From the New York Times’ wonderfully titled “Don’t Cry For Me, Stephen Minarik” post-mortem on the 2006 New York State GOP debacle, I found this amusing piece of insight from Joe Mondello (Minarik’s successor):

He (Mondello) said on WROW that Mr. Pataki had to know he was not a front runner, but that perhaps he thought he could get the nod if the ‘08 Republican primary got messy and there was “blood on the floor.”

That’s an understatement. The thing better be a freaking slaughter house if Pataki has any chance of getting the Republican presidential nomination.

Here’s Jon Stewart’s take on “president Pataki” (from the Daily Politics). Sometimes the truth hurts.

We got a reprieve this year in NY state. We were supposed to have those dern e-lectronic voting mosheens this year, but the state got an extension since they weren’t ready to make up their minds on which new system to implement. Thank god for that– given all the problems with e-voting across the country this year, for example the 18,000 missing votes in FL-13, those trusty ol’ lever voting machines seem pretty rock-solid.

NY is actually set to make a decision soon, although I just got off the phone with the Monroe County Board Of Elections, and their understanding is the decision-making process will really get going after the first of the year, with well-publicized public hearings and input.

Which is good, since the National Institute of Standards and Technology is, startlingly, planning on de-certifying the e-voting machines!

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is recommending that the 2007 version of the Voluntary Voting Systems Guidelines (VVSG) decertify direct record electronic (DRE) machines.

(snip)

According to an NIST paper to be discussed at a meeting of election regulators at NIST headquarters in Gaithersburg, Md., on Dec. 4 and 5, DRE vote totals cannot be audited because the machines are not software independent.

In other words, there is no means of verifying vote tallies other than by relying on the software that tabulated the results to begin with.

The machines currently in use are “more vulnerable to undetected programming errors or malicious code,” according to the paper.

The NIST paper also noted that, “potentially, a single programmer could ‘rig’ a major election.”

As a recovering software geek, I have seen first hand how when you do any kind of reporting via computers, you can oh, so easily manipulate the way data is recorded and tabulated to match the “new requirements” of “the customer” who doesn’t like the way the data looks.

It’s one thing to do that when reporting on how teams are performing inside a company. Quite another when it’s, you know, what the voters intended vs. what Diebold (or Sequoia) and their allies in DC want. As the great prophet, George Clinton, once said, “I wants my funk un-cut.”

That should be something every patriotic American can agree on, Dem, GOP, or other.

Many of you may know that the famous abolitionist (and one-time slave) Frederick Douglass is buried here in Rochester in Mt. Hope cemetery. Many of you may also have heard the horror stories of how Frederick Douglass was treated while he was a slave and of how he ultimately escaped slavery.

What you may not know is that Donald Rumsfeld now owns the property on which Frederick Douglass and countless other slaves were brutally tortured. Here’s a piece by Amy Goodman on this topic:

Frederick Douglass, the renowned abolitionist, began life as a slave on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. When his owner had trouble with the young, unruly slave, Douglass was sent to Edward Covey, a notorious “slave breaker.” Covey’s plantation, where physical and psychological torture were standard, was called Mount Misery. Douglass eventually fought back, escaped to the North and went on to change the world. Today Mount Misery is owned by Donald Rumsfeld, the outgoing secretary of defense.

I’m not sure “ironic” is the right word to describe the fact that a brutal torture camp is now owned by the architect of the Bush administration’s despicable new torture policy. A more accurate word might be “sad”.

There’s a message here: Frederick Douglass was a remarkable and humane man who was treated terribly by a society that we now regard as ignorant and backwards. Recently, there have been high-profile cases of innocent men who were abducted and tortured by American intelligence services. What will future generations think of us?

