Blowing the Buffalo Billion

It's all over the news right now and it's going to turn in campaign fodder for the 2018 Governor's race. No question about it.

The “Buffalo Billion” is blowing up in “Status” Cuomo's face.

$200 million behind in payments to the Solar City / Riverbend complex? The one that has questionable minority hiring practices. Right now 200 contractors received pink slips until payment comes. Possibly Monday.

And that's not all. There's the Athanex Complex that's also being built (the main offices in Buffalo) that are behind on their payments. Who know what is owed or how long this will drag out.

Then there is the Greek style yogurt plant in Batavia that – after all that money was put into it – went belly up. 170 workers lost their jobs in this fiasco.

Part II on the Greek yogurt plant is all the farmers that expanded their farms, took on more debt thinking that this plant was their way to some part of the capitalist pie in the sky. Now the plant is shuttered and awaiting a buyer (possibly one coming from Missouri) and farmers are deeper in dept than some of the manure pools that they have out in their fields.

I don't have to tell you how bad they stink. Worse than a CAFO and I have driven by several of those. Both cattle and chicken.My friends tell me to roll up the windows and turn off the air. Yep. It's that bad.  I can't decide which is worse and winter does not help.

Back to the blog – And these farmers are dumping milk rather than selling it in hopes of driving up the prices. Not going to happen. Too much over production in the market. Read some Marx. He'll explain that and its consequences pretty decently.

To boot – This “Buffalo Billion” is our tax dollars. Yes, we are subsidizing multi-million dollar corporations expansion plans with our tax dollars. We'll get around 1500 jobs out of the Solar City Complex. Around 900 or so out of the Athanex expansion. And they'll get millions of dollars to report on their books as profits, report to Wall Street as profits, and line their pockets with.

And, for the record, Marx & Engels called this “bourgeois socialism.” It's supposed to be “good for the workers” (in the jobs it creates) but it costs the workers how much? For pennies of profit (to the worker) for the dollars spent (that line the 1%'s pockets).

And this needs to stop.

If we're going to use our tax dollars to create jobs, they need to be owned by the workers and run by the workers, not owned by the state and leased for a song by some private corporation. We are paying out far more than we are receiving back.

If they want to come here, we should not be bribing them with pie in the sky dreams.

It winds up being more pie in our face actually.


Update March 1, 2016

Late Monday (Feb 29) NYS officials announced that they would begin making payments at the Solar City / Riverbend plant. Several months behind schedule. And days of unemployment later. For 200 union workers.

For the record: NYS is shelling out through the Empire State Development Corporation $750 million. Solar City – the company – is putting out $150 million.

So we are paying out six (that's 6) times as much and getting none of the profits while the company is putting out 1/6th of the money and receiving all of the profits.

The claim is that WNY will see 1500 permanent jobs sometime in 2017 and 1900 construction jobs (read temporary) now.

According to the Buffalo News,this is normal. The winners of the 43 North competition had to wait a long time for payment of the “prizes” they won in a competition to see who would be the beneficiary of a bourgeois socialist shark tank. Athanex – the company that is having their plant in Dunkirk built on the taxpayer's dime - is also missing payment money.

And meanwhile, back at the ranch, union workers are waiting to be called back to work.

Solar City's Aspirations

I waited a week before writing this because I wanted to see what the Buffalo media would say about the Solar City Protests.

Not enough.

The background: Governor Andrew “Status Cuomo” created the “Buffalo Billion” project – basically $1 billion in taxpayer dollars to bribe corporations to set up shop in WNY.  And then give them 10 years of "tax breaks" (taxpayers footing the bill for private profits that leave the state). 

Solar City took his offer of taxpayers footing the tax bill for the building of the Riverbend “Solar City” plant.

During the announcement of the plant “Status Cuomo,'” Mayor Brown, and the project managers promised that 25% of the workers hired would be minorities and women. The audits show otherwise. Just over 16% of the workers have been minorities and barely over 5.5% of the workers have been female.

The construction firm states that by using the law of averages that they have met the 25% goal. When that explanation fell flat, the goals became “aspirational.”

That's what capitalism does – It makes it's own definitions and rules so that no matter how much it fails to meet its promises, it did because they can change the rules to suit their purposes. If you average out the number of hours worked, they “met the goal.” If you don't buy that, then, well, you know, we'll just change the definition of success behind your back.

Capitalism and its empty promises.  It aspires to full employment.  It aspires to make everyone wealthy.  It aspires to provide good benefits and safe working conditions.  It all depends upon how you define "aspires."

Take #2: From reading the articles, I noticed it was the construction bosses and the union leaders against the African-Americans and women. It's the old “divide and conquer” the working class against itself trick. Put the unions against the non-unionized and let them fight it out.

There's a simple solution to that – unions need to open their doors more to the minorities and women. Reach out to the unemployed.  Build a united front against the bosses. In an era of declining union membership, and the resulting weakness that goes with it, it only makes sense for the unions to reach out and recruit the non-unionized.

Take #3: BUILD of Buffalo is right to monitor the hiring practices. But wouldn't it be better to use the “Buffalo Billions” to start up a solar manufacturing plant that would be headquartered in Buffalo? Owned by the people of Buffalo? Right now the profits from the company are leaving NYS. If the plant were owned by the people of Buffalo, or by the workers via a co-op, the profits would stay here, be spent here, and build up the economy right here in Buffalo and Erie County.

Take #4: And the medias' coverage of this was lame, to say the least. But look at who owns the media and you'll understand why. We need a worker's media – newspaper and TV/radio programs so that people get the worker's perspective.

The more I think about this, the different I see it.