To be honest, I’m not certain, and I feel it would be hypocritical to feign interest retroactively by checking now.  Still, it’s great that our region’s sportier residents got to talk smack when matched against foes from clearly inferior sections of New York situated in different relative compass directions.

What’s not as inspiring is the uncompetitive nature of a portion of the festival’s endowment.  Specifically, taxpayers backed it whether or not they attended it.  Nobody is that pro-volleyball.

Citizens don’t get good value for their mandatory athletic investment.  For one, Games-affiliated recipients of New York’s confiscated largesse should be able to put together a better website.  Their Angelfire-style front page is only missing a Bill Clinton’s first term-era “under construction” icon.  An animated one would be awesome.

The lone useful bit of information provided notes that “The Empire State Games is a program of: Office of New York State Parks, Recreation & Historic Preservation.”  To clarify, they are one of countless bureaucratic clusters that get to spend what you earn.  Sadly, the state perpetually medals at the event.

Thankfully, many of the subsidies were voluntarily.  In particular, First Niagara generously kicked in a large portion to compensate for state funding being at its lowest level ever this year.

But New York’s contribution should be at an even lower level next time, namely zero.  Financing a statewide intramural contest is exactly the sort of expenditure that ultimately encourages our athletes to dash out of New York when they can’t find work after the final whistle. 

The amount of the state’s contribution is irrelevant.  Everyone shouldn’t have to pay so some may play or watch ball-chasing games.  Such active promotion is well outside government’s domain, even if that’s tricky for the particular government in question to recall.

And the timing couldn’t be better for a game change.  Of course, this state perpetually faces financial calamity.  But lawmakers have remarkably gotten even worse than awful at frittering away capital in the capital.

Still, at least some good may come of it on the slim chance that they collectively gain wisdom.  Namely, their dire profligacy makes this an ideal moment to spin off extraneous spending into the hands of interested private parties.

Taking money from earners so that Hudson Valley residents can prove how proficient they are at fencing relative to their state’s mates epitomizes frivolity.  Alternately, New York can set an example by showing that its athletes can excel without state aid.

People who enjoy the Games needn’t fret: they can just buy tickets.  Those who already do can cough up a bit more.  At the recently-concluded Games, an adult could see everything for 30 bucks, which is too good a deal.  Attendees can spend their tax savings on reasonably pricier seats.

It’s nothing personal: I swear I don’t resent the event just because I was scandalously left off both the track and rugby teams for no good reason except my utter mediocrity in each respective sport during my hazy school days.  To prove my lack of bitterness, I’d support any athletes who rang my bell and asked me to buy chocolate bars in order to fund their clashes.

They can enhance lessons about self-reliance and dedication provided via sweaty contests by obtaining funding for their events themselves.  If they sell enough, they could even reduce or eliminate their own surcharges.

Meanwhile, I can live vicariously though the competitors as I watch us make the other state sectors our bitches while inhaling my chocolate.   I can say “us” as long as I contribute financially; the candy would merely be a bonus.

But at least I’m aware now.  An article in Sunday’s Buffalo News about the incarcerated Hassan gave him a chance to argue why his murdered wife is the one who should actually be behind bars.

Someone who started a network designed to improve Islam’s perception may have caused slightly more damage to the cause than good by brutally slaying his life partner.  At the same time, he did provide a horrifyingly useful example of the word “irony.”

His talent as a wordsmith is undeniable, as seen in how the man facing murder charges twisted the English language in ways previously thought impossible during the story about him.  Having apparently moved past slicing off heads, inmate Hassan is now focused upon digging a hole for himself:

Contrary to the pile of evidence and witness corroboration that he mentally tormented and physically beat his wife over a period of years, he said, the truth is that he was the one “emotionally tortured” by his outwardly kind and sweet-natured wife, Aasiya Zubair Hassan.

I’m certain that the “emotional torture” was not only real but severe enough to justify the physical torture he inflicted upon the woman who joined him in matrimony as he coldly ended her life in the most horrifying manner possible.

It’s easy to see in that regard why he sees himself as being totally like history’s most renowned practitioner of nonviolent resistance.  That’s of course aside for that one time he supposedly separated his wife’s head from her body:

“I could have gone to Toronto, taken a direct flight to Pakistan, and I speak the language fluently,” he said.

Instead, he said he chose to turn himself in and adhere to Gandhi’s principle of “satyagraha” — to seek the truth without selfish interests.

Hopefully, he will move away from selfish acts, such as, oh, extinguishing a human life.

There’s much learn in the Buffalo News piece, which did a nice job of capturing his unbearable stupidity.  For one, it added outside perspective to his chilling nonsense, as with but not limited to a quote from a UB law school professor shredding his defense in the fifth paragraph.

To the staff’s further credit, they didn’t agree to a longer conversation with him because of how he wanted to basically write and edit it himself.  Specifically, he “said he would agree to an extended interview on two main conditions: That he determines when and where the story would run and that he would be the only person interviewed for it.”  Keep dictating terms from the Holding Center, you cunning mastermind.

