Papers write about Kuhl’s Brazilian vacation
Fighting29th has a good round-up of local coverage of Kuhl’s Brazilian vacation:
Reader Elmer sends the Corning Leader’s front-page coverage [pdf] and jump [pdf] The Hornell Evening Tribune has a long story on the trip, too. As usual, the Democrat and Chronicle has the shortest story of the region’s papers, but they front-page a picture of Kuhl along with a paragraph from the A2 story.
The Leader mentions a detail that I’ve heard elsewhere, that Kuhl apparently hung up on reporters during his press call when they went after him about the junket:
Kuhl spoke to reporters Thursday via a cell phone. His phone went dead prior to the end of the call and Kuhl’s office did not return emails asking how much the trip cost taxpayers.
For some strange reason, the Elmira Star-Gazette not covering the story. This is especially strange since the paper is a Gannet paper and Erin Kelly, who wrote the piece for the D&C about this, is a Gannet reporter. Go figure.
Any idea if Democrats have gone on similar fact-finding trips?
I think about half the people on this particular trip were Democrats. This isn’t a partisan issue at all.
Frankly, I don’t think it’s that important of an issue either. I just like writing it about because it’s fun. I don’t especially hold any of this against Kuhl.
It wasn’t important for them to have gone, it cost money that could have been used for things like, oh I don’t know, funding uninsured kids, and just because half were Democrats on this trip doesn’t mean we should give Kuhl or any of them a pass.
I don’t especially hold any of this against Kuhl either but instead it applies to all of them unless there is some explanation. How much did it cost? Why Brazil?
I’m not giving anyone a free pass. I just think that: (1) this was probably a waste of about a million dollars, not that much relative to the 200 billion we’ll spend on Iraq this year and (2) unfortunately this is standard practice for Congress.
The reason to visit Brazil is that Brazil really is a world leader in ethanol. Now, we can’t replicate what they do since we don’t grow much sugar cane and, even if we could, it would make more sense to visit a lab at Cornell or Davis (the two leading ag research programs, to my knowledge) to study it there. So the trip is a waste of money. But it isn’t completely ridiculous as a choice of place to visit
So I’m not ready to write a “Randy is a disgrace” type piece about this. That’s my main point about this.
Fair enough.