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From Speakupwny.com New Government Structure The following is a transcript of the speech given by Leonard Roberto at the second meeting of Free Buffalo. This is a great display of patriotism and I am grateful to you. We have 400 people in this room. It’s a little unusual. They say politics makes strange bedfellows. But I never thought I’d see the day when a lawyer (James Ostrowski) and a preacher (Leonard Roberto) would be on the same platform. Jim Ostrowski has taken half the jokes out of my lawyer’s joke book. But the rest are still good. I want to thank Jim Ostrowski for the great work he’s doing, for helping to put on this meeting, for the ongoing efforts of Free Buffalo, and for the assistance he has been lending to Primary Challenge. We expect great things. We are going to see great things happen. I think we have scared the establishment like nothing else in the history of Erie County. (Applause) We’re going to do more than just scare them. We’re going to fire them. (Laughter and Applause) Around the room, you’re going to see some people who have helped us get here, without whose help we just would not have made it this far. (Leonard Roberto proceeded to introduction Russ Thompson, Leigh Hardy, and others.) We have a great team. It’s growing and we are going to rock Erie County and New York State. There are a couple of people who I talked to earlier today, out in the hallway. One fellow in particular - I love his idea. That is - to make Western New York a separate state. (Applause) But I would ask this one mercy. Don’t do it until I fire Sheldon Silver. (Laughter and Applause) New York State has declined from being one of the greatest states in the union to being the leading economic indicator of recession in this country. We have not participated in an economic revival in a lifetime. And some people are getting old. We rank near last in every major statistical category. And for those that would like to see these categories, they are posted on the web site, www.primarychallenge.org. Let me read a few of them for you. Government Employment, we are dead last, which means we have too many (government workers). Individual Income Tax, dead last (NYS residents pay the highest taxes) State and Local Tax Burden, dead last (NYS residents pay the highest taxes) Unemployment Tax Burden, dead last (NYS Unemployment Insurance is the highest in the nation) State and Local Tax Per Capita, dead last (NYS residents pay the highest tax) Business Tax Climate, we’re only forty-ninth. Watch out number fifty! (NYS has the second worse business tax climate) (Laughter) Debt Per Capita, forty-ninth Government Spending Per Capita, forty-ninth Financial Institutions in New York, forty-ninth Cost of Electricity, with the greatest hydroelectric generator in the world, we are forty-ninth (Boos) Even our manufacturing sector ranks only forty-sixth in the entire country The people who have run New York have run it into the ground and they have to be held accountable. (Applause) It’s time for you to join this group and say enough is enough. We are going to take the government back, we are going to grab it by the scruff of the neck, we are going to shake it till they give us what we want, and we are not going to let go again. (Loud Applause) Dale Volker, that very insightful (State) legislator of ours, has so eloquently said, “Erie County is the most dysfunctional county in New York State.” Which really sounds funny coming from a guy who is in the most dysfunctional legislature in the entire country. (Applause) But to his credit, he may have actually got that right. The budget fiasco in Erie County is an affront to every person in this room. There is no excuse for this government in Erie County to be this dysfunctional, unless it is partisan politic driven. No contract bids being inserted into a budget and Legislators saying, “I didn’t read that”, doesn’t fly. (Loud Applause) For what we pay them, and we pay them too much, they could at least read the legislation before they vote on it. (Applause) And then there’s that all too common practice of money laundering. They just found this out! This year! Why do we have a county comptroller’s staff at all, if they can’t figure out where the money’s going? (Loud Applause) I want to nominate a candidate for County Comptroller. Any housewife in this room! (Applause) I’ve asked myself this question over and over again, over the past ten years that I’ve been involved in this whole thing, “How is it that we keep electing these parasites to office?” You know, my wife keeps telling me I have to be nice. I have to ask, why? Why do we have to be nice to the people who are putting their hands in our pockets and stealing the future of our children? (Applause) I know, I’m a preacher; I’m supposed to be nice. Yeah, but you know what? I’m supposed to tell you the truth. And I’m going to tell you the truth. Why is it that the election process, which we have depended on for over two hundred years, has failed us in New York? It’s because they corrupted it and took it over. They manhandled the election process by gerrymandering and carving districts so there is a massive plurality of one party or another in any given district. By controlling the election board, they can control who gets on the ballot. By doing that the outcome of the general election is irrelevant. They know who is going to win way before you pull that lever. We need to fix that process. The Board of Elections, for those that may not