Carl Paladino, Wal Mart, Buffalo News Citizens of the Month

Our local one horse Newspaper seems to have lost what's left of its mind. They have gone on record as congratulating local developer Carl Paladino for -- now right off the bat I am a little murky on what exactly they are saying but I think it's close to this -- "raising the profile" of the Board of Education elections in May. I guess when he said of the current Board "I will destroy them - all 9 of them," he was raising the profile of said popularity contest. Now they don't want to get caught up defending Carl on any of his campaign SNAFUs like the anti-gay remarks or the brutally unfunny racist emails and horsey porn many sources received and identified Carl as the sender. No, the high minds of da Nooze want to sidestep all of that while somehow extending their gentrified little mitt to swat Carl with a high five. The brief love affair with PCB/PhD/Harvard appears to have hit the rapids and I suspect it all went to hollering and flying utensils when the Superintendent told them she wasn't handing over the investigation into Debbie Buckley's alleged mismanagement of somewhere between a quarter and a half million dollars. Much of it was  somehow funneled to her own tutoring centers where a dearth of tutoring transpired. So Mary Pasciak had to FOIL request it and when she got it she also blew up the City Hall Ballers for paying vendors without contracts and paying vendors whether their services were delivered or not among other icky bits of business nobody with Italian loafers and a $29.00 coffee mug sashaying around the upper floors of City Hall wanted made public.  Here are a few video samples of the guy the News praises for "raising the profile" (as if that helps anyone with anything) of the Board of Ed elections. Other than drawing in some yahoo votes and possibly turning this thing into an extended dance re-mix of last fall's debacle, I am baffled why at this stage the Nooze is attempting to suck up to Carl Paladino. At one point last year their  recently departed publisher's name was splattered on a building downtown among a list of Paladino enemies Carl had targeted for, well I don't want to speculate what for but there they were. 

 

                           Carl's checkers speech if you will complete with orange baseball bat

Carl and Fred Dicker of The Post exchange pleasantries until fellow UB English major Michael Caputo intervenes.

                   Carl's New York City Trip, an Oldie but Who Can Forget This Pointed Rant? 

And in a similarly baffling endorsement the day after the News steps up to support a guy who's never bothered to hide his contempt for them, the same bright bulbs praise Wal Mart for hiring veterans and encourages other companies to emulate their largesse towards our warriors. While the editorial writers were forced to list a litany of The Walton Klan's transgressions towards workers, unions, the environment and the forces of good in general they blundered right on ahead in backslapping one of the largest cesspools of corporate slime in the global economy. They neglected to mention the age old favorite practice of "dead janitor" or dead peasant policies the Waltons made famous when they surreptitiously insured disabled and ill workers then kept the payout upon death of same. Barbara Ehrenreich in Nickel and Dimed in America worked "undercover" at a Wal Mart and was also able to document a corporate policy of grabbing workers either before they punched in or after they punched out and squeezing anywhere from fifteen minutes to half an hour of free labor out of them. This was picked off in an internal memo and Wal Mart was forced to answer for it and stop it.  The best part of the entire myopic editorial though was written not by the New but by a reader who commented that they only hire Vets because veterans get health care at the VA and Wal Mart will never be beholden to contributing anything towards their well being -- aside from the miserly sub-living wages they pay. Maybe it was a slow week or maybe somebody missed the bus to Stupidtown but to read this week's Buffalo News was an exercise in stupidity and convoluted praise to parties who don't really deserve any. If they were public school teachers I'd have to rate them failing and ineffective.