Genesee County Legal Politics (and things, to wit: Criminal Charges)

So, the LeRoy Town Supervisor, Steve Barbeau. found himself in bracelets this weekend following a physical altercation with a LeRoy property developer who also happens to be said Supervisor's neghbor.

According to The Batavian, LeRoy Town Supervisor Steve Barbeau initiated a physical altercation with neighbor and local property developer Pete McQuillen over a dispute about some tree branches and where they happened to land.

Barbeau allegedly attacked McQuillen because "Barbeau was upset because a tree on McQuillen's property fell and Barbeau believed a portion of the tree came down onto his property."

Barbeau was arrested by LeRoy police and charged with Second Degree Harassment which, under New York Penal code happens when:

A person is guilty of harassment in the second degree when, with
intent to harass, annoy or alarm another person:
  1. He or she strikes, shoves, kicks or otherwise subjects such other
person to physical contact, or attempts or threatens to do the same; or
  2. He or she follows a person in or about a public place or places; or
  3. He or she engages in a course of conduct or repeatedly commits acts
which alarm or seriously annoy such other person and which serve no
legitimate purpose.
  Subdivisions two and three of this section shall not apply to
activities regulated by the national labor relations act, as amended,
the railway labor act, as amended, or the federal employment labor
management act, as amended.

Barbeau by his own admission in the following quote from The Batavian committed the violation:

"It was quite heated," Barbeau said. "He got heated right back. I pushed him with my hands open on his chest and he fell to the ground."

This quote tells you a couple different thing. First, when Barbeau says that 'It was quite heated,' he is referring either to himself or his opinion of the entire situation since he modifies that statement immediately with the following, 'He got heated right back.' The statement tells us unequivocally that McQuillen responded in a way that mirrored Barbeau's 'heated' actions until those actions became physical in nature. There is also a reasonable understanding that, at this point, Barbeau was on McQuillen's property and, by Barbeau's own admission, initiating physical contact.

I take no issue with the police response or with the charges levied against Mr. Barbeau for his admitted actions except for this:

In Genesee County, NY, alleged crimes rising to the bare minimum level for charging under the statute have been previously charged under the current District Attorney Lawrence Friedman, particularly when they involve political figures to wit NY v. Charvella in which a political activist was charged with Misdemeanor Aggravated Harassment under NY Penal code 240 for placing a phone call in which the defendant stated to an elected official's answering machine: 'Thank you for reading my blog.'

NY v. Charvella was later dismissed by a Town Justice in that same county.

The District Attorney in that county later stated after being accused by the defendant in the case as well as educated commentors outside of the case as making political decisions rather than legal ones that his ""political affiliation is always irrelevant. I don’t look at anybody’s politics when I get involved in a case, neither the victims nor the defendants nor the witnesses nor anybody else."

If the Genesee County DA was in any way serious when he made that statement he should, based on his history of charging crimes clarified in the the very weakest letter of the law, upgrade this charge to Assault in the Second Degree (a misdemeanor) which states:

 A person is guilty of assault in the second degree when:
    1.  With intent to cause serious physical injury to another person, he
  causes such injury to such person or to a third person;

Or, at the very minimum, Menacing in the Third Degree which states:

A person is guilty of menacing in the third degree when, by physical
menace, he or she intentionally places or attempts to place another
person in fear of death, imminent serious physical injury or physical
injury.

The Genesee County DA should also reserve, and exercise , the right to upgrade this crime based on any injuries Mr. McQuillen may have sustained during the altercation.

The justice system only works when it is used in a manner that is equal for all under its purview. Whether that person is the accuser or the accused should not matter. Consistency must be the watchword. Consistency from case to case.

Election Day In America

It's Election Day in America and policy is an internet meme. I know this because I made more than a few of them myself.

What will Medicare be?

Who feels more deeply the plight of the middle class?

Who loves Christ the King?

Who will represent whiteblackmuslimlatinoasian America?

Why do less than half of us even care enough to fill in a sheet, pull a lever or punch, too softly, a hanging chad?

