The BEAST: Buffalo's Best Fiend

The Giambra Family & Friends Program

And a good deal it is! Let’s face it, despite all our cool culture, Buffalo is a backwater town and the deserved butt of many national blizzard jokes. The real laugh isn’t all the snow, though, it’s how crooked our politicians are. Guys like, oh let’s just say, Joel Giambra, a complete douche bag who got elected to the highest position in the county by saying the political system was corrupt, then did exactly the same shameful things as his predecessors, only on a much larger scale. We call him Don Giambra because he’s got a lot of family and friends on the county payroll, a huge assortment of misfits and losers milking the system for all it’s got. His good buddy Victor Getz, aka The Driver, makes over $80,000 a year, but he’s only the tip of the iceberg. Thirteen of Getz’s relatives suckle from Erie County’s teat, to the tune of almost $600,000 a year. Giambra’s own relatives account for another $300,000, and that’s not including whatever sweet benefits they get. It’s a twisted spiderweb of friends and relatives and relatives of friends all weaving their way across our government, filling hundreds of jobs without standard requirements like education or intelligence or even passing a simple civil service exam. It’s like magic, even if you’ve only worked menial construction jobs all your life, if your name ends in a vowel and you’re related, well then you too can magically become a $75,000 a year special consultant to the county. Must be nice to be in that tight circle known as the Giambra Family, never having to fear about little things like competency, employment, or a paycheck. You know a politician is really shitty when even the Buffalo News turns on him.

The Patron-Age

County hacks are over deadline, hammering out the 2005 budget. After failing to come to an agreement by their supposed midnight deadline Tuesday night, they’re still trying at press time, with a few hours to go before defaulting to Giambra’s proposed catastrophe. No word yet whether or not the sales tax will be raised 12% to 9.25 cents, but it’s pretty much a guarantee knowing the way things work around here. The public story is that they’re arguing over letting the city share the tax increase, but word on the street is that none of the legislators are willing to give up their personal pork projects—typical. The good news is that Giambra’s sky-is-falling Red Budget has sparked a patronage war, which should remove some of the aforementioned leeches from both the Republican and Democrat sides, as well as force the county to share the extra sales tax revenue with other local governments. It makes us really happy to know connected insiders are going to lose their jobs and actually have to come down to our level and search in vain through the pathetic employment ads like the rest of our broke asses. Others will lose their free cars, cell phones, pagers, and laptop computers (the horror!). These cuts will restore aid to libraries and keep health and public safety workers on the job, and this is only possible because the Democrat controlled Legislature can amend Giambra’s budget without him overriding them (Joel can veto additions, but not cuts). Sadly, none of this will help fix Erie County’s woeful fiscal affairs. It’s a band-aid slapped on a severed jugular vein. Funny how the “temporary penny” we’ve been paying since 1985 is turning into a “temporary dime” and if you don’t think our spendthrift politicians will keep increasing it ad infinitum you’re on another planet.

Maybe the most horrendous part of this story is that everyone—the News, county legislators, and even Giambra himself all refer to “patronage jobs” without batting a goddamn eye. Any crooked politician worth his salt—Dick Cheney, for instance—knows enough to deny corruption no matter how damning the evidence may be. But Joel is cocky enough to defend it, arguing that, hey, everybody does it, and he needs those patronage jobs. The Legislature talks about eliminating some patronage jobs, probably a small fraction, because they’re certainly in on the game too. The mere fact that these people are so comfortable with what amounts to theft of tax dollars, unafraid of voter retribution, should indicate to you just how worthless they are. And if you’re comfortable with it too, then you shouldn’t complain when nobody plows your street this winter.

