Remember how the GOP-led County Legislature immediately rubber-stamped the Brooks/Minarik unFAIR plan, an hour after Brooks unveiled it last fall?  Remember how the Dems asked for a little time to digest and discuss the plan, but were voted down by the GOP?

A similar scene played out recently in Parma, and is probably playing out in other towns, as they have to ratify the revised money-sharing agreements that are affected by the unFAIR plan.  According to Changing Parma, a couple independent thinkers on the Parma town board were steamrolled  by the rest of the board and supervisor into accepting the agreement, h:

So here we have it folks, if you’re an elected Republican it is more important to accept dictates from above than to question the provisions of an agreement that has been scrutinized from the start. For Parma we believe this will only get worse as one of the independent voices; Joe Reinschmidt, leave the board and is replaced by Gary - the Republican town leader - Comardo….that should be interesting, another Minarik Jr. elected in Parma (can you guess who the other Jr. is????)

Anyone see anything similar elsewhere in Monroe county towns?

Over at Daily Kos, Mike Pridmore has given us, in his diary, 10 good reasons to vote for Eric Massa.

In the ugliness of the Democratic presidential primary season it is a good thing when we find something we can all agree on. As we approach the primaries we also come to the end of the fundraising quarter. And I think we can all agree that supporting Eric Massa is a good thing. Here are 10 good reasons to support him:

Go on over to Kos and read the reasons, and on this New Years Eve, maybe we can all think of ten things that we can do, individually, to help get Eric elected. Call them New Years Resolutions, if you like. Then go over to massaforcongress.com and offer your services. Wasn’t it Ghandi who said, “Be the change you want to see in the world”?

I’m in New York City visiting friends right now, so I haven’t had much time for blogging, but I’ve had lots of time for reading New Yorker political articles on the subway. The recent article about the immigration issue in 2008 is fascinating. We’ve written before that we think that Republicans will make immigration the big issue in Congressional, if not the presidential race. The article makes the case that this is not only irresponsible but also possibly politically disastrous:

Barack Obama, during a recent interview with the editorial board of the Boston Globe, predicted that the Republicans will run next fall on two issues: terrorism and immigration. When I asked a leading Republican strategist and former Bush lieutenant if he agreed, he said merely, “I hope not.” He argued that it was incorrect to think that immigration was the second most important challenge facing the United States. “We need to address other issues, like the economy, health care, and education,” he said. When I asked Tancredo if he was leading his party “over a cliff” or “to the promised land,” he laughed and said, “I see manna out there.”

The evidence so far, though, points to a cliff. In several election contests in the past two years, Republicans tried and failed to deploy immigration as a campaign weapon. This November, Republicans in Virginia and New York who ran on the issue were defeated. Not even Eliot Spitzer’s misbegotten plan to issue driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants, which was thought to be ruinous for Democrats, has damaged the Democratic Party; rather, the Party increased its numbers in local races around the state.

[....]

Far from fearing the immigration issue, some Democratic strategists are quietly cheering how the subject has played out. Simon Rosenberg, a Democratic strategist who has closely studied the politics of the issue, says simply, “The Bush strategy—enlightened on race, smart on immigration, developed in Texas and Florida with Jeb Bush—has been replaced by the Tancredo-Romney strategy, which is demonizing and scapegoating immigrants, and that is a catastrophic event for the Republican Party.”

Back in September, I was not yet a contributor, or even a commenter to RT. But, in reviewing this month of Sept’06, it was obvious that these guys were on fire!

As the elections were coming fast upon us, most of the posts were in direct reference to the candidates and the voting. A fund-raiser for “Shot-gun” Randy featuring “Shooter” Cheney (Poster Boys for Gun Control) took up a good portion of the blog and lots of great, sardonic posting was to be found. The D&C’s take was unimpressive. Photos of the protest and the anti protest (featuring a Nazareth co-ed with a sign that said “We love Dick” which, ironically, didn’t need a caption :)) abounded, along with photos from Eric Massa’s Veteran’s picnic where you could have your picture taken with Eric for free to contrast with Cheney’s $1,000.00 a shot (pun intended) photos.

