Category: Richard Rainey
Coyotes Threaten Residents
WASHINGTON, Dec. 1, 2004 — National Park Service ranger Ken Ferebee searched the spotlight beam on a late September evening, hoping to catch a deer in its circle for a nocturnal count he was conducting in Rock Creek Park, the meandering stream valley that runs through the heart of the nation’s capital.
As the light came to rest beneath a grove of trees, the shining eyes staring back at him were altogether unexpected.
“It was just out in some high grass under some oak trees, probably eating some acorns,” Ferebee said as he recounted the sighting..
On Sept. 19, Ferebee had officially spotted the first coyote in the District of Columbia. Four more sightings of furry interlopers in October and November confirmed that it wasn’t the only one.
“We’re not sure how many we have at this point,” Ferebee said, “at least two, maybe four or five.”
Coyotes, symbols of folklore and notorious pains-in-the-neck for ranchers in the West, had finished their steady expansion east over the last 100 years. For Connecticut residents, coyotes are old hat; the creatures have been lurking along fences and the edges of lawns for nearly half a century. The spotting in the District of Columbia, however, illustrates the pervasiveness of the species, and with the increasing numbers there have been increasing concerns in New England about how to deal with them.
Coyotes belong to the family Canidae , which includes the wolf, the fox and the domestic dog. Their coats range in colors from all black to all red but are most often mottled gray with a cream-colored underbelly. Standing about 2 feet high at the shoulders, a coyote sports a long snout, upright ears and a black-tipped tail; in dim light, it can resemble a thin German Shepherd.
While most specimens typically weigh 30 to 35 pounds, coyotes seem to have gained considerable size as they migrated into New England from Canada and the Great Lakes region. Researchers in Connecticut have caught males weighing close to 50 pounds. Speculation abounds among scientists as to the reason behind the greater size, but most evidence blames likely interbreeding with the growing wolf population as coyotes migrated east.
Active at dawn and in the late evening, coyotes are some of the greatest opportunists of the natural world. Living close to wolves, coyotes can often be spotted scavenging a wolf pack’s fresh kill. They’ve been known to take down deer, but prefer smaller mammals such as squirrels, mice and hares. As such, small domestic pets that venture outdoors need keep a wary eye.
“They seem to have a real fondness for cats,” said Christine Montuori, director of the Second Chance Wildlife Center in Gaithersburg, Md.
Coyotes have held a tumultuous place in history, one they carried with them as they traveled east. They were revered by American Indians as symbols of wisdom, but western ranchers tried to shotgun them into extinction as threats to livestock. Now, as they crawl beneath the fences along city limits, their reputations have many people feeling apprehensive.
“It’s an interesting psychological study, watching people’s reactions to them,” Laura Simon, urban wildlife director for the Fund for Animals, said from her office in New Haven. “We get calls here that coyotes are here to drag their children off.. People are scared to death of them. We have to correct a lot of misconceptions over our hotline.”
Simon noted that coyotes tended to avoid people at almost all costs, even going so far as to pass over garbage and other possible sources of a quick meal rather than risk contact.
“Coyotes, even in suburban areas, tend to make an honest living,” Simon said. “They ate what they were supposed to eat.”
Coyotes now exist in almost every major metropolitan center in the continental United States. In Chicago, for instance, naturalists have discovered them in every wooded section of the city, where they travel via aqueducts and abandoned “L” tracks from hunting ground to hunting ground.
The coyote population in Connecticut stands at roughly 3,000 to 5,000, having first entered the state some time in the 1950s, according to Paul Rego, a wildlife biologist with the state Department of Environmental Protection.
While problem animals can be caught and killed, there is no concerted effort in Connecticut to control the coyote population. It’s just not feasible, said Rego.
“Coyotes have an extremely high reproductive rate,” he said. “To kill even a small percentage of the population, you’d have to put an astronomical bounty” on coyotes to entice hunters to put in the necessary effort. “If you removed half the population, they’d be back in a couple years.”
