The NFTA may finally drop the pretense that they should be involved with sea travel. By doing so, they would be decently letting a company reap the benefits of doing the work involved with running a boat parking lot. They should take notes on how to make money so they’re not begging for us to again cover their losses:

The NFTA board of directors voted Thursday to negotiate a $3.5 million offer from Bear Development Group to purchase the small boat harbor and Gallagher Beach waterfront parcel.

You mean they are going to invest their own cash? Is that even legal? The private enterprise may even build neat stuff on the spot:

The proposal includes a commitment by Bear Development to pour an additional $15 million dollars into the land, including an expansion to the harbor break-wall and marine facilities as well as the construction of interior parks and an amphitheater.

An amphitheater would mean they could host rock and roll combos and make draught beer available for purchase during warmer months. The one thing the potential new owner would not be allowed to build is a wall:

The NFTA also stipulates that any agreement must promise to keep the property and boat facility open to the public.

Why would they want to cut off access, anyway? They have to want people there if they’re going to profit. Those looking for something to do near the lake would be just one beneficiary: a local agency is on the verge of finally doing something something wise. If the seemingly improbable sale comes to fruition, they would also add to their coffers from, of all things, a voluntary transaction:

Proceeds from the deal would go to stabilize the agency’s capital reserves.

We can only hope that government will get the hang of ridding themselves of stuff they shouldn’t own while simultaneously make money. It may be as likely as the president admitting that unemployment increased after the stimulus. But at least this property sell-off would be a good first step, even if they never take a second.

It’s past time to let a private company give running that edge of the city a shot. After all, it’s not as if they could do much worse than NFTA has. They apparently hoped that the sparseness would keep people from noticing.

People have a motive to keep what’s theirs running well. By contrast, a government entity doesn’t have to worry about going out of business: they’ll just turn to taxpayers and request a loan, if “request” means “demand” and “loan” means “wasted bailout.”

The prospective new owner would have every incentive to make the property enticing. The public may worry about a private company failing to make it work. But, if there’s value in the harbor, the plucky new investors will either make it a success or go out of business trying. And the latter would just allow another enterprising concern to give it a better try.

Anything that could enliven Buffalo’s waterfront is worth a shot, especially for the stretch past the pointlessly execrable Skyway. The exchange would create progress compared to what the government has, and has not, done with the tract.

NFTA’s drivers just traveled along the I-90 to ask for a sum of cash that would cover way more than gas money. Executives arrived on time, as they didn’t take their own buses:

Officials from the NFTA plan to travel to Albany Monday and meet with local state lawmakers to request assistance with their budget gap.

The NFTA is requesting additional state transit operating assistance, access to eight additional megawatts of low-cost power from NYPA and that its $2.75 FYE 2008 NYS dedicated transit funding application be approved so they can improve and modernize the transit system.

Artificially cheap juice will solve everything. After all, the Authority can’t be blamed for trifling things such as circumstances:

Kimberley A. Minkel, Executive Director of the NFTA says, “It is our intention to meet with each member of our delegation so we can show them how converging fiscal constraints outside the authority’s control are causing our budget deficit.”

Whining about the inability to control conditions is the prefect domain of government. Normal businesses must deal with what happens as a condition of coping with life. On the other hand, a decidedly non-private business merely begs for a bailout for which you won’t even receive a snarky ecard as thanks. At least the entitled caravan serves as a reminder of how good they are at budgeting, which is to say not very:

The NFTA needs to close a $7.1 million funding gap in its 2012-2013 budget.

As a result, New Yorkers at large are now being called upon to back bus passes for riders in two counties. Public transportation should be supported by the specific members of the public who use it.

If there’s a need to share rides in a lumbering vehicle on a predetermined route, consumers and providers can sort it out amongst themselves. It’s not precisely a coincidence that an industry propped up by public funds never thrives.

Our transportation overlords take the entirely patronizing view that we must support people who make less by subsidizing their rides. But the state is only acting as a wasteful middleman.

Perhaps those who use the proletariat chariot could afford to pay their way if less money was first sent to Albany. But the rich twits would spend that non-taxed income on salaries for their employees or goods for themselves that would help other employees. Thankfully, our lawmakers take it before earners can odiously prime the economy.

The bus company in which you involuntarily invest would be far more responsive if they had to meet customers’ needs. Instead, they strive to convince the state to cover them.