The month started out with the primaries and Hillary’s refusal to debate her opponent, Johnathan Tasini, but also her willingness to support our local congressional candidates with appearances. I was struck by a comment to one of these posts from Exile which was in reference to gender equality which said:

“The soft bigotry of lowered expectations is hardly better than outright discrimination.”

Beautifully said, may I quote you?

A post, regarding primary voting, by btp really grabbed my attention. In this post, the writer is telling his daughter a story about the importance of voting and of being the one to step up to the plate in terms that a 5-year old can understand:

Once upon a time, there was a nice man who wanted to save the day. He was tired of the Mean People. They were always taking things from people and saying mean things about them. The nice man said, “That’s not very nice. There should be rules to say the Mean People can’t do those things.”His friends said, “Oh well, that’s just the way it is. You can’t do anything about it.”

“Yes there is! I’ll run for office!” the nice man said. “What do you mean?” his friends asked. “It means I’ll tell people to vote for me, and if I get enough votes, I’ll get elected, then I’ll be able to make rules that say ‘Mean People, if you keep doing those mean things, you’ll go to JAIL!!!” (She liked the drama.)

I’ll tell you what- Elmo and I are really digging this stuff!! And we love the drama too!!

When channel 13/WHAM was set to air “The path to 911″, RT did what it does best-it advocated for the public and encouraged the public to advocate for themselves. Advertisers and sponsors to the program were listed for contact along with the VP & General manager, Chuck Samuels. Louise Slaughter comes on board and makes an official statement on the issue, and a reporter is sent to Drinking Liberally. Then we don’t hear back from that, did he show?

stlo7 had some great posts, which were instructional in nature, to help us better communicate with the conservatives and non-political junkies in our life in “Talking to conservatives round 3″ and “Always helping voters”. I, for one, am guilty of impatience and extreme adrenaline rush when trying to reason with the dark side and advice on how to “get to Yes” is greatly appreciated.

As the month wore on, the Mark Foley scandal was coming into full swing and a favorite post of mine, from Exile, was Throw Tommy from the train.That, and stlo7’s post, What XXXactly did Tom Reynolds know about Mark Foley and what did he do about it? told the story of of a pathetic little congressman with a disqusting habit of hitting on underage pages (Mark Foley) which Congressman Tom Reynolds was painfully aware of and did nothing. Sadly, this was not enough to unseat this hubristric “Jaba-the-Hut” of a congressman.

Jeanine Pirro also started her tortured path towards the Senate. Here is Minarik’s take. We discussed torture and dissected the ticking bomb argument. Jim Walsh is a little loose with the facts (on tape no less).

John Edwards surges ahead in Iowa. Huffington post has this to say:

John Edwards has clawed his way into contention to win Iowa’s caucuses on Thursday in the first vote for the Democratic presidential nomination, gaining strength even as rivals Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have lost ground, according to a new McClatchy-MSNBC poll.

Good news folks, and Yours Truly will be traveling to New Hampshire this weekend to put boots on the ground for Edwards. Wish me luck.

So, the calm before the storm. We are done with Jingle Bells and RGE’s Vote Your Choice ads. Primaries in Iowa and New Hampshire will be done in a week or so. The New York primary is February 5th.

So expect to be inundated with vote for me ads , calls and mailers fairly soon - maybe some of those candidates will throw some ads our way . Actually, New York is in play from a primary perspective because we are early and will actually get to influence who gets on the ballots from either party.

Have you made up your mind?

I get asked that a lot as I continually practice the politics of personal conversation.

My favorite situation is the hand-wringing I see from Dems, agonizing over who they should vote for, because they want to vote for someone who will win in November. I usually tell them to vote for someone they actually want. Someone who closely represents most of their positions. I remind them that more than likely in November they will pull the lever for the Democratic nominee anyway, so the primary is really your only opportunity to select a candidate of your choosing. If they are worried about who plays better in November - I remind them that this is New York. The candidates have to earn other states so let those other states decide.

Meanwhile - it is never too early to look at their positions,

Here are two charts that might help:

One from the New York Times on all candidate positions

The other - grist.org on Candidate environmental positions.

Check them out.

Also - ask yourself - if there is a candidate from the other party that you could vote for?