Maybe it's because Mr. Smith can never go to Washington.

Maybe it's because our politicians send pictures of their stiff cocks to Twitter followers or are so ashamed to admit they're gay that they troll Craigslist for transsexual boytoys.

Maybe it's because no matter who becomes the President, there will always be football on Sunday (rightafterchurchamenpraiseGodandtheDallasCowboyshallelujah!)


Maybe it's because we're a nation of homeless veterans and impoverished children and no one here seems to give one tinylittlemarginal fuck about it anymore.

Maybe it's because our education system is out of money and terrible and our health-care system is drowning in money and even worse.

Show me a candidate who will spend a trillion dollars on feeding the poor and homeless.

Show me a candidate who will tell the naysayers to go fuck themselves when he does it.  

Show me the man or woman who will stop the wars to pay for better schools and bridges and clean energy and healthcare that won't bankrupt families.
\
Show me a candidate who will stop forcing eighteen year old American children to kill eighteen year old Afghan and Pakistani children.

Show me a way to a better world and I will show you a reason for more than less than half of us to care again. 

Chris Collins Thinks Substance Is For Suckers

Submitted for your skepticism.

That's an email sent by Chris Collins to supporters just a few days after GOP Presidential candidate Mitt Romney chose Medicare hatchet-man Congressman Paul Ryan as his running mate. It's not surprising that Collins would attempt to find an attack avenue using Medicare as an issue in the NY27 race since the Ryan budget plan of 2011 received most of the credit for Congresswoman Kathy Hochul's easy victory in last year's special election in a heavily Republican district.

Collins refused to take any position whatsoever on Paul Ryan's plan for Medicare, but that didn't stop him from attempting to turn the issue into a ham-fisted attack on Kathy Hochul. As usual, Collins' latest release is so full of misdirection, fantasy and outright lies that we'll need to break it down point by point.

1:

"Typical Kathy...

She's at it again.  After voting to cut $700 billion from Medicare and Medicare Advantage, Kathy Hochul is back to scaring seniors with half-truths, lies and distortions." 

No one is going to accuse the Collins campaign of having a sense of irony. The cuts Collins is discussing here have zero effect on benefits to seniors. They are aimed at disbursements to providers and the Medicare bureaucracy. The real fun fact about this attack is that the Ryan plan for Medicare contains the same 700 billion in cuts. Collins knows this and even told the Batavia Daily News that the Ryan plan doesn't go far enough with its cuts.

2: The second portion of the Collins email is a donation ask. This is typical for a campaign email from any candidate, a simple link to a donation page that says their opponent is killing puppies and if you want to help stop such disgusting behavior you need to send five or ten or twenty-five dollars right now.

3:

That’s right - she’s the only candidate in this race who voted to cut Medicare - by $700 billion.

That’s the kind of hypocrisy typical politicians like Kathy are known for.  They say one thing at home, but do another in Washington. 

 Kathy Hochul is the only candidate in this race who has ever voted for any bill. She's a Congresswoman, that's sort of what they do. We've already addressed the $700 billion myth, so let's just move on.

4:

We have serious problems ahead of us.  As a result of Barack Obama and Kathy Hochul’s reckless policies of massive debts, skyrocketing taxes and economic failure, our country is at a tipping point.  

Their failed policies have jeopardized the very programs they claim to protect - like Medicare.

There is nothing true about this statement. Taxes are at a 30 year low. Allow me to repeat that: Taxes are at a 30 year low. This cannot be denied. Collins, much like Mitt Romney is attempting to run against a fictional opponent rather than the one standing right in front of him. 

5:

But even worse, their failed policies have jeopardized the the future of our children and grandchildren.

We need to get serious about cutting our spending, reducing the debt and fixing our economy.  To do that, we need serious leaders who will tell us the truth, and not use scare tactics like Kathy Hochul. 

Right, Collins for the kids. What does that statement even mean? Nothing, nothing at all. I'll let you decide who's using the 'scare tactic' here.

