And so it begins....

Local businessman and philanthropist Richard Hanna has announced that he'll be running for the 24th Congressional District's seat in the 2010 election.

“I am running as an Independent minded, pragmatic American who believes that it is government’s responsibility to clear the way for individuals to solve problems, to foster all those productive economic and educational elements that create jobs and opportunity, which has allowed our nation’s citizens to enjoy the highest standard of living in the world,” Hanna continued. “We are living at a time of grave consequences as well as opportunity. How we respond is how the future and how our children will judge us.”

This is great news.

Absit Omen

I've decided to take a break and defer to the highest ranked blog in the 24th.

Really, what else need be said?

Arcuri's Bailout Vote Gets Some Attention

On Monday, Congressman Michael Arcuri joined a minority of the House in voting for the abysmal $700 billion dollar bailout plan. Today Mr. Arcuri was targeted by a non-partisan group opposed to the taxpayer funded bailout, No Cash For Trash.

On Friday a revised version of the bailout larded up with even more spending is scheduled to come up for a vote. It doesn't take much effort to figure out how Mr. Arcuri will be voting.

Outside The Walls of Fortress Arcuri

Congressman Michael Arcuri will finally be holding a public meeting with his constituents, in conjunction with Utica Mayor David Roefaro:

October 17th: Mayor Roefaro will be having lunch at The Balkan in South Utica at 12:30, joining him will be Congressman Michael Arcuri.

Make plans to be there. It should be a memorable occasion.

Gone, But Not Forgotten

Sorry about the lack of posts, but I've finally caught up on my workload. Onward!

The Blackest Of Blackouts

Today's Observer-Dispatch article on Congressman Arcuri's efforts to portray himself as a political independent didn't have many surprises for anyone that's been following his career. The one thing I did find surprising was this:

Despite numerous requests, Arcuri was not made available for an interview for this story – only submitting e-mailed statements.

Up till now Mr. Arcuri's reluctance to answer questions in an interview could have been explained away, but it's beginning to look like he's actively avoiding any kind of open press availability.

Another Pin In The Map

"Unknown Assailant", the most prolific and dangerous gunman in Utica, opened fire again last night:

Two people were shot Wednesday night at the intersection of Jay and Nichols streets, according to Utica police.

Police said Zeffaire Hobbs, 18, and LeShawn Thomas, 17, both of Utica, were being treated for nonlife-threatening injuries at St. Elizabeth Medical Center. Police said the pair was taken to the hospital privately. The shooting happened around 10:05 p.m., police said.

Police are investigating and no arrests have been made.

That means another pin my Crime Tracker map that keeps a record of violent crimes and arsons since the first of the year. It's till horribly undercounting incidents, since I haven't gone back and filled in many crimes from earlier in the year, but it's up to date as far as the last two months are concerned.

Red pins are violent crimes.

Red pins with dots are violent crimes where someone was actually injured or killed.

Yellow pins are arsons.

The blue pin is the home of Mayor David "See no evil, hear no evil" Roefaro.


View Larger Map

Good Morning, America. Rome? Not So Much.

I know this segment about Rome from ABC's "Good Morning America" is causing a bit of a stir, but I'm not sure what the people upset about it are driving at. In essence, the video segment boils down to "This is Rome, New York. There aren't any jobs and people can't afford to live there."

I don't necessarily like the negative portrayal, but you certainly can't fault them for not telling the truth.

No Rest For The Wicked

Sorry about the lack of posts, but I've had a project blow up in my face. I started taking orders for some new artwork on Sunday night and expected to get, maybe, a dozen takers. By Monday afternoon I was trying to keep up with over 40 orders and it's just gotten worse since then.

Hopefully things will slow down a little bit by tonight so I can post something useful. As much as I love you all business has to come first.

NY Times Joins Hanna On Rangel

On Friday, Richard Hanna called for Congressman Michael Arcuri to join him in calling for the resignation of Rep. Charles Rangel:

Congressional candidate Richard Hanna today called on Congressman Michael Arcuri to return donations from embattled Congressman Charles Rangel, D-NY, and join him in calling for Rangel to step down as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.

