Here in Trumansburg, we’ve done better than most of the nation. The pitch of the decline of our housing prices has been less steep. Nonetheless, this chart from Zillow, which tracks real estate statistics, shows that we’re in a double dip too.

At least housing prices here aren’t as low as they were in 2009.

On economic issues, however, Richard Hanna hasn’t begun so well. So far, TheMiddleClass.org has given Congressman Hanna a zero percent legislative rating, indicating that Hanna is voting against the economic interests of his middle class constituents. Ulysses is a mostly middle class town, of course, and Hanna’s economic agenda so far isn’t matching our needs.

On Valentine’s Day, Congressman Hanna voted against an effort to extend the worst provisions of the Patriot Act. The record shows that these provisions are used in connection to alleged terrorist conspiracies only a fraction of one percent of the time. More than 99 percent of the time, Patriot Act powers to conduct unreasonable search and seizure in violation of the Fourth Amendment are done against people, many of them Americans, who are not even accused of having any connection to terrorism – even second or third-hand connections.

If you think about it, it makes perfect sense for a principled Republican to vote against the renewal of the Patriot Act. Republicans assert that they’re against big government, and the Patriot Act is the worst kind of big government program there is.

We also ought to be able to assume that Democrats in Congress would be willing to take such a stand in defense of our liberty. Yesterday, New York’s U.S. senators, Kirsten Gillibrand and Charles Schumer, showed that’s not the case. They both voted in favor of extending the worst spying powers of the Patriot Act – with no reforms whatsoever.

Will we hear any comment from Democrats in Trumansburg and the Town of Ulysses about this vote?

The existence of the Patriot Act has encouraged the federal government to ignore all restraints – even the very loose restraints that limit Patriot Act spying powers. A new report by the Electronic Frontier Foundation shows that there have been tens of thousands of violations of the Patriot Act by FBI agents, for example.

Our Democratic Senators ought to know better than to vote in favor of any provision that extends these unconstitutional powers. Please call Senator Schumer and Senator Gillibrand through the congressional switchboard at (202) 224-3121 to deliver that message.

While you’re at it, call Richard Hanna at his office in Auburn – 315-252-6700 – to thank him for his vote against Patriot Act extension.

The reason has everything to do with the Congressman Richard Hanna will be replacing: Mike Arcuri. Arcuri has been our Democratic U.S. Representative for four years now, though Democrats in our district never really got the chance to choose him as their candidate. Back in 2006, then-Chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Rahm Emanuel hand-picked Arcuri to be our district’s Democratic nominee, and maneuvered to pressure all other Democrats to withdraw from the race before rank and file Democrats could make their voices heard through a primary.

We were told that a primary would weaken Democratic chances of victory. Instead, what we actually got was four years of weakened Democratic Party victories. Because of the election of Michael Arcuri, and right wing Blue Dogs like him, to Congress, Republicans won large numbers of legislative victories even though they were nominally out of power. The Blue Dogs blocked good legislation and worked with Republicans to pass nasty laws.

From the start, liberals like myself were told that we were obligated to vote for Arcuri just because he was a Democrat, regardless of his ideology. Democrats here in Trumansburg howled and scowled when I told them in 2006 that I wouldn’t vote for Arcuri because of his support for the Military Commissions Act, a law that encourages torture and set up kangaroo courts with shamefully low standards of justice (Arcuri announced his support for the law even before he had read it). I was told that I ought to think of the big picture, and imagine all the wonderful things that would be done once the Democrats took control of Congress.

They got what they wanted, and then, almost all those wonderful things that the Democrats promised they’d do when they got control of Congress were blocked by Michael Arcuri and his fellow Blue Dogs. Arcuri’s vote against health care reform and climate legislation this session were just the most recent examples of his frequent collaboration with Congress to the detriment of the political ideals that most Democrats hold dear.

I disagree with a huge amount of Richard Hanna’s political agenda, but there’s one thing Richard Hanna does not do. Richard Hanna does not tell me that he’s progressive and then act regressive.

In fact, Richard Hanna is every now and then surprisingly reasonable. This year, for example, when most Republican congressional candidates were hissing and foaming at the mouth in protest against the renovation of a community center run by Muslims, with a memorial to the victims of the September 11 attacks in it, calling it a “Ground Zero Mosque”, Richard Hanna refrained from joining in the hateful paranoia… at first. He rightly noted that where any religious group chose to place its buildings is their business, a matter protected by the First Amendment’s freedom of religion.

Then, Mike Arcuri, seeing a political opportunity to exploit fear to his personal advantage, declared that he thought that Muslims ought to move their community center away from the community in which they lived. Arcuri was effectively stating that there ought to be Islam-free zones in the USA. He was joining with Sarah Palin, against Barack Obama’s pleas for toleration. He forced Richard Hanna to change his position, and join in the scapegoating of Muslims.

