I hate cars. But cars are a fact of life in Connecticut. This should not be. But it is.

 

I moved to Hartford in 1998 so I could bicycle to work, and for years, I kept a calendar tracking car free days.

 

But now, I have a job requiring a 40-mile round trip commute. To find some peace within this tyranny of travel, after I wrecked my 1993 Honda Civic in October 2006 (working a different car-dependent job), I bought a diesel VW Jetta with the goal of using biodiesel to kick my addiction to foreign oil.

 

When Karl Benz invented the diesel engine, he envisioned a flexible fuel engine that could run on veggie oil, diesel or biodiesel. Biodiesel makes your car run cleaner (less frequent oil changes, etc) and you emit 70 percent less carbon.

 

The best part of this non-fossil fuel is that ordinary people can mix biodiesel in their garages with methanol, lye and used vegetable oil from restaurants. I hoped that a diesel car could help me attain fuel self-sufficiency.

 

While running with biodiesel doesn't eliminate traffic, or any government policies that slant the transportation system towards the automobile, the wealthy and the suburbs, biodiesel would make me feel better about not relying on war to get around.

 

Making a gallon of biodiesel costs about two dollars - a dollar for materials (equipment, methanol and lye) and a dollar for the labor. Building relationships with restaurants, collecting the veggie oil, filtering it, mixing it, cleaning up after the chemical reaction, and pumping it into your car all take time, which is money. This is all still cheaper than ExxonMobil’s sulfur-free diesel, which still spews mercury and Sox and Nox into the atmosphere.

 

Other biodieselers seem to handle the mixing and using of biodiesel without a problem. It seemed so simple at first that I dreamed of a bio cooperative where diesel drivers pool resources to insure a stable flow of clean fuel - a closed loop industrial process that recycles oil from local eateries and creates a few jobs, too.

 

But my bad car karma (or, my car-ma) has led to me to declare my experiments with the alternative fuel a failure.

 

The tribulations of my used 1999 Volkswagen Jetta TDI began with the engine being replaced under warranty in December 2006, two months after I bought it. In June 2007, my dad, trying to be a nice guy, accidentally filled my tank with unleaded instead of diesel.

 

Mistakes happen, so I can't hold that against my dad, especially considering that before graduating college, I totaled four of his cars – a '77 Chevy Nova, a '72 Dodge Dart, an '83 Ford Escort, and an '87 Firebird.

 

Obviously, that I am not the world's best driver contributes to my loathing of my dependence on automobiles. Yet I figured that making my own fuel might repair some of my bad car-ma.

 

So after paying a mechanic to drain the unleaded from my diesel, I started in earnest trying to mix biodiesel. A friend of mine has been mixing his own biodiesel for years, and I learned from him.

 

Adventures with Biodiesel...to the rest of the story...

 

A Brooklyn man recently discovered that his ringing cell phone turns on his oven.

 

The New York Times reported how the oven turned on inexplicably, and started fires. Then, he sleuthed the cause to his cellular phone.

 

A number of studies recently have hinted that on some level, cell phones have impacts we cannot fathom. I find myself discomforted by the buzz buzz/clicking interference noises that cell phones exert over radio and computer speakers.

 

Cellular phones emit radiofrequency energy. This low-frequency, non-ionizing RF energy is a form of electromagnetic radiation, of a different class than x-rays, which are high-frequency and ionizing, according to the U.S. National Cancer Institute.

 

Furthermore, the National Cancer Institute says that "Studies have not shown any consistent link between cellular telephone use and cancer, but scientists feel that additional research is needed before firm conclusions can be drawn."

 

Scientists are studying to see if cell phones cause tumors. Now suppose for a minute that some scientists prove that radio waves emanating from cell phones cause tumors.

 

There have already been preliminary studies – funded by the industry more than a decade ago - suggesting a link between cell phone radio waves and cancer.

