See we can make a difference.

We wrote about the LTE that slurred Massa by stating, as fact, his campaign had something to do with releasing Randy Kuhl’s divorce records in 2004. That assertion was a lie.

Your calls prompted a published retraction in this morning’s paper.

A Sunday letter to the editor incorrectly stated that Democrat Eric Massa’s campaign staff secured sealed court documents to embarrass Rep. Randy Kuhl, R-Hammondsport, Steuben County, in 2006. This leak has been attributed to the 2004 campaign of Kuhl opponent Samara Barend.

I’d link to the retraction but, not unexpectedly, it isn’t on line. So no link.

Yo D&C - put the retraction on line (maybe next to the LTE) because if you publish a retraction and no one sees it , is it really a retraction?

Paul Kramer, the owner of the flatiron-style building on the corner of University Ave & Atlantic Ave, and one of the driving forces behind ARTWalk, in this week’s City Newspaper:

“Instead of the geography of nowhere, this (the ARTWalk) is the geography of somewhere”

He’s alluding to James Howard Kunstler, an important New Urbanist author.

Mr. Kramer, Rochester could use a hundred more like you.

(Photo of Flatiron Building (c) 2007 Joseph Sorrentino.)

I picked this up over at RAW story. Apparently the Washington Post recently discovered that the junior Senator from New York has breasts. Not only that, she wore an outfit with a lower neckline and had that thing that people with breasts usually have - cleavage. Oh my God. Glad to see that we are focusing on the important stuff. What is interesting is the Washington Post’s defense of this drivel.

The Post ombudsman defended Givhan’s article.

“Does this have anything to do with whether Clinton should be president?” the ombudsman asked. “Not a thing. But do we want to read the column about her cleavage? Yes indeed.

Gee, I’m looking forward to more intense investigatory journalism where they uncover the fact that Obama is black or Richardson is Hispanic. Did you know that John Edwards last name begins with “E”. Can’t wait.

Who cares?

Look - the larger picture here is how we, if you pardon the pun, look at women. Do we really need to focus on types of Pant suits, or necklines? Remember the fuss over Nancy Pelosi when she became speaker? The discussion was what she was wearing. Why can’t we know about how these people - our elected officials - will develop and implement policy that affects their constituents.

Remember Carrie Andrew’s wonderful guest essay about diversity in the Monroe County Legislature? We wrote about it but the Democrat and Chronicle links are long gone. But if you have a library card you can access an on-line database of the D&C and read the March 6, 2007 essay. It was about diversity and what diversity brings to the table. Carrie wrote.

However, what really does make a difference and what distinguishes each elected representative is the life experience he or she brings to the table. For example, I have never experienced being pulled over while driving because of my skin color. Or having someone laugh at me because I spoke English with an accent.

However, I have experienced sitting in a business meeting knowing full well that the person I’m working with is more interested in sneaking glances down my blouse than listening to what I was saying. And I may have to decide to give up years of service at work, promotion possibilities and an increased pension if I choose to take time off to raise a child.

These life experiences contribute greatly to how we analyze policies, look at programs, prioritize spending and make many other decisions that are the core of governing. Without having a diverse elected body, issues that matter to many people can be ignored, even unintentionally, or not prioritized.

People’s experiences matter - not their necklines or cleavage.

Yesterday, we told you all about Andrew Stainton, who is running for County Exec as a member of the sustainability party. Turns out the Working Family Party is running a candidate as well:

Brooks, a Republican elected four years ago, will face Working Families candidate Patrick Christopher, 37, of Webster.

That’s the good news. Here’s the bad news:

But the lack of a Democratic challenger at the top of the ticket frees up Brooks to spend the $876,792 in her war chest on some of the 100 other local races in November.

From The Albany Project:

(From Amy Traub at DMIBlog)
At the beginning of the month, I wrote an op-ed for the Albany Times-Union challenging the conventional wisdom that the year’s legislative session was largely a failure. I pointed out that on issues important to most current and aspiring middle-class New Yorkers, Albany has made significant progress: hundreds of thousands of low-income kids are becoming eligible for state health insurance, underserved schools are finally getting resources they’ve needed for decades, and new groups of employees are eligible to organize themselves for a fair deal at work. I argued that by minimizing these substantial policy victories for ordinary New Yorkers, we risk feeding into dangerous myths that nothing of substance is ever accomplished in the state capitol.

It’s important to give credit where it’s due. And if you like the sound of this legislation, imagine what great stuff a state leg full of Clean Money Clean Election candidates would do.

But the question remains: how did all this good stuff get past Joe Bruno? Did he think he was voting on something else?

City has a great LTE this week, Give Lej Control to Democrats, written by County Leg candidate Ted Nixon.

Ted talks about the Democrat’s “We the People - A Citizens Guide to Taking Back Monroe County”. This blueprint has been ignored by the partisan Republicans of the Monroe County Legislature. For that matter, the Democrats have been ignored by the Republicans and until the Democrats have the majority (they only need to pick up 3 seats) this status quo will remain.

