Rob Galbraith
@RobCGalbraith
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Father, Uncle, Gardener, Spouse // research at @twittlesis
Joined May 2016
Turning the 33 into a full or partial tunnel would be a far worse generational blunder than anything they might do with a Bills stadium.
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NYC cops riot as their endorsed Presidential candidate loses his re-election bid.
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How do this story and $3 billion for Amazon exist in the same universe?.
Thousands of NYCHA residents didn't have heat, hot water on Thanksgiving
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Chris Koob, the treasurer of Persist PAC, the Super PAC that recently dropped $9 million on Elizabeth Warren ad buys, is the former COO of Securing America's Energy Future, a military + business led oil advocacy group
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People in Buffalo love to talk about how people from other cities can’t handle a little snow and then drive their car through the window of a City Mattress on a clear summer day.
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It’s significant that Warren’s Super PAC is being run by the former head of an oil lobbying group given that Warren has pointed to @sunrisemvmt’s endorsement of Sanders as justification for reneging on her promise to reject Super PAC support.
Chris Koob, the treasurer of Persist PAC, the Super PAC that recently dropped $9 million on Elizabeth Warren ad buys, is the former COO of Securing America's Energy Future, a military + business led oil advocacy group
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North Tonawanda.
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"Mayor Michael Bloomberg suggested Monday that American lawmakers might have a thing or two to learn from nations like Singapore, where drug dealers can be executed for their crimes."
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BAD NEWS FOLKS: Cuomo is putting Bill Mulrow, a senior advisor at the Wall Street private equity vulture Blackstone Group, in charge of the coronavirus economic recovery. More on Cuomo, Mulrow, and Blackstone here:
It’s an administration reunion for today’s scheduled press briefing with Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Larry Schwartz, Bill Mulrow and Steve Cohen in attendance.
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@EoinHiggins_ Botany 101, tomato growing season is year-round, every tomato contains 1 seed, and every plant produces 25 tomatoes at exactly the same time.
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When Buffalo was protesting racist violence in 2020 Brown & Poloncarz falsely blamed "outside agitators" and tried to silence the protests by enforcing a curfew with batons and gas, so not really interested in what they have to say about an outside racist murdering my neighbors.
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Absolutely insane. Sinatra should never have heard this case. His real estate developer brother is a major donor to Brown, including in this election, and has his business deeply entwined with Brown's administration as I laid out in a thread this week:
BREAKING: Federal Judge John Sinatra has ordered the Board of Elections to place Byron Brown ON THE BALLOT in NOVEMBER @news4buffalo
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Buffalo has $10 million to replace some lead water lines in order to poison fewer people and $1 billion to give away to Terry Pegula, who makes money by putting more poison into the water and the air.
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@BusinessInsider Jet in the cover image for this story costs ~$2 million and was registered by Gonzalez's Lamb Rock Properties LLC on 9/30/20 so maybe the eviction moratorium hasn't hurt too badly.
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This evil fuck is bitching about shoplifters when thousands of people have been stuck without heat and power for more than 3 days with absolutely no help from the city.
Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown excoriated those found looting stores in the aftermath of the blizzard: "I don't know how these people can even live with themselves, how they can look at themselves in the mirror. They are the lowest of the low."
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8 out of the 13 people prosecuted under the Espionage Act in all US history were prosecuted by Obama in his war on whistleblowers who tried to hold him accountable.
Mr. Obama is trying to teach Democracy 101 to the authoritarian Mr. Trump >> "The free press isn't the enemy of the people. It's the way we hold people accountable.".
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It’s actually Hunter Biden’s longtime business partner Devon Archer, who sat on the Burisma board with him and was implicated (convicted at one point) in a scheme to defraud a Native American tribe last year using a firm that was also paying Biden. Just some normal-ass stuff.
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Billionaires’ income doesn’t come from wages for work, it comes from owning productive capital. Taxing their wealth brings hoarded money back into circulation to rebuild the social infrastructure that made such hoarding possible in the first place.
