54 Search Results for amazon

Jul 24

2022

A most unreasonable demand

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I’ve never heard of such a thing: elected officials being asked to sign a nondisclosure agreement to preclude them from discussing public policy. Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz is making the demand of three county legislators who would serve on a committee to consider, at long last, a community benefits agreement tied to the construction of the new Buffalo Bills stadium. The county executive wants those negotiations, much like talks involving the stadium, to be held in secret. Public policy should not be negotiated behind closed doors. This is yet another example of Poloncarz kowtowing to the Pegulas and thumbing[...]

Posted 2 years ago

Jun 6

2022

Monday Morning Read

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Jim Heaney shares his recommended reading from the previous week, which is also delivered Sunday mornings via his WeeklyPost newsletter. You can subscribe for free here. That didn’t take long. Just days after Congressman Chris Jacobs announced he would support gun control measures in the wake of mass shootings in Buffalo and Texas, he withdrew as a candidate for re-election. The GOP just wouldn’t have it. Analysis here from The Buffalo News and The New York Times. The Washington Post reported a few days ago there have been 232 mass shootings in the United State so far this year. And[...]

Posted 2 years ago

May 30

2022

Monday Morning Read (Tuesday edition)

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This week’s post includes stories of interest from Sunday and Monday, to cover the  holiday weekend. You can receive the entire WeeklyPost newsletter, which also includes a summary of our best reporting from the previous week, by subscribing here. The Buffalo News tackled the subject of racism in Western New York. A very good companion piece to the story we published a couple of weeks ago. The New York Times profiled the pain of the killings on one Buffalo family. Margaret Sullivan laments that the toll that media fragmentation means we’ll probably never see a lawless president brought to heel[...]

Posted 2 years ago

May 1

2022

Monday Morning Read

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Read all about it: Jim Heaney’s recommended reading from the past week. That, and more, is available for free each Sunday morning by subscribing to WeeklyPost. First, what I wasn’t reading: NFL mock draft coverage. Has there ever been a greater waste of journalistic resources than the endless speculation on who might be drafted by what teams that we’ve been subjected to for the past couple of months? Buffalo Rising reported on the prospect of a museum dedicated to the Irish author and poet James Joyce. Why here in Western New York? For whatever reason, the University at Buffalo is home[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Apr 4

2022

WNY tops the list of most wasteful subsidies

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New York state has a long history of squandering huge amounts of taxpayer money on economic development projects that yield little to no returns.  A new report highlighting the state’s “Dirtiest Dozen” economic development deals ranked four Western New York projects at the top of the list.  The report, developed by the American Economics Liberties Project, a nonprofit organization that advocates for corporate accountability, singled out the subsidy package offered to Plug Power to locate a facility in Genesee County – at a public cost of $4 million per job – as the worst of the worst.  “The most expensive[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Feb 7

2022

DailyPost

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Welcome to Daily Post, which we’ll produce Monday through Friday, featuring short enterprise pieces and summaries of full-length stories. Thursday, March 3, 2022 Cash calls it quits Kriner Cash has officially cashed out as Buffalo schools’ superintendent. He’s resigned after leading the district for five and a half years. The district’s Board of Education unanimously accepted his resignation at a special work session tonight. “Both the Board and the superintendent came to an agreement that we were going to part ways,” Board of Education President Louis Petrucci said. The full terms of the agreement aren’t clear — “You can FOIL[...]

Posted 3 years ago

Mar 17

2021

The mother of all subsidy deals

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At a cost of $4 million per job, the subsidy deal designed to bring the first tenant to a vacant industrial park in rural Genesee County would be the richest in Western New York history.  Plug Power is in line for an estimated $269.5 million in tax breaks and power discounts in exchange for building a plant that would create 68 jobs.  The cost per job dwarfs other local subsidy deals. Subsidies for a data center built nearly a decade ago in Lockport worked out to more than $2 million a job. Government money invested in the Tesla solar plant[...]

Posted 4 years ago

Feb 7

2020

$40 for a six pack of beer? OTB parties on.

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 The Western Regional Off Track Betting Corp. is spending more than $300,000 a year on suites to Sabres and Bills games and concerts and running up large tabs for food and drinks, including copious amounts of alcohol. Officials claim they’re rewarding high rollers at its casino, but records show they’re also helping themselves to the free tickets and concessions. OTB, along with other Sabres suite holders, chose from a menu last season that charged up to $130 for a bottle of liquor, $40 for a six-pack of beer and $53 for a pizza. OTB, spending public money, dropped $85,690[...]

Posted 5 years ago