The Fighting 29th

All about New York's 29th Congressional District

The Messenger-Post's Monday editorial cautions Eric Massa to keep the swine flu hype in check.

Reader Elmer sends today's Corning Leader front page [pdf] and (jump [pdf]) with coverage of the dedication of the Vietnam Veterans' Museum in Elmira. Eric Massa spoke at the dedication. The Star-Gazette also has coverage of the event.

The Leader also front-pages the passing of Jack Kemp. Here's a great example of the kind of class act Kemp was. (via Balloon Juice).

WETM lists the money coming to the district from the just-passed budget.

Rob Price at the Steuben Courier has a column where he interviews his mother-in-law about border closings.

Reader Elmer sends this morning's Corning Leader front page [pdf] (and jump [pdf]) which contains a story about Massa's continuing call to close the Mexican border.

Massa's continuing call to close the Mexican border got some local press, in the Star-Gazette and on WENY.

Massa was also on cable, with a FoxNews [subscription required] interview on the flu, and a MSNBC interview on Specter's defection.

Finally, the Democrat and Chronicle reports 8 suspected cases of swine flu in the Rochester area, and the Corning Leader reports two suspected cases in Cortland County.

A reader sent me a meeting notice that looks interesting. Robert Freeman, the director of the State Committee on Open Government, will be speaking on freedom of information and open meeting laws in Penn Yan.

What: Talk by Robert Freeman on Open Government.
When: 7 p.m. May 11.
Where: Auditorium in the Yates County Office Building, 417 Liberty St, Penn Yan.
The event is free and open to the public.

Some of the topics that he'll discuss include the limits of boards going into executive sessions to discuss "personnel" matters, and whether the public has a right to give input at meetings.

Reader Elmer sends this mention of Eric Massa in a Seattle Times editorial about Time-Warner's caps. It's indicative of the wide attention this issue has received outside of the 29th district.

Meanwhile, there was a major Time-Warner outage in upstate New York today. Customers from Albany to Buffalo were without Internet and telephone for about three hours this morning. As Stop The Cap points out, Time-Warner telephone customers were without the ability to summon emergency services. Time-Warner's heavy promotion of their digital phone service doesn't mention that they don't have the same network standards as old-fashioned telephone service.

Eric Massa's call for closure of the Mexican border got some attention in the local media. It's too early to tell whether Massa's call is panic or prescience, but some of what I've read about the Mexican outbreak is not a confidence booster:

I'm a specialist doctor in respiratory diseases and intensive care at the Mexican National Institute of Health. There is a severe emergency over the swine flu here. More and more patients are being admitted to the intensive care unit. Despite the heroic efforts of all staff (doctors, nurses, specialists, etc) patients continue to inevitably die. The truth is that anti-viral treatments and vaccines are not expected to have any effect, even at high doses.
[...]
The truth is that mortality is even higher than what is being reported by the authorities, at least in the hospital where I work it. It is killing three to four patients daily, and it has been going on for more than three weeks. It is a shame and there is great fear here. Increasingly younger patients aged 20 to 30 years are dying before our helpless eyes and there is great sadness among health professionals here.

One of the most interesting, and scariest, works of history I've ever read is The Great Influenza, which documents the 1918 "Spanish Flu" pandemic. A few take-home lessons from that book:

• Like this outbreak, the 1918 pandemic killed the young and healthy, not the old and weak.
• The 1918 pandemic began with outbreaks in crowded areas (Army bases) and it seemed to "flare up", kill large numbers, and then go away for short times. Overall, it was short (18 months) and deadly (50 million killed worldwide).
• The care in 1918 was mainly supportive. Hospitals quickly became overwhelmed by the large numbers of victims.
• One of the major contributors to the spread of the 1918 pandemic was minimization by authorities. This included wartime censorship which filled the newspapers with happy talk instead of news which could have led to school closings and quarantines. Authorities also did things like holding massive draft call-ups in cities where flu was reported.

13-WHAM has the story of a local man's struggle with an airline. Massa's office is mentioned as one of the agencies helping out.

Mustard Street points to this New York Times article about cheap bandwidth in other countries. Here's a comparison of bandwidth pricing and cost worldwide. Stockholm, Sweden is the cheapest because the city owns the fiber network and has providers compete to provide service on the network.

Eric Massa's district tour got a story in the Star-Gazette.

The D&C also weighed in on the Time-Warner issue, giving Massa some credit for helping the situation. (via Rochesterturning)