The Fighting 29th

All about New York's 29th Congressional District

Today's Massa press conference covered the State of the Union, the primaries, earmarks, S-CHIP and defense spending. Massa began by saying that the real story of the primaries is the increase in voter turnout by Independent and Democratic voters.  He characterized the Republican vote as "suppressed", and looks forward to seeing energized voters on Super Tuesday.

Turning to the State of the Union, Massa noted that one of major commitments by the President was to veto any legislation that does not cut taxpayer-funded earmarks in half.  Massa pointed out the difference between that position, which was echoed by Randy Kuhl in a press release on Monday, with the announcement the next day of a grant for the town of Erwin, as well as Kuhl's historic position on earmarks: "In the last Congressional campaign, Congressman Kuhl's primary reason and justification for re-election was his ability to bring home earmarks."

Massa said that the "irresponsible borrowing and spending by the government has driven this country to the brink of an economic disaster we face today."  Referring to past examples of political courage, such as JFK's, Massa noted that "to be part of the problem and then say it should be eradicated [...] is not political courage."  Massa's position is that every Congressional district should have a fair share of federal money brought back, but it should be done through the budget process.

I asked Massa whether he had any concerns about the stimulus package, and lack of pay-as-you-go financing. 

Borrowing $150 billion from the Chinese to buy $150 billion of Chinese-manufactured goods stimulates the Chinese economy.  In addition to getting cash to the economy, we need to engage in a FDR-style infrastructure building package nationwide.  We need to tie stimulus to living wage jobs that produce something for the public good.

Massa said that pay-go financing for the stimulus package should come from "tax subsidies for the ultra wealthy."  Massa noted that the middle class has seen taxes go up, so he prefers to call the Bush tax cuts "tax subsidies".  "I don't know anyone who hasn't seen their taxes go up."

On S-CHIP, Massa defended his desire to debate Kuhl: 

There's nothing wrong with a public official debating this key issue.  It is not a trick or a ploy, I'm not trying to be cute.  He's going to be here on recess doing the business of the district, and there are thousands of children in the district -- why won't he debate this issue?

Referring to Kuhl's suggestion that Massa read the bill, Massa said he's read it many times.

I asked Massa another question about the military budget.  Since our defense spending is more than the rest of the world combined, I wonder where he thought it should be cut, and, specifically, if we should reduce our commitments in wealthy countries like South Korea and Germany.

It is true that we are spending more on our military than every other country combined.  We are not spending it smartly.  We have committed $2.5 trillion to the occupation in Iraq and received no increase in our national security and no increase in our economic security. 

Massa agreed that garrisons in South Korea and Germany need to be scaled down or eliminated.  He also pointed to overseas bases, such as those in Japan, Kuwait and the United Kingdom, saying "this network of overseas bases needs to be evaluated."  Massa added that there was some more important information about the military:

This administration has consumed our military.  President Clinton turned over 30 fully-operational and deployable Army brigades.  [...]  Today we have in that category, zero.  Not a single deployable Army brigade exists outside of Iraq.  Those in Iraq do not meet pre-Iraq standards.

Massa pointed to the recent grounding of half of the F-15s in service, and to the fact that the Navy is a fraction of the size it was when the Bush Administration came to office as other indicators of problems with the military.  "Across the board, our military is being mishandled and misused.  We need people in Congress and in the White House who understand that."

I was the only person on the call who asked questions -- I think there was at least one other who was not identified.

If you think that a Rudy Guliani candidacy would have excited Western New York Republicans and brought more of them to the polls in the Fall, then Randy Kuhl's election just got a little bit tougher.  I don't think that Rudy would have had much in the way of coattails, so it's probably a wash.

Back in the cold, windy North, farmers are worrying about the farm bill, which is stuck in the Senate.

