Did you know that people actually buy ads in this newspaper? Yes, it's shocking but true. I know for sure because somebody heard it on Sal Paonessa's radio call-in show on WJJL and told me about it.
You know Sal, the Niagara Falls Police Department lieutenant who moonlights as a local radio comedian. At least I think he's doing comedy. I mean, how funny is it that a host would use half his airtime each day calling for a greater emphasis on law enforcement here, and then spend the other half defending the biggest crook in town, Mayor Vince Anello, who copped a plea to a criminal harassment charge last week and is under investigation by the FBI for accepting bribes and by the IRS for not reporting those bribes on his income tax.
Now that's really comical! You'd have to watch an episode of "The Simpsons," where Police Chief Wiggum spouts law-and-order platitudes while providing protection to the corrupt and libidinous Mayor Quimby, to see anything so funny.
These are dark days for the crackheads, illiterates and bloodsuckers who remain loyal to Anello; just ask City Administrator Bill Bradberry or economic development czar Ralph Aversa. I figure those guys must need the money pretty badly to allow themselves to be a part of a municipal government that many in the law enforcement community regard as a criminal enterprise. I hope I'm never that down and out.
In any event, Sal and his brain-dead audience have spent countless mornings since the feds announced their investigation two years ago lashing out at the Niagara Falls Reporter for conspiring to bring their man to ground. In fact, we didn't have to do a thing. Vince did it all himself and we just wrote about it.
We told you he was a criminal, and last week the charge was proven in court. He weaseled a plea bargain and wound up with an ACD and an order of protection against him, pretty much the same thing some dirtbag gets the first time he smacks his wife. The judge could have dismissed the case "in the interest of justice," but did not.
Why hasn't the Niagara Gazette written about it in the same way the Reporter has, you may well ask. Except don't ask me, ask the people over there. They've got the same hack who writes one of those corny "dumb criminals" columns sitting down with the mayor to get his side of the story, a courtesy they wouldn't extend to you or me if we found ourselves in a similar predicament.
Inadvertently, the Gazette even caught the mayor in the commission of another crime. In their photograph of Anello being driven away from the hearing, he wasn't wearing his seatbelt. Violators are supposed to receive a $50 fine, but I guess in Niagara Falls "Click it or ticket" is just another law that doesn't apply to our criminal mayor.
To read their coverage of the Anello adjudication, one would think Anello had been found not guilty, which he most definitely was not. Considerable space was devoted to an analysis of the victim's motives by the mayor's defense attorney, while the prosecutor in the case wasn't even interviewed.
They did the same thing when the Niagara Falls Reporter uncovered the evidence that led to two guilty pleas in a case centering on the theft of asphalt millings from the city, and they did it again when this paper exposed criminal fraud by the then-manager of the posh Parkway condominiums, who was convicted. They also did it when we became involved in the case of the Bridge Commission member who was using his public office to shake down people trying to do business at the bridges. He pleaded guilty, too.
In all of those cases, the people who ended up at a sentencing hearing told anyone who'd listen that the Reporter had made the whole thing up. They would be exonerated and they were going to sue us for libel. Having printed this nonsense, when the indictments were handed down and the sentences came in, the Gazette buried the news somewhere back by the comics page.
Now they're taking the same tack with Anello, who has taken lawlessness to a whole new level. Just take a look at his election petitions, which contain so many violations of the state election law you couldn't count them using all your fingers and toes.
With the Gazette going to great lengths to cover up evidence of wrongdoing by the Anello administration, and with a popular local radio host doing his best impersonation of Sgt. Schultz from the old "Hogan's Heroes" TV program ("I know nothing!"), it's quite understandable that people would be misinformed.
That this misinformation campaign is taking place is self-evident. The mystery is why.
"I know that the good, decent people of Niagara Falls recognize that they have a mayor who will face even the devil on their behalf," Anello told the Gazette following his court appearance.
He ought to try looking in the mirror.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | Aug. 7 2007 |