Tag: Buffalo Bills

Nov 13

2025

Bills custodian, a migrant, jailed by ICE

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For two months, a young Venezuelan woman who had been hired to clean the Buffalo Bills’ Highmark Stadium has been detained by ICE. The woman, Yusgleidy Villa Alvarez, 18, has no criminal history. Until September, she’d been a legal resident of the United States, was on the path to obtaining a green card and had been granted a work permit. Yet without warning, a federal lawsuit alleges, ICE agents arrested her after a shift Sept. 19, the day after the Bills beat the Miami Dolphins at Highmark Stadium. For more than a month, she was held at the Niagara County[...]

Posted 5 hours ago

Oct 6

2025

The beginning of the end of the Buffalo News’ print edition

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The Buffalo News announced Friday that it will stop printing a Monday edition starting Nov. 3. It’s part of an industry trend, with some dailies publishing print editions as infrequently as three days a week. The News’ print circulation continues to spiral downward. Paid circulation has dwindled to an average of 23,792 according to the annual publisher’s statement filed in June with the United States Postal Service. Digital subscriptions were 67,430. The numbers pale in comparison with peak print circulation in the 1990s of over 300,000 daily and 400,000 on Sundays. Why eliminate the Monday edition? It’s one of the[...]

Posted 1 month ago

Sep 22

2025

Buffalo Bills among NFL teams honoring Charlie Kirk

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Terry Pegula waved his right-wing flag Thursday by asking Bills fans to observe a moment of silence honoring Charlie Kirk prior to the game vs. the Miami Dolphins. The team also flashed Kirk’s image on the stadium scoreboard in the third quarter.  I’m told fan reaction was mixed, more confused than anything. No word on how the players felt about it, especially Black players, given Kirk’s proclamations that Martin Luther King was “awful,” the Civil Rights Act a “huge mistake” and accomplished Black women including former First Lady Michelle Obama and Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson “do not have[...]

Posted 2 months ago

Aug 25

2025

Let’s talk football: Terry Pegula’s yacht and brain damaged players

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It turns out Terry Pegula owns a yacht valued at up to $100 million.  Fox News reports the yacht “was custom-built and delivered in 2021 and is valued between $75 million and $100 million. From designer interiors, including Louis Vuitton and Gucci, the yacht offers a glass-sided spa pool, sauna, gym, cinema lounge and much more … The yacht is reportedly available to charter at around $500,000 per week.” The story notes that taxpayers are forking over $850 million to help build a new stadium for Pegula’s Bills. As if he needed the money. Today’s football heroes are tomorrow’s damaged[...]

Posted 3 months ago

Jul 28

2025

Reform gives way to greed at OTB

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Before I get to what I’m reading, allow me to expand on a story I edited last week: A pay raise already for Byron Brown. As I wrote in my newsletter yesterday, I’ve written once, maybe twice that Brown has been doing a better job than his predecessor, Henry Wojtaszek, at the Western Regional Off-Track Betting Corp. Admittedly, it’s a very low bar to clear.  Then came last week. Dale Shoemaker reported that Brown got his board of directors to give him a $8,850 raise, bringing his salary to $303,850. Never mind that he’s already the highest paid OTB administrator[...]

Posted 4 months ago

Jun 30

2025

Much ado about the mayoral primary in NYC

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Nationally, Zohran Mamdani’s upset victory in the Democratic primary for New York City mayor was the electoral story of the week. Five takes: The City covers the election results. Politico shares the thoughts of eight political types about what it all means. New York Focus explores whether state government is likely to go for Mamdani’s agenda. The New York Times and The Intercept weigh in on what lessons the Democratic establishment should take from Mamdani’s victory. Writing for The Times, Rebecca Kirszner Katz, a political consultant who worked on Mamdani’s campaign, lamented “the party establishment’s impulse to stifle and ignore[...]

Posted 5 months ago

Sep 2

2024

NFL move could help – or hurt – the Bills

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The National Football League last week voted to lift its ban on private equity firms owning a piece of franchises. That’s good news for Terry Pegula, who is looking to unload a minority share of the Bills, presumably to help cover stadium cost overruns.  The Buffalo News published a good analysis of the NFL vote last week. The league’s move is partly in response to the escalating price of franchises and the dwindling pool of people able to afford buying a team. Looking down the road, the lifting of the ban could further come into play if Pegula decides to[...]

Posted 1 year ago

Aug 12

2024

Free speech may not be as popular as the Buffalo Bills

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Mark Sommer of The Buffalo News has a good read on a new policy imposed by the Chautauqua Institute that stifles demonstrations, apparently out of fear that protesters  advocating for a ceasefire in Gaza might show up at their gated community. (No one has.)  Some folks are OK with the move, others are not, accusing the institute of betraying its  self-proclaimed support of democracy and free speech. On one hand, the move is kind of surprising, given Chautauqua’s reputation.  Then again, a lot of Democrats, including big city mayors who cracked down on Gaza demonstrators on college campuses this spring,[...]

Posted 1 year ago
Investigative Post