The Buffalo Record

All the news and views fit to consume during your morning grumpy.

Sad juggler gives up his dream

1.  A new CNN poll released yesterday gives an outstanding view not only of how the Presidential race shapes up, but also lays bare how each party is perceived by Americans. So far, it seems the effort by national republicans and Fox News to lay the blame of high gas prices at the feet of the President hasn’t really worked. His approval ratings remain steady. President Obama beats Mitt Romney 54% to 43% among registered voters, and 56% to 40% among all adults. That’s the headline you’ll hear, but the really interesting information is buried in the details.

The data show the Republican Party is very quickly becoming the party of christian white males, to the exclusion of everyone else. President Obama’s approval rating, while at 51% among the total population, is  78% among non-whites, and only 40% among white voters.

The Democratic Party, enjoys a 48-35 favorability advantage over the GOP, has a 67-22 advantage among non-whites. Whites are evenly split on party approval.

As mentioned before, Obama beats Romney by a 54-43 margin among the total population, but he wins by a huge 61-point margin among racial minorities.

Now you know why the republicans have stepped up their state-by-state efforts for more stringent voter identification laws. As the number of minorities eligible to vote increases, the larger the margin becomes that republicans need to overcome to win a national election. Long term population and education trends forecast a desperate future for the Republican Party, which is fast becoming a regional and religious political movement with little appeal to minorities or women.

Other interesting data points in the poll:

• Women approve of Obama by a 54-45 margin
• Only 34% of women have a favorable view of the Republican Party
• 56% of Americans haven’t forgotten that it was the republicans and President Bush who were primarily responsible for creating our current economic mess

So, unless America soon becomes whiter and more masculine, the republicans are in a lot of trouble.

2. Another piece of excellent national coverage for Wegmans, the corporate treasure of Western New York. Wegmans, the Anti-Walmart.

The dirty little secret? Staying private and avoiding pressure from institutional shareholders to maximize profits.

Executives say the company is also able to invest in its employees and focus on steady, strategic growth because it is not publicly traded. They said cutting jobs or shipping them overseas was, in part, the product of having to relentlessly please the stock market.

A true success story.

3. Remember during the healthcare fight, when right wing pundits scolded democrats for being unwilling or unable to read the legislation they were voting on? Conservative members of the Supreme Court, you know, the people tasked with interpreting the law, don’t feel the need to read it.

Justice Antonin Scalia seemed surprised that someone would have expected the justices to read the text of the health care reform law before the hearings:

JUSTICE SCALIA: Mr. Kneedler, what happened to the Eighth Amendment? You really want us to go through these 2,700 pages? (Laughter.) And do you really expect the Court to do that? Or do you expect us to — to give this function to our law clerks? Is this not totally unrealistic? That we are going to go through this enormous bill item by item and decide each one?

I wonder if this will become a Fox News talking point and internet meme as it did when Congress was tasked with reading it. Fair and balanced!

4. Buffalo and the larger Cash Mob movement that was born here were again featured in a national media outlet. This time, it was on NPR’s Morning Edition.

“The best way to let something grow is to not worry about it,” he says. “Let people take ownership of it and do it the way that works for them. And as long as you stay true to the original concept, I think you’re always going to be successful.”

Over 80 cities, 35 states, 7 countries. After our last cash mob at Ulrich’s, we’ve now spent $15,000 at 8 businesses in Buffalo.

5. What would you do with $1,450,000,000,000? Well, the U.S. government plans to spend that much on the F-35 strike fighter.

The total cost to develop, buy and operate the Lockheed Martin Corp F-35 Joint Strike Fighter will be $1.45 trillion over the next 50-plus years. The Pentagon still plans to buy 2,443 of the new radar-evading, supersonic warplanes, plus 14 development aircraft, in the coming decades.

The new baseline forecasts the average cost of the F-35 fighter, including research and development (R&D) and inflation, at $135 million per plane, plus an additional $26 million for the F135 engine built by Pratt & Whitney, a unit of United Technologies Corp.

Wow. Funny, I heard that President Obama was gutting our military capability and destroying America. Huh. Truth of the matter is, the military-industrial complex is bankrupting our country.

Fact Of The Day: In 1830, the average American was guzzling the equivalent of 1.7 bottles of hard liquor per week — three times the amount consumed today.