Fuel Gouge

Welcome to December, Buffalo; it finally snowed and it’s getting frigid and National Fuel executives couldn’t be happier. Natural gas is at the highest price ever, ensuring broke residents won’t be able to keep comfortable again this winter. It’s the old supply and demand game, which doesn’t account for students, families on welfare, or just plain underemployed locals being able to afford heat. Welcome to America, home of the brave, where the price of basic necessities are wholly out of whack around the country. There are cities out West, built in the harsh extremes of the desert where nothing grows and very little lives naturally unless everything is piped and trucked in. Folks out there live very nicely because government subsidized utilities keep their bills ridiculously low and allow for these air conditioned nightmares to thrive. Meanwhile, upstate New Yorkers get gouged, suffer, and even freeze to death while National Fuel gets rich. This winter the American Dream for us is to stay fucking warm and with all the libraries closing the list of places we can soak up some free heat are diminishing at an alarming rate. Someday we’ll earn enough money to move away, maybe out to Arizona where it’s nice and dry, the golf courses are brilliant green, and the politicians fight like mad dogs to keep utility bills “reasonable.”

Pano’s Problematic Expansion

Elmwood Avenue is the hottest retail strip in the city and they did it all on their own, one business at a time without any bullshit government sponsored incentives. They’re locals, some struggling, some thriving, all deserving of much praise for taking a gamble on making a go of it in Buffalo instead of some Transit Road strip mall. But in true Buffalo fashion, when a guy like Pano Georgiadis tries to grow his successful restaurant, people and groups and politicians come out of the woodwork to stop him from demolishing the flophouse next door. So what if he wants to bring more people to Elmwood Avenue? they say, that house must be saved at all costs because, um, hmmm, well, we don’t really know. Is it the curved turret-like thingy which makes the shingle-style house an architectural masterpiece? Is the ugly red paint job somehow reminiscent of classic, 19th Century bad taste? We don’t know, but the Mayor won’t grant poor Pano a permit to demolish the building because high-minded friends of his, you know the kind of rich, educated people who know better than stupid commoners what’s best, are against the idea. So while Bass Pro gets shoved down our throats without any opposition, local businessmen get the shaft because they’re small fish. At this rate the whole pond should be dried up soon enough and we’ll have only ourselves to blame for this nonsense because we keep electing assholes who screw everything up.

Examine Thyself - Where does a 20-page thin weekly paper get off announcing a new “two-paper” era in Buffalo? Don’t get us wrong; we wish the new Buffalo Examiner all the luck in the world, despite their simplistic politics and desperate obsession with hockey during an NHL lockout. But charging a buck an issue and swearing off morally questionable ads does not position them to challenge a huge daily like the News, and it certainly doesn’t make this a two-paper town. Likewise, their paper-thin assertion that other local alternatives aren’t respectable because there’s booby ads in the back is just silly—we all have to pay our bills somehow, and, frankly, we’ll be surprised (and a little impressed) if the Examiner’s business model pans out.

Their conceit continued in their last issue, featuring a piece on the old Courier-Express a multi-section daily, call “The Other Other Newspaper.” What? Guys, do you really think you can talk this town into believing your paper, a full 12 pages smaller than this one, is any kind of threat to Warren Buffet’s all-smothering pillow of journalistic mediocrity? Puh-leese. Nice layout, though.

Extra Cornbread - Mary Kunz, The Buffalo News’ “Fresh Voice,” has rapidly become a central focus of liberal rage, universally despised among local progressives for her vapid, casually fascist columns. Since the election, she seems to have calmed down a bit, or perhaps she’s been muzzled (we can only hope). But, it would seem, she never fails to get her facts wrong. According to Sam, the owner/operator of Everything’s Special on Allen, one of the best takeout places in town (as long as you’re not in a hurry), Kunz liberally misquoted him in her insipid “Buzz” column a couple of weeks ago. He was especially put off by her use of ebonics. “The word ‘bling’ is not in my vocabulary,” says the disgruntled proprietor. Apparently, whatever Sam really said wasn’t quite “colorful” enough for the wretched Kunz.

On a related note, it seems Alt Press has decided to take aim at Kunz, promising to criticize her at some point in the future. Wow, guys, where’d you get that idea?