In our continuing series of monthly wrap-ups, today we look back to August 2006.

Back in the day, the D&C had the fortitude to investigate some COMIDA fraud; it makes one wonder where their back-bone has gone.

August 06 gave us the Democratic Primary for Joe Lieberman’s CT Senate Seat. Pitting Lieberman against progressive darling Ned Lamont. Lieberman’s people were whining about their website, but, in the end, Lamont beat Lieberman for the Democratic nod. We were all pleased to see our very own Chuck Schumer endorse Lamont’s candidacy.

A great new blog named The Fighting 29th burst into the blogosphere, helping set the record straight on Randy Kuhl. Speaking of Kuhl, back in August 06 Eric Massa secured the endorsement of a powerful NYS Union, mainly because Kuhl had a history, in the NYS Senate, of voting against worker’s rights.

We had Jim Walsh sending out false literature, while Dan Maffei challenged Walsh to a debate. Speaking of lit, Assemblyman Joe Errigo was sending out what appeared to be taxpayer funded campaign mailings.

Willa Powell announced her candidacy for the State Senate’s 56th district, running against entrenched incumbent Joe Robach.

Local TV weatherman, Kevin Williams, displayed an absurd aversion to science. It’s OK, though, because we’re here to help guide Mr. Williams to the light.

Finally, with the September 06 NYS primaries around the corner, we had Eliot Spitzer facing off against Tom Suozzi and John Faso (remember them?) in a Rochester debate.

On to September….

Looking back to the early days of RochesterTurning, I realize that things have changed a lot for progressives over the past 18 months. In mid-2006, the Republicans still had control of both houses of Congress, the press had yet to receive the memo saying that Bush was wildly unpopular out here in flyover country, and the entire progressive movement was in a deeper funk than George Clinton doing an encore of “Atomic Dog”….

But the liberal blogosphere was already making great strides. One thing I’m struck by is how much we here at RT depended on other local bloggers, like DFE, NYCO, The Rural Patriot (and the rest of the 29th Blogging Irregulars), and Rottenchester. Then, as now, we get by with a little help from our friends.

It’s also been a lot of fun reading about what Dan Maffei and Eric Massa were up to before they became household names among upstate progressives. BTP had a terrific post about the make-up of NY-29. Among the first real news reported was that Paloma Capanna had dropped out of the Democratic primary in NY-25, ensuring that there would be no primary. These local races got a real shot in the arm as outside observers, like Charlie Cook, began to write that NY-29 and NY-25 were poised to become among the most competitive races in the country. And the Q2 fundraising numbers, which we, along with other upstate bloggers, spent a lot of energy publicizing underscored just how competitive these races were going to be — for example, Massa out raised Kuhl for the third consecutive quarter. Predictably, the D&C ignored nearly all of this.

The biggest splash of 2006 was old friend OptimusPrime’s one man protest of the Kuhl vote against stem cell research! MyDD picked up the story — our first hit with a national blog. The footage of the protest is gone from the WROC site but DFE did find footage of Kuhl babbling on about why he opposes stem cell research.

As the month wound down, Kuhl took a trip to Iraq Massa and Kuhl agreed to a series of debates.

You may have noticed the “One Vote ‘08″ ad running in the center column.   This is a great tool for comparing how the presidential candidates plan to address world poverty and disease. ONE is on the front lines of confronting poverty– I’d call them “subject matter experts”– and you can compare what they recommend to what the candidates say they’re going to do.

It was interesting to note that of the Dems, only Richardson didn’t respond, and of the GOPers,  only Huckabee responded.  For many of the rest of the GOP, they were able to take excerpts from campaign speeches to answer the questions. Sorta.

I think a non-response either means that the candidate’s giving poverty issues lip service, or some staffers are asleep at the switch.  Expect biting lyrics about non-responders in the next U2 album. (U2 frontman Bono initially kicked off ONE.)

This is the first in a series of monthly wrap-ups. If you joined us recently - here is how it all started…

“I am committed to fostering a progressive, sustainable community in the Greater Rochester area”. So started btp’s kick-off rant. Introducing RochesterTurning to the public. This was the culmination of several meetings in darkened coffee shops with btp, myself, J and Exile. All of us had roots in the local activist community with experience in a wide variety of different groups- something critically important when writing about Rochester.

