Republican Primary costs Oswego County taxpayers $30 a vote

If interest in the Republican Presidential Primary race is reflected by the number of voters who turn out at the polls Tuesday, it would be a fair statement to say there was little interest.

Only five percent of registered Republicans, or 1,659 voters, cast a ballot in the primary race.

That’s according to Legislator Terry Wilbur, who serves as chairman of the Community and Consumer Affairs Committee. He presented the statistics during Wednesday’s meeting.

The approximate cost to taxpayers for each vote was $30, Wilbur noted. “I’ll leave it at that,” he said. “It wasn’t impressive.”

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Texas Planned Parenthood Defunding Halted By Federal Judge

A federal court in Texas ruled to stop a new law on Monday that excluded Planned Parenthood from the Texas Women's Health Program, which serves about 130,000 low-income women in the state. U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel ruled that the law was unconstitutional because it bars eight Planned Parenthood clinics that don't provide abortions from participating in the program based on their affiliation with legally and financially separate entities that offer abortions.

Yeakel also cited the fact that the Department of Health and Human Services cut off all Medicaid funding for family planning to Texas because of the new law, which could jeopardize the entire program.

"The court is particularly influenced by the potential for immediate loss of access to necessary medical services by several thousand Texas women," Yeakel wrote in his ruling. "The record before the court at this juncture reflects uncertainty as to the continued viability of the Texas Women's Health Program."

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Only "Once Chance" To Get Osama

Cutting Social Programs

Committee tables resurrection of expired exemption program

Oswego County Legislator Dan Farfaglia presented members of the Community and Consumer Affairs Committee with a proposal that would return a program that allowed a tax exemption for home improvements.

“When this option was available previously, homeowners were exempt from paying the full amount of the increased assessed value until five years after completion,” Farfaglia wrote in a memorandum to members of the committee.

The committee voted Wednesday to table the proposal, not because they don’t support it, but because they want to obtain more information.

Under the previous law, the first year of the increased value of the home, the owner paid no additional property taxes. Beginning in the second year, they paid a small increased amount.

Gradually the amount paid increased every year and by the time the sixth year arrived, they were paying the full assessed value of the home. Link

Cuomo Skips DRC

Our intrepid anchor and super blogger Liz B. and jack-of-all-trades producer Mike Whittemore are heading out to Corning to cover the Rural Democratic Conference, an annual confab of upstate party members.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who has deep political ties to the group, won’t be there, however.

His office confirmed this afternoon that the governor would be skipping the event, even though he appears on the DRC’s official schedule of events today alongside other elected officials. The official public schedule puts Cuomo in New York City today.
The DRC event last year — held in Schenectday — was something of a homecoming for Cuomo, who had netted the support from the organization during his failed 2002 run for governor. Link

Court of Appeals hears constitutional challenge of GOP plan for new seat

A lower-court judge called it "disturbing," but jurists on the state's highest court were skeptical that there was anything unconstitutional about how Republicans arrived at their decision to upsize the state Senate to 63 members.

Democrats in the chamber sued the majority Republicans in January, alleging the GOP had decided to add an extra seat — which runs from Amsterdam to Kingston, cleaving Albany County in half — purely for partisan advantage.

All along, political sources said, the Republicans tailored the seat for Assemblyman George Amedore, a wealthy homebuilder from Rotterdam, whose win would buttress the GOP's bare one-seat majority in the upper chamber.

It's the linchpin of the Senate's new political map, drawn once a decade after a new Census is released. If the seven judges of the state Court of Appeals throw out the map, the tensely partisan redistricting process would be sent — literally — back to the drawing board.

"This is earth-shattering," Eric Hecker, a lawyer for the Senate Democrats, said Thursday as both sides appeared before the court for oral arguments.

Read more: http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/Judges-weigh-size-of-Senate-3514349.php#ixzz1tLjpjRaD

Helping our Veterans Make Informed Decisions about Higher Education

President Obama discusses a new Executive Order designed to crack down on the bad actors who prey on our veterans and service members considering higher education.

Oswego County Democratic Chicken BBQ

The will be a Oswego County Democratic Committee Chicken BBQ in Hannibal on Sunday May 6th from Noon to 3:00pm at the Hannibal American Legion 226 Rochester Street.

Directions.

Romney Can't Say 'Everything I've Said For The Last 6 Months, I Didn't Mean'

President Barack Obama framed the 2012 election in some of the starkest terms to date in an interview published Wednesday by Rolling Stone.

Obama said that in this election there "will be as sharp a contrast between the two parties as we've seen in a generation."

"You have a Republican Party, and a presumptive Republican nominee, that believes in drastically rolling back environmental regulations, that believes in drastically rolling back collective-bargaining rights, that believes in an approach to deficit reduction in which taxes are cut further for the wealthiest Americans, and spending cuts are entirely borne by things like education or basic research or care for the vulnerable," Obama continued.

