Senator Dodd came to my synagogue earlier this month to talk about his new book Letters from Nuremberg, which was co-authored by one of our congregants, Lary Bloom.
Here are the Senator's remarks, it's well worth the 17 minute run time:
The national AFT has endorsed Hilary Clinton for President, and the Connecticut AFT is not thrilled: AFT Connecticut President Reacts To Clinton Endorsement
The AFT executive council today endorsed Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination for president.
In reaction to the endorsement, AFT Connecticut President Sharon Palmer had this to say:
I am very disappointed in the AFT executive council's endorsement of Senator Clinton. For months, AFT has made it known that the input of members would be foremost in the decision making process regarding a presidential endorsement. The manner in which the AFT executive council rushed through this endorsement, without any notice to State Federation's like ours, is a disservice to our members.
On behalf of the AFT Connecticut, I would like to reiterate our support for Chris Dodd's candidacy for President of the United States. From expanding Head Start to passing Family and Medical Leave, Chris Dodd has delivered results for America's teachers, parents, and most importantly students for the last 26 years. For his advocacy and ability to get results Dodd was named "Senator of the Decade" by the National Head Start Association.
And now Senator Dodd is offering the boldest proposals - from providing access to free community college to calling for universal pre-school to reforming No Child Left Behind - to bring desperately-needed changes to our education system. Without Chris Dodd's leadership behind these bold ideas, we are concerned that the status quo will trump change, to the detriment of our nation's students. While we are disappointed in the AFT's endorsement decision, we remain steadfast in our commitment to Chris Dodd's candidacy and hopeful that voters will recognize the need for his leadership with results.
AFT Connecticut is the state's second largest AFL-CIO union representing more than 27,000 professionals, including teachers, healthcare, higher education, and public employees.
Any discussion of rebuilding New Orleans must take into account this alarming reality: New Orleans is sinking.
"[T]he city will be completely surrounded by the Gulf of Mexico just 90 years from now. ... That's the projection, because we are losing land on the Mississippi Delta at a rate of 25 to 30 square miles per year. That's two acres per hour that are sinking below sea level," says [Tim] Kusky, [a professor of earth sciences at St. Louis University].
That process could only be slowed, in theory, by massive restoration of wetlands.
The geological forces that, over the centuries, created the area we now know as New Orleans were drastically changed in the 20th century by levees along the Mississippi River. These levees diverted the silt, sediment and nutrients that created the Mississippi Delta out into the continental shelf. Without the steady flow of sediment, the Mississippi Delta - including New Orleans, the wetlands and barrier islands - will likely disappear under water by the end of this century.
Wetland loss in coastal Louisiana has reached catastrophic proportions, with current losses of 25-35 square miles per year. ... The disappearance of Louisiana's wetlands threatens the enormous productivity of its coastal ecosystems, the economic viability of its industries, and the safety of its residents. The wetlands support various functions and values, including commercial fisheries; harvesting of furbearers and alligators; recreational fishing and hunting; ecotourism; critical migratory butterfly, songbird and waterfowl habitat; endangered and threatened species habitat; water quality improvement; navigation and waterborne commerce; flood control; buffering protection from storms; and the perpetuation of a unique culture that has developed in this beautiful and bountiful area of the country.
The good news is that geologists have identified ways to restore the coastal area. The bad news is that neither the Louisiana government nor the federal government are acting fast enough to adopt these plans. And that's where we bloggers can help.
Both Chris Dodd and Barack Obama have introduced plans to revitalize New Orleans, but Dodd's plan doesn't address coastal restoration, and though Obama's plan does, it doesn't go far enough.
Basically, the Mississippi River needs to be diverted back into the bayous, and the plan for doing this - the Coast 2050 project - costs about $14 billion. Congress and the Bush Administration have indicated they're willing to spend only $1.9 billion on coastal restoration, which isn't enough to do the job. Keep in mind that FAILING to restore the coast would cost American taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars!
I know a lot of MLNers support Senator Dodd and some even work for him. Please make him aware of the problem and urge him to support the 2050 Project in its entirety. Phone calls and emails to the other candidates would help too. At the second anniversary of the Katrina and Rita disasters, now would be a perfect time to contact them.
Thieves broke into U.S. Sen. Christopher Dodd's Hartford office late Saturday, taking undisclosed items and leaving evidence at the scene, city police said.
Police on Sunday declined to say what was stolen or what evidence was left behind.
Following the great discussion Senator Dodd had with Senator Brownback that I posted earlier this month, here's another superb debate between the Senator and Newt Gingrich:
Senator Dodd has represented me in the United States Congress for as long as I've been alive. He was elected as the US Representative to my home district, CT-2, in 1974 and the United States Senate in 1980.