This is a follow-up to BTP’s insightful election analysis post (link). I’ve been putting together some election results data from the NY-29 congressional election. Right now I’m focused on comparing 2006 to 2004. Where were gains made? The graph below is the percentage of votes for Kuhl, stratified by year and county (sorry for the 4 letter county abbreviations, but had to make it fit!). I sorted the counties by the percentage of votes for Kuhl in 2004.

kuhl votes

Here is a link to the full size image. It’s good if the diamonds are below the circles, because that means a smaller percentage of voters voted for Kuhl in 2006 compared to 2004 in that particular county. As you can see, gains were made in all but 1 county. In some cases the difference was substantial (e.g., Yates).

It’s very nice to see the points creeping towards the 50% line…

Now, it should be noted that more people voted in 2004, as it was a presidential election year. Therefore, the voting population might be slightly different. Nevertheless, these are encouraging results.

I’ll look at comparisons between 2004 and 2006 in more detail in a future post.

I was just reading one of Curt Smith’s typically silly pieces for the local Messenger Post papers and it made me so mad I went to his website to find out more about him. I came across this love letter he wrote to Richard Nixon. It closes with

Nixon’s still The One — the most enduring American of our time.

You think I’m making this up, don’t you? I’m not.

For some reason, Mr. Smith’s latest magnum opus (the one that made me mad to begin with) isn’t on the Messenger Post website yet. I’ll give you the gist of it, though: upstate New York is doomed because not enough people go to church anymore. My two least favorite talking points — “upstate New York sucks” and “go to church or be damned” — rolled up into one. It’s not everyday that you read something that stupid.

You’ve really got to read the thing he wrote about Nixon. You’ll think you’re reading the Onion. Why do our newspapers print things like this?

Update: I nosed around and found from some very anti-GWB things from Curt Smith. So I guess he’s not all bad.

I certainly don’t mean to start talking about the 2008 presidential campaign all the time — after all, this is a local blog and 08 is 2 years away — but I just thought I’d follow up on our earlier post about the nightmare scenario of Hillary running against Giuliani.

Neither Charlie Cook or Chris Cillizza (two prominent political prognosticators) is willing to write Rudy off just yet. Both say the two leading contenders are Romney and McCain but see Giuliani as a wild card.  Both articles are pretty interesting: Cook pegs McCain’s chances of getting the GOP nomination at 60%, which is a bold prediction, and Cillizza mentions a possible Democratic presidential candidate I’ve never heard of — Governor Phil Bredesen of Tennessee.

For the record, it seems to me that unless someone new jumps into the Democratic mix, we’re looking at Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.  And if no one new jumps into the Republican field either, we’re looking at president Hillary Clinton (the Clintons have pieces of people like John McCain stuck between their teeth — Newt Gingrich, for example — and I just don’t think a northeastern like Romney or Rudy would stand much of a chance against Hillary).

Last week, we asked you: “So, what should RT do now?” Here’s how you answered:

The items with a green background are the ones we’ll be focusing on.  We invite those who voted for the “Investigative pieces on local issues” to email us with any issues they’d like to see covered.  It’s kind of funny that the “write-in” candidate got the most votes.  Democracy in action!

I’ll keep the poll open– I want to give folks who haven’t had a chance to vote yet a little while longer.  It took longer than I thought to get 50 votes, given that we have many times that number visiting us on an average day, but then I guess I should expect that over Thanksgiving vacation, when even the nation’s biggest political blog (DailyKos.com) goes down to a mere fraction of its normal traffic. (The “mere fraction” being 100k to 200k, but you get the idea.)

Thanks to all who voted!  We’ll be putting our heads together shortly to come up with an action plan based on the outcome, and we’ll keep you posted on it.

So let it be written, so let it be done.

Walsh Watch weighs in with an entertaining (and exhaustive) list of potential Democratic and Republican (assuming Walsh cashes in his 20 years and retires to a K Street lobbying firm) candidates for the NY-25 seat in ‘08. An excerpt:

• Joanie Mahoney - Why can’t all candidates have rhyming names? I don’t think she’s tough enough for a real race, she looked positively D-list numerous times against Driscoll. Whether or not that effects her decision to run is a different story.
• Bill Meyer - Between losing a primary to Jeff Brown and losing a general to Al Stirpe Meyer has pissed away about $100K of his own money. Would that discourage him, or does he enjoy throwing money away? Either way he is the single worst campaigner alive.
• Chucky Iavarone - Haha, just kidding.