The best way to deal with the animals is to accept their presence and take precautions. These include keeping pet food indoors, supervising small dogs and cats outdoors or putting up fences around property.
Trapping and relocating the animals is not an option, Rego said. Trapping laws in Connecticut are strictly regulated, so much so that the only traps used must be placed in the winter and must be under water.
“Most of the species trapped in Connecticut have something to do with water,” Rego said, including beaver, mink and raccoons. The state has no traps specifically for coyotes.
The District of Columbia, with a significantly smaller coyote population, doesn’t have a need for residents and naturalists to examine man-predator interactions-at least not yet. The National Park Service is making plans to monitor the animals in Washington and surrounding areas. In the spring, rangers will use motion-sensitive cameras with the hope of locating breeding dens in Rock Creek Park.
But even without a den sighting, there’s strong evidence that coyotes will remain a permanent fixture.
“I doubt they’re going to disappear,” said Montuori of the Second Chance Wildlife Center. “Whether they become a problem is really anybody’s guess.”
Dodd Denies Involvement With Abramoff, Scanlon
WASHINGTON, Nov. 18, 2004-Senator Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) denied Wednesday any political involvement with Jack Abramoff or Michael Scanlon, Republican lobbyists under congressional investigation for allegedly swindling six Indian tribes out of $66 million in lobbying fees in 2002.
"I don't know Jack Abramoff or Mike Scanlon," Dodd said in a written statement read before the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs. "So any representations they might have made without my knowledge regarding me . are categorically wrong and false."
An e-mail message in July of 2002 from Abramoff to Scanlon, obtained by The Day, appears to support Dodd. In that e-mail, Abramoff said he had just been told that Dodd was not supporting their lobbying effort.
In what the committee chairman, retiring Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell (R-Colo), referred to as a "classic shakedown operation," Scanlon and Abramoff are accused of masterminding a multi-million-dollar scheme against the Tigua Indian tribe that began with their involvement in the closing of the tribe's Speaking Rock casino near El Paso, Texas.
The casino opened its doors in 1993. Six years later, it was pulling in an estimated $60 million in annual gross revenue. In 1999, Texas Attorney General John Cornyn - now the state's junior senator -concluded that gambling was illegal under state law. He sued the tribe.
On Sept. 27, 2001, a U.S. District Court judge sided with Cornyn, and the Tiguas shut down Speaking Rock by the end of that year.
The following February, the tribe's public relations and government affairs representative, Marc Schwartz, had a conversation with Abramoff about the possibility of the Republican lobbyist representing the Tiguas on Capitol Hill in their bid to get their casino reopened, according to Schwartz's testimony Wednesday. Abramoff offered the services of his law firm, Greenberg Traurig LLP.
On Feb 18, Schwartz offered Abramoff and Scanlon's public relations firm, Scanlon/Gold, $4.2 million to lobby Congress to regain the Tigua Tribe's main source of revenue.
What Schwartz didn't know at the time was that Abramoff and Scanlon had allegedly been involved in helping to shut down the casino in the first place.
As revealed in a September 2004 investigation by The Washington Post, dozens of e-mail messages allegedly exposed Scanlon's and Abramoff's efforts to rally Cornyn's office against the casino by hiring a conservative religious - and anti-gambling - activist, Ralph Reed.
Abramoff and Scanlon had strong political ties to leaders on Capitol Hill. Abramoff, who rounded up more than $100,000 in contributions for President Bush during his reelection bid, had been recommended to the tribe as a close contact of House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Texas). Scanlon formerly served as DeLay's spokesman.
Using the attraction of their connections, the men allegedly proposed to the tribe that they could get language inserted into federal legislation that would allow the Tiguas to reopen Speaking Rock Casino, according to hearing testimony. In the early summer of 2002, Abramoff and Scanlon told Schwartz, through mail and phone calls that they had found just the right legislative vehicle: the election reform bill.
