Tonight, the Mendon Democratic Committee voted unanimously to support Eric Massa’s Campaign in the 29th Congressional District. In so doing, they are the 5th out of 9 Monroe County Town Committees to do so.
 So, what is everybody else waiting for ?
From the AP wire:
WASHINGTON: The Bush administration said Tuesday it will fight to keep meatpackers from testing all their animals for mad cow disease.
The Agriculture Department tests fewer than 1 percent of slaughtered cows for the disease, which can be fatal to humans who eat tainted beef. A beef producer in the western state of Kansas, Creekstone Farms Premium Beef, wants to test all of its cows.
Larger meat companies feared that move because, if Creekstone should test its meat and advertised it as safe, they might have to perform the expensive tests on their larger herds as well.
You know Republicans? Those friendly chaps who have this unshakeable faith in the free market to solve all ills? The party that hates government so much they want to drown it in the bathtub?
Well, one enterprising young company had the innovative idea of testing all their beef for Mad Cow Disease, thus differentiating their product. Republicans should be smug, right? See? The free market works. Creekstone farms has addressed an untapped demand in the market, thus creating competition and therefore lower prices and better quality for all.
Unfortunately, the corporate bankrollers of the party don’t much care for the idea of competition.
There has always been a strained relationship between conservative ideology (ie Goldwater conservatism) and the actions actually taken by conservatives (Bush Jr. and Reagan conservatism). One type of conservatism has a claim to a long line of distinguished thinkers such as Edmund Burke, and is a legitimate political ideology. The other type of conservatism funds the Conservative Message Machine Money Matrix.
Guess which type we have in power here in Monroe County.
Wow– I can’t believe I missed this editorial in the D&C. Glad DFE didn’t, because he hits the nail on the head:
FOIA reform aside, one aspect of open government the federal government has addressed far more adroitly than local government is Web site completeness and ease of navigation.Too many state and local sites are either difficult to navigate or overly political. The Monroe County site, for example, tends to focus County Executive Maggie Brooks’ activities. She’s running for re-election, not coincidentally.
Holy crap, yes! Finally, someone in the Rochester MSM decides to take Maggie to task for having spent god-only-knows how much to improve the MC website only for the sake of using it to promote herself.
But the county’s got cash to burn, right? No $100M budget gaps coming or anything.
Congrats to the D&C Ed Board for recognizing the fact. More of this please!
From the Massa campaign’s press release:
STEUBEN COUNTY, N.Y. – Congressional Candidate Eric Massa of Corning was unanimously endorsed by the Steuben County Democratic Committee this week. This represents the Third Official Endorsement by a County Democratic Committee in New York’s 29th District for Massa.
Someone just emailed me this joke and I thougth some of you might enjoy it.
Question. How many Republicans does it take to change a light bulb?
Answer. None.
Nothing is wrong with the light bulb; its conditions are improving every day.
Any reports of its lack of incandescence are a delusional spin from the liberal media.
That light bulb has served honorably, and anything you say undermines the lighting effect.
Why do you hate freedom?
So COMIDA - provide incentives to grow businesses. The concept is sound. It can be a good thing. Ever get a loan from a bank? What does the bank look for - the ability to pay back the loan. They figure that out BEFORE the loan is granted.
So COMIDA must do the same thing right? Figure out if the jobs will be created and all that? Sounds like a fair enough question.
So here is a guy in the audience asking if the COMIDA board determines the validity of the claims of job creation.
Watch for Bob Hurlbut to lose his cool when dealing with the little people asking questions.
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See COMIDA’s take is that the applicant doesn’t get anything until the job is created.
Then why did COMIDA grant Brighton Lodging LLC a 100K Sales tax waver? That is the grant allowed without a public hearing.
I mean the renovations are still on going. The “job” has not been created. what’s up with that?
Judy Seil at least ties to answer the question but check out Bob Hurlbut. He couldn’t be bothered.
Want more on COMIDA - check out our archives.