A tight-fisted hold on power does not produce teamwork. It produces resistance. An immediate rejection of innovative ideas will not lead to new solutions. It will result in divisive politics as usual and a continuing deterioration of our county’s economy.

Let’s get involved with our local County Leg campaigns and make this change a reality. It’s time to take our county back from the clutches of the odious ones, remove the arrogance and ignorance from the County Legislature and create an environment of cooperation and understanding. We can do this. We have the power.

A video posted on YouTube last week shows local activist Gerry Minerd giving the Pittsford Town Board a hard time. It also shows a clearly irritated Bill Carpenter (the Town Supervisor) asking her about her attendance record. (I wasn’t aware that there was a requirement..)

The issue? Attachments to town board meeting minutes and agendas are available only at the town hall, and not online. I’m a huge proponent of open, transparent government, but it’s entirely possible that Pittsford’s not trying to hide anything, here. Getting electronic copies of that type of document can be difficult.

Not shown on the video were two other residents who spoke at the meeting. Mike Slade discussed televising town board meetings; there was confusion about whether the town or Time-Warner is responsible for providing public-access television. Judy Braiman spoke about (rumor, here) balloon safety and the Town’s balloon policy.

We’ve been so caught up in the mix of Monroe County politics, that we haven’t checked in with our friends over at the Walsh Watch in quite sometime.   Here’s some of what’s been going on in the 315 (and part of the 585, of course):

“Just the other day Walsh showed that he is still opposed to a woman’s right to choose (even in the case of rape and incest), family planning, and contraception, by voting  for an amendment `to prohibit use of funds in the bill for Planned Parenthood.`”

A reader just sent me the reply he received from from Max Anderson (about the letter o’ lies) via email and I’m passing it along:

I’m sure that you know, we’ve been flooded with “feedback” on that sentence this morning; many not so nice as you might imagine…Anyway, a correction is slated for tomorrow’s paper.

Andrew Stainton

On Saturday morning, three of the Rochester Turning contributors (stlo7, Exile, and myself) sat down for a conversation with Andrew Stainton, the Sustainability Party Candidate for Monroe County Executive.

You’re obviously aware of our strong opinions about the current administration. Mr. Stainton is not just “anyone but Maggie”, though. We discovered that he is a man who cares deeply about the future of Rochester and Monroe County, and that he is a man with some truly visionary ideas about where our community should be heading. We were, to say the least, extremely impressed with Mr. Stainton’s intelligence and passion.

One of the things that we liked about Mr. Stainton was his emphasis on local economies, on keeping our dollars in the area and using multiplier effects to crank up the economy.

We also liked his dual emphasis on transportation and downtown development. For too long Monroe County has been sprawling itself into second-class status. Mr. Stainton has viable, low-cost proposals to give our citizens real transportation choice.

His understanding of transportation issues and downtown dynamics lead him to strongly oppose the Renaissance Square project. He believes that, with Maggie Brooks as our county executive, we will very likely spend a quarter-billion dollars on an incredible boondoggle. We’re inclined to agree.

He understands, too, that the future of the City of Rochester is the future of the county, and he is able to articulate that idea in a way that isn’t threating to suburbanites.

Mr. Stainton is the only person in Monroe County with the courage, and the ideas, to stand up to Million Dollar Maggie and the Minarik Machine this fall. We applaud him for that.

The following is a transcript of our interview with Mr. Stainton.

RT: Tell us about yourself.
AS: I got into politics through the Ren Square issue. I worked two blocks away from the site for years, originally I supported it, I mean who’s not for mass transit and downtown development? Then I went to a city council meeting, and I heard what the plan really was, and ever since then the closer I look the worse it gets. You start to wonder, too, if it’s like this for this project, what’s it like for other stuff?

(He was part of PFABBS - People for a Better Bus Station)

RT: Are you going to get your 1500? (1,500 signatures are required to get on the ballot)
AS: Oh, absolutely. No doubt about it, we’re going to get a couple thousand. You’ll see us at the Public Market, the beach, the East End. Any place there’s people. You know, the value of this is really a couple of things. Somebody ought to be in there contesting the race, and raising some tough questions for Maggie Brooks to answer. There’s also the larger issue of sustainability; this allows us to address those issues, which, we believe, need to be heard pretty quickly.

RT: You wrote a piece in the D&C, maybe a year ago, about the Inner Loop. Could you tell us about that?
AS: Sure. It was about three years ago. The idea is that there’s a LOT of asphalt there that’s not getting used. There’s no traffic, if you stand in the Kinko’s parking lot and watch for a while, it’s like looking at the traffic on a dirt road. So you’ve got all this asphalt, and you’ve got to pave it, plow it, clean it. You’ve got to maintain it, salt it, it’s a lot of effort. The idea is to take out the part of the loop from Monroe Avenue to at least Main Street. We could capture about 100 acres for development.
RT: That’s more than I thought. I’ve always felt like that part of the loop really does cut off the East End from the rest of downtown.
AS: It’s huge, that things got it’s own climate. Think about how much money we’re paying to maintain this mistake; to keep something that saps Rochester’s vitality. We should return that land to the tax base. Of course, people would still be able to travel that 1.3 miles by car, they’d just do it at 30 miles per hour instead of 50. The transportation people and development people in the city are on board with this, they’re ready to go get some land. The state’s on board, too. Where’s the county? Talking about a bus station.