 

Imagine that beyond reasonable doubt, researchers independently verify in peer-reviewed laboratory studies that talking on a cell phone for an average of two hours a day, five days a week, during the course of 15 years, will cause fatal cancer, be it brain, testicular, ovarian or eye cancer.

 

What are the chances that this information will ever reach the general public? It seems like we have been down this road before.

 

How long did the cigarette companies hide the fact that nicotine is highly addictive and that chemicals in tobacco cause cancer? How long have we been fighting the global warming battle?

 

Are Cell Phones Cancerous?...(continued)

 

Gov. M. Jodi Rell is angry because an F-18 fighter jet flew too low last week, scaring some people who live near Bradley International Airport in Windsor Locks.

 

One just wishes that Gov. Rell would get this angry that F-18s fly too low and drop munitions every day, killing people who live in Iraq and Afghanistan.

 

This accidental F-18 fly-by inspired Rell to pen a nastygram to Navy Cmdr. J.J. Cummings at the Oceana Naval Air Station in Virginia Beach, home of the offending fighter jet, according to an August 29, 2009 report in the Hartford Courant by Christine Dempsey and David Owens.

 

"Witnesses say the jet flew about 100 feet over treetops and performed twisting maneuvers," Rell wrote. "All of this occurred above densely-populated neighborhoods and below radar levels. This represents an incredibly perilous disregard for the safety of our citizens and is absolutely unacceptable."

 

While Governor Rell scolds and wags her finger like an angry, protective Grandma at the Navy, she enthusiastically supports and enjoys the support of the war machine in other quarters.

 

Her act is starting to wear thin. She welcomed the waste of taxpayer dollars that was the supersonic fighter jet flyover at her inaugural parade. I remember the A-10 Warthog that tipped its wing over the Hartford Police Station on its way to the parade route on January 3, 2007.

 

More importantly than the symbolic gesture of a fly-over for the Connecticut National Guard's Commander-in-Chief, Gov. Rell consistently allocates millions of dollars annually for the Connecticut Military Department.

 

In 2010 alone, Connecticut taxpayers will fork over up to $60 million to fund the Connecticut Military Department.

 

The Military Department's budget hides in the Regulation and Protection section of the Governor’s proposed operating budget. Right there on page 58, the Governor's budget defines the Military Department as the Connecticut Army National Guard, Air National Guard and the State Militia.

 

$70 Million for the CT Military Department...(continued)

 

Columnist’s note: Some of these items may be repeats from older columns, but the ideas are so strong, so important, they bear repeating:

 

1. Daylighted Park River done in sections, like the progress of Riverfront Recapture – first the flower street to the Legislative Office Building – build a bridge for Broad Street. Second section Bushnell Park, Jewel Street, to the Whitehead Highway. Third section from Farmington Avenue behind the Mark Twain House to Capital Avenue at the Aetna Viaduct.

 

The end of the I-84 Aetna viaduct on Capital Avenue should account for a daylighted Park River.

 

The possibilities for cultural vibrancy that come with running water in a central urban location are limitless – look at WaterFire in Providence. Buckets of fire – logs burning in floating steel wire mesh pits – 50 of them, on the river, with music piped along the river.

 

Across the street from Waterfire, a big band and a DJ take turns playing ballroom music for dance lessons, shows and group dances on a floor big enough for hundreds - set up in the middle of an intersection.

 

Whose streets? Our streets. Dancing in the streets. Yeah. Every other Saturday night. Riverfront Recapture is close, but the daylighted Park River could add so much energy flow to the city.

 

2. Sarah Palin’s America to understand that the life in Northeast cities depends on immigrant populations. Without this influx of people to live in our urban spaces, the blocks would be desolate.

 

White flight left the cities a shell. Immigrant vibrancy has reflowered them.

 

While New York City and San Francisco could live without their Chinatowns and still be vibrant cities, without the transplanted nightclubs from Mexico and the trucks selling acupurrias and tostones from Puerto Rico, many of our city streets on a Friday night might be abandoned.