“I don’t know how you raise taxes on people who are out of work and their businesses are closed. I don’t know how you do that now.”. -@NYGovCuomo on calls to raise taxes on wealthy to deal with #coronavirus outbreak.
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This is a choice. The government is choosing to try to round up people for stealing rather than helping people because they care more about if the manager of a Rent-a-Center has to fill out an insurance claim form than if poor people die.
Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia said the department has had to divert resources away from recovery missions because the crime that is occurring cannot be ignored.
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someone who is good at the economy help me budget this. the cops are assaulting my neighbors.
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"Limit your time outdoors" says governor who just gave the green light for 225,000 evictions in the middle of the worst wave of the pandemic.
It’s a cold one, New York. Be sure to bundle up if you’re going outside today and to limit your time outdoors. Stay warm and stay safe.
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Hochul teamed up with the GOP to try to appoint an anti-abortion activist judge to the chief seat of the top court in NYS.
I will always do everything in my power to protect your reproductive rights.
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Grateful for this photo that shows how the Buffalo fire department’s rescue truck, which is stationed a block from the Jefferson Ave Tops, is emblazoned with the punisher skull beloved by the anti-Black Lives Matter crowd.
DA Flynn joins @MayorByronBrown, @BPDAlerts, US Attorney Ross, law enforcment and public officials to provide an update on the investigation into the #JeffersonAvenue shooting.
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They hiked taxes to give the cops an extra $5.2 million this year but there’s never enough money to run non-violent public services.
None of Buffalo's outdoor pools will open this summer
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Imagine throwing a rally to support beating up the elderly.
A large crowd of people made up of mostly law enforcement are standing outside of Buffalo City Court
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Despite all the advances in communication, energy infrastructure, etc in the past 46 years, this storm has already killed more people than the longer, snowier Blizzard of 77 when Erie Co had a larger population. But don’t you dare criticize the performance of elected officials.
More devastating news: .Blizzard's death toll climbs to at least 34, with 27 in Buffalo; more deaths than Blizzard of '77 via @TheBuffaloNews.
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Kim and Terry Pegula, the owners of the @BuffaloSabres frequently fund the campaigns of anti-gay politicians like Chris Collins, Pat Toomey, and Karin Housley.
We are proud to celebrate the LGBTQ+ community with the @Penguins in the @NHL’s first-ever joint Pride Game on Saturday, April 17 at @KeyBankCtr!. More info:
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These fucks are going to cook some idiot hashtag like “BuffaloTough”, use this crime to ratchet up surveillance and cop violence targeting the same neighborhood the killer did, and then go straight back to palling around with local people who share all the killer’s basic beliefs.
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Weird, just last week he insisted he couldn’t do this.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Biden to announce new eviction ban due to COVID spread.
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NPR @MorningEdition just had on Jack Keane justifying assassination without disclosing Keane is a long time war profiteer with a variety of defense industry roles, including advising Academi (the mercenary outfit formerly known as Blackwater) and on the board of General Dynamics.
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The public safety mayor and governor sure are having a hard time conceding that it's wrong to murder people.
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Biden has been in office for more than half a year now and hasn’t done anything about the US child abuse warehouses for migrants. Guess he was too busy not canceling student debt, not extending the eviction moratorium, not taking action on climate, etc.
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After posting where I live on Facebook, Trump's new HHS spokesman sent me this video threatening me with his "MAGA Quick Reaction Force." I've never protested at his house or any events, but I did criticize a rally with Steve Bannon he organized during the 2018 mail bomb spree
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Elon Musk (net worth $69.2 billion) got a $1 billion stimulus package from the people of New York State 5 years ago and still has not delivered on his end of the deal.
Another government stimulus package is not in the best interests of the people imo.
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Mighty Taco liked all of these tweets except for the one where I said they should have a union
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Democrat geniuses making sure that billionaires' kids don't get free community college, where billionaires' kids notoriously go for education.
Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) tells me he could envision tuition-free community college being means tested.