Quote Of The Day:  “You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture – Just get people to stop reading them.” – Ray Bradbury

Video Of The Day (Movie Monologues Week): Al Pacino overdoing it (as usual), but a great monologue from “Any Given Sunday”.

Cartoon Of The Day (Bugs Bunny Week): Rabbit Hood

Song Of The Day: “Sail” – AWOLNATION

Follow me on Twitter: @ChrisSmithAV

Email me links, tips, story ideas: chris@artvoice.com

All the news and views fit to consume during your morning grumpy.

90s Flowchart

1. Retired local food blogger Jeremy Horwitz posed a simple question on Twitter which led to a robust discussion amongst several local bloggers.

[blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/#!/horwitz/status/184753299961032705″%5D

If you’re reading this website, you’ve probably had this conversation dozens of times over dinner or a few porch beers with friends. Maybe you’ve argued the finer points of BuffaFAIL on various social media outlets while you’ve slacked off at work.

Hell, I wrote hundreds of variations on this theme while writing at WNYMedia.  But, I rarely write about it anymore. Why, you ask? I grew tired writing about the horrible, transactional political crumb hoarding that makes for news in this region. The same people having the same arguments every year. It’s fucking ponderous, man.

However, the bigger picture is that Buffalo and WNY are the way they are because you don’t really want it to be any different. And lacking any massive influx of new people with fresh perspectives, it’s going to stay the same.

If you really wanted to create change, you would. However, you’re comfortable in your middling job with your below-national-market salary. You leave your desk at 4:59PM every day to race home through minimal traffic and get back to your life at your affordable house that barely appreciates in value. You complain about the “outrageous” taxes, but you vote for a higher school budget every year and you protest like a 60’s hippie whenever a government official tries to cut spending or reduce/regionalize your public services.

Many of you hate when they tear down old buildings, but also hate the way the new ones look. Oh, and you demand that your input be incorporated into the plans. Many of you wish businesses would invest in their facilities, but threaten to sue if you don’t personally approve of said improvements. The rest of you complain about these types of planning busybodies, but you couldn’t be bothered to get off your ass to stop them. You’re “busy”.

You loathe the local political class, but you rarely vote.  And if you do go out to vote? It’s to vote the same bums back into office or promote them to a higher one. You don’t get involved in your town or city political committee. You don’t donate to unproven candidates and you sure as shit don’t go out to petition or canvass for an underdog candidate. You want to magically will them into office with your supportive Facebook posts.

There are dozens of other reasons that inform why the status quo is what it is, but why beat a dead horse?

Buffalo is the way it is because this is the way you want it. It’s your fault. Until you own that, nothing much is going to change.

If none of the above describe your attitude, you’re probably reading this from outside WNY or planning to do so as soon as possible.

For the small percentage of people who don’t fit into the above, haven’t moved and aren’t currently planning an escape? You’re a special and unique little snowflake in this town. Try to remain sane as you swim upstream against the ferocious power of the status quo. But here’s a bit of unsolicited advice, stop trying to “save” Buffalo. It doesn’t want to be saved. This city is like an alcoholic, abusive boyfriend. The more you try to save him, the more he drags you down with him. I know, we don’t “know” how sweet he can be when you’re alone together, right? If you just try hard enough, he’ll change.

As in real life, you can’t save someone or something that doesn’t want to be saved. Make yourself a personal and professional success…and maybe Buffalo will follow your lead.

2. An under-reported reason as to why unemployment rates have stayed a bit higher than expected is the massive reductions in government jobs, both at the federal and state level.

It’s true that during Obama’s tenure, government employment at all levels dropped by 1.2 percent in 2011, one of the largest declines in history. The federal government lost a proportional share of these jobs: about 13 percent of government workers are employees of the federal government, and about 13 percent of overall public sector job losses in 2011 happened there. But what’s critical to understand is that the drop-off in employment in state and local government wasn’t spread evenly across states, and this trend had almost nothing to do with Obama or his policies.

Some states have experienced much deeper cuts in government employment than others.

Of the eleven states in which Republicans came into power in 2010 – Alabama, Indiana, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – five were among the seven states that lost more than 2.5 percent of their workforce from December 2010 to December 2011. The remaining 42 states lost an average 0.5 percent (there is no data for Mississippi).