Obama rejected the idea that Romney would be able to disavow positions he's taken in the primary. "I don't think that their nominee is going to be able to suddenly say, 'Everything I've said for the last six months, I didn't mean.' I'm assuming that he meant it," he said. "When you're running for president, people are paying attention to what you're saying."

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Fact Checking Fox

Mitt Romney & Rudy Giuliani: A match made in heaven...

Mitt Romney was a pro-war draft dodger who protested anti-war protesters

Well, here's a funny story from Buzzfeed about Mitt Romney: Back when he was a young, impressionable college student at Stanford, he was a Vietnam war protester.

Oh, he didn't protest against the war; he protested against the anti-war protesters:

Carey Coulter, a conservative and anti-Communist student who had spent time as a civilian in Vietnam, was outraged and organized a counter-protest. [...]

As the roughly 150 counter-protesters held signs and chatted with passing students, a tall, neatly-dressed 19-year old Coulter had never seen before approached him.

"He walked up to me and said that he had some experience with the press, and that he would handle the press for me if I wanted him to," Coulter recalled. "I said fine, because I was busy running the demonstration."

Naturally, Mitt Romney supported the Vietnam war. Alas:

Romney did not, however, serve in Vietnam. As a Mormon missionary, he was considere[d] "'a minister of religion'' by the church and was exempt from the draft.

Convenient for Mitt, wasn't it? He voiced his "ardent support" of other kids going off to die in Vietnam, but, darn the luck, his religion required him to go live in a palace in France:

But the Republican presidential hopeful spent a significant portion of his 30-month mission in a Paris mansion described by fellow American missionaries to The Daily Telegraph as “palace”. It featured stained glass windows, chandeliers, and an extensive art collection. It was staffed by two servants – a Spanish chef and a houseboy.

No doubt Romney wanted to go fight in the war he supported so much that he graciously offered his expert media services to the anti-anti-war protesters, but, tragically, he had to oversee his servants in his Parisian palace. And then he had so much studying to do:

Before and after his missionary deferment, Romney also received nearly three years of deferments for his academic studies.

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Ted Nugent: draft dodger (deadbeat dad and creepy ‘teen dater’ too)

April 18, 2012 · Posted

Ted Nugent is not only standing by his violent rhetoric regarding the president, he doubled down today, which is why the Secret Service will be paying him a visit Thursday. But for all his tough guy, gunslinging rhetoric, the real Theodore Anthony Nugent is, above all things, a rank coward and draft dodger. Do contain your shock…

Like the presidential candidate he has endorsed, Nugent managed to avoid service in Vietnam, employing both familiar rhetoric, and describing his clever plan, in a 2006 interview with the Rutland Herald out of Vermont back in 2006: FULL POST

John McCain on Mitt Romney

Calling on Congress to Prevent Student Interest Rates from Doubling

Conservatives At Florida Revival Are Lukewarm For Mitt Romney

Few if any of the Christian conservatives here at The Awakening conference said they would name Mitt Romney as their first choice for president. But whether they are worried about his politics or his Mormon religion, many said the former Massachusetts governor........

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Ted Nugent Screed

Hillary Clinton to speak Monday at Syracuse University

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s foreign policy talk at Syracuse University will be open to the public Monday, with no tickets or reservations required.

SU officials said today that seats in Hendricks Chapel will be available free, on a first-come basis, with the doors opening at 9:45 a.m. The chapel can hold about 1,100 people.

SU officials are advising students, faculty and the general public to avoid carrying bookpacks or large bags to the Clinton event. Those who do will be subject to additional security screenings. Pay parking for visitors to campus is available at SU's garage on Irving Avenue, across from the Carrier Dome.

Romney secrecy

Judges Move Cautiously Forward in New York Redistricting Battle

A three judge panel in Brooklyn Federal court today sought more evidence from parties on both sides of the state redistricting case Favors v. Cuomo, but decided to spread out hearings over the course of the next two weeks because of pending decisions on the lines in two other jurisdictions that could reshape what, if any, intervention they make in reshaping the district maps.

Next Friday, the Department of Justice in Washington  is expected to rule on whether New York’s redistricting plan complies with Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, and the New York State Court of Appeals in Albany is expected to rule on the viability of a 63rd Senate district, created in this year’s plan.

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Mitt Romney Responds To Brian Schweitzer, Grandfather A 'Polygamist'

Mitt Romney responded on Friday to Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer’s (D) suggestion that he'd hit bumps in the road in appealing to the national electorate because his father was "born on a polygamy commune in Mexico."

Addressing the assertion made one day earlier, Romney told Fox News, "My dad's dad was not a polygamist." He added, "My dad grew up in a family with a mom and a dad and a few brothers and one sister. They lived in Mexico and lived a very nice life there from what I understand and then when he was five or six years old there was a revolution in Mexico. They escaped. I believe they went to El Paso first, and were helped by the government to get on their feet and then his dad went around the country, Los Angeles, I think Idaho, Utah, went broke more than once. My dad had a very tough upbringing."

