The war on drugs has claimed another politician: Ned Lamont will moderate a forum at the "Drug Policy for the 21st Century" conference at Central Connecticut State University, Wednesday, February 4, 2009.

 

National legalization experts like keynote speaker Ethan Nadelmann from the Drug Policy Alliance, and panelist Jack Cole, from Law Enforcement Against Prohibition will lead the conference, co-sponsored by CCSU's Peace Studies Department and its Institute for the Study of Criminal Justice. Tickets are still available for the conference here.

 

Give Lamont some credit for guiding the afternoon's premier panel, featuring Connecticut anti-prohibitionists like Cliff Thornton, whose 2006 Green Party campaign for governor I managed, former Hartford City Councilman Bob Painter and A Better Way's Lorenzo Jones.

 

But surrounded by activists openly touting legalization, with no one on the panel to argue for the drug war, you think that Lamont, who enjoys a part-time professorship in the Peace Studies Department at CCSU, would be forthcoming about his opinions and history with illegal drugs.

 

"No, I am not answering any of those questions," Lamont said when I asked him if he had ever done any illegal drugs. Nor would he go on the record to analyze prohibition.

 

"It is a long overdue debate for the state of Connecticut," Lamont would only say. "As a moderator I am going to do everything I can to be neutral. I am going to be a provocateur."

 

So Ned is playing his participation like a man who is running for office in 2010. And frankly, I tire of leadership - or those who purport to want to lead society via electoral office - equivocating on the most intense, important issues of our day.

 

Lamont did not make the war on drugs an issue in his Senate campaign. So when did he have this epiphany that the war on drugs was bad? Or does he think by lending his world-famous, Lieberman-slaying name to a conference that endorses legalization, he can still straddle this fault line of an issue?

 

"A leading indicator of a politician's character is their stance on the drug war, or lack thereof," Thornton said.

Link...

Mayor Eddie Perez will be indicted and arraigned tomorrow.

 

What he will be arraigned and indicted for is unknown, and what counts are being leveled is unknown. But I have it from three solid sources that he will be arraigned and indicted tomorrow.

 

City Councilman Luis Cotto is one of the three people who has heard that Eddie Perez will be indicted tomorrow. One source indicates that Carlos Costa is under arrest.

 

"If all this is true, I don't know what to compare it to, all I can think of is Maria (Perez's wife). I think of the person before I think of the politician," Cotto said.

 

Cotto has known Eddie for years, and "My initial thing is that this is unfortunate. I am waiting to see what happens next."

 

Councilman Matt Ritter said he didn't know what the charges were, but had heard that the indictment included bribery and forgery of evidence.

 

"It is a very disappointing to hear these allegations and it is truly a sad day for the city of Hartford," Ritter said. "All nine of us are supposed to do everything we can to uphold the public trust. Our roles are non-permanent and also ones that when we are in office, are expected to uphold the most ethical conduct and behaivor. Having said that, we are in America, we are inncoent until proven guilty."

 

Ritter said council would be studying its powers and its options.

 

"This is the most sobering, disapointing and sad day for the city of Hartford," Ritter said. "We'll see what the Mayor has to say tomorrow, but these are very sad allegations."

 

Perez appeared on WNPR's Where We Live Monday, January 26 and he said that he basically performing business as usual, and the threat of indictments don't affect his daily work schedule.

 

Here is the link to John Dankosky's interview with Perez this morning.

Link...

Put "Visual Illness" on your to do list: Tuesday night, Cloud 9, on South Green.

 

More serious posting later. Been working this weekend, so I can go out and have fun this week after work and school.

 

Oh yeah - if you missed John Kelly as Joni Mitchell at Real Art Ways this weekend you don't know drag queens performing.

 

UPDATE - the pop locking and breackdancing on display at Cloud 9 on Congress street was awesome. More on it later.

For an interesting read, go here.

When President Obama went to sleep late Tuesday night, January 20, 2009, I bet it bugged him that he goofed the oath of office. Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr. blundered his part, too. Obama likely comforted himself by thinking that he is merely human, and prone to mistakes.

 

At first, when my frozen ears heard it echo from the loudspeakers across the mall in Washington, D.C., I thought "No, they couldn't have." I asked some of the millions of people surrounding me – did Roberts and Obama just goof up the oath of office?

 

No one else seemed to catch it. Maybe that's evidence that you can fool most of the people. When I finally arrived home at 2 a.m. Wednesday, January 21, I scanned online, and indeed, other journos caught it. Maybe that's evidence as to why we need journalists – they are trained, paid observers.

 

The mishap on the oath of office, combined with the fact that Obama needed to have been sworn in by noon according to law, but didn't take to oath until shortly after noon worried me for a moment that some on the right would attack his presidency for that.