Over the next few months, according to his testimony, Schwartz received various updates from Abramoff and Scanlon about the legislation. They told him, "The progress of the bill was a little slower than had been anticipated but was moving forward and was expected to fall into place in late summer."
That legislation would eventually become law in October 2002, but without the language restoring the Tiguas' gaming business.
To keep the tribe satisfied, Schwartz testified Wednesday, the lobbyists listed the names of lawmakers who would be responsive to keeping the tribe's language in the bill. In e-mail messages, Abramoff referred to multiple conversations with Rep. Bob Ney (R-Ohio), the chief House sponsor of the election reform bill. Dodd, a sponsor of the Senate version, was also mentioned.
"For the rest of the months leading up to October of 2002, both Abramoff and Scanlon continued to report that the Senate side would not be a problem since Sen. Dodd had agreed to include the solution through his side," Schwartz said in his testimony. "It wasn't until the announcement of the final passage of the election reform measure that Abramoff phoned to say.that Sen. Dodd had gone back on his word and stripped the measure from the committee report."
In his e-mail to Scanlon on July 25, 2002, Abramoff appeared to be taken by surprise by Dodd's status.
"I just spoke with Ney, who met today with Dodd on the bill and raised our provision," Abramoff wrote. "Dodd looked at him like a 'deer in headlights' and said he has never made such a commitment and that with the problems of new casinos in Connecticut, it is a problem."
On behalf of the Indian Affairs Committee, Campbell (R-Colo.) offered support for Dodd.
"Mr. Abramoff and Mr. Scanlon contended that Mr. Dodd and Congressman Ney were enlisted to spearhead efforts in Congress to provide a legislative fix to the Tiguas problem," he said. "But we know that was not the case."
Connecticut Votes Colorblind
WASHINGTON, Nov. 6, 2004- On election night, during national contests described in opposing hues of red and blue, Connecticut voters proved themselves colorblind.
The campaigns of George W. Bush and John F. Kerry counted Connecticut among the blue Democratic states, and Kerry upheld that label by carrying every county. But in statewide elections, voters split along a very different fault line: they chose experience over new talent across the board, regardless of a candidate's party. The likely reason: incumbency brings with it an almost insurmountable mountain of political capital.
A town-by-town survey of the 2 nd District's political landscape over the last four years made abundantly clear the stark advantage of an incumbent representative.
On the national level, incumbent members of the House of Representatives enjoyed a reelection rate as high as 90 percent over the past few election cycles. In Connecticut, that rate hasn't dipped below 100 percent since 2000, when Republican Rob Simmons beat incumbent Democrat Sam Gejdenson. And with all five incumbents returning to Washington, it will not change this year.
Incumbency gives a candidate an advantage in two obvious arenas: fund raising and the ability to provide money for pet projects for constituents during the federal appropriations process. An incumbent Simmons took advantage of both in his win over Democrat Jim Sullivan. He doubled Sullivan's fundraising efforts and after four years in Congress could take credit for helping bring funds to numerous ventures in Eastern Connecticut.
Such money-moving brought Simmons another benefit that helped him win voters in a traditionally Democratic district - name recognition. His success after the state's 2001 redistricting effort underscored the advantage of being well known.
In the wake of the 2000 census, 11 towns were added to the 2 nd district. Three of those - Somers, Suffield and Enfield - came from the now defunct 6 th District, then represented by Republican Nancy Johnson. The other eight were chiseled out of the 1 st and 3 rd districts, each represented by a Democrat.
During his first bid for reelection in 2002, 10 of the 11 towns voted to keep Simmons in office. On Tuesday, he took all 11. But before redistricting, the eight towns from the 1 st and 3 rd Districts had solid histories of voting for Democrats.
"It's because of the independents," said Christopher Barnes, a University of Connecticut pollster and expert on the state's voting patterns.