Schweitzer didn't back down after sparking controversy with his comments. Eric Stern, senior counselor to the Montana Democrat, said in a statement to The Daily Beast:

"The governor believes exactly what he said: that Romney is in a pickle. He’s in serious trouble with Hispanics because he took a crazy, extreme position on immigration during the primary (deport even those who may have come here illegally 50 years ago who have children and grandchildren who are naturalized citizens)…Romney will probably not choose to highlight his own family’s connection to Mexico as a way of reaching out to Hispanics, because that history involves a polygamy colony, which is something that Romney doesn’t like to discuss."

Below, additional background:

Romney's father, the late Michigan governor George Romney, was born in Chihuahua, Mexico, in 1907 to American citizens living in a Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints colony. The Romney family had left the U.S. to avoid being prosecuted for polygamy after laws against the practice were enforced, and returned to the U.S. after the Mexican Revolution broke out. Some family members stayed in Mexico and Mitt Romney has about 40 relatives still living south of the border.

LINK TO STORY

Does character count... Matt Doheny?

It’s not hard to make a case that politicians don’t have the best reputation, especially when they are picking a jury in the John Edwards trial.
With the congressional primary just two months away, we have some concerns about one of the prominent candidates.

Matt Doheny, an investment fund manager from Watertown, and Kellie Greene, an international business consultant and seminary student from Sackets Harbor, are both seeking the Republican nomination for the new 21st Congressional District, which includes Warren, Washington and northern Saratoga County. We don’t know much about Greene, and we sort of wish we knew less about Doheny.

Making headlines in the New York Post is never a good way to kick off your campaign.

Yes, we watched the video.

This is the kind of story that makes newspaper editors uncomfortable and readers squirm, right before they hit the replay button and forward the video to 10 of their friends.

Doheny, who is engaged to be married in June, was in Washington, D.C., recently to attend a Republican Party event for possible congressional candidates. He attended without his fiancee. The website gawker.com published a report and photographs in late March, and the New York Post followed with a story and video that showed Doheny being a little too friendly with a female aquaintance who is not his fiancee.

Hey, none of our business; but then again, these shenanigans seem pervasive in the political arena these days. Just tune in to the Edwards trial for a reminder — and he was running for president.

We have not met Mr. Doheny yet and know little about him, but what we do know is a concern. He was charged twice in 2004 for boating while intoxicated and subsequently paid fines. While we believe past transgressions can be forgiven after frank discussion, we have found Mr. Doheny’s statements regarding those 2004 charges and his friendly encounter in Washington more spin than explanation.

The video shows Doheny on the terrace of a restaurant, leaning closely in to a woman while his hand wanders down her back, well, to a place that could lead to a slap in the face.

Read more: http://poststar.com/news/opinion/editorial/editorial-does-character-count/article_5f99b814-8a7c-11e1-a2b3-0019bb2963f4.html#ixzz1sfymZhud

Republican Budget: John Boehner Says Bishops Miss Big Picture In Protesting GOP's Proposed Cuts

House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) chastised Catholic bishops at a Wednesday news conference on Capitol Hill, saying they needed to look at the bigger picture after they complained that the GOP budget plan fails to meet "moral criteria."

The bishops had written letters to Capitol Hill, arguing many elements of the Republicans' budget proposal, such as cuts to food stamps, harmed the poor while the wealthy benefitted.

"At a time of great competition for agricultural resources and budgetary constraints, the needs of those who are hungry, poor and vulnerable should come before assistance to those who are relatively well off and powerful," stated one of the letters.

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House Democrats’ Campaign Arm Outraises GOP Rival

House Democrats’ campaign arm outraised its Republican counterpart during the first three months of 2012, though it has less money in the bank to show for it, according to numbers released by both committees Tuesday.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee took in $9.8 million last month, it said, bringing its first quarter total to $22.1 million. The National Republican Congressional Committee raised $9.3 million, bringing its three-month haul to $19.2 million.

It’s some welcome news for Democrats who need to pick up 25 House seats this year to retake the House. But with seven months until November elections, the party is currently spending more money than Republicans.

The DCCC ended March with $22.8 million in the bank. Republicans, despite raising less, had $27.1 million left to spend.

"Mitt Romney: 'It's been fun getting to know Ted Nugent'"

Romney has candidly admitted that he's keeping his plans for eliminating government agencies secret

Oswego County legislator asks that second ethics leak be probed

The Oswego County district attorney has been asked to investigate how an ethics complaint filed against a legislator was leaked to the press. Now, the district attorney will be asked to investigate a second leak in the same matter.

Legislator Shawn Doyle said he was taken by surprise when a news reporter telephoned him to request an interview in regard to the dismissal of the charges.

