Monday 19 July 2010

Its Reputation in Tatters, BP Continues Trying to Cover its Ass

Here's another shocker -- BP wants to keep their cap in place even though some testing by the Feds shows a lower pressure than would be expected from such a well. Hmmm, my spidey senses are tingling me that the pressure is low because there's a leak somewhere. And of course there's a very real chance of that but not one BP is willing to uncap Pandoras well, not when their relief well is in sight. Well, in sight I guess when you think that it could be done in less time than has all ready passed since the April detonation of Petrolesuvius, the destruction of Deepwater Horizon and the loss of 11 lives. So BP's game now is to be very clear that they want the cap to stay on. If the Feds want to go mucking around and uncap it for whatever reasons they may have -- and sadly, from what we've seen of BP it's a damn safe bet they have reasons -- any more spillage will be on them not on Old Blighty. Sorry BP but it's hard to see your motives as anything more noble than they've been up til now : another politic attempt to cover your Union Jack bedecked asses. Nice commercials on Sunday morning t.v. too but you're still full of it.

Sunday 18 July 2010

Mayor Brown's National Search Yields a Byron Brown Campaign Contributor !


Mayor Brown's National Search Yields a Byron Brown Campaign Contributor !

pic by wnymedia.net

Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown is trying to sneak one of his buddies in through the side door and install him as police commissioner. What's even better is Brown claimed he was going to hold a nation wide search for the best candidate. Somehow the search has yielded a candidate whose wife's company sells campaign materials to the mayor's camp. Damn. Can you figure the odds of that coincidence ? The candidate also donates to the mayor's campaigns! What's more is the candidate's lack of any education beyond high school would disqualify him from hiring on as a rookie patrolman. Yes Hutch tech is a high school for smart kids but outside of Buffalo chances are pretty slim that anyone's going to install Dan Derenda as their top cop with a Hutch Tech diploma as his terminal degreee. Word has it Mr. Whitfield Byron's choice as Fire Commissioner counts his GED as sufficient educational background for his position. Ahh but then again this is Buffalo, City of No Illusions friends and do any of us really suffer from the delusion that these jobs are anything other than patronage handouts to good little lemmings who do what their Mayor tells them to do ? Why should these guys have an education, after all remember how our Superintendent of Schools was chosen ? Robert Wilmers of M&T Bank CEOship in his aristocratic largesse offered to pay for one of these nation wide talent searches, one that appears about as rigorous as the one that coughed up the name Dan Derenda. Some who know claimed that Wilmers typed "union buster" into google and got his man, one James Williams, who came here after leaving a path of destruction in Dayton Ohio that included, among other things, an $18 MILLION DOLLAR hole in their wallet that nobody knew about until Williams was house hunting at Spaulding Lake. There have been more than a few casual assertions that Mr. Williams' own advanced degree is of questionable veracity, thus the habit of BTF materials referring to him as Mr. rather than doctor.

And why stop here ? Lieutenant Greg Kwiatkowski has just been suspended with pay for throttling one of his subordinates in a police station because the cop requested a transfer to get away from his Lieutenant K's command. Kwiatkowski is the same guy who is under review for acting up in a bar where cops in uniform had stopped off after an awards banquet. When an NFTA copper tried to warn them that they were drawing the attention of patrons who were taking pictures of them drunk in uniform, the NFTA cop got decked for his attempted collegiality. Kwiatkowski,as we recall, was also involved in a choking incident or so fellow cop Carole Horne, ex-fellow cop I should say, claimed when she leaped onto his back to try and stop him from throttling a perp in his driveway. In similar rogue fashion the Buffalo Public Schools have been shuffling rogue a Principal for years. She's been removed from one school due to parent and teacher outrage. She was then hidden at another school where she slapped a kid with a huge suspension for a minor offense in one act of the tragedy that became McKinleyGate. She has since been installed at another school, a notorious hot spot anyway, where her bullying mainly of faculty has led to an vote of no confidence in her and plans for the school's eventual closing. Her policy of sending kids home for infractions as petty as hall wandering recently contributed to the death of a kid who was gunned down at a bus stop during school hours. Yes I know it's dirty to say that she caused his death, she didn't, but to kick a 15 year old out of school at mid-day for something as minor as cutting class put him on the street where his attacker found him and ended his life.

So friends what we have in Buffalo currently is a control freak mayor who ran unopposed, a schools chief with iffy credentials who was picked by a banking industry millionaire, a top cop with a high school diploma and a fire chief with a GED. We have rogue employees in management running amok and for all of those who love the word "accountability" we have little to none of it until it comes time to nail a political opponent. Instead of revenge or vindictiveness they use the phrase "accountability." At the risk of sounding cynical why shouldn't Byron Brown expect to get away with this one ? As long as Buffalo is willing to be a third or fourth tier city and maintain its stranglehold on that third poorest city in the galaxy position, this is what we're going to get, only worse.