I see the WFP is clinging to the weakest link. Mesi has the least experience and is the easiest for them to control. WFP troops on the ground and backs up everything I have been saying about unions supplying manpower and money to get them elected.

Capitol confidential » WFP brings manpower to Mesi

Working Family Party Joins Mesi for Senate Campaign

61st Senate District – The Working Family Party (WFP) has joined Joe Mesi’s campaign for state senate. This partnership has brought a renowned grassroots operation and campaign staff to bat for this critical Senate race.

“Joe is exactly the kind of guy working families in Western New York need fighting for them in Albany. He’s been a fighter his whole life, and it shows.” said Sam Williams, State Co-Chair of the Working Families Party. “The WFP is making the Mesi campaign a top priority. We need to change the leadership that’s failed upstate New York, and elect the kind of people who will work hard to create jobs and cleanup Albany.”

Beginning this week, the WFP is placing several full-time campaign staff in the operation. The Party will be instrumental in building the candidate’s base, knocking on thousands of doors, mobilizing labor unions and affiliated organizations, and recruiting hundreds of financial contributors.

“This is a challenging race and I believe their help will make a real difference,” said Joe Mesi. “We share common goals on the issues that really matter: job creation, innovative economic development, and reforming the broken political system in Albany.”

“This was an easy decision, because Joe Mesi is one of us,” said Dave Chudy, Vice-Chair of the Working Families Party’s Western New York Chapter. “Joe understands firsthand the issues and struggles that are affecting working families. Whether it be fighting for living wage jobs, Paid Family Leave, property tax relief, or smart, creative economic development, Joe Mesi will fight for us in the State Senate and the WFP is proud to stand with Joe as we work to reclaim and reform Albany.”

Joe Mesi is a Democratic candidate for the 61st Senate District. He is running for State Senate to bring an independent voice, strong leadership, and working class values back to Albany. Joe believes in our community, and he knows it will take more than the same tired old political promises to get our region back on track.

BRAVO to Carl Paladino. He is doing what ALL of us should be doing but instead complain while we sit in front of our computers or televisions. Is there any wonder why things have gotten so far out of control in this state?

It is time to get up off your apathy and speak out and most importantly VOTE! Listen to all the sound bytes at the link.

WBEN 930 : Paladino To School Board: ‘You Should Be Ashamed’

“I think it’s a responsibility of our business community leadership to get out there and criticize where we have to criticize and applaud where we have to applaud,”
– Carl Paladino, Buffalo businessman

Buffalo, NY (WBEN) - Buffalo real estate developer Carl Paladino is calling for the state to remove the Buffalo School Board, in the latest of a series of paid advertising messages where he presses for city reform and better leadership.

Paladino’s radio advertising, airing on WBEN, minces no words, and is a open letter to the board and Superintendent James Williams, directly calling for them to pay better attention to community needs.

“Hello, Board of Ed and Dr. Williams, can you hear us now?” Paladino says in the messages…”We are still waiting for the state to remove you.”

His criticism focusses on spending issues and the recent scandal involving the suspension of a student at McKinley High School.

“You get $26,500 per student. We could send all of them to private schools and have $10,000 left for a college fund,” he says in the open message to the board.

Earlier this year, an independent investigator was hired to conduct an investigation of McKinley High School,after volunteer coach Michelle Stiles questioned whether boys basketball coach James Daye was involved with a student. Principal Crystal Barton fired Stiles and student Jayvonna Kincannon was suspended for 5 weeks when she used a cell phone during school hours to try and speak on Stiles’s behalf.

Paladino’s statement refers to the coach as “the philandering Daye” and questions whether he is worth a $79,000 annual salary.

The board citing costs, state education law, and the time considerations involved, has declined to persue disciplinary action against Barton, despite the investigator’s report (below) which says the Kincannon suspension was overly long.

“You couldn’t find the courage to reprimand a rogue principal who slandered, discharged and humliated a talented volunteer coach, and vilified and abused a 15-year -old honor student,” Paladino says in his open message to the board. ” You (The board) blatantly showed favoritism toward a … coach… with the feeble excuse that it would be too costly…. You should be ashamed of your collective disfunction and overall incompetence.”

The Paladino approach, while not always embraced because of it’s bluntness, is generating a range of reactions, including some support for those who want others to speak out more often in favor of reform. A few examples:

Please help out and give Len Roberto a hand. He will be a great Assemblyman and do the job the way it is supposed to be done. If you can’t go please send him a few bucks, it costs thousands to run for office and not being the chosen “Party” candidate, fundraising is hard.