At the time of the call, few people were in possession of the dismissal and Doyle had yet to review the ethics board decision with his attorney.

When the ethics board renders a decision in favor of the defendant, it is sent to the complainant, the defendant and the defendant’s attorney. They are the only persons who can release the decision. Others with knowledge of the decision would include members of the ethics board and the county attorney.

Both Doyle and Barry Leemann, who made the complaint, said they did not release the decision, although Leemann acknowledged that he had several people ask if the ethics board had made a determination.

When contacted Tuesday, John FitzGibbons, who serves as the chairman of the ethics board, said he could not comment on the alleged breach of confidentiality.

Last month, the legislature’s Strategic Planning and Government Committee unanimously voted to have District Attorney Greg Oakes investigative the leak.

Oakes said in a recent interview that he will be contacting Doyle for more information. As of press time, Doyle said he nor his lawyer have heard from Oakes.

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Ryans Trojan Horse

Ann Romney and Working Moms

Hilary Rosen

Communications, media and political strategist

My Twitter feed was on fire after an appearance last night on CNN's AC360, where I said that I thought it was wrong for Mitt Romney to be using his wife as his guide to women's economic struggles when she "had never worked a day in her life." Oh my, you should read the tweets and the hate mail I got after that. The accusations were flying. I don't know what it means to be a mom (I have 2 children). I obviously don't value the work that a mother does and how hard it is (the hardest job I have ever had); and I absolutely hate anyone who doesn't have the same views as I do (hate is a strong word).

Spare me the faux anger from the right who view the issue of women's rights and advancement as a way to score political points. When it comes to supporting policies that would actually help women, their silence has been deafening. I don't need lectures from the RNC on supporting women and fighting to increase opportunities for women; I've been doing it my whole career. If they want to attack me and distract the public's attention away from their nominee's woeful record, it just demonstrates how much they just don't get it.

My favorite tweet was from someone who said that Republicans like Ann Romney so much more than Mitt that by attacking her (which I didn't), I got people to defend him in a way they never would.

That last one I can actually understand.

Now let's be clear on one thing. I have no judgements about women who work outside the home vs. women who work in the home raising a family. I admire women who can stay home and raise their kids full-time. I even envy them sometimes. It is a wonderful luxury to have the choice. But let's stipulate that it is NOT a choice that most women have in America today.

Why does this even matter? It matters purely because Mitt Romney put the issue of his wife's views squarely on the table.

As Ruth Marcus noted in her column yesterday in the Washington Post, Romney, when asked last week about the gender gap, twice said he wished his wife could take the question.

"My wife has the occasion, as you know, to campaign on her own and also with me," Romney told newspaper editors, "and she reports to me regularly that the issue women care about most is the economy."

So it begs the question, is Ann Romney Mitt's touchstone for women who are struggling economically or not? Nothing in Ann Romney's history as we have heard it -- hardworking mom she may have been -- leads me to believe that Mitt has chosen the right expert to get feedback on this problem he professes to be so concerned about.

I have nothing against Ann Romney. She seems like a nice lady who has raised nice boys, struggled with illness, and handles its long-term effects with grace and dignity. I admire her grit in talking about her illness publicly.

What is more important to me and 57% of current women voters is her husband saying he supports women's economic issue because they are the only issues that matter to us and then he fails on even those.

Let's put aside for a moment his views on women's health issues -- such as his pledge to repeal funding for Planned Parenthood or repeal title X -- which provides important health services for poor women, and true anecdotes (such as when he was a Bishop in his church, he actually went to a congregant's hospital room and told a young single mother who had just given birth that she was shaming the church and should give her baby away). Let's put those issues of respect and health dignity away.

Let's just focus on his economic record on behalf of women. When Romney ran Bain Capital, less than 10% of the senior workforce were women. And he said in his 1994 Senate race that it was because he had trouble finding qualified women to be executives. Is there a woman alive who believes that? I personally believe that women hate the way our health issues were made a political football by the Republicans in the last several months. But I am pragmatic enough to believe that the economic issues do matter greatly to women and men alike. But the only way that Mitt Romney will succeed in closing the wide gender gap between him and President Obama is if he stops pretending that it doesn't exist.

Follow Hilary Rosen on Twitter: www.twitter.com/hilaryr

Weekly Address: It’s Time for Congress to Pass the Buffett Rule

President Obama urges Congress to pass the Buffett Rule -- which asks those who make more than $1 million a year to pay at least the same percentage of their income in taxes as middle class families -- as a principle of fairness.

Romney stay-at-home mom

Buffett Rule Supported By Majority Of Americans

According to a new Gallup poll released Friday, a majority of Americans support the proposed Buffett Rule, which would require individuals earning $1 million or more per year to pay at least 30 percent of their income in taxes.

The survey found that 60 percent of adults support enacting such a policy, while 37 percent oppose it.