 

Providence, RI has a Broad Street, too, that runs north to south from downtown to Cranston. More than a dozen food trucks of all shapes and sizes and nationalities – Mexican, Dominican, Puerto Rican, Venezuelan and names – La Universidad de Chimi, El Pais de Chimi, El Pueblo de Chimi, Ciudad Chimi.

 

The trucks park in the wide shoulders, alongside restaurants and nightclubs. People stroll down the street, or target their favorite truck and hang out. The sidewalks teem with food and motorcycles and men sitting on chairs on the sidewalk and salsa and rap. Sweet life.

 

Maybe the city could encourage vendors of ethnic cuisines to line up on Friday and Saturday nights on a stretch like Wawarme where the cars line up alongside Colt Park and the Shrine to the BVM.

 

Or maybe on Franklin Avenue, where there is plenty of shoulder and parking. The end result is that the city should do things to encourage and harness this lively momentum.

 

3. Fields of sunflowers. On empty vacant lots. I’m not talking mere guerilla gardening. I’m talking money for Knox Parks to hire Green Teams to till empty lots – like the corner of Park and Main, put topsoil on it, and plant sunflowers. Fields of them.

 

On the corner of Laurel and Case. On the corner of Sigourney and Collins. On the corner of Shultas and Fraknlin. These lots sit empty, creating a hopeless, lonely, abandoned city. Hartford is alive. Plant sunflowers. Make Hartford look pretty.

Continue to Wishes 4 Thru 11...(continued)

 

Dear President Hogan -

 

I write to you as a law student at the University of Connecticut, as a journalist, and as a concerned citizen. I write to you because experience tells me that the UConn Athletic Department will not adequately address my concerns, and thus, I must appeal to a higher authority.

 

On Sunday, August 9, 2009, local journalist Stan Simpson televised a 30-minute interview on Fox 61 with UConn men's basketball Coach Jim Calhoun. During the interview, Coach Calhoun misrepresented my academic record by stating I have been in law school for 15 years.

 

In good conscience, I could not let this distortion go. When the Connecticut Bar Examining Committee pores over my file for the character and fitness portion of the bar review in the fall of 2010, I need to make it known that I defended my academic integrity. If I do not defend my own honor, how can I defend clients zealously?

 

So I emailed Stan Simpson, and asked him to correct the misstatement. Mr. Simpson refused, and suggested everyone understood that Coach Calhoun's comment was hyperbole. Mr. Simpson recommended I take the matter up with Coach Calhoun.

 

My last interaction with Coach Calhoun in July 2009 leads me to think that I will find no recourse there: Coach Calhoun told me to contact his attorney, but refused to give me his attorney's name; then he directed me to the UConn press office. I hate to harp on this, but the athletic department is part of the problem, and it will not help correct Coach Calhoun's distortion of my academic record.

 

Call me paranoid, but I doubt that the every single member of the viewing audience grasped the jest, particularly when Coach Calhoun followed that comment by noting that I was arrested by the state police for interfering with Gov. Rell in January of 2007. Coach Calhoun then lamented that the state police were not at the press conference on Feb. 21, 2009 to stop me from asking him about his salary during the time of a severe state budget crisis.

 

For the record, the scurrilous charges from January 2007 were dismissed, and I am pursuing a federal civil rights lawsuit to find out exactly why the state police targeted me as a "person of interest" and placed me on a watch list and seemingly ordered me arrested on sight at the Governor's inaugural parade.

 

This false arrest happened midway through my 1L year in January 2007, while I was still at the Quinnipiac University School of Law. Thus, I have taken particular care to be as scrupulous as possible in completing my law school studies. I approach my schooling with all the gravity and seriousness that the legal profession demands.

 

The University of Connecticut School of Law accepting me as a transfer student for the fall of 2008 demonstrates my commitment to academic excellence. Provided that I suffer no recriminations from this letter, I am on track to graduate in May 2010. Thus any distortion of my academic record is unacceptable.

