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April 30, 2008
Budget Bilgewater Masquerades As Mint Julips. The KY Derby, Special Legislative Session, Must Be Close
Wednesday April 30, 2008
With the budget meltdown living up to its potential and Capitol pols stumbling over each other to feign fiscal relevancy, Blog-o-rama notices today that the Kentuck Derby must be Saturday.
More evidence: everyone from Senate President Don Williams to Gov. Jodi Rell and beyond are on their high feakin' horses.
The early line is that Big Brown, with only three races under its feet, is the favorite for the Runnin' for the Roses, while the odds of a state budget agreement by midnight May 7 are 3-1 against.
Posted by Ken on 1:09 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 29, 2008
State Armory, Officer's Club, Dedicated to Gov. Bill O'Neill
Tuesday April 29, 2008
It's noonish and Gov. M. Jodi Rell and Nikki O'Neill, the widow of the late former Gov. William A. O'Neill, just unveiled a bronze plaque and a wooden sign designating the state armory as the Gov. William A. O'Neill Armory.
It's probably appropriate that the outdoor sign is located between the main entrance and the more-informal door that leads to the Officer's Club.
Nikki reminded everyone that her late husband, who might have made the U.S. Air Force a career if his father hadn't died and "Billy" came back to East Hampton to run the family saloon, liked the O Club very much.
"A lot of very-important decisions were made in the Officer's Club," Nikki told about 200 people gathered on the armory's second-floor gymnasium space. "Or at least, that's what he told me."
Nikki, appropriately enough, invited those present, including old loyalists like former Lt. Gov. Joe Fauliso, to repair to the O Club for "a light lunch and a few cocktails" after the event.
The 100 or so Connecticut National Guard troops - clad in desert camo - present at the ceremony seemed like they would have supported to idea, but they were on duty.
Nikki also said that former Speaker of the House Nelson Brown is recovering in a Groton assisted-living facility, waiting for a prosthetic leg, after a recent amputation.
Rell, who remembered O'Neill as governor when she was a freshman member of the House of Representatives, called him a "titan of Connecticut politics" and that he was "decent and fair."
"Bill O'Neill always made sure common sense prevailed when decisions were made," Rell said.
Maybe lawmakers currently embattled with the state budget, should take a page from the political playbook of the old timers and wander across from the Legislative Office Building, salute the new sign and plunge into the frfiendly darkness of the O Club to wet their whistles and talk some "common sense" with each other, for a change.j
Posted by Ken on 12:11 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 28, 2008
Lawmaker Can't Get Satisfaction, But Wants To Get What He Needs
Monday April 28, 2008
Rep. Don Clemons, D-Bridgeport, took a page fromr Ernie Newton's expertise in malaprops this morning, during a news conference on the need for more black and Latino judges.
Newton, currently serving five years in federal prison on corruption charges, was famous for butchering the language.
He was possibly best known for asking that a state budget be cut with "a scaffold, not a meat ax," when he meant scalpel.
Back when he was city council president in Bridgeport, Newton once proclaimed "I don't want to be no escape goat."
Anyway, Ernie's out of circulation for a while and Clemons, chairman of the Black and Latino Caucus, led a news conference this morning on the need for more minority judges.
"We the members of the Connecticut Black and Latino Caucus are here to express our DISSATISFICATION with Gov. Rell regarding nominees of judges to Connecticut's Superior Courts," he said, not exactly getting the news conference off on the most-coherent foot.
Posted by Ken on 1:23 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
April 25, 2008
Bush, Desperate For Applause, Finally Admits He Was Born in Connecticut
Friday April 25, 2008
President Bush's motorcade has paralyzed capital-area traffic this morning, on the way to in his flimsy "business" excuse to take a taxpayer-paid trip to Connecticut.
Late-morning traffic was frozen on I-91 south of Bradley International Airport, for his motorcade to a Boys & Girls Club function in Hartford, where he praised the club's campaign against malaria.