Our leaders undoubtedly ponder why more people can’t afford cars as they take more to prop up a fizzling public transportation agency. The funds uncannily seem to disappear faster than coins down the slot.

They hope we fail to notice the public beast wasting your money at a speed that’s the perfect inverse of their lumbering fleet. They’re clogging traffic everywhere.

To wit, there’s a rather suspicious illness presently being passed between psychosomatic high school minds. If you’re not convinced that the disease is convincing, perhaps the noted attention-grabbing alarmist who has shown up on the supposed victims’ behalf will help, or not. Renowned fraud Erin Brockovich is doing more damage than inspiring Julia Roberts to make a movie:

National environmental and health groups are beating a path to LeRoy, poking into the Genesee County community’s startling cluster of teenage students with troubling neurological symptoms.

Groups led by environmental-activist icons Erin Brockovich and Lois Gibbs have been talking with parents and gathering background. A chapter of the Sierra Club has been digging into the LeRoy school’s unusual connection with natural gas drilling. The Healthy Schools Network, Empire State Consumer Project and others are involved.

The Sierra Club is there? I’m sorry, but I can’t take any preposterous rallying against alleged transgressions against the environment seriously until Greenpeace arrives, too. The condition has inspired wholly unfounded conspiracy theories, including one that’s usually the domain of Brockovich’s fellow fraudulent ditz Jenny McCarthy:

Leaders of these groups say authorities in New York may have acted too hastily in ruling out environmental contaminants, infectious illnesses or vaccinations as possible causes of the cluster, which now includes as many as 15 LeRoy Junior-Senior High School students who exhibit varying degrees of involuntary twitches and verbal outbursts not unlike those associated with Tourette’s syndrome. Some report fainting spells and seizures, too.

Buffalo neurologists who have seen a number of the students have said the teens suffer from a psychological disorder causing physical symptoms that spread unconsciously through the student body, a finding that state health and LeRoy school officials don’t seem to dispute.

What also doesn’t seem to be disputed is how many people think the school is being trolled. It’s hard to avoid suspecting that the alleged victims aren’t fakers:

The LeRoy mystery-illness story has unfolded in a peculiar way. Word of students with tics and twitches circulated among families this fall, and was reported by Rochester and Buffalo television stations in early November.

But little information was made public. The families for the most part kept to themselves, and the school district cited privacy laws and revealed no details. It remained a mostly local curiosity until 10 days ago – when Miller and Katie joined another mother and afflicted daughter on NBC’s Today show.

Since then, LeRoy has gone viral. Bloggers and national news outlets, particularly those of TV celebrity-doctors, have scrambled for images of symptomatic teens and argued on air and online about their diagnoses.

Don’t let a TV doctor diagnose you. Instead, listen to a mouthy know-it-all who knows nothing:

“While we don’t have the answers, we are suspicious that the all-clear has been sounded on the environmental side and we don’t believe that it should have been,” said Brockovich, whose dogged legal research on a huge California water-contamination case gave rise to the 2000 motion picture for which Julia Roberts won an Academy Award.

Gah, that’s even worse than even Tom Hanks winning twice. Here in reality, the execrable film’s namesake has a job that might even be more self-importantly useless than community organizing:

Brockovich, who works with citizens in environmental cases around the country, said an associate would be in LeRoy shortly to gather environmental samples.

As a specialist in obtaining media attention by being as obnoxious as possible, she trades in the opposite of science. People who still insist that global warming is as indisputable as the case against fracking are wont to indulge in hysteria about diseases. But the circumstances surrounding the school outbreak in question make it appear to be as invalid as the reasoning against an amazing method for retrieving valuable fuel.

The supposed epidemic is at best suspicious. And the advocates on behalf of victims with dubious symptoms shouldn’t be further deluded into thinking that enlisting someone who made herself famous by presenting everything but proof is going to help.

Would a buck and a quarter more per hour make you happier? It’s easy for New York’s Democrats to push for a higher wage floor; after all, they wouldn’t be the ones covering the increase:

Assembly Democrats Monday will introduce legislation increasing the minimum wage from $7.25 to $8.50 an hour, beginning in 2013, a source told The Post tonight.

