Former Angola resident Matthew Kreiger, 25, is in stable condition with a bullet lodged in his brain.

The Buffalo Board of Education today will consider whether the tenure of Superintendent James A. Williams ought to be cut short.

A group with an unusual business plan went to work last week, sprucing up dozens of homes from the West Side to Hamburg.

Senior transfer hopes to win quarterback spot

The very IDEA of an American remake of great British TV series "Prime Suspect" is going to be appalling to many.

Metaphor

The Clarence Town Board is wading in very perilous constitutional waters.

Town resident Dan Snyder has routinely sought and received town permission to set off a fireworks display at his home on July 4th. A similar request for 2012 was recently before the town board.  Mr. Snyder is a very strong supporter of the town’s local volunteer fire districts, and based on what he believes to be Town Councilman Joseph Weiss’ poor support of them, has mounted a very public and visible campaign against Mr. Weiss this election season.  Among other things, Mr. Snyder has paid for paid political flyers to appear in the Clarence Bee, and has erected several anti-Weiss signs throughout Clarence:

Weiss Must Go 1

Weiss Must Go 2

Weiss Signs

Here is the text of a press release that was sent on Snyder’s behalf on August 4th:

Two Clarence Town Board members don’t want Town resident and prominent businessman Daniel Snyder expressing his political views, especially in an election year in which one of them is trying to hold on to his council seat.

Last week the two councilmen, allies Peter DiCostanzo and Joseph Weiss, refused to grant Snyder’s entertainment company a permit to hold a patriotic Labor Day fireworks display on his own  property unless Snyder would agree to a political gag order.

The Town officials responsible for reviewing fireworks permit applications, Community Development Director James Callahan and Fire Chief Michael Rogowski both said Snyder met all the legal requirements for a permit.   And the Town Attorney, Steven Bengart, told the Board there was no legal reason to deny Snyder, who traditionally has held fireworks displays on other national holidays, including Independence Day.

Snyder has participated in this year’s political debate in Clarence by erecting signs on his properties and sponsoring newspaper ads critical of Weiss’ mean-spirited, intimidating style and his failure to support volunteer firemen, teachers and other public servants and residents.

When the Board considered Snyder’s long-pending permit request at its July 27 meeting,  DiCostanzo conditioned the permit on an agreement to ban all political signs.  When Snyder refused DiCostanzo and Weiss denied the permit–even though other council members cautioned that the illegal gag violates the U.S. Constitution.

But while the nay-saying Councilmen have silenced the fireworks for now, they may have ignited an explosive–and potentially expensive–constitutional crisis for the Town, and maybe for themselves personally.

Snyder has hired Buffalo First Amendment lawyer Joseph Finnerty to help resolve the situation.

“This is Clarence, New York, USA; not Communist China” said Snyder.  “Public officials can’t stifle political debate through threats, brow-beating and punishing tactics.  I’ve lived in Clarence a long time.  I support the community.  I just relocated my corporate headquarters here.  This just isn’t right.”

Finnerty said: “I’ve been defending the First Amendment as a lawyer for almost thirty years.  In all that time, I personally have not encountered locally such a blatant public attack on political speech as Board Members Weiss and DiCostanzo made last week.   Civil libertarians should be outraged.  The issue isn’t fireworks anymore (if it ever was); it’s freedom of speech.”

Finnerty and Snyder are right on this. The First Amendment is specifically designed to prevent the government from imposing prior restraint, chilling, or punishing political speech – which is accorded the most constitutional protection of any speech.  Yet here, DiCostanzo and Weiss have specifically refused to grant a lawfully sought permit because they are unhappy with Mr. Snyder’s opinion, and the way in which he voices it; they have unconstitutionally politicized a completely ministerial function of the town board.

The board minutes are attached below, and pages 168 – 170 memorialize the matter:

7.27.11 Minutes

Snyder is threatening a lawsuit, and followed up with this press release on Friday:

            The First Amendment lawyer representing Clarence resident Dan Snyder took another step late yesterday toward breaking the constitutional stalemate created by two Republican elected officials. Councilmen Peter DiCostanzo and Joseph Weiss refused to grant him a permit to hold a patriotic fireworks display unless he agreed to remove from his property election signs critical of Weiss’ performance in office.

Attorney Joseph Finnerty served Clarence Town Clerk Nancy C. Metzger with two Freedom of Information requests.  “We are using the principles of open government to expose just how utterly illegal their conduct has been,” said Finnerty.

Snyder has asked for records showing how the Town has treated other applicants for fireworks permits, as well as all documentation concerning how his own application was treated.  Town administrators charged with reviewing permit requests said Snyder’s should have been approved, and so did the Town’s Attorney.

“The public comments of Mr. DiCostanzo at last week’s board meeting are damning enough,” the attorney said.  “We believe the rest of the information we’ve requested will leave the perpetrators of this constitutional injustice exposed in the court of public opinion and without a place to hide in a court of law.”

