The Fighting 29th

All about New York's 29th Congressional District

The Hornell Evening Tribune has a story on Kuhl's vote for the Omnibus spending bill, which is a giant conglomeration of appropriations bills patched together to get Congress home by Christmas.

The Democrat and Chronicle has a story about local Members of Congress who lease vehicles at taxpayers' expense. Randy is the only Rochester-area rep who doesn't do this.

Louise Slaughter (NY-28) leases the most expensive car, a Buick Lucerne.  If you're over 60 and live in Rochester, you drive some kind of Buick sedan, and Louise is no exception. The only difference between her and some of my older neighbors is that Uncle Sam foots the bill for her GM boat.

Exile over at Rochesterturning has heard rumors that Randy Kuhl recently paid, or is paying, a visit to Iraq.  

Reader Rich sends a Letter to the Editor [pdf] from the Finger Lake Times about Randy Kuhl's trip to Brazil.  Written by the mother of a page nominated by Kuhl intern in Kuhl's office, it says that earlier letters criticizing Kuhl's trip were "mean and wrong".  

No, the congressman didn't travel by private jet, stay at a 5-star hotel, spend time at the pool or beach. You don't have to take my word for it, check for your­self. Congressman Kuhl's of­fice will be happy to supply you with the real facts.

I don't know if Kuhl spent time by the beach, but he did take a private (military) jet, and his itinerary shows that he stayed in a number of five-star hotels.

Another variation on this theme can be seen in the Steuben Young Republican blog post Respect for Randy. The post has a couple of videos showing the slings and arrows launched at Randy:  "Take a look at this town hall meeting Randy held in Branchport. He had to sit there and listen to more than 5 minutes of attacks."   It sounded like five minutes of gentle questioning to me.

There's something a little disturbing about the version of "respect" being peddled in these two examples.  Randy Kuhl is a politician, and everything he says and does should be questioned closely by his constituents, the press, and any other interested party.  There's nothing disrespectful about doing that, and it should happen more often, not less.

Update:  Meghan Tisinger of Kuhl's office wrote to say the following: 

FYI…the editorial in The Finger Lakes Times was written by the mother of a page that Randy appointed. The page did not work/intern for us. All pages work for the Speaker’s office.

I've corrected the post.  Here's a Wikipedia article about pages.

The Hornell Evening Tribune covers Randy Kuhl's second vote against cutting the Alternative Minimum Tax.   My take on the AMT, and fiscal discipline, can be read here.

I received another robocall call earlier this week:

Hello, I'm calling from the Campaign to Defend America.  Congressman Randy Kuhl needs to be honest with the American people. US intelligence agencies have revealed that Iran stopped building nuclear weapons four years ago.  Congressman Kuhl, George Bush and Dick Cheney were wrong about having [?] to bomb Iran, just like they were wrong about invading Iraq.  Call Congressman Kuhl at 585-223-4760  and tell him to stop pushing us into wars based on lies.

Update:  Reader lean, who considers these calls harassment, sends along the full contact information for Campaign to Defend America:

Campaign to Defend America, Inc.
1825 "K" Street NW
Suite 400
Washington DC 20006

Phone (202) 454-6200 main
(202) 263-4528 (direct)
(202) 263-4530 (fax)

info@iraqcampaign.org
www.noiraqescalation.org

H.Con.Res 215, which was co-sponsored by Randy Kuhl and Dan Boren (D-OK-2), names the first week in June as National CPR and Automated External Defibrillator (AED) Week.  It passed the House yesterday, and the Senate on December 6. 

Also, and completely unrelated, I missed the Massa press conference this morning, so no report on Massa doings this week.

Someone claiming to work for the Democrat and Chronicle sent me an email that was apparently circulated yesterday, touting the success of RocPets.com.  RocPets is a site where pet owners can post pictures and vote for cutest pet.  Here are a few quotes:

As you heard at last week’s Publisher meetings, the newest addition to our audience product portfolio, Rocpets.com, is another Democrat and Chronicle success story. This engaging Web site continues to grow audience – with more than 500,000 page views to date.  It’s truly amazing!!!
[...]
One of the strengths of the Web site is photos – in fact visitors have posted more than 1,100 pet photos so far!  Click on one of the Galleries (Small Dogs, Large Dogs, Cats, Pets and Kids and Other Pets) to view the photos.

The memo is from Jim Fogler, VP for Marketing and Communications, and heavy user of the bang (!).  Now that the journalistic frontier of pictures of kittens has been crossed, I'll bet RocBabies is next.

Rochester Channel 13 has an in-depth story on Randy Kuhl's trip to Brazil.  It includes an itinerary.  Money quote:

Kuhl was not available for interview, but, he wrote in a statement, "New York can learn to develop its own natural resources, such as switch grass and other cellulosic feed stocks, in a similar fashion."

But, he only had to travel to Ithaca where scientists at Cornell University are conducting highly respected research on bio-fuels like switch grass.

The six-day trip to Brazil included 25 events and meetings. But, while Kuhl has touted the importance of studying bio-fuels, only 7 of the 25 events included anything about energy.

Update:  Channel 13 has posted the video, and the second part of the video segment features an interview with a biofuels consultant who disagrees that the trip would help Kuhl understand cellulosic ethanol, and she also thinks that his explanation for the vote against the energy bill was "almost laughable".  Video embed after the break:

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The Democrat and Chronicle calls its comment section "StoryChat".  It's a simple message board where message threads are tied to stories.  Depending on the story content, the quality of the chat ranges from pretty good to Internet rant.  The quality of discussion seems inverse to the hotness of the topic, and discussions often go off the rails:   yesterday's stem cell discussion, for example, starts with a rant about the war in Iraq.

Though StoryChat looks like a run-of-the-mill circa-1999 bulletin board system, it is a pioneer in Rochester's mainstream media.  The major radio and TV stations have nothing like it.  So, kudos to the D&C for making the effort.

It's interesting to see newspapers and other media struggle with issues that are old hat for Internet media.  For example,  Howard Owens has a post that discusses anonymity on the Internet, a subject near and dear to me.  One of the features of Gannett Blog is Commentz Korner, where the Editor keeps track of racist, sexist or offensive comments.

What's missing from the D&C story chat, and from other discussions I've seen, is a sense that the online community can be self-regulating.  Internet-only sites that have a large number of anonymous or pseudonymous contributors have developed sophisticated reputation and ranking systems.  Slashdot is one example of a user-run comment ranking system that is pretty effective at separating the better comments from junk.  Wikipedia uses a reputation system to maintain a pretty high quality standard for all volunteers.  In Rochester, RocWiki is also self-policing community site. 

So, I salute the D&C for trying StoryChat, but they need to step back from the editor/consumer model and embrace the new model of user-generated and moderated content.