The Fighting 29th

All about New York's 29th Congressional District

Over at the Albany Project, Robert Harding has coverage of today's Massa press conference. One of the topics was Massa's supposed reluctance in supporting Kirsten Gillibrand's 2010 run, which was the subject of a Gannett News Service article in today's D&C. Massa says he's "much more focused on my district. Period."

The Star-Gazette and WENY both have coverage of a health care rally in Elmira by Healthcare for America Now! Eric Massa received the "Golden Stethoscope Award" at the rally for his support of publicly-financed health care.

See if you can find Randy Kuhl in today's Corning Leader [pdf], sent by Reader Elmer.

Apple growers are happy about new legislation that will help with the availability of migrant labor.

Chemung County will be getting its share of the stimulus pie.

Massa is happy about the passage of credit card reform legislation.

He's also all over the district this weekend.

Finally, Massa is leading the effort to pass legislation to close US debt markets to Argentina unless it offers a better deal to creditors on whom it defaulted. Massa is being cast as a "friend of Argentina" because his father was a naval attache there.

On the heels of news that Lockheed-Martin will lay off 130 workers in Owego, Eric Massa tells the Star-Trib that there's still hope for a scaled-down version of the Presidential helicopter.

Reader Elmer sends Eric Massa's op-ed [pdf] defending his vote against the supplemental war funding bill. Syracuse News 10 has Massa on the phone defending the vote.

RNews reports on Massa's award of Congressional Awards to to Rochester-area young people.

Finally, here's one man's view on the Route 219 construction delay. Apparently, it was know long ago that building a road through "the middle of a landslide" would be fraught with environmental issues.

Eric Massa's appearances at local high schools is getting some press. WENY also has video of his lightly attended town hall meeting in Chemung.

The Ithaca Journal reports that the $500K cap on gross income is back in the 2010 Obama budget. This cap had been changed to adjusted gross income in the Congressional version of the budget, but it's back in as a "bargaining chip".

The Star-Gazette has news of the helicopter budget cuts, which include both Marine One and a search-and-rescue helicopter called CSAR-X.

WENY reports that Eric Massa is among the members of the New York delegation who's optimistic that some scaled-down version of a new Presidential helicopter will be built. The proposed replacement for the aging fleet has turned into a huge boondoggle, with the estimated cost topping out at $400 million per helicopter.

To get an idea of how crazy that price is, the helicopter on which Marine One is based cost $27 million each when first introduced in 2000.

Update: The D&C pegs the number of jobs riding on this program as 800, centered in the town of Owego, which is roughly halfway between Elmira and Binghamton.

Eric Massa says he probably won't support the Iraq/Afghanistan supplemental, because of a campaign promise not to vote for more Iraq funding until there was a concrete troop withdrawal plan.

The D&C's story on road funding quotes Massa. All totaled, the area will have $73 million of road building financed with stimulus funds.