As the largest voting bloc in the state, independents - or those unaffiliated with any party - account for 44 percent of Connecticut's 2.1 million registered voters. They tend to be less politically active people who register by party, Barnes said, which makes name recognition vital to winning their support.
"They know the names," Barnes said in a phone interview. "We have a lot of challengers starting from scratch, and the default position for the independents is to vote for the incumbent."
Take Madison, for instance. Redistricting moved this affluent seaside town 30 miles west of New London from the 3 rd District into the 2 nd . For the past three election cycles, Republican registered voters there have outnumbered Democrats nearly 2 to 1. The town's first selectman, Thomas Scarpati, is a Republican. And in 2002 and 2004, it voted to reelect Republican Simmons by an average of 60 percent.
But in 2000, when it was part of the 3 rd District, the town voted to reelect the Democratic incumbent, DeLauro, by nearly the same margin. Reflecting the statewide average, 43 percent of Madison's 13,385 registered voters that year were independent.
"Independents lock on to the incumbent, and so aren't really that independent," Barnes said.
The jockeying for the independent vote in Connecticut forces many candidates, especially Republicans, to dodge association with a national party.
"The way it works in Connecticut is that if you want to be a successful Republican candidate, you place yourself as a maverick," Barnes said. Simmons used this technique to great success in both bids for reelection, under very different circumstances.
"He did the first with a tailwind and the second with a headwind," Barnes said.
In 2002 Simmons shared a ticket headlined by a then-popular Republican governor, John Rowland. This year, he ran in front of an electorate that predominantly favored the Democratic Kerry. Simmons defied pollsters, who called his race against Sullivan a dead heat, winning by an 8-point margin.
Tribes Give Much to Candidates This Cycle
WASHINGTON, Oct. 27, 2004-In an effort to ensure that their voices continue to be heard on Capitol Hill, Eastern Connecticut's Indian tribes have given hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions to candidates nationwide during the current election cycle.
"Those folks that have the greatest ability to support us and help us are the ones that we try to help," said John Guevremont, chief financial officer of the Mashantucket Pequot tribe. "It's keeping our friends in place."
Connecticut's two wealthiest tribes, the Mashantucket Pequots and the Mohegan Tribe, each own a top-grossing gaming complex and use part of their businesses' revenues to back political candidates. The Mashantuckets, as a tribe and as individuals, have contributed $456,712 to candidates and to political action committees, according to Federal Election Commission records compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics. The Mohegans topped that, spending $614,194 this cycle, according to the center, a nonpartisan organization that tracks campaign finance.
A closer look at which candidates received money reveals subtle pattern at work, one that diverged from the tradition of donating funds according to party affiliation.
"We're giving to both parties on an equal basis," Guevremont said of the Mashantuckets. "But we're not just shot-gunning money out there."
A similar bipartisan strategy was evident in the tribes' donations to the presidential race. The Mashantuckets gave $7,000 to President Bush and $1,500 to Democratic nominee John Kerry; the Mohegans, on the other hand, gave $2,000 to Kerry and nothing to Bush.
The two tribes tend to slightly favor Democrats. Overall, 61 percent of the Mashantuckets' contributions went to Democrats and 39 percent to Republicans. The Mohegans contributed 53 percent of their total to Democratic candidates and organizations and 47 percent to Republican war chests.
The tribes have been active in the Connecticut Senate race and the close battle for the 2 nd District. Democratic Sen.Chris Dodd received $7,550 from the Mashantuckets and $2,200 from the Mohegans toward his reelection bid. Republican Rep. Rob Simmons, whose race against Democratic challenger Jim Sullivan is one of the closest in the nation, received $4,400 from the Mashantuckets. The Mohegans donated a similar amount to Sullivan.
While both tribes call Connecticut home, they directed the majority of their contributions into campaign coffers outside the state's borders.
Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) and Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell (R-Colo.) can count themselves among the tribes' beneficiaries. Campbell, the Senate's only American Indian, received money even though he is not seeking reelection.
