Assessing Mayor Warren's first year in office.

2014 is drawing to a close, and it is time to assess Rochester mayor Lovely Warren and her administration.
She and they have been an unmitigated disaster for Rochester.
From the moment Ms. Warren won election as mayor in November, 2013 she made it clear that it was HER show and that she would do and say whatever she liked.
She immediately claimed credit for any developments that were already underway in Rochester. Ms. Warren was also incapable of telling the truth about anything else.
Lying is a normal enough behavior among politicians. Lovely Warren raised blatant lying to a whole new level. This ranged from Uncle Reggie's dangerous speeding to the supposed hacking of her Facebook page.
When confronted about this last January by none other than news reporter Rachel Barnhart, Ms. Warren imperiously replied "I am the mayor."
That is true enough. Lovely Warren IS the mayor, but nobody died and made her queen. She is unaware of that.
Her administration resembles the White House of Richard Nixon: neurotic, easily offended and with a "me against them" attitude that has continued unchecked.
Her appointees resemble Nixon's "Palace Guard," keeping her insulated and isolated from reality, continually reassuring her of her popularity and the "rightness" of her actions. There is a conspiracy against them, but they can never say who is doing it.
This has done the mayor no favors, and everyone refuses to tell her the truth for fear of losing their six-figure jobs.
Chief among these staffers is the personal assistant to the mayor, Tracey Miller.
Ms. Miller is the wife of Judge Stephen Miller. She was also the mayor's legislative assistant while Ms. Warren was on City Council.
Ms. Miller controls all access to the mayor, making her the most powerful person in Rochester city government after the mayor. Ms. Miller prefers to limit contact with the mayor to people she likes, unless the mayor chooses otherwise
That she has assumed such power is odd, because Ms. Miller has absolutely no knowledge of city politics beyond the black community and black ministers, nor had she been in charge of other staff people before. She has no real people skills, but is apt at manipulating the staff.
She has made herself feared among the mayor's appointees, and an order from Ms. Miller should be taken as an order from the mayor herself.
But this behaviour has been typical of the mayor's office since her taking over last January.
Cronyism is another charge against the mayor. All politicians do it, but Lovely Warren has turned it into a new art form, reviving positions that were long dormant, creating new ones and requiring an armed bodyguard ( Uncle Reggie ) to drive her all over town raised quite a stink. But stacking the deck at the Rochester Housing Authority with political friends so that another buddy might lead that organization was seen as way too much, especially since it was seen as black racism directed against the Hispanic community.
When Lovely Warren spoke of "two Rochesters," she meant it. Not of the "haves" and "have nots," but of the black community against everyone else. Rather than build bridges between them to achieve some sense of impending equality, she has put up barricades. If it seems that she favors the black community above all else, well, they are her primary base of support.
Her statement about the Ferguson trial, a situation that required delicate handling at best, was hers and hers alone, and it was disastrous. After the murder of Officer Pierson in the line of duty here last summer, it revealed her primary concern is not all of Rochester. The mayor should be building on a broader base than just the black community.
But she chooses not to.
And so it goes on.
The Warren Administration has been given to outright lying, of explicit underserved favoritism, of taking credit where none is due.
Even "Clergy on Patrol" has been limited to the black faith community, more or less.
The black community in Rochester is 40% of the population. Since the mayor has exhausted a lot of goodwill from the remaining 60%, and refused to build bridges with them for the benefit of all of Rochester, to preserve her power she must favor what she has left.
David Gantt is much gratified. He trained her.

A new wind blows through the Democrat and Chronicle: Thank you, David Andreatta.

