Hey, you probably heard about this already. It's been going on since last week.



This couple, Mr and Mrs Stevens, they've got 7 kids, they moved to Buffalo's East side from the country. They own a home on the Fillmore ave on the between Broadway and Sycamore. They have 2 acres of open lots behind their house, all of which are owned by the city. They requested to buy the lots and turn it into a farm. The city said no. Here it is in the Buffalo News

Here's the land







Behind Fillmore, between Broadway and Sycamore.


What do you guys think?

Should farming come back to the city? Without a huge increase in population, what will happen to abandoned neighborhoods? People keep sprawling homes over farmland, and the city is left with abandoned homes to demolish, how can the city rejuvenate itself? The East Side, how does it get better, where can it go. I don't think you can ignore the East Side and expect the rest of Buffalo to Recover. So where is the east side headed, and how can it be positive?

The area around the proposed farm was a dense, popular Buffalo street at one time, a central Business District for the East Side. Broadway Market is still there. But now it's one of those places you drive around and get depressed. The once magnificent buildings on Fillmore and Broadway just look like death. and most of the people who live in the area would rather move. It's a shame. I get furious when I think of how we let our cities rot. First they went to Cheektowaga and let Broadway rot, now they move further out and toss Cheektowaga out like a half eaten happymeal. Back in the 60s it would have been easy to help the East side, and all of the city, now look what we've got.

I'm pretty familliar with the East side, went on the Tour de Neglect twice, that's about 7-8 hours riding my bike around, and used to drive out to MLK park every other weekend.

The way I see it, the City is absolutely foolish not to allow people to turn acres into farmland. The one thing the East side has going for it is the open space, nature has reclaimed areas, and it's a beautiful thing. You can look as some buildings and businesses as assets, but as a whole, the peaceful open spaces are the strength of the East side.

The Mayor would rather see new houses constructed there. Like there's a shortage of homes. Yea, I know, new homes, people like those. Well, I've seen plenty of them abandoned and boarded up too, on the East side and in South Buffalo. I don't think the houses that were there were the problem, it's the neighborhood that nobody wants. new homes can be wasted just like the old ones if the neighborhood has no heart.




I got tons of links on this, the city seems to be getting a lot of bad press, even that Buffalo News article, on the front page, big picture, titled "City Says E-I-E-I No" There's stuff in Artvoice Buffalo Rising WNY Media is doing video, oh, and there's a Facebook group I joined, it's getting close to 400 members

the non-profit Broadway Fillmore Alive has links to a bunch of different stories


oh, by the way, there is a farm in the City FYI Mayor Brown, it's about 4 blocks East of Main St. Queen City Farm Saturdays at 9 you can volunteer.

Doing some healthcare research.

Check this one out

Drug Companies spend Twice as much on marketing and advertising than they do on Research and Development, about one third of their revenue.



Source PDF
from Families USA

Just one example of how we are getting ripped off despite the huge summs we are paying for our healthcare.

Drug Companies are the third most profitable industry in America.


Why so much Profit? Instead of creating new drugs, they spend a lot of time tinkering with old drugs just so they can get a new patent and have a monopoly for 20 years on the production of something, then they spend their money marketing some new form of Prozac with a new patent and a different name.

Anyone else get annoyed by the TV commercials out there telling me to "ask my doctor" about such and such wonderpill? I don't feel like I'm qualified to guess what kind of perscription I need, that's why I'm going to the doctor in the first place right? If I know how to handle it, I wouldn't be going to the Doctor. And didn't they spend about 13 years in school learning this stuff?

I always hated those drug commercials, I always felt like they were just increasing my cost and providing nothing of value. Now that I know the actual numbers... This is so much worse than I thought.

(e:metalpeter) left a comment on my last journal that is right on. I had to give it a hell yea.

I guess the basic idea is that, in America we've slowly lost our sense of community, and that may be our biggest problem.

I probably worry way too much about America, and our problems. But you know what... in my frantic search for solutions, I often come back to the idea that we are all a little too isolated, a little too fearful, and a little too detached from one another.