Other beneficiaries of the tribes' largesse come from Arizona, Florida, Iowa, Massachusetts, Montana, New Mexico, Rhode Island and Wisconsin. In Florida, for example, President Bush's former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Mel Martinez - now a Florida Republican senatorial candidate - has received $4,400 from the Mashantuckets.
The amounts given to specific candidates were relatively small compared to the tribes' donations to party committees, suggesting that the tribes were less concerned with influencing the outcome of individual races on Nov. 2 than in investing in the post-election political landscape.
Most funds from tribes are funneled through party committees, but individuals often give directly to the candidates. For instance, Charles Bunnell, spokesman for the Mohegan Tribe, noted the tribe's support for both the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the Republican Governors' Association, but he personally contributed $532 of his own money to Jim Sullivan, Rep. Simmons' opponent.
The primary reason for the tribes' bipartisan strategies is their support for the unique federal relationship between Indian nations and the United States.
"Our collective protection, if you would, lies in solidarity. I'm looking at a map of Indian Country on my wall over here, and it looks like a shotgun blast," Guevremont said. "Our core issue is the preservation and complete definition of (tribal) sovereignty: to be treated as a government and to deal with the federal government on a government-to-government-basis."
As a result, the tribes tend to financially favor members of Congress's Native American Caucus and incumbent legislators with proven track records favorable to Indian issues.
In Eastern Connecticut, the issue list expands to include the lucrative business of Indian gaming.
"Well, it allows us to make contributions," Guevremont said. "No money, no contributions."
According to the National Indian Gaming Commission, tribal casinos nationwide had nearly $17 billion in gambling revenues last year. More than $ 1.6 billion came from the Connecticut casinos, Mohegan Sun in Uncasville and the Foxwoods Resort in Ledyard.
The Eastern Pequots, who were federally recognized in June, also have expressed interest in building a competing gambling complex in the area. However, they have not contributed en masse to political campaigns this cycle, according to the tribe's chairwoman, Marcia Flowers of Stonington.
The debate over gaming has led some candidates to refuse money outright from the Indian tribes. Jack Orchulli, the Republican candidate running against Dodd, accepted no money from the tribes as part of a "broader mantra" of avoiding the influence of "special interests," his spokesman, John Healey, said.
Rep. Christopher Shays (R-4th District), running for his 12 th term in Congress, has likewise refused any tribal campaign contributions, according to Guevremont.
BRAC Could Spare Groton
WASHINGTON, Sept. 28, 2004---The group working to keep the Naval Submarine Base in Groton, Conn., off the government list for closure took another step forward Wednesday, meeting with lawmakers and Defense officials to talk strategy for the upcoming Base Realignment and Closure battle slated to take place next year.
"You've got to prepare for the worst, hope for the best," said Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.). "That's what we've done over the years on these issues."
Dodd said he hoped that the picture would become clearer by as early as December. The current deadline for the Pentagon to produce the list of possible military closures is May 16, 2005.
Currently, the sub base is the only installation in Connecticut threatened with realignment or closure. From the meetings at the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill, representatives from the Subase Realignment Coalition, led by chairman John Markowicz, established various "points of action" that can be taken to make the base a more attractive asset to the Navy of the future.
The first step would be to open use of the base to as many wings of the military as possible, designating it as a point of "joint operations." The coalition is looking at the possibility of moving two Army units from the Marine base in New Haven to the Groton facility.
Likewise, they are working with Gov. M. Jodi Rell's office on the possibility of allowing more access for National Guard units to train there. The base currently serves as a training ground for Naval Reservists.
The existing units at the base could be designated as joint operations. These include a recently converted Trident submarine used by Special Forces from different branches of the military, said Markowicz.
"We're already 'joint,'" he said. "We're just not as 'joint' as a lot of people would like us to be and we're working on that."
Another option considered by the coalition was to gain the base a special designation under the Department of Homeland Security.
