Welfare King or Savvy Businessman?

Raquel Okyay

By: Daniel Peterson

(Daniel Peterson is a former New York Young Republican Club president and has worked in real estate administration for the past ten years.  This article is cross posted from www.UrbanElephants.com.)

New York Daily News writer, Bill Hammond, wrote a scathing piece on Carl Paladino criticizing him for being business savvy and successful in upstate New York. It is also being featured in the latest Andrew Cuomo “attack” ad against Paladino. Obviously Mr. Hammond is not familiar with New York State north of Westchester, nor is he that familiar with real estate; otherwise he would not be so cynical in his piece.

A hundred years ago, Buffalo was “the 8th largest city in the country and went on to become a major railroad hub, the largest grain-milling center in the country, and the home of the largest steel-making operation in the world.” It was a blue-collar, industrial town contributing to the growing strength of American industry.

Today, the region’s largest economic sectors are health care and education, and these continue to grow despite the lagging national and worldwide economies.

A large number of people in Western New York are employed by Government and public entities. Large numbers of state employees are due to large state universities like State University of New York at Buffalo, State University of New York College at Buffalo and Erie Community College’s three campuses.  wikipedia.org

It’s almost as if Buffalo is trying to supplant Detroit as the national standard as a city destroyed brought on by powerful unions, government excess and unopposed liberalism.

Buffalo is still a beautiful city and it has lately been revitalizing its public places to attract tourism, but it still struggles to bring in big business to generate local revenue from the private sector. So if you are a businessman in the private sector, what do you do?

One of the biggest private industries would be real estate. Carl Paladino had to enter the field with a smart, calculating and manipulative approach in order to be successful. Real Estate isn’t easy in a city like Buffalo. Government has done everything it could to scare away private sector business, so the only thing left is the public sector. Paladino looked at the only option presented to him and that was to play the cards that were dealt to him.

In the Hammond Daily News piece, the columnist tries to suggest that Carl Paladino is an insider because he deals with government contracts and leases space to government agencies. If you are in real estate in a city like Buffalo and government makes the market so restrictive and costly, an entrepreneur in the free market will use all options afforded to him. Strangely, Bill Hammond attacks Paladino for taking advantage of Empire Zones and tax credits and all the breaks that government created for a businessman like Paladino. A man who chooses to remain upstate and keep business flowing in a struggling upstate economy! It’s liberal (or “progressive”) policies put forth by politicians Hammond supports that are responsible for “creating a monster like Paladino.” How dare Hammond attack him for using it to his advantage? Give me a break.

Hammond may have thought his article would explain what scum Carl Paladino is, but what it winds up doing is proving that government is dysfunctional in Albany, because its policies give a savvy businessman like Paladino an opportunity to use it to his benefit. If you want to fix Albany, then you elect someone like Carl Paladino and vote as many Albany incumbents out to reform the system.