Mar

28

Angry mob descends on Buffalo for the Western New York Tea Party

Filed Under Buffalo, New York State | 1 Comment

It was a perfect day for a tea party on Buffalo’s historic waterfront as over 300 angry Western New Yorkers got together to protest America’s #1 dysfunctional state government. To say that they were angry is no overstatement as even the mention of names like Paterson, Silver, Smith, Volker or any other of New York’s entrenched pension grabbing political class brought on resounding jeers and boos from the audience.
Only one politician dared to show up to make a speech, State Senator George D. Maziarz an ally of one of the event organizers, activist Rus Thompson. Senator Maziarz gave some tips on how citizen action can stop Albany’s constant schemes to tax everything in sight. Even so Senator Maziarz was not immune from the mood of some of the protesters, a few hecklers were not in the mood to hear anything from any politician this day.

Views and Press Coverage of this event (I will update this as reports come in):

From the Buffalo News:
Tea Party protests high taxes, ‘failed’ government

From the Buffalo Bean Blog: Buffalo Tea Party: Mad As Hell

The Buffalo Shark has a few pics posted: Tea Party After Action Report

Progressive blogger Buffalo Pundit has a number of posts, video and pictures.

Speakupwny article: Russ Thompson’s speech highlights Buffalo tea Party

Political Class Dismissed (Jim Ostrowski’s speech): My Remarks to the Western NY Tea Party (March 18)

Niagara Gazette: TAXES: Hundreds show up for ‘Tea Party’

Tonawanda News: TAXES: Angry citizens stage revolt

WKBW Article: Taxpayers Stage Real-Life Tea Party to Protest High Taxes

Mike Rebmann from the North Buffalo Journal and Review has a slide show on Political Class Dismissed.

From WIVB: Tea party tax revolt on the waterfront

Mar

24

Erie County/Western New York Tea Party on March 28th

Filed Under Buffalo, New York State, Taxation | 2 Comments

Erie County-Western New York Tea Party

Details at the Albany’s Insanity Blog

More at Political Class Dismissed

Dec

19

Governor Paterson invokes the spirit of FDR

Filed Under History, National, New York State | 5 Comments

When it comes to unprincipled politicians, what they say and what they do are more often than not two different things. What makes me even more suspicious is when they invoke the spirit of FDR in an attempt to strengthen their proposals. Governor David Paterson of New York did just that in his article in the Daily News.

In March of 1933, when New York Gov. Franklin Roosevelt left Albany for the White House, he told the nation in his inaugural address that: “This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly.”

Now most Americans wouldn’t give this a second thought, after all most Americans, most of who are ignorant of real history would rate FDR at or near the top of the pantheon of former presidents. FDR said it so it must be good, he spoke the truth, frankly and boldly —right?
The facts are quite different from the myth when it comes to FDR’s much quoted speeches. With a little truth seeking you’ll find that what he said he stood for on the stump is most times the opposite of what he really stood for and did.

John T. Flynn exposes this one amongst many FDR contradictions in his book “THE ROOSEVELT MYTH” first published in 1948:

“He called Herbert Hoover “the greatest spender in history” He cried out against the Republican party: “It has piled bureau on bureau, commission on commission . . . at the expense of the taxpayer.” He told the people: “For three long years I have been going up and down this country preaching that government—federal, state and local—costs too much. I shall not stop that preaching.” The statement is a curious one, since I can find among his published addresses while he was governor up until the time of his nomination, not one reference to government deficits. And for a good reason, of course, since as governor he took New York State from the hands of Al Smith with a surplus of $15,000,000 and left it with a deficit of $90,000,000. He was against Big Government. “We must eliminate the functions of government . . . we must merge, we must consolidate subdivisions of government and, like private citizens, give up luxuries which we can no longer afford.”
He repeated this over and over: “I propose to you that government, big and little, be made solvent and that the example be set by the President of the United States and his cabinet.” Toward the end of the campaign he cried: “Stop the deficits! Stop the deficits!”
Then to impress his listeners with his inflexible purpose to deal with this prodigal monster, he said: “Before any man enters my cabinet he must give me a twofold pledge: Absolute loyalty to the Democratic platform and especially to its economy plank. And complete cooperation with me in looking to economy and reorganization in his department.”

This government belt tightening, deficit halting platform was in fact the original Roosevelt New Deal. It was the New Deal that most modern day Americans never heard of. Of course the reason why is— this was not the New Deal as it was carried out after he took office.

