A crowd of around 100 people gathered last week in St. Philip’s Baptist Church on Staten Island to rally against proposed cuts to a federal grant that aids the poor, seniors, immigrants and youth.

The Community Services Block Grant reaches about 800 people on Staten Island through eight community based organizations.  Some Republican proposals in the House suggested fully eliminating the grant, but even President Obama, a former community organizer himself, called for cutting the $700 million grant by half.

City officials from the Department of Youth and Community Development, the agency that distributes the federal grant money, described how the cuts could potentially deprive the Island of $600,000, but the crowd wanted to hear from the man who would vote on them—Rep. Michael Grimm. Local resident Sharon Peake grew frustrated with city officials, and called for Grimm’s representative, who sat in the front row, to step up.

“He shouldn’t be here just to listen,” said Peake.  “He should be here to answer the questions that you all can’t answer.”

A reluctant William Smith, Grimm’s communications director, stepped before the crowd, but offered little by way of answers, except that he heard a lot of negative feedback.

“Congressman Grimm has not made a decision yet,” said Smith.  “We don’t have a position.

Grimm will now have more time to make that decision, thanks to a temporary spending measure passed by Congress last week that will keep the government operating until April.   But if the crowd at St. Philip’s serves as an indicator, residents of the Island’s North Shore are growing impatient.  Organizers encouraged members of the audience to join in the letter-writing campaign Grimm, along with Senators Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand.

“CSBG creates programs that offer people a hand up in life,” the letter states,  “not a hand out.  Without your support of this program, many people in need in our community would be at risk.”

Wasteful spending is bad. Except maybe when it’s not.

That’s what some members of Congress are saying now that the ban on earmarks is in place. In November of last year, Republicans made a vow to ban earmarks, a motion offered under unanimous consent by former Real World house member and current Republican House member Sean Duffy.

“Anyone who’s been listening to the American people can tell you that banning earmarks is a no-brainer,” Duffy said in an Op-Ed to Politico. “Throughout the year, Americans clamored for Washington to stop spending and start focusing on creating jobs. But Americans weren’t being heard.”

This came right around the time that Democrats proposed their own ban on earmarks for corporations.  In fact, President Obama famously said in his State of the Union address, “if a bill comes to my desk with earmarks in it, I will veto it.” The idea is that earmarks are wasteful spending, and in an economic downturn we should do everything we can to cut spending.

While the banning of earmarks is well underway, members of Congress have found other ways to get projects done: just straight up ask for it. Legislators have found a way around the earmark ban by going directly to the agencies involved in handing out the money.

Last Tuesday, an article ran in the Queens Courier about new funding for a YMCA program in Flushing. The $1.1 million grant was provided directly by the Department of Labor, via direct lobbying from Senator Chuck Schumer. And in January, Gary Ackerman petitioned another Queens project–a VA hospital in St. Albans– to the secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Republicans are in on the game as well. Rep. Peter King, who is no stranger to earmarks himself, says the ability to reach out to these organizations is now very important now that the ban is in place.

“I will do everything I can to protect my district,” he told the Times.

While “earmark” can be a bad word when uttered by politicians in public, it makes sense that a lot of politicians would feel the way King does. For Gary Ackerman or Peter King to come out and say they’re against earmarks is like saying they’re against securing money for their districts.

Beyond just taking funds away from congressional districts, banning earmarks does little to reduce spending in the big picture, so the entire idea of banning earmarks in order to get tough on spending is no more than a game. And why should multi-term incumbents have to play?

In January, Gary Ackerman made news by being openly critical about J Street, the liberal-minded non-profit organization whose purpose, they say, is to advocate for a peaceful solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Ackerman’s critique was about the organization’s recommendation to the Obama administration to not veto a U.N. resolution condemning Israel.

In an emotional press release, Ackerman said that the organization’s “brains had fallen out.”

“America really does need a smart, credible, politically active organization that is as aggressively pro-peace as it is pro-Israel,” Ackerman said. “Unfortunately, J-Street ain’t it.”