3. I’ve been meaning to write about this one for about a week. Suburban poverty rates are rapidly climbing.

The Brookings Institution reported two years ago that “by 2008 suburbs were home to the largest and fastest growing poor population in the country.” In the previous eight years, major metropolitan suburbs had seen poverty rates climb by 25 percent, almost five times faster than cities. Nationwide, 55 percent of the poor living in the nation’s metropolitan regions lived in suburbs.

To add insult to injury, a new measure to calculate poverty — introduced by the Census Bureau just last year — darkens an already bleak picture: nationally, 51 million households had incomes less than 50 percent above the official poverty line, and nearly half of these households were in suburbs.

We see a lot of similar changes in our inner-ring suburbs. Rising poverty rates and increasing numbers of vacant properties were documented in LISC-Buffalo’s research paper, Blueprint Buffalo – Regional Strategies and Local Tools for Reclaiming Vacant Properties published in 2006. The study and action plan are still incredibly valuable and with the approval of a regional land bank, perhaps we can begin to address problems of disinvestment.

4. The truth of Comrade Obama’s unrelenting war of terror against those wholesome American oil companies laid bare!

Oh, when will this socialist America-hater stop the madness?!

5. Conservative judicial activists run amok!

Five years ago, Jeffrey Rosen wrote a startling essay in the New York Times Magazine, describing a radical turn of events that is being borne out before our eyes. In the piece, Rosen described the rise of a new strand of conservative and libertarian judicial activists who believed the Constitution required small-government policies. Advocates of this theory believed judicial intervention was legally justified, of course, but also that it was necessary to win policy victories that conservatives could not obtain through Congress.

During the oral arguments over PPACA (Obamacare) in the Supreme Court, this kind of conservative activism has been on full display.

The spectacle before the Supreme Court this week is Republican justices seizing the chance to overturn the decisions of democratically-elected bodies. At times the deliberations of the Republican justices are impossible to distinguish from the deliberations of Republican senators.

Scalia himself offers the most blatant case. His famed thunderings against meddlesome judges are nowhere to be found. He is gleefully reversing his previous interpretation of the Commerce Clause, now that it is being deployed against big government liberals rather than pot smokers. He is railing against Obamacare like an angry Fox News-watching grandfather.

Personally, I favor broad interpretations of law and the Constitution by SCOTUS. The Constitution is a living, breathing document not an inflexible checklist. However, Scalia and the right wing abhor judicial activism, or so we thought.

6. The Center on Budget Policy and Priorities has completed their analysis of the budget put forward by Rep. Paul Ryan and the House Republicans.

Even as House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s budget would impose trillions of dollars in spending cuts, 62 percent of which would come from low-income programs, [1] it would enact new tax cuts that would provide huge windfalls to households at the top of the income scale.  People earning more than $1 million a year would receive $265,000 apiece in new tax cuts, on average, on top of the $129,000 they would receive from the Ryan budget’s extension of President Bush’s tax cuts.[2] 

All of its new tax cuts are both expensive and tilted toward high-income households.  It would cut the top individual tax rate to 25 percent, the lowest level since the Hoover Administration more than 80 years ago.  It would cut the corporate rate to 25 percent and eliminate both the Alternative Minimum Tax and the Affordable Care Act’s increase in the Medicare tax for high-income people.

Seems fair…if your name is Donald Trump.

Fact Of The Day: There is a company called “Shitter” which will print your tweets onto toilet paper, so you can wipe your ass with the Charmin-y softness of your own banality.

Quote Of The Day: “Advocates of capitalism are very apt to appeal to the sacred principles of liberty, which are embodied in one maxim: The fortunate must not be restrained in the exercise of tyranny over the unfortunate” ~ Bertrand Russell

Video Of The Day (Movie Monologues Week): Alec Baldwin, Glengarry Glen Ross

Cartoon Of The Day (Bugs Bunny Week): Bugs and Thugs

http://www.220.ro/embi/IhJ0AIOfXd
Vezi mai multe din Desene animate pe 220.ro

Song Of The Day: “Makes No Sense At All” – Hüsker Dü

Follow me on Twitter: @ChrisSmithAV

Email me links, tips, story ideas: chris@artvoice.com

All the news and views fit to consume during your morning grumpy.

