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Frigging
in the Rigging
- If you thought local authorities were honest, hard working individuals
this story should set you straight. Seems employees at the Board of
Elections like to spend their time combing through nominating petitions
searching for disqualifying errors. Nothing wrong with that, except
for the fact they're whoring themselves out for certain political candidates
who keep them employed. Oh, and it's a highly illegal form of election
fraud, but that's becoming almost trendy these days. When an employee
was recently caught red-handed working to disqualify Francina Cartonia's
petition in the race against Louise Slaughter on county time, they came
up with a doozy of an excuse to cover their sorry asses: the employee
was actually on lunch, only he wrote down the wrong time on his time
card because a clock hadn't been adjusted for daylight savings time.
Yeah, right. That shit didn't work in high school, but apparently it's
an effective excuse in the "real" world of county government.
No wonder rational, honest, intelligent people don't run for elected
office; they get hammered from the get-go, before they're even valid
candidates for office. The Board of Elections is supposed to be a nonpartisan
body, even if it's completely staffed by Democrats, but these jackasses
spend their time screwing over potential political candidates before
they even get on the ballot. If it were Haiti this sort of election
fraud would be reported far and wide and cause an international uproar,
but since it's Buffalo this is probably the last you'll hear of it.
Baby
Thrown Out, Bathwater Retained - After rendering its verdict on
September 15, Judge Tim Drury informed the jury that they were the
last group ever to decide a case in his courtroom on the second floor
of Erie County Hall. It was the first courtroom in the county, established
in 1825, now abandoned as local politicians, businessmen, and developers
build (and furnish) brand new courtrooms in their civic-minded efficacy.
The defendant laid his head down on the table, not because a chapter
in the pages of history had come to a close, but because the 31-year-old
man had just been convicted of raping an 11-year-old girl in his house
last December 20. It could have been worse, the kid forgot exactly
which day in October it was when he first lured her to his house and
raped her, so it's only one conviction for first-degree rape, not
two. Facing a maximum sentence of 25 years isn't too bad- oh wait,
for a pedophile going to Attica, that is bad; he might last a week
if he's lucky, maybe longer if he's particularly "pretty".
Too bad about the courtroom, though.
No
CSI for Little Guy - A West Avenue man was recently convicted
of first-degree burglary after a three day trial in which DNA evidence
linked him to the robbery of a Buffalo Police Lieutenant's house on
Richmond Avenue. It seems the individual helped himself to some orange
juice in the fridge during the crime and CSI types managed to get
a saliva sample from the carton and track him down like rabid wolfhounds.
A while back we were the victims of a vicious vehicle break-in; the
thief couldn't manage to steal the stereo (next time bring a screwdriver,
idiot), but they did rip the entire dashboard apart using a Bic pen,
leaving plenty of blood smears behind. When we called the police and
they took a report we mentioned the blood evidence, we were told it
wasn't the "crime of the century" (no shit) and therefore
not worthy of even a rudimentary investigation. Guess you have to
be a cop to get any justice around here, and that applies to all the
unsolved murder cases gathering dust in the Major Crimes Unit office.
Maybe if the victims were cops or their close friends or family, detectives
might manage to solve more than half of them, especially since everyone's
running up overtime in order to pad their retirements. Oh well, that's
Buffalo, suckers, you lock your shit up tight, you still take your
chances.
Feel
Like (killing) Yourself Again - Do you take happy pills? Do you
pump them into your rambunctious little brats? Well, either way, it's
good news for the gene pool. Government scientists have concluded people
who take antidepressants, especially children and teenagers, have a
tendency towards suicidal behavior. And homicidal (think Columbine),
although you won't see that on the nightly news, it might tick off their
drug company sponsors. In fact, this is old news to the drug companies-the
info comes from studies they commissioned, but chose not to make public.
America
is the undisputed home of the quick fix; people actually believe compassionate
pharmaceutical conglomerates can cure all ails with a pill, even if
the "disease" is merely the natural biological impulse of
a seven-year-old kid who can't sit still while some miserable ass shoves
his head down into some textbook. We've got whole generations popping
Prozac, living their lives in a surreal, slow dream, missing out on
the whole reality of living a life of free will. Years from now, if
we're still around, it'll all be exposed as a genocidal scam designed
by drug companies to rake in billions. In a related and even freakier
development, Prozac has turned up in British drinking water-apparently
so many people are on it over there that their collective "overflow"
builds up in the water, surviving the sewage treatment process. What
are the chances it's not happening here, too? Time to start avoiding
drinking tap water altogether. Meanwhile pot is illegal. Don't expect
anything to change, because politicians get rich on the PAC money from
drug companies. More progress in the war against all things natural.