There was another line in the press release that I thought was peculiar, but I didn’t pick up on it right away. Ackerman said that J-Street is “not an organization with which I wish to be associated.” At the time, I thought this was just a way to grab attention by putting himself in the middle of a situation he had nothing to do with.

Imagine my surprise while perusing Ackerman’s donor list. In the number two slot, by no more than a few hundred dollars, was the J Street PAC.

This struck me as an interesting turn, since on the surface Ackerman agrees with J Street’s main objective of a two-state solution. He even drafted a letter with Charles Boustany (R-LA) in 2007, urging former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to invest more in the Mideast peace process, a move praised by J Street and other pro-peace organizations.

So why the attack on a former donor?

A cynical person might say that Ackerman doesn’t really care so much about Israel, and that his concern only goes as far as his reelection chances. As the representative from New York’s 5th congressional district, Ackerman represents neighborhoods where the populations are a lot of older Jewish people, including Jamaica Estates in Queens, which has a large Orthodox population. Much as with his anger over Bernie Madoff, Ackerman could be playing to his base.

But a less cynical person might say Gary Ackerman just stands by his beliefs. I find myself coming back to this a lot. Ackerman is a tough guy to figure out: he’s been in congress since before I was born, so his seat seems pretty safe. I gather he could probably sit back and do nothing with his time in office, but he continually puts himself in the center of foreign policy issues, and not always in ways that would necessarily have immediate benefit to him. If he was pandering to a large older, Jewish base, why not take a more conservative stance on Israel? For that matter, why take a pro-revolutionary stance on Egypt? With a miniscule Arab population in his district, why take any stance at all?

And that’s just it: he doesn’t really have to, but he does anyway. We might have just stumbled across the rare politician without an ulterior motive.

Although, my friend Lily had another theory as to why the 68-year-old Ackerman might have criticized a former donor.

“Maybe he forgot,” she said.

Maybe!

In a press release last week, Gary Ackerman continued his unrelenting support of the uprisings taking place throughout the Middle East.

While speaking specifically about Moammar Gadhafi, whose actions the congressman called “inexcusable and criminal,” Ackerman also called for broader U.S. support throughout the region.

“A wave of freedom is blowing through the Middle East,” Ackerman said in the release, “and the United States must stand with the people of the region who are demanding nothing more than the political and civil rights we Americans enjoy everyday: the right to free speech and assembly, equality before the law and a government accountable to the people who elect it.”

At a Senate Foreign Relations Committee Hearing on Wednesday, committee chair John Kerry and Secretary of State Hilary Rodham Clinton echoed that sentiment.

“We have joined the Libyan people in demanding Gadhafi must go — now without further violence or bloodshed,” Clinton said.

This speaks to the broader point Clinton was getting at: promoting stronger foreign support in order to serve our strategic interests and protect the United States’ national security. Clinton notes, for example, that not supporting Afghanistan during the Cold War may have cost us in the long run by creating a less stable country.

But one avenue of that support Ackerman, Kerry and Clinton are calling for is coming under attack by the GOP: foreign aid spending. Last month, the House passed the Full-Year Continuing Appropriations Act which the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition says will cut the International Affairs Budget by 19 percent for fiscal year 2011.

“There is something about these cuts that does violence to the Judeo-Christian ethic so many people claim to uphold,” Kerry said last week.

Ackerman, for his part, voted against the cuts in the House. According to CQ, the congressman sees this time of upheaval as a chance to support Democracy in the region.

“There’s an opportunity here that we’ve never sensed,” Ackerman was quoted as saying. “This is a new generation of people. . . . They have dreams, and they’re looking to us to help them.”

It sounds like that old bit from Sesame Street.  One of these things just doesn’t belong.

On Friday, Michael Grimm joined Queens democrats Anthony Weiner and Gregory Meeks in endorsing of the “Residential and Commuter Toll Fairness Act,” which would allow State and local governments to grant discounts to local residents who use bridges, tunnels and other forms of transportation.  Grimm hopes to protect the discount enjoyed by Staten Islanders who use the Verrazano Bridge, the only bridge connecting the Island to the other four boroughs.

