The Fighting 29th

All about New York's 29th Congressional District

Granolabox reports that the protesters who occupied Randy Kuhl's Bath office in August, and who were convicted of criminal tresspass in September, will be sentenced on Wednesday.  Each of the five faces a $250 fine and three months in jail.

Half of the population of the 29th district reads one paper, Gannett's Rochester Democrat and Chronicle.  In the coming weeks, I'm going to ask some hard questions about the D&C, and show how the 29th is affected by its lackluster performance in a number of areas.  To kick things off,  I thought it would be interesting to hear another voice on the state of newspapers in Rochester:

Emigres from less conservative climes find the Rochester newspapers conspicuously lacking in any semblance of metropolitan journalism.  They find it far simpler to compare them with the weekly newspapers of the small town -- only with more advertising.  Robust phrasing, critical estimates of civic efforts, personalities, or mores, are frowned upon. [...]

They are without serious competition.  There is no necessity to crusade and therefore increase reader interest and circulation.  Thus they content themselves with the role of mere documentation.  As one critic puts it -- "The dullest stuff from the AP wires (all of which you heard on the eleven p.m. newscasts the night previous), a puff for the Republican administration, a report on the activities of four garden clubs, the list of speeders and four columns of obituaries."

This estimate is more accurate than cruel.  Fortunately for those who must read the customary comics and day's inaccurate weather forecast, [...] there is one rewarding feature -- both newspapers have fast-moving, easy-reading and nearly complete sports coverage.

This quote is from the book Smugtown, U.S.A, published 50 years ago by Rochester newspaperman and gadfly Curt Gerling.  When he wrote, Rochester was a prosperous town dominated by Kodak.  Much has changed since then.  A firm he knew as Haloid, ("obsessed with an idea called 'Xerography' which if you can believe what you hear, is a coming thing") has risen and fallen.   Rochester has gone from "safely Republican" ("even the moderately intelligent realize that big business and Republicanism mix even more magnificently than scotch and soda") to a mix of city Democrats and county Republicans.  

Yet, amidst all this change, most of what Gerling writes about Gannett is as true today as it was 50 years ago.   Since the Times-Union closed over a decade ago, only the use of the plural form keeps the following analysis from sounding as if it were written yesterday:

Whatever may be the weakness of the Gannett publications as newspapers, they are still a monopoly and as such we are stuck with them.  [...]  [T]oo often what seems like news to them is not news to the national radio or television commentators nor the New York Times.  Rochester has not only learned to live with it but expects it.

Though Rochester is feeling less smug nowadays, I don't think its main newspaper has gotten the message. I'm not deluded enough to believe I can change the D&C, but I hope to point out how it could change, and why the 29th deserves better.

Today's Elmira Star-Gazette has an in-depth look at the "glacial" process involved in building a transportation center in Corning.  The grant for the center was approved in 2005.  Construction may begin in 2011.  According to the story, Randy Kuhl was instrumental in getting the grant approved.

Unlike Randy Kuhl's earlier town meetings, the current crop finished on a quiet note.  Besides a feel-good story about home-schooled kids, the only other media notice I've seen is a reprint of a press release by WXXI, Rochester's public radio station.

I'm guessing the reason for the calm is a combination of factors, including the holiday week and the lack of any burning issue coming to the floor of the House in the near future.  Location of the meetings probably wasn't a factor, since meeting places included the Monroe County towns of Chili and Perinton, as well as the neighboring Ontario County town of Victor.  Perinton, the site of Kuhl's northernmost district office, has see protests before.

I received the following robo-call earlier this week.

Hello.  This is a call from American Family Voices,  202-293-1128.   Congressman Randy Kuhl has allowed China to import unsafe products to our nation by underfunding our inspection agencies and allowing corporations from around the world to import goods to America without proper oversight.  Pet foods that harm pets.  Toothpaste that contains antifreeze.  Even children's toys that use lead paint.  While our trade deficit soars, and the holiday season approaches, Congressman Kuhl's unsafe products keep coming in from China.  This is dangerous, and it's costing us thousands of middle-class jobs and putting our children at risk.  Call Congressman Kuhl at 607-776-9142 and tell him to put America first.