Community.

That really is the the path to a better world, and a better life in your own skin.

Somewhere along the way, we were fooled into thinking that if we could just take more and more for ourselves, we would be happier. But I think the opposite is true. You have to give, in order to be happy. Cause you'll never have complete control, the world is disorderly, life is unpredictable, and if you think you can take enough from the world to make you happy, you're missing the point. Rich people can be miserable, and the dirt poor can be joyful. The thing that matters, is the people in your life. And if the people around you matter, then selfishness has no place.

Fear of eachother, and self-centered values. I'll bet that's hurt our society more than anything.

Yea, we moved out of our towns and cities. So we could get away from all those people. Get our own grass, our own pool, our own swingset, our own everything. But self indulgence has not made us happier, and fuckin'a we worked so hard to get it.

I think we're starting to come full circle though. Technology drove us apart, but now it's starting to bring us together again.

You know, I make eye contact with anyone I walk by. I want to know my neighbors. And sitting home alone I can relax, but I need people in order to have fun.




By the way, thanks (e:strip) for bringing people together, thanks paul for making it exist and enviting us to your house. And for improving the site all the time. I won't let you launch the new site without sending you a donation. I'm a cheap bastard, but I put my money where it matters.

I'm frustrated. I don't even know where to start. I think Washington hates change. it seems like they're doing everything possible to preserve the current systems that have destroyed the country. Life changes, circumstances change, and you have to adjust, or else you're screwed. I think we're getting closer and closer to "screwed".

So much of our way of life is unsustainable, but it seems like our politicians are trying to preserve all of it. As if they think a lifestyle based on importing chinese crap, exporting weapons, moving our manufacturing to Mexico, building McMansions on farmland, running our lives on credit, saving zero dollars as a nation, shrinking the middle class, letting our cities rot, and leaving our healthcare up to insurance companies instead of doctors, is something we should be fighting for.

I thought we had finally hit bottom, but now I'm not so sure. Corruption runs deep. There are a lot of people making money off of our misery. I was hopeful that we'd finally see some progress now that the people on top are hurting too, because of the Stock Market. But these bailout proposals look like free cash for Wall Street.

And why the hell does big business think they're entitled to free cash and aid from the government without penalty? Oh, right, cause there's no such thing as a free market, we always bail out the fat cats, that's the way it's always been.

two big issues are bugging the shit out of me. Healthcare and the Economy. I've decided to start with the Economy.

2 Opinions about the economic problem

There seems to be two general opinions on what the problem is in the Stock Market.

1) the first opinion is the Tim Geitner, Paulson, Wall Street perspective

2) the second opinion is the Krugman, Stiglitz, Robert Shapiro, Richard Freeman, and dcoffee perspective. Along with all the others who support wasting as little money as possible, protecting the public, and letting the lying gamblers on Wall Street who got us into this mess go broke.

1) the first opinion;
The main problem is that investors are scared. There is too much instability in the market, and nobody has confidence that they can make money. But things are fundamentally sound, the assets and most of the companies are OK, they're just undervalued because nobody is buying right now. But eventually things will go back to normal.

2) the second opinion;
Some of the money that people had on paper never existed, or it was grossly inflated because of the crazy housing bubble and other bundled debt that was sold. So actually there are 2-3 trillion dollars missing from the stock market, and it's not coming back.

these two ideas are not really compatible. Sure there is a crisis of confidence, that is obvious, but the money either exists or it doesn't. And if it doesn't exist, we'll have to find out what's worthless sooner or later. Or we can let the government buy the trash and save Wall Street's ass.

1) the first opinion supports the idea of giving 'aid' and 'relief' to financial institutions to help them get through this troubled period. Everything will go back to normal eventually, but right now the usual investors are just acting irrational. Maybe the government could buy the worst assets that nobody really understands, and nobody wants. Then it's our problem, instead of Wall Street's, and wall street can at least go back to normal.