John T Flynn explains:

“In the first hundred days of his administration, Mr. Roosevelt put into effect a program of very large dimensions. But it was a program built on a wholly different principle from that which was described as the New Deal.
First of all, his central principle—his party’s traditional principle of war upon BIG government—was reversed. And he set out to build a government that in size dwarfed the government of Hoover which he denounced.”

The question is now “Is Governor Paterson cut from the same cloth as the real FDR?” Faced with the largest deficit in New York history, a whopping $15.4 billion, he has been calling for massive government cutbacks, something that has had small government types panting with approval.
The reality is that his own budget proposal only includes some token layoffs of state workers, some budget increase cuts for some already bloated institutions like schools and elimination of a few failed state government agencies and programs. Why stop there governor? There are so many failed state government agencies and programs to choose from in New York State. How about some real slash and burn before the bankrupt state really crashes and burns? Too much to ask for in the Vampire State I guess, its many decades long big spending New Deal has bleed population and employers, and the political class has grown accustomed to it, for they’ve never made any meaningful attempt to reverse it as long as their golden goose downstate was laying golden eggs. Paterson laments that “Maybe we should have thought about this when we were depending on what we thought was inexhaustive collections of taxes from Wall Street - and now those taxes have fallen off a cliff.”. Good thinking bucko, if only the Albany den of thieves had a brain to think with this could have all been avoided, but their tiny power greedy brains were more occupied in keeping their gerrymandered districts secured so their bloated pensions were maximized, their largess seeking special interests fat and happily funneling campaign contributions to their campaigns and their dependents securely poor and dependent on the state.

Are we to believe Governor Paterson’s denouncing of the big government liberalism that sunk NYS into a fiscal abyss? Like FDR’s original New Deal, there’s no real evidence to support that belief. In the Cascading Collapse of Liberalism “the liberals’ answer is ever greater doses of liberalism!”

Oct

17

Albany Ron Paul Rally Video on Google

Filed Under Libertarian, New York State, Republican Party, Ron Paul | Leave a Comment

Transcript of Jim Ostrowski’s Remarks at the Albany Rally: HERE

Apr

21

Invitation to a Guerilla War

Filed Under Buffalo, Education, Libertarian, National, New York State | Leave a Comment

Jim Ostrowski waking people up to the damage they are doing to their children by sending them to government schools at LewRockwell.com

You Are Cordially Invited to a Guerilla War
by James Ostrowski

Recent events in Buffalo have me thinking about government schools again. Fourteen Catholic schools closed including the neighborhood school my children happily attend. We were devastated. My son asked me, “Are you going to send us to a government school?” I said, “No way would we ever do that!”

Long story short. The government school system is finally beginning to realize its original mission: to knock off Catholic schools. The nuns and brothers had fought the good fight for 150 years. Without reinforcements, Catholic schools, with one-half of all private school students, are in deep trouble.

Government’s de facto monopoly over primary and secondary education is our single biggest problem, a problem that is genetically linked to all our other political problems.

READ ON

Mar

27

Ron Paul On WNYM Internet Radio

Filed Under Buffalo, Libertarian, New York State, Republican Party, Ron Paul | Leave a Comment

Ron Paul will be a guest on a new internet radio show this Thursday, March 29th hosted by Free New York’s Jim Ostrowski.

This is Jim’s first show on Buffalo and Western New York’s first 24 hour all local talk, sports and music internet radio station, WNYM.

The show runs from 1:00-2:00PM, Ron Paul will be on at 1:30

There was some technical difficulties that kept most of the show off the Internet, but the show went on and the Podcast is now available.

Mar

14

Compassionate Socialism In Action

Filed Under Buffalo, Health Care, National | 1 Comment

A tale of a Canadian that came to Buffalo, NY so his own government couldn’t kill him.

Mar

1

Woe is New York State

Filed Under Buffalo, Democratic Party, Economics, New York State | 1 Comment

Mike Rebmann at the Free New York Blog and the North Buffalo Journal and Review has pointed out a notable hypocrisy of Spitzerism. “Since Day One, Eliot Spitzer has pledged not to raise taxes. His pledge is about as valuable as the paper your money is printed on.”

Mike is talking about Spitzers no new taxes turnabout in his proposal to raise taxes on companies by nearly $600 million. Like Mike says, “Apparently the pledge to not raise taxes does not apply to businesses.” A small clarification Spitzer inadvertently left out of his pledge by accident I’m sure.