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Buffalo News apparently willing to print any anonymous hearsay as long as they can use it to wind up salacious rumors. Here an anonymous landlord alleges to police that an anonymous neighbor made an allegation to him. Police “found no proof” of allegation, but the News prints it.
"Absolutely not," India Walton said of the accusation that drugs were being sold out of the house she shared with three of her sons.
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HUGE conflict of interest: The federal suit against Erie Co Board of Elections to get Byron Brown on the ballot for mayor of Buffalo is being heard by John Sinatra, the brother of real estate developer Nick Sinatra, a major campaign donor and ally of Brown's.
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$250 million in reimbursement and fees for scamming people is 0.26% of the $95 billion in revenue that BofA reported last year.
Bank of America must reimburse customers more than $100 million and pay $150 million in fines for “double-dipping” on overdraft fees, withholding reward bonuses on credit cards and opening accounts without customer consent.
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Gonzalez can't be suffering all that much due to the eviction moratorium. He registered the airplane in this photo – which costs ~$2 million – on 9/30/20, months after the pandemic had set in.
I'm a landlord with 24 properties. We're suffering during Biden's eviction ban, too, and no one is helping.
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Buffalo News says Nick Sinatra – the real estate developer brother of the judge that just put Brown back on the ballot after losing the primary – has given $6,650 to Brown's campaign. I found at least $11,755 in donations from Sinatra and his LLCs, most recently on June 7.
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Caputo has now scrubbed his MAGA Quick Reaction Force website, but cached versions are still available:
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Byron Brown perpetually sounds like a middle schooler improvising a homework excuse.
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Folks when you are buying your mass murder souvenir please remember to only buy the official Buffalo Bills-branded one.
#ICYMI The Better Business Bureau is warning Western New Yorkers about fake "Choose Love" shirts being sold online.
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Buffalo has the largest city hall in the United States. It's so big, in fact, that no one that works there is ever able to reach a ringing phone to answer it.
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When she was Erie County Clerk, Hochul threatened to turn immigrants in to a notoriously racist sheriff if they attempted to apply for a driver's license.
The life of St. Patrick reminds all of us to open up our doors and welcome those who seek refuge. Thank you to Bishop Brennan for this morning’s #StPatricksDay Mass at @StPatsNYC.
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Sad to lose the Old Pink even though I haven't been there in years. One of the places where grubby cavalier Buffalo freakiness persisted in the rising tide of smoothed-out "renaissance" chintz. Seeing it go down in literal flames feels especially poignant and also terribly fated.
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Cuomo loves to blame WNYers for coronavirus, but he refused to cancel rent or mortgages or to tax the rich, he defunded public services, he changed his re-opening criteria to make people go back to work early, and he’s ignoring his “red zone” criteria to keep people at work now.
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Police commissioner Gramaglia has no right to complain about looting considering he looted the majority of his masters dissertation at Buff State.
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@StefanMychajliw Big government is already in Buffalo. The state and federal governments are the top 2 employers in WNY. UB and BPS are 6 and 7. The county government, ECMC, and Roswell Park are 9, 10, and 11. Things a person would think you'd know as comptroller!.
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I do think that sometimes politicians do the wrong thing because they genuinely believe it’s the right thing to do. Time and again @GovKathyHochul has shown she is willing to fight to do what she knows is wrong because she believes it will help her politics career. That is worse.
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Millionaire developer from DC, convicted of fraud and pardoned by Trump, who came here 5 years ago to buy up half of downtown whines about "someone we don't know" when talking about India Walton, who has lived, worked, and raised a family here for 39 years
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All these cutting edge toys and weapons to punish us with while we live in toxic, uninsulated houses, drinking unfluoridated water from lead lines, walking on crumbling sidewalks, breathing filthy polluted air, pouring raw sewage straight into the river.
The Buffalo Police Department’s SWAT team utilizes a wide range of devices and equipment to find the safest way to end conflicts across our city! 💙🏘️. This includes devices like robots, thermal drones, and armored vehicles!🚔✨
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I'm the one Josh Allen got pregnant and guess what Bills mafia, I. am. keeping it.