2) the second opinion says that, there was a lot of gambling going on in the market, there was a lot of deception, and everybody lost money in the end. Now the public as a whole is in danger because our money was in that corrupt system. The government is the only one who can stabilize the market for the sake of protecting us all. This involves firing the people who got us into this mess, taking control of all the assets from that institution, not just the 'toxic assets'. The government reestablishes confidence by figuring out what all that stuff is really worth, and sells it back once we've made sense of it. We've done this in the past, in the 80's during the savings and loan crisis, maybe you forgot about that crisis, cause the nationalization plan worked damn well.

1) you might call the first option, cash for trash. Or a Bailout.

2) you might call the second option, detox. Or Nationalization.


The fundamental disagreement is weather the money exists or not. Call me crazy, but I don't think people on Wall Street can't accept that the money is gone. If you're on Wall Street you cannot be objective, because you want that money, you expected it, and the fact that it's gone is just impossible, no matter how much research you see to the contrary.

What happened to the money? A lot of it was based on mortgages and other debt. Everyone assumed that housing prices could only go up. So you got a big mortgage, and bought an amazing house. Your house was like a huge credit card that not only had a big credit limit, but its value went up, and eventually you could sell it and make a profit, or at least pay off a chunk out of the debt you owed on it. You wanted an expensive house, so even lame houses became expensive, and you didn't care, cause the value could only go up. At least, that's what everyone said.

The money was based on all of our debt, and we had a shitload, we still do. But we're not so sure we can pay it back, and neither are the banks, cause unemployment is rising. When you take out a 20-30 year mortgage at 4% - 5% you end up paying double, that's right, double, go ahead do the math. So that means the banks, as soon as they gave you that mortgage, they acted like they had cash in their hand. They figured about a quarter of the overall money they were owed wouldn't be paid back. So you get a $200,000 loan, they double it to $400,000, and subtract a quarter, and they guess they're going to make $100,000 from the interest over time. so they took that money, and used it on the stock market.

Add our consumer debt to that pile. And you realize this money is not coming back.


There's a hole in the market, that money is gone. The part that bugs me is that this problem was created on Wall Street, and they expect the taxpayer to bail them out. We should bail ourselves out, and put the greedy crooks who crashed the system in jail.

Lots of interesting things in the News today. The stabbings on Elmwood which (e:James) Mentioned.

Drug Laws

Also Rod Watson takes on the Drug Laws in NYS for 2 reasons;
One the laws target Minorities. 90% of the people in NYS who are locked up for non-violent possessions charges are black or Hispanic, though whites use drugs just as much. Here's a statistic "blacks made up 53 percent of drug offenders in state prisons nationwide, while comprising only 13 percent of the population."

Second reason is the waste of money. "it costs $45,000 to $50,000 to lock someone up for a year. That compares with about $30,000 for residential drug treatment, and about $14,000 for outpatient treatment."
I'm glad we're getting some sane discussion on this issue. In the past just questioning the drug laws could make people label you some sort of self centered hedonist, who values nothing except being in a drunken stupor, and doesn't care about somebody's children.. or something like that. It's a ridiculously simple and shortsighted argument, but a popular one that tends to stop rational discussion.

Least Compotent Criminals .or. Not My Neighbor Anymore

Another Article in the news is about an idiot in South Buffalo who used to run the Moose Lodge on my corner. Apparently he fired bullets into a house because the guy inside was going to testify against him about breaking a somebody's nose in a bar fight. So instead of an assault charge, now this moron has felony witness intimidation, reckless endangerment, illegal possession of a firearm, and a host of other stuff. And he's unemployed, cause he was booted from the moose lodge. So good riddance to him. But it does make me wish that our Prisons were better at being 'correctional' facilities.


Updated......
One Bit of National News relating to the AIG bonuses and the public uproar they are causing.

The public has a right to be pissed. We definitely talked about this issue when the stimulus was being discussed a month ago, and as far back as the election, "Golden Parachutes" was the term being used them. So it should be no surprise that the revelation of these bonuses and others in the industry has caused an uproar. So now some people are trying to use this anger in a political way. I saw Cantor on the TV trying to say "this is exactly the reason why no republicans voted for it". Personally I do think people should have had time to read the bill before voting on it. not that I think much would have changed.