 

The Student Code at the University of Connecticut does not address the issue of faculty members distorting information directly, but it certainly specifies that it is an offense against scholarship to distort one's own academic achievement. If I were to lie about my own academic record in such a fashion, I would likely be violating Student Code Part III, Proscribed Conduct, Section B, Conduct Rules and Regulations, Subsection 1, Appendix B, Academic Integrity in Graduate Education and Research.

 

Section A of this Academic Integrity policy, entitled "Forms of Academic and Scholarly Misconduct" indicates that "making false, inaccurate, or misleading claims or statements when applying for admission to the Graduate School or in any scholarly or research activity, including publication" is a violation of the Student Code.

 

While classifying Coach Calhoun's televised interview as scholarly or research activity might be a stretch, it is certainly publication, and he made "false, inaccurate or misleading claims or statements" about my record. While he is not a student, he is a member of the American Association of University Professors. The University must demand a higher fidelity to the truth from its most public faces.

 

My hunch is that Coach Calhoun knows that I have not been in law school for 15 years, and he utilized the exaggeration to harm my credibility with the greater public. This would not be tolerated were I to have done it to another student before the Graduate Hearing Committee. The University of Connecticut would seem like Saturn eating his children if it condones this conduct of a faculty member against one of its own students.

 

Perhaps it would be instructive for me to demonstrate how I am certain that Coach Calhoun knows I have not been a perpetual student since receiving my undergraduate degree in magazine journalism from Syracuse University in 1994. Coach Calhoun, as you may know, has a voracious appetite and a legendary memory for all things written about him. He surely recalls the incident during the 1998-1999 season when, as a staff writer for the Hartford Advocate, I opined on the inappropriateness his profane tongue on the sidelines. See story as .pdf here.

 

The UConn athletic department punished me for my disloyalty, preventing me from doing one on one interviews with star players. I submit my correspondence with then Athletic Director Lew Perkins as evidence of the policy by the UConn athletic department to bully members of the press. Also, I attach the story I wrote in 1999 questioning Coach Calhoun's deal with Nike, and his attempts to intimidate me then.

 

Open Letter to UConn President Michael Hogan...(con't)

 

EExactly 15 years ago, I went down to Woodstock II, which should have been titled: "Corporate Music Fest." Woodstock II was a television ready anniversary event in a culture that loves to celebrate the passing of time.

 

So in honor of that, I dip back into my journal from August 1994, and dedicate this column to thoughts on memory, music, money and Woodstock II in Saugerties, NY.

 

A few months after I graduated from college, I got fired from one of many temp jobs, this one from a bank credit servicing center. My boss, the wife of a bass player in a local rock-n-roll jam band, told me I wasn't "vanilla" enough. What am I rocky road? Mint chocolate chip?

 

An executive I met in another temp job needed someone to cut a stack of kiln dried scrap wood into 18" pieces for his wood stove. So this recently divorced guy with a sweet mansion in the country paid me $8 an hour cash to cut two metal banded cords of sawmill shavings - 3/4", 1" and 2" thick sticks of hardwoods - maple, ash, cedar and oak - with a dull chainsaw.

 

I sawed until my arms wanted to go on strike. But I earned enough to go to Woodstock. A ticket for the three day festival cost $144. I went with a friend from college and his buddy from Australia.

 

From the journal: "Even at the first rest stop out of New York City at 3:30 in the morning, I felt tense. By 5:30 a.m. we were sitting in a massive line, waiting to get on a bus from the parking lot to the festival site. We showed our tickets, and they checked our bags for guns or drugs. They missed the ounce of weed I was carrying. Oh well. People started throwing things in the sky - bananas, frisbees, beer cans, footballs, tennis balls, socks. Other people wanted to tip over the mobile security trailer. "

 

After the security checkpoint, we boarded a school bus to go to the concert site, which put us in a location where we were at the mercy of the forces running the show. I spent $104 on food and souvenirs. At least $40 of my expenses was turned into scrip money - Woodstock coined its own cash. Unfortunately, I couldn't use the scrip for the $200 I spent on weed that August weekend.

