Why do the CIA, FBI, and Connecicut State Police spend so much time tracking activists?
The Ken Krayeske arrest last week has caused quite a bit of good blogging, and finally, so far, some good inquiry by the Governor facing the threat and likely reality of legislative investigations.
Often, people seem to ask: "With all the foreign terrorists and suspected domestic terrorists and criminals, why do they spend all those $ and infiltrating and spying on peaceful activists and protesters?"
My answer maybe different than most. I recognize that paranoids and fearful people such as Nixon and Bush may be a huge factor, yet perhaps they are more enablers than causes.
Animal rights activists, environmentalists, bloggers, anti-war protestors, Greens, feminists, and labor organizers have something in common: the government thinks that they're all potentially dangerous to public safety.
What may surprise you is that this isn't a new idea, or even one plucked from the world of neocon fantasy, but rather, a basic assumption of traditional democratic theory, relating to the way individual opinion is transformed into public action. A long description over the fold.
In his first annual address to the Legislature, Gov. Eliot Spitzer proposed to overhaul almost every corner of the state's operations and policies, saying he would move swiftly to guarantee health insurance for all children in the state, publicly finance state elections, rein in spending and draft a constitutional amendment to overhaul the state's courts.
He also said that he would seek to broadly overhaul the state's ethics and lobbying rules, to make pre-kindergarten available to all four-year-olds by the end of his four-year term, to overhaul the public authorities that control most of the state's debt and to make New York more palatable to business by changing the state's approach to policies, like workers' compensation. [...]
Saying "our government is in disrepair," Mr. Spitzer added, "New York is not in this position because of a lack of ideas, New York is in this position because of a lack of leadership."
In a day that proved long on tradition but short on content, Connecticut Gov. M. Jodi Rell was inaugurated to begin her first full elected term as the state's chief executive.
Rell's progression to her first elected term followed her successful leadership of the state through the embarrassment and uncertainty of the final years of the scandal-ridden Rowland administration. Rell initially assumed the office in July 2004 following the resignation of Rowland, who faced impeachment proceedings in the legislature. But by the conservative nature of the day's events, and of Rell's brief inaugural speech, she and her staff seemed to be signaling that Connecticut residents can expect a continuation of the formula that has propelled her to high popularity ratings and a huge victory at the polls in November.
Dispensing with fanfare or risky oratory, Rell seems determined to present herself to voters exactly as she is: a steady hand who has restored credibility and fiscal health to government by a sensible, no-nonsense approach.
Rell was sworn in on a blue-carpeted stage in the atrium of the Legislative Office Building in Hartford by U.S. District Court Judge Alan H. Nevas. In her 8-minute address, Rell avoided any specifics on the issues facing the state -- health care, energy needs, the crisis in the care over abused children -- and hewed, instead, to truisms about government that committed her to few new directions for the legislative year.
HARTFORD - The state could have a budget deficit of at least $500 million in fiscal 2007-08, which Gov. M. Jodi Rell said Friday could require some cuts in state services.
If spending continues at its current rate, state Budget Director Robert Genuario projects a deficit of $500 million to $700 million for the next year to provide the current level of services.
"We're going to have to talk about what we want as priorities, and what we will be able to afford, and it won't be all at one time," Rell told reporters Friday after a meeting of the State Bond Commission. "It may mean the possibility of some cuts in current services."
Last month, state officials said Connecticut had a $486.5 million budget surplus, but they projected shortfalls starting in fiscal 2008. By law, the surplus for this fiscal year, which ends June 30, must be spent on retiring debt or filling the state's so-called rainy day fund.
Rell would not say Friday whether raising taxes to close the deficit might be an alternative to cutting services.
"Even if you went out today - and folks, I'm not recommending this - and raised $500 million in new taxes, we have a constitutional cap on spending," she said, referring to limits that voters enacted in 1992 after lawmakers passed the controversial personal income tax.
House Speaker James A. Amann, D-Milford, said the possibility of a deficit will force the Democrat-controlled legislature to be more cautious with state dollars.
"I don't know if cutting services is an answer, but if we find waste in government, I'm all for it," Amann said. "What we need to do is to ensure that what we do is effective and efficient, and that we're accountable."
Next year's projected shortfall could also make it more difficult for Rell to push her favored proposal to eliminate local car taxes. The tax cut would be partly funded by eliminating a property tax credit offered against the income tax.
Amann said Friday that other property tax reforms would be more helpful to residents, such as increasing the income tax credit or helping municipalities pay for their increasing education costs.
"Though I hate the car tax and I think most people do, unless there's some new plan the governor hasn't shown me yet, what she's proposed seems like it's just taking out of one pocket and putting it in another," he said.
