In this space I'll try to add some perspective to the local media scene in Buffalo.
Watching for HORA in January.
The December issue of La Ultima Hora appeared on January 11, all 25 issues of it, in the lobby of Hunt Realty, a major advertiser. Normally there are about 50 copies on Grant St. This time there were none. Nor were there HORA’s at another advertiser & downtown meeting place of community leaders, Niagara Cafe.
Why advertisers pay for virtually unseen ads remains a mystery. BMHA (housing authority) ads are a regular, but a politically corrupt organization spending about $40,000 annually on advertising while steadily reducing occupancy is a natural for Hora, the local equivalent of PRAVDA. Adelphia had 3 jobs ads in the December HORA (actually Jan. 11) having filing deadlines of 12/21. That is, job hopefuls first saw the ad three weeks after they had to file an application! And we wonder why the Hispanic community is so poor and powerless?
COPY: City Hall WATCH Nov18
La ULTIMATE WHORE LATE AGAIN!
In Buffalo, Truth is Often Stranger Than Fiction
La Ultima Hora, (euphemistically: “Ultimate Whore”), printed by the family of $47,000 / yr. county-funded “civil rights bureaucrat” Luis A Rodriguez, Sr., is virtually unknown to most.
We’ve never seen evidence of more than 200 copies of a paper operating on “PUERTO RICAN TIME”! Historically it appeared the 15th to 19th of the month, while dated on the 1st. Finally an embarrassed Rodriguez re-dated it to the 15th. But on Sunday, Nov. 18, it is not on Grant Street; one of very few places where it can be found (Usually about 50 issues in M&T Bank & Frontier Beverage).
It purports being ‘numero “1”’ in the Hispanic community, while actually being govt-funded fraud in the tradition of PRAVDA (without the circulation, of course). There is no real news to a desperately poor Hispanic Community, the fastest growing segment of a very poor, virtually bankrupt Buffalo. Heavily funded by BMHA, Buffalo’s deeply corrupt housing authority, HORA never criticizes failed housing policy, nor Robert Quintana, who they relentlessly promoted with free (illegal) political ads, as he decimated Hispanic political power.
There is no phone directory listing. HORA uses Rodriguez’s home address & phone on pg. 2 (805 West, Buff 14213, 882-3869) as he really operates out of his Rath Bldg. office. Incredibly, Rodriguez is a Democrat closely tied to Chito Olivencia, Dem. Party Treas., who started HORA as LA PRENSA HISPANO, & still delivers it as Ellicott Creek Park Commissioner. Both Chito & Luis are now paid by Republican Giambra . . as they “bipartisanly” still exploit poor Hispanics . . & taxpayers.
Expanding the fraud, HORA now alleges Rochester readership, with a full (Oct 15) back page ad by Rochester Gas & Electric Corp. Ads by Wegmans & Tops were pulled after we asked them for proof of meaningful circulation. Very questionable full-page ads by HUNT Realty continue, steadily revising false information when challenged. Initially, obscenely high asking prices on a plummeting West Side disappeared. Then alleged sales for the prior month disappeared, after the same ad repeatedly re-appeared, as some sales, far below assessed value, never closed.
HORA joins BMHA & WSNHS (City, NYS & HUD-funded “Neighborhood Housing Service”) in perpetrating fraud on predominately-Hispanic west side poor. Of course the rest of the media is silent as well, as BMHA carries out biggest-ever projects at Lakeview & Frederick Douglass (totaling $150 million, $150,000 to $1/4 million per apartment for the poor . . . & counting), as WS owners lose life savings in homes & the middle class flees the West Side in epidemic numbers.
It ain’t a pretty picture, as the West Side & Buffalo steadily die . . . at incredible taxpayer cost.
Richard Kern, MSW, 882-2388, Jan 16, 2002; (Copy : Nov. 18, 01)
WEBSITE: www.kernwatch.com email: Kernwatch@AOL.com