Anyway people are looking for some scapegoats and political windfall from this. So I wanted to dig a little deeper. Chris Dodd (D) chair of the senate banking committee, has been named as a culprit. I looked into it a bit, and I don't think he deserves any of the blame. You can see a video here it's on Huffington post, but the pest part is the 8 minute CNN interview where he sets the record straight.

After reading a little more about this, I think you can fairly blame Timothy Geitner for loosening the restrictions. And maybe Lawrence Summers a bit though he technically doesn't have as much power. But I think Chris Dodd, Barney Frank, and Obama are fine. They all wanted a tougher bill, and they seemed compelled to change things in the compromise. I never really liked Geitner, and there was some article a month back, in Politico I think, about him getting heat, getting laughed at, and argued with, when he was pushing the market's interests in a meeting where most people were most concerned about taxpayers. I think Geitner got what he thought was best, and not it's bitten us all in the ass.

I've been reading more fiction lately. A good book is like watching a movie in your head. It's always tricky turning a book into a movie, and I guess it's typical to say that a movie is never as good as the book. But I loved the Lord of the Rings books, and I thought the movies were good too, even though I completely knew the story ahead of time and they left out some good stuff.

I just watched Harry Potter Order of the Pheonix, and I am so glad I read the book first. This movie was awful! absolutely terrible. It was stupid, it made no sense. My wife went to bed cause she didn't know what was going on. It was so fast that it was totally clumsy and confusing.

I'm so glad I started with the book. It was so interesting that I read it within 2 weeks, and I only spent about 7-10 of those days actually reading it. Yea, it's the type of book you can read for 6 hours straight and go to bed at 2am.

I liked the story way better in my head, I almost want to reread the book just to put the thing back together again. The book is long, and there's some stuff that obviously didn't need to be in the movie, but really I could summarize the movie in about 3 paragraphs.

I saw the first Harry Potter movie and thought it was a lot of fun, so I watched the next 3 too and enjoyed them. I started reading more and after the 4th movie I thought that the story was about to get complicated, and I should read the book, the books are really popular so I might as well try reading one right? I'm glad I did, and from now on I'm reading the book first, I don't care how long it takes.

Ok, I'll just talk about one part. This evil wench comes to take control of the school, she's from the governing board of wizards, which is currently corrupt. She acts all nice to everyone's face, but really she hates students and just wants them to obey orders and take tests, rather than do anything practical, kind of like our system. Point is, she's a bitch and you totally hate her, really bad. So finally she gets some control over the school and the students revolt, they're creating chaos, magical fireworks and swamps in the hallways. She's a weaker wizard and has no idea how to handle this stuff. All the students seem to be competing for "troublemaker in chief", and you enjoy watching the wench lose control cause she totally deserves it, you spend the first half of the book learning that she is evil. Even the teachers don't care, cause she likes power so much, let her be in control of dealing with it the havoc she inspired. The movie totally ruins it, maybe it's impossible to recreate I don't know, maybe they don't want kids setting off fireworks in school, whatever, but when they got to the scene it was a total buzzkill, I was looking forward to the special effects and it was totally wrong. And Professor McGonagall is supposed to be the wench's opposite, a strong woman, who knows how to teach and how to keep children in line, but is willing to give you credit and can recognize an unfair situation. I think she had one scene and two appearances in the movie, lame.

Dammit, I'm writing too much again.

Anyway, the first couple movies are quite good, I'm sure the books are good too. But whatever you do, make sure you read the Order of the Phoenix,

I was going to mention some of the other good books I like, but I gotta go to bed. see ya.

Hey Everyone!!

Just wanted to show everybody some pictures from the Parade on Saturday. Yep Saturday, the one on the "Old Neighborhood" down in the valley, at South Park and Elk.

It was sooooooo fun! I had a ball, it was so authentic and comfortable, and there was a huge crowd, the parade went on for about an hour and a half. Then we went to the Valley Community Center afterword for some corned beef and potatoes. Plus live music and dancing. Did I mention it was a lot of fun? I was so satisfied I didn't even bother going to the parade on Delaware today.

