Nutmeg State Democrats at every level of government have spent years asserting that higher taxes on everything that moves - from income to business entities and property ownership - would not negatively impact our State’s future.  As a result, economic growth has been all but nonexistent, 18-34 year olds flee the State at the fastest rate in the nation, and yesterday brought word that even the casinos are taking a bath in the economic downturn.  But on Dodd Watch: Day 116, Connecticut’s senior Senator is trying to see the bright side of things.

“We’re hopeful this week we get a better response then we did at the end of last week,” Dodd said, referring to the stock market.

The problem, of course, is that the global markets aren’t buying Dodd’s positive spin. For example (h/t Drudge):

The UK Telegraph:

Investors will learn today whether the Paulson bail-out - fattened to $850bn (£480bn) by Congress - can begin to halt the death spiral in the credit system. So far, the response looks terrible.

And from Breibart:

“We have a seriously weak and fear driven market at our hands,” said Tom Hougaard, chief market strategist at City Index.

And from MSNBC’s Jim Cramer:

“Whatever money you may need for the next five years, please take it out of the stock market right now, this week. I do not believe that you should risk those assets in the stock market right now.”

At this rate, Chris Dodd should quit the Senate and become a weatherman.

It would be hard to cover this any better than Connecticut Local Politics:

Wait. What’s this? First, this is going to be in some way about purchasing bad mortgages (Dodd’s mortgage, I assume, is still good) from failing financial institutions. This isn’t a big surprise, but it gives us an idea of what the thinking is. However, it seems to be Dodd’s assumption that unless there’s some sort of “stimulus” thrown in for the little guy that the public is going to react negatively. However, throw in the stimulus, which is basically just making MORE debt we’ll have to pay back later, and all will be well!

Senator Dodd really looks like he is at the end of his rope here - and it’s hard to feel sympathy for him.  The economy is in turmoil, largely by the hands of those who financed his Presidential campaign and gave him the sweetheart deals on two of his own mortgages.  The count on the Dodd Watch Clock is 100 days and things don’t seem to be getting any easier for the senior U.S. Senator from Connecticut.  It’s time for him to come clean.

Connecticut’s “Democratic heavy“, Senator Chris Dodd, is out in Denver this week participating in the Democratic National Convention festivities.  But while he continues to receive glowing treatment from the media, many questions surrounding his sweetheart mortgage deal still linger, wanting answers from the State’s Senior Senator.

Still unreleased, despite the good Senator’s pledge, are the mortgage papers that document the transaction between Countrywide Financial, where Senator Dodd was the beneficiary of the “Friends of Angelo” VIP Program, and the Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee - you know, the one that has oversight over Countrywide.

We’ve been making this case for weeks, and some may accuse us of beating a dead horse.  But the horse is only dead because no one in the journalism business has fed the horse.  The investigative journalism that always seems to target Republican officeholders never takes a whack at the Democrats who have been in power for years.

Instead, we read about 2nd State Senate District candidate Veronica Airey-Wilson, who has unfortunately been dragged into the mess with corrupt Hartford Mayor Eddie Perez.  Political opponents of Airey-Wilson, a Jamaican-American who has a great shot at taking out the ever-worthless Senator Eric Coleman, have been trying to get these stories about Wilson spinning for some time now.  The more pragmatic observers dismiss them outright - and it is well advised to dismiss them again.

The Dodd issue has legs - certainly more than any old wives’ tale about Veronica Airey-Wilson - but those that value transparency and accountability find no allies in the press corps.  In the meantime, Dodd continues to float on by, as he always has.

The Democrats are headed to Denver to nominate Barack Obama and his newly-minted Sancho Panza, Delaware Senator Joe Biden, as their 2008 ticket for the White House.  Though the 3am text message was a bit of a flop and the Biden announcement speech seemed a little flat, the Dems will rightly celebrate their moment in the coming days.