1. What is Mitt Romney’s biggest problem? He’s an asshole and nobody likes him. His team has yet to come up with a strategy to deal with the fact that Mitt is the guy who fired your Dad. Around these parts, this is known as “Collins-itis”.

An ABC News/Washington Post poll tells you everything you need to know.

That’s a big divide between he and Obama. Interesting how Obama’s favorable ratings have remained high while his job approval numbers are more volatile.

2. Who or what in Buffalo and WNY is connecting companies to global markets, targeting regional efforts for export production, promoting our regional advantages, and selling the Buffalo metropolitan brand? Is it Buffalo Niagara Enterprise? Buffalo Niagara Partnership? World Trade Center Buffalo Niagara? Who is coordinating any effort that might be underway? Is there a plan in place? I ask because I just finished reading through a Brookings report about Metropolitan Export strategies and I was excited to learn about the work being done by Brookings with regional economic development leaders in Syracuse. The work in Syracuse will primarily focus on building stronger ties to the Canadian economy and increasing their export pipeline.

3. Three reasons to remain calm about gas prices. We’ve been here before.

Prices in constant, 2012 dollars. Note how things were stable for quite some time until Bush decided to destabilize the entire Middle East with a war of choice.

4. If PPACA is overturned by The Supreme Court, the name Donald Verilli will go down in legal flameout history. Obama’s Solicitor General came down with a case of the stammering flopsweats and seemed incredibly unprepared for even the most basic questions.

Stepping up to the podium, Verrilli stammered as he began his argument. He coughed, he cleared his throat, he took a drink of water. And that was before he even finished the first part of his argument. Sounding less like a world-class lawyer and more like a teenager giving an oral presentation for the first time, Verrilli delivered a rambling, apprehensive legal defense of liberalism’s biggest domestic accomplishment since the 1960s—and one that may well have doubled as its eulogy.

On the other hand, his opposition was well-prepared.

Former Solicitor General Paul Clement, who argued against the constitutionality of Obamacare, ably responded to questioning from the Democratic appointees on the court, all of whom offered more persuasive defenses of the mandate than the man who had come to the court to do so.

The transcripts are brutal. Perhaps Obama should have left Elena Kagan in the Solicitor General’s office instead of appointing her to the court. What a disaster.

5. This week in fracking…

Under a new law, doctors in Pennsylvania can access information about chemicals used in natural gas extraction — but they won’t be able to share it with their patients.

There is good reason to be curious about exactly what’s in those fluids. A 2010 congressional investigation revealed that Halliburton and other fracking companies had used 32 million gallons of diesel products, which include toxic chemicals like benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylene, in the fluids they inject into the ground. Low levels of exposure to those chemicals can trigger acute effects like headaches, dizziness, and drowsiness, while higher levels of exposure can cause cancer.

Pennsylvania law states that companies must disclose the identity and amount of any chemicals used in fracking fluids to any health professional that requests that information in order to diagnosis or treat a patient that may have been exposed to a hazardous chemical. But the provision in the new bill requires those health professionals to sign a confidentiality agreement stating that they will not disclose that information to anyone else — not even the person they’re trying to treat.

I wonder why those companies don’t want you to know about those chemicals. Hmmm…

Fact Of The Day: There is a male birth control shot being developed in India that lasts for 10 years, and has very minimal side effects so far. In other news, Republicans will most likely cover this birth control under all insurance plans without complaint.

Quote Of The Day: “Two percent of the people think; three percent of the people think they think; and ninety-five percent of the people would rather die than think.” – George Bernard Shaw

Video Of The Day (Great Movie Speeches Week): “The Indianapolis Speech” – Jaws

Cartoon Of the Day (Bugs Bunny Week): Rabbit Of Seville

Song Of The Day: “Trouble No More” – Muddy Waters

Follow me on Twitter: @ChrisSmithAV

Email me links, tips, story ideas: chris@artvoice.com

All the news and views fit to consume during your morning grumpy.

1. Building off an incredible article by Jonathan Chait in New York Magazine, Ira Glasser asks a fundamental question, what exactly are conservatives trying to conserve?