By significant margins, both independents (63 to 33 percent) and Democrats (74 to 24 percent) supported the measure, a key Obama campaign issue. Republicans opposed it, but by a smaller margin of 54 to 43 percent.

The Gallup survey was conducted April 9 to 12 among 1,016 adults and has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

Full Story

Romney Campaign on the Lilly Ledbetter Act - We'll Get Back to You on That

Romney campaign says women were hit hard by job losses under Obama...FALSE

Mitt Romney's campaign wants you to know that the same president who argues for contraceptive coverage and suggests that a Congress with more female members would get more accomplished has also presided over disproportionate job losses among women.

On April 6, 2012, Romney’s press secretary Andrea Saul tweeted, "FACT: Women account for 92.3% of the jobs lost under @BarackObama, a claim also made on Romney's website.

She followed it up a few hours later with this: "@BarackObama touts policies for women & 92.3% jobs lost under him are women's. He's even more clueless than we thought."

When we asked for backup for the claim, the campaign cited national employment figures spanning four years. We found that though the numbers are accurate, their reading of them isn’t.

‘Total nonfarm payroll jobs’

Romney’s campaign pointed to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics employment figures from January 2009, when Obama took office, and March 2012, for all employees and for female employees.

Here they are:

* Total Nonfarm Payroll Jobs:

January 2009: 133,561,000

March 2012: 132,821,000

Net loss: 740,000 jobs.

* Total Female Nonfarm Payroll Jobs

January 2009: 66,122,000

March 2012: 65,439,000

Net loss: 683,000 jobs.

They then divided the net loss among women by the total net loss and came up with 92.3 percent.

Beyond the numbers

The first problem we find with Saul’s tweet is that it begins counting job losses the first month Obama was in office. We have taken points off previous claims for blaming officeholders for situations that existed at the beginning of their administrations, before their policies have had time to take effect. One could reasonably argue that January 2009 employment figures are more a result of President George W. Bush’s policies, at least as far as any president can be blamed or credited for private-sector hiring.

We reached out to Gary Steinberg, spokesman for the BLS, for his take on the claim. He pointed out that women’s job losses are high for that period of time because millions of men had already lost their jobs. Women were next.

"Between January 2009 and March 2012 men lost 57,000 jobs, while women lost 683,000 jobs. This is the reverse of the recession period of December 2007-June 2009 (with an overlap of six months) which saw men lose 5,355,000 jobs and women lose 2,124,000 jobs," Steinberg told us in an email.

So timing was important. And if you count all those jobs lost beginning in 2007, women account for just 39.7 percent of the total.

Gary Burtless, a labor market expert with the Brookings Institution, explained the gender disparity.

"I think males were disproportionately hurt by employment losses in manufacturing and especially construction, which is particularly male-dominated. A lot of job losses in those two industries had already occurred before Obama took office," he said. "Industries where women are more likely to be employed – education, health, the government – fared better in terms of job loss. In fact, health and education employment continued to grow in the recession and in the subsequent recovery. Government employment only began to fall after the private economy (and private employment) began growing again."

Betsey Stevenson, a business and public policy professor at Princeton University, also pointed out that "in every recession men’s job loss occurs first and most, with unemployment rates for men being more cyclical than those of women’s."

She added that many of women's job losses have been government jobs -- teachers and civil servants -- which have been slower to come back because they require greater government spending.

So have Obama's policies been especially bad for women?

Said Stevenson: "I don’t think you could point to a single piece of evidence that the pattern of job loss: men first then women, is due to the president’s policies. It’s a historical pattern that has held in previous recessions."

Our ruling

Romney's website said that women account for 92.3 percent of jobs lost under Obama.

By comparing job figures with January 2009 and March 2012 and weighing them against women’s job figures from the same periods, Saul came up with 92.3 percent. The numbers are accurate but quite misleading. First, Obama cannot be held entirely accountable for the employment picture on the day he took office, just as he could not be given credit if times had been booming. Second, by choosing figures from January 2009, months into the recession, the statement ignored the millions of jobs lost before then, when most of the job loss fell on men. In every recession, men are the first to take the hit, followed by women. It's a historical pattern, Stevenson told us, not an effect of Obama's policies.

There is a small amount of truth to the claim, but it ignores critical facts that would give a different impression. We rate it Mostly False.

Barney Frank Slams Allen West: 'Not Even Joe McCarthy Would Have Said Anything So Stupid'

Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) on Wednesday tore into Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) for saying that members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus are communists.

"Not even Joe McCarthy would have said anything so stupid and dissociated from reality," Frank said in a call with The Huffington Post. "It's an indication of the significant deterioration of the Republican Party as a responsible entity that an ignorant, mean guy like Allen West is considered one of their stars."

