Sunday, February 26, 2012   11:00 am – 1:00 pm

Vespucci Restaurant (10579 Fairfax Blvd, Fairfax, VA 22030; map, click here). Additional parking is available in the business lot next door on the left side (east) of Vespucci’s.

• RSVP by ordering your tickets on ActBlue, click here.
• Flier, click here.
• Share on Facebook, click here.

John Sturdivant Award, honoring a member of the labor community for his/her commitment to Democratic ideals and values.

11th CD Community Service Awards, honoring three Democrats from the respective jurisdictions of the 11th Congressional District (Fairfax County, Fairfax City, and Prince William County) for community service:

• The Joseph V. Gartlan Award, Fairfax County – Linda Byrne,
• The Deloris Hampton Award, Prince William County – Fred Parish, and
• The Frederick W. Silverthorne Award, Fairfax City – TBA.

Questions, more Info contact George Burke, Chair (chair@11thDistrictDemocrats.org).

The 11th Congressional District Democratic Committee invites you to their Annual Awards Brunch honoring some good Democrats.

Sunday, March 6, 2011  11:00 am – 1:00 pm
Vespucci Restaurant
10579 Fairfax Blvd, Fairfax, VA  22030
map, click here 

• John Sturdivant Award
  • Honoring a member of the labor community for his/her commitment to Democratic ideals and values.
• 11th CD Community Service Awards
  • Honoring three Democrats from the respective jurisdictions of the 11th Congressional District (Fairfax County, Fairfax City, and Prince William County) for community service.
    • The Joseph V. Gartlan Award, Fairfax County – Walt Mika
    • The Dolores Hampton Award, Prince William County – Kathleen Seefeldt
    • The Frederick W. Silverthorne Award, Fairfax City – Teddy Goodson

Suggested Donation: $40 to help defray expenses; Sponsors: $250; Hosts: $100. Click here to purchase your ticket(s) online via ActBlue.

RSVP to: Ginny Peters, Finance Chair, at glpeters@verizon.net. More Info: George Burke, Chair, at georgeaburke@gmail.com.

Your contribution may be used in connection with federal elections and is subject to the limitations and prohibitions of the Federal Election Campaign Act. Federal law requires us to use our best efforts to collect the name, address, occupation, employer & location of employment for individuals who contribute $200 or more in a calendar year.  Other contributions will be deposited in our non-federal account.  Virginia law requires political committees to report the name, mailing address, occupation, employer and location of employment for individuals who contribute $100 or more in a calendar year. Contributions to the 11th CDDC are not deductible for federal or state income tax purposes.

Paid for and Authorized by the 11th Congressional District Democratic Committee, George Burke, Chair

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General and Special Elections (Mason District), Tuesday November 2, 2010

2010 Election for Congressman, 3 Constitutional Amendments, and a Bond Referendum

• Congressional Candidates
  • 8th District
  • 11th District
• Proposed Constitutional Amendments (3) (Virginia Constitution)
• Fairfax County Bond Referendum (1)

Party Designators
R = Republican
IG = Independent Green
I = Independent
D = Democrat
L = Libertarian

Candidates, 8th District – Member, House of Representatives
(Vote for not more than one)

• J. Patrick Murray – R
  PO Box 25243
  Alexandria, VA 22313
  murrayforcongress@gmail.com
  http://www.murrayforcongress.com
• James P. “Jim” Moran, Jr. – D incumbent
  311 N Washington St, Suite 200-L
  Alexandria, VA 22314
  http://www.jimmoran.org
• J. Ron Fisher – IG
  PO Box 1310
  Falls Church, VA 22041
  http://www.ronfisherforcongress.com
• Write-In

Candidates, 11th District – Member, House of Representatives
(Vote for not more than one)

• Keith S. Fimian – R
  PO Box 3131
  Oakton, VA 22124
  kfimian@fimian2010.com
  http://www.fimian2010.com
• Gerald E. “Gerry” Connolly – D
  PO Box 563
  Merrifield, VA 22116
  info@gerryconnolly.com
  http://www.gerryconnolly.com
• David William Gillis, Jr. – IG
  7663 Somerset Lane
  Manassas, VA 20111
  davidwgillis@yahoo.com
  http://www.votejoinrun.us
• David L. Dotson – L
  3429 Brookwood Drive
  Fairfax, VA 22030
  vote@ddotson.com
  http://www.dotsonforcongress.com
• Christopher F. DeCarlo – I
  9754 Lee Highway
  Fairfax, VA 22031
  cdecarlo@fairfaxpropane.com
  http://www.honestyandethics.com
• Write-In

Proposed Constitutional Amendments (Virginia Constitution)

• Question 1:
  Shall Section 6 of Article X of the Constitution of Virginia be amended to authorize legislation that will permit localities to establish their own income or financial worth limitations for purposes of granting property tax relief for homeowners not less than 65 years of age or permanently and totally disabled?
  Yes
  No
• Question 2:
  Shall the Constitution be amended to require the General Assembly to provide a real property tax exemption for the principal residence of a veteran, or his or her surviving spouse, if the veteran has a 100 percent service-connected, permanent, and total disability?
  Yes
  No
• Question 3:
  Shall Section 8 of Article X of the Constitution of Virginia be amended to increase the permissible size of the Revenue Stabilization Fund (also known as the “rainy day fund”) from 10 percent to 15 percent of the Commonwealth’s average annual tax revenues derived from income and retail sales taxes for the preceding three fiscal years?
  Yes
  No

