Looking at the Town of Henrietta website, I noticed there was a little section stating that Congressman Randy Kuhl visited recently.

We, as residents had no idea he was coming. No announcement was ever made ahead of time.

It states, “Congressman Randy Kuhl met with Supervisor Michael Yudelson last week to discuss issues that affect residents of Congressman Kuhl’s district, which includes Henrietta”.

So if he was there “to discuss issues”, why not bring in some residents? Why not ask OUR opinion as the people you represent?  Ever since Kuhl’s town hall meetings went from a positive PR opportunity to a negative one, he’s done his best to keep the public out.

I bet Eric Massa would want to hear our opinions…

This is a small sample poll so take it with a BIG grain of salt, but it shows, at the very least, that NY-26 should be a competitive race:

A Brilliant Corners Research & Strategies poll of 400 likely voters shows that Alice Kryzan holds a 10-point lead over Republican candidate for Congress Chris Lee with 39 percent to 29 percent and 32 percent undecided. The poll, which was commissioned by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and EMILY’s List, was conducted September 15-17 with a 4.9 percent margin of error.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee slams Kuhl for getting money for a bowling alley in Canandaigua and not getting so much for the VA hospital there:

I’m not completely sure that zydeco music is appropriate for Canandaigua, but it’s an amusing web ad.

See the ad below:

You’ve probably read about the proposed plan for the Treasury to buy approximately $700 billion in distressed mortgage-related assets from private firms. That makes this news very troubling:

Titans of the financial industry are battling to influence the government’s financial rescue plan, a package that will create new winners and losers in the sector.

[...]

House Republican staffers met with roughly 15 lobbyists Friday afternoon, whose message to lawmakers was clear: Don’t load the legislation up with provisions not directly related to the crisis, or regulatory measures the industry has long opposed.

Randy Kuhl has received 5K from the Credit Suisse First Boston PAC, 4K from the Goldman Sachs PAC, and 2K from the Morgan Stanley PAC in this election cycle. These firms are among the largest (still existing) investment banks and certainly in line for a huge payday if this plan goes through. There are undoubtedly other financial companies that have given generously to Kuhl.

Whatever one thinks of the bailout, to have these and other companies given hundreds of billions of taxpayer money without any strings attached is absurd.

It will be interesting to see if Kuhl listens to common sense or to Wall Street lobbyists here.

If this election is going to be about anything beyond arugula and lipstick — and I’m not sure that it is — it ought to be about things like health care and the fall-out of the financial crisis. Last time we discussed the financial crisis, we noted that John McCain supports privatizing Social Security and that Kuhl has supported it in the past.

So let’s be clear on what privatization means. Privatization means replacing some or all of the Social Security tax with private, personal investment accounts. It’s pretty simple, though many journalists seem to have trouble understanding it.

With health care, the debate might also be thought of as a public versus private. A single payer system (which I favor) would replace insurance companies with a single government payer. Neither candidate is proposing that. Obama favors a mandated system in which we’d still have insurers but everyone would have some kind of insurance (unlike now). Massachusetts already has a system along these lines. McCain proposes mostly leaving our system as is, with a bit more federal money for high risk pools and new taxes on workers’ health care benefits.

It’s quite telling that a few weeks ago McCain said that he thought our financial system was working so well that we should model our health care system after it:

Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation.

The financial crisis is believed by most nonwingnuts to have been caused by the lack of certain regulations. Imagine what deregulating the health care system can achieve.

Again, these are issues where we deserve to hear the opinions of everyone running for Congress locally.

The collapse of Bear Sterns, Lehman Brothers, AIG, and, well, the Dow over the past few weeks illustrates the dangers of privatizing Social Security. I don’t think that requires much explanation.

Lest we forget, Randy Kuhl was an early supporter of Social Security privatization. John McCain has also expressed support for Social Security privatization. The Obama campaign has hit McCain with an ad about this:

It will be interesting to see if the DCCC or the Massa campaign hits Kuhl with ads over this.

Social Security is an important issue. Voters deserve to know which candidates would privatize it and which would keep it the way it is now. That goes for candidates in all local Congressional races.

John McCain thinks so

Do Dale Sweetland, Chris Lee, and Randy Kuhl think so too? I’m guessing Dan Maffei, Alice Kryzan, and Eric Massa don’t.

Yesterday’s liquidation of Lehman Brothers was the biggest bank collapse since the 1930s and AIG may represent an even larger collapse.

Can you have large bank collapses in the context of a fundamentally strong economy? What caused this crisis and what can be done about it?

These are questions that should be answered by everyone running for federal office.

F29th links to a a piece in the Hornell Evening Tribune which points out that Kuhl has really only agreed to one debate with Eric Massa. The forum in Elmira is not a debate.

You may recall that Kuhl and Massa debated three times in 2006. You may also have noticed that the Kuhl campaign has taken to telling outright lies in its direct mail pieces, something they didn’t do last cycle.

This is hardly isolated among Republicans in this election cycle. The McCain campaign’s efforts to shield Sarah Palin from the press is unprecedented in the annals of modern American presidential campaigns. And the series of lies from the McCain campaign — about Palin’s attitude towards earmarks, about the Bridge to Nowhere, about Obama’s support or a program to protect children from predators — is changing the landscape of American politics, and not in a good way. Here’s Tom Edsall, probably America’s most respected political reporters, on that:

The McCain campaign, in running TV ads which defy prior political standards, is gambling that the traditional rules governing what is permissible in presidential contests — as defined by the mainstream media — can safely be discarded this year.

The normally cautious and even-handed Associated Press on Thursday declared, “Even in a political culture accustomed to truth-stretching, McCain’s skirting of facts has stood out this week.” The controversies have surrounded McCain television commercials and stump speeches asserting that Barack Obama “supports” comprehensive sex education in kindergarten, that Obama called Sarah Palin a “pig in lipstick,” and that Palin stood firmly against the “bridge to nowhere” — despite videotape evidence that the Alaskan governor provided support for the earmark before she opposed it.

[....]

If, however, the current Republican strong-arm approach to this year’s contest proves effective, not only will Democratic expectations be crushed, but the triumph of image over substance, of playing to bias, and of coded rhetoric will mark a significant advance of the dominance in politics of advertising “ethics.”

[....]

The McCain campaign, however, is banking on the notion that the steady decline in trust in the media has reached the point of no return, that the press and television can no longer play the role of umpire or national arbiter of what is accurate and what is untrue, what is fair game and what is out of bounds.

I speak with people who support McCain, defend his tactics, and also say they support a strong free press. Those people are living a lie, my friends.

If Republicans are able to make an end run around the media, the truth, and previously accepted standards of political behavior, it may mark the death of the press in America and the end of our functional democracy.

From New 10 Now:

The Steuben County League of Women Voters has canceled a candidate forum scheduled for next month.

Congressional candidates Randy Kuhl and Eric Massa and senate candidates George Winner and John Tonello were invited to participate in the debate October second in Bath, but a spokesperson for the league says Kuhl and Winner declined the invitations. Both campaigns say the event did not work with their schedules.