Instead, reporter Sandra Tan let Hassan hang himself.  A rope around his neck is better than he deserves considering what he did to his wife’s same body part.  But at least he was allowed to make himself look beyond foolish.

At the same time, it’s important to remember the function that a repulsive perversion of faith played in his unconscionable act.  Hassan’s sick interpretation of Islam can’t be discounted, as the crime for which he has been charged featured the hallmarks of an honor killing.

This case is a typical domestic abuse murder in the same way that the Fort Hood massacre was just another shooting, the Underpants Bomber was merely another unremarkable disruptive jerk on a flight, and the Times Square Bomber was either a random psychopath or Obamacare foe.  As with America’s ongoing war against cowards using terror as their chief tactic, there’s almost a perceptible connection among the various heinous acts.

There just maybe seems to be linkage between each attempted or actual murderer and what he believed, or at least what he thought he believed.  Wait: I spot a pattern.  Indeed, recognizing on whose behalf the cited examples all claim to operate is seemingly incontrovertible proof of their common agenda.  Unfortunately, the most ardent dissenters to the threat’s reality either work in or answer directly to the White House.

Area Muslims can’t afford to think like the Obama administration.  Hassan manufactured the second prominent local incident attempting to corrupt their faith in recent memory.  Thankfully, the first also gave the religion’s members a chance to show themselves at their noblest, as upstanding community members turned in the Lackawanna Six before they could make any further diabolical progress.

Now, the prudent move would be for local congregations to condemn Hassan’s ranting, and not just because his line of defense is more despicable than that of former fellow Western New York resident/accused wife murderer O.J. Simpson.

It might not seem fair that they have to respond to the barbarian’s lunacy.  But the fact remains that Hassan is one of a disturbing number who brutally take lives in their religion’s name.  Our innocent Muslim neighbors sadly but urgently must take back their faith by denouncing the acts and perceptions of every dastard who uses either a demented sense of world dominance or family standards as a motive.

By ostracizing the evildoers who assuredly do not represent them, Muslims have a chance to simultaneously confront and disprove a serious threat to their beliefs.  As for Hassan, I am almost impressed: who thought it would be possible to like him less?  It turns out you just have to let him talk about himself.

Many would never dream of patronizing businesses they can’t see from their dwellings’ roofs or even imagining where they might be.  Union and Walden?  Do they cross?

Of course it’s fine to support your local Mighty Taco.  At the same time, it’s possible to go too far in the name of parochial fondness. There’s a point where pride in a minute region crosses into unnecessary territorialism.

For example, a group called the Kenmore Village Improvement Society has been posting fliers in the jurisdiction after which they’re named.  Much like bottle rocket corpses littering the pavement on July 5, the bills are unavoidable for anyone traversing through the small patch.

As for their chief goal, they want to keep the Village a Village.  There has been some talk of erasing the border with the Town of Tonawanda, and the Society has responded by not quite literally but sort of figuratively manning the line with pitchforks.  According to the mission statement on their site,

The KVIS has voted to accept the following statement about village dissolution. The KVIS believes that the quality of village life would diminish by dissolving the Village of Kenmore. Therefore, we accept the three stage agenda and will employ our Mission Statement to convey our belief. Just to refresh your memory, our Mission Statement is: “…to improve the quality of Village life through consistent communication, engaging education, and thoughtful action.”

But the one thing that may improve Village life is eliminating it.  By contrast, the senseless provincialism afflicting much of this county keeps people sheltered instead of feeling as if they’re on the same team.  They apparently want their street sweepers sweeping streets a certain way, and they’re not going to risk losing it by switching towns.

Resistance to alterations aside, this area is plagued by redundant governments.  The existence of ample administrations reeks of inefficiency.  Of course, people want control over their own areas.  But there’s just not that much difference between one side of the particular divide and another.

The loss of autonomy in question shouldn’t be treated as if certain blocks are going to find themselves ruled under fundamentally differing political systems.  We’re not talking about handing West Berlin to the commies.

National comparisons don’t apply.  It’s one thing for 50 state governments to offer different service and taxation levels.  As New Yorkers who have stayed behind lamentably realize, each one competes for commerce and people; that acts as an incentive to reduce the state’s burden in most capitals aside from of course Albany.  But there is only invented competition between contiguous suburban districts that are essentially offering the same services.

Besides, Kenmore and Tonawanda have proven they can share.  The areas already split a school district, library system, and paramedics; uniting other governmental features is just a natural extension of the streamlining already in effect.  The garbage trucks work the same no matter if you’re standing at one spot where Delaware Road ends at Delaware Avenue or another.

It’s understandable that the group wants to preserve what they like about where they are.  People remain in their particular neighborhoods for the same reason they stay in the Buffalo area in general; everyone here already knows the laundry list of benefits.

Of course Kenmorites (Kenmorians? Nah: Kenmorers) want what they like about it to be maintained.  But there’s little reason to think that the prefecture won’t be able to keep its character just because it’s being governed by a not-quite tyrannical regime about a mile over.

While some things might change for the better in terms of eliminating duplicate functions, the reality is not much will change at all.  The goals and values are too similar to provoke chaos and resentment if the fusing occurs.  That stands as the best reason to stop acting as if we’re kept in place by an Invisible Fence.  We’re trained too well, although I suppose that means we deserve treats.

