Flame Bait: Statler

I think keeping a mothballed, unused Statler with a negative value needing tens of millions of dollars in renovations and environmental remediation in the very heart of downtown Buffalo is infinitely worse than demolishing it and allowing something to be built on that block that people might actually use.

The Lowly Cab

In New York City, cabs are an integral part of the public transportation system. While privately owned and operated, cab medallions are tightly regulated and worth their weight in diamonds.

The problem is that since the demise of Marathon Checker, there has been no uniform New York taxicab on the road. The 1991-era Chevy Caprice was as popular as it was ugly, but since then it’s been a hodgepodge of various sedans, Ford Escapes, Toyota Siennas, and others that take a beating and rack up the miles.

In London, which also depends on cabs, there is a brilliant uniformity. The cabs are diesels, so they run forever and are fuel-efficient, they are roomy, and they are built to be cabs and nothing but cabs.

Ford has unveiled a Transit Connect done up like a New York City cab, and it looks pretty sweet. It’s roomy, custom-built for passenger comfort, and fuel-efficient. The little Turkish-built European-style cargo van is built to be abused, and this one is built to run on compressed natural gas, which is efficient and burns cleaner. They are going to sell this thing.

I like it. Good job, Ford.

Mother of All Scandals!1!

Governor Paterson is not going to resign.

All of this is viral marketing to build up hype for what will ultimately be a pretty benign profile piece on a controversial political figure, and that Cuomo’s people are promoting the crap out of the whole this-is-career-ending meme.

Don’t believe the hype.

Erie County Control Board: The Empire Strikes Back

Isn’t it ironic that we’d save about a million bucks per year in county taxpayer dollars if we got rid of the ECFSA? How fiscally “adult”.

On Friday, the control board’s finance committee voted to recommend going back to a “hard” control period, because it says the administration’s four-year plan is defective and because it says it can do county short-term borrowing more cheaply than the county can. They gave the administration until tomorrow to fix it.

The latter claim is dubious, at best, and the former is nothing more than substituting one guess (the four-year plan) with another (the control board’s interpretation of it).

The full control board meets on Thursday in a an auditorium that can fit 300 people, but 3 will attend, and all of them will be county staffers and press.

I guess they have to justify their existence and expense every once in a while. Sort of like the patronage-laden, expensive board of the Erie County Water Authority.

The Who

Best joke I saw on Twitter: If you want to figure out who’ll be playing the halftime show in 2011, just figure out which group would have been a great “get” for Super Bowl VI.

Me? I saw two British ex-Mod OAPs reliving their 60s and 70s heyday playing that most detestable of musical gimmicks – the medley of old hits. They sounded well enough and all, but with Moon and Entwhistle now dead, how soon is it before we have Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr start the 2011 Beatles world tour?

Along the Kabul Gorge

While the Times doesn’t have the Paterson kitten-drowning story yet, it does have this cool piece about a mountain pass in Afghanistan. Happy Motoring!

Paterson Rumor Mill

The New York Times is supposedly working on a “blockbuster” story about Governor David Paterson. From what I can gather, he shoots kittens while snorting heroin and having sex with hookers who quite literally stand in line in front of the governor’s mansion waiting their turn.

At least, that’s what must be going on, based on the overactive rumor mill coming out of Albany.

Maybe he’ll quit, maybe he’ll quit the race. Maybe he won’t. Maybe the Times will ever publish this story about Paterson spitting on infants and taunting puppies.

Maybe any of this matters with respect to better government and running the state in a balanced way, always striving for excellence. It’d sure be handy for candidate Cuomo, wouldn’t it? Hm.

The only thing more dysfunctional than our state government is our collection of inept local governments and business-promotion entities. And people wonder why we stagnate.

Last Night on CBS

The Superbowl was surprisingly exciting last night, although most of the ads were sort of lame and formulaic. Look elsewhere for analysis of the game. Although the very existence of a sports commentating and analysis industry proves that I’m wrong, as far as I know, it was just a football game. Yay Saints.

As for the ads, oh, look – a sexually suggestive Go Daddy Ad. The Google ad was touching, yes – but it actually showed someone using Google as a person might actually use Google, and it’s a product we’re as familiar with as we are with Coke. Speaking of Coke, I didn’t get why a sleepwalking guy camping out in the Serengeti might need caffeine in the middle of the night, and the Simpsons haven’t been really watercooler-funny in a decade. The Doritos ads were clever, as was the Snickers ad with Betty White and Abe Vigoda. Audi had a cute ad for the A3 TDI poking fun at environmental “green police” while an eponymous song parody of Cheap Trick’s “Dream Police” was playing.

But right afterwards, CBS premiered a show called “Undercover Boss”. I watched as the COO of Waste Management sorted recycling in Syracuse, cleaned portable toilets in Florida, picked up trash on a landfill, shadowed an overworked office manager in Fairport, and rode along collecting trash in Rochester. He was impressed by the dedication of his front-line employees, who didn’t know the boss of bosses was riding along with them. He also got to see his “productivity” initiatives put into action, and the reality didn’t match the theory.

And in the end, when he revealed himself, he pledged changes so, for instance, the female garbage truck driver doesn’t have to pee in a coffee can so as to stay on her route and meet her productivity target, and the woman in Syracuse wouldn’t get docked two minutes’ pay for every minute she was late clocking back in after lunch.

But in a world where big businesses like Waste Management pay more attention to the bottom line and the investor class than in their own employees, it was fascinating to watch – made even more so by the fact that almost all the jobs highlighted are filthy blue-collar jobs that are back-breaking and unglamorous. It was dramatic when this executive saw that his company relies on its customers and front-line employees more than it relies on middle management or some day trader. It highlighted the dignity inherent even in the least desirable work.

What a concept. I loved the show.

Quick Saturday Thoughts

1. It is fundamentally unfair that for the past few winters, the east coast has been battered by one or two bad Nor’easters while Buffalo has gotten a smattering of snow here and there.

2. Governor Ravitch?

Keep Calm and Carry On

I didn’t see the cut version of Jon Stewart on Bill O’Reilly’s Factor the other night, but Gawker reviewed the entire, uncut version on Fox’s website and brings us highlights from the parts that didn’t make it to air. Which include many of Stewart’s strongest arguments about Fox News’ descent into hysterical, emotion-driven rage. Seriously excellent discussion. My favorite quotes:

On discussing the insanity of Neil Cavuto, Stewart explains that Cavuto’s schtick is posing ridiculous questions like: is Obama a Stalinist, while posting a picture of Stalin over his shoulder:

I know what this is. I come from Jersey—it’s the same thing: “I’m not saying your mother’s a whore. I’m just saying she has sex for money. With people.” [F]ox News used to be all about, you don’t criticize a president during wartime. It’s unacceptable, it’s treasonous, it gives aid and comfort to the enemy. All of a sudden, for some reason you can run out there and say, “Barack Obama is destroying the fabric of this country.”

Stewart gets O’Reilly to admit that he thinks Obama is a socialist tyrant. Stewart retorts:

How many tyrants do you know that really suffer because they can’t get cloture?

On the panic attack hysterical Fox-driven conservative terror over Khalid Sheikh Muhammad being tried on the US mainland:

He’s not Magneto—Khalid Sheikh Muhammad isn’t going to sprout wings and fly out and start shooting buildings with lasers

Check out the whole thing.