Tea and Vitriol

Ahh, the power of money! Today, Rochester's mayor, Malik Evans, settled with the estate of Daniel Prude for the sum of $12 million!  In his usual, mealy-mouthed way, he stated that it was time to put the Prude affair behind us and the $12 million settlement was probably cheaper than the cost to Rochester would be if the case went to court. "Probably." Mahweak seems to have forgotten the grand jury called by NYS Attorney General Tish James refused to indict the RPD officers involved in the arrest of Daniel Prude. They did not feel that the officers behaved in a criminally culpable manner. THAT evidence could have been used in the court case in favor of Rochester. Instead, Mahweak threw away $12 million to the Prude family to shut them up. In the long run, it probably won't. I have dealt extensively with the death of Daniel Prude in previous blogs, so I will provide only a cursory glance here. Daniel Prude was a drug addicted out-of-towner with psychiatric problems who

 By now, everyone in the US knows that there was a drug raid on Rochester mayor Lovely A. Warren's home on Wednesday, May 19. It was conducted by the NYS Police after seven months of investigation, at the prompting of the Monroe County DA's office. Usually, such raids also involve the local police departments. In this case, RPD's interim police chief was not notified. The DA and the NYS Police didn't trust her NOT to inform the mayor of the investigation or the raid. The state troopers arrested Mayor Warren's husband, Tim Granison. They also removed more than two kilos of cocaine, $100,000 in cash, a loaded pistol (illegal) and a rifle from Mayor Warren's home. Granison, as a convicted felon for an earlier crime in his late teens, is not allowed to own firearms. Yesterday, Mayor Warren held a press conference about this event. She did nothing wrong, she said. She and Granison had been legally separated for years, she said, and were only living together for the s

 Probably the incumbent mayor, Lovely A. Warren. Not because she's a better candidate than her only "serious" opponent, Malik Evans. She and her crew control most of the City Democratic committees. Her base of support are to be found in the Black neighborhoods and slums, to whom she has made grandiose promises regarding financial support. That demographic will insure that she gets elected, never mind the stunning disasters and overwhelming failures she has been responsible for in Rochester over the last eight years. She has brazened them all down. Even the recent arrest of the mayor's husband, Tim Granison, on drug and weapons charges after the raid on their home, hasn't instilled a sense of shame on the mayor. Her press conference on the very next day was as loud as ever, claiming political motivation behind the timing of the raid and that she has every intention of continuing to run. For a female, she has a hefty set of brass ones, noticeably absent in her male

 Last month, State Assemblyman Harry Bronson announced that he was supporting the candidacy of City Councilman Malik Evans for mayor. Big deal. That was to be expected. It was Harry's way of sticking it to Lovely, who pulled out all of the stops last year to oppose his re-election campaign, running her then chief-of-staff, Alex Yudelson, against him. Her actions were unethical, underhanded and downright sneaky but perfectly legal according to some rather peculiar bylaws by which the Democratic committees operate in Monroe County. Her control of the City committees guaranteed that Yudelson would get the party's endorsement. What it did not guarantee was that Yudelson would win the Democratic primary, where Harry soundly trounced him and went on to win the general election against his regular Republican opponent, Peterson Vazquez. Harry and Lovely have been less than cordial political opponents from the get-go, each representing the two dominant, opposing political factions of th