Heh. Funny. But knowledgable.

That’s the advantage of being in the thick of a district, as the Watcher is in Syracuse. You know intimately the players and can speculate on their chances. With Rochester split between 4 districts, and at the edge of each of them (except for Louise Slaughter’s NY-28), the key players are a little beyond the event horizon for those of us based in Rochester.

For example, conventional wisdom is that any Dem challenger in the 29th has to come from the Southern Tier, as opposed to Monroe County. I won’t argue, but other than knowing that there are 3 Dem mayors of the main cities in the bottom of the 29th (Corning, Elmira, and … er, Hornell?), I’m a little fuzzy on who could step up to the mic and have a go at Kuhl, should Massa opt out for a second time around.

As a lifelong hater of the Mets and Yankees, I sometimes can’t decide which phrase sickens me more, “president Bush” or “subway series”. Thus, you can probably guess how I feel about a “Metro North election” — that is a presidential race pitting Hillary Clinton against Rudy Giuliani (Metro North is the train line that connects New York City to Chappaqua, where Hillary ostensibly lives — clever, no?).

At this point, Hillary may be inevitable for the party nomination if not the general election. Resistance is futile. And Hillary gets more than her share of bad press (check out the blog JustHillary sometime).

The same cannot be said of the media’s treatment of Giuliani. You probably know that Giuliani was Time Magazine’s Man of the Year in 2001 and that he generally receives more favorable media coverage than anyone else in the world save John McCain and the pre-Katrina George W. Bush. What you may not know is that these days, Rudy is all about the Benjamins, ethics be damned. Here’s a good piece from Ben Smith (when was the last good piece on New York poltiics this guy didn’t write) in the New York Observer. Highlights include:

• * Giuliani “walked away from the tsunami benefit with $80,000 at a time when celebrities from Bill Clinton and the first President Bush to George Clooney were donating time to the relief effort.”
• * “The core of his firm’s practice is aiding companies in trouble, and as often as not that trouble is—at least partially—political. The client list often reads like the list of witnesses before Congressional committees in some of the highest-profile corporate crises of the last few years: Along with Entergy Nuclear Northeast, which owns the Indian Point nuclear plant, they include the manufacturers of the painkiller OxyContin, which had become popular as a recreational drug; the scandal-plagued National Thoroughbred Racing Association; and a pharmaceutical-industry trade group, for which Mr. Giuliani produced a study suggesting that imported prescription drugs may be dangerous.”
• * “The only real public questions over his speeches arose in Adelaide, Australia, where Mr. Giuliani spoke to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Research Foundation. The foundation’s director, Maurice Henderson, later went public with his complaints that Mr. Giuliani had been paid the equivalent of $230,000 while the foundation took in just over $15,000 from the fund-raiser.”

And of course there’s Bernie Kerik. Let’s hope the press is just getting warmed up here. Giuliani doesn’t get a free pass just because he made a few nice speeches after 9/11.

A lot of the folks in upstate worry about the crappy economy, high taxes, and Albany dysfunction. They see the state lej as needing reform, then vote the incumbents back in.

But what if, instead of the same ol’, same ol’, or a myopic “business uber alles” perspective, the state lej set out in a more progressive direction? What would that look like? If your brain is straining under the stress of trying to imagine Albany being anything but screwed up and stagnant, relax. A think tank called the Progressive States Network is on the case. I’ve been getting their “Daily Dispatch” in my email for some time now, and I have to say, it’s a delightful, refreshing change from the plodding, way-inside-the-box, must…eliminate…taxes…, thinking that’s so prevalent around these parts. I mean, come on. We’re Americans. We went to the friggin MOON in less than 10 years once we set our minds to it, so why do we insist on anything less than that level of ingenuity when it comes to the future of upstate?