I wanted to post these pics yesterday but my computer has been giving me a hard time, it keeps freezing. But it's happy now, so I better hurry up and post something!



This is how we started our day, 10:30 we're on the front porch and we see this festive pickup truck plating Irish music just 3 houses down the street from us. Molly says 'maybe there's a parade?' So we look it up online, shove some food in our face, fill a plastic bottle with red wine and hit the road.













These dudes are seriously riding motorized coolers! I gotta build one of these.







These kids were so cute, running around collecting candy in their little bags.



This little guy was so excited about the loot he collected, but I really just wanted to take his picture cause he has a green mohawk :)




Old neighborhood parade



This is where the festivities ended, classic Irish party at the Valley Community Center. Lots of kids, live Irish music, corned beef, potatoes, $2 beers. Molly got a sweet hoodie for $10. I talked to some local politicians and block club people.

I'm even more proud to be from South Buffalo now. What a fun crowd. You guys should go next year. Sure there's parties all over the city, but this just has a unique charm. and it's a great excuse to drink beer at noon :)

Just about everyone is ready for a better healthcare system. And they think the government can do a better job than private companies.

New survey numbers out, this is a poll conducted by Lake Research Partners on behalf of Health Care for America Now


Interesting numbers from the poll:

62% of voters believe a public health insurance plan will spend less on profits and administration and force private insurers to compete Compared with Only 28% of voters believe that a public health insurance plan would be a "big, government bureaucracy".

73% of voters want a choice of a private or public health insurance plan, including 63% of Republicans

61% think a public health insurance plan will be better able to control health care costs by using its purchasing power to drive competition.

66% agree that a public health insurance plan will provide choices including a wide choice of doctors.


Doctors everywhere want a National system too, I think it's just about unanimous

Small Business people are becoming more Democratic too, because of Republican opposition to healthcare. We used to worry about taxes because we pay more taxes than employees. BUT Healthcare is now a much more important issue for small and large businesses alike, and at least one Republican is worried about it. David Frum


WalMart.... also likes a national Healthcare system, so do AT&T, General Mills and a bunch more.


the health insurance companies better start playing catch-up, if they want to keep profiting off of our misery. Seems like the country is ready to try anything.

Politicians better get on board soon, or get thrown out of office. I don't think you can fool us or scare us anymore. People realize that we're smart enough, and resourceful enough as a country to come up with a better system than this. Call it Socialized, or Nationalized or whatever you want, whatever it is, it's better than this.

These guys are my new favorite Pro-Healthcare group


News Junkies, read more pro-healthcare opinion here

Religious Right ditching the Republicans? Some prominent leaders apparently ready for something. Watch this video, it might brighten your day.


I'm starting to wonder about the Shrinking Republican party. If more moderate Republicans continue to leave the party and become Independents, who's left in the Republican Party? Fanatics, Extremists, Ideologues.. right? So that means that those are the people will be deciding who the Republican candidates are in the primary elections. Most states have closed primaries where only registered Republicans can vote in primary elections. So... following these numbers, as the Republican party shrinks, the remaining members will be fanatic Rush Limbaugh dittoheads, and other like minded far right folks, right? Seems like the Republican candidates are going to get more extreme and more partisan, and more polarizing because of the people who select them during the primary. Which ends up pushing the party further out of the mainstream, and onto the fringe. Freaky.

Schumer on the Economy...

On the other hand, I watched Lindsy Grahm (R-SC) and Chuck Schumer (D-NY) on Meet the Press Yesterday. These two guys seem smart, and they look like they can have an open discussion and agree on some issues. It was refreshing. click on the "netcast" link to watch the whole thing.

Earmarks...

There's more transparency in the process now, you can look at every earmark and see who suggested it online. And there's about one fifth of the earmarks that there were last year. Plus, these things do create jobs in most cases, so I'm not categorically against "earmarks" so long as people are willing to put their name on them, and make it public.

Nationalize the Banks...

