Murray Light chastised Brown’s budget in an editorial Sunday. If you ask me, it was half-hearted criticism. Light said that although a $2 million proposed increase for the Buffalo schools was admirable, the City couldn’t afford it. This is more of the nonsensical logic that landed the City in its current financial mess. Money, or lack thereof, is not the cause of the poor performance by students. It is lack of competition, which breeds complacency, that has caused the poor academic achievements. A voucher system combined with a decent amount of school choices (both public and private) would weed out the under-performing schools. Competition creates a tangible reward for good teachers - they get to keep their jobs and keep teaching.

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New York State’s taxes are already out of control. Albany is dysfunctional and keeps spending. Tonight while watching the 6 o’clock news I witnessed Byron Brown urging support for Spitzer for Governor. Brown was babbling some nonsense about how great things will come to Buffalo if Spitzer is Governor. Did Byron miss “State Spending 101″? The main gist of the lesson is that Buffalo got into the current mess by over-reliance on State funds. How can anyone expect the State to fix its own finances if money is being promised for votes???

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Here’s a quote from a Buffalo News article today:

Under Brown’s administration, the Police Department has placed a greater emphasis on enforcing quality-of-life violations in neighborhoods, including noise complaints and traffic infractions.

Personally, I don’t see any significant difference. I did see a police officer going down a one-way side street and measuring the distance between car tires and the curb. Does that qualify as a “quality of life issue”? BTW, it was 3 a.m. when this was occurring. To me, that was a waste of the officer’s time, we’d be better off cutting his job and saving on the salary.

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I didn’t do much today. Just relaxed with a friend, went downtown to Spot Coffee for awhile and walked around the Erie Basin Marina. There were a ton of people there and the ice cream stand had a good sized crowd lined up. Here’s a slide-show with a few shots of the beautiful day. Click a pic and you’ll be taken to larger versions.

Art & Photography, Buffalo | No Comments »

I guess its no big news flash to find out Brian Higgins is just another lying politician. We knew that his years in Albany had exposed him to the virus of political prostitution, but when we found out he sided with the credit card bastards, we were just caught a little off guard by the speed at which Higgins had dropped to his knees and started sucking once he got to Washington. It’s astonishing really; the man is a machine.

The article is from the Buffalo Beast and points out that Higgins voted for the Bankruptcy reform law that benefits the credit card companies.

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The Past Destroyed, The Future in Question, originally uploaded by mike in wny.

No words necessary!

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I know that my post title will not set well with many people, but this is not about a popularity contest. Delphi is fighting for its life. There is something wrong with our system when a company can not make the decisions necessary for survival without court approval. Whether people like it or not, it is an economic reality that we are in a global economy. It is more vital than ever that companies are able to take the necessary steps to remain competitive, failing that, they will fold. It is not rocket science and does not take a p.h.d. in economics to figure that one out.

The unions have turned the delphi situation into an “us against them” battle. Us being the unions, them being management. That is utter BS. One can not survive without the other and both sets of jobs are important. The unions are willing to tank the whole company if they don’t get their way, in the process it is likely that GM could be dragged down the drain too. Can someone please explain where the victory is in that type of foolish action? The “if I can’t work, you’re not gonna work” mentality has got to end. It serves no purpose and inhibits free trade and competitiveness, both of which are vital to not only survive, but to also prosper in the world as it stands today.

There are no guarantees in life and unions have to learn that lesson. Putting something on a piece of paper does not trump the natural laws of economics, it just leads to a greater loss of jobs.

This country was founded on principle of freedom, liberty and justice for all, that includes private industry. The unions have to respect that and deal with it or we will travel down the road to being a socialist economy. One only needs to look at the U.S.S.R. to see the results of central planning while ignoring market conditions.

National, World | No Comments »

Run, don’t walk, when someone starts spewing urban planning ideals vs. sprawl. Those lofty dreams have proved time and time again to be nothing but money-sucking ideas. Here’s the latest:New Report Says Restrictive Land-Use Rules Add Billions to Housing Costs

Housing shortages caused by restrictive land-use planning have added hundreds of thousands of dollars to the cost of buying homes in California, says a new report from the Independent Institute, The Planning Penalty: How Smart Growth Makes Housing Unaffordable. The report estimates that planning added anywhere from $69,000 to the cost of median homes in Bakersfield to $850,000 to the cost of median homes in the San Francisco metropolitan area (including Marin and San Mateo counties).

California cities pioneered the use of urban-growth boundaries and other growth-management planning tools in the 1970s. This caused housing prices to increase much faster than incomes and by 1979, California cities that had been affordable in 1969 became some of the least affordable housing markets in the nation.

The penalties of planning are far greater than the so-called costs of sprawl, says the report. The most widely cited study of the costs of sprawl estimates that urban-service costs to low-density homes are about $11,000 more per home than to compact neighborhoods.

“How smart is ‘smart growth’ if it makes every home in a city cost $70,000 to $850,000 more so the city can save $11,000 on a few new homes?” asks the report’s author, economist Randal O’Toole, a Research Fellow at the Independent Institute. O’Toole recommends that cities set user fees and taxes to make sure new development covers its costs and let people make their own choices about where they want to live.

More here.

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Yesterday’s gleeful dancing on the grave of Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling elicited an unusually large number of anonymous posts from readers eager to pin the blame for Enron on the Clinton administration –”all that bad stuff happened on his watch, so it’s his fault!”

How the World Works welcomes readers of all political stripes, though we prefer it if they attach real names, or at least persistent identities, to their arguments. We generally aren’t predisposed to take an argument seriously if it’s signed “No Name Given.”