"We know that the Southeast Connecticut area is a high-risk area for a variety of reasons," said Rep. Rob Simmons (R-Conn.). "So it would become a regional homeland security.emergency operations center at the upper base."
Any strategy developed faces a common problem: neither Connecticut lawmakers nor members of the coalition can be certain at this point what the Navy is looking for in a successfully operating base.
"We have requested the data calls repeatedly," said Simmons, referring to a survey of about 700 questions the Navy uses to rate the viability of any given base. "They have not released the data calls," but the Navy may release the information sometime next year, he said.
The threat of closure is not new to the Groton base. It has survived at least four attempts to shut it down over the past two decades. In 1993, the coalition scored a reversal of the government's decision to shut it down under the original 1990 legislation.
The sub base's closure could carry a severe economic impact, said Markowicz.
"It can be as high as $2.5 billion if you add to that the possibility that if the base closes, [Electric Boat] leaves town," said Markowicz. "We hope we don't get nicked."
The resulting loss of business related to the base, its personnel, employees and subcontractors - who do an estimated $277 million worth of business in the area - would cause a "ripple effect" in the area that would be almost indeterminable, said Tony Sheridan, president of the Chamber of Commerce of Eastern Connecticut..
"The quality of the Navy's involvement in the community suffers," he said. "That's a huge loss. It's a loss that cannot be measured monetarily."
Senate says Intelligence Network Needs Czar
WASHINGTON, Sept. 15, 2004- The Senate committee in charge of revamping the nation's intelligence network is proposing centralization of U.S. intelligence gathering activities and giving control over spending to a central intelligence czar, according to Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.), the committee's top Democrat.
Appearing yesterday with Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), chairwoman of the Senate Committee on Government Affairs, Lieberman said they planned to introduce legislation next week that would closely follow the recommendations of the 9/11 commission, and take a large step toward unifying the different spheres of expertise within the intelligence community under one national director.
"The American intelligence community today is like a very good football team - a team with great players, but no quarterback," said Lieberman.
Under the committee's new plan, the recently formed terrorist threat integration center - a system formed to consolidate the information gathered by the CIA, the FBI, the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security - would be expanded into a broader entity; a national counter-terrorism center.
In addition, authority would radiate from a central cabinet-level official who would dictate how funding would be distributed among the agencies under its policy umbrella. Under the Senate proposal, the Defense Department stands to lose significant authority over a large portion of its current intelligence budget, but would keep control of the Defense Intelligence Agency and intelligence "directly related to the battlefield," according to a spokeswoman for Sen. Lieberman.
The increased budget authority for the proposed intelligence director would be crucial to ensuring that another level of government bureaucracy would not be formed, said Collins.
For the first time last week, President Bush said he would support giving a national intelligence director "full budgetary authority," but balked at giving the director full say over who would run each individual agency. Under the Senate legislation, the director could make strong recommendations to the White House, but the president would maintain ultimate authority over personnel.
Lieberman noted that without the input of the director on hiring and firing intelligence leadership, conflicts of interest could develop. "Where would the loyalty of those deputies be?" he asked. "Would it be with the departments they spent most of their time in, or to the national intelligence director? We feel very strongly that you can't blur those lines."
In addition, the committee's proposal would create a national counter-terrorism center that would replace the current system for collecting, combining and analyzing information.
Lieberman also noted that the legislation would specifically address potential threats to Americans' civil liberties by calling for the formation of a special advisory board and the creation of a civil inspector general whose sole purpose would be to monitor the actions of the intelligence community.
House leaders said yesterday they hope to act on their version of intelligence reform before Congress is scheduled to adjourn in October.
"We're going to make sure we do the job right and we will do it before Congress adjourns," said House Majority Leader Tom Delay (R-Texas), according to the Associated Press.
Lieberman and Collins will formally introduce the legislation to the Senate Committee on Government Affairs next Tuesday.