6:

We deserve a real debate about the solutions to address these problems.  But with typical politicians like Kathy Hochul who campaign based on distortions and half truths, we won’t have that debate. That’s why we need a change. 

This little gem is the crowning achievement in this communication from Candidate Collins. A fundraising email full of distortions and half truths sent out at the direction of a candidate that refuses to have an public opinion about the issue being discussed is finished off by accusing Congresswoman Hochul of engaging in the same behavior without providing a single example of her doing so.

Chris Collins continues to be a willfully ignorant and purposefully non-substantive candidate. He uses poorly thought out e-mails and press releases to define a platform that doesn't appear to have any planks.

Taxation Misrepresentation The NY-27 Way

Last night in Washington D.C, members of the House of Representatives voted on two separate tax relief extension bills.

First up was H.R. 15, the version introduced by House Democrats. The highlights of this bill were extensions to tax cuts for the middle class through December 2013, a 5% increase in the capital gains tax that would have moved the current rate on self-replicating wealth from 15-20%, a reset of the tax rate on income over $250,000, and extensions of the Child Tax Credit and Earned Income Tax Credit. Local representatives Kathy Hochul, Brian Higgins and Louise Slaughter all voted in favor of the bill which was eventually defeated by House Republicans.

After defeating H.R. 15, House Republicans introduced their own, much shorter, tax bill, H.R. 8. It is shorter because it is simply a continuation of what we're doing now with some minor adjustments to specific amounts. Hochul, Higgins and Slaughter all voted against this bill, but it passed the House 256-171. It will not pass in the Senate.

Now that the background is done, let's look at how the votes on these bills are being used as campaign fodder in the NY-27 Congressional race.

Republican candidate Chris Collins wasted no time before making outrageous and barely factual statements about Kathy Hochul's votes. His statement also included a poorly constructed populist narrative that would only be construed as sincere if you didn't know anything at all about Collins.

First, the substance. In his statement, Collins accuses Hochul of voting 'against extending the Child Tax Credit and the Marriage Penalty Tax Relief which were included in the package passed by the U.S. House of Representatives today.' This, while not exactly a lie, fails to address the fact that Hochul voted for extending the Child Tax Credit in the Democratic version of the tax relief bill. This signifies that she is not opposed to the Child Tax Credit, but instead to the extension of tax breaks for millionaires. Marriage Penalty Tax relief is a misnomer at best. There was never a tax penalty for being married, only a lack of incentive to file jointly if spouses had significantly disparate incomes. Hochul supports what is essentially a return to the Clinton-era tax structure, with some extended benefits for the working class. Collins is apparently demanding that she support the status quo, which is an unbelievably dense position since the only thing we can all seem to agree about is that our economy sucks and things are terrible.

Collins then goes on to say that 'Official records show that Kathy Hochul may be one of Congress’ more wealthy members, having disclosed assets that total between $1 million and $2.3 million. In addition, Hochul and her husband, an Obama political appointee, together jointly earn over $325,000 annually, placing them in the top 1.5% of earners in the United States.' I'm not sure I've ever seen a more ironic statement from a candidate, so let's break this down.

Collins seems to be donning his populist costume here, but it doesn't fit very well. This attack on Hochul probably needs to be fisked sentence by sentence so let's drag our Bull-Shit-O-Meter up from the basement and get to work:

Sentence 1:  'Official records show that Kathy Hochul may be one of Congress’ more wealthy members, having disclosed assets that total between $1 million and $2.3 million.'

On a bullshit scale of 1-10, this statement ranks a 9.5. The only reason it wasn't a perfect 10 was because there actually is a financial disclosure document that details Hochul's assets. The rest of this sentence is nonsense. Although 2012 comparisons including liabilities were not readily available, using the best information at my disposal, it took me about ten seconds to learn that the 'official records' referenced by Collins when compared to other members of Congress actually show that Hochul is most likely in the bottom third of House members when it comes to wealth.

Sentence 2: In addition, Hochul and her husband, an Obama political appointee, together jointly earn over $325,000 annually, placing them in the top 1.5% of earners in the United States.