U.S. Rep. Chris Shays, R-4, came off Air Force One with the president.
Things are so bad for the unpopular president that he finally broke down and publicly admitted in that Texas drawl that he was born in Connecticut to trigger a smattering of applause.
This fluke of the map and calendar occurred back in New Haven just after WWII, when his father was at Yale.
But the president's main goal Friday was an early afternoon, $1,000-a-head function at Henry Kissinger's place in Kent, to benefit the congressional candidacy of state Sen. David Cappiello, R-Danbury, who's trying to unseat freshman U.S. Rep. Chris Murphy, D-5.
Kissinger, you'll recall, was the architect of the "Peace is at Hand" lie in Vietnam for President Richard Nixon in the runup to the 1972 election, when Hammerin' Henry was secretary of state.
THERE'S a guy who should live in a "compound," a term of art for an insulated multi-millionaire who's still considered a war criminal by many around the globe. Bush was getting there by helicopter after motorcading back up to Bradley
Chris Healy, GOP state chairman, told Blog-o-rama yesterday that there's going to be some kind of split between the state and national Republican parties over the revenue produced by the suddenly malaria-astute president.
It's $10,000 to have a photo taken with Bush, on top of the $1,000 entry fee.
Nancy DiNardo, the state Democratic chairwoman who still is in denial over the Democrats' potential for self-destruction in a presidential election year, cackled Friday:
"We hope that President Bush comes back often and continues to pose for pictures with David Cappiello and Chris Shays. With every visit to our state, he will remind the citizens of Connecticut that, if these two individuals are elected to the US Congress, they will carry on Mr.Bush's failed policies well after he moves out of the White House."
Posted by Ken on 12:04 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 24, 2008
Yale's Peabody Museum Sends Exhibition to Capitol: More Relics Missing!
Thursday April 24, 2008.
Yale's notorious Peabody Museum has had a marketing display set up this week in the underground concourse between the Legislativge Office Building and the Capitol.
It consists of posters touting the 11 curatorial divisions and "12 million specimens" located at the Whitney Avenue landmark.
Among the pictures of the carved wooden mask of the tiger spirit, the model of the giant squid, the beetles, the blue poison frog, the fossils and the Navajo blanket, was exactly zero mention of the thousands of objects looted from Machu Picchu, the lost city of the Incas, back nearly 100 years ago by Yale's Hiram Bingham.
Yale's currently engaged in a long-running confrontation with Peru, which rightly wants their artifacts back.
Blog-o-rama says Yale should return the Andean heritage to the Peruvians and the museum, in turn, can take Doc Gunther, the 88-year-old former state senator honored by Germany in the state Capitol yesterday, for display behind glass with the museum's other fossils.
Posted by Ken on 8:10 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 23, 2008
UConn Day in the Capitol: Diminished Crowds Gush Over Also-Ran Huskies
Wednesday April 23, 2008
UConn Day in the Capitol, in years that basketball teams won the national championship, meant crowds of people filling halls and chambers, applauding their heroes.
This year, the galleries in the House and Senate were mostly empty, the corridors merely filled with deadly lobbyists.
The Blogster found it strange that the UConn men's soccer team, say, wasn't invited to take the place of the under-achieving basketball team. The soccer team got to a game away from the final four and had the player of the year in the NCAA, O'Brien White.
But your average lawmaker is a meat-and-potatoes basketball and football fan and lives to be on the receiving end of a smile from Jim Calhoun.
Blog-o-rama was probably the only reporter to embrace the coincidence that UConn Day in the Capitol came within minutes after Democratic leaders of the House got together with Jeff Hathaway, the athletic director, to announce the evaporation of opposition to any deal UConn can cut with the Notre Dame football program to guarantee seven years of football clashes either in South Bend, or Giants Stadium or up in dreaded Foxboro, the land of Richard Kraft, who once used Connecticut like a pry bar to leverage a better deal in Massachusetts.
That debacle was a funny unwinding and playing of John Rowland, back around the time he was doing crooked things in his private life, but we hadn't yet realized it.