To first understand Elliot Spitzer, you must understand he thinks of himself a man of action, he believes that a public executive can defy the laws of economics. He suffers the same delusions of every social democrat; he thinks he can plunder the scarce resources of an economy and pump it into that cesspool of inefficiency and waste called government and out comes utopia. It’s utopia for the political class, but for everybody else. it’s hell.

He told New Yorkers in his inaugural speech that “Franklin Roosevelt advised us to be, “bold,” and to recognize that people demand “action, and action now.”
Spitzer must be a student of the FDR school of political economy, he’s going to now get us into prosperity by increasing taxation on business, and recklessly transferring more wealth to his outer circle of special interest plunderers, mainly New York State’s bloated unionized government employee workforce. Dumb boy, his ivy league education was a waste, he probably actually believes that crap about FDR getting the US out of the Great Depression as so many high school books of distorted American history say.
His economic sophistry was clear from the beginning, with his solutions to fix our problems by pumping more money into failed bureaucracies including public schools (or more correctly, school teacher unions), Industrial Development agencies ect… It’s all been done before with the same pathetic results. Does he actually think that he can get the large part of NYS out of its economic malaise with the same tax, borrow and spend foolishness and government regulation that got us there over the last 50 years?

The story is the New York businessmen are mortified by Spitzer’s new proposal to tax them, including I’m sure those that hoped to get more political clout by endorsing him like the Buffalo Niagara Partnership and the Rochester Business Alliance. They should have known better, but they chose to be unprincipled and ignorant, if not just greedy for special privilege.

They should have heeded the words of Bastiat:

“Our ignorance is the raw material of every extortion that is practiced upon us, and we may be certain beforehand that every sophism is the precursor of an act of plunder. My friends, when you detect a sophism in a petition, get a good grip on your wallet, for you may be sure that this is what the petitioners are aiming at.”

Feb

15

The Mark of the Welfare State

Filed Under Economics, Global, National, New York State | 1 Comment

Henry Hazlitt wrote in his book Man vs. The Welfare State, “One mark of the welfare state everywhere has been the gathering of power into the hands of one man.”

In the UK, that man is Gordon Brown, Chancellor of the Exchequer, a post that is now regarded as most powerful next to the Prime Minister. In the UK, they have another term for the welfare-state, they call it the “client-state”, and it has been said that “Brown won’t stop until we’re all his clients”

“This must inevitably be the case when the over-arching philosophy of a government is to run the public services more for the benefit of those who are employed in them than for those they notionally serve. While waiting lists stretch into infinity, and children leave school barely literate or numerate, the public sector worker feels increasingly grateful. His or her vote will, with shocking inevitability, go at the next election to the man who has created this land of milk and honey - the same Gordon Brown”

It sounds strikingly, and disgustingly similar to what is happening in the US and even more noticeable to us in New York State with public sector unions receiving great largess as a payoff for electoral support and the vast amounts of money being poured down the rat hole of failed bureaucracies that employ innumerable government workers and minor bureaucrats.

Read more

Feb

13

Fatigued Legislators Want Too Outlaw Drowsiness

Filed Under New York State | 1 Comment

As Ben Franklin said; “We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid.”

And evidence has shown, they do work very hard at it in the legislative palaces of New York State.

If you drive a car, you’ll need to stock up on NoDoz if some mentality challenged New York legislators get their way.

New crime proposed: Driving while drowsy

By DAN WIESSNER
GANNETT NEWS SERVICE
(Original publication: February 11, 2007)

ALBANY - Need to yawn when you’re behind the wheel? If a bill introduced at the Capitol last week becomes law, you might want to stifle it.

A Queens lawmaker wants the state to create a new crime: driving while drowsy. Those found guilty would face fines and license suspension.

“If a person involved in an accident has been without sleep for 24 hours, then the presumption (would be) that drowsiness caused the accident,” said state Sen. Toby Ann Stavisky, D-Queens, a sponsor of the bill.

As Rus Thompson says at AlbanyInsanity.com…

“Oh Boy, yet another brilliant piece of legislation introduced in Albany. Do they have a test for this like a snooze-A-lizer.. I can just see the cops now pulling some one over for this… asking how much sleep did you get? Do you have a witness that can testify to this.. OK Sir out of the vehicle we have a field snooze test to give you…”

I agree Rus, but they’re so busy figuring ways to tax and fine New Yorkers out of existence, they haven’t the time to consider how their ill conceived laws can be enforced.

Somebody should warn these politicians that oxygen deprivation caused by having their head up their ass 24/7 causes permanent brain damage.

Next Page →