Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

One could only imagine what might have happened at the Hartford Courant’s editorial board offices if one of their investigative journalists had discovered that former Governor John Rowland, now a radio talk show host, had failed to pay his mortgage “several times,” having been sued by a bank anxious to recover mortgage payments from a dead-beat politician. Brains would have exploded.

Even the New York Times , a publication that can hardly be accused of harboring black thoughts about the usual culprits in the U.S. Congress, referred last August in a news story to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two quasi-private business enterprises cosseted by the Democratic Congress, as “wards of the state.” Previously, each had been designated a Government Supported Entity (GSE). In a news story – the editorial board of the Times, predictably listing left, has already predictably endorsed Connecticut’s attorney General Richard Blumenthal for Congress – reporter Gretchen Morgenson snickered that Fannie and Freddie, now become wards of the state sucking the blood from taxpayers, “got just two mentions in the 1,500-page law known as Dodd-Frank: first, when it ordered the Treasury to produce a study on ending the taxpayer-owned status of the companies and, second, in a ‘sense of the Congress’ passage stating that efforts to improve the nation’s mortgage credit system ‘would be incomple...

Sen. Chris Dodd, hammered by his opponents and some in the media as having been intimate with Big Insurance from which has received in the past 20 years $2.3 million in campaign contributions, has been at some pains to show that he is not on their leash, which is why he is now peeing on their leg. They will not mind the wetting. Two recent commentaries on Dodd, one in the Hartford Courant and one in Slate magazine, both make use of Ralph Nader’s old chestnut that Dodd is “the senator from Aetna.” “Among the three principals currently working to combine two Senate committee bills on health reform,” Slate notes, “the strongest advocate for creation of a ‘public option’ government insurance plan (which private insurers strongly oppose on competitive grounds) happens to represent the state of Connecticut. And the state of Connecticut happens to be home to the insurance industry generally and to health insurance giants Aetna and Cigna HealthCare in particular... Dodd must know that ...

There appears to be a lot of chatter among conservatives concerning Sen. Chris Dodd’s prospects for re-election. Most of them want a badly wounded Dodd to run for re-election. Independent voters, many of whom in Connecticut may be disgruntled Democrats, do not appear to be enchanted with Dodd’s re-election. Among what is amusingly thought of as the Democratic “base,” there are many activist bloggers who rather hope Dodd will see the light and step aside so that Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, their designated replacement, may fill the senator’s large shoes, thus preserving the seat for those who frequently visit such sites as MyLeftNutmeg, a leftist commentariate watering hole. Dodd has made strenuous efforts to get on the right side of the left-most corner of the Democratic political barracks through targeted video opportunities. What are his prospects for re-election? Certainly they are not as bright as they were several years ago, when Republicans in the state were scourin...

Sam Caligiuri, a second term state senator representing Connecticut’s 16th district – Southington, Wolcott, parts of Cheshire and Waterbury -- announced his run against U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd early in April, and in mid-August Caligiuri turned up at Coventry Town Hall to address the Republican Town Committee. Caligiuri is the deputy minority leader of the Senate Republican Caucus and serves on five legislative committees. He is the ranking member on both the Elementary and Secondary Education Committee and the Insurance and Real Estate Committee. In 2007, he earned the distinction of being the only state senator of either party to vote against the state budget, a matter of principle, according to Caligiuri. The budget exceeded the state’s spending cap and would lead, Caligiuri predicted, to insupportable state deficits. The legislatures’ penchant for spending surpluses, its leftward drift, the country’s collapsing national economy, and political inattentiveness to the signs of the times a...