Naturally, the mean opposition thinks that the government promising you something good could have negative consequences, because they are not equipped with hearts and thus don’t believe in the power of compassion and love as expressed through making your boss pay you more to run a cash register:

Senate Republicans — and business leaders — are expected to oppose the measure, a Democratic source said, adding it’s not likely to pass.

The pay hike sounds great in the same sense that eating ice cream for dinner is appetizing for kindergartners. The man who has to choke down Sandra Lee’s cooking hasn’t yet revealed if he’s in favor of forcing work to dole out larger sugar rations:

Gov. Cuomo has not indicated his position on the proposed law, but said he wants to make the state more business-friendly.

Cuomo the Younger’s desire to make businesses like our state apparently somehow explains why he raised the state income tax for high earners and no longer bothers to make a show about cutting government to any serious degree. His ability to resist the urge to impose a more expensive mandate on employers will presumably be as strong as his desire to pretend he’s not a liberal.

The measure’s mere suggestion reaffirms that some head to Albany for the sole reason of micromanaging your life. Assembly stooges attempt to tell us what people should make when they’re not deciding what marriage is.

As with their unilateral redefinition of weddings, their economic theories seem to have been developed by humans who are new to society. Let’s hope that their viewpoints arise from mere unfamiliarity with our customs and discoveries.

In reality, people should be able to work for whatever rate to which they can obtain. Just like everything one buys is a negotiation with a seller, one’s wage should be freely agreed upon with an employer.

Companies want good and skilled workers; the bad news for them is that they have to compensate properly. Liberals assume we’d all be making 85 cents per hour without the government’s protection, as if laborers would settle for pocket change while employers in a competitive environment who wanted to attract talent wouldn’t offer bills.

The Assembly thinks it’s humiliatingly absurd for entry-level hopefuls to start low and earn that raise. But bosses are just trying to determine is how much value they can get out of a worker performing his task and compensate him accordingly. Or maybe they pay a small amount because they’re cruel and would rather gold-plate their moats than pay people to do economically useful tasks for them.

The result of the bill moving forward would be fewer jobs, as companies would divide the finite payroll budget among fewer people. But at least the openings would be higher-paying if they existed.

Workers could receive better compensation from millionaires if the latter didn’t have to send more to Albany. But our politicians would rather punish the successful until they learn that making money doesn’t pay.

Socking it to high earners harms those who are earn less. Class-on-class combat assumes that rich people won’t leave and will keep being as productive as they were before our leaders hiked taxes. On top of that, surrendering more to the proven dopes in the capital also means that they’re left with less left to pay janitors and secretaries.

Practitioners of envy similarly figure that employers will happily pay workers more than they may be worth. But a higher minimum wage just leads to a minimum number of starting jobs being available. Those who wage basement laws allegedly help will express their gratitude by desperately selling us their plasma.

That’s true regardless of whether every in-person seat is filled.  After all, they’ve also thrown money on owner Ralph Wilson’s pile just by paying taxes in the the Evil Empire State.

Football partisans can’t just enjoy cheering for their preferred sport: they must also contemplate Washington’s puzzlingly invasive role in it, which is especially galling considering that the hometown Redskins are presently barely better than the horrid Bills.

As a result, fans contemplate whether it’s worse for one government to fund a private business or another to decide if they will be stuck listening to their team on fall Sundays if a few hundred seats remain unsold.  Thinking about which Bills squad since 2000 has most insulted the game of football is miserable enough.

This republic won’t let us call our own plays. Fans are left begging the FCC to please let us watch our fantastically lousy local football side on our home screens:

The Federal Communications Commission is looking for the public to comment on the NFL’s blackout rules.

The move by the FCC came in response to a petition filed by groups who object to the rule.

The feds have a say for the same reason that they choose which failing companies deserve to be propped up with our money, namely because they feel like it:

An FCC rule dating back to 1976, requires all other broadcasters, including cable and satellite companies, to abide by the blackout agreement.

But now, the FCC is taking a second look at that rule.

They’re checking to see where their power to set arbitrary rules is found in the Constitution. Just kidding. Fans are understandably ticked that the availability of tickets is even an issue in whether a contest is broadcast locally:

Brian Frederick, Sports Fan Coalition: ”Well it’s extremely important, and it’s even more important that fans speak out now because what the FCC is looking for is to hear from fans in these affected areas. So it’s going to be up to the fan bases in Buffalo and Tampa and Cincinnati where there have been pervasive blackouts to say ‘enough is enough, where we shouldn’t have to pay for the stadium with our tax dollars and then be blacked out at home as well.’”