For decades Rochester's only daily newspaper, the Democrat and Chronicle, has acquired the reputation of being a biased, liberal rag. Its primary purpose was to promote the social and political agenda of the editor, James Lawrence. First on the agenda was political correctness for white folks, which is to say that white folks shouldn't say anything truthful or honest that might offend other people. Lawrence's programme also featured social engineering and white folks accepting the guilt for three hundred years of black slavery and discrimination.
It was with this in mind that Mr. Lawrence and company created the "Unite Rochester" scam. It was supposed to encourage open dialogue about "the elephant in the room" ( white racism against blacks ).
It did no such thing.
"Unite Rochester" does provide a forum for the black community to air their grievances against the white community. As for the white folk who were invited to participate in "Unite Rochester," they are mostly liberal economic, social and political elites. They seek to maintain their elite status and liberal credentials by shouting "mea culpa," beating their chests with one hand while the other hand is squarely behind their backs with fingers crossed.
There are other elephants in the room, which Mr. Lawrence chose to ignore for obvious reasons.
Those elephants consist of accepting personal responsibility for actions committed and of black youths assaulting Burmese and Nepalese refugees, most of whom reside in the 28th legislative district.
Mr. Lawrence retired as editor of the Democrat and Chronicle a few weeks ago. Nobody, especially me, expected any change in the nature of that newspaper's bias.
Until yesterday.
David Andreatta, a staff writer for the D&C, wrote a scathing article about a recent incident concerning Mayor Lovely Warren's Facebook page. Andreatta wittily likened the mayor's claim that her page was hacked to the existence of unicorns. This was the first time ever that the D&C permitted the publication of a report that was highly critical of Lovely Warren.
A brief recounting is necessary here.
In a testy exchange with a suburbanite busybody on the mayor's Facebook page, someone purporting to be her told him to mind his own business in a less than politically correct way.
Owing to the uproar of this statement, the mayor promptly claimed that she didn't write it.
I firmly believe that she didn't write it. The mayor is a busy woman, and it highly unlikely that she has the time to waste on Facebook.
On the other hand, the mayor also stated that three of her staff has access to her page. This was an oblique way of stating that she doesn't personally respond to everything on Facebook. She has her paid staff do it, hence their ability to access her page.
I am guessing that "the three" are old, dear friends of hers. Which is why she exonerated them. She claimed that they didn't write it, either, and that her page was hacked.
Oh, come now, mayor. That I don't believe.
I do have a few friends whose Facebook pages have been hacked, but that was because they had left their pages open and unattended, or never logged off of a public computer.
How many of "the three" have done that? Don't they each have their own computers at taxpayer expense? Don't some of them have more than one computer? Are her nearest and dearest, who have been entrusted with appointments close to the mayor's office, that stupid and careless?
Or is it simply a case of her loyal supporters, exasperated by criticism of their dear friend, boss and mayor simply exploding and telling off one of her critics?
That I do believe.
What is important here is that someone on the D&C's staff didn't buy the mayor's story, either, and was allowed to print his opinion.
This is a radical departure from the D&C's previous policy of molly-coddling the mayor throughout her and her administration's frequent and almost regular screw-ups since she took office.
Thank you, Mr. Andreatta, for breathing a bit of new life into the D&C. Time will only tell if you and others on staff will be allowed to print more comments critical of the mayor and her crew when their actions so deserve.
One thing is for certain: had Mr. Lawrence remained as editor, you would not have been permitted to run your post.

Opening Shots

Hello, everyone.

Steve ( Istvan ) Bathory here.

I am a lifelong Rochester resident, the son of Hungarian refugees.

I was born and brought up here in Rochester. I grew up on Clifford Avenue, near Joseph Avenue.

My parents sent me to Catholic grammar school, where the nuns tried beating religion into their students, to make them as God-fearing, ignorant and bigoted as they were.

I went to the old Edison Tech on Clifford Avenue, where they taught useful trades to their students ( then ).

After a three year stint in the Army ( sitting out the Vietnam war at Fort Dix was no easy matter ), I went to RIT and then onto Kodak.

I retired ten years ago, and have enough leisure time to watch how Rochester is going down the toilet at the hands of the Democratic factions in control of the city's government. The Republicans have their share of blame there, too. They abandoned the city to its fate years ago, making the city Republicans look ridiculous.

That's why Bob Duffy changed his party affiliation, to make himself more palatable to Rochester's voters. Being electable did not make him any smarter or better a leader, but it has made him a local celebrity. He's smart enough to laugh all the way to the bank because of it.

That's the reason for my writing this blog.

Ever since the D&C got rid of Andy Rau as a blogger ( his joining the Warren Administration would make his comments seem biased, not that the D&C's have been anything but biased in favor of the Gantt wing of the local Democrats ), there has been nothing balanced in that journalistic rag that would seriously criticize the city's Democratic government in general or the mayor's office in particular.

I choose the title of my blog to be "Disturbing the Peace." It is to disturb the peace of the smug politicians and their appointees.

Stay tuned for future blogs. I can guarantee you that they won't be flattering.

And if some of you must resort to the old saying, "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all," I beg to differ. Silence is what those political con men now in office rely upon.