The Fighting 29th

All about New York's 29th Congressional District

Randy Kuhl has an op-ed in today's Elmira Star-Gazette where he disputes the "rubber stamp" characterization. He claims that he's voted against the Bush administration 45 times in the last 3 months, and lists a number of bills he's supported despite the President's opposition.

Reader Rich sends a Finger Lakes Times clipping [pdf], which announces the appointment of a new district director for Randy Kuhl's Bath office. Unlike the Star-Gazette story, this one identifies the new director, Pete Ellis, as the son-in-law of State Senator George Winner, the man who has Randy Kuhl's old seat in the New York Senate. Winner is the head of the Investigations Committee, which is investigating "Troopergate".

Eric Massa is in Washington, DC meeting with Democratic leadership and third-party groups, so there was no Massa press conference today. In possibly related news, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has a little under $20 million in the bank. Its Republican counterpart is a little over $2 million in the hole.

Today's paper Rochester Democrat & Chronicle front-pages yesterday's S-CHIP vote. The story isn't online yet. Randy Kuhl voted against final passage of the bill as amended by the Senate.

The Elmira Star-Gazette reports that a $5 million project in Elmira relies on the HR 1495, the Water Resources Development Act. This bill passed the House with almost no opposition (and Randy Kuhl's support) in May, and recently passed the Senate with a veto-proof majority. President Bush has threatened a veto.

Randy Kuhl has a new blog entry re-iterating his opposition to Governor Spitzer's policy granting illegal immigrants drivers' licenses. In the post, Randy adds some facts to his earlier allegation that the 9/11 hijackers' possession of licenses helped them accomplish their attack. He also points to his support of the RealID Act in the 109th Congress as an example of how identification should be handled.

It's nice to see a substantive post on Kuhl's blog, and Kuhl identifies a number of real shortcomings in our immigration system. But the underlying fallacy of the post, and the RealID act, is the notion that better identification alone will somehow fight terrorism.

To understand this point, I have to untangle two threads going through Kuhl's post. The first is his list of fraud and deception used by the 9/11 hijackers and other terrorists. Randy quotes a report which details the ways that 94 terrorists were able to enter and remain in the US. The report found that 59 of those terrorists committed immigration fraud, and many of them relied on falsified documents "including driver's licenses, birth certificates, Social Security cards, and immigration arrival records". Another common form of fraud was sham marriages.

These cases of immigration fraud are serious, but they have little to do with the Spitzer proposal. As Spitzer said when explaining his proposal: "The D.M.V. is not the I.N.S. [Immigration and Naturalization Service]". In issuing licenses, the DMV is concerned with making sure that drivers are qualified and insured. Like every other agency which relies on documents, the DMV participates in a web of trust, assuming that other document-issuing agencies are doing their jobs. It would be expensive and extremely inconvenient for the DMV to re-verify visas or naturalization documents. We can't afford to make the DMV into a proxy immigration agency.

So, in response to Kuhl's examples of terrorist fraud, the obvious answer is for the federal government to fix the problems in the INS that led to this fraud. The wrong answer is to use state government as a backstop for an incompetent bureaucracy. The DMV needs to stick to its knitting, which is making sure drivers are competent and insured. In that context, licensing illegal immigrants makes sense, because it will reduce insurance costs by increasing the number of uninsured motorists. The state estimates that the rule change will save New Yorkers $120 million yearly.

So, a bigger drivers' license bureaucracy isn't the answer to our immigration problems. A national id, like RealID, doesn't do the job, either. RealID is simply a better way to determine that person X is who he says he is. But knowing that X is really X doesn't tell us anything about X's intentions. Every one of the 9/11 hijackers presented a valid ID card before they boarded their planes. Even Ted Bundy had a valid drivers' license. If he had a super-valid, nationwide ID card, would he have been caught any sooner?

I don't need to go into the risks to liberty created by one standard, nationwide id. Ron Paul has that covered. This country has long resisted that move, and states are again fighting it. It's ironic that a "conservative" like Kuhl is championing this kind of big government program.

The bottom line in all of this is that New York State should feel free to issue drivers' licenses in whatever way they think will make the roads safer. And we shouldn't have to carry a nationwide id because identity is not intent. Randy Kuhl's diagnosis is right: our immigration system is dangerously broken. His suggested cure -- interfering with states' rights and a Big Brother ID card -- is dangerously wrong.

Reader Elmer sends today's Corning Leader report (page A3 [pdf], jump [pdf]) from Randy Kuhl's Thursday press conference. Kuhl is frustrated with the pace of legislation in Congress. He thinks the budget might not be done until after October 1, and Congress might not adjourn before Christmas.

Judging how "fast" or "slow" Congress is working is difficult, but let's start with some facts. During the last non-election year (2005), the Republican-led House had voted 485 times by September 21. This year, the House has voted 890 times. In 2005, the House adjourned on December 19.

Here's what then-Majority Leader John Boehner (R-OH-8) said in 2006 about adjournment dates:

It means nothing [...] You all know it means nothing because it really does mean nothing. Anyway, there is no reason to have a target adjournment on the schedule.

Randy Kuhl is now a blogger. And, he's on Facebook and MySpace

Kuhl has 70 "supporters" on Facebook, compared to Massa's 326 "friends". On MySpace, Massa has 54 "friends", while Randy has 20.

The Massa campaign has announced that Eric Massa will be a guest on Air America's Young Turks program tomorrow morning at 7 7:30 AM. This is a nationally-syndicated program, but it does not air in any of the media markets in the 29th, so 29th residents will have to tune in on the Internet to listen.

The dust-up over Iraq must be over for the moment, since Randy Kuhl's regular press releases are starting to get some play in the local media. The Star-Gazette reports that Kuhl and Earl Pomeroy (D-ND-AL) have introduced legislation to ensure that rural schools receive sufficient funds through the Rural Education Achievement Program. Kuhl's announcement of a grant also made the Star-Gazette.

Eric Massa is Number 35 on Esquire Magazine's list of 100 "register of emerging ideas, trends, discoveries, products, people, and obscene gestures you should know about before everyone else does."