EDITORIAL: Dodd lied about AIG bonuses (CT Paper Actually Goes After Dodd)

We’re not going to mince words. Chris Dodd is a lying weasel. It is hard enough to swallow that the senator had no idea that he got preferential treatment on his home mortgages that saved him thousands of dollars. Or that, simply out of friendship, a wealthy New York man, who was later convicted in a huge stock swindle, picked up much of the cost of a condo Dodd bought in Washington; or that the stock swindler’s business partner out of a love of Ireland did the same for Dodd when the senator bought a waterfront house in Ireland.

Now, Dodd flat-out has lied about his role in legislation that is allowing employees of American International Group to receive $400 million in bonuses despite receiving $173 billion in taxpayer money to keep the failed financial giant alive.

We praised Dodd on March 9 for authoring an amendment to the $787 billion stimulus bill that barred the top executives and highest-paid workers at companies that took government bailout money from receiving bonuses. Sharply down in opinion polls, Dodd was riding the wave of public anger at Wall Street’s greed.

What Dodd did not reveal at the time was that there was a provision in his amendment that exempted any bonuses, including AIG’s, in contracts dated prior to Feb. 11. The exemption was cited by Obama administration officials as the reason they were powerless to stop AIG’s payment of the bonuses.

Lowell Weicker was voted in as a maverick Republican and instituted the income tax. I still have my “Hey Weicker - VETO THIS!” hat......a reminder that you CAN NEVER trust a politician........

Even LESS trustworthy was his successor. Lowell Weicker was thrown out for neglect of duty. And much as I'd like to give Connecticuttians the credit, the citizeney were flim-flammed by a despicable fraudster. Read on.

September, 11, 2000
Pro-life Lieberman remembered
By George Archibald, The Washington Times

EXCERPT Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman is a staunch supporter of abortion rights now, and even voted against a ban on partial-birth abortion-----six times in a row----- but Catholic leaders in Connecticut remember another Joe Lieberman.

Lieberman called on the state's archbishop with a pro-life pledge 12 years ago, when he was first a candidate for the US Senate, ad even told pro-life leaders he would have voted to confirm Judge Robert Bork for the U.S. Supreme Court.

Mr. Lieberman met with Archbishop John F. Whealon of Hartford to seek Catholic votes in the final stretch of his 1988 Democratic bid to oust 18-year Sen. Lowell P. Weicker Jr., a Republican who supported abortion rights, from the U.S. Senate.

"Joe was very liberal, like Weicker, but we had a poll on abortion that showed which way the wind was blowing," says Daniel Cosgrove, then the Democratic town chairman in Branford, Mr. Lieberman's hometown.

The poll showed anti-abortion sentiment outweighed pro-choice views in urban areas throughout Connecticut. "In the Waterbury area, it was more than any, 12,000 [more] against," Mr. Cosgrove says.

Records of a meeting between Mr. Lieberman and top officials of the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) two months after the 1988 election quote Mr. Lieberman as saying he "thinks there are too many abortions," and promising he would not "apply a litmus test" against pro-life judicial nominees.

Archbishop Whealon has since died, but his former secretary, Father Thomas Berry, says he remembers the 1988 meeting where Mr. Lieberman "expressed himself as coming from a tradition in support of life, not in favor of abortion on demand."

"Lieberman expressed himself against abortion, all suicide, and euthanasia. His position on that definitely was well received by the archbishop and priests," Father Berry says.

A spokesman for Mr. Lieberman says Mr. Cosgrove's memory of the meeting with the archbishop "is not accurate," and says Mr. Lieberman has been consistently pro-choice.

Mr. Cosgrove says he and state Sen. Regina Smith, who conducted the pro-life poll for the archdiocese, arranged for Mr. Lieberman, then the state attorney general, to meet with the Catholic prelate before the election to lay out his support for Catholic pro-life positions, which Mr. Weicker had actively opposed.

The strategy worked, Mr. Cosgrove says. Mr. Lieberman convinced the archbishop he favored pro-life positions and would vote differently than Mr. Weicker, thus winning Catholic support that pushed him to a narrow 10,000-vote victory — the only Democratic Senate upset of that year.

With Republican Vice President George Bush outpolling Democrat Michael S. Dukakis by almost 100,000 votes in Connecticut's presidential balloting that year, Mr. Lieberman's strategic appeal for pro-life votes countered the Republican tide that otherwise might have benefited Mr. Weicker, Mr. Cosgrove says.

