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.

On Selling Wine in Supermarkets

In reading through @buffalogeek’s tweets from yesterday’s County Legislature session, I stumbled upon this:

What is it with this issue? It’s wine and liquor – not guns and crack. Admittedly, I don’t see the point in allowing supermarkets to sell hard liquor. I can see why there’d be a public interest in keeping vodka and Jager under a different roof from the Cap’n Crunch and Wardynski’s. But we sell beer in supermarkets, so why not wine? After all, it has an only incrementally higher alcohol content than beer, and is really a part of dining at home. It fits. Why make people drive to a separate store to pick up a nice bottle of something?

I realize that there is a strong liquor store lobby that vehemently opposes this, and I also realize that the state keeps tight screws on who can and can’t sell and serve alcohol because it’s an opportunity to control and tax. But the argument that permitting the sale of wine (or allowing supermarket pubs, or liquor store chains) is somehow going to be unfair to existing merchants? It’s silly and fiscally counterproductive.

There are many ways for a liquor store to provide better and more personalized service, or more expertise than what you might ultimately find in the wine department at a Wegmans. Plus, if the sale of spirits was kept out of supermarkets, the liquor stores will have retained some exclusivity they so unreasonably treasure.

Loads of people enjoy a nice glass of wine with dinner at home, and it makes perfect sense to let supermarkets sell it. So does permitting membership clubs like Sams and BJs to sell wine. In Massachusetts, the membership clubs sold wine in a separately accessed part of the store – I got decent prices, but no guidance or advice. If I go to Premier, I get both. If Wegmans was allowed to sell wine, I presume that the decisions about what to stock would be left up to expert buyers who would only stock decent stuff. When Trader Joe’s comes to town, we’ll get two buck Chuck. The Trader Joe’s downstate, which don’t sell wine, are sad shells of what a they’re is supposed to be. Less kefir, more wine.

Isn’t the state is going about it all wrong? It gets a cut of every bottle of wine and liquor sold. It would make sense fiscally to maximize the number of outlets selling this. And this goes doubly for the county legislature, which also gets revenue from taxation of beer, wine, and liquor sales. This should be a no-brainer, and the interests of reducing a bad deficit should trump political contributions and lobbying from liquor store interests.

A 15-0 vote opposing the sale of wine in supermarkets is stupid. Give the choice to consumers, not to liquor store lobbyists and puritans.

Meanwhile, at the Erie County Legislature

It takes 15 people to decide on this stuff.

15 people.

15 people to expand the holding center and replace a sign that hasn’t worked in a generation. A decision on a holding center and getting a sign to work shouldn’t be political. It should be a ministerial function of a professional county manager. All done.

He Has a Wife, You Know

From Foreign Policy:

In Saudi Arabia, size does count.

A high level Pakistani diplomat has been rejected as Ambassador of Saudi Arabia because his name, Akbar Zeb, equates to “Biggest Dick” in Arabic. Saudi officials, apparently overwhelmed by the idea of the name, put their foot down and gave the idea of his being posted there, the kibosh.

Which of course, since I’m poking through the Python YouTube channel, leads to this: