Sunday, April 26, 2015

A city fit for pigs.

Next week is "Clean Sweep."
This event is not an ages old tradition in the City of Rochester. It began as a publicity stunt in 2006, the brainchild of Bob Doofus' palace guard to test his popularity. To see if thousands of people would come out to clean the streets at his request.
Nobody can deny that it worked.
Sort of.
A few thousand participants got a t-shirt and a hot dog for lunch.
The number of participants fell after a few years.
Doofus' successors continued Clean Sweep, although the current mayor cut it down to one day for the entire city.
The majority of Rochesterians never joined in at all. They knew a farce when they saw one. Residents pay taxes for environmental services. Clean Sweep cost the taxpayers extra. DES people were paid overtime to collect the litter picked up by volunteers that day. Within days of every Clean Sweep, the streets returned to their original trashy, litter-strewn conditions.
That's because Rochester is filled with pigs. The human variety.
Pigs who throw their fast food bags and styrofoam containers out their car windows when driving along.
Teenage pigs who are savvy enough to use smart phones but are too stupid to use trash cans when roaming through our streets after patronizing mom and pop stores to buy junk food.
Pigs who walk their dogs and let them shit everywhere, including their neighbors' lawns, without picking it up.
The poorest parts of town are also strewn with the most trash. Make whatever correlations you wish.
I know enough people who complain about trash being blown onto their front lawns. I also know that plenty of them are too fucking lazy to bend over and pick it up. That's especially true where there are rental units. It's the landlord's job to pick up trash that was blown onto their lawns that was originally dropped by pigs sauntering along the street, not the tenants who live there.
The tenants would rather complain and wallow in that filth rather than pick it up.
The landlords claim that they are forced to rent to pigs who ruin their properties and bring the property values down in certain neighborhoods.
It is the people who pick up litter when they walk their dogs, knowing it to be a losing battle, that get my sympathy. Not the pigs who are excused from behaving responsibly for socio-economic reasons.
Since the City is going back to neighborhood policing, which is an imprecise term, perhaps our law enforcement officers can start ticketing litterbugs. The courts can charge hefty fines for littering.
Or we can use the inmates in the county lock up to clean our streets, at no additional cost to the taxpayer. We already provide them with room and board. It's the perfect job for those white-collar, weekend only inmates.
This doesn't stop the problem of littering. It starts in the home.
How do you change the behavior pattern of pigs who were raised by pigs?
Perhaps the mayor's Operation Transformation will answer that question.

Thursday, April 23, 2015

The continued asininity of the Rochester School Board.

Everyone already knows that Rochester's inept superintendent of schools Bolgen Vargas wants to sue the equally inept school board. They were infringing on his rights. His attorney has already stated Vargas would drop the suit if they extended his contract past the 2016 school year.
Rochester's City Newspaper has reported that talks between the two parties will decide Vargas' fate. The same paper also reported that board member Willa Powell didn't want to search for a new superintendent, saying that this is just a family squabble that can be resolved.
It is the same school board that hired Vargas in the first place.
Both preside over the worst school system in New York State. It is also one of the worst school systems in the entire USA.
And isn't it Powell and the commissioners' duty to search for a new superintendent if the current one has been tried and found wanting? Perhaps she isn't up to it any more.
The school board has hired a parade of inept superintendents over the years. The public schools here have continued to decline, providing many parents who reside in Rochester  a viable reason to move to the suburbs so their school age children can attend arguably better school systems. The school board and the superintendent feel no shame at this, since they continually point the finger at each other and anyone else who might be handy to blame.
Admittedly, many parents are blameworthy. They have entrusted their children to the school system, expecting it to raise their children for them. They blame the teachers, the school board and the superintendents for the piss poor education offered to their children. Then, like the typical assholes that most voters are, proceed to re elect the self same commissioners to the school board that they have accused of making a mess of the schools.
The school board has also filed a complaint against the principals and administrators union, arguing that the union has been acting in bad faith. That same union voted no confidence in Vargas in January.
Is anyone beginning to see a pattern here? Or a least a vicious circle?
Why do we even need a school board that has nothing but a history of failure behind it? They are the ones who hired the equally unsuccessful string of superintendents who have left the schools worse than they found them.
The answer is simple: politics.
The school board is elected by the voters, who are told that it is their right to elect the school board that has made Rochester's schools the worst in the state. Any attempt to dismantle the school board would be depriving citizens of their right to vote. That's undemocratic, perhaps even racist.
Playing on the fears of the voters in this way has resulted in the continued existence of a school board whose mission is to insure that they will hold their seats for as long as they want them, no matter how shitty they and the superintendent make the public schools.
It's a sad state of affairs for those parents who can't afford to send their kids to private schools or move out to the suburbs with better school systems.
Who cares if Vargas stays or goes? Or if the school board does?
Of course, what the school board might really be worried about is finding a competent superintendent who might suggest that the voters shitcan the lot of them. That would be a change from the superintendents they have hired in the past who let them do whatever it is that they claim to do.
For them, it's best that everything remain the same.

