DOMINIC RECCHIA/STEVE HARRISON

Rumor has it that City Councilman Dominic Recchia is considering a run for Congress from CD-13. This seat has been held by Bush waterboy Vito Fossella since 1997. In the 2006 Congressional election Fossella was challenged by Steve Harrison and if Harrison had more money and backing from the DCCC he would have won that race.

Look at it this way, Vito had over 1,400,000 in contributions and spent over $1,600,000 which gave him a debt of over $200,000. With the Democrats taking over the House Fossella has lost his cash cow Finance seat (banking, real estate, stock market) and now only sits on the Energy and Commerce Committee.

The problem with this seat and beating Fossella is that in every race the local Dems have put up a new candidate against Fossella. Additionally, all the candidates that they have put up live on the Brooklyn side of the district. Apparently no Dem in Staten Island wants to run in this race for reasons that remain questionable at the very least.

This week Crain's had a blurb that City Councilman Dominic Recchia is considering running for this seat. Recchia is term limited in his current Council seat as of 2009. Recchia is a conservative Democrat and there is a question if he lives in the district of CD-13 or CD-8 where Jerold Nadler is the Congressman. I know his parents (father recently deceased) live in CD-13 but am not sure of his address. Recchia serves on the City Council part time and has a law practice where he made $250,000 last year so he doesn't need the money. Additionally, he did little if nothing to deliver Gravesend to Steve Harrison last year. So much for a team player.

Harrison is a proven candidate and with more money and backing from the DCCC he would have won in 2006. He knows both Staten Island and Brooklyn and will represent both sides of the Bridge equally.

I say Recchia KEEP OUT. Give your support to Steve Harrison if he decides to run again and this time don't make that support just lip service. If you had done more in your district to help Steve he could have won. Harrison has a volunteer base who are awaiting his announcement so that we can begin fundraising and getting his message out. Step aside until Steve makes his decision.

We need a firm candidate and we don't need or want a primary in this district. That starts us off on the wrong foot and gives Fossella the edge. We need to band together a make this seat which is the ONLY seat in the 5 NYC Boroughs that is in the hands of the RNC a Democratic seat and increase our majority.

vito needs the war in Iraq to Continue

Vito needs war in Iraq to continue - NY13
While the country is opposed to the war, Rep. Vito Fossella must do everything he can to keep it going. It is not just that he can play off the fear but also that should the war end, and should the troops come home then what? How does Vito support the troops if he can no longer send them off to war (his current method of 'supporting' them). Consider this:
Fossella voted in favor of stripping the Tricare provision of the 2006 Defense Authorization Bill - which would have made healthcare coverage available to thousands of National Guard and Reservists.
Fossella voted against an amendment to the Perkins Vocational and Technical Act of 1998 (S. 250 - introduced in 2006) would have increased veterans' access to education benefits.
Fossella voted against the Stupak amendment which called for a living wage for active duty military and a $1500.00 bonus for those serving in Iraq or Afghanistan.
Fossella voted against the Stearns Amendment to H. 10 (2005) , which sought to increase funding for prosthetics research.
Fossella voted against HR 1362, the Accountability in Contracting Act, aka The Waxman Bill, which sought to increase supervision of government contracts.
Fossella voted against the Supplemental bill just last week which requires adequate troop training and equipmentIf there is no war Fossella does not have much of a record of actually 'supporting our troops' to fall back on. Of course that reality must be frightening to him.Then again he did get funding to print up all of those posters showing how much support he had. Looking back on it, maybe using that money for care packages would have been more effective, not to mention meaningful since the troops aren't here to see his pretty posters.

VITO ON SUPPORTING OUR TROOPS

I got this from NY-13'S Blog and this was too good not to be entirely published.

