Kids who want to learn get chewed up in the public school system, said Patrick Moore, the head of the new Covenant Preparatory School in Hartford.

 

Covenant, a private, rigorous middle school, will begin operations this week, on the corner of Farmington and Broad streets in the old YWCA facility.

 

A year ago, Moore had a vision to start an intensive academic experience for high-performing yet at-risk Hartford students. He had no building, no money.

 

“No nothing,” Moore said. Moore hails from Canton. He attended Holy Cross College in Worcester, and considered law school. But then he spent a year volunteering as a teacher in a Covenant Prep School in New Bedford, Massachusetts.

 

That year turned into four, and those four years stoked the fire for Moore to replicate the successful Covenant model in Hartford. Jesuit brothers in the lower east side of New York City started the Covenant model 37 years ago, and now more than 65 Covenant Schools dot the American urban landscape.

 

“I’ll never be able to give back what this school has given me,” Moore said. “This is my passion. I had it pretty good. I was fortunate to grow up in Canton.”

 

So Moore is trying to give back, and he is not worried that 15 students fifth and sixth grades that will start this week won’t trust him, a white idealistic suburbanite.

 

“These students are smarter than we give them credit for,” Moore said. “They know I am here to work for them.”

 

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WFSB-3 news team, congrats! You've gotten John Rose, Jr., Hartford's Corporation Counsel, to show his true stripes on camera.

 

Not only that, little old blogger me will be on Face the State, Sunday, August 24 on Channel 3 at 11 a.m. Hooray! Dennis House invited myself, Kerri Provost of Real Hartford and Amy Bergquist of the Greater Hartford Real Estate Blog.

 

We talked about violence, poverty and educational issues in Hartford. And we graded Eddie Perez. I gave him an "F."

 

My favorite thing, though, is that Len Besthoff in the above clip reveals that the Perez grand jury investigation has called Kelvin Roldan, state representive and pig at Hartford's taxpayer trough for his cushy job at the school system.

 

Summer, boys, means the heat is on. And in full disclosure about John Rose, Jr., I should note that I am suing the city of Hartford in federal court for that arrest thing last year, and Rose, Jr. is listed as counsel of record on the lawsuit.

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Sitting through the public hearing at the Court of Common Council Monday night, August 11 at Hartford City Hall was painful.

 

A massive crowd stuffed themselves like sardines into council chambers. Person after person paraded to the microphone to air an angry laundry list of the failures of self-governance.

 

The problems in Hartford seem intractable, so embedded and deeply ingrained that this kind of public venting and self-expression – more than 50 speakers at a pre-council meeting hearing – may be the only way to hang onto some semblance of city pride.

 

Council President Cal Torres, though, had trouble maintaining order, and some rowdy, inconsiderate speakers didn’t play responsibly, which added to the chaotic feel of it.

 

And it made me wonder if Council President Calixto Torres can’t run a public hearing, how do we expect him to lead a council with any backbone to challenge a power-hungry Mayor.

 

These are hard times. People complained about having to choose between eating and paying for electricity. Others explained the fear they have walking the streets after 11 shootings in 24 hours. Still more complained about the closures of the library branches and linked the lack of services to the explosive violent outbreak. A few derided the concept of a curfew as collective punishment on youth. Someone else praised it.

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Guns, guns, guns. Two stories about guns, with differing results. I completely missed the connection. Lucky thing we have Helder:

While trolling The Hartford Courant's website today for information regarding yesterday's primary results, this was the way their front page was organized. While I was at first shocked by the image of one of the young boys shot during the incidents this past Saturday, I was then outraged at the share stupidity and thoughtlessness of placing a headline about a shooting range's problems next to it! Look, I'm all for the second amendment - even as misappropriated by gun lobbyists. Frankly, guns should be used on a firing range, not on our streets. The powers that be and the media whores can blame the violence on the youth, the police, the drugs, the parents, immigration, unemployment, each other, whatever... the guns in the wrong hands are what injured innocent bystanders. Be realistic and honest about that and deal with that issue if you want to deal with the violence.

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Abe Giles hung up the phone with me before I could ask him what he thought of Mississippi’s famed civil rights activist, Fannie Lou Hamer.

 

I called him to inquire about a number of topics, and I started with the hard one first. Maybe I should’ve led with Hamer.

 

But I wanted to know how Giles’ business, G & G Enterprises, Inc., won the low bid on the Contract for Miscellaneous Services #4076, On Demand Moving and Storage Services of Personal Effects of Evicted Tenants.

 

The scope of services in Contract #4076, when put out to bid, originally called for the winner to move the voting equipment, too.

 

Let’s put aside the fundamental question of why the city has to subsidize landlord-tenant relationships rather than working to guarantee housing for all, and focus on why the contract when Giles signed the contract July 13, 2007, it didn’t have that voting equipment provision.

 

“The only reason why, because people like you ask damn, dumb stupid questions,” Giles said. “You didn’t start it, it started years ago. That’s the only reason why.”

