At the end of what would be my failed attempt to get on the ballot in the 2006 campaign, the LPNY Senatorial candidate, Jeff Russell and I crashed a MoveOn.org event. The purpose and the tone of the event was a criticism of the war on Iraq and a display of the opportunity cost for the district if the tax dollars stayed at home. 
While we were there to criticize Hillary Clinton and John Sweeney for their support of the war , there were a couple cat calls in regard to the current Congresswoman Kirsten Gillibrand. She obviously had not taken a strong enough position against the war and the leftists and brave progressives were taking her to task about it. While its not very puzzling strategically to see why the Gillibrand campaign avoided this event, it remains equally dubious that the current mailer her five offices has mailed out amounts to fiddling with the tax code in light of the major crisis that Empire has driven. While it stresses property tax relief, one has to wonder whether the current CongressCritter would have been suited for the Assembly or State Senate instead of waddling around under the auspices of the nation's Capitol. It was a question many asked of me as I was running. My answer was always . . 'the war, the war'.
If you're still with with me on this post, which have been rare and infrequent here, here's an in depth criticism of the whole approach. Of course I saved the top shelf stuff for the real blog. This hardly seemed like worthwhile there, but it was something that had to be said in case there are a few willing donors to pop a few grand off a piece for another insurgent effort that dealt with the war and the trillions of dollars of unfunded mandates that our children and grandchildren are stuck with . . . .
The basic premise behind this Gillibrand legislation is that 40% of taxpayers need a better accountant. A detailed itemization would allow a certain segment to make certain deductions that they are 'entitled' to. If the form was just that much easier, all these fixed income seniors would be better off.
While it does nothing to address the state and local requirements that ties property and school school funding together, the addition of federal funds is the chimera that makes it all better according to the Gillibrand mailer. The local example of a 184K appropriation for the Town of Schroon for a waste water treatment facility is just good old constituent services. No regard or thought is ever given to the poor bastard in Idaho who had some percentage of his pay taken for a place crawling with tax free setups like the Word of Life.
Of course the other Gillibrand blind spot is that even though you depict these moderate homes on your brochure and describe the district as 'upstate', the millionaires created by sky rocketing prices and subsequent assessments to neighbors is never addressed. Even if the poor old seniors enjoy a marginal difference on the low taxes that must be associated with their fixed incomes and star programs, if their houses double in value every ten years there outta here soon anyway.
I have to wonder how the smug progressives I met up at the Health Care forum in Saratoga are reeling from the obvious treachery that the Gillibrand camp engaged in when promising to end the war. Or was that just what the Times Union fabricated as her position in the final days before (or was it after ?) the Sweeney fall ?