Fundraiser to Elect Leonard Roberto
Monday-July 28, 6;30 P.M.
Danny Sheehan’s Steak House
491 West Ave.
Lockport, N.Y. 14094

Minmum donation $35.00/ person
*Dinner* Chinese Auction* Music

Make checks payable to:”Friends of Roberto”
Please RSVP TO 716-491-3332 by July 24
If unable to attend, donations gratefully accepted.

*** (Items needed for the chinese auction, If you can help out please call 716-491-3332)

Golisano’s Money and Michelle Iannello/Ward Whines, that should be the real title to this article. If this is true that you cannot meet with a candidate and talk about the campaign then we have elections violations going on everywhere and in every election.

I will be more than happy to help out Golisano, anyone know how to get a hold of them? Have them contact me. I ran against Iannello/Ward, I know how she works, I know how her husband helps, I know how the unions supported her. By the way,,,,, anyone know where her new office is? It’s not downtown any more, WE pay her rent and bloated staff now, she’s a big wig now don’tcha know.

Golisano’s Money

It was a major announcement by Sabres owner and Rochester businessman Tom Golisano. He put 5 million dollars of his own money into a fund to support candidates for the New York State legislature. It’s called a multi-candidate unauthorized independent committee. “It’s pretty straight forward. We want a responsible state budget. We want responsible process for coming up with a state budget and we want to remember we have to keep our expenses under control because our economy is not growing as fast as the budget is.” said Golisano on Tuesday of last week.

But now Erie County board of elections commissioner Dennis Ward is crying foul, saying that Golisano’s committee could be breaking the law. According to election rules, when a committee hands out a lot of campaign money, it’s not allowed to meet with the candidate and talk about the campaign.

Ward says that Golisano has already met with candidates like Baby Joe Mesi, who happens to be running against Ward’s wife, Erie County legislator Michelle Ianello, in the democratic state senate primary. Mesi was supported by Steve Pidgeon, the man now running Golisano’s new committee and handing out all the money. “How does the candidate not cooperate or foster if your sitting and discussing the campaign with Mr. Golisano, or Mr. Pidgeon, or Mr. Parenti that they will not cooperate and use the money. What do you just sit and talk about the weather?”, said Ward.

“Dennis Ward is probably the biggest whiner and cryer in Western New york Politics and is wrong again.” replied Pidgeon. He doesn’t deny knowing Mesi, but says it doesn’t matter what happened in the past because the committee didn’t exist when he was working with Mesi. Pidgeon claims so far no decision have been made about where the money is going. “It’s a matter of coordination going forward, going on in the future. He hasn’t made any designations yet. He doesn’t need to make designations.” said Pidgeon.

Still political analyst Bob Davis says this is a real issue that may eventually end up decided by the courts. “I think the state election law is set up to prevent things like this from happening. I think somebody needs to challenge it.” said Davis.

A whistle blower line, great idea and I hope many, many people use it but use it for real waste, fraud and abuse. I also think we need one for Erie County government where patronage jobs can be reported. When I was running for Erie County Legislature so many County employees discussed to incredible amount of patronage in their offices. They were afraid I wanted to eliminate their job. Far from the truth, the real county workers we need, they are the ones that keep everything up and running. What we need to eliminate is the patronage.

County government has become the employment agency for campaign workers and is full of patronage. But, the legislators will do nothing to eliminate this and we continue to pay these peoples salaries, healthcare, pensions etc………..

County comptroller opens new whistle blower hotline for reporting waste, fraud : The Buffalo News

Erie County has a new email address and telephone line for reporting waste, fraud and abuse in county government. They are: whistleblower@erie.gov and 858-7722.

Or tipsters can still use the anonymous form found on the erie.gov site, after clicking on the link for the county comptroller’s office.

“We will review every one of the tips we receive,” Comptroller Mark C. Poloncarz said this morning when announcing the new methods for people to contact his auditors anonymously.

The comptroller’s office receives about 20 tips a year, or perhaps two a month, he said. Most often people choose to send unsigned letters.

“We are receiving more tips lately because people see that when we get a tip we research it. We do check it out,” he said.

His auditors last year read an anonymous letter about a government employee who seemed to be home during his work day. The auditors confirmed the parks department employee would punch in to work, go home, go back to work to punch out for lunch, then once clocked back in, go home again.

Poloncarz said the employee was disciplined but not fired by aides to then-County Executive Joel A. Giambra.

The City of Tonawanda got slammed a couple years ago when Hoyt had the Erie Canal designation moved to the city of Buffalo. It cost the Tonawandas over a million in Federal aid. Now this? Could this be payback for the election when I was running against her and the Mayor accused her of not living in her district?