He’s certainly correct that locals who fund the stadium should be able to see games played within it. But the issue lies with why the community pays for stadiums with tax dollars in the first place.

Forget trying to grow the area’s economy so that there are naturally more NFL nuts than tickets. New York’s stimulus-style approach assumes that businesses will only set up shop and remain if politicians who coincidentally haven’t succeeded in the private sector offer suspiciously generous gift bags.

We couldn’t dare let people figure out if they want to invest in industries like professional athletics by themselves. Instead, we get massive compulsory spending of our own money with a rotten economy as a reward.

But at least the Bills might continue to play home games in Orchard Park and Toronto instead of Southern California if they get more state money in exchange for playing not particularly decent football. Of course, Albany must first tax the stuffing out of us to raise enough so they can throw more from the communal pile at an affluent private business.

Big public-money spenders like Andrew Cuomo claim they aim to keep the Bills around. But their schemes in fact initiate the exact government-initiated drag that leads to unfilled seats. Their solution creates the problem. They can never determine why filling a 73,079-seat stadium is a struggle despite all their bribes.

Stadiums should be run as for-profit private enterprises owned by whoever thinks they’re good business investments, including the one in suburban Buffalo. Subsidizing a participant in a multibillion-dollar enterprise does not quite qualify as helping the less fortunate.

Either way, we’re left figuring out how the FCC has any say in a football league’s broadcast decisions. Of course, winning football played in a thriving town would inherently lead to sellouts. And owners like Wilson could get off the dole and set any blackout rules they want. But it’s easier to bribe an official who doesn’t even know the game’s rules.

Occupy Buffalo didn’t seem to realize that it would get chilly around calendar-changing time, which fails to portend well for their ability to make accurate political predictions. Still, the unsurprising frigidity may bring a merciful end to a movement that’s as relevant as a video from the Huntsman daughters.

Even mailmen claim they work through crummy weather. But it’s apparently only worth fighting to plunder the income of others when there are leaves on the ground, not snow:

Though organizers of Occupy Buffalo say the recent cold and snow hasn’t affected them, the recent evidence may suggest differently.

“This snow is not a problem. I don’t know how clearly I can say that,” said Heron Simmonds-Price, an Occupy Buffalo organizer.

Learning of an Occupier’s troubled relationship with the truth is as shocking as finding a sign advocating free tuition in one of their shantytowns. The Buffalo breeze is stronger than the will to publicly demand regular checks from the Treasury as a reward for not figuring how to make much:

Over the past few days, the cold, wind and snow seems to have sent many of the permanent protesters on a winter vacation. Though with recent temperatures dropping into single digits at times and wind gusts reaching over 40 m.p.h., few could blame them.

Still, it’s important to distinguish between lightweights and Occupiers who are hardcore about wanting other people’s money:

Admittedly, Simmonds-Price also added that the movement is made of folks with different preparedness and commitment levels.

Sunday afternoon, most of the tents that dot Niagara Square lay empty, some even sit wide-open, completely “un-occupied”. No protesters could be found outside, and about three were gathered in a large, enclosed tent structure.

Zip the flaps shut, ya goofs! The professional whiners don’t seem to grasp that people can’t see inside tents, which my research indicates tend to be opaque; that tactic only works if the doors are closed.

The weird thing is that they’ve been artificially inflating their attendance numbers for some time by cluttering the public space with sneakily vacant outdoor abodes, so perhaps they’ve just gotten tired and sloppy. As evidence, many are quitting their non-jobs:

Does that mean the movement is losing steam, or just that the cold weather is thinning out the less dedicated? Only time will tell.

Time has already told that their detestable purpose is to seize the gains of other people’s labor. The geodesic entitlement dome was supposed to warm their whiny hides, but temperature-based discomfort is apparently too much to bear in the eternal quest for personal bailouts.

Sure, the protesters could thaw in an office building where they could be paid for doing tasks. But the redistributive policies they advocate will strangle the economy and thus make it even harder to find employment. So, they’d get exactly what they want. Work is for robber barons.

