Tea and Vitriol

My bet is "Yes." From the minute Mahweak Evans won the Democratic primary vote in 2021, he was guaranteed the mayorship in November's general election. During the interim, violent crime in Rochester exploded, as did its number of homicides. In fact, 2021 was a record-breaker for the number of homicides that were committed in our fair city. Mahweak did nothing, apart from occasionally expressing that his heart was broken. Apparently, Mahweak's heart is a remarkably resilient organ. Nor did he provide Rochester with any idea about how he would combat this uptick in violence, probably because he didn't know what to do in the first place. On January 1, 2022, Mahweak was finally crowned and enthroned. He promptly announced that he would be putting all of Rochester's anti-violence programs, all stunning failures, under his control, which he promptly handed off to his cousin, Victor Saunders. There was no noticeable improvement as violent crime continued to escalate.

 City Councilman Jose Peo ( NW district) hosts a regular podcast on We the People Podcast Network, "Politically Correcting With Jose Peo." It features Peo himself with a co-host and guests guzzling beer and making off color remarks, sort of like pubescent adolescent boys pretending to sound like men after they discovered their daddy's liquor stash. However, the episode aired on June 15 featured a segment of unbelievable vulgarity, crudeness and political incorectness that was not to be expected from a sitting elected official and his buddies. At least not in public. Less surprising is that most people didn't know anything about it until City Newspaper's Gino Fanelli posted his story about it on June 27, almost two weeks after the podcast, probably because most people don't pay attention to what little Peo says anyway and couldn't be bothered to listen to his podcast. If they even knew he had one. Frankly, it became a tempest in a teapot. I listened to the

Too many coincidences are too coincidental. A recent incident following a crime scene investigation in Rochester, New York bears this out. On June 18, officers of the Rochester Police Department were investigating a shooting on North Street that sent a man to the hospital with non-fatal gunshot wounds. These incidents have become as common as pig tracks in our fair city. They taped off the area that they were investigating, to prevent onlookers and passers-by from contaminating evidence at the site. Low and behold, skipping out of a bar in the vicinity, comes an individual who was curious about the activities of RPD in that area so early in the morning. He came, looked at the outer perimeter and then appeared to be leaving. However, he proceeded to walk deeper into the crime scene and was told by the police officers to leave. The individual refused to do so, was promptly arrested for Obstruction of Governmental Administration in the 2nd Degree (a misdemeanor) by the police officers the

 Remember the song, the "Limbo Rock" and the refrain "How low can you go?" Well, apparently the people in charge of governing the City of Rochester, NY are looking to bring it as low as they possibly can. We already know that our fair city is the deadliest in America per capita in terms of homicide. We have the worst school district in the State of New York, and one of the worst in the entire nation. We rank second in terms of child poverty. We used to rank first, but Syracuse, NY succeeded us to that dubious title this year. And now...and now... According to WalletHub, a personal finance website, Rochester ranks 13th out of 150 cities as one of the worst-run major cities in America! Surprise, surprise! Most residents of our fair city already know that. Washington, DC, San Francisco, New York City and Chicago, all jewels in the crown of progressive liberalism and governed by Democrats, fared worse than Rochester. According to the story printed yesterday (June 22, 20

Since its creation as a result of a referendum vote in 2019, Rochester's Police Accountability Board has provided endless hours of mirth and disgust. An expensive and mysterious nuisance, it has accomplished nothing since its inception except to spend millions of dollars and claim an authority over the police department that two court cases ruled they did NOT have. Supposedly answerable to City Council, the PAB claims it is independent of that body and is answerable to no one. And they have ignored demands for transparency, while they demand it of City Government and the police department. The latest scandal revolves around the "integrity" of the PAB, with tales of dysfunctionality and sexual harassment to entertain the taxpayers stuck paying the PAB's bills and salaries. Two founding members of the PAB, Dr. Celia McIntosh and Ida Perez who had an unquestioned history of integrity in Rochester's politics and neighborhood advocacy, resigned in March of this year, s

  Today is Memorial Day. It is the unofficial start of summer, the culmination of a three-day weekend that usually features picnics where people overindulge in barbecued food and beer, parades and fireworks. But that is NOT what Memorial Day is all about. Memorial Day was set aside to honor the brave men and women who served our country in the armed forces to preserve our freedom and died in the process. Freedom is not free. Our service men and women in many cases paid the cost of freedom with their blood, sometimes making the supreme sacrifice: their lives for our country. We take those freedoms for granted on a daily basis. Some people, when they have run-ins with the law, claim that they now know what it is to live within a "police state," when it is patently clear that they know no such thing. A "police state" would never allow them to speak publicly in that manner. Among some people, it has been fashionable for a very long time to mock patriotism and the armed

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