About a month ago, Jonathan Chait published an important article in New York Magazine arguing that demographic changes in the United States will before too long spell doom to the political influence and hegemony of conservatives, and that conservatives, well aware of these changes, regard the 2012 elections as their last, best chance to reverse the course America is on.

This is something I’ve written about frequently, to whom do Republicans think they will appeal in ten years? The faith-based, “fear of the other” messaging to a diminishing audience is marginalizing their future.

What conservatives were desperately trying to conserve was not the values at America’s origin (the Bill of Rights was, after all, ratified in 1791), but rather the privileges and powers of 19th century and early 20th century America. This is what has fueled the reactionary politics of the past three decades, and it is what we are seeing now in the Republican base and its candidates.

Social change and large-scale demographic shifts will further limit the party to regional and rural appeal with people who are angry about the march of time. The campaigns of Rick Santorum and other tea party candidates feel more like a death rattle than a rallying cry.

2. Through the use of over 20 tax shelters, Exxon Mobil will pay a 13% effective tax rate on over $41,000,000,000 in profits (a 35% increase over 2010, no thanks to Comrade Obama, I’m sure).

Think about this next time you’re paying $4.05 per gallon at the pump. Also relevant, domestic oil production is at it’s highest rate in nearly ten years and speculators are profiting at absurd rates.

3. Someday, I’d like to live in a country in which our citizens don’t have to hold Chinese Auctions and bake sales to pay for cancer treatments.

If you happen to see flyers like these while you are out and about, please take a snapshot and email it to chris@artvoice.com. I’m building a Tumblr/Artvoice series featuring these photos.

4. Ten lesser known reforms to insurance plans and health regulations included in the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare), pretty great stuff.

• The Physician Payment Sunshine Act under health care reform requires drug, device or medical supply companies to report annually certain payments or things of value that they’ve given physicians and teaching hospitals.
• The law requires restaurants with 20 or more locations to list calorie content information for standard menu items on menus and drive-through menus. Other fun facts like fat, saturated fat, cholesterol, sodium, total carbohydrates, sugars, fiber and total protein would have to be made available in writing upon request.
• Mammograms, physical exams, colonoscopies, vaccinations — these are among the preventive care services that will be fully covered by insurance companies. (Note: I currently have a policy that doesn’t fully cover standard preventive procedures like this)

5. Last week, we learned that Encyclopaedia Britannica would discontinue it’s print offering to focus solely on their online product. Wikipedia killed it, right? That’s the conventional wisdom. As Tim Carmody points out, it was Microsoft Encarta that actually killed the print encyclopedia…in the library, with the revolver.

Britannica went bankrupt in 1996, long before Wikipedia was a crowdsourced gleam in Jimmy Wales’ open-access eye. In 1990, the company had $650 million in revenue. In 1996, it was being sold off in toto for $135 million. What happened in between was Encarta.

I loved encyclopedias…I devoured the information in them like a starving wolf. I’ll miss the feel and weight and import of those books.

6. A fascinating interview about the morality of economics with a Czech economist.

We want to live as if we were actors portraying ourselves.

Ethics forms the core of economics. It leads straight to the question of the good and right way of living, or Aristotle’s concept of eudemonia. For him, maximizing benefit without maximizing good would have been pointless. A market economy without morality is a zombie system: The robots function perfectly, but in the end they leave behind a trail of devastation. We have to return to our origins and talk about the soul of the economy.

A little heavy on the religious imagery, but an enlightening read.

Fact of The Day: There is a cat named Hank who is running for Senate in Virginia. No, really. Maybe we can get him to move to Buffalo and run for Mayor. It would be an improvement.

Quote Of The Day: “If every trace of any single religion were wiped out and nothing were passed on, it would never be created exactly that way again. There might be some other nonsense in its place, but not that exact nonsense. If all of science were wiped out, it would still be true and someone would find a way to figure it all out again.” – Penn Jillette

Video Of The Day (Great Movie Monologues Week): Captain Koons and The Watch – Pulp Fiction

Cartoon Of the Day (Bugs Bunny Week): Bunny Hugged

Song Of The Day: “Fools Gold” – The Stone Roses

Follow me on Twitter: @ChrisSmithAV

Email me links, tips, story ideas: chris@artvoice.com