Categories for Outrages & Insights

Mar 2

2026

The story behind the stories of Burmese refugee

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Investigative Post broke one of the biggest stories of our 14-year history last week about Nurul Amin Shah Alam, the nearly blind Burmese refugee who died in the streets of downtown Buffalo six days after Border Patrol agents dropped him off at a doughnut shop and left to find his way home, five miles away. We published five stories last week. I want to give you a look under the hood at how we went about our work. Consider this column the story behind the stories. Last Monday, Feb. 23, J. Dale Shoemaker received an email from an immigration attorney informing[...]

Posted 7 days ago

Feb 10

2026

Data center deal wrong on so many levels

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There’s growing pushback across the country against data centers. They’re energy hogs that are bad for the environment and the pocketbook of electricity consumers. Except in Genesee County. There, the IDA is dangling $801 million in tax breaks in a package that works out to $6.4 million per job in an effort to bring a data center to its STAMP business park.   To put this in context, the state spent $959 million to build a factory in South Buffalo for Elon Musk in exchange for 1,480 jobs. The data center deal: $801 million in tax breaks — plus likely discounted[...]

Posted 4 weeks ago

Jan 13

2026

Change coming to Buffalo News ownership

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It can’t get any worse. That’s my first-blush impression of the pending change in ownership and management of Lee Enterprises, the newspaper chain whose holdings include The Buffalo News. Lee bought The News, and 30 other daily papers owned by Berkshire Hathaway, in March 2020. Lee’s ownership of The News — and, I suspect, many other papers under its control — has been marred by top-down management and poor decision-making. Crippling debt, along with the changing economics of the newspaper industry, are at the root of Lee’s problems and help explain its management of The News.  Revenues companywide have dropped[...]

Posted 2 months ago

Dec 22

2025

The many costs of proposed data center

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There’s a lot to not like about data centers. They consume a lot of energy, and oftentimes water, and usually demand a lot of public subsidies. All to fuel the operations — and profits — of the likes of Amazon, Google, Apple and Meta. J. Dale Shoemaker reported last week about a new proposal to build a massive data center at the STAMP industrial park in Genesee County, located midway between Buffalo and Rochester. How massive?  There’s its physical size: 38 football fields. And its energy consumption: 500 megawatts. That’s enough electricity to power practically every residence in Erie County.[...]

Posted 3 months ago

Nov 25

2025

‘Falls mayor in need of anger management

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Many politicians and bureaucrats drag their feet when they field a request for information from a reporter they don’t like or are asked about something they’d rather not disclose. But they at least go through the motions of responding – eventually. Then there’s Niagara Falls Mayor Robert Restaino, who recently announced on his YouTube channel that he’s refusing to respond to information requests from the Niagara Gazette. Wrote the newspaper, in a story we republished last week: In his message, Restaino also suggested the newspaper and members of its staff have refused to “honor” an “obligation” to report on things[...]

Posted 3 months ago

Oct 23

2025

From conservative to kinda crazy

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Back in the day, Republican leaders in Western New York were conservatives. Congressmen like Jack Kemp and Jack Quinn. Erie County Executive Ed Rutkowski. State Senator George Maziarz. Party chairmen like Bob Davis and Jim Domagalski. Party leadership started down a slippery slope a couple of decades ago. Carl Paladino switched party affiliation from Democrat to Republican in 2005 after his friend Tony Masiello, a Democrat, retired from public office. Mike Caputo, an operative who learned at the feet of Roger Stone, became a player locally when he ran Paladino’s 2010 gubernatorial campaign and his influence grew from there. Nick[...]

Posted 5 months ago

Aug 25

2025

The coming duopoly at Channels 2 and 4

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Editor’s mote: This story was updated on Sept. 1 My item last week about the pending purchase of Channel 2’s parent company by Channel 4’s parent company generated a lot of traffic and a fair amount of speculation and hand-wringing.  Well, the deal went through last week and from what I’ve learned, there’s plenty of justification for continued hand-wringing. Alan Pergament of The Buffalo News wrote a good analysis on the local impact and The Washington Post produced an insightful analysis from a national perspective. Both are worth a read. (The Post story is a gift link.) Pergament wrote about[...]

Posted 7 months ago

Jun 26

2025

Buffalo’s mayoral election has been settled

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The fat lady has sung. Sean Ryan will become mayor come January 1. The November election is simply a formality, barring any drastic unforeseen circumstance. Prior to the primary, Acting Mayor Chris Scanlon stated his intention to run on a third-party line if he didn’t win the Democratic nomination, although in his concession speech Tuesday night he said he had some “soul searching” to do. The cold, hard fact is that he was only able to garner 35 percent of the vote Tuesday. His strategy, should he continue his campaign into November, is to pull a Jimmy Griffin — supplement[...]

Posted 9 months ago
Investigative Post