But the things people like won’t disappear.  After all, we can still call the neighborhood Kenmore, and it would by all accounts still look the same.  The municipality could enjoy maintained or even improved virtues.

For one, the value of working as one police unit far outweighs the response time differences allegedly seen in dueling fiefdoms.  And we can all promise to still never dream of driving over 30 miles per hour in that new section of Tonawanda.  Speaking of which, three Tonawandas seems like two too many.

Sadly, the obvious appeal of mutual transactions won’t stop involuntary painting training backers from promoting seizure of your income.  To wit, Colin Dabkowski devoted precious opinion column space in a recent Buffalo News edition to moan about a woman in a Buffalo neighborhood who needs you to fund her dreams:

In a small painting studio flooded with afternoon sunlight and crowded with half-finished canvases, Molly Bethel leaned forward in her chair, rested her elbows on a paint-spackled table and recited her creed.

“I believe,” Bethel said, “I really believe that everybody has a basic human right to have a realistic opportunity to develop whatever talents and interests they may have.”

Fifty years ago, spurred on by that belief, Bethel launched the organization that became Locust Street Neighborhood Art Classes, a community institution that has instilled a love for the arts in thousands of students from across the city’s East Side and beyond.

That’s quite a “basic human right.”  But there’s no reason to rebuff the audacity of hope.  We clearly need a 28^th Amendment which would guarantee the freedom to pursue whatever the hell sort of career or hobby you want.  Yes, it would cost society a fortune, but is life really worth living if you don’t get to live without fear of boundaries or rent?

As for now, in a Buffalo tragedy equivalent to a presidential assassination or the Mike Mularkey era, the school may actually soon have to pay its own bills.

After 50 years of serving an underprivileged community, Bethel is used to patching together the school’s modest budget (about $100,000 per year) from a mind-boggling range of sources, including the New York State Council on the Arts, local foundations, companies and individual donors. But this year –because of a low score on an application vetted by the Erie County Cultural Resources Allocation Board – the organization is getting no money from Erie County, which has consistently provided about $10,000 to the school annually.

For once, we should be applauding our oft-wayward county: they actually had the nerve to cut off something subjective like neighborhood art instruction.  Participants could look elsewhere: can’t they just send away for the Art Instruction Schools brochure and try to advance their creative careers by submitting drawings of a turtle and pirate like all other budding drawers?

The answer is no.  Instead, they want your money.  Hand it over unless you hate art, you bigoted homophobe:

Bethel preferred instead to reflect on the importance of public funding for the arts.

“I think it’s to everyone’s benefit and I think I’m a good example of that,” Bethel said. “In my family, nobody was in the arts. I discovered painting through a place” –the Cornelia Yuditzky School of Creative Art in Washington, D. C. –“that had originally started as a WPA project.”

So, we’ve got the feds to blame for this crap.  There’s a message here for anyone who maintains that government subsidies create a culture of dependency that keeps recipients from ever learning how to make themselves valuable: you were utterly correct.  On the other hand, earning would cut into art time.  Heavens forbid that someone actually be required to make money:

Bethel’s legendary determination has lately been frustrated by the difficulty of making her grassroots school work in a funding climate that increasingly trumpets economic impact above activating the imagination, tourism potential above community service.

Activate your imaginations on your own time and dime, pal.  The alternative, namely that people be allowed to purchase what they like with their own funds and support the schools they find worthwhile, is apparently unimaginable.  That won’t keep us merciless conservatives from pointing out that the government’s role is to maintain conditions where citizens can prosper, not attempt to dole out prosperity itself.

Letting citizens figure out how to fund their own free-time fun is a wholly worthwhile approach that implicitly verifies the government’s trust in adults to make their own decisions.  Babysitting the whole county clearly hasn’t worked, so we may as well try the alternative jut for novelty’s sake.

Plus, there would naturally be more cash about if our administrators didn’t get their grubby elected paws upon it first.  The reason the Fruit Belt remains menacing to both outsiders and residents is precisely because various governments cavalierly toss around thousands of dollars taken from earners.

That leaves little for purchases or investment: the neighborhood is broke because so many people are.  Yet our paper’s hacks can’t ascertain why Buffalo is constantly teetering near depression.

Dabkowski’s whining about funding serves as a perfect Buffalo News column, which most Western New Yorkers recognize is as far from a compliment as imaginable.  The word assembler snottily endorses taking money from everyone to fund an obscure, obviously non-essential venture with parochial appeal.  Why would we object?

The wildly improper use of authority to redistribute wealth harms artists far more than making them find buyers or benefactors.  Everyone knows of this state and county’s legendarily unbearable tax rates, which may explain why there are so few citizens able to scrape together enough to sustain right-brained instruction.

But Dabkowski would rather demand than request.  If he really cared, he could encourage both lower taxes and higher private donations.  There should be enough readers willing to kick in a few bucks to preserve the artistic outpost; that’s especially so since it’s allegedly such a piddling amount, at least in the eyes of fat cat News staffers.