Members of Congress spend most of their time in committee, yet there's little press coverage of most committee hearings.  This seems like an ideal opportunity for specialist blogging.  Here's an example of a blogger who wrote about a House Education and Labor hearing attended by Randy Kuhl.  The topic was the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Last week the Massa campaign put out a press release essentially challenging Randy Kuhl to a debate.  The heading of the release was "Massa Accepts Kuhl's Challenge to Debate".  I read the release, and also the press release from the Kuhl campaign, which I got via the Massa campaign.  After looking both over, I decided that it was basically an attempt by the Massa campaign to get some attention based on some pretty light evidence, and didn't run the story. 

Today, the Ontario Republican posted a link to a Messenger-Post is report that Eric Massa and Randy Kuhl are planning a debate on S-CHIP, perhaps sometime in March.  The story was by Hillary Smith, one of their general assignment reporters.  Ontario GOP quickly posted a follow-up denial, which I assume he got from Kuhl's office, that includes the entire Kuhl press release.  GOP says that he thought the story was a little fishy, but he went with it anyway because the M-P printed it.

If this tells us anything about politics and journalism, it's this:  newspapers need to feed the beast.  That's why campaigns send out press releases like a deer craps pellets. Once in a while, a campaign lucks out and their pure spin gets reported as fact.   I'd bet a little money that Hillary Smith did not call Kuhl's office on this one, because she'd have gotten a pretty quick denial.  I'll further speculate that Hillary's editor will get an earful from the Kuhl press office, and M-P reporters will be a little more careful in the future.

As far as I've seen, the M-P was the only local paper that ran the Massa press release.  The other left-leaning blog in the area, Rochesterturning, has a post on it, but later included an update saying that it might just be a media back-and-forth instead of a real debate.  So even the "partisan" bloggers didn't swallow it whole.  Take from that what you will.

A couple of area blogs (Rochesterturning, Albany Project) are wondering if Randy Kuhl is going to retire.  Kuhl's story has been the same for the last few months:  he won't say if he's decided to run yet.  I would have thought that it's far past the time to announce retirements in competitive House districts, but this week's Walsh retirement, and yesterday's announcement by Dave Weldon (R-FL-15), have people wondering.  Kuhl's current position is consistent with his strategy last cycle, which was to delay his announcement in order to keep from engaging Eric Massa directly in campaign mode.  I think he's doing the same thing this year, and that there's little chance he won't run again.

Update:  See Elmer's comment below.  Someone's polling Kuhl alternatives in the Southern Tier, and it sounds like a Republican organization.  The plot thickens.

In other retirement-related news, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) announced yesterday that Dan Maffei, the Democrat who challenged Jim Walsh in 2006 and is running again, has been added to their "Red to Blue" fundraising program.  This announcement comes before any other Democrat has an opportunity to even decide to run in the NY-25 primary.  That's an interesting change in the DCCC's position on primaries.  Last year, when Massa faced a primary challenge, the DCCC was the Switzerland of political committees, scrupulously neutral.  This is still more evidence that Eric Massa is not the candidate of the Democratic establishment.

Finally, Randy Kuhl made the news decrying the new border regulations.  The story on Rochester channel 13 began with Louise Slaughter (NY-28), who says that Chertoff is "absolutely breaking the law".  I assume that Louise will do what Congressional Democrats consistently do when faced with lawbreaking -- assume a fetal position and ignore it.  Unless, of course, it's lawbreaking in baseball, which gets some serious consideration.  The story ended with the claim that the identification law is necessary "to help avoid another 9/11 tragedy."   I wonder how long 9/11 will be trotted out to justify loss of liberty and convenience in return for a very questionable increase in safety.   As I've argued elsewhere, identity does not disclose intent.

The New York State Board of Elections has approved three optical scan ballot machines for use by counties in New York.  This probably means that we'll be voting on paper ballots that will be scanned after marking, beginning in 2009.  Counties have until February 8 to make a final choice of one of the three approved devices.

Bo Lipari, executive director of the non-profit New Yorkers for Verified Voting, sent an email to the Albany Project describing the history of his organization's work against electronic voting machines.  It makes interesting reading, because if we had rushed the choice, we'd have been in the same situation as Maryland.