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Wow, just what we need in the stretch run to a new state budget: Senate Majority Leader Marty Looney going bonkers over a throw-away quote by Chris Cooper, the recently retired Rell spokesman who has come back, for free, a couple days over the last week to deal with poitical damage control for the governor. Yesterday, the Working Families folks staged a rather imaginative, for them, “Billionsiars for Budget Cuts,” a sarcastic attempt to lampoon the governor for cutting social spending and protecting the state’s wealthy from higher taxes.

 Both GOP State Chairman Chris Healy and Cooper used the C-word, communism, to describe the event.“The Democats have been holding well-orchestrated events for the last six months to try and raise support for the billions of dollars in new taxes they have proposed. Now, they have apparently aligned themselves with the Connecticut Communist Party for their latest act of political theater,” Cooper said.

 Looney just issued the following release:“This was one of the most reckless and irresponsible attempted smears I have seen in my 29 years in the General Assembly. It seems that the corrosive spirit of Senator Joseph McCarthy is alive and well and with the governor’s spokesman.

The attack could be dismissed as desperate and laughable if it weren’t so malevolent. To imply that the so-called millionaire’s tax somehow suggests communism rather than fundamental American fairness is reprehensible.

This is a clumsy and transparent ploy to divert attention away from the reality that the Democratic plan for a more progressive income tax enjoys broad public support.”

The Blogster thinks it’s still laughable, but Looney’s overreaction is worthy of our life and times. If only his caucus had the 24 solid votes needed to push through the Dems’ proposed higher taxes on Connecticut’s wealthiest, then the whole budget impasse could drift into memory.

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Yesterday’s flurry, or should be say slurry, of activity in the Capitol would, on its face, indicates that majority Democrats and the Republican governor are far apart on their budget proposals. In fact, they’ve never been closer and it bodes well for an eventual deal sometime in August. Unfortunately, things are very reminiscent of 2003, when Democrats tried to raise tax rates on the wealthy, but the Republican governor, John “Why Should I Resign If I’ve Done Nothing Wrong?” Rowland successfullyvetoed it and the result was that income taxes on everyone rose from the former 4.5 percent to the current 5 percent.

Today, Dems want to raise taxes $1.8 billion over the biennium. Rell has proposed just shy of $400 million. Add them up to $2.2 billion, split the differenet and we have just over a billion in new taxes. That’s the way the Blogster sees it coming down. Fortunately the gun to everyone’s head is the September 1 deadline where Comptroller Nancy Wyman will certify the deficit in the fiscal year that ended June 30. Without a new budget in place, the $1.4-billion rainy day fund will be used to clear the books. Both the governor and Democrats have agreed to borrow and bond the $900-million deficit. The state can’t borrow to fund ongoing expenses.

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The best thing about U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd’s announcement today that he has an early form of prostate cancer, is that he has the Cadillac of healthcare benefits, thanks to you taxpayers.

He’s having a news conference in Hartford right now. He just told reporters he’s spoken with other senators about the disease. “I don’t expect any real delay and obviously even while periods of recuperation, it doesn’t mean you’re off in isolation,” Dodd said. “So I’ll be home and a light schedule is recommended. For a week or I think they want you to just take it easy, but I anticipate by the end of the month I’ll be out and about.”

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It’s not so much of a vacuum as a gaping hole in the GOP bench, as Connecticut politicians today come to gripes with Senate Minority Leader John McKinney’s decision not to seek the Fourth Congressional District seat held by U.S. Rep. Jim Himes of Greenwich.

GOP State Chairman Chris Healy: “I think more power to him for having his priorities. It’s refreshing when someone puts something in perspective and decides on the most-important thing. He’s an outstanding guy, a good leader. We have plenty of excellent Republican leaders, elected and non-elected in the 4^th. I don’t want to list them because I’d forget somebody. They are people who understand the disaster Jim Himes is. I don’t think there’s going to be a shortage of potential candidates. I think we’ll beat Jim Himes no matter who we nominate. We’re going to have time to find someone and support someone who’ll do a good job and win.”

 Healy conceded that the long-term demographic in the 17-town is leaning toward unaffiliated voters. “We’re not worried because what is happening to our country is going to come down to economics, quality of life and those things that we measure our quality of life by.”

 Healy called Himes the “puppy” of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Democratic State Chairwoman Nancy DiNardo of Trumbull: “After much finger-crossing, sweet-talking and cajoling by the national and state Republicans, it speaks volumes that John McKinney has opted against challenging Jim Himes in 2010. As a freshman Congressman, Jim has focused his efforts on impeccable constituent services in the district, helping to secure funding for programs in the district that help put people back to work and get our economy moving again, and is a leading voice on issues affecting the diverse population he serves. Jim is a first-rate Congressman, and has proven himself to be an adept, tireless campaigner. John McKinney took a long, hard look at how difficult this race would be for him, and I advise any other Republicans who may be considering challenging Jim to do the same.”