DiCostanzo and Weiss told Snyder he could not entertain the Town with Labor Day fireworks until he stopped expressing his dissatisfaction with Weiss’ performance in office.

Weiss and DiCostanzo’s unconstitutional grandstanding may be related to the 2011 race for town supervisor. Incumbent Scott Bylewski, a lone Democrat in a Republican sea, is in an increasingly heated re-election campaign against a Republican opponent who is closely supported by Mssrs. Weiss and DiCostanzo, who voted against this fireworks request based on Mr. Snyder’s political speech. That’s bad government, and it’s dumb politics. But above that, Snyder’s team is right that this is a pretty blatant constitutional violation for petty political purposes. It reeks of political intimidation and violates the law, decency, and any notion of fair play.

What’s happening here is a concerted effort – Constitution be damned – by Weiss and DiCostanzo to paint Bylewski as somehow unethical. Bylewski’s opponent David Hartzell is already beating that drum with his own insert in the Clarence Bee.

A political ally of Bylewski’s filed a general objection to Republican supervisor candidate David Hartzell’s Conservative party petitions, and has submitted a bid to the town’s IDA to do some marketing work. Startlingly, sources tell me that Hartzell, as town IDA chairman Hartzell, said in an open meeting that the bidder could expect a “backlash” from the IDA; that the applicant would be rejected solely because he is a political supporter of Hartzell’s opponent.  (I have sent a FOIL to the town clerk to obtain a recording of that meeting’s proceedings.)

If true, there appears to be a growing pattern among town Republicans to threaten and exact retribution against political opponents, even if it violates the United States Constitution.

For their disregard for the Constitution, Weiss and DiCostanzo should be ashamed, and their re-election should be prevented.  To find out more, send your contact information to ClarenceBetterGov[at]Gmail.com.

’88 Toyota Supra, Grand Island, N.Y. The September issue of Hemmings Sports & Exotic Car has an article about “cheap” GT cars for at little as four grand. Among those in the up-to-ten-grand category is the 1986 1/2-1992 Toyota Supra. And darned if I don’t spot one a couple of days ago on Grand Island [...]

The Buffalo Bills have a trio of assistant coaches that are learning more about their profession at the highest level of the game. Jamaal Fobbs, Ernest Jones, and William Inge have been named the t...

Note: This was published last Friday, and I think you should read it. It doesn’t matter what you think of Michael Moore or unions or Ronald Reagan – you should read it anyway, because it sets forth an argument that the Reaganist Republican war on the poor and middle class has succeeded beyond anyone’s wildest imagination. Whether you call it trickle-down, voodoo, or Reaganomics, the obliteration of America’s middle class to further enrich and empower the wealthiest Americans, being embroiled in military action throughout the Middle East, and Supreme Court jurisprudence that has all but banned restrictions on money in politics, is doing tremendous – but not irreperable – harm to America. 

The middle class is under siege, and those who dare to defend it are labeled as fringe leftists. 

I don’t know what the answer is to this. I don’t know how you begin to undo 30 years of what has become almost an economic religion, based more on faith than empirical fact. But Obama apparently isn’t the guy to fix it – how can he? If he does anything to the left of Reagan, he is accused of Marxism. 

Meanwhile, Canada has genuine universal health care, minimal foreign entanglements, a functioning parliamentary democracy, a functioning and regulated banking industry, a middle class that has certain rights and guarantees of benefits, family time, and vacation, and 7.6% unemployment. 

August 5th, 2011 3:00 PM

30 Years Ago Today: The Day the Middle Class Died

By Michael Moore

From time to time, someone under 30 will ask me, “When did this all begin, America’s downward slide?” They say they’ve heard of a time when working people could raise a family and send the kids to college on just one parent’s income (and that college in states like California and New York was almost free). That anyone who wanted a decent paying job could get one. That people only worked five days a week, eight hours a day, got the whole weekend off and had a paid vacation every summer. That many jobs were union jobs, from baggers at the grocery store to the guy painting your house, and this meant that no matter how “lowly” your job was you had guarantees of a pension, occasional raises, health insurance and someone to stick up for you if you were unfairly treated.

Young people have heard of this mythical time — but it was no myth, it was real. And when they ask, “When did this all end?”, I say, “It ended on this day: August 5th, 1981.”

Beginning on this date, 30 years ago, Big Business and the Right Wing decided to “go for it” — to see if they could actually destroy the middle class so that they could become richer themselves.

And they’ve succeeded.

On August 5, 1981, President Ronald Reagan fired every member of the air traffic controllers union (PATCO) who’d defied his order to return to work and declared their union illegal. They had been on strike for just two days.