Better yet, he could buy patronize the school himself instead of patronizing readers.  That possibility would create the additional benefit of no further columns on the dreadful subject.

As it stands, bitching that the government is obligated to fund painting classes is as foolish as suggesting that newspapers deserve public funding.  Still, the Wegmans ad and daily Sudoku puzzle are far more beneficial to the community than teaching people how to stroke brushes properly, which means The News logically deserves a crutch from the county first.

We’ll start seeing editorials campaigning for such bailouts once circulation slumps a little more.  You understand: the rag’s toilers have Prius payments to make.  It’s not as if they can sustain themselves indefinitely without aid packages.  They’re certainly not about to attract more readers with content that serves as the artistic equivalent of sad clowns rendered on velvet.

I’m trying to blame life’s problems on tools.  But thinking in such a manner is challenging.  Exuding as much smarminess as a lefty journalist is nearly impossible without buying a Honda.  There’s no need to buy a Coexist bumper sticker, as they come standard.

Instead, I’ll let the professional smug piety dispensers employed by The Buffalo News explain.  They never disappoint.  Take the recent story about the dangers of being shot if you venture into one of the city’s sides helpfully titled “Danger on streets as guns proliferate.”

Notably, the harangue takes care not to place the scourge’s blame on trigger-pullers.  In case that wholly objective headline missed the mark, the measured subhead emphasized that “Ease of buying weapons puts young lives at risk.”

These armed angels are seemingly oblivious to the effects of pointing, then pulling.  Our city’s paper certainly isn’t going to teach them about consequences.  To wit, present News staffer and future Brady Campaign board member Abram Brown breaks the news that there are people, some of whom may be involved in bad stuff, buying black market guns:

All it would take is about $100 and finding the right person, and a teenager can end up with a gun, those who work with young people say.

Buffalo’s East Side would be the easiest place to get one, and $100 would buy a teenager a small-caliber semiautomatic handgun—small but deadly.

“Small but deadly” really gets the point across about these devices, no?  They could kill if used in a certain manner, yet they could fit in the microwave.  Yes: small but deadly.  Unfortunately, we have bigger worries, as alien cyborgs are bent on destroying Earth:

“We believe that this gun problem is a bigger conspiracy from those who are bent on the destruction of mankind,” said Arlee Daniels Jr., interim chairman of the Stop the Violence Coalition.

Well, that’s a downer: I’m a member of mankind.  We have relatively trifling matters with which to deal while anticipating the apocalypse.  For one, the article’s other noteworthy revelation is that messing with felons may endanger your life:

“We’ve seen people in the City of Buffalo get killed because they stole another criminal’s gun,” Daniels said.

Buffalo police have seen guns stolen in burglaries end up in the hands of the wrong people, concurred Michael J. De- George, a Police Department spokesman.

“The hands of the wrong people?”  Um, you mean burglars?  Thankfully, there’s cause to believe there may be a respite to the despair.  Namely, there’s a movie starring Morgan Freeman waiting to be made:

Fear motivates most of the young people searching for weapons, said Bob Keubler, who runs the Youth With a Purpose program at Holy Cross Church on Buffalo’s Lower West Side.

At Keubler’s program, youth come in and talk about what they face at home. They tell of teenagers standing on their front porch and watching another teenager ride by on a bicycle and threaten them.

Even if there isn’t an immediate threat, a young person might search for a gun out of a fear of retaliation for other reasons, such as wearing the wrong colors or talking to the wrong person. It’s almost like a “kill or be killed” atmosphere, Keubler said.

Is not playing an option?  Mentoring seems fruitless if we can’t first acknowledge that the adolescent perpetrators in question are actually capable of self-control.  They could always behave and not pop caps in derrieres, could they not?  Circumstances offer flimsy excuses: it doesn’t help to pretend that the youths making a hobby out of shooting each other are skipping CYO meetings only because they can easily acquire a sidearm.

The idea that people impulsively turn to crime simply because there are firearms about is as tired and demonstrably inaccurate as proclaiming humans are dooming the Earth with their prosperity.  The liberal memes never fail to provoke amusement or headshaking.

Besides, there’s no way that the malicious can obtain guns: New York’s gun restrictions are perhaps the nation’s harshest.  Don’t the shooters know it’s impossible for them to get their hands on handguns within the Empire State?  Lamentably, murderers are audaciously ignoring gun laws.

As with the stimulus’s woeful failure to stimulate, the standard leftist reply to crime spiking despite harsh anti-gun provisions is that we merely haven’t gone far enough.  If we’re serious about fighting crime, we clearly need to ban transportation, as feeble humans are just going to find a seller and Glock up if they’re permitted to move around.

But some may just happen to disagree.  Is there anyone quotable who blames crime on criminals?  Of course, Brown is entitled to applaud and weep during Obama’s Oval Office speeches on his own time.  But packing every left-wing cliché about firearms, crime, poverty, and human nature into an allegedly impartial dispatch is just the billionth example of a News drone clownishly tipping his or her voting patterns via submissions.

In this case, the article compiler couldn’t manage to find someone who didn’t find the actual guns guilty.  Googling the words (NRA) and (contact) would have been a hassle.  The same goes for contacting someone from the Shooters’ Committee On Political Education as the writer could have done if he was looking for a local pro-gun perspective, which he was not.

