Happy Holidays!

By DAN and CATHY MALLOY

As I reflect on this past year, I’m encouraged by how far we’ve come and what we’ve achieved together.   In the coming months, with a new Administration in place, I have faith that we can finally join together and mend what has been broken during the past eight years.

While the potential for meaningful and substantive change in the coming year is great, we face unprecedented challenges here in Connecticut, and the list of problems to solve is long.  However, I’m confident that those challenges will become opportunities for us to improve the lives of all those who live, work and raise families in this great state.  With energetic and inspiring leadership and commitment to our principles, we can whether this storm, achieve our goals and usher in a time of growth and success.

It is my wish that you experience a holiday season and new year filled with joy, good health, peace and prosperity for you and your entire family.   I hope that you feel as blessed as Cathy and I do from so much support and kindness from family, friends and colleagues.

We wish you a safe and happy holiday season and look forward to a wonderful 2009, with you.

A Bailout for Main Street

By DAN MALLOY

Last week, I participated in a press conference on Capitol Hill as part of an effort led by the U.S. Conference of Mayors to renew our call for a comprehensive recovery  plan for cities during the first 100 days of the new Administration. As a member of the USCM Working Group on the Main Street Economic Recovery Plan, I am working with fellow municipal leaders to develop and advocate for a package that will deliver money directly to the cities that are desperately in need of funding to create jobs and rebuild our nation’s crumbling infrastructure.

While in Washington, I joined Miami Mayor Manny Diaz, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and several other mayors to meet with Representative Charlie Rangel, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to discuss the current economic situation and the steps we must take to aid the recovery process.  Later in the day, the mayors collectively released a report that details ‘ready-to-go’ infrastructure projects across the country– projects that could be started and completed within two years if emergency federal funding were made available.

The report, compiled by the U.S. Conference of Mayors included information on potential projects in Stamford and hundreds of other cities in the United States. The “ready-to-go” projects in Connecticut and across the country span ten different types of existing funding mechanisms, such as Community Development Block Grants, transit, highway infrastructure, green jobs, school modernization, public safety and public housing. 

If funded appropriately, those  ready-to-go projects would provide the most direct relief to struggling cities, allowing us to grow jobs and stimulate businesses, all while developing our respective cities with much needed infrastructure improvements. There is no simple solution for reversing the economic downturn, but providing federal funding to cities can certainly help. We have seen how Washington has bailed out Wall Street in the hopes that pumping in money will eventually benefit the everyday taxpayer, but funding local city driven projects will provide immediate and tangible growth at home.  

A lot was accomplished by these meetings, but there is a great deal of work that remains to be done.  I look forward to working alongside my colleagues as we strengthen our call for an economic plan that will not only bail out Wall Street, but will support our local economies right here in Connecticut.

Oh Yeah? Well Bail THIS Out, Senator!

By MICHAEL K. NORRIS

As it turns out, the GOP is eager to move on from the phrase “the fundamentals of our economy our strong,” which was their epitaph on their November headstone. They picked one I’m sure we’re going hear from now through the 2010 midterms: “taxpayer protection” Once again, they’re settling on a phrase that is nothing but a cover, has no bearing on reality, and exposes just how bad they are on the economy and how worse they are on the middle class.

Of course, we’re talking about the proposed bailout of the auto industry. Before going any further, let’s make sure we’re all aware of the following: no one likes bailouts. Republican, Democrat – we loathe bailouts. Even the folks who think there should be an auto industry bailout hate them, but will vote in favor of it because there’s a huge risk to the economy if the industry collapses. Indeed, several legislators have all but admitted they’ll have a vomit bag at the ready when voting yea to bail out an industry that should have known better.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has been spending most of the week talking about how the proposed bill doesn’t have enough “taxpayer protection.” I gotta couple question for you, Senator:

Where were you when banks sought to loosen their own lending rules and deregulate itself so severely that we were asked to put up $750,000,000,000 to bail them out? Why weren’t you protecting taxpayers then?

Better still, where were you in the 90s when Democrats were ineffectively trying to raise fuel efficiency standards for light trucks that the industry fought tooth and nail against? Don’t you think if those standards were in place then Detroit would have been making fuel efficient SUVs that consumers wouldn’t have abandoned? You could have protected taxpayers then in three ways: you would have helped keep the price of oil low, reduced pollution that leads to respiratory illness, and the industry wouldn’t need the bailout it’s asking for today.

In light of these questions, it’s clear the Republican idea of protecting taxpayers is like an airbag that deploys an hour and a half after the accident.  McConnell takes his party’s demented logic even further to the point he’s replacing the delayed airbag with shrapnel: In the 1,400+ word statement he made on the bailout yesterday (where some version of the phrase ‘taxpayer protection’ was mentioned at least six times) he voiced his support for something called “The Corker Amendment.” Now, as much as this sounds like the title of a Robert Ludlum novel, here’s a big part of what it proposes: that the auto industry start paying its workers on par with its foreign competitors. In other words, on the planet of Mitch McConnell, the best way to protect taxpayers is by reducing their taxable income. From McConnell’s statement:

“The Corker Amendment also requires that labor costs at participating companies be brought on par with companies like Nissan, Toyota, and Honda — not tomorrow but immediately — because it is delusional to think that a company which spends $71 per labor hour could compete with a company in the same industry that spends $49.”

You’d think that the next words from McConnell’s mouth would be: “Since almost all of those extra costs are due to health care, I fully support universal health care so our fine American companies won’t be stuck with the burden themselves” but you’d be wrong. It seems the Minority Leader believes that if Ford is spending the same amount of money per labor hour as Mazda, everything will be just fine.

This week I got my hair cut by a guy named Tony in a barbershop that bears his name. I could have paid about half of what I did at a chain haircutting place, but Tony does a much better job and I’m happy to pay for it. When I buy books, I go to Elm Street Books in New Canaan or Barrett Bookstore in Darien. I know the books are often cheaper elsewhere, but it’s more important to me that bookstores are visible anchors in their communities that encourage reading than it is for me to save a couple of bucks on paperbacks. Has it occurred to the Senator that what workers are building and how well they are building them in a “labor hour” matters more than how much that hour costs?

Keep on talking, Senator McConnell. You’ll have everyone wishing Democrats had 60 seats in no time.

The Real Story

By DAN MALLOY

In case you missed it, here is my interview with Shelly Sindland on “The Real Story” which aired this past Sunday.

Proactive Leadership

By DAN MALLOY

Last night, I attended the Connecticut Citizen Action Group dinner honoring incoming House Speaker Chris Donovan.  At the event, I had several interesting conversations, many of them centered on an article in this week’s Fairfield Weekly and the subsequent commentary about Governor Rell. 

Few people argue with our current Governor’s PR prowess, but many are concerned with the direction we’re headed as a state, specifically in regard to our lack of real vision for the future.  During my conversations throughout the evening, the same questions kept popping up: What is possible for our state amid this economic downturn?  How are we going to compete in an increasingly global economy, create jobs and protect our working families?  How will we create a budget that reflects our values and keeps us afloat financially?  Simply put, people want to know where we’re going as a state, and how we plan on getting there.

Connecticut deserves a leader who not only shows up every day, but who is also able and willing to roll up their sleeves and get to work.  What we need in the face of this economic crisis is an administration focused full time on creating jobs, building infrastructure, and fixing a broken transportation system.  One concerned with protecting education as well as the human services resources that the families of Connecticut rely on.  We need something more than reactionary governing via press release; we need a leader who actively and passionately fights for Connecticut residents, day in and day out.