Check out the YouTube video posted at Deacon Dan Wright’s blog. See: Team Hoyt Video.
Bring the tissues – you’ll need them.
EXTREME SARCASIM WARNING
It looks like Israel is showing the U.S. the way to rid itself of its immigration problems: Israeli air raids kill 40 civilians in Lebanon
One Israeli air strike hit a farm near Qaa, close to the Syrian border in the Bekaa Valley where workers, mostly Syrian Kurds, were loading plums and peaches on to trucks, local officials said. They said 33 people were killed and 20 wounded.
They blew up the migrant farm workers…
God have mercy on us all.
The Buffalo News is reporting on two faith communities in Buffalo that are doing the right thing. They are reclaiming a portion of the city most people have written off as drug and crime infested. They are restoring value to a portion of the city where people who own homes have to abandon them. They cannot sell, as many of the properties have a negative value.
Check out the article: On the East Side, growth is at home: 3 new housing developments may be able to transform some moribund neighborhoods
Three new housing developments are popping up in an unexpected place – Buffalo’s East Side.
One development involves the transformation of one of the city’s oldest public housing complexes into a mix of rental properties and market-rate homes or townhouses.
Another plans the transformation of a 16-block area around the Masjid Zakariya mosque on Sobieski Street.
And the third – being built without any government subsidies – includes the construction of 40 suburban-style homes around St. Stanislaus Catholic Church on Peckham Street.
Religious institutions are centerpieces of two of the housing initiatives as faith-based groups get more active in revitalizing neighborhoods.
The projects also are within a mile or two of each other in a part of the city where such activity – no matter who sponsors it – has not been the norm.
Municipal labor unions are at it again in Buffalo, New York.
The unions, the inheritors of cushy contracts and high wages for their members (as well as plush jobs for union officials) are upset because their workers have not been granted wage increases over the past few years.
The unions met the other night and discussed staging a combined citywide strike, crippling the city and endangering the health, welfare, and safety of the city’s residents (including school children), all because they haven’t gotten what they want.
The wage freeze that is in effect in Buffalo is the result of actions by a Municipal Control Board instituted by the State of New York. The Control Board was necessary as Buffalo was so far in the red that it was about to go bankrupt. Buffalo politicians and their union supporters were so lost in the woods that someone had to come in and rescue them.
A dying rust belt city, Buffalo’s population and tax base has steadily decreased since its peak in the 1950’s. Wikipedia has an excellent article about Buffalo. The population chart shown there indicates that a city that once boasted nearly 600,000 residents now tops out at a little more than 280,000 residents.
The problem is that while the city declined, the unions grew. Their wages grew, their slots grew, and the politicians handed over more and more power and money to the unions in exchange for their support. No one had the courage to turn off the faucet.
A friend once told me that Buffalo is the perfection of communism, one-third of the people working for the government, one-third on the public dole, and one third actually working to support the other two-thirds.
The unions, and the politicians who have fed them, are the problem. They need to be reigned in and they need to be brought down. Work together for the city and improve everyone’s life, get rid of the fat, and work a full day for an honest wage. Do you really need a union if you are confident in your ability to work and succeed?
As to the strike proposition, I think there is a term for harming the innocent to get what you want —“ and I think it is called terrorism.
For more on the story, check out the Buffalo News’ series of articles on the story: Unions discussing citywide strike and Strike could hurt workers. An excerpt from the second story appears below:
Meanwhile, a Common Council member who is on leave from his job as a Buffalo public school teacher says unions have blundered by floating the strike trial balloon.
“I understand their frustration,” said North Council Member Joseph Golombek Jr. “But I represent some neighborhoods where the median income is $16,000 a year. If they’re looking for sympathy, they won’t get it in many of my neighborhoods.”
In October 2004, the control board released a study indicating that the average city worker earns 180 percent more than the typical Buffalo resident. Union leaders attacked the study for using distorted numbers and accused the control board of being obsessed with abolishing union contracts.
Boże, któryś zasługami i nauka błogosławionego Dominika, wyznawcy Twego, kościół Twój uświetnić raczył, spraw za jego przyczyną, aby nam nigdy nie brakło pomocy doczesnych, i abyśmy duchownem wsparciem zawsze wspomagani byli. Amen.