The Trumansburg Village Board intends to enact a fee for service system.  They refuse to discuss the ramifications.  I sent the report with this graph to them, and have had no response.

Jonathan wrote about the National Guard at the Fair.  The next day we have a armored Humvee in our Fireman’s parade?  Is this part of a program of increasing militarization of our society?  I don’t remember this in other years.

One of my neighbors kids has signed up, and will probably deploy to the Middle East soon.

Glenn Beck held his rally in Washington today to honor the troops, on the anniversary of MLK’s famous “I Have a Dream Speech”.  He was standing on the same steps on the Lincoln Memorial, as MLK stood 47 years ago today.

Glenn Beck, trying to capitolize on the memory of MLK, who said that our country was “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today”

We spend more on our military than the rest of the world combined.  Perhaps if we slashed our military spending, we could afford send a little more to local Fire Departments and Ambulance Services, and not have to privatize them.

To see the National Guard, however, at the front gate, encouraging children to pick up guns, many children so young that they weren’t even tall enough to go on most of the rides – that greatly reduced my feeling of comfort with the event this year. Men in uniform stood, watching as young children picked up a variety of guns, swung them around wildly, and even pointed the guns at each other, pretending to shoot.

It isn’t about whether you support the military, or even whether you think it’s appropriate for the military to target elementary school kids for pre-recruitment. It’s about basic gun safety. Every year children are killed, and kill, because they’ve been taught to treat guns like toys.

I was taught that it’s never okay to point a gun at somebody, even if you think it’s not loaded. What are these National Guard recruiters being taught?

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.

At noon on Wednesday, there will be an open discussion of the book Message in a Bottle.

Also, the library is soliciting “adult book reviews”, which will “be entered to win a gift certificate to Americana’s Crystal Lake Café”. Anyone read any good adult books lately?

Sorry to have a lame little chuckle at the library’s PR expense, but really, the library is having a great amount of interesting events this summer. The staff and volunteers there are doing important work for our community.

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.

It’s curious that 14.3 miles is close to the distance from Cornell University to the Trumansburg Fairgrounds, where the Grassroots Festival of Music and Dance is taking place this weekend. I’m not saying that I know that Ranger was actually en route to hear Donna the Buffalo, but it would provide some motivation for going the distance.

There was another Task Force meeting in mid July that I could not attend.  I’ve heard that Jackie Wright was there and took minutes and sent them to Trustee Chris Thomas.  I’d like to see them!  So I asked the Village Clerk.  She hasn’t seen them.  I asked Jackie Wright.  She said that she had sent them to Chris Thomas, and didn’t feel comfortable releasing them directly to me.  So I wrote to Chris Thomas and every member of the Village Board and the Ulysses Town Board, requesting the minutes, on July 17th.  I haven’t heard a word from any of them. So on Monday I filed a Freedom of Information Act request for them at Village Hall.

“One of the best parts was this little play area right in the center of town that had three wooden play structures–a library, a school house, and a firehouse. It totally inspired imaginative play, but also physical (ladders, a pole to slide down in the fire house), and we could have spent the whole morning there.”

Thanks for the note to Clara and company, but I have to give a special smile at the blog’s report of the temperature of Cayuga Lake: “a chilly 70 degrees”. I’ll take a chilly 70 degrees with gratitude during these hot summer days.