by Democrat and Chronicle
Posted on 10/21/2010 6:25:23 AM PDT by true believer forever
David Andreatta – Staff writer
Local News – October 21, 2010 - 5:00am
DANDREAT@DemocratandChronicle.com
What’s a brash businessman with a beef with big government and a penchant for publicity to do when a news outlet offers to videotape his musings on anything and everything and broadcast them unedited over the Internet?
Take it and sound off, of course.
That is just what Carl Paladino did in the years leading up to his improbable gubernatorial run when Artvoice, a popular Buffalo weekly newspaper, asked him again and again to opine on topics of his choice for an online segment dubbed “My 3 Minutes.”
Paladino, already known to Buffalonians as an outsized firebrand with thoughts on everything from legalized gambling to dysfunctional schools, never disappointed.
“That’s your job, to read the (expletive) that you’re passing!” Paladino boomed in a September 2008 segment in which he berated state lawmakers who don’t acquaint themselves with bills and called for a constitutional convention.
“It’s a bunch of people that you would not want working at a Delta Sonic,” he said in June 2009 in calling for abolition of the Buffalo Board of Education. “Collectively, there is not a brain among them.”
On civil rights investigators with the state Attorney General’s Office: “They are very liberal-leaning people who think that prisoners should be living in, at worst, Holiday Inns, probably Hyatts,” Paladino said in September 2009. “These are not good people.”
And so it went more than a dozen times over two years, as Paladino, often casually clad in a rumpled, open-collar shirt, spoke out on anything and everything from the staid backdrop of his downtown Buffalo office.
To watch the videos, though, is not to see an unpolished version of the future gubernatorial candidate. Rather, Paladino came off as unbowed and irascible as he has on the campaign trail.
“He didn’t reinvent himself for this election,” said Artvoice publisher Jamie Moses.
Well before Paladino the Gubernatorial Candidate said he would enforce the collection of taxes from native tribes selling cigarettes to non-Indians, Paladino the Outspoken Businessman was railing against the “15 to 20 thugs” who he said run the Seneca Nation with an unfair tax advantage.
“It isn’t the common Indian that’s benefiting,” Paladino told Artvoice in January 2009. “It’s the big thugs who run everything. … They should tax them and make things fair, make the rule fair, play by the rules.”
In March 2009, Paladino criticized a prevailing wage measure in Albany that would have required developers like him to pay higher wages on publicly financed construction projects as the work of downstate “union-minded” legislators.
“We’d like to see this nonsense of giving union labor and contractors a special edge in New York state stop,” Paladino said. “It has stymied upstate development.”
Paladino campaign spokesman Michael Caputo described the videos as “a reflection of the frustration of the people of Buffalo.
“What you see in those videos and in the history of Carl Paladino is the Carl Paladino that all of Buffalo knows and many of us love,” Caputo said. “He’s a guy who isn’t afraid to fight even if he’s alone in the battle.”
If the Artvoice segments served as an unfiltered platform for Paladino to share his thoughts, the arrangement was mutually beneficial.
“He made for great video copy,” Moses said, recalling that Paladino routinely ran over the allotted three minutes. “Every time we put one of his videos up, there would be like 300 or 400 downloads in a matter of minutes. Everyone wanted to hear what the hell he had to say this time.”
Moses said Paladino never approached Artvoice for a forum, but Moses also never recalled Paladino refusing an invitation. Artvoice tapped Paladino so many times, Moses explained, because his strong stances on just about everything fostered public discourse.
“You wouldn’t go to Carl for a middle-of-the-road opinion,” Moses said.
None of the videos could be described as rants. Nor does any reveal Paladino as the erratic torch wielder that his critics and political opponents have portrayed him as to voters.
Still, there was enough invective in them to have drawn a banner ad on the website paid for by the campaign of his Democratic opponent, Andrew Cuomo, asking, “Who is Carl Paladino?” followed by a string of a half-dozen unflattering adjectives that have been used to describe him.
Among the more provocative clips was one broadcast in June 2009, in which Paladino blasted the regional Chamber of Commerce as “one power-grabbing, sick operation” run by a “a little rat.”
Later in the video he described an African-American state senator as “an idiot” and “an embarrassment” who holds onto his office “because our black community continues to vote for a man who is totally incompetent at representing them and doing the right thing for them and getting them relief.”