But maybe the reporter just wants to make friends in nearby offices and cubicles.  After all, the rag persists in allowing commie race hustler Rod Watson to call himself a city desk editor, so what kind of climate do they expect?  The hacks have run amuck.

They’ll undoubtedly keep themselves busy: the next story in the local section cycle will either be a fawning look at a government-funded jobs training program or some blather about how hard it is for the working poor to make ends meet.  Place bets.

I am a big bowl of sunshine who obviously loves working with people.  So, ushering visitors through North Tonawanda’s Herschell Carrousel Factory Museum may be an ideal way for me to get on the dole.  It’d basically be a government job, after all: the federal government just threw a six-figure fortune at a local repository dedicated to the most boring amusement park ride ever (h/t The American Spectator):

A stroll through the Herschell Carrousel Factory Museum is a walk through the early history of American amusement parks.

But nothing solidifies the historic significance of the sprawling, long-defunct North Tonawanda factory that once produced the most carousels in the world more than a recent award: a Save America’s Treasures Grant, the National Park Service’s most competitive and prestigious preservation grant.

“It’s validation,” museum director Rae Proefrock said. “We’ve been saying for 30 years that this site needs to be preserved and interpreted. This grant validates everything we’ve been saying. It’s very exciting for us.”

If it was crucial enough to be “preserved and interpreted,” perhaps a little more hustling for private funds would have been appropriate; they had 30 years to do so by the director’s own admission.

Then again, maybe it’s wise from their perspective that they never tried hard: as with countless other businesses, organizations, and individuals in 2010, the museum’s staff has learned that the government will pay you if you wait long enough.

For Western New Yorkers, the ridiculous infusion isn’t justified by the location.  Imagine how aggravated you’d be if an inconsequential museum in Topeka, Colorado Springs, or Jacksonville landed a $265,000 federal grant.  Now, you know how residents of those municipalities, along with every other one in America, would view an arcane Western New York exhibit hall being handed same amount.  The feeling welling up inside you is not local pride:

The museum was one of 40 grant recipients out of 400 applicants nationwide. It received a $265,000 matching grant to go toward a $590,000 project to stabilize the wood trusses of the Carving Shop, which was built in 1905, and upgrade its aging sprinkler system. The work, which will include building a steel frame to hold up the building, is slated to begin in November.

Proefrock said the museum also garnered additional grants — $215,000 from the state Environmental Protection Fund; $65,000 from the Margaret L. Wendt Foundation; and $50,000 from New York State Dormitory Authority.

After pondering such obvious waste, any journalist should have been inspired to pursue a story about why this state is constantly in debt up to its appetite.  But Buffalo News copy-producer Emma D. Sapong cannot be bothered with your trifling concerns about confiscated or borrowed money literally being spun away in North Tonawanda.  No, Ms. D. Sapong is too busy doing public relations work for the museum so they can get even more money from us without our permission:

The state and federal grants are both matching grants, and the federal money cannot be used to match the state grant, leaving the museum in a financial bind and the duty of raising an additional $80,000.

If the museum can come up with the matching funds for the state grant, the state grant can then be used to match the federal grant, Proefrock said. To donate,

I’d like to apologize, as I mysteriously copied and pasted the block quote without including information on how to make contributions.  You’ll have to invest the effort to find it; will you forgive me?  Anyway, attracting more paid visitors is obviously a ludicrous strategy.  That’s apparently why neither the director nor reporter thought to suggest that more people should consider spending their own capital at the museum.

Maybe they’re just realistic about the facility’s capacity for self-sufficiency.  Consider the former factory itself, which set an example for today’s manufacturers by being vacated decades before the stimulus:

But nothing solidifies the historic significance of the sprawling, long-defunct North Tonawanda factory…

There’s a reason it’s “long-defunct.”  Namely, carousels are even more uselessly outdated as an entertainment form than actual horse racing.  Of course, the government props up that silent film-era activity, too, so at least they’re consistent about dragging us back early into the previous century.  At least not many people want to follow:

About 15,000 people visit the museum each year, taking in exhibits and displays in its six areas.

According to the museum’s website, which made me nostalgic for 1995, they are open something like 210 days per year.  That’s works out to about 71 measly people per day.  It’s almost as if folks just aren’t interested in carousels and carousel history anymore.  No- it can’t be.  Please stuff that cynical notion in your moustache wax tin.

Still, every one of those 15,000 undoubtedly clamors for the museum to open in January, February, and March, the months in which it’s presently closed; maybe the grants will help.  That said, I suspect that one woman in Getzville accounted for about 150 of those visits on her own.

But you, I, and most of the people you know will likely not be visiting the obscure museum soon even though bundles of taxpayer cash are being used as doorstops.  I don’t think I’ll get to use the service entrance, either:  I may have sunk my chances to get hired by the museum during this smart-alecky blog’s course.

I lost my shot before the interview all because I pointed out that they should do their own fundraising if it’s essential to preserve materials related to this subject.  I’m frankly doubtful a single job will be created or saved out of the outlandish endowment.  Besides, they probably wouldn’t even let me ride the wooden horsies on my lunch break.