After the last seven years of enduring an executive branch run amok, it's time for not only a new President with experience, but one who also brings a sensible and balanced approach to facing our challenges... Someone who can work across the aisle and will find productive ways to settle our differences both domestically and internationally. That's right, we need a statesman.
Forget about all this BS about who the pundits believe can win and take a minute to look at the field - both Democrats and Republicans. You will find only one candidate who has the experience, who is right on the issues we care about, is respected on both sides of the aisle, and has the ability to lead our country out of these troubling times. That candidate is Senator Dodd.
Connecticut Local Politics has been lucky lately to have a plethora of guest posts from progressive politicians and candidates (and from our Republican Lt. Governor) on issues and subject that are important to Nutmeggers.
It's a shame that more people won't see this fantastic debate between Senators Dodd and Brownback on the role of faith in modern politics. Topics go just beyond the role of religion, however. Iraq and other important national issues are covered as well. It runs about an hour and a half - perfect to have in the background at the office.
The debate took place before a packed auditorium at Boston College.
"This is a real bind for Democrats," said Dan Gerstein, an advisor to one of Imus' favorite regulars, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.). "Talk radio has become primarily the province of the right, and the blogosphere is largely the province of the left. If Imus loses his microphone, there aren't many other venues like it around."
This week, when Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.) was asked by CNN why he picked Imus' show to announce his presidential candidacy, Dodd explained: "He's got a huge audience; he gives you enough time to talk, not a 30-second sound bite, a chance to explain your views; … and a chance to reach the audience who doesn't always watch the Sunday morning talk shows."
I got this email from MoveOn today. I know some in here have mixed feelings about them. But, here are the results of their virtual town hall meetings from this past Tuesday night.
Dear MoveOn member,
The votes are in, and Barack Obama is MoveOn members' top choice to lead the country out of Iraq, with John Edwards a close second (see full results below).
At the Virtual Town Hall meeting Obama said, "The hard truth is there's no military solution...It's time to end this war." Edwards declared, "Congress...must not write George Bush another blank check without a timeline for withdrawal. Period."...
...Now, here are the full results from the Virtual Town Hall vote (remember, this does not imply a MoveOn endorsement):
Sen. Barack Obama 28%
Sen. John Edwards 25%
Rep. Dennis Kucinich 17%
Gov. Bill Richardson 12%
Sen. Hillary Clinton 11%
Sen. Joe Biden 6% Sen. Chris Dodd 1%...
All emphasis added by me.
Below the fold they have slightly different results when only MoveOn members who watched the Town Hall at the various parties were included, like dauphinb and OrangeTownBlueDem did.
I attended the MoveOn Virtual Town Hall Meeting on Iraq at the Bishops Corner Library Senior Center in West Hartford, hosted by Huguet Pameijer of the MoveOn Operation Democracy Greater Hartford Council, with Gregory Spears of Connecticut Opposes the War manning the laptop. It was a great venue, with good sound and a big projection screen, and my eyeball estimate of the crowd was ~30 people.
The format was that each candidate was asked three questions from the MoveOn membership. The first question for each candidate was "what is the best and fastest way out of Iraq?", submitted by a Florida woman; the other two questions varied. After the questions, each candidate had a 1-minute closing statement, for a total of roughly 10 minutes each.
My notes and my take on the candidates (in order of appearance) &mdash a sort of delayed liveblog based on my notes &mdash is below the fold...
Though Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are the focus of most celebrity-obsessed media coverage about the 2008 race, our own Chris Dodd has shown that when he gets his fair share of attention, he does well. Much of the buzz on the first day of the DNC Winter Meeting was about how Chris Dodd was the only candidate to really exceed expectations. Dodd won a straw poll in one South Carolina county after he spent a day campaigning there.
In the Hartford Courant today, David Lightman explores the potential impact of Chris Dodd's appearance on The Daily Show this coming Monday night:
When Chris Dodd trades quips Monday with the host of Comedy Central's "The Daily Show," he could be doing more for his White House bid than a dozen visits to New Hampshire.
Dodd, no slouch in the wit department, will duel with the caustic Jon Stewart for only about five minutes. But, between Monday night and reruns on Tuesday, the Connecticut Democrat will probably reach 3.7 million viewers, 2.3 million of them 18- to 49-year-olds.
[...]
Candidates need to remember that younger voters grew up in an era of anything-goes TV, and they can discern who's genuine, who's nervous and who's reading his lines.
"Our society has become used to these kinds of appearances," said Connecticut television news consultant Kenn Venit. "Younger viewers in particular are watching and saying, `Can you stand up to Stewart?'"