Fairfax County Bond Referendum

Shall the Board of Supervisors contact a debt, borrow money and issue bonds of Fairfax County, Virginia, in addition to the bonds previously authorized for transportation improvements and facilities, in the maximum aggregate principal amount of $120,000,000 for the purpose of providing funds to finance the cost of constructing, reconstructing, improving and acquiring transportation improvements, including improvements to primary and secondary State highways, off-street parking, pedestrian improvements, and ancillary related improvements and facilities, and including capital costs of land, transit facilities, rolling stock and equipment in the Washington metropolitan area allocable to Fairfax County, Virginia pursuant to the provisions of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority Compact?
Yes
No

Connolly’s opponent, Keith Fimian, subscribes to the Sarah Palin philosophy of “Drill, Baby, Drill” and “Drill here, Drill now.” He has a long record of supporting offshore drilling and believes that business, including Big Oil, should be allowed to self-regulate. And in the wake of the environmental calamity in the Gulf, he has not changed his reckless stance.

Watch the video to learn more.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coTJloFBdVY

The horrific images of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico serve as a grave reminder of what can happen when oil companies are allowed to drill offshore with lax oversight and no environmental protections. This spill is the greatest environmental catastrophe in our nation’s history, and the worst part is that it could have been prevented.

It is important that we look back and analyze the mistakes that allowed this disaster to happen. But it is even more important that as we work to clean up this spill, we look to the future and take the necessary actions to make sure that this kind of thing can never happen again.

In 2005, the Republican Congress, led by Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX), relaxed the regulations on offshore drilling, allowing special exemptions for offshore rigs like Deepwater Horizon. This bill will end the special exemptions that allowed BP’s Deepwater Horizon Rig to be built and operated without real oversight. Keith Fimian believes companies like BP should be allowed to police themselves. But that kind of lax approach led to the disaster in the Gulf. Let’s stand with Gerry. Sign on as a citizen co-sponsor to help prevent future oil spills!

Please join Congressman Connolly and help prevent the next oil spill. You can send a message by becoming a citizen co-sponsor of his bill. Click here and tell Big Oil, “Never Again.”

Here is more background below, and some thoughts from Gerry about how the spill was preventable.

• BP Oil Spill in Gulf was Preventable
• Connolly Bill Would Repeal Bush-era Loopholes that Allowed BP to Operate Recklessly

BP Oil Spill in Gulf was Preventable
By Congressman Gerry Connolly

While the BP oil spill continues to spew tens of millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, it is important to recognize that this spill could have been minimized or even prevented.

As the best minds in the oil industry, academia, and the federal government search for ways to stop the worst environmental catastrophe in our nation’s history, we must look at the factors which allowed it to happen and then make sure it can never happen again.

In 1969, after an oil well spilled more than 200,000 gallons of crude oil onto the California coast near Santa Barbara and the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland caught fire, Congress passed a law, known as the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), requiring that environmental impact statements and assessments be conducted on projects that had the potential to create environmental damage.

The law was designed to prevent private companies, as well as government entities, from cutting corners which could create serious environmental consequences on federal lands, including the Outer Continental Shelf off our coast.

Unfortunately, in 2005 the Bush administration and the Republican Congress passed legislation creating loopholes in the law that allowed “categorical exclusions” for projects with minimal risk to the environment and required the Secretary of the Interior to approve oil and gas exploration plans on the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) within 30 days of their submission to the federal government.

It was this “categorical exclusion” provision granted by the U.S. Minerals Management Service that allowed BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf to begin oil exploration without any analysis or assessments of the potential environmental impacts required by NEPA under the premise that the rig could never leak more than 4,600 barrels of oil into the Gulf. That clearly was a false assumption.

To date, somewhere between 20 million and 70 million barrels of oil have spilled into the Gulf, closing America’s largest fishery, jeopardizing tourism, and wreaking havoc with the region’s entire economy. Already the BP spill covers an area of the Gulf equal to the size of the state of Kansas or, to put it another way, it would cover a land area stretching from Northern Virginia to New York City.
Consider that the Rail to Dulles project, a public project right here in Northern Virginia, had to go through an extensive and thorough two-year environmental review before a single shovel of dirt could be turned to begin construction. Yet BP’s privately-owned oil rig in the Gulf was exempted from the same process, even though there was a strong potential for catastrophic environmental consequences.

In Canada, deepwater drilling rigs are required to have contingency plans for offshore drilling, including the capability to drill relief wells soon after the primary wells are constructed. If BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig had predrilled such relief wells, it would have enabled the closing off of the leak weeks ago, but, thanks to the loopholes in U.S. regulations, they weren’t required to do so.