So one post down and lots more to go. We were looking for our bloglegs so to speak.

We discussed Chicago and how they are greening their city. Go back and read it - it still applies today. Just the other day, I was having a conversation with someone about companies who, for example, who buy/lease roof space on industrial box stores and install solar panels. So we were asking questions back then..

Joining the Blogosphere means we had to link to other blogs. DFE was our first friend in the neighborhood as he wrote about the Wegmans egg farm.

Metro Justice was ramping up some COMIDA Awareness as well. We discussed the D&C editorial, Metro Justice packed the Legislature and wrote about it with pics.

We started to reach out to get people involved in campaigns - someone named Maffei was getting organized in Monroe County and we started covering Eric Massa.

There were a few other blogs out there…

And 30 days later we updated why we are here.

Our coffee shop meetings translated into 15 posts and 29 comments. BTP basically carried the posting torch for the month. My first post didn’t hit until the following month. Exile - the posting machine - didn’t rev up the posting engine until the following month. June 2006 seems like such a long time ago. Technically it is only 18 months but it truly seems like several lifetimes ago.

It is interesting reviewing our first month - looking back, I think we’ve grown in ways we simply don’t even know yet. In the end none of this matters unless you, our readers, come back and play. So a hearty thank you for making all this a worthwhile experience.

As you look through these posts ask yourself, like we will, what will the next 18 months bring?

I think the answer is we will have a measure of growth much like comparing RochesterTurning (version June 2006) to RochesterTurning (version December 2007) version. 18 months from now is June 2009. We will see…

Confucius said a really long time ago that “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”. Well, if that “series of tubes” called the Internets was invented back then he would probably add - and if u r blogging, it starts with a first post.

RochesterTurning’s first post came in June 2006, the same month of Ted Stevens’ famous “tubes” speech. 18 months is like an eternity in blog time- it’s hard work to write the 5-9 articles a day, attend and write about events, and generally keep our focus. Over time, our stuff slips off the front page. We have also discovered that we too lose context of what we have written.

So for the past few weeks, the RochesterTurning team has been hard at work reviewing our early content and creating monthly summaries of our early posts.

It has been an interesting project for the authors. If you wander back, you too will find some of it was painful as in “OMG, we actually wrote that” some of it was inspirational as in “Gee, how do we do more of this“, Much was informational as in “Oh, yeah, I remember that and it was a good point then as now“.

We think we’ve come a long way since we started. When btp got a group of us together for this “blog thing” - we wanted to help readers see how local government affects you and how you can affect government. We’ve been overly optimistic in what we thought we could initially achieve yet we’ve excelled in ways that we never expected.

En-route to becoming more informed ourselves - we have helped create a more informed community. There are lots of different voices and opinions - Just look through the recent comments. There are still miles to go before we sleep so to speak but looking back - We’ve come a long way and are looking forward to continuing the journey.

Perhaps most importantly - we are having fun, you are coming back and new folks are joining all the time.

Thanks for joining the conversation. We’re on a roll, and you’re a big part of it.

Here is where we’ve been…

Spelling can be an issue for busy writers with jobs, kids, etc. Here’s how to fix that there problem.

1. When you finish your article, click the Spell Check button (see image below).

2. Little squiggly lines will appear under misspelled words. (Note it doesn’t spell check the title– you’re on your own for that.)

3. Click each word that’s underlined, and you will be presented a bunch of suggested spellings.

4. Select one of the suggested spellings, or not. Repeat for each word with the squiggly underline. It’s just that easy.

Welcome to the If I hear a Christmas jingle or a Voice Your Choice reminder one more time… edition

So where to start? How about the beginning. It was a light week given the Christmas holiday still there was some excitement.

Let’s start with the D&C editorial board. James Lawrence wrote a piece where he attended the Rudy Guiliani fund raiser and asked Ms. Brooks if she would intervene in the Public Defender selection process. She dodged the question and we asked if Mr Lawrence would actually follow up... Someone want to start a pool? Anyway maybe next time Mr Lawrence sees Rudy - he can ask him if it is the Guiliani campaign position that all Muslims should go back to their caves.

