman Joseph Golombek Jr. of the North District.

For every property owner who grumbles about a $150 ticket for high grass, there are other neighbors who are grateful for such crackdowns, Golombek said.

I like you Joe but Man, you are way out of line on this one.
Why do I say this is so hypocritical? Look at this picture.

That is a picture of a friend of mines band. Yup, they promoting a concert from the Jungles of Colombia… Thing is, this picture was taken right here in Buffalo along side a vacant city of Buffalo lot. This is the former site of a bakery that was along a R/R track. The picture is pretty convincing isn’t it… So who is in violation here? Who is the district councilman? The same councilman that says he doesn’t want any warnings, just issue the fines. I say we hand Council member Joe Joe Golombek a big fine for allowing this jungle to grow out of control. Joe should re think his position.

Don’t Cops have better things to do with their time? We have meter maids that can do this or are they too busy chasing down expired meters and illegally parked cars. This City is still in the fifties in so many ways.

Quality-of-life ticketing debated : Buffalo/Erie County

The old saying warns: “Be careful what you ask for.” For years, Common Council members grumbled that the city was too lax in cracking down on quality-of-life problems, including high grass and loud noise.

In recent months, the Police Department has dramatically beefed up enforcement of such offenses, writing thousands of tickets for everything from unsightly weeds to keeping upholstered furniture outside. The head of the office that processes the violations estimated Tuesday that her case-load has ballooned at least 150 percent in the past year. Now, some lawmakers are getting angry calls from property owners who claim police are too eager to write tickets for conditions that the city has quietly tolerated for decades.

During a lengthy debate Tuesday, at least three Council members said they want to see more warning notices given before people are slapped with initial fines that range from $52.50 to $1,500. Read the rest—>

What about this year Governor? Have you come to an agreement with the leadership this year that we don’t know about yet? You, Governor Paterson are calling for a 2 billion dollar cut in this years budget due to excessive spending and the Wall Street collapse. How are you going to do that before the end of the year? The legislators are scared to death to go to Albany and address this problem before election day so each and every day that YOU wait, costs us millions upon millions…

We already know that you are stealing the surpluses from the “Authorities” once again, a clear violation of the Law and the Constitution, but that has never stopped any governor or slowed down the abuse.

Paterson Says No Tax Increase Next Year

“Governor, will you rule out raising taxes — either business or personal income taxes — next year?”

Governor Paterson: “We have ruled that out, myself and all of the leaders of the legislature, for the period this year and the budget process next year. What we want to do is cut our out of control spending.”

The Best Video Ever - Wall Street - How The Market Really Works

News is just out that the US Congress has approved the US $700m Wall Street Bail out.

This article is good and I would hope all of our representatives in Albany get a copy of it. I posted the highlights for more details read the whole thing. The author is spot on with many of the issues but he forgot a few of them so I will add my two cents.

Can you imagine if we just did all this we would be bailed out in no time, money would be available to spend and invest.. Wow, what a concept. Albany!!! Are you listening?

A simple guide to cutting the New York budget

The bad news: The Wall Street meltdown has opened a gaping hole in the state budget.

The good news: Gov. Paterson and the Legislature can easily find billions in savings without harming basic services.

Albany lawmakers have been spending like drunken hedge-fund managers for so long, there’s no shortage of obvious ways to economize. Closing a $1.2 billion deficit this year - and $6.4 billion next year - may be politically tricky, but it’s not brain surgery.

Herewith, a guide to Budget-Cutting for Dummies:

First, do no harm. Forget about launching big, expensive new programs.

Tame the Medicaid beast. Albany has allowed this health insurance program to grow so bloated that New York spends as much on Medicaid as California and Florida combined.

Cash in the law-and-order dividend. Close and consolidate prisons that have emptied out thanks to plunging crime rates.

Get real on education spending. Cancel the scheduled $2 billion increase in school aid, an idealistic goal the state can no longer afford. Just holding education funding at its current level - which happens to be the most generous in the nation - would reduce the deficit by a third.

Go cold turkey on pork. Eliminate the pork-barrel slush funds that individual lawmakers dole out to community groups in their districts.

Drive a harder bargain with labor. Paterson should give the public employee unions a choice: Agree to trim excessively generous health and retirement benefits or face the prospect of layoffs

End corporate welfare as we know it. Throwing money at profit-making businesses is the wrong way to create jobs and simply can’t be justified when you’re pinching pennies on education and health care. To improve the economy, make smart investments in infrastructure instead.

