Category Archives: Essex

Wyman, Bjornberg, Stone Hold Press Conference Today to Discuss Women’s Rights

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Emily Bjornberg (D)

Emily Bjornberg (D)

Later today, Thursday, Oct. 30, at 1 p.m., Lt. Gov. Nancy Wyman and Democratic State Senate Candidate Emily Bjornberg will hold a press conference on the front steps of the Town Hall in Clinton, Conn., to discuss the importance of supporting candidates who will stand up for women’s rights in the upcoming Nov. 4 election.  Wyman and Bjornberg will be joined by State House Candidate Mary Stone of Old Lyme, and many other concerned women and local residents.

Bjornberg’s opponent was recently endorsed by a conservative organization that is trying to roll back a wide variety of rights for women in Connecticut.

Letter to the Editor: Linares’s Business Experience:  What Is It Exactly? 

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To the Editor:

The suggestion that voters should support Art Linares for state senator due to his “business experience” deserves closer examination.  So does Linares’s portrayal of himself as a champion of free enterprise.

Linares’s company, “Greenskies”, installs solar panels. It is undoubtedly among the most heavily subsidized companies in Connecticut.  In 2012, the Hartford Courant reported that “the biggest impact on Greenskies’ potential for growth by far is how successful it is in capturing state subsidies.”  In a lobbying paper to the Connecticut legislature, Greenskies president called such support  “critical”.

How many Connecticut companies depend for growth “by far” mainly on state subsidies?  Most companies, like the successful car dealership run by the family of Emily Bjornberg  (Linares’s opponent) must compete on their own merits.  Given the extensive state aid propping up Greenskies, how relevant is Linares’s experience to most businesses ?

Tea Party politicians like Linares usually revile such support as “corporate hand outs” and a bone-headed effort by government to “pick winners and losers”.  We’re not hearing that here, however.

Meanwhile – and this is a key point — Linares wants to cut many other state programs supporting equally worthy causes and opposes increasing the minimum wage.  For others, Linares believes the free market should set wages and prices – just not in the sector where he does business.

Greenskies use of Chinese solar panels takes this double standard to a new level.  In 2012, the U.S. Government found that factories controlled by the Chinese government were selling the panels at prices below their cost of production.  This is an unfair trade practice under U.S. law, known as “dumping”.  Our government imposed tariffs on the panels.

Greenskies liked the artificially cheap panels dumped by the Chinese because they hurt its competitors, who, unlike Greenskies, make their panels in the U.S.  Greenskies president bluntly told the press “When we go to toe to toe, we enjoy an advantage. We were perfectly happy with low-cost equipment from China.”

It did not seem to bother Greenskies or Linares that, according to our own government, this “advantage” resulted from Chinese market manipulation.  The matter is now before the World Trade Organization.

So I am trying to understand this.  It appears that Linares’s business experience is with a company that enjoys state subsidies on a huge scale not available to virtually anyone else, which enable it to distribute panels dumped by Chinese communists at artificially low prices, damaging American companies and destroying U.S. jobs.

That’s quite a business model for a champion of free enterprise.

Sincerely,

David Harfst,
Essex.

Big Book Club Hosts Mystery, Suspense Author Event at ‘The Kate’ Tonight

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John Searles

John Searles

The Big Book Club has announced a new event on Sept. 27, at The Katharine Hepburn Cultural Arts Center (“The Kate”), presented by The Day.  The line-up of mystery and suspense authors includes:

  • John Searles, Editor-at-Large for Cosmopolitan Magazine, Book Critic for the NBC Today Show, and author of Boy Still Missing, Strange But True, and Help For The Haunted; 
  • Tess Gerritsen, internationally bestselling author and creator of the Rizzoli & Isles series on TNT;
  • Alafair Burke, American crime novelist, professor of law, legal commentator, and author of two series of crime novels featuring NYPD Detective Ellie Hatcher and Prosecutor Samantha Kincaid;
  • Lisa Unger

    Lisa Unger

    Lisa Unger, whose novels including Beautiful Lies and In The Blood have sold more than 1.7 million copies and been translated into twenty-six languages;

  • and, Old Lyme’s own David Handler,author of the popular Hoagy & Lulu and Mitch & Desiree mysteries.

The event will be moderated by Hank Phillippi Ryan, investigative reporter for Boston’s NBC affliate who has won 32 EMMYs and dozens of other awards for her ground-breaking journalism.  Phillippi-Ryan is also the coveted Mary Higgins Clark award-winning author of crime fiction including The Other Woman and The Wrong Girl.

David Handler

David Handler

The event will benefit Reach Out and Read Connecticut, a non-profit organization that prepares America’s youngest children to succeed in school by partnering with doctors to prescribe books and encourage families to read together. By using the code READ at registration, $10 from each ticket sale will be donated to Reach Out and Read.

Tickets are $45 each and include a signature martini courtesy of 44 North Vodka and hors d’oeuvre stations by the Bee and Thistle Inn and The Cheese Shop of Centerbrook.  A cash bar will also be open.

Books will be available for sale by Bank Square Books of Mystic, CT.  Other sponsors include Bob’s Discount Furniture, The Copper Beech Inn, Middlesex Hospital, LymeLine.com and ValleyNewsNow.com.

The Big Book Club is a creation of LaFrancois Marketing Consultants and Essex Books.