But even the most intoxicated of Democrats would have to concede that the gushing over Senator Biden’s status as a man who never moved to Washington is a little over the top.  Sen. Biden doesn’t have a home in Washington; he instead commutes back and forth between Wilmington, DE and Washington, a whopping 90 minute AMTRAK ride.  (Map courtesy Google Maps)

Nonetheless, Obama surrogates and media reporters (but I repeat myself) spent the day cooing over Biden’s train ride to the point that the Washington Post finally gave up and dubbed Biden ‘D-AMTRAK’.  It is perfectly respectable that Mr. Biden raised his family on his own and spent his time on the train instead of having a second house 100 miles from the first one.  But to characterize Biden as anything other than an ultimate Washington Insider simply because he’s a regular on the evening Regional is ridiculous. 

I will say though its probably nice for the citizens of Delaware to be represented by a guy who actually lives in the state.  Senator Chris Dodd has never been so burdened - that whole “he moved to Iowa” thing, you know.  Maybe Dodd should have hooked Biden in with his Countrywide guy - could have saved Biden a bundle.

Speaking of our Washington Insider, someone out in Denver ought to stick a camera in his face and ask him about those pesky mortgage documents he said he was going to release.  Remember, right after President Bush signed the Countrywide Bailout Bill?  Sadly, Senator Dodd disappeared to Ireland without a trace after the bill signing, and undoubtedly will bypass Connecticut on his way to the Convention without stopping home to put the paperwork in the mail.

Dodd scored a sweetheart deal, and he knows it.  That’s why he has turned into a ghost who waters his hanging plants while wearing shirtsleeves. 

Our interest should rise on this issue in light of the Biden pick.  By his own admission, Senator Dodd gave his financial paperwork to the Obama vetters in hopes of being his pick for Vice President.  But after reviewing the documents of the Dodd situation, the vetting team may well have seen that Dodd’s goose is cooked on the VIP mortgage mess.  In Biden, they basically got a slightly cleaner copy of Dodd - without the ”Friends of Angelo” business.

If the stuff in that paperwork is big enough to cost him the Vice Presidency, who knows what else it will cause when it finally does come out?

Though you wouldn’t know it for reading Connecticut-based news outlets, the story surrounding U.S. Senator Chris Dodd’s sweetheart mortgage deals continues to generate interest across the nation.  Here at The Everyday Republican, the Chairman’s post on Dodd’s double dealing gained links from nationally-known Instapundit and the National Review posted links to the site, generating our single best day ever for traffic.

Of course, all this attention raises the perfectly legitimate question: where is the Connecticut news media?  It is true that some of them have had articles on this in the past, and indeed the Chairman’s post was generated from Kevin Rennie’s commentary piece that appeared in the Hartford Courant.  But Rennie isn’t an investigative journalist and the Courant isn’t the only paper of note in the State.

Part of the problem is that the investigative journalism that was the hallmark of a certain era of journalists - those who grew up idolizing Woodward and Bernstein - have parted the field as antiquated business models and conglomeration killed the local newspaper.  The remnants of the great American newsprint tradition are either too biased or too frail to properly hold Senator Dodd to account. 

Those in the State that bore witness to the events surrounding former Republican Governor John Rowland could little be faulted for simply citing bias.  One has to wonder whether Senator Dodd’s excuses would hold up under the same level of examination given to Governor Rowland.

It is, however, possible that this reality is the simple byproduct of dependence on antiquated business models - remaining reliant on classified advertising and subscriptions while the Internet made their product obsolete.  Survival has meant consolidation, downsizing, and the death of the local newspaper.  Old fashioned muckraking doesn’t seem to occupy the same plane in the new journalism.

On the other hand, the thousands of visitors to this site and others would seem to defy that conclusion on this day.  Instead, it would seem, actually reporting the news without bias appeals to people, many of whom would very much like to believe in their elected officials again.  Until the rest of the news outlets figure this out, we’ll have to keep reading the blogs for the kind of journalism that matters.

Click here to view the CNBC interview with Robert Feinberg, formerly an account manager with Countrywide Financial, who described how he gave U.S. Senator Chris Dodd a sweetheart deal on his mortgage loan.