Today's deal was to allow the Notre Dame/UConn clashes to appear in stadiums twice as large as Rentschler Field in East Hartford, the cozy 40,000-seat stadium that separate UConn for the true football factories.
Anyway, Blog-o-rama finds it obscene that Connecticut athletes, by and large, can no longer play athletics for their state university and we, the taxpayers are coughing up scholarship money for out-of-state semi-pros.
Alumni and season ticket holders, in turn, pay through the nose for seats to Husky football and basketball events staffed by merceneries from elsewhere and their over-priced, controlling coaches.
Geno Auriemma, the woman's basketball mentor and the classiest coach in Connecticut, actually gets his players to graduate, which is the best thing you can say about the college-athletic experience.
Happy Freakin' UConn Day!
Posted by Ken on 8:38 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 22, 2008
The Polls Are Almost Closed in Pittsburgh
Tuesday April 22, 2008
Finally, another primary is almost history and Blog-o-rama believes it would have been better to have had a primary in Connecticut THIS month, as opposed to Super Tuesday in February.
As much as the Blogster hates seeing TV get political advertising, an April primary really would have made us prominent way beyond out 60 measly Democratic delegates.
Granted Sen. John McCain would have been less relevant, but the whole political horserace this year has been mostly about Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
Plus, if the Connecticut primary were held during April, Connecticut reporters would have been able to go to school on the Washington testimony on the Iraqi War.
We could have been position to ask Obama and Clinton on their vision for the length of time they estimate the U.S. military bases will have to remain in Iraq, even as they try to position themselves as the anti-war candidates.The national press corps seems to keep its focus on month-old slips of the tongue, faulty memories and divisive background noise.
Posted by Ken on 7:19 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 21, 2008
Wake Up and Smell The 107-44 and 23-13 Minorities
Monday April 21, 2008
The Republican governor, the one who got to the bottom of the Girl Scout cookies controversy last week, has just issued another news release about the persistent-offender controversy, which dates back to last July 23, when the Cheshire home invasion and triple homicide occurred.
Remember that those alleged murderers would never have been prevented from the home-invasion opportunity under a three-strikes law that could have sent them to prison for life?
Call it three strikes, call it persistent offender, but it's symbolic of the active struggle between majority Democrats and Minority Republicans who are desperate for an issue, any issue that they can use to possibly gain a few more seats in the House and Senate.
Blog-o-rama, by the way, thinks things would be more interesting - and better balanced - if there were more Republicans in the Gewneral Assembly. The Blogster also thinks that Democratic leaders would admit that fewer members of their majority caucuses could make it easier to legislate.
Last week House Minority Leader Larry Cafero, R-Norwalk, offered up an amendment that would have rekindled the "three strikes" debate for a few hours. Rep. Mike Lawlor, D-East Haven, asked the House to reject the amendment and wait for a few more days for a bill to be crafted with prosecutors, in a variation on an announcement he made with Speaker of the House Jim Amann and Chief States Attorney Kevin Kane on April 11, including $15 million for additional personnel.
The House debate was sidetracked with Majority Leader Chris Donovan pulled the bill, temporarily and mercifully, from debate.
Rell's people have been in the habit recently of working weekends and shooting out PR proclamations that TV stations pick up without a peep and as if they were actual news.
Today, they extended the weekend to Monday, with yet again, the governor pronouncing on "three strikes," as if the House and Senate were Republican controlled and as if the persistent offender law hadn't already been rewritten during that January special session.
It's another example of how reactive the Legislature and the governor have been. A kid wraps their overpowered car around a tree? Make it tougher for all 16-year-olds to get a license.
Our violent society leaves several dead in unrelated incidents around the state? Issue another nerws release on that "three strikes" mantra and wrap yourself in a "tough on crime" blanket.
Meanwhile, conveniently forget about additional school funding for the state's cities.
Forget about the separate-but-unequal education offered in the cities compared to the safe suburbs.