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A few years ago, Seneca water protectors stopped a Pegula-backed project to dump fracking waste into the Allegheny River. Now Hochul has extorted half a billion from the Seneca nation to give away to Pegula.
.@TheSenecaNation is not so happy with @GovKathyHochul and her plan to use casino revenues to fund the @BuffaloBills stadium:
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Looks like Starbucks on Elmwood in Buffalo voted to unionize 19-8.
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Weird. Did the Tesla computer mistake the convention center for a pedestrian?.
WATCH: Security camera video in Ohio captured the moment a speeding Tesla crashed into the Columbus Convention Center.
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From paid sick leave, to free testing and treatment, to publicly owned industry, the coronavirus pandemic is showing the US the benefits of social democracy.
Cuomo says a 7 oz. bottle of this hand sanitizer is $1.12. "It's much cheaper for us to make it ourselves than to buy it on the open market.".
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We won’t help you if you’re trapped in a house without heat or power but by god if you leave your house you WILL feel the full force the law.
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Damn imagine if the government sprang to action as quickly for stamping out racist police as it did for covering up people’s outrage over racist police.
WATCH: Buffalo Department of Public Works crews are cleaning up after protesters painted the word "resign" in front of the courthouse on Franklin Street.
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Love to treat myself to a $300 bottle of booze after doing a back room deal to give away a billion dollars of the people’s money to an oil billionaire.
Definitely a 21 year Scotch day. Save the really good stuff for days like today. :)
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Seen on Facebook: Byron Brown mailer paid for by the New York Republican State Committee. Have not seen the committee report any spending on behalf of Brown, but 11-Day Pre-General campaign finance filings are due today.
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In 2013 @washingtonpost covered our report on how they and other outlets let Stephen Hadley and other war profiteers goad the Obama administration toward war with Syria in their pages without disclosing their ties to weapons sellers. No change in 7 years.
the writer here, Stephen Hadley, makes $305K/yr as a director at Raytheon, which built the Multi-Spectral Targeting System for the MQ-9 Reaper drone that killed Soleimani. None of this is disclosed in his "drones actually open the door for diplomacy" take.
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Fixed this
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Fact check: Brown has already accepted in-kind support from Paladino and spent over $11,000 at Paladino’s businesses in this campaign.
"I did not ask Carl Paladino for support, and I will not take any money from Carl Paladino." @MayorByronBrown @WGRZ.
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Byron Brown reported a $5000 donation from the "Russel J. Salvatore Foundation" on June 1, 2021. The Russell J. Salvatore Foundation is a 501(c)(3) charity controlled by the Transit Rd restauranteur of the same name. 501(c)(3)s are prohibited from donating to politicians.
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Wow look at this futuristic rendering of a what an electric mass transit system in Buffalo could look like
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All in all a most disgraceful week for the federal judiciary.
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Poloncarz, Brown, and Hochul continue to not give a fuck as dozens of people die from this storm with no help from the government. They reject any accountability for themselves and then when asked what stranded people should do, they just scold them for not being better prepared.
Yikes. Spectrum reporter asks Poloncarz about plans for the people running out food. He gives a non-answer (they have no plan), then goes on to say people should've had 2wks of food & medicine on hand for the emergency. Remember, #Buffalo is one of America's poorest cities.
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BUFFALO: My friend's tree company is hiring a tree climber at $20-$30/hr with possible future worker-owner status (they are currently transitioning to a worker co-operative). Full listing here:
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@lhfang SKDK also running this campaign for Uber, Lyft, Grubhub, etc to keep gig economy workers classified as contractors rather than employees with labor rights in NYS:
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How Buffalo's "renaissance" – an expansion of amenities marketed to professionals dependent on disinvestment and punishment of the poor – created conditions for India Walton's historic campaign. Great history co-written by my colleague @derekseidman80.