 

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If Colin McEnroe wants the Hartford Police Department to show up at a call, he needs to throw a party. I did this past Saturday night, and HPD showed up twice in two hours.

So when I read Colin’s column this past Sunday about HPD taking forever and two Tuesdays to respond to a burglary call, I was perplexed. Maybe Colin should have said something different to dispatch.

 

The one thing he had right was that he was going to receive some angry responses. I heard lots of people talking about the column, many angry, many confused.

 

Consider this column not an angry response, but one puzzled by Colin’s surrender. A few weeks ago, Colin wrote a column about cities being important because they are the places where everything happens.

 

We need people like Colin here, but if he chooses to leave, someone else will fill the vacuum he leaves, and we’ll miss his reporting on incidents with HPD.

 

My interactions with HPD could fill a book. Generally, experience shows me that honorable officers fill out the ranks of HPD, they just take orders from people who emphasize the wrong priorities.

 

For example, if I take photos of the wrong person, I can be surrounded by six officers in under 30 seconds.

 

Or, like this past Saturday, I threw a backyard kegger with three hardcore punk bands, (part of a bicycle race celebration known as an Alley Cat), HPD showed up twice in two hours for noise complaints (well before the noise ordinance kicked in, but that’s another qualm). No arrests, no bad blood. Good clean fun with loud, obnoxious rock and roll.

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Here's an e-mail exchange regarding Avery Doninger and this story way back in June.

 

From an anonymous June 23, response to this story about Doninger's graduation: "your Burlington story is so full of partial and inaccurate statements, I don't know where to begin. You need to hear from both sides, not just one."

 

My response to mystery emailer: "Please, do begin. Begin by telling me what I did wrong, explain the inaccuracies and half-truths, and I will be more than happy to post your comments as a letter to the editor. Of course, I need your full name to
do so. Thanks for your input."

 

Finally, July 13, Al Gaens wrote his missive, titled "Lewis Mills." Here it is, unedited:

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Without demanding something, you get nothing.

 

If you’re a Zen Buddhist, perhaps that’s a great way of looking at life.

 

But shoot, not even Buddhists can find their nothing in modern America, which is why we must makes demands on the political power structure.

 

From local land use boards to the state Freedom of Information Commission to the presidential election, citizens must make concrete demands of those in power, lest they do nothing at all.

 

Last year, the Newtown Planning and Zoning Commission stopped the local Cambodian Buddhist Society from building a temple on land it owned in town. The Buddhists appealed, the superior court ratified the town’s decision, and the state Supreme Court upheld the lower court’s ruling.

 

Not far behind is the Meriden P&Z board, which denied a mosque a permit. Now imagine the Hartford P&Z rejecting the application to build Grace Lutheran Church or Asylum Hill Congregational Church, and then getting the highest court in Connecticut to stamp such religious bigotry with approval.

 

I can’t fathom it myself, but Dred Scott happened to, so it is not so far-fetched.

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Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal earns $110,000 annually, 28 places and tens of thousands of dollars behind highest paid AG Jerry Brown of California, according to LegalNewslist.com's ranking of pay for all 50 state attorneys general.

Brown, a former governor and presidential hopeful, rakes in $184,301. A minimum wage and some overtime behind him is Alabama's Troy King, who pulls in $163,744. Winning the bronze is New York's Andrew Cuomo at $155,500.

 

See the List

 

Chaz and AJ of WPLR proved today that they are the state's best morning radio show. They confronted a critic head on, and while they haven't won me over, they did the next best thing - they offered me four one-minute spots over the next four weeks to discuss pressing issues that they fail to cover.

 

What Luck! And now, I am trying to figure out how to use that time. I need your help to determine the best ideas for it.

 

But first, let's review how I got there, what I said and how listeners responded, and try to craft 240 seconds worth of message that resonates and potentially grows into something larger.

 

Twice since May, I've written posts critical of Chaz and AJ and their kid-gloves handling of elected officials. They've let the likes of Gov. M. Jodi Rell, Vice President Dick Cheney and presidential hopeful Sen. John McCain talk without answering a difficult question.

 

This morning, they gave me ten minutes of rebuttal time, after reading on the air some of my complaints about them. They found my posts on Myleftnutmeg.com and at the40yearplan.com, and they mentioned both websites prominently. Big up for MLN!

 

Then they asked me what I thought. I had a lot I wanted to say in 10 minutes, but basically, I said that the airwaves are public property, that Chaz and AJ are lucky to be doing the job they do, and that they have a responsibility to represent all points of view equally.

 

Link- and email your ideas for a minute a week on FM...

 

Scene: The back room at Hartford's Wood-n-Tap pub, Monday July 7, 2008. A group effort moneymaker, aimed at achieving public financing thresholds for state representative Kelvin Roldan and candidate for state representative Hector Robles.

 

Organizers advertised it on a Facebook page. More than 35 people, including City Hall's usual suspects from City Council, like Lieber-crat Cal Torres, from the mayor's office, like Glendowlyn Hall, and from the Registrar of Voters office like Sammy Vazquez paid to populate the room. They noshed on hors d'oeuvres with members from the Democratic Town Committee and others in political circles.

