The separation fantasy
Dimwitted Disunityby Bruce Fisher Now it's Upstate right-wingers who want to split New YorkBefore Hong Kong became a part of China again, it was a city-state that enjoyed fabulous prosperity, creativity, and freedom. In the good old days, many a resident of New York City fantasized about how sweet the liberation would be if only Gotham could shed the dead weight of its Upstate country cousins. The late writer Norman Mailer ran a campaign for mayor premised on seceding from New York State; he said that, after the City went solo, the rest of the state could call itself Buffalo for all he cared. These days, it’s the country cousins who are talkin

Killing the majority?
Left and Right ConvergingPublished on Artvoice Blogwww.artvoice.comNovember 20, 2009Filed under: News, Presidential Politics — Tags: 2010 elections, Bailout, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Henry Paulson, Levy Intitute, stimulus, Tea Party, Timothy Geithner — bruce @ 5:08 pmAV columnist Bruce Fisher sends in this reflection on How Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner’s bad economics could turn Blue states Red in 2010:Jim Hightower, the former Texas politician and veteran political wit, was fond of excoriating political moderates as he was of skewering Republicans. “Ain’t nothin’ in the middle of the road but

Where mom can walk, recession can end
Your Mom, Walkingby Bruce Fisher How attention to street detail makes or spoils the regionThe American cities that are suffering worst in this recession are the ones whose economies are tied closely to General Motors and Ford and their supply chains. A recent survey by the Brookings Institution finds that five of the 21 large metros in the Great Lakes region—Dayton, Detroit, Grand Rapids, Toledo, and Youngstown—rank among the 20 weakest metro economies in the country. Akron, Cleveland, Cincinnati, and a couple of other car-towns aren’t quite as badly off, but that’s rather like saying that someone with swine flu isn’t as badly off as somebody wi

How Democratic wimpiness empowers local Palins
Taxes, Rants, & Teaby Bruce Fisher Poor Chris Collins. The current Erie County Executive is about to become Joel Giambra, the previous County Executive, and Ned Regan, the one who proposed raising county property taxes over 70%. That’s because the same fiscal circumstances that faced Erie County under Regan and Giambra are returning for 2011 under Collins—a huge growth in the cost of unfunded mandates, insufficient local revenue to cover those costs, and the unavoidable, distasteful task of telling taxpayers that the same choice that faced us before faces us again, a choice between gutting services and raising taxes. But let’s reduce the e

Haters and silence
Time To Go, Chrisby Bruce Fisher The Corrosive Consequences of Casual Hate SpeechIn the best of times, Buffalo is a hard sell. We’re a little city in the cold part of fly-over country, an inconvenient eight-hour drive from Manhattan, Boston, Washington, or Chicago—the big cities where America’s political, cultural, financial, scientific, educational, and entrepreneurial leaders live. Despite the sunny reality of our summers, the pleasant livability of our short commutes, our world-class natural and cultural amenities, America and the world alike imagine us to be a snowy place that houses terrorists, sits atop Love Canal, jails innocent non-rapists, and lo