Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Brebart News is reporting: “Despite their denials, influential Democratic Sens. Kent Conrad and Chris Dodd were told from the start they were getting VIP mortgage discounts from one of the nation's largest lenders, the official who handled their loans has told Congress in secret testimony.”

The poll numbers on the public’s dissatisfaction with Connecticut’s two US senators, Chris Dodd and Joe Lieberman, suggest something is rotten in Denmark. The approval ratings of both senators dipped below 40 percent in October, according to a recent poll commissioned by the Hartford Courant from the Center for Survey Research and Analysis at the University of Connecticut. The dip is regarded as especially troublesome for Dodd, who is up for re-election in 2010; Lieberman will not face the firing squad until 2012. Lieberman’s unpopularity may be traced to his attempt at rebranding. A liberal Democrat for most of his political career, Lieberman jumped the Democrat Party fence more than two years ago when he was challenged and defeated in a primary by Ned Lamont , a wealthy but politically undistinguished anti-Iraq war candidate from Greenwich, Connecticut. Lamont’s candidacy was supported by former governor and senator Lowell Weicker, whom Lieberman had earlier defeated in a bitter sen...

US Sen. Chris Dodd, whom the lustrous but air-headed Paris Hilton might well consider “a wrinkly white guy,” is still playing his seemingly nefarious connections to Countrywide close to his vest. Wrinkly white guys sometimes wear vests, and in fact they are once again becoming popular among what used to be called the jet set. Way back when Countrywide, the Robin Hood of mortgage lenders, was reeling from disclosures that it had lined the pockets of powerful politicians like Dodd with special discounts and rates, the media began sniffing around Dodd’s closet . Dodd was and is the chairman of the US Senate Banking committee, and as such became a magnet for funds freely given, no strings attached of course, by the financial wizards who even then were paving the way for the current Wall Street collapse . What about this special treatment you have received from Angelo Mozilo, the serpentine head of Countrywide, the dogged media wanted to know? The legislatively pampered Countrywide...

He is a man of splendid abilities, but utterly corrupt. He shines and stinks like rotten mackerel by moonlight -- Senator John Randolph of Virginia, commenting on fellow lawmaker Edward Livingston. In a follow-up to its explosive story on Countrywide, the nation’s now defunct largest mortgage lender whose president Angelo Mozilo had greased the palms of shakers and movers in Congress such as U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd, the chairman of the senate’s powerful banking committee, Portfolio , a Conte Nast publication, now gives us the honorable Richard Aldrich, a California state appeals court justice. As was the case with Dodd, Aldrich also was favored by Mozilo’s chief agent, loan officer Robert Feinberg, who was put in charge of the now notorious “Friends of Angelo” VIP program. Refinancing his 8,200-square-foot house adjacent to a Jack Nicklaus-designed golf course at the Sherwood Country Club in Westlake Village, Aldrich turned to fellow member Mozilo, who through Feinberg approved the $1 m...