Rangel is embroiled in three separate investigations by the House Ethics Committee, and has balked at calls for his resignation as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.

Hanna said he believes Mr. Rangel's errors have compromised his credibility and he should step down. He challenged Arcuri to join him in calling for Rangel's resignation.

Now the New York Times has echoed that call:

Mounting embarrassment for taxpayers and Congress makes it imperative that Representative Charles Rangel step aside as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee while his ethical problems are investigated.

This recommendation does not come easily, considering the New York Democrat’s four decades of service in Congress. But Mr. Rangel himself has felt obliged to request three separate House ethics inquiries of his behavior. While denying serious improprieties, Mr. Rangel concedes that he has not lived up to the “higher standard” expected of members of Congress.

His latest admission is that as chief of Congress’s tax-writing committee, he was “irresponsible” in failing to disclose $75,000 in rental income and pay federal and state taxes on a villa in the Dominican Republic.

Mr. Arcuri has refused to comment on the matter, much less return the thousands of dollars in political contributions he's accepted from the corrupt Rep. Rangel. Earlier this morning he was scheduled to make on appearance on WIBX's "First Look" program to answer questions on the matter, but a "scheduling conflict" prevented his appearance. Oddly enough, as the hosts of the program discovered when they attempted to carry out the interview over the phone, that "conflict" also shut down his cell phone.

Update: An anonymous emailer claims that Mr. Arcuri's "scheduling conflict" happened because he spent part of the morning shooting a political ad with either or both Sen. Clinton and former Congressman Boehlert. Take that for what it's worth.

New York In Play?

Somewhere on the second level of Hell a long-ignored and lonely winter clothing salesman is raising his eyebrows. Things haven't quite frozen over, but it looks like the temperature is definitely dropping:

BOOSTED by the selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate, Republican John McCain has experienced a surge of support among women in heavily Democratic New York state - where he has closed the gap with Barack Obama, new private polls show.

The internal Republican and Democratic polls, details of which were provided to The Post, have stunned members of both parties - and produced deep worries among Democrats.

One great concern for Democrats is that the data show a continuous movement toward the McCain-Palin ticket by women, a majority of whom traditionally favor Democrats.

If these polls are accurate it's going to have a huge impact on New York as a whole and, more importantly, our local congressional election. On Saturday I posted that the state was a lock for Mr. Obama, so I should probably Google up some recipes for crow.

Hotel Utica Countdown: H+31

It's now been a month since Utica Mayor David Roefaro missed his self-imposed deadline to resolve the Hotel Utica crisis.

Last month, the city's Urban and Economic Development Commissioner, Robert Sullivan, said that he and his crack staff had developed "several plans" to deal with the problem and were in the process of selecting their final solution. Supposedly, as he stated when interviewed by WKTV, we could expect a press conference "in the coming weeks".

Obviously, we're still waiting.

Mr. Roefaro's administration has continued to demonstrate, time and time again, a level of inability to handle this matter that truly boggles the mind. They've now spent months allegedly working on the problem and, despite constant talk of "getting tough" and "cracking down", have absolutely nothing to show for it. In the meantime the city has been on the hook for close to $10,000 a week covering the Hotel's debts.

That leaves us with only two possibilities for why the Roefaro administration continues to hem and haw while the city treasury hemorrhages cash: they're either incompetent or corrupt.

Given Mr. Roefaro's close ties to the owners of Hotel, and his support for the infamous "Friends and Family" plan, we should probably be praying that he's just incompetent.

The Missing Man, Part Deux

Q: Why would a national political campaign ignore a chance to get some free editorial space?

Editor’s note: The O-D invited the national campaigns for presidential candidates Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain to offer commentary on how their election to office would benefit New York state. Repeated attempts to secure a contribution from Obama’s national campaign were unsuccessful.