Posted by Ken on 6:49 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
April 18, 2008
Same Old Story: Suburbs Rule And Cities Are Left Holding The Bag
Friday April 18, 2008
Blog-o-rama is clearing off the desk for the weekend, piling up Gov. Jodi Rell’s apologies like cordwood - or the more seasonally appropriate daffodil flowers - as the governor sputters through this week’s crisis of confidence on the amazing, escalating costs of the New Haven Rail Yard.
Amid the daffodil petals now scattered like Rell news releases around the desk in the Capitol Press Room, is a roll call vote that the Blogster didn’t have time to chronicle yesterday in the hubbub of the House and the blithering blather of Rell on when she knew what on the rail yard.
It was a vote that occurred at 3:43 p.m. on H.B. 5646.
It was one of those voting breakdowns that happens a couple times a session that really shows what urban lawmakers are up against in a suburban and rural-dominated Legislature.
The vote was 127-19, with every Bridgeport rep, every Hartford rep and nearly every New Haven rep voting against it.
Why? Because the bill, which next goes to the Senate, is yet another unfunded mandate on the cities.
It would allow professional firefighters who, say, work in Bridgeport but live elsewhere, to volunteer in their hometowns. But if they’re hurt at a fire in that town, but the city would have to pay the cost of overtime to replace the injured worker.
Sounds like a nice lose-lose foisted on the already strapped cities.
“The bill prohibits municipalities from entering into any contract prohibiting paid firefighters or paid emergency personnel from serving as active members of a volunteer fire department, during personal time, in the municipality where they live,” says the analysis from the Office of Legislative Research.
The vote was hailed by Rep. Linda Gentile, D-Ansonia.
“This bill is immensely important for Ansonia and Derby and all other small communities that rely on volunteer firefighters who have the enormous and brave task of protecting our homes and our loved ones,” Gentile said in a statement. “The legislation allows trained, career firefighters who are on their own personal time to volunteer their much needed services to our smaller communities who greatly need it.”
Why shouldn’t she favor it? Ansonia and Derby are getting away cheap, by depending on volunteer departments, even though both municipalities claim to be cities.
“If we did not have these volunteers and were forced to have a paid fire department, it would be a huge cost to our already overburdened taxpayers,” she said.
Rep. Don Clemons, D-Bridgeport, a retired Bridgeport firefighter, agreed that too often, it’s tough being a city lawmaker when the suburbs, which are the first to whine about unfunded mandates, want something from you.
Oh yeah and forget about the Finance Committee’s PILOT plan, allowing cities to get increased revenue from a new tax on delivery services, going forward this session. Senate President Don Williams, on tonight's "On The Record," the CPTV public affairs program taped this morning, said so.
After all, who's going to raise taxes in an election year? Oh yeah, the aforementioned big cities.
Posted by Ken on 6:38 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 17, 2008
Rell Barks at Wednesday's Blog Dog; Dems Find Smoking Video
Thursday April 17, 2008
Gov. Jodi Rell, at the end of an otherwise low-key "avail" with Capitol reporters this morning, got huffy when Blog-o-rama quoted from yesterday's item from Speaker of the House Jim Amann, who said "It's feasible" that the governor's re-election team hid the bad news on the escalating cost of the New Haven Rail Yard project during the 2006 gubernatorial election.
Blog-o-rama: "The speaker of the House yesterday, coming out of your office, said quote it's feasible that in 2006 the bad news about the train yard was kept from the public in some kind of cynical election-related ploy. Do you want to comment on that?"
Rell: "No, I wouldn't comment on that," she said."I would just tell you that I'm surprised that he would say such a thing. And if you know Bob Genuario (secretary of the Office of Policy and Management) he would probably be equally upset with something like that. But I would tell you that in 2006 Bob worked with the DOT in trying to bring those numbers down in 2006 and 2007."
Another reporter: When did you first know this project was way over budget?"
Rell: "January."