The weather doesn’t matter. Even after Erie County defrosts, they’ll still self-righteously believe that the system should be changed so it’s unfair in their favor. As with Western New York experiencing four seasons every year, some things are entirely predictable.

Some may even suggest that there’s real crime in this state about which to worry. For one, there’s the matter of how politicians like the AG draw checks they clearly don’t earn.

To wit, wags have been joking that not being able to see the presently mediocre Buffalo Sabres is a blessing. Regardless, the office is now being used to mediate something as extraneous as a cable feud:

The State Attorney General is stepping in the rink to referee the dispute that’s put Buffalo Sabres fans with cable in the penalty box.

Attorney General Eric Schneiderman released a statement Friday, the day after some Buffalo lawmakers asked him to step in, saying he would ask both MSG and Time Warner officials to meet in his office next week. Time Warner customers would couldn’t watch the game turned out by the thousands to watch the Sabres play the Carolina Canes at First Niagara Center Friday night.

So, the franchise figured out a way to show the games despite the dispute? The inventive solution provided an opportunity for fans to demonstrate their dedication to a frustratingly underachieving squad. Naturally, the attorney general doesn’t care:

The Sabres opened up the arena and let fans in for free, giving them free popcorn and pop on day six of MSG’s decision to pull Sabres’ games off of Time Warner. But now, the NYS Attorney General hopes to mediate an end to the dispute, saying, “We have had constructive discussions with Time Warner Cable and MSG Networks as part of an ongoing effort to facilitate progress in their talks. We are hopeful that the two parties will come to an agreement in short order so that Sabres, Rangers, and Knicks games are available to subscribing New Yorkers as soon as possible.”

I want my Knicks games! That’s pro basketball, right? Maybe an elected official can intimidate people into whatever results he thinks would be fair:

Sherry Park isn’t sure if that will make a difference and said, “I don’t know. It’d kind of hard. Everybody’s trying to step in and stuff. Hopefully, being the Attorney General, I hope he can make a bigger difference.”

He’ll make a bigger difference, all right. Using the state’s chief law enforcement officer to tell businesses how they should resolve their dispute should unsettle everyone. At least somebody thinks the government has no place trying to referee this game:

“It’s a shame that the Attorney General of New York has to waste his time. With the stuff that we have going on in New York, because a company wants to raise 52 percent. I mean, I can see where you can make a raise, but not many of us get a 52 percent raise when we go in to do our jobs,” said Jeff Schultz.

MSG denies asking for a 52 percent raise and says, “We appreciate the Attorney General’s offer to meet with us to discuss our dispute with Time Warner Cable and we look forward to meeting with him.”

It’s hard to judge who’s being a jerk without knowing the intricacies regarding standard cable channel compensation rates. Either way, the one thing that could make the frustrating situation worse is the government deciding that it has a role to play.

As with the criminally inept Bills getting free sugar from Erie County no matter how consistently they fail, the popularity of professional athletics is lamentably strong enough to trump the principle of governmental nonintervention. People can decide on their own what’s fun and what they should pay for it. The business of sports is none of the state’s business.

The line brawl involves two private enterprises hashing out different ideas of how much one party’s product is worth. Wanting the state to stay out of the matter has nothing to do with cheering for a franchise like the Sabres that we find endearing no matter how frustratingly they play.

If you want to watch your team, yell at your cable provider and/or the channel that carries them. Just don’t yell at the government.

The soul-crushing franchise found a new way to tease its fans this season, namely by pretending to be good for a few weeks. The jubilation following a 5-2 start almost seemed like it couldn’t be real, and it truly wasn’t.

Winning after Halloween would have just been greedy. They couldn’t even sell out the game against despised rivals the Miami Dolphins; the fan base’s general unwillingness to taunt the tropical franchise about their chilly hides stands as yet one more telling low.

This team has taken on the personality of its coach, unfortunately. Chan Gailey is the latest in a series of uninspiring oafs to lead this squad, and mumbled excuses about rebuilding don’t conceal that he’s won 9 of 30 games.

Gailey embodies a franchise that is comical in its incompetence. They make puzzling draft picks like that of C.J. Spiller, who is ill-suited enough for pro football that the NFL version of the Peter principle should be named after him.

Only the Bills would draft a running back when they needed everything but a running back. The team hopes fans are fooled by a good show against another junior varsity team in the Dolphins.  It still didn’t keep the Bills from getting swept in the season series.