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Thing to keep in mind about the Pegulas is that they’re not billionaires because they’re fracking business geniuses. They’re billionaires because they owned PA drilling rights at the start of the boom and flipped those to Shell. They’re just incredibly lucky bumpkins.
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The Buffalo Municipal Housing Authority is sitting on THOUSANDS of vacant apartments they have allowed to rot because they wanted the Bills to tear them down for a stadium. This crisis is being intentionally inflicted.
Landlords in Erie County — primarily in Buffalo — are moving to evict tenants in greater numbers than almost anywhere in the state. More than Queens, Manhattan or the Bronx, @jaz_ciel reports:.
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Terry Pegula and Jerry Jones are the main people profiting off of Kathy Hochul's $850 million in public money for the new Bills stadium.
From the Jim Trotter complaint against the NFL. Note the quotes attributed to Jerry Jones and Terry Pegula.
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Bringing in outside experts to assess whether Buffalo should plow the snow or try to help people when they’re without electricity in below-freezing temperatures for the better part of a week.
I am pleased to announce @nyuniversity's Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service will study the Dec 2022 Buffalo blizzard & deliver an after-action report. The report will review the actions throughout the region to prepare for, respond to, & recover from the storm.
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These rules are totally arbitrary. It's either safe to go to a bar or work out in a gym or it's not. It doesn't become safer if you've ordered a sandwich or if it's before 10 pm. We get this sanitation theater because leaders won't contemplate just paying everyone to stay home.
NYS is taking action to stop the spread in response to rising COVID numbers. Any establishment with a state liquor license, including bars and restaurants, must close at 10pm. Gyms must also close at 10pm. These new statewide rules will take effect Friday, 10pm.
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Thursday @CanisiusCollege sent out a brochure using a photo of my wife & kid to tout their "community impact." Last night, they fired my wife in violation of her contract & told her she had 5 days to decide whether to teach 1 more year or take severance & forfeit her right to sue.
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A crew of billionaires have come together to try to stop India Walton from becoming mayor of Buffalo, including:.- Jacobs family (worth $2.5 billion).- Bob Rich ($4.6B).- Dan Loeb ($3.5B).- Alice Walton ($62B).- Jim Walton ($62.3B).- Glenn Dubin ($2B).- Paul Tudor Jones ($7B).
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It's shameful that while other cities are tearing out urban highways and closing city centers to cars, the powers that be in Buffalo are spending >$1 billion to preserve the Kensington Expressway and destroy the Main St pedestrian plaza.
The Cars Sharing Main Street project is moving along with the announcement on Monday of more than $54 million in additional funding.
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A few years ago I wrote about a prominent Buffalo developer who hadn’t paid property taxes to the tune of $1.2 million over several years. I heard from a reporter that this developer had run my credit and was trashing me around town about my student loans to anyone who’d listen.
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For god's sake there are so many groups based in and serving Masten Park and east Buffalo taking donations right now, do not give your money to the billionaires' lobbying group that works to make life worse here by keeping wages down, rents high, and healthcare expensive
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Kathy Hochul is married to Bill Hochul, general counsel for Delaware North, which operates concessions, premium dining, and retail at Highmark Stadium. Huge conflict of interest for Hochul to participate in stadium negotiations from which her family could financially benefit.
"The way we protect the taxpayers is by keeping the Bills in Buffalo.". New York State Lieutenant Governor Kathy Hochul insists that this is just the beginning of a negotiation and the Bills are not going anywhere. @MikeBaggerman has more:.
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Less than 2 years ago, @NewEraCap CEO Chris Koch told @rollingstone "I like to think we owe something to all the people who live in Western New York." Now he's firing 200 people so he can move where there's no union #NewEraHatsOff
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Buffalo's @MayorByronBrown still learning on the job as he begins his historic fifth term in office.
"The commissioner's authority to rescind or change the notice of condemnation is not specifically set forth in the city charter and city code," the mayor told the Buffalo News, regarding his issuance of a demo permit to ADM for the Great Northern Elevator today.