 

Woodstock scrip money.

From my notebook: "Expensive food and its own money based on American currency, all for the benefit of corporate paymasters. A thriving black market of alcohol ($6 a can, $50 cases of beer)."

 

I know my expenses because I tracked the cost for three days of peace, love and music in my journal. My notebook explained: "The hippies cash in. I tire of being the hippies' slave children: to their fears and unresolved doubts, to their nostalgia trips, to their money making schemes, pyramids and bad television, to the apathy and their lack of faith, to their unresolved sexualities. A bequeathment of gifts I could do without."

 

Shortly thereafter, in 1995, Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder and punk rock legend Mike Watt came out with the song "The kids of today should defend themselves against the 70s/it's not reality/just someone else's sentimentality/it won't work for you."

 

Corporate entertainment giant Warner Brothers figured out that the original Woodstock in 1969 was marketable as a movie, and the movie made a bundle, thus stadium rock was born.

 

So if the first Woodstock marked a rite of passage for a peaceful community that, in essence, dictate what the market would sell, Woodstock II demonstrated that the market was in control.

At Woodstock I, police and national guardsmen helped provide free food, breakfast in bed for 400,000, as wavy gravy said. At Woodstock II, the corporate community demanded its wages for your sustenance.

 

Woodstock II story and photos, continued...

 

The problem with political theater is that we never really know when the curtain falls and when the play starts again.

 

The cast and crew of "What's the matter with Connecticut?" met up for a healthcare sinecure – a sinecure being a job you don’t need to show up for, coming from the middle aged feudal position of a job in the church that didn't involve the saving of souls.

 

Sen. Chris Dodd, Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro, and two Obama cabinet members, former Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius, now Obama's Secretary of Health and Human Services, and U.S. Small Business Administrator Karen Mills converged on Hartford.

 

The handlers selected a humble warehouse at 39 Belmont Street in Parkville, home of a successful small business, Connecticut Commercial Maintenance, Inc.

 

More than 90 people packed into this tiny, hot space, where two kayaks sat on wall shelves, and many ladders of all sizes leaned against walls covered in mudded and taped sheetrock that had never been painted.

 

Despite the fact that Parkville is poor, and two perfect-sixes sat across the street from the venue (one blighted and boarded up, the other with broken windows and children sitting on the front stoop), the show attracted a hardly diverse crowd.

 

Perhaps it wasn't fair for me to engage in racial profiling, but I counted six African-Americans in the Democratic audience, (seven if we count a DHHS cop who didn't want me taking pictures of his lapel pin), and maybe a dozen people who appeared to be Latino.

 

Aside from the journalists, the bloggers and the cops, including DHHS' internal security service who refused to identify which law enforcement agency they worked for, the regular suspects attended.

 

The reserved front row featured Connecticut Democratic Party Chair Nancy DiNardo, Senate President Don Williams, Speaker of the House Chris Donovan, and Secretary of the State and wannabe Governor Susan Bysiewicz.

 

Also spotted in the audience were City Councilman Larry Deutsch and former State Senator and now a staffer in Congressman John Larson's office, Billy Ciotto of Wethersfield. CCAG boss and former Lamont campaign manager Tom Swann was there, too.

 

The AP daybook email circulating around said the dog-and-pony show about the proposed Democratic health care plan would start at 9:45. Dodd and DeLauro met in a private room upstairs with some locals prior to the show. Sebelius arrived at about 10, and the show began.

 

The Democrats wouldn’t be talking about single payer - the health care policy where the US government becomes the main purchaser of health care services (a monopsony where one buyer controls the market).

 

Why so many cops at protests? (link)

 

The Earth cannot handle more than 350 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Currently, humanity has added enough CO2 to bring the content in our atmosphere to 389.42 parts per million.