The way she views her town of Kenmore and the City of Tonawanda is really twisted. Kenmore is a village with it’s own system of government that honestly should be consolidated into the Town of Tonawanda. I do think Kevin Gaughn suggested that in the way to shrink the sizes of government and so many elected officials. Something stinks about this whole thing and if it is political payback who gets hurt? The people that live in the City, not just the Mayor who will have to do something about the finances.

Tonawanda News - ERIE COUNTY: Change to tax revenue could hurt city

The City of Tonawanda stands to lose $1 million of revenue per year if a proposal being touted by a local member of the Erie County Legislature gains approval from state leaders.

Appearing earlier this week before the county Legislature’s Finance and Management Committee, Tonawanda Mayor Ron Pilozzi argued that the county’s three cities would be drastically impacted by a plan authored by Legislator Michelle Iannello, D-Kenmore, to redistribute the way sales tax revenue is shared with Tonawanda, Buffalo and Lackawanna.

Based on an agreement that has been in place since 1977, the county’s three cities receive 10.008 percent of the local 3 percent share of Erie’s sales tax revenue. Were that to be abandoned, Tonawanda would lose $1.1 million, or 5.7 percent of its annual operating budget, Pilozzi told the committee.

“Tonawanda would be either forced to cut vital public services or raise city taxes by approximately 13 percent, placing additional stress on its state 2 percent constitutional taxing limit,” he added.

The resolution, which Iannello’s colleagues passed last month, asks Gov. David Paterson and the State Legislature to re-examine the formula for determining state aid for municipalities to make it more fair to New York’s 279 villages, including Kenmore.

“Demographically and geographically, they are very similar,” Iannello said of the City of Tonawanda and Kenmore, whose populations are 14,931 and 15,123, respectively, according to the latest U.S. Census Bureau Population Estimate. “The current formula gave the City of Tonawanda $2.6 million in 2007-2008 and the Village of Kenmore $651,000,” Iannello said.

Her resolution calls on state officials to revise the revenue sharing criteria to “focus less on what a municipality is called, but (more) on the services it provides, the needs of the residents and the economic factors surrounding the municipality.” Continue reading this post…

Well the session is over and he does not have to campaign so why not… So long Joe.

NY Senate leader Bruno to resign seat by Friday - NewsChannel 9 WSYR

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) - New York Sen. Joseph Bruno, the chamber’s Republican majority leader since 1995, said Tuesday that he will officially leave office by Friday.

He surprised most in state government last month when he said he would resign but had not given a firm date when he would leave the office he’s held since 1976.

The 79-year-old resident of Rensselaer County near Albany said he would like to return to the private sector and run a business.

State law prohibits him from a lucrative job of lobbying the Legislature for two years.

Republican Sen. Dean Skelos of Long Island has been chosen to replace Bruno, with Bruno’s support.

In the two years since Gov. George Pataki left office, Bruno has been New York’s top Republican leader.

“Frankly, my work is fairly well done,” Bruno said Tuesday at his last major public event, an announcement of an IBM Corp. high-technology project in Albany. “I feel like my transition is done. The furniture is moving out of my office tomorrow, the pictures are off the walls.”

Then Bruno, true to form, joked: “It can get depressing if I hang around. I push the buttons and nobody’s answering.”

His term would have ended Dec. 31. A general election in November will pick Bruno’s successor, who will be sworn in in January.

He said his exit doesn’t threaten the Republicans’ majority, now that the regular session is over. The Senate’s Republican majority would likely only convene a special session if there was broad agreement on issues with the Democratic minority.

No of course it’s not an easy fix, I can see blockades coming from all sorts of directions namely the strength of the public service unions, teachers unions and stubborn corrupt politicians not wanting anything to change that would benefit anyone else but them.

The people and the local economies are at the bottom of the list in Albany, we should be at the top of the list.

Wilmers assumes Empire State post, says economy is “not an easy fix” : The Buffalo News
First step is to reorganize development agency

Robert G. Wilmers, chairman of Buffalo-based M&T Bank, adds a new line to his resume today — economic-development czar for the state.

Wilmers, who was Gov. David A. Paterson’s surprise selection to oversee the powerful but fractured Empire State Development Corp., admits he has his work cut out for him.

“This is a big job, and I hope I’ll be able to do it in a way that’s good for New York,” Wilmers said. “I want to see a state more thriving and prosperous than it is now. That’s not an easy fix.”