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A billion dollars of our money to give away Elon Musk, a billion dollars of our money to give away Terry Pegula, but there's never enough of our money to take the lead out of our homes or to put sidewalks on our streets or to build sewers that don't spray shit into the river.
A $1 billion investment of tax dollars in a new stadium for the @BuffaloBills would be the largest public subsidy ever for an @NFL stadium. #Buffalo #WNY #ROC #NiagaraFalls #Niagara #NewYork #upstateNY #Bills.
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This seems to have struck a chord so I’ll say I advise against overinterpreting this specific relationship. It’s an illustration of the networks in policy planning/political consulting industry. More important are the donors to this super PAC. once they are finally disclosed.
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State Democratic Party doubles down on remarks by Chairman Jay Jacobs comparing Buffalo Democratic mayoral candidate India Walton to KKK leader David Duke in order to explain his endorsement of write-in candidate Byron Brown.
“This is what’s wrong with public discourse today - people want to find something to be unhappy about, so they twist statements, or ignore statements, to make their argument. That doesn’t make them true. Read the full comments.” — JSJ
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Interesting: One of the Carl Paladino LLCs that donated to Byron Brown in October 2021 is owned in part by Joel Sartori, a level 2 sex offender who also gave to Paladino's 2010 campaign. Brown and his allies baselessly accused challenger India Walton of being soft on sex crime.
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Thinking about that story from Genesis where the people of a city were vicious and inhospitable to migrants. Don’t quite remember how it ended though. Probably with god rewarding them for their righteousness and not destroying them with fire.
At a Cheektowaga Town Board before a full crowd Tuesday night, officials confirmed asylum seekers will be removed from their temporary housing at a Dingens Street hotel — but it is not yet clear where the migrants will go next.
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Utter cowards on @TheBuffaloNews ed board trying to both sides a racist mass murder. They can't name one person on the left that supports "great replacement" bullshit, but the News ed board have themselves endorsed plenty of openly racist right-wingers, like Carl Paladino.
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The expert the Buffalo News got to say that it was ok for two riot cops to smash an elderly man’s head on the steps of city hall is a former IDF solider and Israeli National Police officer. Maybe an aprartheid state is not the model we want to emulate!.
Experts differ on police shove that focused the nation on Buffalo
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From president to congress to governor to state leg to county exec to county leg to mayor to city council, Buffalo is governed by Democrats. Not that the GOP would do different, but looting the foundering wreck of our society to make the rich richer is a bipartisan project.
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In response to @SBWorkersUnited's string of wins at stores in Buffalo and in Arizona, @Starbucks board is bringing back former CEO and failed presidential candidate Howard Schultz, who compared working at Starbucks to the Holocaust at a union-busting meeting in November.
BREAKING: Starbucks’ union movement forced the departure of CEO Kevin Johnson. Starbucks board member Mellody Hobson explained that former CEO Howard Schultz is being brought back because he is "singularly capable" of dealing with the workers. Schultz is a union-buster. 🧵
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Six years ago, my buddy tagged me in a Facebook post to go watch the Bills-Jets Thursday night game at Cafe 59. While waiting for my friends to show up, I met the woman who I'd marry a year and a half later. The Bills won 22-17.
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Recently @TheBuffaloNews editorialized in favor of changing the law to crush NY’s minor parties, saying that the Democrats and Republicans are enough. Now that they don’t like the major party nominee, they favor subverting NY election law to give their pet candidate a do-over.
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The only reason to use the euphemism “officer-involved shooting” is to obscure the fact that the police shot someone. It’s the opposite of journalism. Intentionally muddying the waters of what happened is the opposite of journalism.
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What’s been interesting to me is seeing all these (mostly older, Facebook-style) Dems, who have a very specific and unshakeable self-conception, insisting that because THEY benefit from the SALT deduction, it therefore isn’t a tax cut for the rich.
“If you’d told me a year ago that the second-biggest piece of a signature bill of this Congress was $280bn in tax giveaways to millionaires, I’d have told you the Republicans were in charge,”.
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