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.

In communications with the Federal Communications Commission, it’s another matter. According to Free Press, Mike Arcuri is one of 74 Democrats in the House of Representatives who have signed their names to a letter to the FCC urging against adoption of standards for Internet media that would establish net neutrality.

Net neutrality is a term that refers to the ideal that the Internet ought to be the same for everybody – at least in terms of the quality of its delivery. Net neutrality is opposed to telecommunications efforts that would set up a two-class Internet, one for big corporations that have enough money to pay for their web sites to receive access to an elite network of special power, and a second-class Internet for everyone else.

The letter Arcuri signed was written by telecommunications industry lobbyists. That in itself is cause for concern.

But what can we do? We’re in Trumansburg, a thousand miles away from the Gulf of Mexico.

It just so happens that we have a person who’s supposed to be working for us, representing people in Trumansburg in the larger affairs of the United States. That person’s name is Mike Arcuri. He’s our voice in the U.S. House of Representatives.

As a member of the House of Representatives, when there’s a national emergency like the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico, Congressman Arcuri has the responsibility to act. He doesn’t have to be the author of legislation dealing with the crisis, but when someone else writes such legislation, he has the responsibility to support the legislation or to support an alternative.

Inaction in these circumstances is inexcusable, but inaction is what we’re getting from Michael Arcuri. There’s a good, simple bill in the House right now. It’s H.R. 5248, the No New Drilling Act. The legislation would do what the title suggests: Put a moratorium on expansion of offshore drilling.

Mike Arcuri is not a supporter of the No New Drilling Act. He hasn’t cosponsored the bill, or any other bill that would help our government deal with the current oil spill disaster or prevent future ones.

If you’d like to see Arcuri take action to move Congress forward in dealing with the Deepwater Horizon disaster, you can call Arcuri’s closest local office at: 315 252-2777 .

In the first quarter of this year, there have been only three donations over $200 from Trumansburg to the re-election campaign of our incumbent Representative in Congress, Michael Arcuri. The total amount of those donations is $2,400.

That’s more than what Arcuri’s Republican rival, Richard Hanna has obtained from Trumansburg. Although Hanna took more than half again as much money as Arcuri in general during the first quarter of this year, Hanna did not receive any donations over $200 from Trumansburg.

It seems that a general lack of enthusiasm characterizes Trumansburg’s role in the 2010 congressional election so far. Support for Richard Hanna is low, but support for Congressman Arcuri isn’t high either.

Roberts says that he’s waiting to see how district Democratic Committees and labor unions sifting out in the aftermath of Mike Arcuri’s move to work with congressional Republicans in voting against Barack Obama’s health care reform legislation. Of course, that vote is not the only reason that growing numbers of Democrats and other progressives oppose the re-election of Congressman Arcuri. Arcuri has a consistent record of opposing progressive legislation. Arcuri voted against climate legislation last year, for example, and just before he voted against health care reform, he voted in favor of extending the worst abuses of George W. Bush’s Patriot Act – without any attempt at reform at all.

Mr. Roberts, if you’re looking for an indication of the attitude of Democrats in our district toward Representative Arcuri right now, I can point out that, although there have been comments here expressing disgust with Arcuri, not one local Democrat has stepped forward to defend Arcuri from criticism. Whether or not you challenge Arcuri from the Working Families Party, Arcuri won’t win this election. He lacks the enthusiastic support from his own party’s voters that he needs to win, especially considering the narrow margin of victory he had in 2008, a year he had Obama’s coattails to ride. There will be no free ride for Michael Arcuri this year. Les Roberts need not worry about being an election “spoiler”. Mike Arcuri has already spoiled it quite well enough for himself.

Three quarters of donations to Congressman Arcuri’s re-election campaign last year came from political action commitees. Only one quarter of donations came from individuals – and a good number of those individuals aren’t even from our district.

For example, there are the two checks Arcuri took from Robert Blancato, who lives in Arlington, Virginia, and has spent 5 of the last 10 years as a registered lobbyist. Also sending money from Arlington were Shawn Bullard, who works for the lobbying firm Duetto Group, and lobbyist Bob Gray, working for Strategic Insight. Arcuri took a $5,000 check from Gilbert Butler, an investment manager in New York City, a check from Patrick Foley, who lobbies for the firm Bolton-St. Johns, and Patricia Guay, lobbying with the Petrizzo Strategic Group for clients such as Agios Pharmaceuticals and Medica Healthcare Plans. The list of lobbyists counted as individual contributors to Arcuri’s re-election campaign continues on, and on. Search through that list, and you’ll see that even the 24 percent of donations that Arcuri took from individuals isn’t wholly comprised of fawning Arcuri constituents in our district.

Of course, many lobbying firms were quite open about handing money to Congressman Arcuri. For example, before he voted against climate change legislation, Arcuri took a check from Kelley, Drye and Warren, a lobbying firm that represents ExxonMobil. Arcuri also took money from the PAC for the lobbying firm Sonnenschein, Nath & Rosenthal, a lobbying firm representing Allstate Insurance, as well as the PAC for the lobbyists of Williams & Jensen, which represents pharmaceuticals giants Novartis, Amgen, and AstraZeneca.