A: Because they just don't care. Mr. Obama is almost guaranteed to carry New York thanks to the overwhelmingly powerful Democratic machine downstate. Upstate? Not even worth the bother. We just don't matter.

Let The Weekend Begin

Another weekend, another shooting in Utica:

At least one person was shot in East Utica early Friday night.

The victim was being attended to on the porch of 777 Blandina St. before being taken by ambulance to a local hospital.

Utica Public Safety Commissioner Daniel LaBella confirmed at least one person was shot in the 6 p.m. incident.

Police also were believed to be involved in a foot chase with the suspect near Blandina Street but apparently eluded capture, according to police radio transmissions.

And with that, another pin gets added to the Utica Crime Tracker map.

Red is a violent crime.

Red with a dot is a crime where someone was actually injured or killed.

Yellow is an arson.

Blue is Mayor Dave "I'm cleaning up this city, one gum wrapper at a time" Roefaro's home.


View Larger Map

Blame Billy Fuccillo

Over the next few weeks we're going to be inundated with political advertising on both radio and television. You might be surprised to learn that Billy Fuccillo, he of the annoying "Huuuuggggggeeeee!" car commercials, is the reason why.

Mr. Fuccillo spends an absolutely insane amount of money in the local market. In most instances he invites a sales representative from a station in to "discuss" his yearly ad buy, lays a total price and the number of paid and bonus spots he wants on the table, and then walks away. That's it.

What he manages to do using that technique, other than getting an incredible value for his money, is drop his cost per commercial down to almost nothing. In fact, there are some local radio stations where he's effectively charged less than a dollar a spot. The television and cable outlets are pulling in a little more green, but it's still a relative steal. That's why you see and hear his commercials all the time- he purchases so many that stations have to schedule them almost every hour just to meet the terms of their contract.

So why does that mean an avalanche of political ads?

Because stations are forced to sell advertising time to political campaigns at their lowest effective spot rate. At almost every local station that happens to be the price Billy Fuccillo pays, so politicians get the same bargain basement price per spot he does while spending a fraction of the money.

Out Of Bounds

Strikeslip had been doing yoeman's work on the Route 840 intersection/New Hartford Business Park debacle. His latest post has some compelling documentation that the project never actually received an environmental review:

The picture on the left comes from the November, 1999, Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) for the New Hartford Business Park. The plan on the right was drawn last fall for "The Hartford" development.

Notice anything different between the two?

"The Hartford," the proposed hotel, and two nearby buildings appear to be located outside the "area of study" of the 1999 FEIS... located in what is identified as an "orchard." Since review of Planning Board minutes (as well as other correspondence) makes clear that the Town is relying on the 1999 FEIS to satisfy its obligations under the State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQRA), it certainly appears that "The Hartford," which is virtually complete, has been constructed without the proper environmental review.

On the bright side, the New Hartford powers-that-be have agreed to hold public hearings on the matter. Since they've already committed to bonding for the project those hearings are just a bit of political kabuki, as with most other things in New Hartford. They could save everyone a lot of trouble by just admitting they could care less what the public thinks.

You can find even more wackiness about the project at New Hartford, N.Y. Online. Just keep scrolling down for the whole sordid story.

The Missing Man

If you've been wondering why Congressman Michael Arcuri hasn't been talking about Barack Obama this might be the answer:

Tony Podesta, a senior Democratic lobbyist, said members of Congress were “a little nervous” after Mr McCain shook up the race with his choice of Sarah Palin as running mate and intensified attacks on Mr Obama.

“Republicans have been on the offensive for the past two weeks . . . You don’t win elections on the defensive.”

The campaign manager for a first-term Democratic congressman from a blue-collar district in the north-east rejected suggestions that Mr Obama had become a liability. He said his candidate would reach out to Republicans and avoid attacks on Mr McCain.

Hillary's Headquarters: Utica?

It's not quite in the same category as "What if the south had won the Civil War?" or "What if Hitler had died in WW I?", but Howard Wolfson's latest column for The New Republic has a tantalizing glimpse at the alternative history that might have been:

If I had my way I would be in Utica, New York right now.