It was a bold and brash move. No one had ever tried it. What made it even bolder was that PATCO was one of only three unions that had endorsed Reagan for president! It sent a shock wave through workers across the country. If he would do this to the people who were with him, what would he do to us?

Reagan had been backed by Wall Street in his run for the White House and they, along with right-wing Christians, wanted to restructure America and turn back the tide that President Franklin D. Roosevelt started — a tide that was intended to make life better for the average working person. The rich hated paying better wages and providing benefits. They hated paying taxes even more. And they despised unions. The right-wing Christians hated anything that sounded like socialism or holding out a helping hand to minorities or women.

Reagan promised to end all that. So when the air traffic controllers went on strike, he seized the moment. In getting rid of every single last one of them and outlawing their union, he sent a clear and strong message: The days of everyone having a comfortable middle class life were over. America, from now on, would be run this way:

* The super-rich will make more, much much more, and the rest of you will scramble for the crumbs that are left.

* Everyone must work! Mom, Dad, the teenagers in the house! Dad, you work a second job! Kids, here’s your latch-key! Your parents might be home in time to put you to bed.

* 50 million of you must go without health insurance! And health insurance companies: you go ahead and decide who you want to help — or not.

* Unions are evil! You will not belong to a union! You do not need an advocate! Shut up and get back to work! No, you can’t leave now, we’re not done. Your kids can make their own dinner.

* You want to go to college? No problem — just sign here and be in hock to a bank for the next 20 years!

* What’s “a raise”? Get back to work and shut up!

And so it went. But Reagan could not have pulled this off by himself in 1981. He had some big help:

The AFL-CIO.

The biggest organization of unions in America told its members to cross the picket lines of the air traffic controllers and go to work. And that’s just what these union members did. Union pilots, flight attendants, delivery truck drivers, baggage handlers — they all crossed the line and helped to break the strike. And union members of all stripes crossed the picket lines and continued to fly.

Reagan and Wall Street could not believe their eyes! Hundreds of thousands of working people and union members endorsing the firing of fellow union members. It was Christmas in August for Corporate America.

And that was the beginning of the end. Reagan and the Republicans knew they could get away with anything — and they did. They slashed taxes on the rich. They made it harder for you to start a union at your workplace. They eliminated safety regulations on the job. They ignored the monopoly laws and allowed thousands of companies to merge or be bought out and closed down. Corporations froze wages and threatened to move overseas if the workers didn’t accept lower pay and less benefits. And when the workers agreed to work for less, they moved the jobs overseas anyway.

And at every step along the way, the majority of Americans went along with this. There was little opposition or fight-back. The “masses” did not rise up and protect their jobs, their homes, their schools (which used to be the best in the world). They just accepted their fate and took the beating.

I have often wondered what would have happened had we all just stopped flying, period, back in 1981. What if all the unions had said to Reagan, “Give those controllers their jobs back or we’re shutting the country down!”? You know what would have happened. The corporate elite and their boy Reagan would have buckled.

But we didn’t do it. And so, bit by bit, piece by piece, in the ensuing 30 years, those in power have destroyed the middle class of our country and, in turn, have wrecked the future for our young people. Wages have remained stagnant for 30 years. Take a look at the statistics and you can see that every decline we’re now suffering with had its beginning in 1981 (here’s a little scene to illustrate that from my last movie).

It all began on this day, 30 years ago. One of the darkest days in American history. And we let it happen to us. Yes, they had the money, and the media and the cops. But we had 200 million of us. Ever wonder what it would look like if 200 million got truly upset and wanted their country, their life, their job, their weekend, their time with their kids back?

Have we all just given up? What are we waiting for? Forget about the 20% who support the Tea Party — we are the other 80%! This decline will only end when we demand it. And not through an online petition or a tweet. We are going to have to turn the TV and the computer and the video games off and get out in the streets (like they’ve done in Wisconsin). Some of you need to run for local office next year. We need to demand that the Democrats either get a spine and stop taking corporate money — or step aside.

When is enough, enough? The middle class dream will not just magically reappear. Wall Street’s plan is clear: America is to be a nation of Haves and Have Nothings. Is that OK for you?

Why not use today to pause and think about the little steps you can take to turn this around in your neighborhood, at your workplace, in your school? Is there any better day to start than today?

P.S. Here are a few places you can connect with to get the ball rolling:

Main Street Contract for America
Showdown in America
Democracy Convention
Occupy Wall Street
October 2011
How to Join a Union by the AFL-CIO (they’ve learned their lesson and have a good president now) or UE
Change to Win
MoveOn
High School Newspaper (Just because you’re under 18 doesn’t mean you can’t do anything!)

London is on fire, the Asian markets are in the shitter, the US market is in a near panic, 30 American soldiers just died in a horrible helicopter crash in Afghanistan, famine grows in Somalia, 45,000 Verizon employees are on strike, and Bank of America teeters on the edge of extinction…welcome to Tuesday! Let’s get to the morning grumpy!