I do believe Chris Dodd is a far better candidate than his poll numbers now show, and his Daily Show appearance could have measurable impact among young voters if Dodd's personality really shines though.
As Tom Vilsack showed in a couple of months ago, however, simply appearing on The Daily Show(see Vilsack here and here) can't resurrect a campaign in itself. I actually found myself less interested in Vilsack after seeing him on TDS (though his schtick with the Aflack Duck was cute). Vilsack simply wasn't outstanding in either personality or content, but I've heard Dodd has a much more dynamic personality than Vilsack. What do you think?
On a tangential note, I found it interesting that the Hartford Courant titled Lightman's article "TV's a Must for the Likes of Dodd" while the Stamford Advocate titled the same Lightman article, "Dodd Hopes 'Daily Show' Boosts Presidential Prospects". The "likes of"...dismissive, anyone?
I received two emails from our junior and senior Senators. By coincidence they arrived in my inbox within hours of each other. While both emails sound stale, like they were written in January, I couldn't help but not the contrast.
Lieberman:
In 2003, I supported the use of force in Iraq to remove Saddam Hussein from power because I believed that he was a grave threat to our country, his people, and the world; and I continue to believe that decision was right. Since then, I have often disagreed with how the war has been run. And I have not hesitated to speak out about the mistakes the Bush Administration has made, mistakes that have made this war more costly than it should have been. But I have worked hard to stay away from partisan political attacks because that is unacceptable when our nation is at war. And I continue to believe that how we end our involvement in Iraq will have a significant effect on our security for a long time to come.
The Administration was wrong for not: (1) securing the support of enough of our allies in the run-up to the war; (2) having enough troops on the ground; (3) having a sensible plan to win the peace and establish stability in Iraq after Saddam fell; and (4) sooner putting the Iraqis in charge of their government and their economy, including their oil supply.
Note Lieberman does not include the administration's lying about the intelligence in the lead-up to war.
Dodd:
The President's decision to invade Iraq in 2003 was an enormous mistake. I regret my vote in 2002 to give the President the authority to do so. It was a terrible mistake. I intend to do everything possible in the coming days to put pressure on the President to change course in Iraq.
While he doesn't lay out the case that the administration was deceiving the public, at least Dodd acknowledges his mistake, and if you want you can read into it that Dodd thinks Congress had a duty and failed to act as a check on the President.
(Help fix the errors of the Bush administration and restore the rule of law to America - promoted by ctblogger)
Sounds like there's an upcoming debate on a couple of bills in the Senate: S. 185, the Habeas Corpus Restoration Act and S. 576, the Restoring the Constitution Act of 2007. And, the ACLU have sent an email action alert (below the fold) to remind us that our junior senator is supposedly involved in these deliberations. Our senior senator is co-sponsoring ?both bills the primary sponsor for the 2nd bill, S.576. Sen. Dodd is joined by Sens. Leahy (D-VT), Feingold (D-WI) and Menendez (D-NJ), in introducing these measures.
Update: The sponsors of S. 185, the Habeas Corpus Restoration Act are Sens. Specter (R-PA), Leahy (D-VT), Brown (D-OH), Feinstein (D-CA), Salazar (D-CO), Clinton (D-NY), Feingold (D-WI), and Lautenberg (D-NJ)--as of 2/28/07.
The sponsors of S. 576, the Restoring the Constitution Act of 2007 are Sens. Dodd (D-CT), Feingold (D-WI), Leahy (D-VT), Menendez (D-NJ), Kennedy (D-MA), Lautenberg (D-NJ), Boxer (D-CA), Mikulski (D-MD)--as of 3/1/07.
According to politicalwire.com, Chris Dodd led in fundraising for the fourth quarter - outraising even Hillary, Barack, and Edwards - with the help of the "financial-services industry."
(Dodd's part is interesting, but read through to the extended text for discussion on education, science proficiency, and class issues. - promoted by mattw)
Currently, No Child Left Behind mandates states conduct testing to measure schools' performances, but it allows states to use their own criteria for evaluation. A news item in the current issue of Science magazine (subscription or institutional access required)describes how Mississippi was able to show improvement without actually improving students' proficiency:
Mississippi education officials patted themselves on the back in 2005 when state-administered tests showed that 53% of the state's 8th graders were proficient in math--a jump of 14 percentage points in the 3 years since federal mandates for improving school performance went into effect. But a few months later, a nonbinding, nationwide evaluation found that only 13% of that cohort were proficient, ranking Mississippi last on the country's math scorecard. The discrepancy--a product of standards that reflect the state's low expectations for student achievement in math--earned Mississippi a "cream puff" award from an education journal published by Stanford's Hoover Institution.
...