J.B. Walsh, a Buffalo lawyer who hired Paladino out of law school and describes him as “a son,” said Paladino’s past media exploits reflect a consistency in his character to move to correct situations he considers unjust.
$$ Walsh pointed to Paladino’s successful and highly publicized lawsuit against the state Thruway Authority in 2006 to remove a 75-cent toll on motorists entering Buffalo. $$
$$ Paladino was also well known for buying airtime on Buffalo radio stations to call for reform in local government and education. $$
"He’s been the same way for many, many years,” Walsh said. “When he feels that things aren’t being done right, he wants to fix it. That has been a constant with him.
“With Carl,” he added, “what you see is what you get.”
New York, Send this man to Albany...
He may be your last, best, and only hope...
More Carl Stuff at my Blog, help yourself... http://buddysblog.typepad.com/blog
DON'T GIVE UP ON CARL... HE'S A FIGHTER!
What about “The-Rent-is-Too-Damn-High” party? ;)
Listen, New York voters, Carl Paladino may not be polished, he may be a bit nutty and wild with his mouth but he is ten times (at least) better then any wasted, liberal Democrat for New York and a hundred times better then that moron, sadsack of a human being Democrat, Andrew Cuomo!!! Now, I realize that you New Yorkers have your hands out for more “free stuff” from the stash of Failed POTUS Barack Hussein Obama and idiot Cuomo, but witness France and just about all of Europe and....you will realize there is no such thing as a free lunch. The great Empire State where I hail from needs a nutcase who loves her to save her. Get real, New Yorkers and, elect Carl Paladino who can do not worse then the buffoon liberals that have run your wonderful state into the ground of backruptcy and failure!!!!
I like your spirit!!!! It’s not too late, Carl can pull it out!!
IMHO, Paladino is too good for New York; they don’t deserve his leadership. I’ll happily revise my opinion on that if he is elected.
Optimism and pessimism are, just, optimism and pessimism, if they don’t become reality.
CARL CAN PULL IT OFF!!
I VOLUNTEERED AT HIS ELECTION HEADQUARTERS LAST NIGHT MAKING PHONE CALLS- THEY WERE 60% IN FAVOR OF HIM!!!!
DON’T BELIEVE THE MEDIA- THEY ARE TRYING TO ANNOINT CUOMO LIKE THEY ANNOINTED OBAMA
AND ESPECIALLY DO NOT BELIEVE ‘SIENA’ POLL- THEY WERE OFF BY 30% IN THE PRIMARIES- THEY ARE A JOKE
DON’T GIVE UP ON CARL...
He’s still got my vote...& all of my family!
what surprised me about this Artvoice article was he’s no newbie, he has been involved and looking for solutions for the people for quite awhile now... compare that to Cuomo who turned HUD into his own little candy factory for all his cronies...
Most polls are used by democrats(demos and Rinos) to sway "the weak" voters..
I've noticed this for the last decade maybe longer..
And there appears to be many many weak voters.. effected by "POLLS"..
If true then POLLS are TROLLS... used as a tool to leverage moderates..
Also true; if you are a "moderate" you then are "WEAK"...
A weak voter who don't know what to believe..
If you don't want "RADICAL" change in Washington D.C..
You don't really know WHATS going on.. and are conditioned to blanch at the words radical..
"BLANCH" meaning BRAIN WASHED... MANIPULATED.. PLAYED.. SUCKERED.. SCARED.. USED.. TOYED WITH... or politically RAPED..
And ARTVOICE is packed with screaming flaming libtards
I was stunned that they wrote this about Paladino. Unless they feel this is all bad stuff (which is very possible)
BUT I LOVED IT!
Carls the real McCoy kind of reminds me of an early 70’s Ted Turner. I think the guys a breath of fresh air. We’re stunned he’s so far back in the polls considering he’s running against Mario-Lite. That won’t stop us for voting for him though.
don’t believe “the polls”!!!
The ‘siena’ poll the libtards love to quote is a bunch of college kids polling the area of lib professors around their campus.
They were off by 31% in the primaries- they have NO PROVEN TRACK RECORD (except for being wildly innacurate)
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