Mr. Lieberman's winning margin was less than 1 percent of 1.4 million votes.

Mr. Lieberman, an Orthodox Jew, has defended his record, saying Jewish law is so deeply divided on the issue of abortion that even among orthodox Jews it may be construed as "a personal matter."

The senator's spokesman, Dan Gerstein, insists there was no meeting between Mr. Lieberman and the archbishop before the 1988 election. "No one on staff at the time can remember a meeting with Archbishop Whealon during the campaign. He had a private meeting with the archbishop after the election," the spokesman said. "Mr. Cosgrove's recollection of what was said at the meeting also is not accurate," Mr. Gerstein said. Mr. Lieberman "never said he would limit a woman's right to choose, that he would vote to ban abortion or to overturn Roe v. Wade."

Mr. Lieberman has voted consistently pro-choice, both as a Connecticut state senator and U.S. senator, since his first elective office in 1970, Mr. Gerstein said.

Father Berry, now assigned to St. Mary's Parish in Newington, Conn., says Mr. Lieberman presented himself as a clear pro-life alternative, saying, "He was not an abortion activist as Senator Weicker was . . . and said his approach would be different." In fact, Mr. Lieberman's pro-life assurances were so convincing that Archbishop Whealon arranged for the Democratic candidate to meet with Catholic priests throughout the state shortly before the November 1988 balloting.

Mr. Lieberman's expressed pro-life views in those meetings, Father Berry said. "That probably was not insignificant" in the November 1988 election outcome, he said.

Two months after the election, Mr. Lieberman and key staff aides again met with pro-life leaders in Washington and assured them he was an ally, says Douglas Johnson, legislative director of the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC).

Mr. Lieberman said he would have voted to confirm Judge Bork to the Supreme Court had he been a member of the Senate during the confirmation hearings, according to written minutes of the meeting with Dr. Jack C. Willke, then the NRLC head, and Regina Smith, Connecticut's representative to the group. Judge Bork, who was eventually denied confirmation, testified in Senate hearings that he would have voted to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Mr. Lieberman "would have voted for Bork, under whom he studied" at Yale University law school, according to the meeting notes taken by Mr. Johnson. The notes quoted Mr. Lieberman as saying: "I'm not going to vote against a judicial nominee just because he's pro-life. I'm not going to apply a litmus test."

Jackie Dodd spent 20 years working in national security policy, foreign affairs and trade for the US Government. As CEO and Vice Chair of the Export-Import Bank during the Clinton administration, Mrs Dodd visited over 90 countries around the world, leading trade negotiations and opening new markets to US goods.

Prior to her executive branch experience Mrs Dodd worked on issues of national security in the Congress, she holds a MA in National Security Studies from Georgetown University.
http://www.kruufm.com/jackie-dodd-bob-vander-plaats-speaking-freely-w-dennis-raimondi-tues-1pm

Jackie Clegg Dodd, wife of Democrat Chris Dodd, has mixed a career with motherhood, but credits a little luck for her success.
“I like the title of homemaker. The best title I’ve ever taken on is Mommy,” she said. “But I’ve been lucky. I was lucky I had worked for so many years before having little ones. I’ve benefited from having had a full career. That gave me options. I work out of my home, so my little ones have no notion of Mommy working. I do conference calls, while they’re playing right in front of me.”
Dodd, a former vice president of the Export-Import Bank of the U.S. , left a government career six years ago but still runs her own international consulting company and sits on the Board of Directors of the Chicago Board of Trade, Blockbuster, Javelin Pharmaceuticals Inc., Cardiome Pharma Corp. and Brookdale Senior Living Inc. She is past staff member to numerous Congressional committees, including Appropriations, Senate Banking and Defense. She married Dodd in 1999 and is now the mother of two daughters, Christina, 2, and Grace, 5.
http://blogs.eagletribune.com/preselection/2007/10/17/jackie-dodd-mommy-is-the-best-title/

From 2001-2004, Jackie Clegg Dodd served as an “outside” director of IPC Holdings, Ltd., a Bermuda-based company controlled by AIG. IPC, which provides property casualty catastrophe insurance coverage, was formed in 1993 and currently has a market cap of $1.4 billion and trades on the NASDAQ under the ticker symbol IPCR
http://thecynicaleconomist.com/?p=3609

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