The tremendous variation in what a state teaches and the way it measures how well children are learning has triggered a move for national standards and assessments in elementary and secondary school science and math education. Last month, two legislators long active in education reform--Senator Christopher Dodd (D-CT) and Representative Vernon Ehlers (R-MI)--introduced a bill to create and implement a set of voluntary national standards in math and science. A week later, a panel reporting to the policymaking body that oversees the National Science Foundation went further, calling not just for national standards but also for national assessments of student achievement in science and math and national certification for teachers in those fields. "Currently, we have states adopting less-than-rigorous standards to game the system," says Shirley Malcom, co-chair of the National Science Board's Commission on 21st Century Education in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics and head of education and human resources programs at AAAS (publisher of Science). "As a nation, we need to drive a stake in the ground and say this cannot go on."
Well, while legally true, CT Dems shouldn't start licking their chops about the supposed "open seat" in three years. In order to transfer all of his money he raised for his 2010 re-election to his WH campaign account without penalty, he had to file a statement with the FEC saying he wouldn't run. It's simply an accounting thing, nothing more. In fact, should Dodd not be elected POTUS in '08, he, indeed can legally open a new Senate 2010 account. He did this so that he could raise maximum amounts from donors who gave to that 2010 campaign account.
An inquiry to Dodd's campaign about the above mentioned story prompted the following response from spokesperson Beneva Schulte: "It's a legality that isn't an indication of future plans."
Reid and Pelosi have told Joe and his proposed "bipartisan" working group on Iraq to get lost; competing (actual) bipartisan resolutions critical of the Bush-McCain-Lieberman policy on Iraq have been propsed by Hagel (R-NE), Biden (D-DE), and Snowe (R-ME) and Warner (R-VA), Nelson (D-NE), and Collins (R-ME); even Imus went after him hard on his lack of a "Plan B" (obviously, he doesn't want to admit that his "Plan B" is to either send even more troops into the middle of the Iraqi Civil War, or withdraw and admit that the troops he is in favor of sending there now are needlessly risking their lives in the hopes that he is right, which he knows he isn't); and 68% of Americans have turned against Joe's "surge" with 46% deciding they want troops out "as soon as possible," according to a Newsweek poll out today.
(Update: Word is Sen. Lieberman will be appearing on Meet the Press via satellite tomorrow, emanating from the Yale Broadcast Center in New Haven. That's at 175 Whitney Avenue.)
Tim Russert's "Meet the Press'' on NBC also includes Mr. Hadley, as well as two other senators in the White House's corner, Joe Lieberman, the "Independent-Democrat'' of Connecticut, along with Jon Kyl, Republican of Arizona. Two other senators, Chris Dodd, the Democrat from Connecticut who announced his presidential bid this past week, and Chuck Hagel, the Republican from Nebraska, presumably will talk about their opposition to Mr. Bush's proposal.
Kyl and Lieberman are two founding co-chairs of the revived neocon Committee on the Present Danger, and will doubtless be on the show pushing Bush's insane escalation of the war past Iraq into Iran and Syria.
Hagel just this past week told Sec. of State Rice, in no uncertain terms and to the cheers of the assembled crowd in the committee hearing room, that Bush's escalation "represents the most dangerous foreign policy blunder in this country since Vietnam," and that he would "resist it."
Hagel, for one, will be vociferously opposing Lieberman. But will Chris Dodd do the same? Or will he continue his mealy-mouthed subservience to his junior partner on Iraq?
I've got no great hopes for the former. But Dodd would be wise to use this opportunity to do so, especially if he harbors even remote hopes of winning over any significant slice of the netroots for 2008.
(What's Dodd thinking? - promoted by Jon Kantrowitz)
On Thursday, Senator Chris Dodd and most Senate Democrats voted to block an amendment that would force Senators to disclose the size, purpose and sponsor of any earmark.
Basically, this was the same bill that passed in the House, but the Senate Democrats tried to water it down.
The amendment passed anyway. Russ Feingold, Barack Obama, Jon Tester, Jim Webb, John Kerry and about 4 other Democrats voted the right way on this.
From The New York Times (1/12/07): After campaigning for months on a promise to tighten ethics rules, Senate Democratic leaders tried unsuccessfully Thursday to block a measure that would shine a light on the shadowy practice of earmarking federal money for lawmakers' pet projects.
Link: [http://www.nytimes.c...]
Lieberman, surprisingly, voted in favor of the amendment, as did most Republicans. ... Republicans like this ammendment because, now that they're no longer in power and running committees, less money will be coming their way from companies looking for favors. The money would go to Democratic committee chairs instead.
It would have been nice to see Dems in the Senate take the high moral ground, just like they've done in the House.
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