Wilmers, 74, has built M&T Bank, with $66 billion in assets, into one the country’s 20 largest financial institutions. Now he faces the task of overhauling the development agency so it can facilitate the state’s economic resurgence.

He is expected to streamline and refocus it, starting at the top.

Several business and development sources said he plans to create a new chief executive officer position to oversee the corporation’s day-to-day operations. That person will report directly to Wilmers.

Two lieutenants, responsible for separate upstate and downstate divisions, will answer to the new chief executive.

While he declined to discuss his restructuring plan, Wilmers confirmed he has been winnowing a list of candidates for the top posts. A handful has been interviewed.

“I can’t put a plan together until I get the right people, and if it takes some time to find those people, so be it,” Wilmers said.

He said that personnel search does not have geographic boundaries and includes every avenue he can think of.

“They don’t have to be from New York. I don’t care where they come from as long as I know they can do the job,” he added.

Tell me exactly what has Hoyt accomplished in 16 years? Besides bringing home bribe money for you vote. He has voted for tax increases, more fees, more union benefits, more restrictions, regulations………. he has opposed any real form of reform and restructuring of government, Sam is everything to everybody and gets nothing done. The number one job of his staff and interns is to do what ever it takes to make Sam look good. I am disgusted with his representation, his support for the gay agenda and the unions and support for Sheldon Silver.

Golisano snubs Hoyt, donating to the Assembly candidate’s opponent : The Buffalo News

ALBANY — The initial shots from Rochester billionaire Tom Golisano have been fired in the direction of Assemblyman Sam Hoyt, D-Buffalo, according to campaign finance filings made public this afternoon.

Golisano on July 10 donated $3,800 to Barbra Kavanaugh, a former Buffalo council member who is running against Hoyt. The donation helped fill an otherwise lackluster fundraising cycle for Kavanaugh, who raised, with Golisano’s money included, a total of $7,300.

Another $500 came her way from a political action committee run by Steve Pigeon, the former Erie County Democratic Party chairman and Golisano advisor.

The Golisano money to Kavanaugh came from his own bank account and not from Responsible New York, the committee he formed last week with $5 million of his own money to support candidates that he says will back his ideas to change the ways of Albany.

The campaign filings for Hoyt were not yet in with the state Board of Elections. But Hoyt Monday afternoon said his filing will show he has about $120,000 in the bank, compared to $6,500 for Kavanaugh.

Hoyt dismissed the support by Golisano for Kavanaugh as an arrangement by Pigeon, with whom the assemblyman has never shared a close relationship.

“She’s a pawn of Steve Pigeon,” Hoyt said of his primary opponent. “If Mr. Golisano is making his decisions based on the merits, I will have his support.”

Kavanaugh dismissed Hoyt’s claims, saying she had not seen Pigeon in a couple years. She said only once has she met Golisano, about 10 years ago.

Pigeon called Hoyt the “poster child of what’s wrong with Albany.”

“Barbra Kavanaugh represents the type of candidate that we believe can change New York because Sam Hoyt has had 16 years where he has talked about reform but really has done nothing in 16 years to change Albany. He’s been all talk, all press releases and no real change,” Pigeon said. “He works his own personal, political agenda and masquerades as a reformer, and we think Barbara Kavanaugh represents real change.”

Click on image for larger view.

Al Gore…. Sit down and SHUT UP! Because it’s time to WAKE UP!

The simple act of allowing drilling in known good prospective areas along with loosening regulations on refining would have a significant effect on both the dollar’s value and on oil prices. The dollar would gain value because there would be more substance backing it, and oil prices would drop because the market would respond to the increased future supply.

IBDeditorials.com: — Will To Drill Is Strong, Poll Finds; Climate Change Pales As Concern

Contrary to claims by Al Gore and others that global warming is the greatest challenge of our time, Americans by better than 3-to-1 say the price of gasoline is a bigger problem now, according to the latest IBD/TIPP Poll.

Moreover, they stand willing to do something about it, including and especially drilling for oil in the Outer Continental Shelf and in federal shale reserves in Colorado, Wyoming and Utah.

Even drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is backed by a plurality of Americans.

The poll of 920 adults taken last week shows that 73% think “fuel prices at the pump” are a bigger problem for the country than climate change, the new term for global warming.

Only 23% say climate change is more important.

The sentiment prevails across the board — among men and women, old and young, rich and poor, and Republicans, independents and Democrats, two-thirds of whom say gas prices are more important.

Support for offshore drilling and oil shale development is also broad-based, with the former favored by 64% of respondents and the latter by 65%.
Continue reading this post…