When I applied my Bull-Shit-O-Meter to this statement, something strange happened. The needle swung back and forth between 0 and 10, metronome style. I was confused until I realized what the problem was: I had the wrong tool. I opened my drawer and there, nestled between the Sarcastoguage and the Snarktimeter, lay my Irony-ometer. It was just what I needed and when I applied the tool to this statement, it promptly exploded.

As it turns out, the numbers used in Collins' attack on wealth are correct, but the sentiment is not. Collins seems to want you to believe that he is both Robin Hood and the Sheriff of Nottingham. There is no sincerity whatsoever in the Collins position on this issue, in fact, it assumes that you, the voter are a misinformed, zombie, coma patient...but I digress.

The Collins statement goes on to accuse Kathy Hochul of working for the government. We'll have to assume (since we are all morons) that Mr. Collins actually loathes the idea of being a Congressman and that he's just doing it because Jesus told him he had to...or something...

After that, Collins prints a list of generally bullshit talking points that were prepared by his party's majority on the Ways and Means Committee.

I feel like I'm going to be doing a lot of these little pieces on the nonsense coming out of the Collins camp between now and November, and I'm not going to let Congresswoman Hochul slide either. I absolutely detest inanity and obfuscation in political campaigns.

The Siren call of bullshit, smirking accusations seems to be too much for Collins. He simply can't help himself. He and many members of his party think their wobbly platform is enough to win as long as they can get their rabid base foaming at the mouth and the under-informed centrists to believe the nonsense.

Sadly enough, they may be right.

Chris Collins Writes A Letter

It's almost August. Too soon for anyone to care much about local elections, but not too soon for candidates to start making ridiculous statements about one another.

Enter Chris Collins and a letter he wrote to Kathy Hochul dated today, July 31st, 2012. In it, he calls on Democratic incumbent Kathy Hochul to support an extension to the 2001 and 2003 middle class and small business tax cuts and to break with the President 'just once' in order to do so.

Apparently, Mr. Collins, despite all of his self-proclaimed business acumen, has failed to learn how to count. Representative Hochul was one of only 18 house Democrats to vote with House Republicans in favor of a $46 Billion small-business tax cut last April. 

In fact, Representative Hochul, according to her congressional voting record is actually one of the most conservative members of the Democratic Caucus, voting with her party only 82% of the time. By the numbers she is the 24th most conservative Democrat out of the 192 currently serving in Congress.

As for the middle class tax cut extension, it was Representative Hochul who issued her own press release four days ago calling on Mr. Collins to support tax cut extensions for American workers.

Now, here's the important part: Middle class tax cuts don't mean the same thing to both candidates. The 2001 'middle class tax cuts' that Mr. Collins is referring to are commonly known as the Bush tax cuts that reduced tax rates on income over $500,000 roughly 3%.. When you watch MSNBC or listen to liberal talk radio, you will hear this rate commonly paired with the phrase, 'The wealthiest one percent of Americans.' These tax cuts were originally scheduled to expire at the end of 2010, but were extended after President Obama made a deal with Congress that included an extension to his own payroll tax cut as well as guaranteeing long-term unemployment benefits.

When Representative Hochul, who supports a marginal tax increase on top earning Americans, calls for extended tax relief for the middle class, she means the payroll tax cut, in place since 2010, that reduces the amount you pay the Social Securtiy Administration by about 2% and puts roughly $20-40 per week back into the pockets of  work-a-day Americans. Extended out over a year that's up to $2000 dollars extra for the average wage earner, or, in layman's terms, about 100 big boxes of diapers. This cut can accurately be described as 'middle-class' because no one in America pays a dime in social security taxes on income earned over $110,100. I doubt the Collins family ever worried much about the cost of diapers.

This game of dueling press releases cuts directly to the core of modern American politics. Our politicians do their best to run out a string of banalities designed (by professionals) to appeal to the lowest common denominator. In short, this stuff isn't complicated, but you have to want to understand it. Politicians and their handlers assume, correctly, that you don't want to understand it. You're getting what you paid for with regard to our level of debate.

