Ken Dixon's Blog-O-Rama

Monday, August 18, 2008

Gov. Jodi Rell didn’t get quite enough media exposure last Friday, when she chose the shadow of the Farmington Nordstrom, at the fabulously SUB-urban West Farms Mall to extoll the virtues of the tax-free week for sales of clothes and shoes less than $300.
Fine and dandy. Plus, it gave reporters a chance to get her in the field on other issues. The Blogster asked Rell whether she’d put one of those planned “How Am I Driving?” bumper stickers on her Lincoln Town Car.
It’s unlikely, let’s put it that way. Then she pretended the hard-working State Police who are her security detail, always drive the speed limit. Hmmm.
Be that as it may, Blog-o-rama likes the idea of reporting state employees who speed by on the highway like they’re on their way to a fire.Why should WE subsidize their poor gas mileage?
But back to the meaning of this post. Rell, a master at overstating things, has a 1 p.m.media event TOMORROW in Branford to yet again talk about the weeklong tax holiday. This one’s at the Kohl’s in Branhaven Plaza on West Main Street. It makes the Blogster wonder whether she’s combining personal shopping with media events. She would readily admit that she’s more of a Kohl’s shopper than a Nordstromite..

Friday August 15, 2008

It’s mid-afternoon and Gov. Jodi Rell, during an unrelated news conference in Farmington, just admitted to a select group of working-on-a-summer-Friday reporters that she indeed has filed papers forming an exploratory committee to run for re-election in 2010.
So that gives her something in common with Speaker of the House Jim Amann, D-Milford, who’s not running for re-election this year because he wants to concentrate on the 2010 gubernatorial.
“That’s the first step and we’ll go from there,” Rell said, adding that it doesn matter who she runs against.”I don’t care who it is,” she said, adding that she filed the documents last week.
“I very much enjoy the job,” Rell said, standing in the center court at West Farms Mall.”This is why you do the job. You know there’re going to be challenges along the way but I think you need people who can come together and bring people together and hopefully I’ve shown that I’ve been able to do that over the last four years and if I choose to run again I’ll be able to do it in the future.”
In fact, many leading Republicans, who don’t want to speak on the record, have their doubts about the governor’s veracity, even if she filed the committee papers, which allow her to raise some cash and make some expenditures for things like polling.
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Friday August 8, 2008

U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman, the fair-weather Democrat, had an early snack time this week. He was in his usual seat aboard his buddy John McCain’s Straight Talk Express, when the bus got involved in a Florida fender bender.
“The Buzz,” the political blog of the St. Petersburg Times, reported yesterday that the Wednesday morning collision sent a McCain’s staffer’s birthday cake smooshing into Connecticut’s junior senator.
It was chocolate, with “thick white frosting,” The Buzz reported.
“At the moment of impact I was sitting in a booth … right in front of counter right where the cake was. The cake went all over me. That was the end of my suit,” he said at the time, “I always wondered whether sometime a political protester would hit me with a pie in the face. I never thought a friendly birthday cake would attack me from the rear.”
Clearly, he’s not making enough public appearances back home in Connecticut, where he could hold a sizable fund-raiser among state Democrats who’d love to pie him, or cake him as the case may be, for crimes against the party.
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—Adam Smith

Continue reading “Birthday cake hurled onto Lieberman” »

Posted by Times Editor at 3:50:22 PM on August

August 7, 2008

“Any Democrat ought to be favored,” University of Virginia political scientists Larry Sabato said yesterday during a converstaion about Ralph Nader apparent qualification for the November presidential ballot in Connecticut. “The fundamental factors are rarely as aligned pro-Democratic as they are now.”
Nader received a minuscule 12,969 votes in Connecticut in 2004, compared to 857,488 for John Kerry and 693,826 for President Bush. Sabato blamed Kerry for being a bad candidate back in 2004, when he hesitated to immediately respond to GOP-organized criticism of his Vietnam War record.
In 2000, Nader, running on the Green Party ticket in Connecticut,received 64,452 votes, compared to 816,015 for Gore and Lieberman, then a Democrat and 561,094 for George W. Bush.
The Nader campaign said yesterday it has withdrawn any attempt to get on the ballot in Oklahoma, Georgia, Texas, Indiana and North Carolina, because those states make it too hard for independent presidential bids.Cristina Tobin, Nader’s national ballot coordinator, criticized Connecticut election law for requiring petition signatures to be listed along town lines at a time when the state’s computerized election rolls are available on-line.
In addition, the petitions get mailed back to voter registrars in all169 towns and cities, for the validation process. “They could just handle this process right here,” she said, adding that the statewide petition effort cost Nader less than $10,000.“There’s no reason why these petitions should be broken down by town,” Tobin said. “The only reason it’s being broken down by town is to make our life more difficult for third parties.
Even paranoids have enemies.
Chris Healy, the fulminating chairman of the Republican State Central Committee,agreed Wednesday that Nader’s impact will be negligible, but he has every right to campaign.
“If he’s got the support and he’s qualified, good luck to him,” Healy said, acknowledging that Nader would take away Democratic votes. “It’s nice to see a native son do well.”
Healy said that now that the state has gotten rid of voting machines,ballot placement has less impact than ever, giving petitioning candidates more of an advantage.“The obstacles to a third, fourth or fifth-party candidate have been equalized by the tactile paper ballots,” Healy said. “In the old days, alternative-party candidates were at the bottom, difficult tofind. Now it’s all on one sheet.”
Healy, recalling the controversial conclusion of the 2000 campaign,when the Supreme Court gave the presidency to Bush, said Gore had the same problem that Kerry did four years later.“Al Gore helped elect George Bush,” Healy said. “He ran a lousy campaign and that was more than eight years ago. Get over it.”