I know, there’s a lot of bad TV to be watched, and I admit a lot of it is strangely compelling, but press “mute” for a minute and check out the bold legislative platform that PSN is proposing:

Wage Standards and Workplace Freedom	Balancing Work and Family
Health Care for All	Smart Growth and Clean Jobs
Tax and Budget Reform	Clean and Fair Elections

Isn’t that set of titles alone compelling? Yes, I do hear the cynic in you saying “Huh. It’ll never happen.” Well, I’m sure a lot of folks said that about Teddy Roosevelt when he promised to be the “Trust-busting” president. (Remember “Trusts”– the last time corporations wielded way too much power?)

I’m sure a lot of folks said that about FDR, when he was proposing the New Deal that got America through some of its darkest hours.

How many said that of Kennedy when he famously declared we would land a man on the moon within the decade?

And yet, here we are, with a much more modest to-do list in front of us. Who are we to say it can’t be done? Stephen Hawking, the brilliant mathematician-physicist who retains his smarts and sense of humor despite advanced Lou Gehrig’s Disease, said:

I have noticed even people who claim everything is predestined, and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road.

Isn’t it a weird feeling– that starting is as simple as looking before you cross? And while you’re looking, sign on to the PSN petition in support of this platform. The goal is to get a critical mass of signatures, and to get folks like you and me plugged into the loop on how these issues are moving in Albany.  Count me in. How about you?

A great article in Mother Jones argues that Spitzer had a lot more latitude to pursue a progressive agenda on multiple fronts as Attorney General, but may have to compromise a lot more as Governor.

The state’s progressive advocacy community is thrilled that Spitzer has ended 12 years of Republican control under Governor George Pataki. But on some issues—-especially housing, welfare reform, and development–Spitzer’s exact positions remain unknown. Hopes are high, but most progressives say they have a healthy sense of realism about what Spitzer will be able to accomplish in New York’s difficult statewide political arena, especially in light of his campaign pledge not to raise taxes.

Lord knows, he’ll have his challenges, with an entrenched, incumbent-rich state lej.  What can we do to help him?

This makes me laugh:

Eager to begin refurbishing his tattered legacy, the President hopes to raise $500 million to build his library and a think tank at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. Bush lived in Dallas until he was elected governor of Texas in 1995.

Bush sources with direct knowledge of library plans told the Daily News that SMU and Bush fund-raisers hope to get half of the half billion from what they call “megadonations” of $10 million to $20 million a pop.

Bush loyalists have already identified wealthy heiresses, Arab nations and captains of industry as potential “mega” donors…

(snip)

The half-billion target is double what Bush raised for his 2004 reelection and dwarfs the funding of other presidential libraries. But Bush partisans are determined to have a massive pile of endowment cash to spread the gospel of a presidency that for now gets poor marks from many scholars and a majority of Americans.

No, this story isn’t from The Onion.

The proposed name for this monument to failure?  The Institute for Democracy.  These people may not do nuance but they sure do irony. 

President Bush famously claimed after his narrow 51-48% victory in the 2004 election “I have political capital– and I intend to spend it.” The media oohed and ahhed over his “mandate”– not the first time desire for a pre-determined narrative trumped the facts. (I’ve felt the same tug, so I have sympathy for them. I just try to dig a little first. Then again, I’ve got complete editorial freedom and no deadlines, so that helps.)

Well, now we have an example of a true mandate. Spitzer’s massive 69-29% stomping of John Faso provides Spitzer some serious political capital. If that weren’t good enough, the D&C reports that Spitzer will be going into office with a financial boost as well:

Fortune smiles on Spitzer

But bulging state coffers raise the question: How best to use it?

Jay Gallagher
Albany bureau chief

(November 26, 2006) — ALBANY — Gov.-elect Eliot Spitzer is catching a couple of breaks on the financial front, with a booming Wall Street likely to boost state revenues more than expected, and Medicaid costs increasing more slowly than predicted.

Nifty. We’ve got a little windfall to work with. Fortunately, Spitzer has at least one person with long-term vision advising him, according to the article:

“Businesses have been cutting back on benefits, and the government is ambivalent about doing it, so more and more the responsibility is falling on families,” said Karen Schimke, co-chair of a panel appointed by Spitzer to give him advice on human-services issues. “Government needs to step up to the plate, or there are going to be a lot of floundering citizens.”