Vito on supporting the troops, or not
So we all know Rep. Vito Fossella 'supports the troops,' he tells us it often. However what we don't see too much of is his commitment to our soldiers by ways of his vote in Congress, his ability to introduce legislation in Congress, or merely his bully pulpit should he choose to use it. Instead, like you would come to expect from that man that brought us a House resolution demanding a new stamp be made, Fossella gives you posters;
Congressman Vito Fossella (R-NY13) and Island Ford have teamed up to offer Staten Island residents a free, 11X18 color poster emblazoned with the words "Staten Island Supports Our U.S. Troops" over a backdrop of the American flag and a bald eagle.A flag and an eagle! It doesn't get more troop supporting than both of those together. Meanwhile back in reality, where posters don't do much for troops serving overseas in the same way say training would, comes a sad piece from the Hartford Courant;
The U.S. military is sending troops with serious psychological problems into Iraq and is keeping soldiers in combat even after superiors have been alerted to suicide warnings and other signs of mental illness, a Courant investigation has found.Despite a congressional order that the military assess the mental health of all deploying troops, fewer than 1 in 300 service members see a mental health professional before shipping out.SNIPThese practices, which have received little public scrutiny and in some cases violate the military's own policies, have helped to fuel an increase in the suicide rate among troops serving in Iraq, which reached an all-time high in 2005 when 22 soldiers killed themselves - accounting for nearly one in five of all Army non-combat deaths.Out of Salon, we find injured troops are being forces back into duty to meet the demands of troop levels supported by Rep. Vito Fossella;
As the military scrambles to pour more soldiers into Iraq, a unit of the Army's 3rd Infantry Division at Fort Benning, Ga., is deploying troops with serious injuries and other medical problems, including GIs who doctors have said are medically unfit for battle. Some are too injured to wear their body armor, according to medical records.All of this supporting the troops comes to a crucial juncture today, when the House may vote on the Supplemental bill which provides funding for various projects, and has an attached piece of legislation that "would establish tough readiness standards for the deployment of combat forces and an Aug. 31, 2008, deadline for their removal from Iraq." [WaPo] We are well aware that Republicans including Rep. Vito Fossella will probably vote as a party against this, appalled that Congress would try to instill requirements for troop preparedness while we are at war! From The Gavel;
Ranking Member Jerry Lewis (R-CA) offered an amendment during the committee markup which would have stripped language from the Iraq supplemental restricting the use of troops who are not properly equipped or trained, with the only exception being when President Bush is willing to publicly certify it is necessary, along with language requiring that the Iraqi government meet the benchmarks previously laid out by President Bush. The effort was defeated shortly after Appropriations Defense Subcommittee Chairman John Murtha spoke against it;So today, like every day that has past since this war has started, Rep. Vito Fossella☼has a chance to stand up to the party that took us into this war ill-prepared and the party that sends our own soldiers into battle ill-prepared, by voting for this bill and requiring proper troop training and one that requires that goals are set and ultimately met in ending this war (which was to find weapons of mass destruction topple a dictator).Today like almost every other day, Fossella will stand up and tell the world he supports the troops, and then do everything he can to prevent legislation showing it from passing. He will look pretty for his time in front of the media spotlights and will send out press releases and ultimately vote against requiring our men and women from adequately being trained before we send them off to fight and possibly die for our country. While one may think that under those circumstances we should give the troops everything at our disposal to make sure they come home alive; training, armor, supplies, mental health care, you would be wrong, because unless you have an 11x18 color poster with a big Ford logo on it declaring you 'support the troops' like Rep. Vito Fossella does, then you are just fooling yourself.