Tuesday, April 14, 2015

You can blame the Democrats for the downtown transit center.

For years, youth violence has been a regular occurrence at the bus transfer site on Main Street.
There has been no real outrage about youth violence downtown, apart from the local media using it as filler between their weather and sports segments.
Most Rochesterians have come to accept that as a normal, if ugly, fact of life.
It is one of our blood sports.
True, it might bother a few business people when they are trying to peddle downtown Rochester to outside developers.
However, we have been assured by City Hall that downtown Rochester is coming along just nicely.
They are among the morons who somehow believed moving the transfer site to a new Transit Center just around the corner would curtail the violence on Main Street.
It worked. On Main Street.
Youth violence is now concentrated at the new Transit Center, 500 feet away, on Clinton Avenue.
The police, RTS, the school board and the superintendent of schools are all merrily pointing fingers at each other.
The Democrats are to blame.
Republican Maggie Brooks' vision of Renaissance Square featured a bus terminal at the current location.
It was shot down by the Democrats only because Brooks was a Republican, not because it was a stupid plan.
It was stupid.
Within a year, Rochester Mayor Bob Doofus requested a transit center on the same site. Since Doofus was a Democrat, the Democrats who own City Council gladly obliged him.
If Doofus had still been a Republican, it is doubtful that they would have acceded to his wishes.
That is the truth of the matter.
The transit center opened last November, entertaining other passengers with youth violence and regular stabbings ever since.
You can thank the assholes on City Council for that.
With the exception of Mike Patterson, who hadn't been appointed to it yet; and Carolee Conklin, who said it was a 19th century solution to a 21st century problem.
The new transit center: the Democrats' gift to downtown redevelopment and to emergency wards at every nearby hospital.

Sunday, April 12, 2015

HillBilly Clinton to run for president again.

HillBilly Clinton, the power-crazed, female half of America's Ceausescus, announced that she would run for president.
Again.
That was not unexpected.
Only those people who are incredibly stupid and in need of being institutionalized would have thought that she wouldn't.
Mrs. Clinton is running because neither she nor her husband have any shame worth mentioning.
Their only local equivalent, much lower on the power scale but every bit as sinister, are Molly Clifford and her boy-toy Ken Warner.
Equally sinister Democratic leaders, like Cuomo, are also supporting Mrs. Clinton's run, because birds of a feather flock together.
And because nobody wanted him as president.
Members of the women's movement and their supporters are oohing and ahhing over Mrs. Clinton's announcement.
They want a woman president.
That the woman candidate in question is more than just slightly shady doesn't seem to worry them one bit
Yet Mrs. Clinton's clawing her way up the political ladder has no really modern elements to it, or even reflects the rantings and the ravings of the far left wing of the women's liberation movement.
Simply put, Mrs. Clinton got to where she is because of a man.
Her husband.
Nobody ever would have heard of her had her husband not been elected Governor of Arkansas and then President of the United States.
Her husband was an adulterous pig in Arkansas and in the Oval ( or is it Oral ) Office.
His attempts to convince his bimbo, Monica Slutinsky, to perjure herself was the real issue in the latter case, not his healthy sexual appetite.
It was the Democrats who turned that circus into a moral issue, not a legal one.
Hillbilly played the role of the hurt but supportive wife to perfection.
In exchange, her husband gave her a license to steal.
Most cheating husbands buy their wives cars or diamonds to make up for their piggish behavior.
Billbo bought her a Senate seat, financed by the federal taxpayers.
She did nothing there but bide her time.
Hillbilly didn't win the presidential election in 2008, because most white bleeding heart liberals allied with the black community to elected Barack Obama.
They felt it was more chic to have a bi-racial man as president than a dumpy, old white bag.
Obama shut Hillbilly up by making her Secretary of State, where she made a mess of that office.
When confronted about Benghazi, Hillbilly resorted to traditionally female tactics: she cried, pleaded illness and fainted.
These are the credentials she feels make her fit to become the next president.
The only thing that even vaguely makes Hillbilly look like a modern woman was her involvement in the Whitewater scandal.
That ended badly, too.

Saturday, April 11, 2015

Who in Hell is Dorothy Styk?