Then again, the argument that Enron was Clinton’s scandal and not Bush’s is so absurd that one can understand why no one would put an actual name behind it. Let’s review some history, shall we?

Ken Lay was George Bush’s number one financial backer. During the 2000 election campaign, Bush frequently flew on Enron corporate jets. Bush’s first cabinet included a former Enron executive, Thomas White, as Army Secretary, and two former Enron advisers, Lawrence Lindsey (Bush’s first chief economic adviser) and Robert Zoellick (Bush’s first United States Trade Representative).

Continue here

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Many people are under the impression that the government knows what is best. The government should pass laws regulating people’s actions, even when no one else is affected. All of this legislation has 2 effects - 1. It takes away our liberty, 2. It costs billions and billions of dollars that could be feeding a robust economy.

This is a must read for an enlightened perspective on “big government”.

The Nanny State

Visionary leaders of all political stripes have argued against a “paternalistic,” or parenting, role for government. Former President Ronald Reagan argued that “government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves.” Similarly, George McGovern warned, “Our choices may be foolish or self-destructive, but we cannot micro manage each other’s lives. When we no longer hold people responsible for their choices, civility and common sense will be diminished.”

Nonetheless, government seems to micromanage most aspects of our lives these days. Protecting us from ourselves seems to be a common theme in the halls of Congress, regulatory agencies, and state legislatures, be it through anti-smoking laws, laws aimed at curbing obesity, seat belt laws, or the range of other laws aimed at influencing personal behavior to make us healthier.

Government makes us wear our seat belts. It tells us what we should and shouldn’t eat. It tells us which medications we are and aren’t allowed to take and which intoxicants we are and aren’t allowed to ingest, and under what conditions we’re allowed to ingest them. Government tells us some products aren’t safe enough for us to use, even if, fully aware of the risks, we would like to use them anyway. The Department of Justice is now actively pursuing criminal charges against distributors of pornography involving consenting adults. Governments at all levels are also actively attempting to shut down online sports betting and poker sites, apparently alarmed at the amount of money we spend on wagering and games of chance (though they seem to be less concerned about the amount we spend on state-run lotteries).

Continue here.

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During the question period following the press conference last night, President Bush fielded a question about Treasury Secretary John Snow. Did anyone else notice the apparent confusion by Bush? It seemed he forgot who his Treasury Secrectary is and was thinking about his new mouthpiece, Tony Snow.

National | 1 Comment »

I have not been posting much the past couple of days, things have been a bit hectic. That will change.

Tonight is going to be the big test for the Sabres. I am not saying it is a “must” win, but it will surely be an indication how this team responds to adversity and the losses suffered on defense. We will find out the true value of “heart” in the playoffs.

GO SABRES!!!

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First we were told that the Justice Department could not investigate wiretapping by the NSA because it was classified information. The latest twist is that the FCC can not investigate possible violations of the Communications Act when phone companies turned records over to the NSA. The reason? It’s classified.

National, Rants | No Comments »

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Marijuana smoking does not increase a person’s risk of developing lung cancer, according to the findings of a new study at the University of California Los Angeles that surprised even the researchers.

They had expected to find that a history of heavy marijuana use, like cigarette smoking, would increase the risk of cancer.

Instead, the study, which compared the lifestyles of 611 Los Angeles County lung cancer patients and 601 patients with head and neck cancers with those of 1,040 people without cancer, found no elevated cancer risk for even the heaviest pot smokers. It did find a 20-fold increased risk of lung cancer in people who smoked two or more packs of cigarettes a day.

Hmmmm, somebody tell me again why marijuana use is generally illegal and alcohol is not? It seems to me that a lot of money could be saved that is currently being spent on health care if the laws related to pot and booze were flip-flopped. Alcohol is physically adicting for some people, marijuana isn’t. Alchohol causes liver disease, marijuana appears to have a clean bill of health.

At the least, this is another example of why the government should not be intruding in the private activities of individuals that do not affect others.

Over $20 billion has been spent this year between the Federal and State governments on the war on drugs. A war that isn’t working. Over 631,000 people have been arrested for drug offenses. 4,323 people have been incarcerated as a result of drug arrests.

What has this accomplished? It has driven up the cost of drugs to the point that criminals are more than willing to risk the consequences due to the extremely high profits to be made. It has significantly increased property and violent crimes by people trying to get enough money to purchase drugs. It has turned many people, who have used drugs without affecting others, into branded criminals for life which results in the likelihood that they will continue a life of crime because they are not able to gain substantial employment with a criminal record.

If drugs were legalized a great deal of money would be saved. The price of drugs would go down, criminals would lack incentive to traffic in drugs and property and violent crimes would decrease dramatically. This leads to only one question - Is the war on drugs worth the cost? Clearly, it is not. People need to take responsibility for their own actions when others are not affected. The government is doing us no favors in their efforts to control personal behavior.

For a more in depth look at the true cost of the war on drugs follow this link.

Musings, Rants | 1 Comment »

Ironically, Moussaoui has been the only person tried, and also convicted, for the acts committed on 9/11. Osama Bin Laden, in a new tape, says that Moussaoui had nothing to do with it.

Whom do you believe? There is little doubt we have gone to war in Iraq based on false assertions. Now we have a person sentenced to life based on assertions by the same powers that led us into war. This appears to be a case of “reasonable doubt”. In retrospect, the decision to sentence Moussaoui to life, rather than death, seems to have been prudent. Even it was only one juror holding out. That is how our system works.

I am in no means defending Bin Laden, just suggesting that our reaction to 9/11 has been off base.

National | 2 Comments »