August 6, 2008

The State Bond Commission, even though they had very little detail, on Monday approved a $250,000 grant for the town of Hamden to acquire and install a hydrogen-fuelling station.
The money was approved with little discussion, even though state economic-development officials could not provide details of its location or function.
Mayor Craig B. Henrici of Hamden said Monday that the funding,combined with a similar federal grant for the New Haven Transit District, will be used to create a fuel station at the town’s public works garage and eventually support small hydrogen-powered buses to possibly shuttle the elderly.
“Hopefully the town will be on the cutting edge,” said Henrici who would like to eventually have the town’s car fleet also powered by hydrogen. The last hydrogen vehicle in that town was actually OVER Hamden, when the Hindenburg airship floated over the town back in 1937, on its way to New Jersey, where it exploded in infamous flames.
Sen. Gary Lebeau, D-East Hartford, an advocate of hydrogen power, notes that the fire was caused by the coating of the airship’s skin and not the hydrogen itself.

Monday, August 4, 2008

If you’re the glass-is-half-full type, you can tell yourself that Connecticut’s General Assembly paved the way for a new federal law banning toys and child-care items including pacifiers that contain a half dozen types of plastic softeners called phthalates.
But the reality is, state lawmakers caved to the plastics industry and killed a proposal last spring that would ban the plastics. During a telling news conference, a Harvard post-doc talked about emerging evidence of developmental problems in children exposed to phthalates.
Yes, the state passed a new law against lead toys. That was a no-brainer. Farther-sighted, braver state lawmakers would have included the plastics.
Sarah Uhl, coordinator for the non-profit Clean Water Action, said today that the state lead standard was important and even the ignored plastics legislation sent a message.
“By introducing a bill to phase out phthalates and by joining other states in a rigorous public discourse about the need for a phthalates ban, Connecticut helped put the writing on the wall,” she said. “In the end, enough manufacturers,retailers,and members of Congress read this writing and realized that the clock was ticking on the continued use of toxic phthalates in children’s products. When big manufacturers like Wal-Mart and Toys “R” Us began publically announcing plans to stop using phthalates, that left the companies that actually produce these toxins- like Exxon Mobil– to campaign against the ban. It was a close fight that many thought could not be won, but in the end the leadership of the states- and the concerned consumers in those states- drovemarket shifts and state policies that paved the way for the federal win.”

Friday August 1, 2008

Looks like minority Republicans will have the opportunity to get free exposure for their House and Senate campaigns, when the General Assembly meets on home-heating issues later this month.
August 22, a Friday, seems to be the date, but majority Democrats were balking today on committing until they get the OK from rank-and-file. Meanwhile, within hours of her meeting with leaders, Gov. Jodi Rell “officially” called for the date.
Either way, lawmakers have to abscond with that $22-million surplus from the last fiscal year before it reverts to the $1.4-billion Rainy Day Fund on September 1.
So someone’s August vacation is going to be partially ruined. And if you’re watching CTN, the free government-propaganda network, that day, you’ll see Republicans offering yet another round of amendments, doomed for failure in the 107-44 Democratic House and 23-13 Senate, to cap the so-called gross receipts tax on wholesale petroleum sales.
And why not? It’s a good issue for Republicans, who really need to buck the blue-state tide and get some viable numbers, particularly in the House.
Speaker of the House Jim Amann, standing next to Senate Minority Leader John McKinney, called it “a dumb idea,” as much as he personally respects the senator, while the gross receipts tax is accomplishing what lawmakers wanted three years ago: raising revenue for transportation related issues and the general fund
News Channel 8 Capitol reporter Mark Davis tried to stir the pot.”How do you feel about being respected and being called dumb in the same sentence,” Davis asked McKinney, who waved it off. “I did not call him dumb,” Amann protested.
“There are no dumb ideas, there are only dumb people with ideas,” Mckinney quipped.