Connecticut
Post posts about what is happening in the State of Connecticut.
Sotomayor and Doninger
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 05/02/2009 - 21:14Professor Paul Levinson of Fordham University has written an interesting post asserting that Sotomayor's Bad 1st Amendment Decision Should Disqualify Her.
The bad decision is the Second Circuit of Appeals decision in the Doninger case.
I was at the hearing where Attorney Jon Schoenhorn's Arguments in the Doninger Case at the Second Circuit.
In my beginning of the month blog post about the search for a new Supreme Court Justice I wrote:
She [Sotomayor] has an impressive background, and she asked good questions during the hearing, but I disagree with her ruling, at least in that case. It did not seem as if the justices did their homework.
I'm not sure if I would go as far as Professor Levinson in arguing that her decision in the Doninger case should disqualify her. However, I do believe that it raises very significant issues that will need to be addressed in a Senate Confirmation hearing, in the event that it should go that far.
(For previous posts about the Doninger case, see the Doninger category of my blog.)
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Where’s Ken Colabella’s Campaign Finance Disclosure Statement?
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 05/02/2009 - 12:41According to the State Election Enforcement Commission’s Guide for Municipal Candidates, the treasurer of a candidate’s campaign committee must file a financial disclosure statement with the Town Clerk’s office by the 7th day prior to an election. With the Woodbridge Municipal Elections scheduled for Monday, May 4th this would require that the campaign committees file reports by April 27th. These reports must either be received at the Town Clerk’s office or postmarked by the 27th.
According to a source at the Town Clerk’s office, Mr. Colabella’s campaign finance disclosure statement had not been received as of close of business on Friday, May 1st. Others have commented that a similar occurrence happened in 1999 when Mr. Colabella ran against Roger Harrison in the First Selectman’s race in Woodbridge.
It is worth noting that former First Selectman Harrison is now chair of the Economic Development Commission, a commission that Mr. Colabella criticized during this year’s First Selectman’s debate, calling it ‘impotent’.
Is Mr. Colabella simply repeating a failed playbook from ten years ago? Does he have anything helpful to bring to the debate? More importantly, if these allegations are true, how can Mr. Colabella miss important filing dates and still call himself proactive? It would seem as if an accountant would understand the importance of filing financial reports on time.
Mr. Colabella has sent out mailings asking “Where’s Ed?”. It appears as if First Selectman Sheehy has been busy doing his job in a timely and appropriate manner. The real question seems to be, where’s Ken Colabella’s campaign finance disclosure statement?
(Originally published on the Woodbridge Democrats' Blog).
Wimps Begone
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 04/30/2009 - 13:13Next Monday, voters will go to the polls in Woodbridge, CT to vote for First Selectman and members of several boards. Municipal elections don’t often get the same attention that national elections do, but they should. Decisions about how Federal money gets spent and how rules get implemented often happen at the municipal level. Yet issues at the local level rarely reach the same level of intensity as issues at the national level.
I’ve lived in Woodbridge for just under two years. It is a great town, and I’ve enjoyed becoming involved in the civic life of our community. As I’ve looked at the coming election, I’ve been trying to get a sense of what the real issues are here. For many, it may be a very simple issue, how much are our taxes and how are the tax rates changing?
A wiser question is what is the value of the services received, compared to the taxes paid to receive them. People will argue about whether or not First Selectman Sheehy’s strong leadership has been ‘proactive’ enough.
There is a pseudonymous email going around by a person who identifies himself only as “Wimps Begone”. He believes that Woodbridge should sell the Woodbridge Country Club Property “to David Reis and have him develop the 50 acres into 55+ CCRC, keep 100 acres as open space, maybe a nine hole golf course and start paying Woodbridge $1 million a year in taxes”.
Mr. Begone has a right to his opinion, and I applaud him for expressing it. I also applaud First Selectman Sheehy for his actions in making sure that all the people from Woodbridge, Mr. Begone, myself, and all of us, have an opportunity to have our say at how the property should be dealt with.
For the right decisions to be made in our town, we do need to encourage people to not wimp out on our political process. At the preliminary budget hearing, Dr. Silberberg and Mr. Luther spoke out strongly about a small part of the Woodbridge Board of Education budget and the process by which it was drafted. I believe they are wrong, and I spoke up at the meeting about how I think they are wrong. It is this sort of public dialog, even when it gets a little contentious, that helps make our community stronger. It is the many volunteers serving on the commissions of our town that helps keep our town working well.
Yet what Mr. Begone is doing is a disservice to our community. He is unwilling to publicly stand up and state his case. Instead he sends emails with false information deriding members of our community. It is actions like those of Mr. Begone that need to be gone from our political process.
What is perhaps more concerning is some of the comments Mr. Colabella made during the First Selectman’s debate. Like Dr. Sliberberg and Mr. Luther, Mr. Colabella deserves praise for being willing to stand up for his beliefs. However, repeating false information during the debate, which First Selectman Sheehy quickly corrected him on, does little to improve our town. Even worse, deriding of citizens giving of their time to make our town better is particularly damaging to our town.
To suggest that a commission, like the Economic Development Commission is impotent because they are not doing things the way Mr. Colabella wishes is an insult to everyone who works hard to make our town a better place. No, such volunteers are not impotent, they are important.