Meanwhile, management put its faith in quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick, with mutually rotten results. Contract extension in hand, he apparently figures it’s fine to play while wearing a blindfold. For his next Fitzmagic trick, he’ll throw into quadruple coverage, ta da! It’s apparently asking too much of the enriched Fitzpatrick to get a passer rating that’s higher than his Wonderlic score.

And why not break what works? Before Gailey’s unceremonious arrival, the team deployed a 4-3 defense that sort-of stopped other offenses. Naturally, they changed to a 3-4 alignment that has been as effective as putting 11 turnstiles on the field; abandoning it at times as a response hasn’t quite worked at all. Their efforts are not aided by how this team does strength and conditioning on the cheap, which is partly why they seem to send 15 or 20 guys to injured reserve nearly every season.

But why would owner Ralph Wilson splurge on anything like coaches, staff, or the roster? He makes his money no matter how much his team sucks. By doing so, the hoary miser inadvertently provides an example of why corporate socialism kills any motivation to succeed.

Their slide into seemingly permanent oblivion is particularly egregious considering that the entire league is set up so losers can rebound quickly. Most obviously, the worst teams get the best draft picks; on top of that, a salary cap means that owners don’t have to worry about paying anything as crazy as a mutually-negotiated fair market salary to the players who enable their tremendous earnings.

And revenue sharing shows how Occupy slackers would be even less productive if they were handed the free stuff they want. The money teams automatically get creates a perverse incentive for some against trying too hard.  In a league that strives to mandate parity, teams get payments without having to thrive. The system works as well as Obamanomics, and the Bills are the NFL’s Chevy Volt.

It’s not like rent is bankrupting them. By contrast, their subsidized stadium means they don’t have to worry about anything as pedestrian as operating expenses. Not many companies are fortunate enough to get paid for using their office space.

As a result of all their guaranteed income, the Bills have gotten fat and happy on welfare with no reason to excel. The goal should be to improve the area’s financial circumstances so the team can become a big-market franchise.

But that would require Wilson to care about the area as anything more than the source of some of the checks he holds in his Hall of Fame blazer’s pocket.  He gets his money regardless of how much Buffalo has shrunk since it was awarded an American Football League franchise.  But at least income inequality has been addressed so he doesn’t have to work to profit.

Until Buffalo gets a pro football team, fans will have to settle for cheering on the Bills. If it makes you feel better, both players and the owner still get paid even in the likely event they lose. Still, it would be nice if they could remember that they’re supposed to be on the inside when they circle the wagons.

He may be going back on his word by harvesting even more from the state’s most sumptuously-outfitted residents. But at least he’s doing so for a good reason, namely so he can junk the economy.

Maybe Cuomo the Younger is just trying to make his daddy look like less of a job-killing putz by comparison. Otherwise, he really thinks that his new yet old rabid desire to tax people who have made more than you will improve everyone’s finances, which we can only hope isn’t true.

On top of that, his latest actions are fundamentally incompatible his previous words. Consider what the then-new governor once astutely claimed about taxes:

“We can’t raise taxes because we will never attract jobs if New York is the tax capital of the nation.”

As odd as it seems now, something wise once came out of Cuomo’s mouth when he opened it. But that was way back in November 2010; his persistent case of chronic liberalism has flared in the meantime. Now, his word is as valuable as most of this state’s businesses.

Like him, circumstances didn’t really change, unless New York facing massive debt due to massively rampant spending counts as news. With crushing deficits in mind, he didn’t want to suggest anything rash like spending less than at present lunatic rates.

The rather mendacious executive said what he had to while campaigning, namely some sensible things. But you didn’t expect him to keep his word, did you? He couldn’t confiscate more income from those jerky tycoons who employ many of us if he stayed honest.

Unfortunately, decades of experience have shown that everything Cuomos believe is utterly wrong. It’s been a long while since the nickname “Empire State” was not used ironically. Dropping from 47 electoral votes in 1948 to 29 today is the price of a bloated, worthless state administration that never quite gets around to helping its citizens.

At least Cuomo is clever, in his way. The incumbent is perpetrating a cunning strategy of making the unemployment rate appear to drop by creating conditions so miserable that frustrated job-seekers depart for state with less robust governments. A similar strategy has been replicated nationally, with nearly identical phony and miserable results.