NY-13 VITO FOSSELLA HAS HIS 2008 WEB SITE UP & RUNNING

I see that Vito Fossella has set up his 2008 Web Site. Of course it's full of half truths and I see that Vito still is not identifying himself as a member of the Republic Party, guess he's still ashamed of being associated with them. It's also interesting to note that he must be really down to his last dime and had to hire a cheap Web Designer what with errors in spelling. There's one big error and see if you can find it - www.vito2008.com/index.htm

EUGENE AND DISTRICT 40

FROM THE DAILY NEWS

What Eugene said before his lawyer stopped him
The Daily News' Frank Lombardi managed to get Mathieu Eugene on the phone briefly after today's news conference, at which he requested a new special election for City Council in Brooklyn's 40th District. Here's what he found out about Eugene's real estate plans and medical career:
Eugene said he wasn't running away from the media after reading his statement requesting a new election.
"I like you," he said of the media. "You make me very popular, like a star." He said he was in a "rush to get back. I had so many other meetings, appointments, statements, people to meet."
He repeated his contention that he's a "victim of this law," dealing with district residency on election day. "The law is not clear, it's confused."
Asked if he now intends to sell his house in Canarsie, he said, "I don't know what I'm going to do with the house. My wife and I are discussing about that."
Asked to clear up whether he ever practiced medicine here, while working for the Maple Immediate Care Center in Brooklyn, he said flatly, "I did not."
"I've been doing preventive medicine, educational medicine, organizing medical symposiums," he said. Not treatment? he was asked. "No, no, no," he replied. He couldn't recall how long he worked at the Maple Care Center, or when he left.
In response to questions, he said he first came to the U.S. in 1978, but then "went outside" to study in Mexico, where he received his medical degree.
As he was asked when he received his degree, a cell phone could be heard ringing in the background. Eugene excused himself to answer it and then said his lawyer told him he shouldn't talk anymore. Pressed on when he graduated, he hurriedly said, "I don't remember the date exactly," and ended the call.
Posted by on March 8, 2007 7:07 PM Permalink

AIR AMERICA SOLD

AIR AMERICA 2.0 BEGINS TODAY
Mark Green
Today my family formally purchased and took over Air America Radio. Why? Because if progressive values were a stock, now is the time to buy.
This hasn't always been true, as the cycle of politics demonstrates. In recent decades, politics seems to have been governed by physics for every action, there's an opposite and equal reaction. William F. Buckley Jr. started The National Review in the 1950s to rebut what he saw as the dominance of liberalism in the academy and opinion journals like The Nation and The New Republic. From 1970-72, Public Citizen, Common Cause and the NRDC were all created in reaction to Nixon's depredations. Similarly, People For the American Way grew out of the rise of the Religious Right under Reagan in the mid-80s.
New progressive think tanks over the past 10 years, most recently and prominently the Center for American Progress, were created to counter AEI and Heritage. And of course, the Huffington Post and Air America were born in reaction to the electronic propaganda of Drudge and Limbaugh et. al.
Air America was a large, smart idea to counter the near-monopoly on talk radio by the far (f)right. But like most start-ups, the business plan collided with reality. Six CEOs over its first three years and various missteps and misspending sent it into Chapter 11.
It's now ready to go from The Perils of Pauline to The Little Engine that Could. How? First, by focusing on the radio fundamentals of making a strong line-up even stronger; second, by connecting to other major progressive organizations to be mutually fortifying; and third, by being a multi-media content company involving other information platforms mobile, video, broadband, blogs, websites. It's time to think outside the (radio) box.
The twin goals are to make it profitable and influential. One without the other won't work. If it's not a business, it'll go out of business.
But it'll be a business with a sharp point of view. The era of on-the-one-hand-on-the-other-hand liberalism is over -- or as Robert Frost once wrote, "a liberal man is too broad-minded to take his own side in a quarrel." For all those who worry about messianic misleaders governing on a right wing and a prayer, Air America 2.0 will be an answer. For all those fearful of plutocracy and theocracy, the pro-democracy hosts of AAR's programs are the answer. If the conservative media continue to spout propaganda and call it news, we are the alternative of truth, justice and the Air American way.
It's no longer enough just to hope that The New York Times will cover a rally or press release. The relatively new combination of The Huffington Post, Alternet, MoveOn, Center for American Progress and Campaign for America's Future, The Nation and The American Prospect, DailyKos and Talking Points Memo and so many labor unions means that Air America will be part of a larger progressive infrastructure heard by a widening audience. For if we can't now grow and prosper as Democrats -- given the 110th Congress, given the unmitigated disaster that's Iraq, given a slew of top-quality presidential aspirants -- when will we?
So Air America will aggressively cover national politics and policies in ways that will be informative, opinionated and entertaining. All three. We'll be full of news and views. Two views especially. First, America should stop attacking Muslim countries in ways that multiply terrorism. Second, instead of only talking about exporting democracy, Washington should begin practicing it here at home, for example by making sure elections aren't auctions, which means the public funding of public elections.
Speaking personally, my brother and I are excited by this important challenge and look forward to working with the Air America professionals in front of the mic and behind it who have held this dream together. Steve Green has been a very successful businessman accustomed to making money -- and he doesn't intend for AAR to be an exception. I've been an author, public interest lawyer and the NYC Public Advocate; for me this feels like a continuation of so much I've done for the progressive movement over three decades. Air America is like a public advocate for the country, exposing problems and offering solutions.
So we're both optimists in the spirit of Walt Whitman, who wrote that "America is always becoming." Well, Air America too is always becoming.
But that requires a conversation called democracy. In the spirit that dialogue beats monologue, I am today contacting the New Hampshire Republican Party and the New York Post editorial page. Since the Democratic Party of Nevada actually invited Fox News to host that state's Democratic debate, I asked if Air America could host the first Republican debate in New Hampshire, assuring them that we too can be fair and balanced.
And to Bob McManus, editorial page editor of The New York Post, I proposed that he come on Air America to discuss his views and that Air America commentators would in turn once-a-month write an op-ed on his pages, because it's better to exchange ideas than insults. His 720,000 readers should hear from us and our 2 million+ audience should hear from him.
We have many fresh ideas for programming, for technology, for partnerships with sister organizations. But it's this conversation called democracy that's the cornerstone of Air America 2.0. We intend to listen to our listeners; to increase our listeners ; and hope they will join our journey to a better network, better programming, and a better country. To tell them that it's your America, and your Air America.
Originally Released on The Huffington Post (March 6, 2007)