Register at www.thebigbookclub.org

Local Resident Recalls Eleanor Roosevelt Endorsement of State Senate Candidacy

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Eleanor Roosevelt endorsing the candidacy of Essex resident Jerome Wilson, when he was a candidate for the New York State Senate back in 1962

Eleanor Roosevelt endorsing the candidacy of Essex resident Jerome Wilson, when he was a candidate for the New York State Senate in 1962

What with much of the country riveted by the PBS documentary on the “Roosevelt’s,” Essex resident Jerome Wilson has released a photograph of his one time meeting with Eleanor Roosevelt. The photograph was taken in the fall of 1962, and it pictured Mrs. Roosevelt’s endorsement of Wilson’s candidacy for the New York State Senate in Albany. Wilson won his race in 1962 and went on to serve three terms in the New York State Senate.

Wilson was a member of what was called the Reform Movement in New York City in the 1960’s. The leaders of the Reform Democratic movement were three notable national Democrats: Eleanor Roosevelt, former New York State Governor Herbert Lehman and former Secretary of the U.S. Air Force, Thomas Finletter. The purpose of this group was to defeat Tammany Hall, Democratic Party officeholders (the so-called “bosses”), and replace them with Reform Democrats.

On the West Side of Manhattan, the Reform Democrats had already beaten Tammany Hall candidates in the 1960 elections, electing a U.S. Congressman and a New York State Senator. Wilson’s election as a State Senator on the Manhattan East Side in 1962 would be yet another victory for the Reform Democrats. In addition to electing public officials, the Reform Democrats had set up Reform Democratic clubs on both on the West Side and the East Side of Manhattan. At the time of his election to the New York State Senate, Wilson was the President of the Yorkville Democratic Club, a Reform Democratic club located on East 79th Street in Manhattan.

Wilson’s most significant accomplishment during his service in the New York State legislature was to lead the fight to reform the state’s 179-year-old divorce law. New York’s divorce law up until 1966 had only one ground for divorce, which was for adultery. There was not even a ground for extreme physical cruelty. Through his efforts, as Chairman of the Joint Legislative Committee and Family Law, Wilson exposed the inadequacy of the one-ground divorce law, and, as a result, the New York State legislature adopted new grounds for physical and mental cruelty, among other humane grounds for divorce.

State House Candidates Stone, Carney Debate Tonight in Old Lyme, 7pm; Also, State Senate Candidates Linares, Bjornberg at 8pm

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Challenger Emily Bjornberg (D)

Challenger Emily Bjornberg (D)

State Senator Art Linares

State Senator Art Linares (R)

Republic State Senators Art Linares and Democratic challenger Emily Bjornberg have agreed to at least three public debates for their election contest in the 12-town 33rd Senate district, though Bjornberg is calling for at least one more face-off to be held in one of the northern towns of the district.

In a separate campaign development, Colin Bennett of Westbrook has been endorsed the receive the Green Party line on the Nov. 4 ballot. Bennett has run for the seat several times as the Green Party nominee in past elections where former Democratic State Sen. Eileen Daily of Westbrook faced Republican challengers.

The Green Party has secured a ballot line in the district with past campaigns by Bennett, and particularly with the 2012 contest after Daily’s retirement where Melissa Schlag of Haddam won nearly ten percent of the vote as the Green Party candidate in the contest with Linares and Democratic nominee Jim Crawford of Westbrook. Schlag was elected last year as the Democratic first selectwoman of Haddam, and is supporting Bjornberg in this year’s election.

Bennett is not believed to be waging an active campaign for the Nov. 4 vote, but he has been included in at least one of the Linares-Bjornberg debates. Bennett has been invited to participate in a Sept. 23 debate at Valley Regional High School in Deep River that is sponsored by the Essex Library. The debate begins at 7 p.m. in the school auditorium, with written questions from the audience that will be screened by the debate moderator, Essex Librarian Richard Conroy.

Devin Carney (R)

Devin Carney (R)

Mary Stone (D)

Mary Stone (D)

The first campaign face off between the one-term Republican incumbent and Bjornberg, of Lyme, will be held Tuesday, Sept. 16, at the Lyme-Old Lyme Middle School in Old Lyme. The session, sponsored by the New London Day and the Eastern Chamber of Commerce, begins at 8 p.m.  The evening starts at 7 p.m. with a debate between the candidates for the 23rd House seat currently held by Marilyn Giuliano.  Democrat Mary Stone of Old Lyme will face off against Republican Devin Carney of Old Saybrook.  The 23rd seat covers Lyme, Old Lyme, Old Saybrook and the southern section (south of I 95) of Westbrook.

Old Lyme is part of the 20th Senate District, but Lyme, its northern neighbor, is in the 33rd District. The district also includes the towns of Chester, Clinton, Colchester, Deep River, East Haddam, East Hampton, Essex, Haddam, Portland, Westbrook, and parts of Old Saybrook.

The candidates will also appear at a debate sponsored by the Westbrook Council of Beaches in early October, and at a forum, not a debate, sponsored by the Chester-Deep River-Essex chapter of the Middlesex Chamber of Commerce on the morning of Oct. 3 at the Chester Meeting House.

Bjornberg this week urged Linares to agree to hold one additional public debate in one of the five northern towns of the district, Colchester, East Haddam, East Hampton, Haddam, or Portland. Bjornberg said she would keep her schedule open for a northern town debate