“The simple truth is that Staten Islanders pay exorbitant tolls to subsidize mass transit for other parts of our region,” said Grimm in a statement. “We face the longest commutes in the nation and we receive little transit assistance for carrying that toll burden.”

Non-residents pay $13 in cash to enter Staten Island, while residents pay $7.72.  Commuters using EZ-Pass pay $9.60 compared to $5.76 for residents.  Several cases appearing in federal court have contemplated the constitutionality of these discounts.

Residents of Grand Island, NY may lose a discount on bridge tolls if a federal judge in New York’s Second District deems the $0.66 discount unconstitutional.  And a federal judge in Rhode Island could rule in a similar case as early as next week.  The legal offensive against toll discounts has prompted Grimm, along with Weiner and Gregory Meeks (D-Queens) to introduce legislation this week in the House.  Senator Charles Schumer introduced matching legislation in the Senate.

The idea of Grimm co-sponsoring a piece of legislation with one of the most liberal members of Congress may unsettle some, but Grimm laughed in an interview with the Staten Island Advance when he cited his alliance with Weiner as a sign of his independence.  And just as transportation has become a central issue for Grimm, the VZ Bridge has become a central irritant for Staten Islanders.

The opening of the bridge in 1964 was a pivotal moment in the cultivation of Staten Island’s identity as a suburb.  It allowed for many residents to live in the suburbs while commuting to the city.

“The Verrazano Bridge changed everything,” said Patricia Salmon, the curator of the Staten Island Museum.

It stood as world’s largest suspension bridge until 1981, until the Humber Bridge in the bloody United Kingdom surpassed it.  Yet in recent years, Islanders have complained about the backups leaving the Island, and the tolls they pay entering it.

Staten Islanders, who have the longest commute time in the nation, have increasingly found work within the borough, but still, 29 percent of Islanders commute to Manhattan for work while only 8 percent use mass transit, according to a recently published study by the Center for an Future.

So while Grimm entered office as a rebuke to the Democratic policies, his effort to preserve the toll discount drives directly at the daily routine of a significant number of Staten Islanders.  Some relief for drivers at the toll-booth may translate into relief at the voting booth for Grimm, even if he has to build bridges with the opposition.

Cutting federal funding to pre-school for the poorest (and youngest) Americans is a rotten idea, says Nydia Velazquez.

On February 18, Congresswoman Velazquez delivered a statement regarding the proposed budget cuts to education in the Fiscal Year 2011 Continuing Appropriations Act and said, “New York City Head Start would lose almost $30 million in funding under this bill. As we build a workforce for the future, cutting services that prepare children to learn is not just immoral, it is unwise.”

But why?

According to Nina Piros, the Director of Childhood Programs at University Settlement’s Early Childhood Center in the Lower East Side whose Head Start has 170 students, for most of these kids, there is no other option.

To qualify for Head Start, a federally funded program run by Department of Health and Human Services that started in 1965, a family must be at 100% poverty line. For a family of four, that means an income of $22,050.

“Without subsidized childcare, many these children (who were born in the US) would be sent back to their parent’s countries to stay with some relative there until they reach public school age.” (70% of the children at University Settlement Head Start from East Asian countries, mainly China) “This is very common and it is traumatic for a child,” says Piros

Another option, Piros says, is they’d stay with an elder family member in the family’s small apartment in the city. But either way, when they reached public school, they’d be socially, academically, and linguistically delayed.

“What this does is push the cost of child services down the line,” says Piros. “We teach school readiness. And, the research shows that Head Start alum are less likely to drop out and also be involved in criminal activity. Families want their kids in our program. We have 400 children on the waiting list.”

It’s hard to imagine one of the little folks running around a sunny corner classroom at University Settlement as a hardened criminal. On a recent visit, I caught a glimpse of morning “free play” time: healthy 3 and 4 year olds engaged in various activities, all in English. Some were drawing the letters in their names on thick lined paper, others pretending to read books, narrating each illustration with their own words, and a few late comers were finishing up breakfast (oatmeal and orange slices) with a classroom “grandparent”.

