Advance endorsement of McMahon, part IV

The Staten Island Advance has a lengthy write up on why they are endorsing Mike McMahon for Congress. Here is the fourth part;

Indeed, we commend all four candidates for an intelligent, civil and highly informative campaign. They've raised the level of discourse in Staten Island politics and deserve the thanks of every voter.

The clear choice for us, however, is Mr. McMahon, who has been forced to be on top of his game by these three exceptional challengers. He came through the debates and the forums with flying colors, in our estimation.

Now we urge Staten Island voters to get him through the last part of the way and reward him with a hard-earned victory in the contest for the borough's congressional seat come Election Day.

Advance endorsement of McMahon, part III

The Staten Island Advance has a lengthy write up on why they are endorsing Mike McMahon for Congress. Here is the third part;

But Mr. Straniere has always had chinks in his armor. One is that he talks a good game, sometimes taking credit for things in which he had only a peripheral role, but he was never especially productive as a legislator. Of course, in fairness, as a perennial member of the minority in the Assembly, he was always stymied. However, as a member of the likely Republican minority in the House, we fear he'd again fall back on press releases and public pronouncements.

Of more concern is the astonishing number of financial and legal entanglements that have bedeviled him throughout his political career, and even after he left public office. At some point, we've got to wonder what he's been doing to bring on all this trouble.

And, while Mr. Straniere recently established a residence in New Springville in furtherance of his congressional run (though members of the House are not required to live in the districts they represent), questions about his actual place of residence have always hung over him. These kinds of doubts and Mr. Straniere's elusiveness in addressing them raise issues of trust.

Advance endorsement of McMahon, part II

The Staten Island Advance has a lengthy write up on why they are endorsing Mike McMahon for Congress. Here is the second part;

Mr. McMahon has always been thoughtful and well-reasoned in articulating his positions, including on national and international issues. We have no doubt that this approach, which is all too rare in national politics these days, will enable him to make a seamless transition to the larger stage the House of Representatives affords.

While there's always a danger a freshman lawmaker will be dazzled by his elevated status and perhaps too eager to please new leaders, we believe Mr. McMahon will make the best use of his new platform while continuing his intense and effective involvement in Staten Island-specific issues.

Advance endorsement of McMahon, part I

The Staten Island Advance has a lengthy write up on why they are endorsing Mike McMahon for Congress. Here is the first part;

The diversity of Mr. McMahon's backers is a testament to his sensible, practical approach to the business of lawmaking and political leadership. He has consistently disdained ideology and partisan politics in favor of building consensus to achieve realistic goals.

The best evidence of his pragmatic style was his key role, as chairman of the Council Committee on Sanitation and Solid Waste Management, in forging the city's long-term solid-waste management plan. To do this, he had to work behind the scenes with other Council members whose boroughs would be affected, as well as with the Bloomberg administration itself.

and

Lately, he has been at the fore of the effort to pressure the Health and Hospitals Corp. to provide a fair level of health-care funding for this borough of beleaguered private hospital systems.

We expect that he will be an even more forceful champion in this important struggle should he be elected to Congress.

And, at the federal level, Staten Islanders will demand that he become a powerful advocate for the major mass transportation improvements Staten Island sorely needs. Those who vote for him are counting on it.

Staten Island Advance Endorses McMahon as Clear Choice in Democratic Primary for Congress

via campaign email;

SI Advance Cites McMahon’s Record of Accomplishment, History of Reaching Across the Aisle to Achieve Results in Today’s Endorsement for the Democratic Primary for the 13th CD

August 31, 2008 – Michael McMahon's congressional campaign today won the coveted endorsement of the hometown Staten Island Advance in the Democratic Primary for the 13th Congressional District. The Advance lauded McMahon’s “experience, leadership and documented achievements”, his “deep commitment to the borough he lives in and serves” on the City Council, and his centrist values, citing his ability to work in a bipartisan manner to achieve results.

note: the email includes the endorsement article in full which I can not repost in full here. To read the article go here.

If there was any doubt over Fossella's lack of ethics

via Advance;

Fossella hired Barry Pollack, a partner in the Washington, D.C., firm Kelly Drye, which is known for successfully defending Enron executives. Pollack said he expects to scrutinize two blood-alcohol tests administered by police on the night of Fossella's arrest.

If you didn't think he was sleazy enough already, he turns to the lawyers who defended Enron execs.

LTE: Fossella's NO vote of air traffic legislation

An LTE in the Advance;

Mr. Donner also fails to address two of the major points of my letter, that airlines must provide basic needs for airline passengers during long delays and that the Department of Transportation collect and publish data on airline performance. I guess even a spinmeister like Mr. Donner would find it difficult to explain away Mr. Fossella's opposition to these points.

