Yep. Being on the border of another country as well. Cash from Canadian imports yada yada yada.
I by no means am saying I have the knowhow to pull this stuff off (yet). Just saying those that are in office and in positions whom are “professionals” should be able to or else WTF are they doing in there.
Taxing the shit out of working class and fee’ing them do death isn’t the answer. It makes them leave or lowers the quality of living here for the masses. Dunno if we have any readers in here. Check out “the tipping point”, excellent book about mass psychology. Anyhow, the short relation to this is the way NYC and it’s crime was cleaned up. They didn’t create a HUGE task force or have a HUGE budget. They cleaned up grafitti which is a sign of a broken system. They started going after fare beaters, which seems petty but they soon realized 2 things. First the fare beaters were most times carrying weapons and had criminal records, sometimes warrants. So they could get trash off the street by simply looking for fare beaters. Also non criminals would see a fare beater and think “why should I pay, he didn’t”. So you had decent people stealing and acting criminal. Moral/Cliffs are it’s often the small changes that create a tipping point.
As much as I despise Kevin Gaughan, I applaud his recent efforts in reducing the size of government and government waste. That is a (small) step in the right direction.
“I have an idea. How about a city income tax for Buffalo. The money could go directly to help stamp out poverty and would make the wealthy elite pay for it. If you are working - you pay. If you are not working - you collect benefits. You know, spread the wealth around. Works for me.”
I call bull shit on the free nys healthcare. Before i got diagnosed with cancer (when i had two soft ball sized monsters sticking out of my neck) it took me losing all of my income (apperently I made too much on my unemployment after getting laid off from Seal & Design) to finaly get Medicaid. That Family Health plus bullshit only works if you have kids. If you are single and laid off of work, NYS tells you to go fuck yourself.
Ive had six months of Chemo treatment at Roswell now, will be starting Radiation at the end of the month and so far Ive done nothing but fight with medicaid and social services to get any sort of help/aide. I just got food stamps last month. I still have absolutly no income at all. If it wasnt for my girlfriend supporting my cancer ridden ass i would have been dead before I even got diagnosed.
So why don’t more of us business minded people that believe in Buffalo and are going to stay here run for political office and try to make the changes the NEED to be changed.
I’ve honestly thought about running for a smaller position in local governent.
I mean if a blind idiot and Hillary could be higher ups in NYS, then hell, I have a chance…
As my great aunt learned… $760 until you let it run out completely. Then they’ll give you more because it’s an emergency.
And Camarojoe… I was really close to being on the Amherst ballot for town board this year. In the end I decided tacking on that part time job to my full time job would mean too little time with my daughter. As she gets a little older I will seriously consider it.
As ILC mentioned though, it’s no easy task in Buffalo. You have a very large percentage of the population that doesn’t want change because they’re living off the handouts. They’re not going to vote for the guy running on a “less handouts” platform. Why do you think the Republicans didn’t even bother putting up a candidate for mayor of Buffalo?