(Not only does each class have multiple teachers, teacher’s aides, and parent volunteers – all part of the Head Start philosophy of family involvement – there are elder community members who work 20 hours a week in the classrooms through a program run by the NYC Department for the Aging.)

At one point, a group of three girls holding hands get a little rough with their dancing and someone falls down. As the fallen pigtailed 3 year old begins to whimper and the other two look around guiltily, a teacher steps in to begin what can only be described as a teaching moment. This is really how young minds learn to interact and socialize appropriately and effectively, I find myself thinking.

But it is even more than that, say development specialists.

“Head Start is effective. As a comprehensive child development program, Head Start provides education, health, nutrition, and social services to children and their families…. and produces substantial long-term benefits. ” wrote W. Steven Barnett, PhD, Director of the National Institute for Early Education Research in a paper presented in a congressional Science and Public Policy hearing in 2002.

The Head Start at 120 year old University Settlement House, began in 1967. Piros says that each year it receives $1.2 million in federal funding, which covers roughly 112 children. And the rest, $650,000 is provided by city and state money and covers 61 children. She says in New York, rent is usually one of the largest part of a pre-school’s budget, but in her school’s case, the University Settlement House owns the facilities and don’t have to worry about that.

But, just last month, the program received a huge blow to funding. In an effort to reduce its budget, the City changed a family’s income qualification from 275% over the poverty line to 200%, and tacked on a 9 year time limit to access the free pre-school. Piros says 10 spots were thus cut from her school and 10 kids were told they couldn’t come back.

“We’ve had cuts before, but never this big,” Piros said. And with federal funding set to be cut now too, things are looking grim. Piros says this must be why Nydia spoke up at the budget hearing last month.

“Nydia has been a strong supporter of Head Start for years. She is committed to low-income services and working with community-based organizations. I think she understands how it ultimately benefits everyone.”

If the opposite is true, then, reducing the size and impact of Head Start in the community would be a disadvantage for everyone, too.

Michael Grimm is so busy these days, with Congress and what not, that the eligible elected official spent Valentine’s Day alone.

Grimm, an Aquarius, described to the Staten Island Advance how his 14 to 15 hour workday forced him to break a  promise he made to himself during the campaign–that he would keep his daily work out after the election.

His still unfurnished district office in the New Dorp neighborhood of Staten Island still contains two books: one about the U.S. Marines and one about Reagan. A former marine himself, and a former FBI agent, the freshman said that the “rigorous” schedule surprised him. But he left no doubt that he would seek another term, the Advance reported.

Grimm said he ignored the rumors of possible opponents, including the man he defeated to get the job, Michael McMahon.  McMahon has raised little money since he lost in November, according to his filings with the Federal Elections Commission, but the Advance reported that McMahon has made four appearances at local democratic political clubs, where prospective politicians often build support for their campaign.

McMahon’s $27,000 cash on hand brings him close to Grimm’s $29,000, but that only represents the last quarter of 2010.  A clearer picture will emerge when the FEC releases its first quarter filings next month.

That filing will cover the period from when Grimm took office and conceivably gained a fundraising advantage.  Nevertheless, Grimm will likely have to sacrifice courting a mate for courting voters when the race intensifies.

As the congressman turns into a candidate, the fundraisers, endorsement ceremonies and meet-and-greets at the Staten Island Ferry will stymie any chance of dating.

With that in mind, the NYC Political Delegation would like to submit a personal ad for the busy Grimm. (Tip: avoid craigslist). If it fails to attract a date, it also works as a good stump speech.

A single, swing-district Republican seeks multiple term relationship.  I’m just what you need: a nice Catholic altar boy with Italian, Irish and German heritage.  You need a marine and former FBI agent who served his country before graduating from Baruch.  You need someone who will work everyday to fulfill your needs.  We’re smart enough to know what we want, and we don’t need the government to tell us. So, if you’re looking for a grand old party, join me.  Together, we can make a better future for our children, for New York and for our country