Letters to Artvoice

WHO’S BEHIND GIULIANI?

Michael Niman’s article on Giuliani (“Getting a Grip,” Artvoice v6n25) was a good start, but there is so much more to say.

Giuliani won the first ever Lifetime Golden Muzzle Award for his efforts to violate the First Amendment rights of New Yorkers. He lost over 20 court cases for doing so. His lawyers argued in court that images do not constitute speech and therefore have no protection from censorship. Images like photographs, paintings, movies, television shows…

He ruled over a truly lawless city where each police officer was free to decide what was legal or not. I was arrested for standing and talking to one other person for half a minute on the sidewalk in Times Square after a demonstration. I had three different officers attempt to grab one of my protest signs from me on another occasion. One of my signs I could keep, the other mentioned Giuliani and I was not allowed to have it, they said. Another time a New York cop thought he had the right to take my Nader campaign sign away from me while I was entirely legal in my presence. He also failed.

Bernard Kerik, Giuliani’s top cop, besides being corrupt and having mob ties, is also a high school dropout that started as Giuliani’s limo driver.

While I hate normally to examine personal lives, I think it is important also to point out that his own children will not speak to him, ever since he dumped his wife, their mother, via press conference. Like most bullies he is a huge coward and did not have the guts to break up with her in person.

All of this pales though when we look at who is behind Giuliani’s presidential campaign and why.

Giuliani’s main fundraisers are two “vulture” fund owners. One of them “bundled” $10 million for Giuliani’s campaign in a way that is completely illegal, getting others to claim that they were making $4,600 of his donation apiece. Where does this person get the $10 million from? He gets it from ripping off the poorest people in the world by buying their countries’ debt at 10 cents on the dollar after bribing, illegally, the countries’ rulers not to buy it for the country. This is what they did in Zambia, where they bribed the ruler with $2 million and hope to make $36 million off a country with hundreds of thousands of AIDS orphans in a population of 25 million. The money was supposed to go to fighting AIDS and for education. Instead it is going to make Giuliani a “legitimate” candidate for president. Why do this? Because the president of the United States has the power to stop their evil with a stroke of a pen, declaring it is against his or her foreign policy.

Recently in a debate Giuliani said that he agreed with the New Hampshire state motto, “Live Free or Die.” I think we should all take that as a threat. He certainly does not intend for us to live free.

Carmi Turchick

Buffalo

IDA Reform: Good for

the Environment

Assembly Member Sam Hoyt has introduced a bill in the state legislature to fix our broken industrial development authority (IDA) system. Among other improvements, the Hoyt bill encourages green buildings and the re-use of brownfields while discouraging sprawl.

A study by Good Jobs First, “Sprawling by the Lake,” confirms that the current IDA system encourages sprawl and favors wealthy suburbs over the distressed areas that IDAs were meant to serve. Despite containing 30 percent of the county’s population, Buffalo received only 17 percent of its IDA property tax exemptions in 2005. Surely, a city with 8,684 abandoned structures, over 50 brownfields and the fifth highest poverty rate in the nation (26.9 percent) is the place to target resources.

We are suffering from sprawl without growth. From 1980 to 2006, while the region’s population declined by 5.8 percent, our urbanized area grew by 38 percent. Between 1984 and 1999, the average miles we drive increased by 50 percent. No wonder our air quality received a failing grade from the American Lung Association.

We are wreaking environmental havoc by abandoning our core and sprawling into farmlands and woodlands. The Hoyt bill is a step toward a more sustainable future.

Sam Magavern

Buffalo

wal-mart in alden

As a resident of Alden and an Artvoice reader, I was pleased to see the coverage you provided in a thoughtful manner (“Attention Wal-Mart,” Artvoice v6n23).

I personally do not have a view formed at this point whether or not a Wal-Mart would be an asset to our town. There are just a couple of points that I would like to make:

The very first is the most important. Wal-Mart has not approached Alden as to building a store in our town. This whole ordeal is the work of a developer who is looking to develop the land in order to entice the retail giant.

Secondly, we live in a town where currently approximately 50 percent of the land is non-taxable. Alden has four prisons (Wende State Correctional Facility, Erie County Correctional, Buffalo Correctional, Erie County Juvenile Detention) and the Erie County nursing home (which encompasses Hospice also). People working and visiting these facilities use our roads, but rarely stay and spend any money, save the occasional gasoline fill-up and convenience store run.

Of the remainder of the taxable land, a fair portion is agricultural, which is taxed at a lower rate than residential and commercial. If Wal-Mart were to come to town, it would be easy to assume that they would be paying taxes and keeping some of the “traveling through” monies in our area.

In conclusion, I would like to reinforce the idea that Wal-Mart is a concept and not a reality as of yet.

Nora Drogi

Alden

REMEMBERING FREELAND

Great article about the passing of Mark Freeland (Death of a Dream,” Artvoice v6n25).

There may have been better actors to come out of Buffalo. There may have been better artists from here. No doubt some musicians have achieved more fame and success.

None of them will have quite the lasting impact of Freeland.

I don’t know of a single local artist/musician who has had quite the same influence on the arts scene over the past 30 years.

Face it, Buffalo, we may have just lost our Picasso, our Shakespeare…our Mozart! All wrapped up in one package.

There was a time when it was cool to be a freak and a lot of peole wanted to be one. I once tried to be one.

Freeland didn’t have to try. He was the real deal!

Steve Trask

Buffalo

TREES=CLEAN AIR

Aside from the obvious reasons why 6,000-9,000 trees shouldn’t be cut down in Buffalo (“Stumped,” Artvoice v6n24)…their natural beauty and impact on our quality of life…there is nothing wrong with a majority of them…the action is probably motivated by funds from FEMA…

What about the role the trees play in impacting and improving our air quality, especially since we live in the industrial Northeast?

Who and where are the guardians of our urban forest? There is nothing wrong with the majority of the trees. Buffalo officials, take your lead from Town of Amherst who are giving the trees a chance to thrive and who are not being overwhelmed with thoughts of FEMA funds in their pockets.

Buffalo residents, get on the phone: Call city and state officials and stop this travesty before all of Buffalo looks like a K-Mart parking lot and our air quality is so bad that all of our children have asthma. It is your city…take it back.

Cathy Skora

Buffalo