Without yet another rich-soaking, we couldn’t remain “the progressive capital of the nation,” which would naturally just be unacceptable. Albany simply must buy things for the lower and fat parts of the bell curve at the expense of people who had the nerve to be more successful than most.

And the governor has a moral obligation to tax the richest among us until they’re as poor as we are.  That will at least work until the targeted class realizes that there are 49 other states from which to choose.

The problem is that we’ve already seen what happens when we get as many people as possible on the government drip. Namely, the rich get frustrated while everyone else feels more entitled, all while the economy nosedives. At least it’s an opportunity to pad the Medicaid rolls.

Of course, Mr. Sandra Lee is used to guiding the economy while pulling a governmental paycheck, with predictably apocalyptic results. Specifically, his ability to curtail the development of urban areas and housing as Housing and Urban Development secretary is still proving to be particularly toxic to all Americans, New Yorkers or not.

Cuomo has merely become more conniving, as seen by his radical role in altering both the economy and matrimony. His effort to foist gay marriage upon the state was just the start of radical social change.

A steeper income tax rate means a shifty left-wing governor gets even more say in how your life will proceed. His willingness to deliberately deceive isn’t even the worst thing about him.

Occupy Buffalo will get to fortify its numbers with snowmen thanks to a gift that would be considered most unwelcome by society’s productive components. It looks as if the student loan repayment foes are preparing to continue blotting a public space that used to be most notable for featuring a monument to a slain president:

Occupy Buffalo wants people to know, the weather won’t stop them from their mission.

Once again, WIVB makes whining sound so noble. Working as advocates on behalf of class warfare warriors is much easier than asking sensibly obvious questions, which only those who have enough sense to switch to WGRZ get to see answered. In case you’re worried that the tide has turned against the urban campers, know that they have acquired a glorified tent:

Protestors put up a little protection from the elements.

You may already have driven through Niagara Square and thought to yourself, “What the heck is that big dome thing?”

It’s a geodesic dome, to be precise. And it’s essentially a little warming house for the Occupy Buffalo protesters .

They didn’t pay for it themselves, and you’re very surprised by this fact:

Ordinarily, a dome like this would cost thousands of dollars. But it was given to the Occupiers by an anonymous donor.

Albert Brown of Occupy Buffalo said, “This is somebody who felt strongly about the movement, and wanted to make sure that people stay warm, who’re intending to stay here over the winter.”

Um, it still cost thousands of dollars even if someone else paid for it. Leave it to Occupiers to think that an item is free as long as they’re not handed the bill.

And what’s up with these anonymous donors? They should certainly feel ashamed enough by their support of the Blame Squad to stay private. But in that case, they should just invest their money in more evil manners such as job creation or retail purchases.

You don’t see such incognito funding on the other side: I am darn proud that the Koch brothers pay me in bullion. By contrast, I am darn ashamed that the city is letting this boil fester through the frigidness:

The dome is a pretty hard-to-miss reminder that the Occupiers are in this for the long haul.

Not an idea that the city is really warming up to.

Mayor Byron Brown said, “If we do get a storm it would make sense for them to relocate. Where they are positioned in Niagara Square, for snowplowing purposes, we would not be able to easily put the snow that would be plowed into that area.”

Brown isn’t about to find his balls in any snowbank, either. If he had a set, he would have evicted the professional slackers the moment they whipped out tents. But progressive ideology paired with fecklessness led to his permissiveness toward those who think that what’s ours is theirs.

Their classy hut won’t only smell terrific after about five minutes of housing the protesters: it will also allow them to keep using a public space as a living one. If more upstanding citizens want to spend time in the Square, they should come back… well, never, apparently.

You could possibly view the area from City Hall’s observation deck, assuming Occupiers don’t feel like indefinitely lounging there, too. Brown would not only let them but fetch them hot chocolate and muffins, too.

The prospect of snow should be taken as a sign to go home and get work. But the movement has found yet another way to turn their demands into personal action, namely by expecting others to address their basic needs. Obtaining shelter for oneself is what fat cats do.

Even if there haven’t been ample felonies as at other professional shantytowns, Occupy Buffalo will apparently continue to show how giving people whatever they want means they will keep taking it. At least they’ll finally get what they deserve: when they stick their hands out, they’ll be filled with slush.