When we first discussed where to put the Clinton campaign's headquarters I half-seriously argued for Utica, on the theory that the further away from Washington, D.C. we were, the better off we would be.

Outside of the beltway there would be fewer distractions, and most importantly, less pressure to succumb to Washington, DC group-think.

The Obama campaign understood this and located in Chicago. In the end we chose to plant our flag in Arlington.

I'm no Harry Turtledove, but I would hazard a guess that the alternative "Utica HQ" timeline would have Senator Clinton knocked out of the Democratic primary even earlier. After all, we're the end-state, in every sense, of everything she represents. In particular, the first television crew to visit the city for the inevitable process story would have quickly learned how something she said seven years ago still resonates across upstate New York:

I have now spent countless hours talking to parents who tell me, with tears in their eyes, that their children had to leave upstate, leave their hometown, because there weren't jobs for them. I want to help address that, not ignore it, not put happy talk on it, and I have a plan to do that."

That was Hillary Clinton talking during a Sept. 13, 2000, debate with Rick Lazio during her first campaign for the U.S. Senate.

During that campaign, Clinton repeatedly told voters that if she was elected to the Senate, she had an economic recovery plan that would bring 200,000 new jobs to upstate New York in six years.

That was what she said. Two hundred thousand new jobs in six years.

She said it during a visit to a steel plant outside Buffalo. She told it to a chamber of commerce meeting in Batavia. She said it in places like Niagara Falls, Amsterdam, Oneonta and Binghamton. She said it in political ads.

What voters clearly heard was a candidate promising 200,000 jobs if she was elected to the U.S. Senate.

Well, it is six years later.

Rather than gain jobs, upstate New York has fewer jobs.

Upstate has lost 32,400 jobs during the six years Clinton has been senator, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. New York state, as a whole, has lost 96,800 jobs.

The national perception that Clinton's support in New York is unassailable is based primarily on her powerbase downstate. Upstate, the bitterness over her faux campaign pledge would have been a rich source of material for her opponents. Images of the empty storefronts, derelict industrial buildings, and hundreds of abandoned homes that fill Utica are tailor made to illustrate the folly of three decades of empty political promises and failed policies.

Unfortunately, we've unintentionally become the poster children for what happens in a high tax/high government services environment: businesses both large and small flee from the crushing cost of operations while more and more of the economy becomes totally dependant on government spending. The number one employer in Oneida County is government, from the federal down to the local level, closely followed by the healthcare and social services sector. Together, they account for over 60% of the area's jobs. Even the retail sector is being reshaped by Medicaid and Medicare payments, as anyone who has noticed the incredible number of chain pharmacies popping up across the area can attest.

Given that, it's hard to see how having her headquarters here would have helped her. We're the perfect example of what the rest of the country could expect from her policies, and the results are depressingly, bitterly, brutal.

The Race Begins

The first television spot of the 2008 congressional race is now on the air.

WKTV has a look at the commercial from Richard Hanna's campaign:

In the commercial, Hanna says:

"As a contractor, I've built a lot of things over the years...and put a lot of people to work. Nothing is more important than rebuilding this community. We need more jobs and better pay. That will be my number one priority. I will work to stop the wasteful spending and say no to higher taxes. Most importantly I'll say no to the party bosses in Washington. I've never run for political office before. I can't stand by any longer and watch the career politician destroy our country."

Hanna lays out his professional background as well as talking about what he feels are the most important issues to him when it comes to the area.

While, the ad doesn't call anyone out on issues in the traditional sense, it rather lays out a sort of foundation for the viewer asking the question "Who is Richard Hanna?"

That's a good summary of the ad, but they then go beyond that and do something I really like- analyze the content of the commercial and subject it to a "truth test". Since it's basically introducing Mr. Hanna to the voters, giving some of his background and motivation for running, it's not surprising they didn't find any un-supported statements or distortions.