This is the third set of robo-calls from this group.  S-CHIP and possible war with Iran were the subjects of earlier robo-calls.  According to the non-partisan Public Citizen organization, American Family Voices is a 501(c)(4) funded mainly by AFSCME. 

The Syracuse Post-Standard has a story on a bi-partisan effort to increase Medicare reimbursement for ambulance services.  Chuck Schumer is leading the effort for New York in the Senate, and Randy Kuhl, Jim Walsh (NY-25) and Michael Arcuri (NY-24) have co-sponsored the bill in the House.  (hat tip:  Ontario GOP)

I missed this morning's Massa press conference because if it were fun, they'd call it play, not work.

The Hornell Evening Tribune has the story of some home-schooled kids who attended Randy Kuhl's town meeting in Almond.  They asked him questions like "Have you met the president?" and "What do you do all day?"

In his recent post about Mortgage reform, Ontario GOP gives a reason why Randy Kuhl was right to vote against the recent reform bill.  GOP points out that the bill may end up punishing those with "decent but not perfect" credit, because the bill increases the amount of due diligence required by lenders.

I agree with GOP that borrowers are going to feel some hurt.  As he points out, "lenders are already adding many more hurdles to the underwriting process than ever before".  His observation mirrors my sense that, no matter what Congress does, the invisible hand is going to spank lenders who don't have perfect credit.  The reason is the huge correction that's occurring in the financial markets.

Today's news that Freddie Mac lost $2 billion last quarter is just the latest indicator of a market in turmoil.  One of the key mortgage-backed securities, collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), have been steadily downgraded.  Citibank's CFO, whose company holds $43 billion in CDOs, says his latest valuation of that paper is a only "reasonable stab".  That's because the crisis isn't over, and more writedowns are coming.  Amidst this turmoil, banks and other underwriters aren't eager to issue more mortgages.

Unless the requirements of the mortgage reform bill are completely out-of-control, it's unlikely that they'll be any stricter than the lending institutions that have been burned by the current lax environment.  For the near future, banks are going to be extremely tight with the mortgage buck, for reasons that have nothing to do with Congress, and everything to do with the markets.  That's unfortunate for lenders, but  the invisible hand is behind this smackdown.

Reader Elmer sends today's Corning Leader Editorial Page [pdf], which carries Randy Kuhl's op-ed on taxes. The editorial attacks the Rangel tax plan as the "Mother of all Tax Increases."

As he did in his Friday blog post, Kuhl uses the op-ed to portray the recent AMT cut as part of the Rangel plan. Apparently, his strategy for defending his vote against a tax cut is to say that it's part of that plan.

I don't normally comment on newspaper editorials, but there's one in the D&C today that is full of muddy thinking.  The main point of the editorial is that the Democrats need to drop their current Iraq strategy and try to compromise with the President on the war.  The writers at Rochesterturning dissect this editorial pretty completely, but I want to focus on one additional point.  The D&C says:

The goal is, or at least should be, to begin moving in a direction that will allow greater control by the Iraqi government and people. Engaging in power struggles over funding, especially symbolic ones, for the remainder of Bush's presidency will be time wasted.

The first sentence is the most important one in the whole editorial, and it's a key point that's missed by those who tout the military progress being made in Iraq.  To date, military progress hasn't led to any appreciable political progress. The political apparatus that we've installed there hasn't been able to assert "greater control", because they're unwilling to make the compromises and deals necessary to form a viable central government.  This was true last year when violence was higher in Iraq, and it's true this Fall when violence has lessened.  

Since our military efforts aren't yielding political progress, what does it matter that Congress is embroiled in a power struggle over funding?   Whatever Congress does is clearly irrelevant, because if one thing is true about the whole Iraq mess, it's that the mis-application, over-application, under-application, or even Petraeus-perfect application of military force doesn't get us anywhere in enabling a government there.  When everyone's ready to acknowledge that, then maybe we'll get somewhere.

Update: The lede of Thursday's front-page Washington Post story on the war says it all:

Senior military commanders here now portray the intransigence of Iraq's Shiite-dominated government as the key threat facing the U.S. effort in Iraq, rather than al-Qaeda terrorists, Sunni insurgents or Iranian-backed militias.