State regulators approved a 7.7 percent rate increase for Connecticut Light & Power customers on Friday, despite pleas from Gov. M. Jodi Rell to delay the increase until the General Assembly could take up the issue next month.
The increase passed by the Department of Public Utility Control takes effect Jan. 1. For consumers who do not use electricity for heat, the average increase will be 6.9 percent, or about $8.75 more per month, regulatory agency spokeswoman Beryl Lyons said.
Blumenthal appeared before regulators Friday to ask for the increase to be delayed, and asked regulators to ensure that costs from delays are absorbed by the companies rather than passed on to consumers.
"These rate increases will hit our economy like a tsunami on Jan. 1 if they are not deferred," he said.
The state's second-largest utility, United Illuminating, has asked for a 38 percent increase. A final decision on that request is due Dec. 19.
In papers filed before state regulators, Blumenthal accused CL&P and United Illuminating of failing to fight for reform of the state's electricity system since the industry was deregulated in 1997.
The two utilities cited sharply higher energy costs that have forced them to pass increases on to customers.
CL&P officials have said that a one-year deferral of contracts they hold with energy providers would force the utility - and, by extension, its customers - to pay an additional $350 million to finance the purchase of power elsewhere.
United Illuminating said it has signed binding power supply contracts that were approved by the DPUC. UI is liable to the suppliers for approximately $40 million a month, an amount that would be hard to recover if the rate increase was deferred, its officials say.
Is there anything we, the people of Connecticut, can do about this?
Hartford Mayor Eddie Perez continues to sustitute lamesness for leadership. From the Courant:
After 16 people were shot in five days in Hartford, Mayor Eddie A. Perez and Gov. M. Jodi Rell fired accusations at one another Wednesday in a high-profile clash of public letters over how to stop the bloodshed on the city's streets.
Rell claimed Perez had turned away the state's helping hand. Perez said no such thing was even close to true. As the day continued, much ink was spilled by the two political rivals as each lobbed explosive letters at one another.
The first day of legislative hearings into events surrounding a campaign fundraiser for Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell produced few facts and got bogged down Wednesday by protests from the GOP, which claimed the process was unfairly partisan and unnecessary.
Jodi Rowland-Rell, whose only apparent qualification for office is that she is not John Rowland, has once again demonstrated the dangers of having unqualified leaders.
Her appointment of Superior Court Judge Vanessa L. Bryant to the U.S. District Court has been slammed by the ABA, a relatively rare rebuke.
A Courant editorial on the new state budget explains how sausage gets made.
In the end, the Republican governor agreed to give up her campaign to phase out the death tax, which sends the well-to-do running to other states, if Democratic lawmakers gave up a tax credit to help the working poor.
The latest Quinnipiac Poll shows Jodi Rowland-Rell slipping, but not nearly enough.
The tally of 1,536 registered voters shows Rell easily vanquishing either of her potential Dem opponents, although there are reasons for hope in the fine print.
Rell buries two possible Democratic challengers:
66 - 20 percent over New Haven Mayor John DeStefano, compared to 70 - 16 percent February 16;
65 - 20 percent over Stamford Mayor Dan Malloy, compared to 70 - 15 percent.
By a 64 - 6 percent margin, voters have a favorable opinion of Rell, with 19 percent mixed and 10 percent who haven't heard enough to form an opinion.
Her challengers are relatively unknown: 60 percent don't have an opinion about DeStefano and 81 percent don't know enough about Malloy.
Two cronies of the corrupt Rowland-Rell regime have been sent to the slammer. Peter Ellef and William Tomasso got two and a half years each.
Ellef, Rowland's former co-chief of staff, and Tomasso, once a senior figure in his family's network of construction-related businesses, were held to account for conspiracy to commit bribery and tax fraud, becoming the latest casualties in a 31/2-year federal investigation of bid rigging and contract steering by members of the Rowland administration. Both men were ordered to turn themselves in to federal prison authorities on June 28.
Also worth noting:
But federal authorities say their investigation of contracting irregularities and improprieties in government is not over.
Today my campaign did something truly historic, something that no other gubernatorial campaign in Connecticut has ever done – announced a plan for universal health care. Under my Connecticut CAN! (Cover All Now) plan, every citizen will be given the opportunity to purchase affordable health care coverage.
I’ll do this by creating a one-stop marketplace for health insurance, closing corporate loopholes to cover the uninsured and providing relief to low income workers.
He goes on to take a dig at his two opponents:
Gov. Rell has offered NO plan for universal health care coverage. Her most recent State of the State address did not even mention Connecticut’s health care crisis. Dannel Malloy’s plan isn’t much better, providing health care for only 20% of Connecticut’s uninsured.
How will this affect the dynamics of the campaign?
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