1. Last month, Tim Graham resigned his position with ESPN.com and returned home to write for The Buffalo News. His return to a print outlet from a booming web outlet was a rare story of reverse migration in the journalism industry. Many consider Tim to be one of the best sports journalists in the business, but he came home to broaden his horizons and sink his teeth into feature reporting. This past weekend, his tragic story about the life and death of a bizarre family in Niagara County was absolutely captivating.

Howard Baney was surprised to find a reporter at the side door of the house he’d been working on. Baney heard a knock and yelled for him to enter, thinking the visitor was someone else.

Four months earlier, Baney had discovered his elderly cousin’s mummified remains in the basement. Teddy Wroblewski had been missing for two years, lost in his own home.

Really great work, we’re lucky to have Tim back in town.

2. Chart of The Day:

Since August 2008, state and local governments have cut some 611,000 employees, according to estimates by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

In case you didn’t notice, this economy is one shaped by the Republican agenda.

The underlying Republican pitch in response to economic anxiety and recession fears is, “See? It’s time to try things our way.”

What goes largely overlooked is the fact that we already are trying things their way. Whether Republicans want to admit it or not, the economy is advancing exactly as they want it to. The private sector is being left to its own devices; the public sector is shedding jobs and scrapping investments; and the only permitted topic of conversation is about debt reduction.

3. Song for Tuesday, Part 1: “Barely Legal (The Strokes Cover)” by Real Estate

4. A report by Dave Weigel from Right Wing Cloud Cuckoo Land.’

When Michele Bachmann arrived, she devoted half of her opening statement to the (S&P) downgrade. The message: She could have stopped it.

“For the last two weeks, I led the fight against raising the debt limit,” Bachmann said. Increasing the limit “pushed the rating agency over the edge.” It was a “$2.4 trillion blank check that caused the downgrade.”

Make no mistake: The downgrade was Barack Obama’s fault. “We were somehow able to get through the Great Depression without a credit downgrade,” she said.

Wow, it must be nice living in fantasy land, deprived of facts. It is breathtaking that a candidate for President of the United States could be this incredibly foolish. Seriously, it was the raising of the debt ceiling itself that caused the S&P downgrade?!? In fact, it was the approach her Tea Party caucus took that caused the downgrade. Don’t believe me? Read the report. If you do, it’ll put you one step ahead of Ol’ Crazy Eyes.

The political brinksmanship of recent months highlights what we see as America’s governance and policymaking becoming less stable, less effective, and less predictable than what we previously believed. The statutory debt ceiling and the threat of default have become political bargaining chips in the debate over fiscal policy.

Compared with previous projections, our revised base case scenario now assumes that the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, due to expire by the end of 2012, remain in place. We have changed our assumption on this because the majority of Republicans in Congress continue to resist any measure that would raise revenues, a position we believe Congress reinforced by passing the act.

5. Yet another chapter in the “Rich Get Richer and The Workers Get Bupkus” saga of America since 1980.

These are the worst of times for workers, and the best of times for companies.

New figures from the Commerce Department indicate that corporate profits accounted for 14 percent of the total national income in 2010, the highest proportion ever recorded.

Employees have always received more than half the total national income, until now. In 2010, the percentage of national income devoted to wages and salaries fell to 49.9 percent, and it slipped a little more to 49.6 percent in the first quarter of this year. That continued decline may help explain the economic worries of many Americans who have jobs but still fear they are falling behind.

6. Song for Tuesday, Part 2, “Winter Beats” by I Break Horses

Have a day!

$53 million project approved by board of directors and Seneca council.

Barely one-quarter of students in grades 3 to 8 scored at or above grade level in English last May, according to the state Education Department.

Stocks plunged today as anxiety overtook investors on the first trading day since Standard & Poor's downgraded American debt.

Nick Barnett and the Bills defense had a good night Monday.

According to reports from Buffalo’s practice Monday afternoon, the Buffalo pass rush was very effective in creating problems for Ryan Fitzpatrick and the Bills’ offense. Shawne Merriman, Alex Carrington, Danny Batten, Spencer Johnson, and undrafted rookie Robert Eddins all recorded “sacks” (you don’t actually hit the QB in camp) Monday.

Of course, Buffalo’s traditionally awful pass rush having so much success begs the question: are the Bills actually developing pass rushers or does the offensive line just suck? Well, that’s what Chan Gailey is wondering as well:

“I’ll have to go watch the film to get the real story, but obviously our pass protection we just collapsed a few times and you can’t have that,” he said. “We’ve got to let our quarterback stand back there and throw the football.”

Translation: “Our offensive line blows.”

… [visit site to read more]

Pass pressure was the headline of the day at Bills practice Monday. Buffalo’s defensive pressure off the edge was noticeable throughout the team periods of practice as they unofficially logged five...