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

Rochester's current mayor, Malik (Mahweak) Evans has been the most successful failure in our body politic for decades. Despite being uncreative, unimaginative and uninspiring, and despite having never accomplished anything positive for our community since he started dabbling in politics nearly two decades ago, he keeps getting elected to public office, where his cycle of failure continues to this day. And so does community disappointment, not to say disgust, with him continues. Not that he seems to care. A continuation of the previous administration is Mahweak's anti-cop attitude, coming at a time when crime, violence and homicide continues to spike upwards. That, too, is a holdover of the Warren regime. It is that attitude that has cost him the support and respect of frightened, law-abiding citizens. But why should he care? He's the mayor, and the local news media continues to print cute puff pieces about him, trying to make him a leader which he clearly is not. As Lovely

 A recurring theme among the dying cities of the "Rust Belt" is that redeveloping their dead downtown areas will revitalize them. That this "renaissance" will "save" their cities. It has really never worked in the long run. This is largely because the proponents for such plans have chosen to ignore the history of the cities in question, of the organic growth that led to making their downtowns vibrant. They have also chosen to forget that times have changed. Such is the case of our own fair city, Rochester, New York, where downtown redevelopment has been a stunning failure Rochester reached its zenith in the 1950's. With a population of 350,000 souls, its downtown was crammed with all kinds of retail establishments, restaurants, nightclubs and movie theatres. Downtown Rochester was so congested with people and traffic that the Inner Loop was built to allow people to avoid the crowds. At the same time, changes had occurred in America that would produce t

The old saying goes: "Be careful what you wish for. You might get it." In 2021, a large percentage of voters wanted to remove Lovely Warren from the mayoral throne and were not particularly fussy about the character of the person who would succeed her. They got their wish and elected Malik (Mahweak) Evans as mayor. Despite the media blitz to create a positive persona in order to sell the public on Mahweak, it never really took off because the reality of his political history was pretty dismal and too many people knew it to be taken in by all of the hype that now surrounded him. Still, enough people came to believe that their "creation" had the answers to all of their questions and the solutions to Rochester's serious problem of crime, poverty and a failing school system. Only it soon became evident that Evans really had no solutions to anything, which quickly produced a sense of "buyers' remorse" among people who were once his cheerleaders. My only

Let's face it, most politicians and elected officials are boldfaced liars. We are not talking about "little white lies" to make people comfortable or not to offend, because everyone does that. People do not like hearing the truth and only want to hear your opinions if they concur with theirs. We are talking about BIG lies that distort the truth and really have no relation to reality. Politicians lie big time to get themselves elected to public office, then they continue to lie to make themselves popular in order to win re-election. They are facilitated in their political lying by their public relations people, who put a spin on deliberate untruths to make them appear "real," to calm down the voting populace, so people won't think that things aren't as bad as they really are. Case in point is one of the latest pronouncements made by Rochester's current mayor, Malik Evans. Evans, wuss-like and bland, effectively won the Democratic primary early last su

It is a week into the year 2022. And really, nothing seems to have changed. If anything, the new mayoral regime seems like an insipid rehash of previous administrations, especially the last one. When Malik Evans took his oath of office at 12:01 AM, January 1 in his home among his family, the news media covered it. It was cute and folksy, especially with his children asking everyone to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. More about that momentarily. But it was a replay of Mayor Warren taking her oath in the presence of her dying, comatose grandfather, holding his hand, faithfully recorded by her soon to be communications czarina. Both events were designed to elicit sympathy for the new mayors, a publicity stunt. And families make for excellent political accessories, props for the media, don't they? Evans's official swearing in, in the morning, was held virtually because of COVID. That is the reason it was so short. There was no entertainment to glorify the incoming regime. But he d

  Christmas 2021 is over and the year is quickly winding down. The next holiday some people will be looking forward to is New Year's Eve, which is amateur night for drinkers out and about town, and New Year's Day, with football games, parades and the farce of the inauguration of Rochester's latest mayor. I am not nostalgic about the old year or even hopeful about the new one. Why should I, or anyone else, be? Rochester is, and remains, in a state of chaos owing to a lack of political leadership and the moral turpitude of the elected officials and their hangers-on who supposedly govern this city. 2021 saw the resignation of cop-hating Lovely Warren as Mayor of Rochester to avoid being convicted of felonious criminal charges. She walked away with a slap on the wrist, her license to practice law and her pension intact, her ability to run for political office unaffected and her continued control of the majority of Rochester's Democratic political committees could make that