Well apparently the people in the district don’t support or think Mesi has a chance of winning. If they did he would be pulling in more. What does bother me is the donations from New York City… Our biggest problem IS NY City influence and now we see it in the Mesi campaign? Independent my a$$…

Everyone should be worried when down state politicians and interests want to buy off any legislator and especially a candidate. Too much of this goes on with our current crop of legislators, get them when their new and they own them for their whole career. Mesi will loose.

Mesi’s political donations come mainly from outside his district

ALBANY — If all politics is local, Democrat Joe Mesi had some problems during the most recent fundraising period for his State Senate campaign.

Only $350 out of $140,000 he raised during a recent 14-day stretch came from voters or business interests from within the 61st Senate District — a showing his opponent, Republican Michael Ranzenhofer, immediately seized upon Monday.

“It’s kind of astonishing to see such a huge amount of money coming from outside the area,” said Ranzenhofer, an Erie County legislator who is locked in a battle with Mesi, a former boxer, for the seat being vacated by retiring State Sen. Mary Lou Rath, a Williamsville Republican. more–>

OK lets get this out in the open.. There are two reasons why this is happening the way it is. Number one the Grand Island Bridge tolls, my pet peeve. The re-decking of the South Bridge is long over due as is the structural work that needs to be done that won’t get done this time around. But, as long as they borrow the money to do this work the longer the tolls will remain on the bridges. They never should have stayed this long but they are here because of the cash cow the tolls are to Albany. Their excuse now will be they have to repay the bond to do this work…

Sign the petition against the tolls at NoGItolls.com

Thruway Delays For Major WNY Projects

Citing soaring costs for construction materials, the New York State Thruway has decided to trim its capital construction project list that includes two major anticipated projects for Western New York.

They say the allocated $2.1 Billion dollars simply will not stretch far enough and some projects had to be put off beyond 2011.

The $77 million dollar relocation of the Williamsville toll barrier is now on the back burner.

Advocates like State Assemblyman Jim Hayes say it is crucial to reduce congestion and pollution problems in the village and he feels the Authority does not understand the importance. He also does not buy the claim that costs have gone up too high to afford it. “I don’t buy that arguement because motorists have been paying higher tolls. We’ve been told time and time again that money is available at the federal level, other levels of government. The state could appropriate money to be of assistance.”

2 On Your Side asked Thruway Executive Director Michael Fleischer about the point that the toll increase approved earlier this year was supposed to go towards improvements.

His reply: “Yes..and the rationale for the toll increase… without that toll increase, we would have virtually no capital program, we would not be in a position to be able to preserve public safety, we would not be in a position to invest in the highway, we would not be in a position to fix the Grand Island bridges.” That is a reference to a recently approved $48.2 million project for maintenance of the bridges.

The Thruway Authority is also postponing the planned widening of the Thruway from West Seneca to Lackawanna. That would have carried a $78 million price tag.

Fleischer says overall there will still be $250 million in Thruway work in the region through 2011 including the bridges and other repaving and rehab work. And he says they can still conduct environmental studies while the Williamsville toll project is on hold. Fleischer says if costs would come down, then some projects could be pushed up.

He thinks? After getting thrown into the govs office and now seeing that after all these years of voting for this, for that, against this and that, the gov started seeing the light and he started going after the waste, pork, excessive spending. We all thought he was actually going to be a non partisan Governor and do the right thing. Well it appears he has a change of mind. The only allies he has had have been the Republicans in the senate, they have been the ONLY ones, so now he is going to turn his back on the ones that have helped him put together legislation to get the economy turned? The Republicans in the Senate supported HIS Property tax cap legislation and passed it. It was the Democrats in the Assembly that voted against it led by Sheldon Silver.

Remember we are almost 10 BILLION in the hole right now and we are looking at 25 Billion next year. Who is going to get that under control? At least what we have now is betyter than the out come that will further destroy the economy of New York. Think before you vote .

Look, I’m a Democrat. I’m supporting the Democrats. I think they would be responsible in the majority. I want you to help them

Paterson Moves to Help Democrats in State Senate

ALBANY — While playing down his role in this year’s election in public, Gov. David A. Paterson has been quietly leading an effort to raise more than $2 million to help fellow Democrats win control of the State Senate, according to people familiar with his plans.

Mr. Paterson’s aggressive efforts to help Senate Democrats signals an abandonment of the political truce he reached last spring with Joseph L. Bruno, then the Senate majority leader. Since the legislative session ended in June, Mr. Paterson has repeatedly said publicly that he would play only a limited role in the Senate campaign, in part because he would need to work with Republicans to tackle the state’s dire fiscal situation.

But with the Republicans holding a one-seat majority going into an extremely close election, and with a tough year of budget-cutting ahead, Mr. Paterson has decided that his interests would best be served by having Democrats in control of the Senate, according to some of the governor’s associates.