So now we’ve got to deal with being represented in the U.S. House by a Republican. I can cope with that. Just as electing Mike Arcuri wasn’t what delivered the House to the Democrats in 2006, electing Richard Hanna isn’t now a single blow that’s given John Boehner and his Republican allies control of the House. If you look at the election results from yesterday across the nation, you’ll see that it was overwhelmingly Republican-collaborating Democrats like Mike Arcuri who lost their seats in the House. Blue Dogs and other Democrats like them didn’t retain voter support. Liberal Democrats did. The Democratic committees up in Utica and Auburn, who together dominate the Democratic Party politics in our district, ought to consider that as they look for nominees in 2012.

It’s 2012 I’m thinking of as I celebrate the yesterday’s victory of Richard Hanna. Now, Democrats have the opportunity to organize to find a reasonable, genuine progressive Democrat to represent them in the 2012 election. Democrats don’t have to put on false smiles anymore, making excuses for Arcuri. There’s a chance now that, come January of 2013, Trumansburg Democrats will be represented by someone in Congress who actually shares their values.

Michael Arcuri? Good riddance.

Given that we’re about to celebrate the most excellent holiday of Halloween (our Haunted Forest should be open at about 8:00 Halloween night), it seems like a good time to point to the witch-themed online businesses of our resident Rebecca Murphy. It’s called Witchcrafts, and offers a combination of witchy items and ephemera. She upcycles, she recycles. She’s also on Facebook, and on EBay with books.

So, what’s the solution our U.S. Representative, Michael Arcuri has come up with? Well, he voted against health care reform, leaving the unemployed, underemployed and self-employed vulnerable to the outrageous rates from insurance companies. Then, Arcuri voted in favor of doing nothing about climate change, which is already draining billions of dollars out of our national economy every year.

But, you may be asking, what has Mike Arcuri done lately? Not much, to be honest. Most of Representative Arcuri’s work on Capitol Hill has been procedural clerking, offering motions to adjourn, or to have someone else’s bill considered, and that sort of thing.

In his re-election campaign, however, Representative Arcuri has shown the kind of leadership that… well, the kind of leadership that we’ve come to expect from Arcuri. Arcuri’s latest big economic idea, sent out in a campaign email this afternoon, is to invite consituents to a big gathering in Ithaca, and then take their money.

Arcuri’s supposed to be working for us in Washington D.C., but it seems that he sees it the other way around. We work at our jobs, and pay our taxes so that he can get a big paycheck, and then Arcuri charges us for the privilege of meeting him for a few seconds.

The going rate that Mike Arcuri has devised for his upcoming gathering: 500 dollars to stand in line waiting to shake his hand, and 1,000 dollars if you want your photograph taken with him to make yourself look important.

In times like these, Congressman Arcuri ought to be meeting with us come up with ways to help us make ends meet, rather than taking our money to meet his own ends.

Congressman Arcuri has announced that he supports Sarah Palin’s crusade to block the construction of a Muslim community center and mosque in lower Manhattan. Why would Arcuri do such a thing? Manhattan isn’t in our congressional district, after all.

Mike Arcuri says he’s using his power as a member of the House of Representatives to support the anti-mosque campaign because of his support for “victims’ rights”. If Arcuri had stopped to think for a moment, he might have remembered that Muslims like Mohammad Chowdhury were among the people in the Word Trade Center when it was hit on September 11, 2001. Muslims like Rahma Salie were among the innocent people who were on the hijacked planes that hit the towers. Muslims like police cadet Salman Hamdani were among the people who were killed when they rushed to the Twin Towers to help rescue as many people as possible.

Given that followers of Islam were among the victims of September 11, 2001, how on earth can Congressman Arcuri think that he’s defending “victims’ rights” by banning the free practice of Islam in Manhattan? Arcuri is actually opposing victims’ rights on this issue.

The very first words of the very first amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America read, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”. Yet, here Representative Arcuri is, using his power as a member of Congress to attempt the free exercise of religion.

Mike Arcuri’s solidarity with Sarah Palin’s hateful anti-Islam purge isn’t merely constitutionally indefensible. It’s also politically incompetent. Just days before Arcuri announced that he is opposed to the free practice of Islam in New York State, his Republican opponent, Richard Hanna, announced that he would never join in such an attack on religious freedom, because he respected the founding principles of the USA too much.

Hanna took the mosque issue out of play. Arcuri didn’t have to play the anti-Muslim hate card. He did it because he wanted to, or because he just plain wasn’t smart enough to understand that encouraging fear against Islam would bring him no competitive advantage.

Either way, Arcuri has shown with the mosque issue that he is profoundly unqualified to represent us in Washington D.C. For years, Democrats have been making excuses for Blue Dog Arcuri. I don’t see how any decent, freedom-loving Trumansburg Democrat can now continue to support the Arcuri re-election campaign, when Arcuri has joined the Glenn Becks and Rush Limbaughs in their hateful anti-Muslim crusade.

