NIAGARA COUNTY COMMUNITIES COMPROMISED BY VISIONLESS LEADERSHIP AND A DEMORALIZED, DE-POLITICIZED CONSTITUENCY

It is useless to continue to point out the relentless internecine political party warfare over at the Niagara Times blog. You know, the one that is too afraid to answer my criticism. So Hobbes and his gang of Republican blog “administrators,” the Orwellian variety, kicked me off, refusing to post my criticisms and ideas. It is useless to draw further attention to their pathetically Roveian tactics of attack and destroy any real criticism, any space in the public sphere where a real discourse is beginning and any idea that doesn’t empower their party. They are nihilistically committed to hyper-partisan propaganda and agitprop. They are a politics of violence.

Party politics or better, partisan warfare, in Niagara County will undoubtedly continue like the Hatfields and McCoys. And like that hillbilly feud, after a while they won’t really be sure why they are attacking one another. Their doubt might arise, and should arise, because objectively these Democrats and Republicans have more in common as a community of communities than they are courageous enough and wise enough to realize and act upon.

If what George Maziarz claims is true, as Francine DelMonte said on Access to Government last week, that “as Niagara Falls goes, so goes Niagara County,” then Niagara County may well be on its way out as a sustainable community of communities. Failing to generate a leadership to bring unified co-operation to the county, the factors of racism, partisanism power mongering and feuding over the crumbs allocated by the State, will continue to fracture the polity and inflame tensions in the region.

The Niagara County Communities Comprehensive Plan project seemed like a venue in which a real dialogue could begin in order to heal and genuinely empower the people here in an authentic solidarity and re-identification of who we are. But no sooner than announcements of that project hit the newspapers last year, the Niagara Times blog came out flatly against the project. Apparently it was too much democracy for their taste. As far as I know, having attended several of the meetings, the Republican Legislators did not attend the meetings to participate with the people in the process. They would rather have a few Republican lawyers run the county in the name of better business conditions for the connected and well-placed. This opposition to the planning project is symptomatic of their nay-saying regarding any political momentum of which they are not firmly in control and the beneficiaries of. They are the local party of NO.

The democrats do no better in supporting a sweep of millions from NYPA to the State coffers. Also, Virtuoso’s inexplicable recommendation of reducing the Niagara County Legislature to 9, cutting it’s members in half and assuring the decimation of any real representation of the people in county politics, is equally counterproductive. Moreover Mayor Dyster’s not being more aggressive in working to eliminate the Robert Moses and restore the Gorge somewhat closer to its natural state, is equally inexplicable and also counterproductive.

Until the Legislators can place community harmony as their number one priority and give up the partisan power struggle, give up any belief that the machinations in Albany will ever do any sustainable good for our region and give up subsidizing the exploitation of our resources by the State, they will fail to comprehend the power of regional cooperation and local unity, identity and self-determining purposefulness.

Tourism as the centerpiece of success is the answer but each local group seems to think they are the jewel in the crown ending up subverting the success of the project as a whole. Everyone wants to be their own ‘jewel’ and consequently no crown exists to hold the jewels together. Provincial selfishness, shortsightedness and hatred will assure backwater status despite the fact that objective conditions exist to compete and succeed at a world-class level.