I suppose that we will have to wait for this year's debates between Vito Fossella and the Democratic candidate Steve Harrison to get Mr. Fossella to defend his votes. Let's hope Mr. Fossella doesn't try to duck the debates again like he tried to do in 2006.

LTE: More Subprime Mortgage Crisis and Fossella

A recent LTE in the Advace;

Who could see the sub-prime mortgage crisis coming? Well, Congress for one.

In April 2005, the Republican Congress tightened up personal bankruptcy filing laws, making it harder for individuals to find relief and get back on their feet. Many Democrats joined in this vote; Bush signed it into law. Who benefited? Not the working poor or the middle class.

Where are his calls for investigations? Where were his efforts before this escalated to this point? If Vito Fossella is part of the problem he can not be part of the
solution.

LTE: Subprime Mortgage Crisis and Fossella

A recent LTE in the Advace;

If Fossella really wants to help the problem, why not lobby for an investigation into the business practices of the mortgage businesses and brokers who made so much money on these loans, fully knowing that most of them would default? Fines for fraud violations could be applied to a fund for the victims. I don't expect to see that from Vito, since he receives much of his campaign money from banks and financial industry services and probably would not want to hurt his friends.

The people of Staten Island need some new thoughts and some real answers to the problems we are facing now and in the future. We don't have to accept the hollow offers and half-hearted attempts at problem solving. We can demand that government work for the people again instead of the other way around.

LTE: Vito Fossella on Immigration

An LTE in the Advance;

Republicans, however, worry about the guy doing their lawn. The middle class is being destroyed . Health benefits are becoming a memory. Pensions are gone. They're trying to destroy Social Security, college loans are harder to come by, the dollar is in free fall, but watch out for them there immigrants.

Where is Fossella on immigration;

U.S. Rep. Vito Fossella, R-N.Y., has proposed the scheme to withhold federal highway funds for purely political purposes. It's a stunt linked to the presidential race, in which New York Sen. Hillary Clinton and other Democratic contenders have wrestled with the question of whether it makes sense to issue driver's licenses to residents who have not completed the immigration process.

The answer, of course, is that it does make sense. Everyone who drives should go through the proper preparation and testing before they take to the road. By making driver's licenses available to all, states ensure that more people who get behind the wheels of automobiles know the rules of the road.

Unfortunately, some politicians have seized on the driver's license issue as a way to bash a selected minority of residents and those leaders who seek to create rational systems for responding to the surge in immigration. Fossella is one such politician.

Fossella's bill would punish states that seek to make their highways safer by denying them highway funds. It's a measure that is as dangerous as it is senseless. And it attacks the underpinnings of the federal system by creating a new tool for forcing state officials to follow the dictates of distant bureaucrats in Washington.

Where is Fossella on issues like Iraq;

Your search - Iraq site:http://www.vito2008.com - did not match any documents.

Merry Christmas Vito Fossella

via the Advance;

Peace activists raised their voices in song against Rep. Vito Fossella last night, caroling original compositions outside his Amboy Road office and his home.

Ten activists and soldiers' mothers from across Staten Island joined the Granny Peace Brigade in the two-hour-long protest against the Iraq war, which ended only when police shooed the carolers from in front of the congressman's home.

snip

Elaine Brower of Great Kills, an organizer for the Movement for a Democratic Society, said Fossella has "stubbornly refused to meet with his constituents to discuss his voting record on the Iraq war."

Brower's son, James, has served two tours with the Marines in Iraq and Afghanistan and is slated to redeploy again in 2008. She expressed outrage over Fossella's perceived snub of constituents.

update
One of the carolers wrote in the comment that the police had recommended/asked them to move from the street to the sidewalk for their safety but otherwise never made them leave.

Media coverage of the Barbaro endorsement

The Advance is up with their article on the endorsement;

Steve Harrison, who will be running in New York's 13th Congressional District, which includes Staten Island and southwest Brooklyn, was given the thumbs up by former state Supreme Court Justice Frank Barbaro at the St. George Ferry Terminal.

snip

"The fact that Frank came on a night like tonight ... it shows the depth of the support," said Harrison.

Unfortunately the article seems light on research with presumptive comments like this;

They insist that, despite the money Fossella has in his campaign war chest, Harrison can win.

Fossella's FEC filings are easily accessible showing him with a massive 'war chest' of $50,000. We already covered that the Politico is reporting this as some of the worst incumbent fund raising efforts this cycle. In fact Fossella's 'war chest' only has $13,000 more in it than that of Stephen Harrison. Factor in debts owed by each campaign and Harrison has a $58,000 advantage. So much for Fossela's 'war chest'. Nonetheless we are getting media coverage much more often and much earlier in the cycle now which is a net positive, despite poor reporting.