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The “Reinvention” of the state budget that majority Democrats shopped around to a few select media outlets yesterday before finally issuing a release late in the afternoon, includes a provision to explode the one state department that actually provides services for everyone over 16 and under 90: the Department of Motor Vehicles.

Ask 10 people on the street to opine about what they might get for their state taxes and it won’t be Educational Cost Sharing, nursing-home funding or even town-road dollars. It’ll be the sometimes-infuriating DMV.

 And yet, the big idea Senate and House Democrats are offering is dividing up the DMV’s various functions among four other state departments. Sure, the DMV computers still can’t communicate across functions. Yes, there remain administrative fiefdoms in DMV that jeopardize overall efficiency. Yep, DMV Commissioner Bob Ward, the former House minority leader, is a Jodi Rell appointee.

Leave it to the Ds to extend the half-year-long budget impasse with a cockamamie idea. Maybe they should start small: by consolidating the Banking and Insurance departments, before they attack bureaucratic monoliths.

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Last week’s national controversy in which Prof. Henry Lewis Gates of Harvard was confronted at his Cambridge doorstep by a Boston police officer got the Blogster wondering about racial profiling.

From there, he’s reminded that it’s been a while since he heard an update on Hal Turner, the 47-year-old Jersey blogger with ties to white-supremacist and neo-Nazi organizations who was arrested on a felony charge last month after suggesting that two Connecticut lawmakers ( Rep. Mike Lawlor, D-East Haven and Sen. Andrew McDonald, D-Stamford) and a state ethics officer should be shot.

 Harold Charles Turner of North Bergen was arrested by Connecticut State Capitol Police for inciting injury. But a couple days later, he was busted by FBI agents for alleged threats to three federal judges. The feds allegedly seized firearms in Turner’s home.

So even though Turner’s Connecticut arraignment is scheduled for August 4, he’s under federal custody in Chicago, where he’s being charged with threatening to kill three the  judges, who recently upheld a ban on hanguns in a ruling Turner didn’t like. Check out this phone call from the slammer. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tf3o5g4n9DM 

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    It’s National Korean War Veterans Armistice Day 2009 and Gov. Rell has ordered that U.S. and State of Connecticut flags be flown at half-staff until sundown. “Thousands of Connecticut’s best and bravest served with honor and distinction in the Korean Conflict,” Rell said in a statement this afternoon. “It is only fitting that we commemorate the heroism of these veterans, living and dead, by lowering state and national flags in their honor on the anniversary of the July 27, 1953, armistice.

For you youngsters, the Korean War, 1950-53, was the fight for the peninsula between North and South Korea. China was aligned with the North and the U.S. and United Nations were on the side of the south, following the June, 1950 incursion into the South.

According to the World Almanac, quoting the U.S. Dept. of Veterans Affairs, there were about 3 million U.S. veterans of the Korean War in 2006, out of 5.8 million who served. There were 33,667 battle deaths, 3,249 other deaths, and 103,284 wounded during the war.

 “The citizens of Connecticut and the United States remember and appreciate the enormous sacrifices these courageous men and women made on our behalf,” Rell said.

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Look out belowwwwwww!

The historic hall of the state House of Representatives is closed to the public today, blocked off with yellow caution tape after an overnight incident involving apparent metal fatigue and a 30-inch, cylindrical light fixture that fell 40 feet, crashing into a brass handrail toward the back of the room.

Eric Connery, facilities administrator for the Joint Office of Legislative Management, which runs the Capitol complex, said the plunge occurred as custodians were changing a burned-out TV light bulb in the fixture along the back-center of the chamber. Workers were in the attic at the time and the fixture was crushed like an old VW hitting a brick wall, although the handrail is just a little dinged. “It’s quite amazing,” Connery said a few minutes ago. “I would have expected the handrail to be more damaged, but it’s only slightly out of whack.”

Tonight, though, workers will be checking the other half dozen or so fixtures, put up about 30 years ago to better light the room for TV video, to make sure that gravity doesn’t beckon them down at an inopportune moment, like when there’s finally a debate on a budget deal. Connery said the company that manufactured the fixtures has gone out of business, but the shop drawings of the fixtures will be sent to the Florida-based firm that took over the previous company, to see what they’ll cost to replace.

 You thought the House was a blockhead zone, but now, for the time being, it’s a hard-hat area.