Tea and Vitriol

Some jokes are just too obvious to be funny. Such is the case of Rochester's Police Accountability Board. Originally the brainchild of Rochester's cop-hating City Council and ex-Mayor Lovely Warren, it has done nothing in the two and a half years since its creation other than to annoy and demoralize the Rochester Police Department and spend millions of dollars that it can't account for, which is pissing off the city's taxpayers and embarrassing City Council. The greatest public relations scam since the Fast Ferry, City Government convinced people through subliminal messaging that they needed and wanted the PAB until people demanded a referendum vote on the matter, which the cop-hating City government graciously consented to do. Three-quarters of the people who voted in November 2019 wanted it. But only one-third of those registered to vote in Rochester bothered to go to the polls. Such is the failure of democracy in the City of Rochester. Content with this "majorit

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