 

On October 24, 2009, a worldwide day of action will address this crisis. See 350.org.

 

From December 7 through 18, 2009 in Copenhagen, Denmark, world leaders will meet to decide on how to address the carbon crisis.

 

Yet federal, state, regional and local American democratic institutions, paralyzed by the influx of corporate cash, have been unable to address what some consider the most perilous threat humans have ever faced.

 

In the face of this crisis, some deny, some are paralyzed, some want to change the world, like the Al Gore and the Yes Men!, who both advocate civil disobedience.

 

The humble state of Connecticut, using legislative tools developed during the 1973 OPEC oil embargo, could be a leader in addressing climate change. The law guiding state energy policy begins with Connecticut General Statutes §16a-1: "It is found and declared that a shortage of energy supplies and resources exists in the state."

 

This series of statutes allows the governor to declare an energy emergency if an impending shortage of usable energy supplies threatens the health, safety, or welfare of state citizens (C.G.S. §16a-2).

 

The law defines "energy resources" to include natural gas, petroleum products, coal and coal products, wood fuels, geothermal sources, radioactive materials, and any other resource that can yield energy (C.G.S. §16a-11).

 

Pursuant to this finding, the General Assembly created an Energy Emergency Plan, C.G.S. §16a-9, under which the Secretary of the Office of Policy and Management is able to ration oil and gas supplies.

 

At least someone in state government has some awareness of this oil emergency law, because on September 20, 2005, Principal Analyst Daniel Duffy from the state Office of Legislative Research prepared a report answering whether state law prohibits price gouging.

 

Duffy's response details the oil emergency plan. He noted that the statute was last amended in 1994, and it gives the OPM secretary the right to impose price restrictions on energy resources.

 

Someone read Duffy's report in 2005, when oil prices were approaching $150 a barrel, and then plain ignored it.

 

Although it was a Republican President in 1973 who dealt with the first oil embargo, a Republican governor – even one with stratospheric approval ratings – would not dare buck the Bush administration in 2005.

 

The political consequences of declaring an oil emergency to stop price gauging would have sent shockwaves throughout not just Connecticut, but the world.

 

An American state invoking fuel rationing independent of the federal government in Bush’s America? Unbelievable. It need not be in Obama's America. Connecticut has the power to start such a revolution. It chooses not to, of course.

 

Declare An Oil Emergency?...(link)

 

The bills for a $2.7 million beach house in Madison must be expensive, because UConn basketball Coach Jim Calhoun groused that he doesn’t make enough money.

 

"I'm underpaid," he said to this reporter while walking into the Middlesex County Chamber of Commerce breakfast Monday, July 20 at a hotel in Cromwell.

 

Calhoun and his wife Patricia purchased an 1850 vintage 3,300 square foot oceanfront cottage at 43 Soundview Avenue in Madison, CT on November 30, 2005 for $2.7 million. See the property card from the Madison assessor here.

 

Without divulging the price tag publicly, Calhoun mentioned his summer home while introducing NBA All-Star Caron Butler as the Middlesex Chamber's Role Model of the Year.

 

Butler is an American miracle, a street urchin from the slums of Racine, Wisconsin who beat all odds to make the pros via UConn's NBA pipeline. Butler is also a tireless philanthropist and volunteer, giving back to his community.

 

Yet the subject of Calhoun's remuneration lingers five months after his tirade over even having to answer questions about being the highest paid state employee at $1.5 million annually during a severe budget crisis.

 

Since that February 22 blow-up, Gov. M. Jodi Rell has negotiated $637 million in salary givebacks from state employee unions. This week, Connecticut reported an 11 percent decrease in tax revenues during the first quarter of 2009, a $400 million income drop that is sure to result in deeper cuts to state services.

 

Calhoun and his meaty salary continue to be politically untouchable, as he enjoys the adulation of voters, like the friendly 500 packed into a bland ballroom to hear him and Butler speak.