The D&C has a good editorial about the war/occupation in Iraq and Randy Kuhl’s position on it. They seem to believe that Kuhl will get off the Bush warmobile come September. I think they may be right, though I am not sure.
All eyes are on September. That’s when Gen. David Petraeus is scheduled to report back to Congress on the troop surge. With 60 percent of Democrats in the House having voted last week against continued war funding, September looms as the start of the downsizing of American involvement in Iraq.
That’s premised, of course, on an unfavorable report from Petraeus, who currently enjoys perhaps the highest rating of any of the Bush team members when it comes to trust.
Like fellow members of Congress, after Petraeus’ report is in, Kuhl will have no choice but to weigh in as a supporter of the status quo or to direct a new course.
A couple points I’d like to make: (1) it’s interesting that Kuhl gets so much attention for his support of the war while Walsh and Reynolds (who have voted with Bush just as much as Kuhl has with one or two exceptions) do not and (2) there’s still plenty of 25 percenters running around the D&C comments screaming about how the terrorists will follow us home. How much longer will the 25 percenters cling to their strange beliefs? That my be the biggest question facing the country politically.
DragonFlyEye makes a good point about permalinks and the local media:
I wonder what people’s thoughts are concerning the media’s obligation to provide information? I mean, one of the continual annoyances I face is bookmarking or linking to an article in a news website only to have it go away. Why is that? Storage can’t be a consideration, so then what is it? You can search this site for any post I’ve ever done and find it, but if you want an article more than a week old on the D&C, forget it.
For what I can tell, City News doesn’t make dead links. The link to a piece profiling our efforts from two weeks ago is still working, for example.
Speaking of City News, they’re running an article about the D&C right now. The gist of the article is that as readership is falling (even more than the national average), our local Gannett-owned daily is trying new approaches, mainly by focusing on it’s web page and trying niche publications. From the article:
Along with Insider, it publishes Rochester Magazine, a slick, life-style magazine that is delivered free to homes in some high-end zip codes and is available for purchase on newsstands; Big Auto Book, an auto-advertising publication; Her, a magazine geared toward women; and ConXion, which bills itself as “your connection to all things Latin.”
As for the D&C website:
Company-wide, Gannett has placed a heavy focus on the internet. The D&C has been adapting corporate’s Information Center concept - a push to make the website not just a clearinghouse for news, but also rich in multimedia content like slideshows and interactive content such as searchable databases.
And the day’s news goes on the website before it appears in print the following morning.
“We no longer consider the newspaper our breaking-news platform,” Flynn said.
It certainly makes sense to put more of a focus on the internet in an age when millions of consumers use internet news. (Image from britainandamerica.typepad.com)
Both a robust web site and increased local coverage would seem to synergize well with the rise of the internet. Your customers can use the New York Times or BBC News for their international needs, and you can ignore all that, and use your freed-up staff to focus on more local affairs.
However, all is not well with this arrangement:
“We cannot fulfill as we once did our traditional mission of chronicling the day-to-day events and the longer-term trends in metro Rochester,” Orr wrote.
…
“A big part of watching out for the public interest is slogging through routine reports, sitting through public meetings, and pestering elected officials with frequent questions,” Orr wrote. “We still do that, but not nearly as much as we used to.”
Emphasis mine.
That’s what Randy Kuhl said yesterday at a Townhall meeting in Brighton. As usual, he got a lot of questions about the war. Kuhl says that these meetings are just a chance for him to listen, which seems to frustrate some participants:
“You dance around everybody’s questions,” said activist and Vietnam War veteran Gene Simes, 62, of Gananda, Wayne County. “If I was a congressman, you know what I would say? I would say, ‘You know what I’m going to do about this war? I’m going to tell President Bush that we wanted it ended.’”
Regardless, I do applaud Kuhl for having these meetings. Kuhl also had this to say:
The election was seven months ago (and) the next election, I haven’t even declared whether I’m going to run or not.”