 

I. Rep. Kelvin Roldan

Roldan, the 29-year-old state representative, maintained I am not fair to him. In March 2007, I wrote a column about him landing a plum $90,000-a-year job at the Hartford Board of Education. He also makes $30,000 or so a year as a state representative.

 

In total, Roldan slurps in $120,000 at the public trough – a pittance compared to what Dick Cheney's pals take from the U.S. treasury, but still, Roldan is part of Eddie's coterie and your friends are your mirrors.

 

And I think that $120,000 in taxpayer salary for a 29-year-old man, no matter how accomplished, is too much. Roldan could argue that it is the same salary as a Superior Court Judge, and I would argue back that hey, a Superior Court Judge has to have had at least three years of school and another decade as a lawyer in practice.

 

Roldan swears that he works hard for his money. And he uses his salary for good. Like he said he financed exactly half of his trip to Kalamazoo, MI last month to learn about Promise Zones, a program that helps a municipality to borrow money through bonds to pay for high school graduates to go to college.

To Finish Parts I through VII...

 

It appears that Chaz and AJ, Connecticut's self-proclaimed number one morning show, are open to criticism.

 

Tomorrow morning, July 16, the morning show at 99.1 FM WPLR has invited me to appear on their show for 10 minutes to talk about alternative news and views. It's not much, but hey, they're trying.

 

I'll be sure to blog about it when it's all over.

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Montreal calls. Here's a summer reggae break. Enjoy the hell out of your weekend.

 

"Rally Round" by Steel Pulse

 

"Enjoy Yourself" by the Specials

 

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Yusuf James Yee graduated West Point in 1990. He went to Syria, studied Islam, and soon was a Muslim chaplain in the U.S. Army. He later attended to the spiritual needs of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. Then he began challenging U.S. military policies on the ground.

 

The Army accused him of spying. Superior officers threatened him with the death penalty. When treason failed to stick, they threw charges of adultery at him. For 76 days, the Army held him in the same Navy brig in South Carolina with Jose Padilla and Yaser Hamdi.

 

Yee didn't see Padilla or Hamdi because they were all isolated, and all were tortured with sensory deprivation tactics. Yee was never tried, charges were dropped, and he received not just an honorable discharge, but a commendation, too.

 

Sometimes, I get angry that I spent 13 hours in jail for blogging about a sitting governor's misguided policies. So when I saw Yee this past weekend at Hartford's Connecticut Convention Center for the Islamic Circle of North America conference, I asked him how he handled his anger.

 

"When I feel the bitterness, the anger, the frustration," he said, "I try to channel it into positive activities."

 

Yee humbled me. He survived the solitary confinement and torture tactics doled out by the U.S. government from lessons learned at West Point, and he is calm, at peace, almost, when discussing his ordeal.

 

Nor is he merely preaching positive change. He has channeled his angry energy into social organizing and change – he earned a selection to serve as a Washington state delegate to the Democratic National Convention in Denver this summer.

 

Electoral change is the best avenue not just for Muslims, but for everyone, to reclaim our civil liberties, according to not just Yee, but the five other panelists who shared ideas with him during a discussion Saturday morning entitled "Stand Up and Claim Your Rights: The State of Contemporary Civil Liberties."

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Independence Day is universal. All people want to be free. So I liberated this photo from the old print photo archives at the Waterbury Republican-American more than a decade ago, when I was but a cub reporter.

 

I figured my good readers might enjoy this picture. Remember, Thomas Jefferson was 32 when he wrote the Declaration of Independence.

 

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The funny pages have not been the same since Berke Breathed quit the daily Opus routine almost 20 years ago.

 

I wish I could see what story lines he would cook up around the Obama-McCain campaign. McCain talking into a dead cell phone line for 18 minutes the other day takes the cake for me.

 

The Sunday-only version of Opus or Outland or whatever Breathed calls it now lacks the daily wit and topical humor of the old Bloom County.

 

Take, for example, this prescient cartoon panel from 1988, when Frank Jones, the father of Oliver Wendell Jones, accurately predicts the political leaning of the first black American president.

 

Did Frank think it would be two decades before America saw a black man even come close to the White House? Who knows the recesses of Berke Breathed's imagination?

 

In 1988, Obama has just entered into Harvard Law School. He was just beginning his storied rise to the top of the law review to community organizer to U.S. Senate seat. But did he know he would someday be an American dauphin? As a conservative?

 

If I am a liberal, then Obama looks more and more like conservative. I wouldn't expect any other analysis of him at Counterpunch, especially from a civil rights attorney whose son is three-time national Ralph Nader presidential campaign staffer.

 

Yet when the Nation goes after Obama's economists, and the critique is reprinted at the Huffington Post, Obama's rightward tilt isn't a figment of the leftist imagination:

The economic advisors who are assisting Senator Obama's campaign are helping him stake out a position on the subprime lending crisis 'to the right of not only populist Edwards but Clinton as well.'

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