A Fawning Dyster Praises Cuomo To Point of Sloppy Embarrassment

Kool-Aid is served: At a press conference announcing the proposed taxpayer- subsidized-Hamister- midscale-transformational-salvation-hallelujah-and-praise-from-on-high hotel, Mayor Paul Dyster (seated right) applauds his hero/master Gov. Andrew Cuomo (middle, seated). If cameras could have gotten under the table, we are convinced Dyster would have gotten down on all fours and licked Cuomo’s boots. Also shown are corporate welfare recipient Mark Hamister (seated, left). Standing: Motley Cuomo sycophants in rapturous ecstasy over the building of a small, midscale, business hotel that Cuomo said will transform Niagara Falls.

It seems as though we have a new champion.

Boot licker, that is, and he sits in the mayor's office at City Hall.

Last week, he cut short his summer vacation to rush back to Niagara Falls and heap praise on Cuomo.

"That former Rainbow Mall site has been there and part of our downtown since urban renewal and yet has been for so many years vacant and in need of development," Dyster said. "We just couldn't get the job done. Not until you became governor, Andrew Cuomo."

Aside from the fact that, technically, no job got done last week, such fawning is just plain unseemly.

Last week's event was little more than a photo op, the assembled politicians and developers offered little in the way of concrete detail but plenty of self congratulation.

Dyster actually compared the project to the fall of the Berlin Wall because an underground walkway for pedestrians will be dug underneath the building as part of the project, he said. This would save people the big problem of walking the two blocks around it to get from the casino to the falls themselves.

The Berlin Wall it ain't.

Former Mayor Irene Elia was fond of telling developers she wanted to see "a shovel in the ground." Uniland Vice President Michael Montante told the assembled members of the press that wasn't going to happen in all likelihood for at least 18 months.

Still, a good time was had by all despite the fact that details on wire walker Nik Wallenda's "daredevil adventure" were unavailable, as were details about the project timeline, how it will be financed, how much taxpayer funding will be involved, and whether the city will sell or lease the mall to Uniland.

They did claim that the project will create 1,500 direct and indirect jobs during construction and more than 300 permanent jobs when the resort opens, though the hat they pulled those numbers out of was apparently concealed by the podium.

That’s our boy: Last year when Gov. Andrew Cuomo sold Niagara Falls down the river by renewing the Seneca compact with the city for 10 years without consulting anyone in Niagara Falls about how the first 10 years had gone, Mayor Paul Dyster (left), nearly drunk with pleasure and subservient to his governor, holds hands with (middle) Seneca president Barry Snyder (who crafted a winning deal for his nation) and Gov. Cuomo who, while capitulating to the tough Senecas, shafted Niagara Falls, thanks in large part to bootlicker/mayor, who never objected once. Instead of trying to improve the deal the Falls gets on the Seneca compact: 25 percent of Albany’s take, Dyster virtually danced with glee over the compact extension and the poor deal the falls gets out of it from Albany.