Candidates like Collins and Hochul are becoming the norm.

Collins is a wealthy, empty suit who came to the fight armed with talking points about an economic policy that only works in a vacuum or an Ayn Rand novel. He's not John Galt, and neither, by the way, are you. You're not even Hank Reardon.

Hochul, like many Democrats, is bad in a different way. She makes the same assumptions about voters that Collins does, but instead of challenging them to raise their level of understanding she relies heavily on cliche. The tragedy here is that Hochul is actually very good at her job as a Congresswoman. She genuinely cares about constituents and she never misses an opportunity to communicate with people directly. Sadly, the Hochul campaign differs dramatically from the Hochul reality because she has chosen to fight on Collins' home court. No one ever told her that you can win an argument against a person who stubbornly refuses to have any clue what he's talking about.

What's the result? Two separate communications from candidates coming four days apart that look nearly identical but are addressing completely separate points.

We're not having a debate about the benefits/drawbacks of certain economic policies. We're not talking about the wars we fight. We're not talking about the weakening American middle-class. We pretend to talk about those things, they are listed as issues, but honest discussion isn't happening and it's your fault.

Don't let Chris Collins pretend to be the savior of the middle class when his entire platform is essentially a plan to protect some bourgeois notion that a wealth class hoarding money is also creating jobs for the poor. Don't let any candidate for office get away with answering your questions with a talking point from their own website. Life in America is bad and getting worse for almost all of us and our political class is being intentionally useless while we drown.

The Doltification of America

Today I was going to write a piece on equality as it relates to the fervor over the Affordable Care Act (aka ObamaCare) I think we need to start somewhere else, though. Americans aren't ready to have a debate about equality in opportunity without the added decoration of taxation arguments, little girl with cancer memes and all the visceral, emotional rhetoric that comes along with it.

I said Americans aren't 'ready.' I should have said Americans aren't capable. There is something wrong with us culturally. Something is stopping us short of accepting factual material and forming an opinion of that material based only on those facts. We seem to need external input and injections of drama in our political soup. Without that stimulation of our entertainment nerve, we just don't seem able to pay proper attention to important issues. We need someone to root for or we change the channel. Are you on Team Sparkly, Angst-Ridden Vampire or Team Angry, Angst-Ridden Werewolf? Green Bay Packers or Chicago Bears?

Teenage love triangles and football games are not good examples of how to run a government, but the American electorate has come to expect behavior from its politicians that is eerily similar to the two. We want grand gestures and long, meaningful eye-contact from our electeds. We want them knock the other guy out. We don't want boring trips to the library, chaste kisses and post-game handshakes. We want our team to win.

Politicians aren't stupid and neither are the people who manage their campaigns. The trend has been picked up, the gauntlet has been thrown down and elections stopped even pretending to be about ideas and cultural advancement. Instead of debating the cost/benefit/cultural equality implications of a national healthcare plan, paying our bills or even whether or not to fight wars, these people we elect immediately choose a team and go to the mattresses. They do it because that's what we've told them we expect, they do it because they are victims of our drama-crazed culture. We made them that way.

We are the good guys, they are the bad guys.


Don't be on the wrong side of history.


(Insert idea here) is un-American.

Politics is not a teenage drama. Politics is not a sport. Culturally, we have to come to terms with that. We must prepare to be bored by our government or we will be doomed to hate it. Government should be a documentary, not an action film, brain-surgery, not Jersey Shore.

The jokes about politicians being liars, thieves and insipid mouthpieces for special interests have been around forever. Vicious, American self-efficacy perpetuates the narrative.We have set the bar at the level of terrible and corrupt. There has been no need for our representatives to raise themselves up above our expectations. In fact, we punish the ones who try. Why? What is it about our culture that wants the worst of what we are to govern us both literally and figuratively? Are we too dumb to understand the kind of damage we do to ourselves? Are we too lazy to fix it?

Maybe.