Meanwhile, Senate Democrats today - taking a day off from micromanaging their shrinking majority caucus - unearthed some video footage of Rell, dating from a month after her 2006 gubernatorial landslide, as a high-ranking state DOT official gave her the word on an $800 million cost projection for the New Haven rail yard project, up from the original $300 million.
No, the scene was not at a Bosnian airport.
Posted by Ken on 4:42 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 16, 2008
2006 Governor's Race Dogs New Haven Rail Yard Cost Overruns (Arf!)
Wednesday April 16, 2008.
So amid all the hoopla and feigned surprise yesterday over the suddenly escalating price of planned improvements to the New Haven Rail Yard, did any lawmaker do some basic arithmetic?
2008 minus two equals 2006, the year that the Rell administration got word that the $300-million project was going to double in cost.
Of course, it would have been really big news if the amount had shrunk, as opposed to inflated, but that’s not the point. Gee, wasn’t 2006 a gubernatorial election year?
Can’t you imagine Gov. Jodi Rell’s people ordering the DOT to keep a lid on it, scared silly that New Haven Mayor John DeStefano could surf the issue into the Governor’s Residence?
Chris Cooper, Rell’s Capitol spokesman, told Blog-o-rama on Wednesday that OPM Secretary Bob Genuario simply did not accept the higher number. Genuario, otherwise known as Rell’s budget chief, told lawmakers on Tuesday that he assigned OPM personnel to DOT to see if the number could go down. Be that as it may, Blog-o-rama points out the Rell administration’s near-obsessive tendency to play proprietary information close to the vest, and can thus envision a cynical election-year effort to bury the bad news.
Speaker of the House Jim Amann, D-Milford, said in a Wednesday interview that “It’s feasible” that the governor hid the information.
But Senate Minority Leader John McKinney, R-Fairfield, who like Amann, House Majority Leader Chris Donovan and Senate President Don Williams attended a 40-minute meeting with Rell, disputed Amann’s hypothesis of political intrigue.
“I don’t know that anybody ever suggested that or that there was evidence of that,” McKinney said, recalling that the initial $300 million was a “rough estimate” based on two-year-old projections. “There’s plenty of blame to go around,” McKinney said. “A lot of it is DOT, some of it in the Legislature for not asking more questions, but I don’t think anyone suggested that anyone was hiding the ball because of elections.”
Lawmakers are looking at the need to bond an additional $250 million, on top of the original $300 million, to get the rail yard project off the ground.
Posted by Ken on 8:47 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
April 15, 2008
Tax Day 2008: Lawmakers Thank You For Bloated Salaries, Over-Inflated Titles
Tuesday April 15, 2008
With the arrival of the 2008 Legislative Guides, listing various committees, rules and lists of lawmakers, it became very obvious to Blog-o-rama that the House Democratic caucus has never been more bloated with leadership titles.
In fact, there are more House Democrats with lofty titles such as assistant majority leader or whip (there are 30 of those), than there are members of the Republican-minority caucus.
This probably wouldn’t matter, except they’re making at least $4.500 a year above the rank-and-file base salary of $28,000. The eleven deputy speakers and deputy majority leaders make another couple grand a year more than the assistants.
To be fair – and Blog-o-rama hates being fair - equivalent minority leaders get the same pay, which your state taxes, due tonight at midnight, underwrite.
The Blogster wouldn’t have noticed this, except the House Democrats’ title run into a second page of the Legislative Guide.
So let’s see how far this incestuous patronage – and that’s what it is – since the 1995 session.
That version of the guide, found in the archive here in the Capitol Press Room, had 13 Senate majority Republicans in leadership positions while Democrats had 11 such titles.
Over on the House side of 1995, there were 21, including exactly one majority whip, the late Richard Tulisano.
There were 15 high falutin titles on the House GOP side.Today, there are a dozen House majority whips, deputy whips and assistant whips.