Ages ago, long before the Damoclean sword of the “appearance of corruption” was hanging menacingly over US Sen. Chris Dodd’s head, the senator was asked to dilate on the connection between campaign receipts and political favors. He said there was no connection in his case; any perceived connection simply meant that those who contributed to his campaigns were voting with dollars for his programs. Of all the Sherlock Holmes’ in the world, certainly Dodd would know better than most whether he had received a quid for a quo. And he was quite sure he hadn’t – ever. This analysis is mistaken in several important points, not the least of which is that it is not Dodd’s role to sniff out political corruption. Politicians are what lawyers would call interested parties. Journalists are, sometimes, disinterested parties. They are the bloodhounds of corruption. It is their chosen calling to sniff out corruption and expose it to the cleansing light of day, where it may be disinfected. Somehow along t...

With the promise of heavenly manna about to shower upon the great state of Connecticut from Washington DC, angels among us – Gov. Jodi Rell, US Senators Chris Dodd and Joe Lieberman, and US Reps. John Larson, Rosa DeLauro, and the state's littlest angels Joe Courtney and Chris Murphy -- gathered together to make themselves ready to receive these benefits. We don’t know yet how much federal money -- that would be money taxed from Connecticut citizens and partially returned to the state by the administration of soon to be President Barack Obama -- will be approved for “shovel ready” infrastructure projects, but no matter; Connecticut’s US congressional delegation met at the governor’s residence in war torn Hartford recently to celebrate the occasion. The press was on hand. The embattled Sen. Joe Lieberman, a prodigal Democrat recently received back into the fold, said he expects the new Democrat dominated Congress for Change to have the stimulus package on president-elect Barack Oba...

US Sen. Chris Dodd, whom the lustrous but air-headed Paris Hilton might well consider “a wrinkly white guy,” is still playing his seemingly nefarious connections to Countrywide close to his vest. Wrinkly white guys sometimes wear vests, and in fact they are once again becoming popular among what used to be called the jet set. Way back when Countrywide, the Robin Hood of mortgage lenders, was reeling from disclosures that it had lined the pockets of powerful politicians like Dodd with special discounts and rates, the media began sniffing around Dodd’s closet . Dodd was and is the chairman of the US Senate Banking committee, and as such became a magnet for funds freely given, no strings attached of course, by the financial wizards who even then were paving the way for the current Wall Street collapse . What about this special treatment you have received from Angelo Mozilo, the serpentine head of Countrywide, the dogged media wanted to know? The legislatively pampered Countrywide...

He is a man of splendid abilities, but utterly corrupt. He shines and stinks like rotten mackerel by moonlight -- Senator John Randolph of Virginia, commenting on fellow lawmaker Edward Livingston. In a follow-up to its explosive story on Countrywide, the nation’s now defunct largest mortgage lender whose president Angelo Mozilo had greased the palms of shakers and movers in Congress such as U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd, the chairman of the senate’s powerful banking committee, Portfolio , a Conte Nast publication, now gives us the honorable Richard Aldrich, a California state appeals court justice. As was the case with Dodd, Aldrich also was favored by Mozilo’s chief agent, loan officer Robert Feinberg, who was put in charge of the now notorious “Friends of Angelo” VIP program. Refinancing his 8,200-square-foot house adjacent to a Jack Nicklaus-designed golf course at the Sherwood Country Club in Westlake Village, Aldrich turned to fellow member Mozilo, who through Feinberg approved the $1 m...

The admissions made by U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd concerning his preferred mortgage loan from Countrywide – now under investigation for unorthodox business practices by, among others, Dodd – are not likely to satisfy curious minds. The charge against Dodd is that he had received special treatment on his mortgage loan in part because of his status as the chairman of the Senate banking committee. In at least two comments made to a Hartford Courant reporter, Dodd indicated there was no special treatment. The lead paragraph in the most recent Courant story discloses: “Sen. Christopher Dodd admitted today that he and wife were told during their 2003 loan process with Countrywide Financial Corp. that they were being included in a special VIP program -- but the senator said he interpreted that as a benefit for being a longtime Countrywide customer -- not as special treatment because of his Senate position.” “He also insisted again today, in two separate news conferences, that even though he was to...