A 2003 OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) study ranked America's 15 year-olds 25th among the 30 participating countries in problem solving skills. I'm using the 2003 study because these children are now 24-25 years old. They are voters, college graduates and members of our labor force coming into their own as citizens. On a related note, The United States ranks 26th among those same countries in the ratio of GDP (Gross Domestic Product) to teacher salaries and 15th in total education spending as a percentage of GDP.

Here we have the perfect unsolvable problem, a voting population that isn't great at viewing data and making decisions about it responsible for electing representatives whose job it should be to create policy using that same data. Instead of well constructed debates about how we should go about improving our public education system so our children are better prepared to compete in a world that is surpassing us, our system has left us with two emotional arguments that in no way challenge the electorate to make a decision about reality based on fact.

On one side there is the conservative meme that this is all about money and government spending. Because it is the conservative meme, we understand it to mean that if we join this team we are signing up for less of both. So, despite evidence to the contrary, if we side with the conservatives we are telling the world that we think spending less money on teachers and public education, somehow our 15 year-olds will get smarter.

The progressive side has given up on talking about education entirely and instead uses an argument about jobs e.g. employment rates, etc. in order to counteract the conservative meme effectively turning their education policy debate strategy into a numbers game rather than arguing about the quality of our teachers and schools.

Neither side's policy views have anything to do with the real American educational product. They don't address the quality of schools, teachers or students; there is only some ethereal argument about cash and job numbers. Meanwhile, our kids are having trouble deciphering the information contained in the basic graphs that outline the real problem.

How did we get here? It's your fault. Yes, you. You bought tickets to the football game.

Somewhere along the line, one team realized that people don't really like paying taxes, at least not if you can convince them they're not getting a return for their money. This ad campaign worked so well that the other team jumped on defense, but they weren't defending their own policies. Instead, they bought into the other team's game plan and rearranged their own accordingly. Suddenly we weren't having a conversation about what level of government spending on teacher's unions, salaries and public schools had a related benefit to the education product, we were arguing about whether any level of public expenditure on education was just a bad thing or the worst idea possible.

Even a populace as prone to bad ideas in good packaging as ours wouldn't fall into that obvious trap without a little extra help. The emotional idea of bettering our children through education is too strong even in the older demographics that no longer have children in school. The best way to counter an emotional response that you don't want is to introduce an issue that will create the emotional response that you do want. Enter religion.

The public education system had already been vilified for spending a enormous amount of taxpayer dollars and the progressives had already given up defending those expenditures in lieu of a more esoteric argument designed to counter the opposition rather than defend their own philosophy. The conservatives were suddenly able to say things in public like, "Well, we can all agree that the public education system is too expensive," without being argued with or corrected. With that battle won, they were free to attack from another emotional angle. Suddenly it wasn't how our kids were taught, but what.

Conservatives reached out to the fringe of their base and created a new meme: Not only are you paying too much for your kids' education, you are also sending them to public schools that teach them that your personal beliefs are wrong. They are taught in science class that the things they learn in church on Sunday are incorrect so, logically, they are learning that their parents are incorrect.

Once again, progressives failed to argue the correct point. Instead of defending our secular society as laid out in the law of our land, they came back with a mealy-mouthed argument that sounded something like this: "Look, we love God just as much as anybody else, but...., hey, we're Christians too, don't accuse us of being anything else," and down went the American educational system.

We chose teams. We fought about spending money, not about where and how, but about how much. We slipped further down the rabbit hole after a huge voting block decided that the education debate was also about faith vs. fact. The entire argument was suddenly emotional and divisive and no one wanted to talk anymore about the best way to teach children how to read or do long division.

We are living inside the American idiom, while the literal, fact-based world passes us by with incredulous looks on their faces.

Every debate we have about policy devolves in the same manner as the one we had and are still having about education. Healthcare, military action, the economy, drug laws, gun laws and even our established electoral process are now subject to these arguments where emotions are the proof and opinion is favored over fact.

It's more fun that way for an American citizenry that is getting provably worse at critical thinking. We are caught in a web that we created for ourselves and we are not going to escape it without shifting our thought process completely and I'm not sure this is a society that is capable of doing such a thing.