If you were at the Trumansburg Public Schools playground construction site, you would have seen a Muslim among the volunteers. She stood out in the dust and the hot sun, working hard so that all of our children could have a place to come together to play. She’s no terrorist. She’s a good citizen.

Congressman Michael Arcuri spits at her contributions, and at the contributions of all the other Muslims that live in our congressional district. If you vote to re-elect Arcuri to Congress, you will be repeating that insult.

So, it hasn’t been a great surprise that Michael Arcuri has withheld his support from effective legislation to prevent more oil spills such as the one that occurred in the Gulf of Mexico when the Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling rig exploded on Earth Day. But, did Arcuri have to go and support legislation to prevent protections for the Gulf Coast?

That’s just what Representative Arcuri did yesterday. Arcuri voted in favor of an amendment from Charles Melancon, a Congressman who’s long been in the pocket of big oil. Melancon’s amendment, added onto the Consolidated Land Energy and Aquatic Resources Act, ends a 6-month moratorium on offshore drilling. That moratorium was put in place in order to provide enough time for a thorough investigation of the factors that led to the Deepwater Horizon disaster, so that safety inspections in the future can look for similar problems, instead of following the flawed inspection procedures of the past.

In the days before Mike Arcuri voted to help the oil industry evade effective offshore drilling inspections, there were two new oil spills in the Gulf of Mexico. If Congressman Arcuri had been paying attention, he would have thought twice before voting to end the protections for the Gulf of Mexico. It doesn’t appear that Arcuri was paying attention.

And then there was yesterday. On the same day:

- Auditors reported that the Pentagon cannot account for 8.7 billion dollars in Iraq.

- Trumansburg’s U.S. Representative, Michael Arcuri voted in favor of sending the Pentagon an extra 59 billion dollars for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Whether you’re a liberal against war or a conservative against wasteful spending, that kind of vote is difficult to justify. As a Blue Dog, Mike Arcuri long ago lost the support of the Democratic liberal base. With his many votes, like yesterday’s, in favor of wasteful spending, I don’t see how Arcuri will make up the difference with conservative voters.

Today, our Congressman, right wing Blue Dog Mike Arcuri, voted along with every other member of the U.S. House of Representatives to commemorate the 100th birthday of Jacques Cousteau, which will take place three days from now. However, Representative Arcuri has consistently voted against Cousteau’s fundamental values of environmental stewardship over the Earth and its oceans.

Last year, Arcuri voted against legislation to confront climate change. We’ve just lived through the warmest 12-month period ever recorded, but Arcuri decided the time was not right to act. This spring, we’ve seen two weeks of record-low Arctic sea ice, but Arcuri seems more interested in protecting the income of fossil fuel giants than confronting our planet’s dangerous shift in temperature.

Michael Arcuri is now refusing to take strong action to confront the dangers exposed by the enormous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Simple legislation exists to reduce the risk to American coastlines: H.R. 5248, the No New Drilling Act, would take the sensible precaution of restoring the moratorium on expanded offshore drilling that protected this nation’s waters for an entire generation without negative effect. Arcuri won’t sign his name to the bill. He’s content to let it die.

The Cousteau Society promotes the idea of a Bill of Rights for Future Generations. That document asserts that every generation has duty to pass legislation “to prevent irreversible and irreparable harm to life on Earth”.

That duty seems alien to our representative in Washington. Through both active opposition and passive enabling of Big Oil’s agenda of pollution for profit, Congressman Arcuri has ensured that Jacques Cousteau’s vision of a clean planet protected for future generations has not come to pass. Voting in favor of a toothless resolution marking Cousteau’s birthday doesn’t begin to compensate for Arcuri’s record of environmental neglect.

Is Representative Arcuri truly “fiscally conservative”, though, or does he just use that term as an excuse to support the Republican agenda? A recently introduced bill, H.R. 5353, provides a good test of Arcuri’s true fiscal character.

H.R. 5353 would eliminate federal taxes on the first $35,000 of every American’s income ($70,000 for married couples). Just think of how that tax cut could help you in these economically difficult times. The bill would also pay off 16 billion dollars of the federal budget deficit, providing a savings for the American people that will compound year after year.

How would H.R. 5353 accomplish this feat? It would merely require the Pentagon to pay for its activities through its official budget, rather than taking hundreds of billions of dollar in extra requests to Congress. So long as the Pentagon cuts its most outrageous pork barrel spending – such as money just approved for a second engine for the F-35, a single engine airplane – this requirement shouldn’t be a problem. The U.S. military budget is so filled with waste that it’s as large as the military budgets of all the other nations on Earth combined. Our planet’s 2nd largest military budget is from the European Union, and they’re U.S. allies.

Maurice Hinchey, the U.S. Representative for the district that includes our neighbor Ithaca, has cosponsored the bill. But Michael Arcuri? Apparently he doesn’t approve of this sort of fiscal conservatism. H.R. 5353 gives Arcuri a chance to dramatically cut taxes and pay down the deficit, but Arcuri won’t sign his name to the effort.