President Bush was in town today to talk to a group of law enforcement officials about the Patriot Act. Not being one of them myself, I was not at the invitation only event, but I did manage to forget all about it untill early this afternoon.
Of course the visit made front page news, but you have to cry a little about the coverage. Only one of the two articles actuall made any mention of what he spoke on. And that one had almost as much about the protesters as the article solely devoted to the protest.
My favorite quote was from some guy who complained that the protesters had to stay on the other side of the parking lot from Kleinhan's Music Hall where the event was held. OK, let me get this straight. You've got a couple hundred people who are literally calling for George Bush's head, and you want security to let them any closer? I'm all for Free Speech, but you have to be realistic.
And where do you think the protesters would have been put if it was a Democrat President? In this Democrat controled city, you'd be lucky if you were within sight of the location, much less shouting distance.
Speaking of Democrat control, the mayor of Buffalo, Tony Masiello, decided to protest the President by not showing up. Apparently, he and his political croneys blame the Bush presidency for Buffalo having a Control Board put over it. Yeah right. The 40+ years of good ol' boy Democrats running this city and county in the ground had nothing to do with it. Our population base gets a little smaller every year, so instead of backing off services, they just raise the taxes a little more and more. We've got the one of the highest sales taxes in the state and some of the highest property taxes as well.
No wonder everyone is leaving. You can't have much more of a business unfriendly environment than we do here. But you know how it is, when you have people out of work, you've got to soak the evil businesses that have all the money.
Even better, we have the most unionized city in the country. Pretty hard for a business to come in if it knows that if it doesn't unionize right from the get-go, ot probably won't even get a building permit.
OK. /rant
Posted by GEBIV at April 20, 2004 06:11 PM