VITO'S BROKE - TOUGH

Shaking the tree
Posted by Tom Wrobleski March 01, 2007 11:14PM
GOP Rep. Vito Fossella wants you.
To help him retire the debt from his 2006 congressional re-election campaign, that is.
Fossella (R-Staten Island/Brooklyn) has sent a letter to donors asking them to make a contribution so he can retire his debt by March 15. Fossella's election committee owes about $209,000, according to Federal Election Commission filings.
"We need to retire all debt by Match 15th so we can begin assembling the resources to win again in 2008," says a letter paid for by the Committee to Re-Elect Vito Fossella, in Alexandria, Va. "And trust me, we need to act quickly because the [Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee] is soon likely to begin spending a million dollars or more on personal attacks and lies in an effort to defeat me."
Wonder what he knows that the rest of us don't? The DCCC barely spent on dime on the Fossella race last year, when the congressman's GOP colleagues were getting washed out to sea by the Democratic blue tide.
"It smacks of desperation to me," said one Islander who got the pitch.
Elsewhere in the letter, Fossella points to recent "tough campaigns" of his during which "left-wing groups and millionaire Democratic activists have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in attack ads against me."
All the more reason for donors to cut checks now, Fossella says in the letter.
"We can achieve another outstanding victory next year -- and defeat the DCCC's hatchet men and the radical left-wing activists that support them -- if you help me to quickly close the books on 2006, and immediately begin running our strongest and most aggressive campaign ever," the letter also says.
"The committee uses a variety of means to reach out to our supporters," Georgea Kay, the committee's new political director, told us. "It's a testament to Vito's hard work and success that he has several thousand individual contributors to his campaign from Staten Island and Brooklyn alone. They recognize that making an investment in Vito has paid huge dividends in making our community a better place to live." Not everybody seems to be eager to dip into their wallets this early in the election cycle.
"I did what about three or four other people I know who got the letter did," said one Republican. "I trashed it."