I'm genuinely taken aback that they not only did some solid reporting on this ad, but intend to do in-depth analysis of political commercials throughout election season. That's a level of commitment that, frankly, WKTV hasn't shown in the past. The station's newsgathering and editorial standards have never been particularly high because they faced limited competition in a market that's been continually shrinking for the last 30 years. This new feature could be a sign things are finally changing for the better, and for that they deserve both credit and praise.

Update: Mr. Hanna's commercial is now available on Youtube.

Breakfast Of Champions

Finally, someone is calling Congressman Mike Arcuri out for ignoring his constituents while he's selling himself to lobbyists in Washington:

Congressional candidate Richard Hanna (Republican, Independence, Conservative) today highlighted the fact that the large majority of his opponent's campaign funding comes from interests outside the 24th Congressional District.

This morning, Arcuri hosted a breakfast in Washington, D.C. where they asked $5,000 a plate. According to events listed by Arcuri's fundraising firm, at least two more similar events are planned this month.

"Big money and lobbyists have subverted the will of the majority, and Mr. Arcuri has bragged about the amount of money he's taken from interests outside this district," Hanna said. "Lobbyists and special interests are taking over our rights."

"My opponent accuses me of using my success to buy a seat in Congress, but that's not true," Hanna said. "At any rate, I'd rather be accused of buying a seat than selling it to special interests - as my opponent is busy doing today."

While the attendees at Mr. Arcuri's fundraising breakfast were able to get a face-to-face meeting with him thanks to their generous contributions, the people that he actually represents aren't quite so lucky. Even his own supporters have remarked on how difficult it is to get any help from his office, much less talk to the Congressman directly:

I voted for Mike Arcuri in the last election. BIG MISTAKE!!! He's running again - against Richard Hanna. I will be voting for Hanna. I need to find out more about Hanna..........I don't know enough about him or what he's willing to do for us. But- I do know that Mike Arcuri IS NOT IT!!

We called Arcuri's headquarters to inquire as to why our incentive check was only for $600. (According to everything we read and according to the official website, we should have gotten $1200.) Well, the young lady on the other end of the phone said they've had a lot of phone calls like ours. People are complaining, and rightfully so. Well! This was a couple of months ago, and lo and behold, we got a form letter in the mail last week from Mike Arcuri, thanking us for our concern about the price of oil/gas! What the hell is he (or his people) thinking? Maybe they're thinking we'll be impressed that he "took the time" to contact us and that we'll disregard the fact that his letter had nothing to do with our phone call. - NOT - Maybe they're just not thinking.

Unfortunately, this isn't an isolated incident. Yesterday's luxury breakfast at Johnny's Half Shell is a perfect example of how cold, hard cash gets Mr. Arcuri's attention while everyday people can't get a response no matter what they do. That indifference has been enough to alienate the bluest-of-blue Democrats, as this post at Daily Kos demonstrates:

Don't think I'll be voting for Arcuri....even though he and I are both Dems! He is our congressman now, and has been such a disappointment.

He said all the right things when I first spoke to him about our son-in-law's stop-loss status and pending third deployment to Iraq. Since then, however, neither he nor his local representative nor his Utica representatives have responded to my e-mails nor to a paper letter which I wrote to him.

I realize that our concerns aren't that important to him, even though it is a life or death matter for us, and I realize that there is only so much he can do to help us anyway, probably. However, it would have made all the difference to us if he had at least responded and even pretended to care....

On the bright side, Mr. Arcuri is offering the people he's been ignoring plenty of opportunities to meet with him this month...if they have the cash. While his pay-to-play mentality might be a bit disappointing, don't let it be said he isn't a man of the people- he's cut the price for his next meet and greet down to $500!

Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Fundraising Breakfast honoring Congressman Mike Arcuri (NY-24)
Johnny’s Half Shell
400 North Capital Street, NW
Washington, DC
Time: 8:30 – 9:30 am
Requested Contributions: $1,000 PACs; $500 Individual

If you go, be sure to try the Spinach and Gruyere Quiche with sliced, vine-ripened tomatoes. I'm told it's fabulous.