 Short reigns among the ruling elite are not unknown in history. They are unusual, to be sure, making such rulers mere footnotes in history. Having briefly achieved ultimate power, whether in hereditary monarchies or in elective offices in republics, they didn't really have the time to make a reputation for themselves, good or bad. The "might have beens" or "what ifs" can tantalize the historian or political scientist, but ultimately can only lead to an airy void.  And such short-term rulers become the subjects of all sorts of trivia games and television game shows that have been so popular over the years. Take, for instance, King John I of France and Navarre. He was the posthumous son of King Louis X of France and, as such, was born king. He lived only five days. He reigned but never ruled. He was succeeded by his uncle, Philip V. Possibly the shortest reign in history was that of Louis XIX of France, though he was never enumerated or recognized as such. He was

  Now that the Democratic Primary is over and the Warren regime is winding down to its inevitable end, there is one question that needs to be asked and answered: Who's minding the store? There has been a power vacuum in Rochester for the last eighteen months, since the pandemic began.  That became apparent with City Hall's inability or unwillingness to deal with people congregating in public in violation of Governor Cuomo's directive forbidding it. It was obvious when City Hall collapsed before the demands of the Free the People, ROC terrorists after the May 30, 2020 riots, violence, vandalism, looting and general disruption of Downtown Rochester. The mayor and her then police chief claimed that they were caused by "outsiders," when anyone seeing video footage knew they were locals, and mostly Black people involved, straining their credibility even further. Worse to come was when the conspiracy of silence over the death of Daniel Prude came unraveled in August and

Now that the smoke has cleared from Rochester's Democratic primary we are being treated to the usual, nauseating spectacle of the media glorifying the winners, especially in the race for mayor. We are being treated to the perfections of Malik Evans as a person and a politician that were never evident before, either in  his lackluster, nearly invisible, four years on City Council or his rather dismal ten years on the School Board. What the media has chosen not to concentrate on, in its rush to make nice with the probable Mayor of Rochester after the November general election, is how someone like Evans could win the primary against an incumbent mayor. Because the answer is rather embarrassing and blows to smithereens the praise they are heaping on Evans. People chose to vote "Not Lovely" rather than to vote for Evans. The voters were willing to choose anyone other than the mayor after her last disastrous 18 months in office. After she fired him last year, people were pushin

Flashback to the late 16th century. Mary, Queen of Scots, is beheaded on the orders of her cousin, Elizabeth I of England. A quatrain by an anonymous author, describing the event, was circulated throughout England, frightening the Virgin Queen. It served as an explicit example of the dangers facing political leaders everywhere. "The noble, famous queen, who lost her head of late Is proof that kings as well as clowns are bound to Fortune's fate. And that no earthly prince may so secure his crown That Fortune, with her spinning wheel, hath power to pull him down." Fast forward to 2021: Rochester's Democratic Mayoral Primary. Mayor Lovely Warren was defeated in her bid for a third term in office by a "landslide," although barely 25% of Rochester's registered Democrats bothered to vote at all. It was the worst defeat an incumbent mayor ever suffered since Rochester began to elect its mayors by popular vote forty years ago. Her opponent, Malik Evans, won sole

They first make mad. Yesterday (June 18, 2021), Rochester experienced its fourth gang-style execution in a week. What distinguished this murder from the others was that the victim was a woman. She was killed by gunshots in her car in the presence of her two daughters, aged three and eight. The children were uninjured. But that the murderers would undertake an execution under those conditions says a great deal about the sort of monsters who are members of those gangs. The reaction to this latest homicide, the thirtieth in Rochester so far this year, was surprising. Or maybe not. Mayoral candidate Malik Evans issued a terse, probably ghost-written, statement of sorrow. Incumbent mayor Lovely Warren said nothing about it at all. Instead, she called a press conference to complain that the Monroe County Board of Elections was conspiring against her in the Democratic Primary Election. There are priorities, after all. Earlier in the week, after the second such gangland slaying took place just