Congressman Gerry Connolly’s 17th Annual St. Patrick’s Day Fete

Wednesday, March 17, 2011
7:00 PM – 9:30 PM
Kena Temple
9001 Arlington Boulevard
Fairfax, VA 22031
map: http://tinyurl.com/kena-ffx

Tickets start at $40 each. Click here to purchase tickets. For questions or to RSVP and pay at the door, email patrick@gerryconnolly.com.

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Join Congressmen Moran and Connolly, meet and socialize with other Dems and Progressives from all across Fairfax and Northern Virginia.

Thursday, November 4th, 5-8 pm

King Street Blues, Kingstowne
5810 Kingstowne Ctr [in the Kingstowne Shopping Center]
Alexandria, VA  22315
  map, click here

King Street Blues is offering us a fixed price meal with your choice of 5 entrees (with side-dishes, soda, iced tea or coffee). $22 includes tax and gratuity. Please pre-pay HERE and bring the coupon (click here for the coupon / flier) to credit FCDC*.

5 Entrée Choices

• Ultra Famous BBQ Ribs

  Pork Back Ribs House-smoked and mopped with BBQ Sauce. Served with Coleslaw, and Cool Beans

• Grilled Margarita Chicken

  Grilled Boneless Breasts Marinated in Citrus and Southwest Spices. Served with Black Bean Salsa and Fresh Vegetables

• Country Fried Chicken

  Boneless Chicken Breasts Served Up Country Style with Dixie Cream Gravy, Garlic Mashed Potatoes and Fresh Vegetables

• Louisiana Gumbo

  Cajun Classic Loaded with Chicken, Shrimp, Andouille Sausage and Red Rice. Served with Cornbread

• Texas Turkey Meatloaf

  Served with Apple Onion BBQ Sauce, Garlic Mashed Potatoes and Fresh Vegetables

*The Fairfax County Democratic Committee (FCDC) supports local restaurants, and with Democrats Dine Out FCDC receives a small portion of the dinner contribution.

Election Night Party
Westin Arlington Gateway, 7pm
http://www.westinarlingtongateway.com/ 
801 N. Glebe Road • Arlington, VA 22203
walkable from the Ballston Metro on the Orange Line

Connolly Victory Party

Election Night Party, 7pm
Fairview Park Marriott
3111 Fairview Park Drive
Falls Church, VA 22042

Connolly for Congress Campaign Information

Did you know? Mason District has a local Connolly Campaign office! Kaye and Ross Kory have generously opened their home to serve as yet another campaign office.  Congressman Connolly is a true partner in Congress and he deserves our help.  Please consider volunteering for Congressman Connolly. Mason Committee member Kimberly Smith is running this office and she can be reached at  703-624-1182  or you can email MasonForConnolly@gmail.com.

• Canvass Schedule
  • Saturday 10am – 7pm
  • Sunday 12pm – 7pm
  • Address: 6505 Waterway Drive, Falls Church, VA 22044; map, click here
• Phone Bank Schedule
  • Wednesdays/Thursdays/Fridays 5pm – 9pm
  • Saturdays 11am – 8pm
  • Sundays 12pm – 6pm
  • Address: 6505 Waterway Drive, Falls Church, VA 22044; map, click here

Moran for Congress Campaign Information

Moran for Congress canvasses and phone banks are in full swing and for Mason volunteers will be held at FCDC Headquarters; other canvasses will be conducted out of Sue Langley’s home in Vienna. For more information contact the Fairfax County Field Coordinator, Amanda Holmes at 757-660-2531 or email to amanda@moranforcongress.org. Make your choices and see the details below! For all of these events – PLEASE contact Amanda before showing up!

• Canvass Schedule
  • Saturdays 11am-2pm
  • Address: Sue Langley’s House at 2435 Flint Hill Road, Vienna, VA 22181; map, click here
• Canvassing/Phonebanking Schedule
  • Saturdays and Sundays 11am-2pm
  • Address: FCDC HQ at 2815 Hartland Rd, Suite 110, Falls Church, VA 22043; map, click here

WHAT’S AT STAKE THIS NOVEMBER

The challenges President Obama inherited were immense—two wars, an economy in crisis, a broken health care system, record deficits. The size of our challenges had outgrown the smallness of our politics, and Americans of all walks of life were hungry for new ideas and new leadership.

Working with the President, Democrats in Congress helped prevent a second Great Depression and put our economy on the road back to recovery. They stabilized the financial system, and by standing up to insurance companies, big banks and credit card companies established the strongest consumer protections ever. And with the help of grassroots supporters across the country, we were finally able to make real the ideas that every American should have access to affordable health care, no one should be denied coverage because they get sick or have a pre-existing medical condition, and no one should go bankrupt just because they get sick.

But for nearly two years, Republicans have tried to block progress at every turn. They’ve rooted for failure and worried more about the next election than the next generation.

Now they want to take us back—to a time when special interests made the rules and American families paid the price. Where tax cuts for the very wealthiest drove deficits while ordinary Americans found it harder and harder to make ends meet.

They want to take us back to the same failed policies that saw 8 million jobs lost, lives interrupted, dreams deferred.

That’s what’s at stake this November. And that is why we cannot let up—not for one minute or one year or one election. Not when there is so much left to do.

• If you care about educating our children for the challenges of the 21st century; if you care about protecting the health care of working families; if you care about civil rights and equal pay for equal work; if you care about creating jobs and making our economy more prosperous for all Americans—then we’re going to need you to step up and work hard in this election.
• If you are interested in a clean-energy future that creates jobs right here in America while ending our dependence on foreign oil, then you need to support Democratic candidates for Congress, because Republicans are going to say ‘no’ to that.
• If you care about building a new foundation for our country, from the bottom up, instead of returning to the same tired, worn-out theories that didn’t work for the past decade, then we’re going to need you to talk to your neighbors, knock on doors, and make phone calls for Democrats who are willing to stand with the President and move our country forward. We’ve come too far to turn back now. We can’t afford to slow down or sit back and watch everything we’ve fought for slip away—not when there’s so much at stake.

We have a lot of work to do. But with your help, we can continue moving our country forward and fulfill the promise of change.

Share your story and why you support Gerry Connolly. You will be entered to win a lunch with Gerry. Click here.

• Canvasses will be held every Saturday and Sunday
  10am – noon, and 1-3 pm
• Phone Banking is every Wednesday and Thursday
  10am – noon and 5-9 pm

Please bring a canned food item to donate to Food for Others. Volunteer For Gerry: contact Kimberly Smith (703-624-1182, MasonForConnolly@gmail.com).

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.