That is all going to change if I succeed with legislation I have introduced to repeal the Bush-era loopholes that allowed BP to begin oil exploration on the Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf without any analysis of the potential environmental impacts. My bill, H.R. 5506, will mandate a full environmental review of every aspect of all offshore drilling activity off the U.S. coast.

The bill I introduced, knows as the Oil Pollution Environmental Review Act, would repeal the legislation passed in 2005 that relaxed environmental impact regulations on Big Oil. It would also end the provision requiring the Secretary of the Interior to approve oil and gas exploration plans within 30 days, and mandate that all exploration plans, development production plans, and lease sales on the OCS be subject to detailed and thorough environmental analysis.

We have seen the consequences of lax regulation. It is a disaster of epic proportions and like the rest of the nation, I pray that the leak, located a mile below the sea, can and will be capped soon. If I am successful with my legislation in Congress, never again will Big Oil have the opportunity or the ability to circumvent strict and necessary environmental reviews.

Connolly Bill Would Repeal Bush-era Loopholes that Allowed BP to Operate Recklessly

WASHINGTON – Congressman Gerry Connolly of Virginia has authored legislation to repeal Bush-era loopholes that allowed BP to begin oil exploration on the Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf without any analysis of the potential environmental impacts. Connolly’s bill will mandate a full environmental review of every aspect of all offshore drilling activity off the U.S. coast.

“Northern Virginia’s Rail to Dulles project, a public project, had to go through an extensive and thorough two-year environmental review, yet a privately-owned oil rig in the Gulf was exempted from the same process, even though, as we have seen, the environmental consequences were catastrophic to the economy and fragile ecosystem of the Gulf states,” Connolly said.

“The BP oil spill in the Gulf was preventable,” Connolly said. “Unfortunately, between 2003 and 2007 the Minerals Management Service under the previous administration ‘categorically excluded’ the Deepwater Horizon rig from environmental impact statements and assessments required under the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 on the premise that it could never leak more than 4,600 barrels of oil into the Gulf.”

Connolly’s bill – the Oil Pollution Environmental Review Act, H.R. 5506 – would repeal legislation passed in 2005 by the Republican Congress that relaxed regulations and required the Secretary of the Interior to approve oil and gas exploration plans on the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) within 30 days of their submission to the federal government. It would also mandate that all exploration plans, development production plans, and lease sales on the OCS be subject to detailed and through environmental analysis.

“Never again will Big Oil have the ability to circumvent strict environmental reviews, under my bill,” Connolly said. “We have seen the consequences of lax regulation in the form of somewhere between 20 million and 70 million barrels of oil spilling into the Gulf, closing America’s largest fishery, jeopardizing tourism, and wreaking havoc with the region’s entire economy.”

Connolly’s bill is cosponsored by Congressman Jared Polis of Colorado, Rush Holt of New Jersey, and Raul Grijalva of Arizona.

Democrats Say Fimian and Herrity Taking Extreme Positions in their Race to the Right

Eleventh District Republicans canceled their biennial Convention this weekend — two weeks before their congressional primary — to shield the public from the extreme views, bare-knuckles brawling, and increasingly nasty attacks that have marked the race to the right between congressional challengers Keith Fimian and Pat Herrity, Democrats said.

The Republicans announced they canceled the event, which could draw more than 2,600 delegates, because "scheduling problems" precluded the appearance of either candidate at the convention and they had no races for party offices, but the chairs of the Democratic party organizations in the 11th CD had a different take.

"In most primaries, candidates would salivate at the chance to speak to a couple of thousand party activists and throw them some red meat to win votes just two weeks before a low turnout primary," Fairfax County Democratic Committee Chair Rex Simmons said. "Unfortunately, what they are saying to the GOP party faithful now is definitely not what they want to public to hear in November."

Fimian and Herrity have been espousing extreme positions on numerous issues that are way out of the mainstream here in Northern Virginia, the Democratic leaders said.

"These candidates want to abolish the Department of Education and turn back transportation dollars.  Those are not what’s needed in Northern Virginia as we work to protect our quality schools and find ways to solve some of the worst traffic congestion problems in the nation," Prince William County Democratic Committee Chair Pete Frisbie said.

"The Fimian and Herrity campaigns want to run their primary campaigns underneath the radar," said Simmons. "They don’t want mainstream voters who will cast ballots in November to hear their far-right rhetoric about who is more pro-gun or pro-life, and who would refuse the most funding for our schools, our roads, and our public transit systems."

The Democrats suspect that Republicans canceled the event because they didn’t want to draw media attention at their congressional convention to Fimian and Herrity’s extreme campaign platforms or a catfight between the two candidates, particularly in light of Kentucky Republican Senate candidate Rand Paul’s recent controversial remarks in the media disparaging civil rights.

• 8th CD — James P. Moran, Jr. (incumbent)
  • The one person considering a bid against Congressman Moran, Ronald Mitchell, did not qualify for certification (less than 1,000 petition signatures from qualified voters in the 8th CD).
• 10th CD — Jeff Barnett
  • Richard Anthony dropped out to have back surgery, leaving Jeff Barnett unopposed.
• 11th CD — Gerry Connolly (incumbent)
  • No candidate filed to run against Congressman Connolly.