The Massachusetts Democrat, who is retiring this year after 16 terms in Congress, said he is proud of his record over the years in cooperating with even the most conservative of Republicans. But West's remarks -- he told constituents on Tuesday that as many as 80 members the Congressional Progressive Caucus are members of the Communist Party -- show that the current flank of House Republicans leaves little room for bipartisanship, he said.

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Legislator Doyle Cleared of any wrong doing

The Oswego County Ethics Board unanimously dismissed a complaint lodged against Legislator Shawn Doyle by former legislature Chairman Barry Leemann.

The charges stemmed from the Town of Richland’s decision to house the town historian’s office in the Pulaski Courthouse, which is owned by the county.

Doyle, the town’s historian, and other town officials utilize a small office located in the upper level of the courthouse. The town also occupies space in the lower level for departmental offices.

In a press release issued through his attorney, Doyle stated that he wanted to make the public aware of the board decision and asked the public to consider whether “the manufacture and publicizing of unfounded ethics charges constitute a misuse of the process in an attempt to silence or intimidate an elected official, and whether this abuse of the ethics process is a violation of the public trust.”

Doyle’s case has left some legislators to re-evaluate the ethics board process.

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Composition of Oswego County Ethics Board slated for discussion

The recent events in regard to an apparent ethics board leak has led to the discussion as to whether the composition of the board needs revamping.

The Oswego County Legislature’s Strategic Planning and Government Committee will discuss the board when legislators meet April 23.

In the meantime, some legislators are gathering information from other counties as to the number of members they appoint to their boards and the composition of the membership.

State law requires local governments to have a minimum of three members. One member must be an appointed or elected officer or employee of the county.

That law has left some legislators questioning the potential for a conflict-of-interest.

During last month’s meeting of the committee, Legislators Shawn Doyle (R) and Mike Kunzwiler (D) raised the issue of whether a department head should be a member of the Ethics Board.

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Obama opening pitch color

GOP BUFFETT RULE

Cuomo at all-time high in latest poll

Gov. Cuomo's job approval has hit an all-time high while President Obama and U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand are cruising toward re-election in deep blue New York this year, according to a new poll out today.

The Siena College survey found New York voters divided over Obamacare and the potential legalization of casino gambling but strongly supportive of expanding the state's DNA databank and rolling back pension benefits for new public employees.

About a quarter of respondents hope the U.S. Supreme Court throws out Obama's health care law, about a quarter hope the high court finds the law constitutional, and 41 percent are hoping for a mixed ruling - with Democrats tending to favor the plan and Republicans far less supportive.

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/cuomo_gillibrand_all_time_high_strong_gDvUSkOO0GAmWarQNpCE8H#ixzz1rg5a9jB2

Red Hot Chili Peppers' Obama Show: Band To Play Free Show For Obama Volunteers

It's a good week for the Obama campaign: George Clooney agreed to host a fundraiser for the President's campaign and the DNC and the Red Hot Chili Peppers are playing a free show for the campaign's volunteers.

The band will be in Cleveland this weekend to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and they've decided to let local campaign workers who volunteered on phone banks to attend the show for free. The concert will take place at the House of Blues.

A local news outlet reports that the RHCP show will mark the first time in the President's reelection campaign that a rock band is lending its help.

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Easter and Passover Greetings from President Obama

History of the Democratic Party

The history of our country is a history of change. Year after year, we have evolved, innovated, and overcome the major challenges of our time. America’s genius throughout has been its ability to renew our promise to provide citizens the opportunity for a better life—and though our own history isn’t perfect, the mission of the Democratic Party has been to make that promise a reality.

Founded more than 200 years ago, the Democratic Party was born in response to the idea that government should represent the people and that wealth and status should not be an entitlement to rule.

Change is the inescapable driver of history in the United States. Our party’s founders believed then, just as we do now, that being a Democrat means meeting the challenges of changing times so that all Americans can prosper. That’s why the people of this county have always turned to Democrats when times got tough.

In the 1930s, Americans turned to Democrats and elected President Franklin Roosevelt to end the Great Depression. President Roosevelt offered Americans a New Deal that put people back to work, stabilized farm prices, and brought electricity to rural homes and communities.

Under President Roosevelt, Social Security established a promise that lasts to this day: growing old would never again mean growing poor.

In 1944, FDR signed the G.I. Bill -- a historic measure that provided veterans with the opportunity to go to college and help move our country forward.

These investments helped restore America’s promise to be the land of opportunity and offered new avenues to expand the middle class.

Harry Truman helped rebuild Europe after World War II with the Marshall Plan and oversaw the formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. By integrating the military, President Truman helped to bring down barriers of race and gender and pave the way the way for civil rights advancements in the years that followed.

In the 1960s, Americans again turned to Democrats and elected President John Kennedy to tackle the challenges of a new era. President Kennedy dared Americans to put a man on the moon, created the Peace Corps, and negotiated a treaty banning atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons.

And after President Kennedy’s assassination, Americans looked to President Lyndon Johnson, who offered a new vision of a Great Society and signed into law the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act.