I guess we are waiting for the "Stress Tests" to be complete before we decide what to do with what banks. Schumer says there is no "one size fits all" solution here, and I think that's practical. Let's say CitiGroup is bankrupt, you can let them fail, but that means you'll have to pay out all the FDIC insurance on deposits up to $250,000, that's gotta be expensive. Or you can buy their bad assets, and take shareholder stake in their company, also expensive. Or Nationalization, still not completely sure what this means, something about firing the board of directors, getting rid of the shareholders, and taking the assets into a government trust untill they fix the accounting and find out how much the bank is actually worth. Then they sell it back to the private market. I'm still reading this Stiglitz article about Nationalization

Employee Free Choice Act is Awesome...
We definitely would be a stronger nation with this.

One More... The GOP strategy must be broader than this Make the Democrats less popular... How about fixing your own party sometime too.

Oh, and can I get a Hell Yea for National Healthcare?

I pride myself on being able to see things from another person's point of view. Understanding Republicans or Libertarians, or WTO protesters, or Jehovah Witnesses, or other countries, or people who resort to violence, at one point I even tried to understand Limbaugh's perspective...

I feel that most people are rational. If people are honest with you, you can usually understand their perspective when you look at their life experience and values. And you can have a rational discussion.

Right now I don't understand the Republicans, and it's kind of bothering me.

Last week, they actually called for a spending freeze. They wanted the federal government to call some kind of time-out and not spend any money until October.

Honestly, if we followed that idea it would be an instant death blow to our economy. All the employees that would be laid off from state local and federal jobs? Probably around a million, at least. All the construction projects around the country that would come to a halt. Government programs like medicare that would dry up and leave us without a safety net. It really would be like the Great Depression all over again. No safety net, no jobs, no money, tent cities, food riots, the whole miserable package.

And this wasn't some talking point floating around on cable news, they introduced a Bill in the House of Representatives and voted on the crazy thing. AND every Republican voted FOR it, along with 8 Democrats in the house. I'm serious.

Can you find a single economist who thinks that is a good idea? Even at the Heritage Foundation or PNAC? It's completely Insane.

Some Republicans do not agree with this kind of... policy?

David Brooks calls it "Insane" David Frum, says the party should fight for independent voters minorities and women, instead of worrying about Rush Limbaugh and his audience of True Believers.

These Republicans make more sense to me, I can follow their train of thought, even if I don't agree. They are not liberal, they're definitely 'invisible hand of the market' types, but I just think they're critical thinkers, they're logical, so I can understand them.

Sometimes You gotta Change Your Mind

You have to govern based on the facts you have available, and the situation that's in front of you. I think some Party Loyalists are just married to their talking points, they've worked so hard over the years to burn their slogans into our brains. "Big government = Bad" "Tax Cuts = Good" "Big Business = Efficient" "Government = Wasteful"

Those slogans are Old, they originated based on circumstances that no longer exist. You Must adjust to the facts, and address the current situations.

You know Teddy Roosevelt was a Republican. If he ran today, he'd have Grover Norquist and Karl Rove chasing him out of the country and calling him an anti-American Socialist, who would bring an end to America as we know it.

That reminds me, knock it off with the Socialism please. We were not socialist under Clinton, and we are not a 4.6% tax increase away from becoming Cuba. Ditch the slogans and talking points, get your heads out of the box, and look at the information that's in front of you.

Maybe...

Maybe Nationalizing the Banks is smarter than letting them fail and cheaper than pumping out a few trillion to resurrect them.

Maybe GM wouldn't need a bailout, and neither would anyone else if we abandoned the Employer Based Healthcare system that is bankrupting our companies.

Maybe "Free Trade" never really benefited America, and we should try manufacturing things in our own country again.

Maybe lowering taxes on the rich doesn't create the most jobs. And maybe some government programs are actually useful and should be expanded.

Maybe, just maybe, sometimes you have to try something else. because the facts and the circumstances have changed.

"Ronald Reagan was a great leader and a great president because he addressed the problems of his time. But we have very different problems-and we need very different answers...." We need real solutions.