Over on the House GOP side, there are 21 leadership titles. In the lofty Senate, today Democrats have 23 titles, which coincides exactly with the number of senators in their caucus. So NO ONE is making the rank-and-file minimum.
On the Senate GOP side, there are 12 higher-paid titles.
But the startling thing is there are more House Democrats with titles, 45, than the entire House GOP caucus, the “Fightin’ 44.” Call it legislative-salary inflation. Shouldn’t their hat sizes have increased along with their self esteem, over the last 13 years?
Shouldn’t we have at least gotten better government for our money?
Oh yeah, let’s check back to the 1995 budget. It was $9 billion, exactly half the current budget.
Posted by Ken on 2:17 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 14, 2008
Movie Magic Made More Competitive
Monday April 14, 2008
Well, Connecticut may have had its moment as a low-tax, movie-making destination, now that New York State last week passed legislation similar to the location-friendly, tax-soft laws that have given people like Speaker of the House Jim Amann the license to call us "Hollywood East."
Asked to respond to the Empire State's new law last week, Amann said it doesn't mean there will be fewer films shot here.
"But I think, business wise, I think we’re going to see Connecticut will continue to grow, because we’re not just concentrating on tax credits," Amann said, adding that more-recent laws pending this session would enhance.infrastructure and music projects and focus additional funding for colleges and universities.
"We’ve done a great job," Amann said. "New York is now reacting and now we have to see what happens over the next 6 to 18 months to see if our big initiative now is losing ground, gaining ground or we’ll see what has to come next," Amann told a couple of reporters last week. "I think it’s exciting to have that kind of competition."
Amann said he never really thought of New York, Massachusetts and Rhode Island as competition, but maybe the region can work together against places like Washington State and Louisiana for the movie-making market."I never saw the other states as competition," he said of our neighbors. "I thought why aren’t we involved in this? That’s why we made ours the best and the first to be around. At this point now, when we get a dialogue with the different legislators from the different states that I mentioned, then we can truly be competitive with the other top-10 states."
Posted by Ken on 6:42 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 10, 2008
Hands Across The Water
Thursday April 10, 2008
And Blog-o-rama returns to the Capitol after a few days counting robins and gauging slush slides amid the expansive confines and the pines of birches (and the murmur of the pines) in Maine's Carrabassett Valley.
Having missed the big Capitol ethics meltdown of Wednesday (all you need to know is the only folks who have it right are minority Republicans - but not the governor - who want to strip the pensions of people like Johnny Johnola Rowland, but it's not going to happen this year) after Senate President Don Williams said a nearly secret watered-down version was a fait accompli, Blog-o-rama felt a twinge of diligence and followed Gov. Jodi Rell down to Milford for her big celebration over New York's rejection of the Broadwater LNG platform.
Why Milford, when the platform would be built way up the coast, 10 miles off Guilford? It can't be because Guilford has a Democratic first selectman while Milford Mayor Jim Richetelli is a Republican?
Well, maybe.
Blog-o-rama liked the site because it was a gorgeous day, Milford's in the Connecticut Post readership area and the perfect visual aid was virtually ignored by so many supposedly PR savvy pols like the governor, Attorney General Dick Blumenthal and Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz.
Right behind the governor's portable podium, where the sound system failed miserably three minutes into the newser, sending TV and radio guys scurrying to plop their microphones in front of the governor, sat Charles Island.
Charles Island is maybe three quarters of a mile from Silver Sands. The reef heading out there is a sure bet for summer lifeguard rescues, when knuckleheads get stuck our there while the tide races back in.
A smart PR person in any of the aforementioned ambitious-pols camps, could have concocted a line about how the island would look about the same size as the evil, floating LNG terminal, a terrorist target four football fields long and about 80 feet high.
The trees on Charles Island probably aren't 80 feet tall and the atoll (THERE'S a synonym for you) is probably longer than 400 yards. Rell, during a Q and A after the newser, couldn't envision it and Blumenthal, chatting before the event couldn't see it either, but Sen. Len Fasano, who actually did alot of fact-finding work over three years heading Rell's LNG Task Force (plus he played football at Yale, so he knows what 100 yards looks like) could see the geographical symbolism.