President Johnson’s enactment of Medicare was a watershed moment in America’s history that redefined our country’s commitment to our seniors—offering a new promise that all Americans have the right to a healthy retirement.

In 1976, in the wake of the Watergate scandal, Americans elected Jimmy Carter to restore dignity to the White House. He created the Departments of Education and Energy and helped to forge a lasting peace between Israel and Egypt.

In 1992, after twelve years of Republican presidents, record budget deficits, high unemployment, and increasing crime, Americans turned to Democrats once again and elected Bill Clinton to get America moving again. As President, Clinton balanced the budget, helped the economy add 23 million new jobs, and oversaw the longest period of peacetime economic expansion in history.

And in 2008, Americans turned to Democrats and elected President Obama to reverse our country’s slide into the largest economic downturn since the Great Depression and undo eight years of policies that favored the few over the many.

Under President Obama’s direction and congressional Democrats’ leadership, we reformed a health care system that was broken and extended health insurance to 32 million Americans.

We reined in a financial system that was out of control and delivered the toughest consumer protections ever enacted.

We reworked our student loan system to make higher education more affordable and won the fight for equal pay for women.

We passed the Recovery Act, which created or helped to save millions of jobs and made unprecedented investments in the major pillars of our country.

From America’s beginnings to today, people have turned to Democrats to meet our country’s most pressing challenges. We are America's best hope to foster the promise and opportunity ingrained in our history. And we will succeed if we continue to govern by the same principles that have made America the greatest nation on earth.

Sayward supports Owens

Assemblywoman Teresa Sayward says she supports U.S. Reps. Bill Owens and Chris Gibson, a Democrat and a Republican who are running for re-election this year.

Sayward, a Republican from Willsboro, said the region has two good representatives in the House in Gibson and Owens.

"They work well together," she told the Enterprise. "I would support both of them.

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Legislator Amy Tresidder ‘disappointed’ in Republican colleagues

Oswego County Legislator Amy Tresidder has announced she may challenge New York State Senator Patty Ritchie for the 48th District seat.

Although she has not declared her candidacy, the Democrat said she feels the Republicans are becoming nervous about her potential run.

The potential candidate said she was “disappointed” when she learned from a Republican legislator that there is an attempt to censor her from speaking at legislature committee meetings of which she is not a member.

“I am extremely disappointed that my colleagues in the majority would put partisan politics ahead of open and honest government that works for the benefit of and in the best interest of the taxpayers of Oswego County,” she said Friday.

Legislators are assigned to two of the seven standing committees and Tresidder has been a regular attendee at most meetings since she took office just over two years ago.

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Obama Invokes Republican Icons While Painting Mitt Romney As Extreme

President Barack Obama is embracing an unlikely group of political icons as he tries to paint Mitt Romney as extreme: He's praising Republican presidents from Abraham Lincoln to Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan.

The Democratic president typically offers up GOP leaders of the past as evidence of how both parties can work together in Washington to pursue big ideas and rebuild the economy. With Election Day seven months away, Obama hopes to convince voters that he, like his Republican predecessors, is a reasonable moderate. At the same time, he's casting Romney as a candidate who would embrace too-conservative policies out of step with most Americans and with his own party in years past.

Obama invoked Reagan's name four times in a speech this week to The Associated Press annual meeting. He said the conservative hero, never accused of being a "tax-and-spend socialist," still recognized the need for tax increases as well as spending cuts to tame federal deficits. Obama's verdict: "He could not get through a Republican primary today."

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Mitt Romney & Paul Ryan: That's Amore

Obama Calls SCOTUS Activist Judiciary

Other counties don’t require legislators to fill out FOILs

Oswego County legislators are required to make a written request for the documents that they are the legal custodians of — and it has sparked a debate as to whether they should be exempt from having to follow the same procedure as the public in acquiring records.

In other counties around the state, legislators have access to records without written requests or wait.

The requests, known more commonly as a FOIL request, the acronym for Freedom of Information Law, are required to obtain public documents from government agencies. Requests can be made in writing by e-mail, hard copy or by using a form provided by the agency.

Oswego County legislators must make the requests in writing, under FOIL, and sometimes have to wait to receive the records.

During Monday’s meeting of the legislature’s Strategic Planning and Government Committee, a lengthy discussion about how to handle legislator requests ensued that resulted in no conclusion as to how to proceed. The issue will be addressed again next month.

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Mitts The One

Ethics leak probe now in hands of Oswego County district attorney

Oswego County District Attorney Gregory Oakes said Thursday that he will begin to gather information in regard to an ethics board leak that occurred late last year.

“At this point, I’m trying to gather information,” Oakes said.

He added that he will speak with the person who complained to get more background information.

During the March 26 meeting of the legislature’s Strategic Planning and Government Committee, members voted to pass the information to the district attorney for investigation.