Much has been made of County Legislator Dorothy Styk's conversion to the Democratic Party.
Some people have claimed that this signals a swing to the Left in Monroe County.
It is no such thing.
First, she is not prominent.
Styk was appointed to her post, and was elected to it only last November.
She hasn't been around long enough to make her more than an item of passing interest.
Second, her district has more registered Republicans than Democrats.
They are the ones who elected her .
Third, she will have to run for office again this year, since all of the county legislature's seats are up for grabs.
Since it is an election year, all of the legislators will be out campaigning and too busy to do anything of importance until after the election.
This means that Styk, whatever her supposed good intentions, won't be able to prove herself capable of doing anything of note.
Running as a Democrat in a Republican dominated district might be problematic for her after her sudden conversion.
Fourth, the county GOP already had a candidate with which to replace her within seconds of her conversion.
This means that they weren't happy with her, either
After so many setbacks in the last few months, the MCDC and their mentally challenged supporters among the media are crowing way too loud about this non-event.
Lets see if the Democrats will put their money where their big mouths are to pull out the stops for Styk.

Wednesday, April 8, 2015

Filling up the county executive race.

County Clerk Cheryl DiNolfo declared her candidacy for County Executive months ago.
She wishes to follow in Maggie Brooks' footsteps and has been understudying for the role ever since she became County Clerk.
DiNolfo is known for her perfect hair; her perfect make-up; her perfect nails; her perfect clothes and her three-inch heels.
Her campaign has been quiet up to this point because she has been swinging exclusively in Republican circles.
Given the fact that the Republicans control most of the county, that might not be such a bad tactic.
Democrat Sandra Frankel announced yesterday that she will challenge DiNolfo for the office.
It will be Frankel's second attempt to become County Executive.
Frankel was Brighton Town Supervisor for nearly twenty years.
It was, and remains, one of the most expensive places in Monroe County in which to live.
Frankel, a charming, soft-spoken lady, was soundly defeated by Brooks in 2011.
Even the stench of corruption pervading Brooks' personal, professional and political life did not preclude her from winning her third and final term.
Frankel was simply too much of a lady and too kind for the fight then.
Nor did she receive adequate support from the MCDC.
Perhaps she and they have learned their lessons.
If they have, it will be a lively campaign.
State Assemblyman Harry Bronson is also mulling over a campaign against DiNolfo.
It is ironic that they both worked for the same company after they graduated from law school.
Bronson has had a string of election victories in the last decade, especially against anti-gay Republican challengers.
There the deck was stacked in his favor.
Bronson's district includes parts of Rochester that are heavily populated by the gay community.
As an openly gay man, Bronson was able to exploit that political capital to his advantage.
That advantage would be severely diminished in a county wide race where Republicans hold sway and are not sympathetic to the gay community, to say the least.
His chances of winning are not good.
County Minority Leader Carrie Andrews rounds out the Democratic triumvirate.
Because of term limits, she cannot run again. So she needs a new hobby.
There are no other local races she could simply slide into and hope to win.
That leaves only the County Executive race.
Unfortunately, Andrews is not a practitioner of the art of compromise, which would not reassure the Republican dominated towns.
Moreover, it is doubtful that enough Republicans will lose legislature seats to make Democrats the majority party there.
If she won, which is highly unlikely, she would be saddled with a Republican dominated County Legislature that would ride roughshod over her.
At least it would make their meetings interesting.
But she is the least likely candidate to win.
I wonder if there will be any other takers.

Thursday, April 2, 2015

Much evil has been done in the name of god.

First, I don't care what people believe, or how they worship, as long as they don't impose their beliefs upon me.
The Constitution gives Americans the freedom to practice the religion of their choice.
It does not give religious Americans the right to use their beliefs to discriminate against people who do not share their opinions.
That's what "Freedom of Religion" laws enacted by several states, most recently in Indiana, do.
It has been argued that this act, like others of its kind, was directed at the gay community.
And the gay community reacted to it.
The gay community has been marching out of their closets for years, demanding full legal equality as human beings and taxpayers.
They weren't going to back down.
It surprised everyone.
Even straight politicians came out against Indiana's "Freedom of Religion" law.
It is teaching the Bible-thumpers that they don't have the comfort of silence from the gay community anymore. Or from sensible straight people, either.
The Bible-thumpers don't like it. They claim such protests, and political support for the protesters, violates their Constitutional right to the free practice of their religions.
Which means their right to discriminate against others on religious grounds.
Men invented god to explain what they did not understand. Then they came to worship their creation and use the crutch of religion to beat their enemies.
Much of the early history of mankind deals with inter and intra religious warfare, slaughtering opponents for the love of god.
Christians, Muslims, Jews and nearly every other religious sect have their share of guilt in this respect.
We have become only slightly more civilized since the Inquisition.
But only just slightly more.
Because "Freedom of Religion" laws legalize bigotry, giving incredibly stupid Bible-thumpers the right to discriminate against those they hate.
Hypocrites who keep babbling about love of god.
For once, I would like to applaud Rochester Mayor Lovely Warren for her opposition to Indiana's "Freedom of Religion" act.
It will have no practical effect, as it is purely symbolic.
But for a woman who claims to be religious, whose political slogan is "Believe," that took guts.