Speaking of Mr Lawrence. He fond of pushing the conversation in the story chats. Well - here is Ladkiddo’s take on one particular story chat.

We asked who actually reaches out to absentee voters. Where was MCDC?

jrviper has a nice piece on how to do a FOIL request. They come in handy to ensure open government and that our representatives are doing what they are supposed to be doing.

RochesterTurning tried to offer a silent night during the actual Christmas Holiday and instead delivered a little tongue-in-cheek, a little religious instruction and, a thanks to you, the reader. But in the spirit of Christmas maybe the DCCC delivered some support to the local Democratic Congressional candidates.

Then there is the debate over Monroe and Rural Ambulance with City Council overridding Duffy’s veto, Brighton tries to get misspent COMIDA money back, and speaking of IDAs and the lack of oversight - it’s not just for Monroe County anymore.

As a reminder of all that is fragile, ex-Prime Minister Bhutto was assassinated. Check Juan Cole’s take.

Speaking of Fragile. How about Bush’s unwavering support for the troops. Who needs pay raises when you have Haliburton doing the same jobs for 3x the cost.

There was a D&C retrospective of all things Brooks spread over two posts- the Public defender selection and this one by exile and ladkiddo.

Finally - in breaking news - Duffy is against the intercept plan. Who knew?

See you next week.

From the AP via the Washington Post, Bush Signs Child Health Care Extension into Law:

Many Democrats, with help from some Republicans, wanted to give the program a significant cash infusion and broaden coverage to an estimated 4 million more children.

They overwhelmingly supported a tobacco tax increase to pay for the expansion.

(snip)

The Democratic-pushed bills would have expanded the program by $35 billion. Bush said the proposals did not put the neediest children first.

And we all know that the expanded bill was voted against by our very own Rubberstamping Randy Kuhl, hometown congressman extraordinaire, who lives in the back pocket of the tobacco companies, and votes lock-step with Bush all the way.

Don’t we have a responsibility to do right by our progeny? What a sad commentary on our society, when sick, uneducated children are what our local and federal governments have come to be content with. Thanks George, thanks Randy, thanks Maggie. But then again, I would expect nothing more.

I heard this on a radio news report and found a link on Americablog. The Defense appropriations bill which contains pay raises for the troops among other things also includes provisions for Americans to seek damages and sue, in a court of law, the Iraqi government.

Well - President Bush is vetoing it because he doesn’t want the Iraqi government sued in court.

WTF?

From yahoo news via Americablog. Read the entire article

Overall, the bill authorizes $696 billion in military spending, including $189 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, for the 2008 budget year. It aims to provide more help to troops returning from war and set conditions on contractors and pricey weapons programs.

So here is the rub.

The provision that is causing problems would have allowed the victims of the executed Iraqi dictator Saddam to seek compensation in court, Democrats said. The Iraqi government has warned that former U.S. prisoners of war from the first Gulf War might cite this legislation in an attempt to get money from the Iraqi government’s reported $25 billion in assets now held in U.S. banks, they say.

Unless Bush vetoes the legislation, the Iraqis have threatened to withdraw all of their money from the U.S. financial system to protect it from the lawsuits, Democrats said.

The White House contends the legislation subject to the Bush veto would imperil Iraqi assets held in the United States, including reconstruction and central bank funds.

Um -just go read the article. It will remind you of the GOP congress already passed exemption measure preventing compensation recovery of soldiers - victims of torture - for the first gulf war.

I remember years ago delays in federal budget approval AND delays in officer appointments (Congress approves officer promotions) I recall I was victim of this and frankly I was pissed at the time and we weren’t in a shooting war at the time.

yeah - support the troops my ass. No toss ‘em under the bus.

Oh - given the overwhelming approval in both the Senate and House as Exile wrote about earlier where are our local Congress folks going to come on a Bush veto.
Actually they will vote to override it and that will be the sole line in their campaign ad that say they are not a rubber stamper.

(well, it’s a pocket veto so I don’t think they get a vote to override - should be interesting next year)