Last year, a complaint was filed by former legislature Chairman Barry Leemann against Legislator Shawn Doyle. Doyle said he was contacted by a reporter two days prior to being notified that a complaint was filed against him.

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Judicial activists in the Supreme Court

Three days of Supreme Court arguments over the health-care law demonstrated for all to see that conservative justices are prepared to act as an alternative legislature, diving deeply into policy details as if they were members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.

Senator, excuse me, Justice Samuel Alito quoted Congressional Budget Office figures on Tuesday to talk about the insurance costs of the young. On Wednesday, Chief Justice John Roberts sounded like the House whip in discussing whether parts of the law could stand if other parts fell. He noted that without various provisions, Congress “wouldn’t have been able to put together, cobble together, the votes to get it through.” Tell me again, was this a courtroom or a lobbyist’s office?

It fell to the court’s liberals — the so-called “judicial activists,” remember? — to remind their conservative brethren that legislative power is supposed to rest in our government’s elected branches.

Justice Stephen Breyer noted that some of the issues raised by opponents of the law were about “the merits of the bill,” a proper concern of Congress, not the courts. And in arguing for restraint, Justice Sonia Sotomayor asked what was wrong with leaving as much discretion as possible “in the hands of the people who should be fixing this, not us.” It was nice to be reminded that we’re a democracy, not a judicial dictatorship.

The conservative justices were obsessed with weird hypotheticals. If the federal government could make you buy health insurance, might it require you to buy broccoli, health club memberships, cellphones, burial services and cars? All of which have nothing to do with an uninsured person getting expensive treatment that others — often taxpayers — have to pay for.

Liberals should learn from this display that there is no point in catering to today’s hard-line conservatives. The individual mandate was a conservative idea that President Obama adopted to preserve the private market in health insurance rather than move toward a government-financed, single-payer system. What he got back from conservatives was not gratitude but charges of socialism — for adopting their own proposal.

The irony is that if the court’s conservatives overthrow the mandate, they will hasten the arrival of a more government-heavy system. Justice Anthony Kennedy even hinted that it might be more “honest” if government simply used “the tax power to raise revenue and to just have a national health service, single-payer.” Remember those words.

One of the most astonishing arguments came from Roberts, who spoke with alarm that people would be required to purchase coverage for issues they might never confront. He specifically cited “pediatric services” and “maternity services.”

Well, yes, men pay to cover maternity services while women pay for treating prostate problems. It’s called health insurance. Would it be better to segregate the insurance market along gender lines?

The court’s right-wing justices seemed to forget that the best argument for the individual mandate was made in 1989 by a respected conservative, the Heritage Foundation’s Stuart Butler.

“If a man is struck down by a heart attack in the street,” Butler said, “Americans will care for him whether or not he has insurance. If we find that he has spent his money on other things rather than insurance, we may be angry but we will not deny him services — even if that means more prudent citizens end up paying the tab. A mandate on individuals recognizes this implicit contract.” Full Post

Matt Doheny, Upstate Republican, Caught Canoodling

Earlier this week, Gawker published photos of engaged upstate congressional candidate Matt Doheny getting cozy with, and maybe kissing, a campaign consultant in D.C. "We're just friends, and it was a whole big group of us," the woman insisted, and since their lips aren't exactly shown meeting, perhaps it was just loud (?) and they were trying very hard to hear each other (while touching). Today it becomes more difficult to give Doheny the benefit of the doubt: The Post says they have video of the incident and "his hand can be seen sliding over the backside of Monica Notzon, a fund-raising consultant to his campaign."

"These pictures demonstrate nothing more than two old friends joking around as they sat with other friends," said a campaign spokesperson. The Post's video reportedly shows the Republican with his arms around two women, both of whom he is "groping."

"It's sad that Democratic operatives would lay in wait as a group of friends enjoyed a nice evening. But then, the Washington special interests will stop at nothing to keep [incumbent] Bill Owens in Congress." Doheny was in D.C. for the National Republican Congressional Committee's "candidate school," prepping for his campaign in New York's 23rd district. At the beginning of the year, Doheny announced he had proposed to his longtime girlfriend, Mary Reidy. "I am saddened at the state of journalism and politics," she said in a statement. Their wedding is supposedly still set for June, while local politicians are reportedly supporting him, for now.

But apparently this behavior is not out of character for Doheny. "He's your Wall Street-type — go, go, go, work hard, play hard," an anonymous GOP official told the Post. "You might be able to do that on Wall Street, but not as an elected official." Doheny has also been arrested twice, once while belligerent, for boating while intoxicated.

Romney 2012

GOP Individual Mandate

Passing the Buffett Rule So That Everyone Pays Their Fair Share

President Obama calls on Congress to pass the Buffett Rule, a principle that ensures that millionaires and billionaires do not pay less in taxes as a share of their income than middle class families pay -- as a matter of fairness.