Schimke, also president of the Albany-based Schuyler Center for Advocacy and Analysis, said the inauguration of a new governor is the time to push for more help for families — and to think about the cost later.

“We have a long history of money driving policy rather than policy driving money,” said Schimke, who had top policy-making jobs in the Democratic administration of former Gov. Mario Cuomo. “This is a moment in time we should focus on policy.”

What a relief. It’s so refreshing, the idea that “taking care of business” doesn’t just mean “taking care of Big Business”. I can just hear the sound of conservatives’ heads exploding at the idea of “government stepping up to the plate”, but let’s face it: our society is, at this point, like the cartoon character Wily E. Coyote. We’ve run off the cliff and now we’re hanging in mid-air, failing to fall yet due to inertia, and continuing to run due to our amazing ability to ignore reality.

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Following up on my earlier post showing general performance change 04 to 06, I took a look at key demographics from Census.gov. Yes, I’m a geek. No, I don’t have too much time on my hands. It’s critical in understanding what the heck’s going on in the 29th, so, blog I must.  A life unexamined is not worth the living, and a congressional district unexamined is not worth the blogging. (Or something…)
A couple notes before we dig in– the Monroe county stats are for ALL Monroe, not just the 29th’s portion of it. So it’ll do things like depress Monroe county income figures and education level a little, but not enough, IMO, to affect getting a good picture of how things correlate (or don’t). nequals1 is more than welcome to bring his Death Star Planet Killer-esque stats knowledge to bear on this and break it up into little chunks of worthless rock. It’s all in the name of science, after all.

What I did was to take Massa’s % of the vote in each of the counties, and try to correlate it with each key demographic. Because RT has no money (email us if you want to contribute to a stats package :-)) I’m forced to use Excel, so I had to draw correlation lines on the graphs, and so didn’t bother calculating the slope.

Yep, we’re eyeballing it here a little. You get what you pay for.

Let’s take a look at the whole urban/rural thang first. Exile mentioned in an earlier post that overall, rural upstate is trending Dem. I believe it, but don’t see it in NY-29, at least as far as the congressional race went:

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Well, Black Friday came and went. One day after we over indulge and give thanks for what we have, we act like crazy people in the stores or on the road to save a few dollars. It is simply amazing.

How ironic that on Friday when I visited that sacred of sacred places, the Pittsford Wegmans, I was greeted at the shopping mall entrance by people protesting the treatment of chickens at the Wegmans chicken farm in Walcott NY. Unfortunately no camera so no pictures (sorry) but it looked like an impressive turnout. They have a web site here.

Nevertheless it got me thinking – what is the price we pay for cheap goods? Now, Wegmans eggs are not from China (used metaphorically here as all things overseas) but they are cheaper than organic eggs or EB brand eggs? (we usually buy the EB or organic eggs btw).

Our exposure as a society to how animals get from the farm to the table is shaped by the cute books about farm animals you read, or movies like Chicken Run or Babe.

Enter the industrial animal farm. Antibiotics are used to counteract the effects of hormones which are used to grow the animal at a cost of the animals health. These animals are force fed food not normally part of the animals’ diet (Cows are supposed to eat grass not grain). Of course nothing is left to waste, as carcasses are ground up and put into feed. Check out this CBS 60 mins write up about Pig farms. It is Thanksgiving weekend — ever wonder how we manufacture 24 lb turkeys?

Well, don’t eat meat. OK - What about Roundup resistant crops? Genetically engineered crops are resistent to Roundup or other pesticides so the farm can intenstively spray poisons to kill everything but the crop? Then there is genetic engineered crops and the cost of getting potatoes from Idaho, Lettuce from California, Mangos from south of the border to your table.

What is the ultimate price we will pay for the food we ingest? Well, factor in the true cost of the food. From “The Seven Deadly Myths of Industrial Agriculture” .

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