I’ll simply have to look elsewhere: are there any positions open in the field of grant giver-outer?  I feel I’m qualified to dole hundreds of thousands of dollars to organizations with astoundingly parochial appeal; I also like the zero accountability part.  I better e-mail my résumé to Washington.  I’ll blind copy Albany, too.

Take Buffalo company Honeywell, which has been granted a fortune to manufacture de facto golf cart batteries.  Americans are propping up an industry against their will thanks to the deal.  But some merely care that the development means a handful of locals will prosper:

The good news involves Honeywell on Peabody St. near downtown. The specialty materials provider has received a 27-million dollar grant from the Energy Department to develop a critical component of lithium ion batteries. Honeywell will become the first U-S manufacturer to do so. 

Jay Kelly, Honeywell’s Buffalo Site Leader, says “we will be adding six new jobs to help us run our sample plant and there will also be approximately 15 engineering and construction jobs related to the building of the sample plant. Honeywell will build a sample plant to produce and test the new battery.

Of course, it’s only “good news” if we disregard both how expensive the project is and who’s paying for it.  By comparison, corporate goon tycoons acting privately are amateurs at concentrating wealth among the privileged few.  Wall Street jerks should take notes.

But who cares about costs when the deal brings jobs to Buffalo?  Specifically, there are a whole 21 of them coming.  Yes, the price works out to over one million dollars in taxpayer financing for each created position.  But, at current federal rates, they might actually be under budget.  And who cares?  It’s someone else’s money!

Further, why worry that the 15 engineering and construction jobs are temporary project positions?  We could probably find shovels for them to permanently man after construction is completed.  It’s the way of the stimulus.

Honeywell itself certainly doesn’t feel bad.  Why would they?  After all, the company’s Powerball numbers just got picked.  From the tone of their press release celebrating the score, they think the ability to speak geek justifies being spoiled:

Honeywell (NYSE: HON) announced today that it has signed a contract with the U.S. Department of Energy for a $27.3 million grant to produce a critical component of lithium-ion batteries used in hybrid and electric vehicles.

The grant is intended to help Honeywell become the first domestic supplier of high-purity lithium hexafluorophosphate (LiPF6), a conductive salt that is one of four critical components in rechargeable lithium-ion batteries. Lithium-ion batteries are becoming more popular for use in a variety of applications because they are lighter and smaller than other batteries, hold their charge well, and can handle the numerous charge and discharge cycles required by modern electronics and vehicles.

While I’m not anti-high-purity lithium hexafluorophosphate per se, I am anti-waste-your-money-without-your-consent; you see the difference.  If the power sources in question are such great investments, why aren’t private conglomerates lining up to make money by investing in these oh so conductive salts?

It’s telling nobody’s buying this product on its own.  Or at least it should be.  The technology doesn’t exist to run our devices on garbage-powered flux capacitors or the like.  That’s why the project isn’t self-funded by willing consumers who get a desirable good out of the transaction.  Instead, governmental misfits fund the hybrid moments.

Honeywell’s work is being subsidized by the equivalent of a wealthy aunt.  We can only bleed her purse dry for so long, as the lack of retail foot traffic will eventually bite our bankrupt keisters.

America is frustratingly aping the Spains of the world, namely by assuming that the only thing keeping us from living as Mother Gaia intended is a massive cash infusion that greedy capitalists are unwilling to provide.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t work to publicly subsidize something that, well, doesn’t work.  Doing so explains why the Spanish economy is muy malo.

But the only option when you can’t see land is to tread water.  Businesses are merely doing what they can to get in good with Washington partway through the Obamaera, whether such actions take the form of Goldman Sachs donating feverishly to the incumbent or Wal-Mart rolling back and supporting Democraticare. 

As with many other companies facing a Greecified economic environment, Honeywell is just trying to make a good deal for itself.  Of course, the fact they got a good deal is a bad sign for everyone else.

As a result, the public is left funding the unbearable folly of gas station coffee-weak batteries.  More and more will eventually be heavily soaked as financiers: after successful people have been punished to capacity, the present administration will alter the definition of “rich” to any fat cat who earns a weekly paycheck.

But at least unemployment is down ever since the present bout of federal skullduggery began, even though it’s not.  The president is failing to create jobs by treating Avatar as a documentary.  Next, the smart wager is that he’ll try a perpetual census.  Lowering the jobless rate by hiring people to constantly count all the other people is only slightly more inane than sponsoring green battery creation.

As for the handful of eco-warriors who actually fall for buying a vehicle equipped with a feeble battery sporting a Made in Buffalo sticker, the rest of us ask that you please stay in the right lane as you putter along at 48 miles per hour on the Thruway.  Consider it a courtesy to those who helped pay for your hippiemobile, namely every taxpayer passing you.

Matt pointed out why this area is a curious yet telling destination for the president.  And, as commenter Brooks put it, “What better place to see how Liberal philosophies come to fruition than Buffalo.”  Obama wants to open the Petri dish lid covering Erie County and spread whatever growth is festering inside.  Unfortunately, it’s unlikely he will pay attention closely enough to see what will happen outside the lab if he keeps experimenting.