 

More importantly, Calhoun enjoys the patronage of the Chamber and its leadership. For example, Middlesex Chamber president Larry McHugh is the new president of the board of trustees at the University of Connecticut. The joke was made about McHugh being Calhoun's new boss.

 

And without prompting, Anthony Assante, the chair of the Middlesex Chamber, defended Calhoun's salary.

 

"Caron Butler is a testament to Coach Calhoun," Assante said. Assante, a banker, looked like the Beaver, with a green baseball cap and t-shirt over a shirt and tie.

 

"Coach," Assante said, "as far as I’m concerned, you're worth every penny."

 

An argument can be made that Calhoun earns his $1.5 million in state dollars, even in hard economic times. Calhoun has become the face of the state for those Americans who follow college basketball. He sends more players to the NBA than any other school in the country.

 

But he has a 22 percent graduation rate for black players. And at the Chamber breakfast, he revealed his disdain for academic achievement when he suggested that honored guest Caron Butler would not understand a passing reference to "Gone With The Wind."

 

Coach Calhoun Claims He's Underpaid...(more)

 

If Sen. Chris Dodd and Congressman John Larson sought to replicate the Top Gun glory of Maverick and Goose, standing together to drum up support to save funding for the F-22 Raptor, they ended up looking more like Laurel and Hardy.

 

Suave Maverick Dodd and goofy Goose Larson have been shilling for the threatened F-22 since April. This past Monday, July 14, they lined up their talking points before a 1:15 p.m. press conference phone call.

 

A press e-mail from Dodd advertised special guests John Harrity, Connecticut Machinists Official and President of GrowJobsCT and Gen. Mike Dunn, a retired three-star Air Force commander.

 

Both the Senator and the Congressman hit the high points of their arguments for shielding the F-22 Raptor from President Obama's budget ax.

 

The F-22 Raptor is an aptly named Cold War dinosaur. But Maverick and Goose argued to maybe eight press people on the phone that the single-seater stealth fighter will help the United States maintain global air superiority, deter our enemies and maintain the production line.

 

The production line, which represents more than 1,000 subcontractors and 25,000 workers spread across 44 states, needs to stay active for three years until the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter comes on line, lest production of that weapons system be slowed.

 

Panhandling for the war machine falls onto Dodd and Larson because Hartford-based United Technologies manufactures the super hi-tech jet engines for the F-22 through its subsidiary of Pratt and Whitney. The engines mean 2,000 jobs for Middletown.

 

Aside from the $339 million price tag per F-22, Bush/Obama Defense Secretary Robert Gates wants to cut the F-22 because the radar-invisible fleet of F-22s has not seen a day of action in Afghanistan or Iraq.

 

The $6 billion for 20 new planes could be better spent on a more mobile military, Gates claims. Obama has an ally in Sen. John McCain, who sees the program as worthless.

 

Dodd led off the presser by stressing the critical importance the F-22 has in our arsenal.

 

"This is essential to national security and our competitiveness in this world," Dodd said. "I wouldn't be making a case to you on the basis of a parochial issue."

 

Of course not, Senator. It's a corporate issue. UTC chairman George David needs his puppets in Congress to help finance his massive legal bills from his messy divorce, and his spoiled brat countess ex-wife’s $53,000 a week lifestyle.

 

Dodd has his own spending habits, and he needs corporate moguls and unions to finance them. A few hours before the conference call, Dodd announced a $1.2 million haul for his campaign war chest in the second quarter of 2009.

 

While the FEC contribution chart listed nothing from either the Machinists or UTC, other unions like firefighters, electrical workers and boilermakers gave healthy sums and defense contractors like Raytheon contributed to Dodd as well.

 

The whole thing seems like a charade to me anyways. Obama wants to appear like he is challenging the military-industrial complex and reigning in military spending while expanding a costly war, and then blame this on Congress. The members of Congress will face no electoral repercussions because they brought the bacon home.

 

Save the F-22 Raptor, Contribute Here (story con't)...