How can Vito Fossella be fiscally responsible with $9 trillion of debt?

The Advance ran another ad article on Rep. Vito Fossella. They praise him for 20 paragraphs on his fiscal hawkishness and all but deem him the only person keeping our national spending in check. I am sure Fossella appreciates that the Advance writes this stuff so that he doesn't have to use his own spokesperson to pat himself on the back.

Staten Island's congressman tries to keep on the lookout for what he considers to be wasteful federal spending. Doing that is his duty, of course. According to Mr. Fossella, he has voted so far to reduce careless government expenditures for the 2008 fiscal year by at least $23.7 billion.

Psst, did you try looking over here at the war in Iraq? You remember that debacle right Advance? Back in January 2007 it was costing us $300 million a day. Where is Rep. Fossella's outrage?

In the days before the war almost five years ago, the Pentagon estimated that it would cost about $50 billion. Democratic staff members in Congress largely agreed. Lawrence Lindsey, a White House economic adviser, was a bit more realistic, predicting that the cost could go as high as $200 billion, but President Bush fired him in part for saying so.

if he wants to look into wasteful spending, where is his demand for a Congressional hearing on why this administration so grossly under estimated the cost of the war to date. The higher $200 billion is just slightly off of the $1.2 trillion estimates from nearly a year ago. But congratulations nonetheless on reducing careless expenditures by $23.7 billion, that is a whole 79 days of expenses for the US in Iraq.

Let's put this in perspective for a moment. $23.7 billion is a large number. The fact that it is so minusculed by the ongoing costs of this war alone truly shows Rep. Fossella's priorities. Sure there is a war, but is the Congressman just puts out another press release or shows us some endorsement for his Fiscal Conservatism maybe we can stop focusing on all those negatives of a $9 trillion debt. If you will just praise Fossella and not look behind the curtain all will seem rosy. Then again if the Advance won't look at what the $1.2 trillion price tag for Fossella's war in Iraq could have instead funded, let me show you;

doubled "cancer research funding, treatment for every American whose diabetes or heart disease is now going unmanaged and a global immunization campaign to save millions of children’s lives."

Combined, the cost of running those programs for a decade wouldn’t use up even half our money pot. So we could then turn to poverty and education, starting with universal preschool for every 3- and 4-year-old child across the country. The city of New Orleans could also receive a huge increase in reconstruction funds.

The final big chunk of the money could go to national security. The recommendations of the 9/11 Commission that have not been put in place — better baggage and cargo screening, stronger measures against nuclear proliferation — could be enacted. Financing for the war in Afghanistan could be increased to beat back the Taliban’s recent gains, and a peacekeeping force could put a stop to the genocide in Darfur."

But none of that is happening. A you can be sure that if any of that was proposed fiscally scrudge-like Fossella would most definitely vote against them and then roll out a press release letting tax payers know what he saved them.

So pardon me while I am skeptical of the Advance and Rep. Fossella's new found defender of fiscal integrity award, but where have you been for the past seven years when the debt has jumped from $5.7 trillion when Bush took office to the expected $10 trillion when he leaves. Where have you been for six of those seven years when you were part of the majority that crafted the budget, that oversaw our spending and had the chance to put a stop to all of this needless waste? Where were those airplanes then Rep. Fossella?

Why the Advance's tshirt piece on Fossella is fluff

Last week we covered a story I called a 'fluff piece' by the SI Advance that had little if any news worthiness. The story talked about a website out there that is selling tshirts that it automatically creates by crawling the web for popular names. One of those names is Vito Fossella and so you can buy a shirt that says "I heart Vito Fossella." The Advance gave this angle an entire article.

I call this reckless abuse of journalism. News sources, short of something clearly biased and slanted, should be objective and should present its readers with, well news. At a time when we are involved in a downward spiraling war, at a time when even Fossella's own staff are discussing Medicaid and SCHIP the Advance should be covering stories of substance. At the very least one would think that objective reporting would cover more sides to this story. Instead they wrote nothing short of a favorable article for a large ad buyer of theirs. Since they failed to do any reporting, let me try.

There are sites out there that sell anti-Fossella merchandise. Sites like cafepress.com allow 'store fronts' to be created by real people who are not paid staff of the site to express anything and everything they want as opposed to shopzeus.com which automates its merchandise creation regardless of if there is demand or not. So while the Advance only bothered to cover the merchandise praising Fossella there exists this cafepress.com store 'Kick Fossella Out.'

Let's view this from another angle though, web traffic. Alexa.com is an industry leader in measuring web traffic and so I used them for some comparative metrics.