So, what is the real issue that we need to face in our town? We need to keep taxes low while keeping services as good as possible to maintain our property values. We do this by encouraging people to become more involved in our town’s civic life. We do this by acknowledging the hard work that volunteers do to make our town better. We do this by getting out and voting for people that work hard to improve the level of discourse and involvement at the local level.
That is why I am getting out and voting for the whole Democratic Slate. I hope you will do the same.
(Cross-posted at the Woodbridge CT Democratic Party Website).
Liveblogging Woodbridge Board of Education Meeting
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 04/27/2009 - 19:44With one week to go until the municipal elections in Woodbridge, which includes five seats on the Woodbridge Board of Education, the board gathered for their monthly board meeting. After starting with some technology issues and then a salute to the flag, Dr. Stella gave his Superintendent’s report.
He started off by talking about concern Swine Flu. He mentioned that there have been lots of media inquiries and spoke about a conference call with the National Association of Nurses, the Center for Disease Control, the White House, the Department of Homeland Security, and other organizations.
Dr. Stella noted that things are rapidly changing and the reports are now that fifty people have been identified as having contracted the swine flu in the United States, and only two have been hospitalized, both of whom are recovering.
The school will be communicating with the community using letters and updates to the school website. Other aspects being considered includes establishing a long term policy concerning health issues, and ways to address health issues as part of the curriculum, including especially a focus on the importance of washing hands.
Dr. Stella’s report continued with a focus on Twenty-First Century skills. There was a discussion about students from Hong Kong coming to do a presentation at Beecher Road, the two teachers that went to China and the use of Skype to connect teachers, students and parents here in Connecticut with their counterparts in China. Hopefully, Skype will continue to be used frequently going forward.
Dr. Stella also attended a meeting with top executives at Unilever, where the topic was education and Twenty First Century skills. The executives spoke of the importance twenty-first century skills and recognized Beecher Road for its successes.
Liveblogging Rep Murphy and Sen Dodd in W. Cornwall
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 04/25/2009 - 15:53On a beautiful spring day in North Western Connecticut something like 150 people have come out to hear Rep. Chris Murphy and Senator Chris Dodd address issues that our country faces. Outside, two old white men have homemade signs, one saying something like ‘Dump Dodd’, and another making a comment about sweetheart mortgage deals.
Approaching the building, people are handing out NotMyPriorities.orgcards illustrating the $542 Billion Pentagon budget, the $196 Billion Iraq budget and how it dwarfs all other budgets. Another group hands out a piece of paper highlighting Irag Moratorium.
Around one hundred and fifty people are gathered inside. As the forum starts off, a moderator announces that Sen. Dodd is ‘slightly lost’, which gets some chuckles. However, within a few minutes, Sen. Dodd comes striding in.
Rep. Murphy is the first to speak. He talks about the stimulus package and its role in decelerating the pace of the inherited recession. As an example of the difficulties that the credit crunch has caused, Rep. Murphy told the story of Risdon Corporation in Watertown. Risdon had a long back log of orders, no problems with inventory, their lenders cut credit and they had to close down, furloughing over two hundred employees, including sixty in Connecticut.
Update 1:
Sen. Dodd starts off talking about his passion being children’s issues and talks about his efforts on the Family Medical Leave Act. He talked about serving with the Peace Corp and his interest in foreign relations. He notes that with Sen. Biden becoming Vice President, he could have taken on the leadership of the foreign relations committee, but he stayed with his role in charge of the banking committee because it is so important.
In terms of mortgages, he notes that according to the Wall Street Journal, 60% of subprime mortgages went to people that would have qualified for conventional mortgages.
He spends time talking about problems with the credit card industry noting that they have enacted $10 billion in new fees, much of it for no real reason. He noted that many students come out of college with $4,000 to $7,000 in credit card debt. He said that we now have predatory lending in the credit card industry.
Sen. Dodd talks about the importance of addressing health care issues, spoke with the person who created the “Harry and Louise” ads that many say killed health care in Clinton’s era, and that person is now supporting healthcare reform.
Sen. Dodd talks about having a seven year old and a four year old. He spoke about the importance of education reform. He commented about the reason he lost twenty pounds was by chasing around his four year old.
He ended off his initial comments noting that in a recent survey of Republican’s who noted that he came in third both as most partisan and the third most bipartisan. He explained it as being a person who will fight fiercely for his fundamental beliefs, but that he recognizes that he needs to work across the aisle to get the things he feels most strongly about passed.
Update 2:
I'm back home, and getting a chance to decompress and catch up. In response to Christine's question:
Sen. Dodd was very well received by the crowd. I believe that folks from the Rep-Am and some of the weeklies were in attendance. The event in West Cornwall was the second event of the day in NW Connecticut that Sen. Dodd was at that I attended. There were folks from the Rep-Am and I believe one of the weeklies at the first event, which was in Torrington.
Both events were organized by Democratic activists, so the crowd seemed skeptical but receptive as Dodd entered, but quite supportive after listening to him speak.
At the first event, the questions were open to anyone who wanted to ask them, and there was some interesting discussion about AIG. I hope to write about that question in more detail later.
At the second event, the questions where written on cards and handed in, so if there were any really difficult questions, they didn't end up getting asked.
There were many questions that there weren't time for at the second event, and I'm told that many of them were about foreign relations, particularly Iraq and Afghanistan.
Sen. Dodd made some great comments about Afghanistan that I hope to also write about in more detail later.