I’ve been highlighting the outcome of the COMIDA hearing with regards to Brighton Lodging LLC. We discussed the outcome here.
The City Newspaper (Jeremy Moule) had a lengthy article about IDAs and COMIDA. The thrust of article was COMIDA reform and if it is needed using the recent award to Brighton Lodging LLC. It was a balanced article presenting the players and positions on both sides of the argument.
Personally - I think the government’s role is to help those in the community grow and prosper - both businesses and individuals. I just think that there needs to be some oversight. Oversight keeps people honest.
Imagine if the folks in Brighton didn’t get involved in the Brighton Lodging LLC award.
Remember this is a retail hotel where Monroe County has a 40% occupancy rate. A hotel that was purchased in need of renovation - apparently significant renovation. A purchase that per one of the applicants said hinged on getting a COMIDA deal otherwise it didn’t make sense. It is a retail business that promises to create 1 job. Look at the tax exemptions that some other resident of Monroe County will have to pick up and ask yourself it is worth it?
Hell - exempt me from Property taxes and I’ll pay some kid in the neighborhood to cut my grass. I’ll create a job too.
From the city article on the award -
At the last minute, the board deleted the $166,000 property-tax exemption from Brighton Lodging’s benefits package, at County Executive Maggie Brooks’ request. But the company still received more than $180,000 in sales and mortgage-tax abatements.
2 things.
1. w/o intervention by the residents of Brighton through their elected leaders. Brighton Lodging would have gotten even more incentives to refurbish a hotel in a market that may not support it (40% occupancy rate). This intervention drove the change. It wasn’t out of the kindness of Maggie’s heart. Brighton residents through their elected officials deserve the credit here.
2. I’ll have to rely on others for the next bit of info and will gladly retract it if necessary however, I believe Brighton Lodging was also awarded an additional 100K in Sales tax exemptions. See the COMIDA board can do that without a public hearing so I believe these numbers is only includes the funds that a public hearing was required.
I believe there is another 100K added to the 180K.
nevertheless - in the article
Tax incentives, says COMIDA board chair Robert Hurlbut, are essential in attracting and keeping businesses in the county. And, he notes, the Rochester region and all of New York no longer compete only with places like North Carolina. The competition is international - from China, for instance.
Listen to his justification for this award and tell me oversight isn’t needed. Incentives for one job. That doesn’t make sense. We are taking about a hotel not a manufacturer.
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Much has been made about COMIDA. I’ll have another post going up shortly but a couple of things.
1. COMIDA requires a public hearing if the incentive package is greater than 100K
2. COMIDA can award w/o a public hearing packages up to 100K
So Brighton lodging LLC applied for more than 100K in incentives and as a result a public hearing on April 24, 2007 occured in the town of Brighton. For about 2 hours speaker after speaker spoke against the package. I wrote about the summary here,
OK - the stated purpose of that meeting was to gather information and report back to the entire COMDIA board.
Here is Mike Townsend the COMIDA lawyer reporting back to the COMDIA board on May 15, 2007 on the Brighton meeting so the COMIDA board can make a decision. Mike also provided a written back to the board of which I do not have a copy.
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More later but he mentions Paul Haney as having well organized arguments. You can see them here. he also mention Jim Vogel. Brighton Councilman Vogel spoke at the actual hearing and you see his comments here.
Carla Palumbo, the Dem minority leader in the County Leg, had an interesting proposal in the D&C– have the county take over the Water Authority. While I cringe at Minark/Brooks taking over anything, in reality the WA’s members are political appointees of Minarik anyway, so by doing this we remove one layer of deception/control and bring it closer to the people.
I still shake my head when I’m reminded of the blatant, self-serving gorging at the public trough, paid for by the taxpayer:
Last August, the New York state comptroller released an audit indicating that nearly $500,000 in excessive and unearned salary and benefits was inappropriately paid to six officials at the Monroe County Water Authority from January 2000 to January 2005.
According to the audit, a former MCWA executive director received questionable compensation totaling nearly $300,000.