Cafepress.com is ranked 854 most popular website on the internet.
Shopzeus.com is ranked 1,234,061 most popular website on the internet.

Scroll down that last link and you get an ad for shopzeus.com that puts this all in perspective. The ad is a tshirt they will create for you based on the information they automatically generate from that site, their own web stats, that reads

"0.00003% say my site rocks!"

Anyone can find a site that says what they want, I never expected that would be the basis for a "news" story. And remember the buried gem of the Advance's "article", "So far, no orders have been placed for the shirts."

see also:
More on Advance's Fluff piece on Fossella
SI Advance almost covers a news story

AARP, Sen. Clinton and SCHIP

The AARP has released a statement thanking Rep. Dingell (who introduced the SCHIP bill Vito Fossella voted against) and Sen. Clinton "for working to ensure America’s children have access to affordable health care."

Not surprising Rep. Vito Fossella is not mentioned anywhere in that statement, in fact the AARP has gone so far as to criticize Fosssella and others;

We are disappointed by New York representatives who voted against strengthening health care for children and improving Medicare. As Congress leaves for vacation, some lawmakers chose to reject the opportunity to strengthen Medicare and provide health insurance for millions of eligible children who are without health coverage.

I mention all of this because had you not known, and if you are a reader of the SI Advance you may have been mislead after reading their recent article;
Clinton, Fossella unite in opposition to health benefit guidelines for poor, August 29. The article claims that Clinton and Fossella "unite" in some manner on this issue, which is true in only that they both are critical of new federal obstacles in place to prevent the implementation of SCHIP expansion. What the article fails to mention is that first the two are in no way working together despite being "united" and second, a point I have harped on for a bit now, Vito Fossella voted NO on the SCHIP bill. Sen. Clinton on the other hand supports the Senate version. How can the Advance claim they are united when they have exact opposite voting records on this? Both small details one might expect to be included in article had it been actual reporting as opposed to more free positive press for the Congressman.

More on the Advance's fluff piece on Fossella

I started doing some 'web surfing' to try to find the website making the tshirts in the SI Advance article we covered last night (SI Advance almost covers a news story). I have yet to come across it and can use some help. If you can find the site (shopzeus.com) through a 'random internet search' as the Advance did please pass along which search engine and search terms you used to stumble across the site. Feel free to leave a note in the comments or email me ny13blog(at)gmail(dot)com

So far;
Vito Fossella, Google, not in the first 10 pages of search results
Vito Fossella, Yahoo, not in the first 10 pages of search results
Love Vito Fossella, Yahoo, not in the first 10 pages of search results
I Love Vito Fossella, Yahoo, not in the first 10 pages of search results

more tonight...

update
I love Vito Fossella, Google, #1 return for Amazon.com not shopzeus.com
So that wasn't very hard to stumble upon a shirt store selling "I love Vito Fossella" shirts when you enter the exact phrase in Google. This though is quite different from the articles claims to "stumble across it". The questions this raises though still need to be asked:

What was Rob Hart searching for when he wandered across this site?
How did he find shopzeus.com because the search results only bring up Amazon.com (at least in the first 100 returns)?

SI Advance almost covers a news story

Since Congress is on vacation, the Advance logically figures there is no Congressional news (and or investigative reporting) for it to cover. Therefore they take the next logical step and write about a tshirt company, selling tshirts;

Do you love Rep. Vito Fossella?

If so, now there's a way for you to show it outside the voting booth: An "I Love Vito Fossella" shirt.

The article, like our war in Iraq goes on, and notes it eventually notes that some company is making tshirts with the names of somewhat famous people on them. Get this, they have a shirt with Vito Fossella's name on it. Eventually after several paragraphs of fluff promoting people's obvious love of Rep. Fossella they mention no one has actually bought one of these tshirts. And thus they neatly wrap up the article.

Not just is this news, this is courageous reporting. Anyone can come along and write about our troops, or traffic congestion, or massive federal debt and/or budget deficits, poverty, rapid transit, etc. But it is rare that a reporter manages to ignore all of that and kiss ass to the extent they have in this article and clearly recognize the boundaries of balancing the communities interest with offering free publicity for an elected official, and they completely bypass those boundaries.

The more I think about it, I have a question for Rob Hart (this certainly is no Tom Wrobloeski article). You fail to mention how you found out about this "tshirt company" so in your appropriate follow up where you apologize for your failed journalistic integrity please expound on how this story came across your desk, least we assume this is nothing more than free advertising from Rep. Fossella's office that you obliged in printing.

update
A hat tip to a reader that points out that the article says;

If a Web surfer stumbles across it -- through a random Internet search, say, as happened with the Advance -- and shares the sentiment for Staten Island's congressman, he or she can order one.