Still, we can at least try to get him to traipse through and gawk at some telling rust spots on the area’s hull.  Suggesting a full itinerary serves as a form of bipartisanship.  At the least, he’ll be unable to refer to us as the Bloggers of No.

First, his trip itself should be routed along the Kensington and Scajaquada.  Such an excursion would allow him to ponder how bureaucratic planning led to thruways cutting through the middle of a pleasant neighborhood and the city’s signature park, respectively.

His travel time would also ideally include a white-knuckle roller coaster ride along the useless Skyway.  Once he digs his fingers out of the car seat cushion, he’ll have a chance to ponder federal unresponsiveness to obsolescence.  If it makes him feel better, he can think about frazzled Western New Yorkers who have to drive on the superfluous elevated roadway every day and be especially thankful he didn’t take his jaunt in February.

Also, POTUS ought to save some ride tickets so he can take a slow journey on the Metro Rail.  Luckily, its cars are outfitted with windows, allowing him to look outside during the above-ground trek and see. . . well, not much.  Any initial signs of progress he spots have come a couple decades late.

Ironically, Obama’s expedition here is part of the myopically-named Main Street Tour.  Thanks to a woefully onerous public policy, the Main Street of the municipality he’s visiting often looks like an Omega Man set.  Get home before sundown lest you’re up for fighting mutants.

Looking at Main Street will allow Obama to comprehend just how sparse the commercial presence is in large swaths of the metropolis.  He should then take a complementary swing through some nearly-deserted neighborhoods to see how the residential situation is eerily similar.

In certain neighborhoods, he could buy a house as a souvenir if he has a couple hundred bucks in his pocket.  If he’s lucky, the dwelling he wants won’t be knocked down first in recovery’s name.

But turning buildings into lots qualifies as development here.  With that in mind, Obama should stop by the empty patch where the Aud stood.  His guide can tell him how the city demolished a war memorial after letting it idle for years.

Instead of selling a historical building to a commercial concern who could have imaginatively repurposed it, we just smashed away.  Moving a publicly-built facility into private hands was apparently unthinkable.  On the positive side, he can envision shopping for fishing poles the Bass Pro that will be built on the site circa 2841.

It’s not that there’s a dearth of worthwhile projects to check out in Buffalo; it’s just that signs of development can only be measured with time-lapse photography.  Wonderful sites like the Commercial Slip and Darwin Martin House are still works in progress because both are funded in large part upon tax dollars.

Either restoration could be moving faster if the projects relied on attracting individuals or businesses to invest or donate.  Instead, a public partnership has limited growth.  Hey: it’s just like the jobs created/saved rate.

He might be a little depressed after those stops.  But there are cheery points of interest, too.  Obama should look and learn from what’s nice: by chance, many of the great things about the city emerged precisely because they are unscathed by federal, state, county, or city planning.

For one, the commander-in-chief could enjoy a Chippewa Strip beer summit, experiencing the organic phenomenon of people deciding to have fun by hanging out together.  The revelry offers a lesson: somehow, bars and patrons popped up in the area without central planning.  A pleasantly lax  4 a.m. last call helped, too.

A trip down Elmwood is also necessary.  The hipsters probably don’t appreciate that the area has been enlivened thanks to urban settlers like themselves and stalwart retailers, not wise bureaucrats.

Next, he should check out the offices of greedy fat cat conglomerates like HSBC, Delaware North, and personal corporate hero Labatt USA, all of which create jobs and fuel the economy.  Unfortunately, their success feels like an exception both locally and now nationally.  Why haven’t they just gone broke and demanded a bailout?

Regardless, everyone who’s ever crossed into the city of course must nosh at the Anchor Bar, where Teressa Bellissimo didn’t need a stimulus grant to engage in delicious ingenuity.

All the while, he can meet Buffalo’s citizens, who remain optimistic in spite of experience.  Ideally, he should come back in the fall and sit at a sporting event with locals.

The alleged White Sox backer could learn that Buffalo fans don’t let the frustrating pain of repeatedly falling short paired with maddening decisions by those in power keep them from feeling confident about the possibility of a more desirable outcome next season.  Still, it would be nice to pull a championship one of these blasted years.  Unfortunately, the nation’s general manager is more likely to pursue mediocrity.

Obama will undoubtedly merely look around Buffalo as opposed to actually seeing what’s happening.  His baffling desire to Greecify America means he wouldn’t change his approach even if he did get the picture.

Sadly, that knowledge tempers the excitement over a presidential visit.  For those of us left behind, Buffalo’s copious pleasant aspects will hopefully offer some distraction from having seen what the rest of the country faces next.  Time travel’s side effects include bouts of melancholy and overwhelming nausea.

When Nicholas A. Langworthy leads the Erie County delegation to the Republican State Convention in Manhattan next month, some grizzled old pol might just bar him from entering the smoke-filled backrooms.

With a kidlike mug and only 29 years old, Langworthy hardly looks old enough to smoke, let alone lead the Erie County Republican Party.