know, is a dumping ground. These people are political hacks whose only function is to protect the party that put them there. They are not there to represent you! They are the front door of political corruption in New York. (Applause) And then we have our party leadership. Well, they have their party leadership. I wasn’t invited to the party. A leadership which has, for the last forty-five years, failed to find ONE incumbent who was not doing his job, and say “We’re not going to give you our endorsement this year.” They continue to put people on the ballot who are not doing the job, who are raping the people of New York, and who deserve to be put in jail. And for their part, they themselves are now irrelevant. What are we going to do about it? I’ll tell you what over two hundred thousand people in Buffalo have done about it. They moved. They left. They decided it was better somewhere else and they were right. But, for those of us that are either to stubborn to move, to mad to move, to broke to move, or too dumb to move, we are going to kick them out of office! (Applause) Primary Challenge is going to get in the ring with the political hacks that have been destroying New York State and we are going to knock them out! (Applause) We are going to challenge well entrenched, well financed incumbents in primaries where gerrymandering is a factor, where Republicans are voting for Republicans, and Democrats are voting for Democrats and we are going to remove these people from office in the Primaries. (Applause) We are going to work with – I don’t like using this phrase, “Minor Parties” - because anyone who is involved in the political process with the intent of changing the way New York does business, is not “Minor” in my book – We are going to work with the “other” parties and we are going to work together to strip them (“Major Parties”) of their second endorsement to insure that they cannot get in on the general election once Primary Challenge wipes them out in the primaries. (Applause) What kind of progress is Primary Challenge making? Well let me tell you this, we’re not going to divulge WHO our candidates are, but nine of the fifteen legislators in Erie County already have a formidable challenger prepared to come to the forefront, who have already said they are going to run on behalf of Primary Challenge. And we are going to take over the Erie County legislature in September. (Loud Applause) We scared them so bad Steve McCarville just decided not to run. Well, I hope that was the reason. I don’t know that it was. We have an office and we almost have a phone. Our office will be fully functional by the end of next week. You’ll be able to call and volunteer your services. We have volunteers that have come from all over the county. In fact, from all over Western New York, to volunteer to man that office so we can have it open at least twelve hours a day. We have over five hundred volunteers who have registered to walk petitions, put signs in their yards, go door to door handing out flyers, man the office, and put out literature. Any thing that needs to be done, we have a volunteer that will do it. We have an event coordinator. The next meeting of Primary Challenge will be held at the Buffalo Convention Center. It is scheduled for April 15th. How cool is that. We are going to make a public presentation of all our candidates, including those in Niagara County. (Applause) Our purpose is very simple. We’re going to return the government back to the people. (Applause) We’re going to take it away from special interests and political machines. We’re going to make it respond to the mother who can’t put food on her table and the father who is losing his job, and the business owner who is being brutalized by government agencies. We’re going to give this government back to the people. (Applause) I don’t care how hard George (Pataki) holds on to it, or Sheldon (Silver) wants to keep it, or Joe (Bruno) wants to keep it. We’re taking it back. What can you do to help? You can log in to www.primarychallenge.org and submit that volunteer registration so we know where you are when we need to put a sign on someone’s lawn, so our candidates can knock on your door and say, “Will you help me run petitions around the neighborhood” or “Will you help me go door to door so that people know who I am.” It’s not going to take hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars to run campaigns to un-elect these people. They’re un-electing themselves. (Laughter and Applause) It is going to take the commitment of a few people, like you and I, who are not going to take no for an answer and who are not going to quit. (Applause) I want to leave you with these words, spoken by Samuel Adams. This is to those who are afraid to get involved, afraid because, if they get involved, some regulatory agency is going to knock on their door. And I’m not going to tell you that is not going to happen, because when I ran for office, that’s exactly what happened. Seven times, some alphabet agency showed up at my door and tried to put me out of business. All they did is infuriate me and cause THIS problem for them! I leave you with the words of Samuel Adams. “If you love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating concepts of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your council or your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand of those who feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you are our countryman.” (Standing Ovation) © Copyright 2003 by Speakupwny.com |