Are you starting to get the picture of how Michael Arcuri could have seen his way to vote against health care reform? Yes, Arcuri certainly got some interesting telephone messages from Tea Party protesters, but perhaps more convincing was the $53,500 he received from medical industry PACs, and $15,000 from insurance industry PACs. That’s in addition to the amounts given by the lobbyists listed above.

Arcuri also took $10,000 in donations from the Blue Dog PAC. Arcuri is a Blue Dog himself, and along with rank-and-file members such as Arcuri, every single leader of the Blue Dog Coalition voted against health care reform.

Did Democratic voters here in Trumansburg think that Representative Arcuri would listen to them on the issue of health care reform, with the loud voices of all that corporate money competing for attention?

Arcuri has justified his decision to vote with the Republicans by saying, “I am not convinced that after months of listening, studying and debating that the current bill benefits the people in my district in the best possible way”. The best possible way?!? What is Congressman Arcuri waiting for? A clause to guarantee house calls accompanied by free pizza delivery?

Consistently, Michael Arcuri has voted with the right wing Blue Dogs, against the progressive values of Trumansburg Democrats. Just a few weeks ago, Arcuri voted to extend the infamous Patriot Act – without any reforms even to its worst provisions. Maybe Arcuri’s growing Republican voting record okay with the political machine up in Utica, but voters down in this corner of the district see things differently.

Problems For Arcuri Update: The Working Families Party is now looking for a candidate to run against Representative Arcuri. The service workers union SEIU is also refusing to grant Arcuri its endorsement in this year’s election.

Les Roberts may be running again. Remember when local Democrats told us that Arcuri was the better choice?

The Patriot Act was set to expire. It was originally supposed to expire years ago, actually. So, the House and Senate judiciary committees went to the trouble of holding hearings, and arguing about the need for reforms. The need for reforms to the Patriot Act are substantial. It’s been revealed through federal government reviews that Patriot Act spying powers are being used not to investigate terrorist plots, but to spy on Americans who aren’t even suspected of having any connection to terrorism. Senator Russ Feingold pointed out during a hearing on the Patriot Act last year that “in fiscal year 2008 only 3 out of the 763 sneak and peek search warrant applications were in terrorism cases. 65 percent were for drug cases.” From last year’s hearings, some reforms were proposed. They weren’t as strong as they could have been, but at least they were a step in the right direction.

Some Republicans in Congress objected to reforming the Patriot Act, however, so this week, the congressional Democratic leadership capitulated, and agreed to extend the Patriot Act without any reforms whatsoever – as quietly as possible, disguised as a Medicare reform amendment, and without any debate or roll call vote in the Senate at all. In the House yesterday, a roll call vote took place, but only someone paying very close attention would have known that the roll call was about the Patriot Act, not Medicare reform. If you want to take a look yourself, here’s the roll call.

Defying their party’s leadership, 87 Democrats in the House decided to do the right thing and vote against the no-reform Patriot Act extension. Our Representative in Congress, Mike Arcuri, was not among that 87. Congressman Arcuri voted yesterday in favor of extending the Patriot Act without reforming it one bit.

Ulysses Democrats, is that what you thought you were voting for in 2008? You can call Arcuri’s office at 315-793-8146 to tell him yourself what you expect.

No, this party was in Washington D.C., at a very special house. It wasn’t the home of one of his constituents. It was the 21st Century Townhouse, the home of the Twenty-First Century Group, a lobbying firm.

The party was organized by 21st Century staff lobbyist Jocelyn Hong, but the checks by people in attendance were written payable to Arcuri for Congress. Individuals were required to pay $500 dollars to attend. Political action committees were asked to pay $5,000 to Congressman Arcuri in compensation for the sugar cookies and punch, though organizations seeking a lesser level of political influence could pay a mere $1,000 for a “PAC Memento”.

I’ve never charged admission to a holiday party. Then again, I don’t serve on the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, as Michael Arcuri does, and I don’t work for a corporation that does business in the areas of transportation and infrastructure, as clients of the 21st Century Group lobbying firm do.

Do you think that Mike Arcuri had fun at that holiday party? Maybe not, but he walked away with an awful lot of nice presents.

If we had hosted a $5,000 per plate holiday party for Representative Arcuri here in Trumansburg, would he have supported single payer health care and climate legislation this year instead of opposing them?

Current tax law gave an exemption for the first million dollars of this form of income. Under the bill Arcuri voted for, that exemption will be raised to three and a half million dollars.

Middle class and working poor Americans won’t see one single cent of savings from this tax cut. In fact, we’ll be paying for this widened tax loophole for wealthy Americans. It’s going to cost the federal government hundreds of billions of dollars, a debt our taxes will have to pay off – with interest.

For years, when the Republicans were in charge, I heard Democrats complain about tax cuts targeted to benefit the wealthiest Americans. Will Democrats be silent now, when one of their own in Congress has voted in favor of the same sort of scheme?