Spicy
Meatball - Six people were busted recently for smuggling $14 million
dollars worth of ephedrine from Europe into the country, including Sandra
Jacobi, co-owner of the Italian restaurant bearing her surname (what's
with these crazy Mediterranean restaurant moguls?). Ephedrine is a neat
upper all on it's own, but it's also the main ingredient in crystal
meth, a nasty, addictive drug burning people out like cheap candles
nationwide which was, naturally, hatched in some drug company lab. Why
a successful owner of a pizza establishment has to resort to organized
crime and drug dealing is beyond us; the markup on a large cheese and
pepperoni alone is like 93% or something, not to mention the soda. Anyway,
Jacobi and company are looking down the barrel of an eight-count indictment
executed by the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force and will
definitely need some good lawyers. Could the seized shipment be the
real reason the Bills have lost two straight games?
Albany
Dysfunction - The circus is back in session after a well deserved
summer break and it began with the usual histrionics when the state
Assembly failed to override Governor Pataki's $1.3 billion in budget
vetoes after vowing to do so. Sheldon Silver, the Majority Leader of
the Assembly, had egg all over his face after three Democrats defected
on the vote. See, Silver and his cronies control the Assembly with an
iron fist, nothing gets done unless he wants it to. It's the same way
in the Senate under Majority Leader Joseph Bruno. Thank God the cracks
are showing, because that's why nothing but bullshit gets done. Consider
the law taking all the speeding fine money away from municipalities
which we were banking on using to wreak havoc with the system. First
they pass it in secret like imperious bean counters, then they repeal
the law in under a month when they realize just how big a can of worms
they opened up. Can't pass a budget on time to save their lives, but
this gets passed and repealed in the blink of an eye.
Good
Game, Bad Move - We thoroughly enjoyed watching the Bills lose their
first game of the season, at least the part where we drank nineteen
Budweisers in front of a 36-inch television screen, puffing weed and
stuffing ourselves with pizza and chicken wings before stumbling home.
Besides that it sucked, until we heard about some drunken fool from
Lackawanna who tried outwitting the Erie County Sheriff's patrolling
outside the Ralph after the game. When Chief Brian Doyle spotted a car
driving "erratically" out of the stadium he tried to pull
Roman Deyoe over for a chat but Deyoe took off, racing through a residential
area chock full of children at play before abandoning his vehicle and
fleeing on foot. Chief Doyle chased him down, suffering minor injuries
in the scuffle. The list of charges was mind boggling: felony DWI, felony
driving while impaired by drugs, felony aggravated unlicensed operation
of a vehicle, reckless endangerment, resisting arrest, obstructing governmental
administration, possession of marijuana, consumption of alcohol in a
motor vehicle, speeding, and driving without registration or insurance.
We think he'll need a lawyer or something to straighten the mess out.
It's a good lesson for BEAST readers: The Bills aren't worth ruining
your life over, not until they win a playoff game or two.
Blind
Zebras - Speaking of which, it turns out officials did such a bad
job calling the second Bills game that the NFL has actually apologized
to the Bills. If you were watching, you probably already know the crucial
plays that were called wrong: a holding call that should have been a
safety, another bogus holding call that cancelled out a 63-yard punt
return, and worst of all, Travis Henry's fourth-and-goal run apparently
actually was a touchdown, not a failed attempt as it was called. Even
if we wouldn't have scored after the long punt return, the two scores
we were robbed of put us up on the Raiders by six points. Sounds like
a conspiracy to us. This one'll be fun to remember when we're edged
out of playoff competition by one game.
NHL
Lockout - Guess which professional sport decided to shoot itself
in the head? Yeah, the NHL, which can hardly afford to lose the revenue.
Outside the Northeast, hockey is mostly a funny sport people understand
a little bit better than curling. Icing? How do you explain that to
some landlocked simp from Missouri? Needless to say, yokels would rather
watch Nascar and Iron Man competition reruns than the Stanley Cup Finals.
Why lock out the players a month before the season begins? Because the
players union refuses to accept a salary cap, despite the fact their
salaries eat up 75% of league revenues. Nobody held a gun to anyone's
head in offering ridiculous salaries to toothless French-Canadians and
Slavs. An inflated market was created under the last collective bargaining
agreement, but that agreement has ended and league officials are adamant
about correcting the system. Both sides are dug in and their positions
are understandable, but the future of professional hockey will suffer
badly. The salary cap in the NFL leveled the playing field, making for
a lot more competition, close games and excitement, where many playoff
spots aren't decided until the final game of the season and anyone can
win the Super Bowl (except the Bills, of course). The NHL's made great
strides in making the game more mainstream, but this debacle could set
the whole thing back half a decade or more. Judging by the way things
stand the season ain't gonna happen, meaning Sabres fans need another
excuse to swill warm, foamy keg beer, drive drunk and be bitter.
