Categories for DailyPost

Oct 17

2022

Monday Morning Read

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Subscribe to WeeklyPost and you’ll get Jim Heaney’s recommended reading first thing Sunday via email. President Biden’s decision to pardon those convicted on federal marijuana possession charges is a big deal — to a degree. How many people will get out of federal prison as a result? Zero. How many are held with similar convictions in state prisons? 30,000.  Still, it’s a step forward to reverse the damage the war on drugs has inflicted on Black people. Bombing, raping, executing and otherwise terrorizing civilians. Russia’s savagery in Ukraine knows no limits. But it gets worse. Now the Associated Press reports the Russians[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Oct 12

2022

NFL stadiums go green. Will Buffalo’s?

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When it rains in Seattle — which it does just about every other day — the water landing on the roof of Climate Pledge Arena is collected and used by Zambonis to make ice for the hockey team. That ice is actually smoother to skate on than municipal water used in most hockey rinks. In Atlanta, when Falcons fans buy beer or pop and recycle the can, Mercedes-Benz Stadium cashes in the aluminum and uses the money to build new houses through Habitat for Humanity. And in Minneapolis, waste generated during Vikings games is reused, recycled or composted — and[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Oct 11

2022

Kelly discusses police contract on WBFO

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In July, Buffalo’s police union won a big victory in its three-year-old (and counting) negotiations with Mayor Byron Brown’s administration for a new contract. A state arbitration panel granted police — whose contract expired in 2019 — raises and back pay worth as much as $15 million. The city got nothing in return: none of the reforms protestors and elected officials clamored for in the summer of 2020, no new managerial rights, not even a reinstatement of a residency requirement that expired with the old contract. Geoff Kelly reported the story two weeks ago, before the Brown administration had even[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Oct 10

2022

Monday Morning Read

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Monday Morning Read is extracted, with updates, from WeeklyPost, a free email newsletter sent Sunday mornings. Get Jim Heaney’s recommended reading by subscribing here. The deal announced last week by Kathy Hochul and Chuck Schumer to bring a huge microchip plant to Central New York represents the biggest subsidy package in state history. Micron will receive $5.8 billion — yes, billion — in grants, tax breaks and other goodies to build a massive production facility north of Syracuse. (The Genesee County IDA’s STAMP industrial park strikes out again.) The announcement includes the usual hyperbole about jobs and green operations, which Reinvent[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Sep 29

2022

Podcast: Pulitzer Prize winner Tom Toles

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Tom Toles is the most decorated journalist in the history of Buffalo news media. He cut his teeth as an editorial cartoonist at The Courier-Express, moved on to The Buffalo News, where he earned his Pulitzer in 1990, and then succeeded the legendary Herblock at The Washington Post in 2002. His work was syndicated in more than 200 newspapers across the country Along the way, the Hamburg native has received numerous awards for his work. Honors, in addition to the Pulitzer, include the National Cartoonist Society Editorial Cartoon Award in 2003 and the Herblock Prize in 2011. Toles retired in[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Sep 28

2022

Raises (but no reforms) for Buffalo police

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Buffalo police just got a raise. The city got nothing — no concessions, no reforms — in exchange. That’s the upshot of more than three years of negotiations between the Brown administration and the Buffalo Police Benevolent Association, whose contract expired in July 2019. When talks stalled in early 2021, the dispute put in the hands of a state arbitrator, who was empowered only to deal with pay.  Reform — the mantra of demonstrators and elected officials alike in the summer of 2020 — was sidelined. On July 19, a state arbitration panel awarded Buffalo police raises and retroactive pay worth[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Sep 26

2022

Monday Morning Read

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Get the news a day earlier by subscribing to our weekly newsletter, emailed every Sunday morning. The Pew Research Center has released new studies on how people get their news and how they use social media to access media sites. First, how people get their news. Online has overtaken television, at least for those under 50. Newspapers, well, they’re yesterday’s news; only 5 percent of people consider print their go-to source of news. Social media? Half of Americans use social media “often” or “sometimes” to follow the news. Interestingly enough, the share of people who use social media “often” is[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Sep 20

2022

Hochul has inflated number of stadium jobs

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Gov. Kathy Hochul and Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz have repeatedly claimed that 10,000 jobs will be created during construction of the $1.4 billion stadium for the Buffalo Bills.  “I love the fact that this is the largest construction project in Western New York history with 10,000 union jobs,” Hochul said during a visit in April to Buffalo.   It appears, however, that the stadium project will create about 6,800 direct construction jobs statewide, not the 10,000 claimed by Hochul and Poloncarz. That lower estimate was included in an economic impact study commissioned by the Bills. Only by adding “indirect” and[...]

Posted 3 years ago
Investigative Post