Yet that’s exactly the position he assumes after the GOP County Committee meeting Wednesday. He becomes the youngest person to lead a local political party in any-one’s memory.

To almost everyone who knows him, however, the son of a Chautauqua County tavern owner appears as a rising star in political circles, with more experience than many of his elders.

“He’s where he is because of a combination of intelligence, political intuition and flat-out hard work,” said former Niagara County Republican Chairman Henry F. Wojtaszek. “The fact that he’s chairman at 29 does not surprise me in the slightest, and I could have told you that a long time ago.”

I met Nick soon after I moved to Western New York two years ago when he was running Chris Lee’s successful campaign for Congress. So, once again I offer my congratulations to Nick. I hope his leadership at the ECGOP will lead to a stronger relationship between the local party and local blogs.

But maybe there was something charmingly worthwhile about figuring out how to earn a decent paycheck without political assistance.  Not only is it a rewarding incentive for good work, but the alternative doesn’t work here in reality.

The progressive attempt to enact a hyper-minimum wage only spurs economic retreat.  Such guarantees are only guaranteed to be counterproductive for a municipality that isn’t in a position to make demands.

Take the Canal Side project, which Buffalo’s Common Council naturally wants to stall with a “Community Benefits Agreement.”  It includes inflated worker payments among its other boring lefty demands:

Backers of a CBA want it to ensure that, among other things, small local businesses get a significant share of the project’s retail space; that the development use “green” technology; that it include local and minority hiring goals; and that Canal Side jobs pay a “living wage” higher than the state’s minimum wage.

The Council’s efforts to sabotage a retail ray of hope in an area that’s been dominated by a black hole for decades is sadly typical.  It’s reminiscent of the recent deal between the city and the Buffalo Olmsted Parks Conservancy to maintain the greens, during which the issue made a cameo:

An understanding that the conservancy would not have to pay seasonal or temporary employees a higher “living wage,” which the city typically requires of contractors.

The fact that the exemption was an exception defines the problem.  Workers who are valuable enough will make enough to pay for their needs; they’re either already at that level or will get there.  That’s even truer for those employed in private industries.  Distorting the market prices the area out of business while sticking taxpayers with the tab.

Further, it may shock Council members and their confused supporters to learn that nobody is entitled to make enough to break even at month’s end.  Workers toiling for low earnings are free to take on another job, subsist meagerly, request help from a church or the Salvation Army, find a roommate, rely upon a working spouse, live with family, or be a minor who doesn’t have to worry about rent and utilities yet.

Or, they could seek better work.  Some trades simply don’t generate enough value to employers to justify high wages.  Particularly, entry-level retail positions like the ones that would be available at the theoretical Canal Side shopping esplanade aren’t conducive to making it on one’s own.

Of course, a raise or promotion into management might catapult the register jockey into self-sufficiency.  But the initial salesclerk positions for enterprising young people will never even exist if the city insists on mid-level pay upfront.

The misconception that employees won’t be properly remunerated also lurks behind standard minimum wage increases.  Those who see corporations as parasites hold that unskilled and inexperienced workers would be compensated about nine dollars per week without government edicts.

But attempts to rip off working stiff would be unsuccessful even if there were no state or federal limits: a similar company down the street will exploit the exploitation and attract personnel who aren’t being financially respected at Company A.  Members of the workforce are free to market themselves as long as there are free markets.

Unfortunately, government meddling of all types serves as the equivalent of lead life preservers to those treading water.  Consider how they pay their own: every day brings yet more stories of woefully overpaid state workers or woefully underfunded state pensions.  If governments set out to compensate their minions in a way to make private sector workers jealous, they succeeded.

With that in mind, we must let everyone begin on the lowest rung.  As with Buffalo itself, workers must prove themselves.  Thankfully, prospects for both the area and jobseekers would improve after a slight probationary period: the retail presence and wages have every chance to grow concurrently along the Canal as long as everyone involved is willing to engage in the equivalent of entry-level work.

On the other hand, the Council’s wage interdiction threatens to stop development in the empty plot phase.  It’s unfortunately not hard to understand why fat paychecks are so scarce considering the stifling economic circumstances that have enveloped the area for decades.  Neither the legendarily large tax burden nor the similarly huge rulebook are helping; insisting upon living wages is just one more maddening example of aid that should be refused.

The worst way to compensate for the damage inflicted by untold unreasonable regulations would be another regulation.  Making companies pay artificially high wages now will prevent genuinely good jobs from being created at any future point.

The level of base pay sought will either shrink profits or eliminate them altogether to the point of being prohibitive.  But at least the remaining positions will offer a “living wage,” assuming the highly dubious notion there are any.

A decent hourly rate is a foregone conclusion for proficient staff, unless one happens to subscribe to the rather East German notion that businesses are run by cigar-chomping, cognac-sniffing fat cats who hang out on Wall Street dressed like Rich Uncle Pennybags or Mr. Peanut.

Hard and smart work ensures meager wages are merely a temporary condition.  But some politicians are attempting to erect a payment floor that stands on stilts.  If they’re successful on the Canal Side, vacant spaces will continue to accompany the city’s vacant storefronts.