FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY. The author believes all information below is true and correct. A caucus is governed by law and regulation, so any errors contained below will NOT bind the conduct of the caucus. On Monday, July 24, at 8 pm, Ridgefield Democrats will caucus to nominate candidates for the local fall elections. Every […]

Republicans have been promising to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act ever since it was passed.  There were votes in the House over the last few years, but they were largely symbolic.  They addressed repealing the current legislation, but they didn’t propose a replacement.  And everyone knew that the repeal bills would fail in

There was a time when people came together every year on the Fourth of July to hear someone read the Declaration of Independence.  They stood in town squares, on village greens, in front of court houses, by general stores, in grange halls, in union halls.  They were young and old, rich and poor.  Some were

When I was a kid, maybe six or seven, a man stopped his car on the side of the parkway and helped my mother change a tire.  It was a long time ago, long before cell phones.  We were in an awkward position.  The shoulder was narrow, and the ground sloped down away from the

Video by Joe Dowdell. A capacity crowd attended an informative public forum sponsored by the Ridgefield Democratic Town Committee (“DTC”), Saturday afternoon, June 10, at Ridgefield Library. The forum focused on Russian efforts to influence the 2016 US election. Susan Cocco, former DTC chair, moderated the discussion, with  Congressman Jim Himes who represents Connecticut’s 4th

There’s an election this year.  You may not have recovered from the last one, and you may be looking forward with anticipation or dread to 2018 or even to 2020.  You may not think local elections are important, but they are.  The results affect our lives every day. Ridgefield, like many towns in Connecticut, has

Democrats and Republicans don’t agree on much. They especially don’t agree on economic policies and what will be necessary to grow the economy. The GOP view at the national, state and local levels is pretty much limited to cutting taxes and gutting regulations. Do these things, they say, and economic growth and prosperity will follow.

Two years from now, Connecticut will have a new governor to grapple with old challenges: cutting expenditures and finding new revenues to balance the budget. But positioning the state to benefit from a global economy based on innovation, collaboration and automation is the key to reviving Connecticut’s vitality. It behooves voters to recognize the structural

American military might was crucial to the Allies’ victory in World War II. But so were the military efforts of Great Britain, the Soviet Union, China, and others. America was cemented as the single “indispensable nation,” because America led the efforts that won the peace. America became preeminent by championing the Marshall Plan, the United

Some people will start to pay attention to a local election after Labor Day. Some people will start around Columbus Day. Some people will wait until Halloween. Some people will remember that there was an election after it’s over. And some people will never think about it at all. There’s an old joke that only

In this age of “fake news” brought to you by Breitbart, InfoWars and even the President himself, a free and unfettered press is more important than ever.  The very existence of a free press is has long been a tenet of our democracy, making President Trump’s assault on it deeply troubling. At a time when

We’re a nation of immigrants, some more recent than others.  People have come here for a long time.  Some were looking for opportunity, a chance to own some land, to find work, to learn a trade, to practice a trade they’d learned somewhere else, to have choices they’d never had before.  Some were looking for

The United States was founded on the notion that all men are created equal and have some unalienable rights, including life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  The part about the pursuit of happiness is a particularly American idea.  It’s something we should be proud of. We’ve made mistakes.  We’ve gone off in the wrong

Seventy-one days of planning, 450 members, 62 signs, 275 riders, 13 travel hours, and 6.5 miles on foot – all part of our mission to spend some quality time standing in solidarity with 500,000 of our closest friends. Well, we believed we’d be standing with 200,000 people – we picked up an extra 300,000 on

Ridgefield, like many towns in Connecticut and in other parts of New England, has a Town Meeting form of government.  Its roots go back to colonial times when people would meet and make decisions about local issues by voting.  They didn’t choose representatives to vote for them.  They did it themselves. There are some other

Ridgefield Democrats salute everyone who participated in the Women’s March on Washington and sister marches in cities and towns across the United States and around the globe! We are especially proud of the hundreds from our own lovely town who traveled long hours to demonstrate their support for women’s rights, human rights, decency and compassion. WE

About 5,000 people – about four times larger than expected – leant their voice and signs to the Woman’s March on Stamford with a common purpose: putting President Donald Trump on notice. The march, one of hundreds across the country and around the world that coincided with the main event in Washington, drew a broad

The Declaration of Independence sets forth America’s essential promise: that we are all created equal and endowed with unalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and that governments are instituted by and derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. In the 240 years since the signing, that essential promise

There are people who believe that government can make a difference, a positive difference, in people’s lives.  I’m one of those people.  And there are people who think government is the enemy and that it should be resisted at all times and thwarted at every opportunity.  It looks as if those people have at least

Most voters, including most Ridgefield voters, rejected Donald Trump. Hillary Clinton won Ridgefield with 55.3% of the vote, while Trump received just 39.7%. Clinton’s national lead is 2.7 million votes, about 2%. For context, Clinton matched Obama’s 2012 national total, while Trump underperformed Romney’s 2012 national total. But, owing to structure of the Electoral College,