__(’Read the rest of this entry »’)

We won’t be posting (barring breaking news) until after lunch (between 1 and 2) but we encourage you to read the entire interview.

There is an alternative to how we allocate county resources.

You do have a choice on election day.

Later on, we’re going to have the transcript of an interview we did with Andy Stainton who is running against Maggie Brooks (and is the only person running against Maggie Brooks) for County Exec.

Let’s be clear about what the race should be about as opposed to what Minarik and his flunkies will try to make it about. We want this race to be about substance, about whether or not we should have more attempts at Great Leap Forward-style economic development (as with the ferry, Highfalls development project, and possibly Renaissance Square), about whether the county should continue its sales tax shenanigans, and whether COMIDA should continue to operate in such a, shall we say “less than transparent” manner. We want it to be about the future of this county, about its economy, and about its quality of life.

Stephen Minarik wants it to be about things like internet-filters at libraries, the Pledge of Allegiance in schools, and other pseduo-issues that scare up (literally) more Republican voters from the suburbs.

The Democrat and Chronicle editorial board has played a shameful role in Stephen Minarik’s political Reign of Terror. By publishing asinine “Speaking Out” essays about internet filters in libraries, encouraging absurd debates about the Pledge of Allegiance, and by continuing its ridiculous and pointless anti-gangster rap jihad, it has (deliberately or not) helped distract the voters of Monroe County from the real issues that face them.

This race should not be about distractions. The county as a whole will surely benefit from an honest, issues-based campaign. Whether people support the Renaissance Square project or not, they should agree that the project should be thoroughly and openly debated. Whether people like COMIDA or not, they should agree that massive government giveaways should, at the very least, be subject to scrutiny.

Make no mistake: Stephen Minarik wants this race — in fact, all county races — to pit the good white, upstanding, hard-working, God-fearing, Bush-loving people of the suburbs against the gay, black, flag-hating, pornography-loving freaks who live in the city (and, increasingly, in Brighton and Irondequoit as well).

We cannot allow that to happen. We all live in the same county. In the words of Benjamin Franklin, we must all hang together, or surely we will all hang separately.

One of our commenters spoke with the man who wrote the factually incorrect letter that the D&C published today (I am not reprinting the man’s name here since I do not want to encourage others to contact him). Here’s a snippet:

I started my conversation by acknowledging his right to express an opinion about Eliot Spitzer. Then I admonished him for writing lies about Eric Massa. He replied that the D&C checked the facts and printed his letter.

Now, Rotten suggest that it is unlikely that the D&C fact checks the letters it prints (I’m inclined to agree, since they are often inaccurate, though rarely so blatantly as this one). So I wonder: does the D&C have any policy about truthfullness in its letters to the editor?

If someone writes a letter in to the D&C claiming that a candidate is a serial killer and drug addict — and these assertions have no support in any kind of public record — would the D&C refuse to run it?

I realize there’s gray area here — the D&C is not responsible for the content of the letters and lacks the resources to thoroughly fact check all of them (I don’t think they fact check their editorials that carefully, either, to be honest). But I don’t think that the letter o’ lies they ran earlier today is in that gray area — it’s on the wrong side of good journalistic practices.

Let’s talk about results-oriented government.  Let’s talk about doing things that make sense to help taxpayers, instead of the Brooks/Minarik one-shot cash deals and useless “Taxpayer Protection Acts”.  How about government bodies teaming up to get volume discounts?

The towns of Brighton and Irondequoit are saving at least $30,000 by working together and hiring one consulting firm to help with property revaluations in both towns.

(snip)

By the time the entire revaluation process is over, Irondequoit may realize a total saving of about $100,000, Heyman said, including the $20,000 it saved on the GAR contract.

Brighton’s assessor, Elaine Ainsworth, said it was too early to tell how much her town would benefit in addition to saving $10,000 on the GAR contract.

“We’re just in the beginning stages,” and some things are hard to measure, she said.

For example, she has created a brochure that Irondequoit could easily use as its own after making a few changes — saving several hours of labor.

It’s no surprise this comes from the 2 Dem-controlled towns.  Wow, actually saving the taxpayer money.  What a concept!

As you may or may not know, I went to the Voice of the Voter panel a few days ago. Here’s my take on the visit.

I came to the forum maybe 10 to 20 minutes late, so I missed the whole boring rules and introductions and so on, I guess. I came into the room as some citizen-like person was talking (I could tell because she didn’t have a suit on), and quickly just sat down somewhere.

The room the panel was in is a classroom in MCC, so there are rows of auditorium chairs facing and open area with a podium. The “citizen-like” person was at the podium, while a row of folding chairs housed “serious-looking people” in suits and stuff, who were at an angle facing both the audience chairs and the podium.

Layout of the Voice of the Voter forum. Not to scale.