The report explicitly stated that these payouts were done at “the ratepayers’ expense by means of generous employment contracts and separation agreements devised specifically to enrich selected authority officials.”
The comptroller also found that the Monroe County Water Authority board had failed to exercise its governance responsibilities with respect to executive compensation, and as a result, managers were able pay themselves unearned compensation and benefits.
Ah Global Warming
Oops - another example of the permafrost is melting in Alaska. You can see the NYT article here about what to do with a remote village that is affected by the climage change.
The earth beneath much of Alaska is not what it used to be. The permanently frozen subsoil, known as permafrost, upon which Newtok and so many other Native Alaskan villages rest, is melting, yielding to warming air temperatures and a warming ocean. Sea ice that would normally protect coastal villages is forming later in the year, allowing fall storms to pound away at the shoreline.
I remember reading or hearing somewhere that the warming will be good for the northern states. Warmer weather, milder winters and all that. I laughed when I heard that. That also means bugs and insects that can’t survive the winters now will move here. Gee can’t wait.
Can anyone say Fire Ants?
Did you see this? Paul Wolfowitz has blamed the media for his troubles. From the BBC
The outgoing president of the World Bank, Paul Wolfowitz, has told the BBC an “overheated” atmosphere at the bank and in the media forced him to resign.
This points the finger of blame at our “liberal media” or in this case “liberal” editorial boards. Well - Paul don’t blame the Democrat and Chronicle - you can always count on the the support of the D&C Editorial Board. Recall they opined this piece of support - this piece of treat him “fairly”.
(April 27, 2007) — World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz, as wrong as he certainly was in steering his girlfriend into a cushy government job and creating some well-paid slots for old cronies, should be judged by his board on his overall performance as head of this important institution.
[snip]
But it’s only fair to him, and to the reputation of the World Bank, that he stay or go based on what he’s done at the bank, and whether his patronage maneuvers have crippled his ability to serve.
[snip]
Perhaps a monetary penalty is in line, or a public censure. But the board has to be as objective as it can in this judgment. And that means looking at the whole picture.
You have to read my post about it for the entire piece. You can find it here.
So Paul - you got canned at the World Bank for cronyism by giving your girlfriend a whopping big pay raise and as I understand it hiding it from the board. You have the nerve to blame the media for your troubles. Look in a mirror for who to blame but…
Don’t blame the Democrat and Chronicle Editorial Board. Yeah they have other issues, lots of them but don’t point the finger of blame in their direction - they supported you.
In fact - move to Rochester, there are some town blogging spots that are open, the type of cronyism you practice would fit right in at the Water Authority (I don’t recall the D&C calling for any resignations there either).
Yeah Paul - you would fit right in here.
(note: I’d be remiss if I didn’t credit some posts at Americablog and Huffpost for helping me locate some background information).
The Monroe County GOP has done a lot of disheartening things since they seized power, but their latest move, denying grant money to the DA’s Office, takes the cake.
Not only did the County deny this grant money, but they previously had a wage freeze on DA’s.
According to DA Mike Green:
“the salary freeze, which was lifted two years ago, has made it difficult to keep talented attorneys who can earn much more working at private firms. One prosecutor left to join the sheriff’s road patrol to make more money, “
I have long thought one of two things needs to occur in order to maintain the most qualified public officials: 1.) Find a way to reign in private sector executive pay; 2.) Drastically raise the pay of public officials.
It doesn’t take much common sense to figure out the most talented individuals are going to follow the money, especially in our type of economy.
So, the County GOP has denied this grant money which would give our DA’s a modest bonus. What effect will this have? I would wager we will see some of our best prosecutors leave the public payroll. This will no doubt hinder many prosecutions over the coming years.
Next time you hear about a rise in crime or some dirt-bag being released on a technicality, you can place the blame for compromising our safety squarely at the feet of Steve Minarik, Maggie Brooks and the Monroe County GOP.
Election year politics are to be expected, but this crosses the line.