That would give Democrats control of all levels of power in Albany.

In recent weeks, Mr. Paterson has called dozens of major political donors, including some of his own top contributors and members of New York’s Congressional delegation, asking them to give money to the Democratic Senate campaign. He also plans to expand his schedule of endorsements and campaign events with Democratic candidates, according to people familiar with the plan. more–>

Lead poisoning, this subject has bothered me for years and the over blowin hype that comes from the scare tactics against property owners. As a contractor I have had to deal with lead paint removal in apartments and never did understand the thinking that a baby or a child can be poisoned by the paint. Have you ever seen a baby or child chewing on a door frame, a windowsill or base board? I never have and I have 6 children, but I did the work that was required from the various building departments.

Get rid of these files. Historical documents, please.

Save these county records

Slow emergence of health effects makes long-term preservation necessary

Erie County Executive Chris Collins was elected on a promise to bring the highest standards of customer service to county government. But he may sometimes have to be reminded of who his customers are.

Those customers include families whose children may suffer from lead poisoning — poisoning caused by lead paint, poisoning for which landlords can and should face lawsuits and, sometimes, pay damages.

Unfortunately, the plan by Collins’ chief attorney to destroy county inspection records that would be crucial to such lawsuits smacks harshly of bureaucratic self-interest.

By seeking to destroy inspection records that are more than seven years old, County Attorney Cheryl A. Green is putting the interests of sick children who need help behind those of government bureaucrats who don’t want to bother with finding space for more boxes of paper.

Surely, she’s not out to make it harder for such suits to be filed, in the process protecting landlords who may well owe a penalty for their lack of standards.

Because it takes years for the effects of lead poisoning — hyperactivity, aggression, learning disabilities — to manifest themselves, such documentation needs to be maintained much longer than the state minimum of seven years.

Not only are the documents Green seeks to destroy of material importance to people with serious lawsuits, they may also be a way for the county itself to make back some of the money it has spent on Medicaid bills for those very children. Just one law firm that pursues such cases has already paid the county $400,000 from such suits.

Green’s argument that if she preserved those records she would be forced to preserve many others just doesn’t wash. Certainly, Collins’ beloved Six Sigma quality control program would have such decisions made on the merits, not habit.

The County Legislature’s recent action declaring the records “historic documents” may be a bit of a reach. But it serves the purpose, and Collins should go along.

This is such a great point the my friend Jeff makes. Sarah is still firing up the base and others yet we never hear it reported. Jeff has a bunch of pictures as proof.

SARAH PALIN DRAWING HUGE CROWDS

Despite what the MSM and pollsters are indicating, conservatives across the width and breadth of this nation have reason to hope.

That hope is in one Sarah Palin and the tremendous impact she is having amongst every-day Americans of almost all stripes outside of the unabashed liberal elite.

Many of the people Sarah is appealing to will only be registered in one poll, the one in November.

Eagles up!

Here we are again, well not yet, we have to wait until after the election. Tell me, what is more important, the diving economy or the re-election? Just curious. Once again our representatives fail to do their job this time it’s two fold. They are putting off this economic crisis for political expedience at the same time state spending just continues on because they refuse to address it because they are worried about getting re-elected and don’t want to make the unions angry.

So let’s look at a brief over view. We were 6.4 billion in the hole, our legislators cut 400 million… OK now we are only at 6 billion. This crisis is projected to cost us another 3.5 billion and Paterson wants them to cut another 2 billion? If he succeeds, which is highly unlikely we will be at 7.5 billion… Wow, great job Albany. I fully expect them to fall far short of the 2 billion so either way we look at it we are screwed. And this still doesn’t even address the 25 billion we are looking at over the next 2 years. Most of this started before the Wall Street crisis…

Paterson Seeks $2 Billion in Budget Cuts

Gov. David A. Paterson said on Friday that he would seek $2 billion in new cuts to the state’s current budget and challenged lawmakers to abandon Albany’s spending habits amid a deepening financial crisis.

In a meeting with legislative leaders that was at times remarkably testy for what are often scripted affairs, the governor said he would call the Legislature back to Albany — but not until after the election — to reopen the state budget. The governor and lawmakers agreed during a session in August to cut $427 million from this year’s budget, but recent turmoil on Wall Street has opened an additional $1.2 billion hole, and the numbers are expected to worsen.

While Mr. Paterson and legislative leaders have warned that the Wall Street crisis would have a magnified impact on New York, the extent of the damage is only beginning to emerge.

Preliminary tax receipts released this week by the state comptroller’s office showed that revenue in September from sales, business and other taxes declined by about 7 percent, or $154 million, compared with September 2007. more–>