Sen. Edwards and Ned Lamont
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 08/17/2006 - 23:08
Sen. Edwards and Ned Lamont address a bunch of bloggers in New Haven, CT
DR. ALEKSEJ N. VUKOLOV
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 08/17/2006 - 11:40DR. ALEKSEJ N. VUKOLOV was born May 24, 1917 in Novocherkassk, Russia.
His father was an officer in the Russian Army, WW1. Germany was defeated but the homeland was lost to communists in the Russian revolution. His father fought in the White Army and retreated to Yugoslavia. Aleksej's mother was Polish and left Russia with her son during an amnesty period. They settled in Yugoslavia with his father. One year later, his parents divorced. His mother worked and re-married in 2 years.
He graduated from a Russian Cadet Military Academy as a cavalry officer in his new country's army. He fought Germans on horseback in the mountains at the beginning of World War 2. His King surrendered to Hitler and signed the Geneva Convention. Hitler honored it. Aleksej was a prisoner of war for four years. After the war, he returned to a much changed country under communist Tito's absolute control. He became a dentist.
He emigrated to U.S.A. in 1956, settling in Louisville Kentucky with only $10. He entered dental school at the University of Louisville, graduating in 1959, second in his class (one year earlier than required).He came to Connecticut and practised dentistry in West Haven until he retired. He was Captain in the Connecticut Horse Guard, Second Company, for 25 years. He studied with Karl Mikolka, Classical Dressage, for 6 years learning technique. He taught dressage and trained 2 horses to Grand Prix level.
Connecticut is 2006’s Iowa
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Wed, 08/16/2006 - 13:19(Cross posted to Greater Democracy)
Over the past week, all the pundits have been explaining the meaning of Ned Lamont’s victory over Joe Lieberman. It is a victory of the liberals over the moderates some tell us. Others say that it is a victory of the anti-war crowd. Still others suggest it is a victory of the outsiders over the insiders. As a staffer on the Lamont campaign and a frequent contributor to Greater Democracy, I want to add my thoughts on this. It is a victory of good old-fashioned American Democracy.
Polls have shown that the war was a very important issue for voters in Connecticut. They have shown that many people voted for Ned Lamont because they no longer approve of Sen. Lieberman. Yet to me, the line that sums it up most succinctly was at the nominating convention when the Southbury delegation cast its vote saying, “Madam Secretary, Southbury, the town that invited Joe Lieberman to speak in February, and is still waiting for a return call, proudly casts five votes for Ned Lamont!”
To put it into the language of this blog, Lamont’s victory was a victory of post-broadcast politics. The disengaged beltway sound-byte isn’t good enough anymore. People want a representative democracy where candidates go out and engage in an honest and vigorous discussion about the issues. These discussions are not simply a candidate talking at potential voters, but a multi-way discussion.
RIP: Alex
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 08/03/2006 - 12:41Kim forwarded the following message to me a few minutes ago:
"Alex passed away early today peacefully at home."
Alex was Kim's riding instructor for many years. When I get a chance, I will provide more details.
Changing the political process
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 07/22/2006 - 22:23(Cross-posted at Greater Democracy.)
Today, rumors of new polls spread claiming that Ned Lamont is pulling ahead in the Democratic Primary in Connecticut. Nancy Skinner blogged about how Dick Cheney has come in to raise money for her opponent at a $1,000 a plate fundraiser and she has lost her voice dialing for dollars.
Last week, I was at DemocracyFest in San Diego, and had some great discussions with Christine Cegelis about the lessons learned from her campaigns. The key message is that we will not bring about change by doing the same thing that the incumbents have been doing for the past couple decades.
We must stop focusing on raising lots of money to do big media buys. Yes, it is important to be on the air, but that isn’t what makes democracy strong, or will help bring about a change in the balance of power. We must use emerging technologies to help bring us back to the retail politics that made democracy strong in our country.
First, let’s think about the importance of volunteers. I don’t know how many hours a typical volunteer puts in on a campaign, but Christine spoke of volunteers that would put in twenty hours a week for a couple months leading up to the election. Let’s say that you needed to pay these people to do the work they are doing, and you paid $10/hour. A thousand volunteers, doing a hundred hours of work at ten dollars an hour is the equivalent of a million dollars. We should be focusing more on this sort of ‘fundraising’. It helps rebuild democracy.
At the Lamont campaign, their advertisements have been viewed on YouTube alone more than 150,000 times and volunteers are out making their own advertisements. We’re not talking about an advertisement that is shown on broadcast television that people with Tivo’s skip over. We’re talking about advertisements that people go out of their way to watch. Meanwhile, Nielsen is reporting new record lows for the least-watched week in the history of their ratings of broadcast networks.
Back to Nancy Skinner’s campaign, I hope she gets her voice back soon. I hope she raises the money she needs. But, even more so, I hope that she raises an army of volunteers that will spread her message effectively around her district and online.