Posted by Ken on 9:43 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
April 4, 2008
Time-Challenged Lawmakers Heading Into The Last Month
Friday April 4, 2008
The session ends at midnight May 7. There are still literally thousands of bills that remain in the legislative pipeline. The House and Senate did about 150 minutes work yesterday before adjourning at about 5 p.m. for the annual intra-Capitol charity basketball tournament.
So when are they going to get down to a full day of actual business? Well, most Capitol lobbyists don't care because they're in the business of KILLING legislation, so time is their unpaid coworker.
For those who actually want to accomplish something this session, time is growing short.
And lawmakers are still kind of freaked out about going to actual voters for small campaign contributions, so there's mounting pressure to come to a budget agreement before the end of the session, allowing them the whole summer to go hat in hand and leverage cash from the Citizens Election Fund.
Everything is set up for majority Democratics to heft a big, old waterlemon of bills on May Day, with only a week to figure out how to fit it into a bud vase.
Posted by Ken on 12:19 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 3, 2008
When the Basketball Flies Like a Shoo-Fly Pie, That's Amore
Thursday, April 3, 2008
It's noon and Blog-o-rama just hung up after a surprise call from a famous Civil War battlefield, where Jim Murphy, former News 12 Connecticut reporter, is faking antiques in the basement woodshop of his Gettysburg goat farm.
Jim and his wife Judith, a college communications officer, are totally into the Lady Huskies hoops team and are justly proud of this year's version of the squad, which actually GRADUATES players.
They watch the games on streaming video, so that's pretty hardcore.
"Considering the way the state has taken to Maya Moore," Murph says of the freshman All American, "affection has reached the state of idolatry. I expect a ballot proposition this fall that would change her name to 'My Amour.'"
Posted by Ken on 12:04 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 2, 2008
Norwalk Kids Litter Downtown Hartford
Wednesday April 2, 2008
It's 10:30 and about 20 under-dressed kids from Brien McMahon High School in Norwalk are fighting the fierce, cold spring gale to retain whatever hasn't blown away from the Capitol lawn, past the horseback sun-splashed statue of General Lafayette and down Washington Avenue.
It's one of the weirder news-conference scenes we've had here in recent years.
The plan was to kick off National Child Abuse Month by staking down 9,422 brown-paper lunch bags to commemorate each child abused in Connecticut last year.
So the school's Senators Community Foundation decided to use bags to illustrate instances of abuse, which occur every 41 minutes.
The students started staking the bags at 7:30 and thousands of the mercifully biodegradable lunch sacks must have blown away by now.
They are skewered on long lines along the ground, but still the northwest wind is making the lines lift and rattle while bags are ripping off regularly. They're blown by the wind across Capitol Avenue, then past the Revolutionary War hero's statue and southeast down Washington Avenue.
"We wanted a nice sunny day and we got it," said an optimistic Sen. Bob Duff, D-Norwalk to reporters. "We didn't ask about the wind. We just wanted to make sure we got a sunny day."
Of the statewide incidents over the last year, 1,342 kids were abused in Fairfield County and 246 were abused in Norwalk.
Blog-o-rama think it's appropriate that the bags were blowing away from the demonstration, since 90 percent of male felons lost in the state prison system were abused as kids; and 50 percent of the violent female prisoners.
Ruhana Da Silva, an 18-year-old senior said the point is to remind people to do something against child abuse.
"Many people do not realize that somewhere in Connecticut a child is abused as they watch their favorite one-hour show on television, that two children will be abused during the UConn women's basketball game," she said.
House Minority Leader Larry Cafero, R-Norwalk, whose district includes the high school said: "You know there's an old saying that says ' a man never stands so tall than when he stoops to help a child' and I think we could add to that that a man never sinks so low tghan when he abuses a child," Cafero said.
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Posted by Ken on 10:23 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