 

Yet the literal flag waving and the cheer that erupted from the millions on the mall after Roberts said "Congratulations, Mr. President" made me weep tears of joy. The nightmare of the last eight years is over.

 

The crowd froze their patooties off to secure his position as leader, and insure the triumph of the ballot over the bullet, as Sen. Dianne Feinstein noted in her inaugural introductions.

 

Four years ago, on a similarly cold January day in DC, I determined that come hell or highwater, I wasn't missing the 2009 inaugural, whether it was a Democrat, Republican, Green, Libertarian, Independent or Barking Spider who would take the oath of office.

 

Tuesday's inaugural reminded me on some levels of the three previous inaugurals I have attended – Clinton's in 1993, and George W. Bush's in 2001 and 2005. Yet Oabam’s carried more than all three of those combined, and I'm not just talking crowd size.

The rest of the Report from Washington, D.C. ...

Chalk up another empty lot for the historical apathy of Mayor Eddie Perez. Saturday morning, January 17, 2009, driving down Franklin Avenue, I caught a glimpse of another piece of Hartford's past demolished.

 

Even though the building at 118-136 Franklin Avenue, on the corner of Shultas Place in the South Green neighborhood, was listed in a historically significant neighborhood, forces conspired to allow its destruction. 

 

We should mourn the passing of a building from 1906, as we did for the two prior historic structures in the South End that Eddie Perez failed to protect - the mixed-use dentist's office on Franklin Avenue crushed for a drug store, and the 1888 Italianate on Wethersfield and Airport that fell for a box drug store.

 

I used to bicycle down Franklin Avenue to work, dreaming of the possibilities for the edifice at Shultas Place - a small neighborhood boarding school, a community center, a media center, or even its original use - mixed use retail and housing.

 

Once, the boards blocking the doors had opened, and I peered inside. The dusty floor sagged so much, I dared not even enter, lest I fall into the basement. Though dilapidated, the building was saveable.

 

A few weeks back, Hartford's tireless housing advocate Rafie Podolsky of the Hartford Preservation Alliance sent out a clarion call for help, since the city was doing nothing:

Like a number of other historic and architecturally significant buildings in Hartford neighborhoods, this building has been vacant for many years, is in seriously deteriorated condition, and needs a great deal of work. It is, however, possible to stabilize and revitalize it. It is also well worth the time and effort required to do so.  

 

The city issued a demolition order in February but delayed action to allow the owner to try to find a use.  We believe he did not succeed in finding such a use only because, at the time, he tried to sell the building for an unrealistically high price, in the process discouraging at least one interested developer. 

Link to New England's Razing Star...

In the hallway overlooking downtown Hartford, outside ballrooms 21-23 of the Connecticut Convention Center, more than 150 people created an exciting breakfast din, mingling and networking at the MetroHartford Alliance Rising Star Breakfast, Tuesday morning, January 13, 2009.

 

Inside the large empty conference room, rows of empty seats sat waiting for the crowd to migrate in to hear the keynote speaker: Mayor Eddie Perez. Perez stood alone talking with Oz Griebel, chairman of the MetroHartford Alliance. Mayor Perez chewed on his fingertips, listening to Griebel. After a few minutes, Oz gave me an opening.

 

Mayor, I said, I missed last night's city council meeting, do you know if council voted to hire Nancy Johnson as a lobbyist?

 

He didn't know whether the council voted for his $13,000 a month proposal to hire a federal representative, but during the conversation, he talked as if it was a done deal.

 

"We've hired a lobbyist," he said.

 

Turns out it was a done deal. Council voted 7-1-1 - seven in favor of hiring the former Republican Congresswoman from New Britain, with one no (Luis Cotto) and one abstention (Larry Deutsch).

 

"There is a little thing called federal support," Perez said, noting that the city has a dike system that needs $50 million worth of fixing. "We can't do that locally."

 

So Perez delegated the responsibility of hiring a lobbyist and running the search process to his Chief of Staff.

 

"Matt Hennessey represented the Mayor's office," Perez said. Perez took Hennessey's recommendation to hire Johnson and her new firm, the Tennessee law/lobbying firm of Baker Donelson. Perez then sent it to City Council for a rubber stamp.

 

"I think you'll see why," Perez promised. "Many communities have lobbyists. We want to show Washington, D.C. what our priorities are on a 24/7 basis."

 

What Perez told the MetroHartford Alliance...

Former Congresswoman Nancy Johnson couldn't win enough votes in Connecticut's Fifth Congressional District to secure re-election in 2006.

 

Come Monday, January 12, Johnson needs only five votes in Hartford's Court of Common Council to win a $13,000 a month, six month lobbying contract for her new employer, the Tennessee law/lobbying firm of Baker Donelson.

 

That's more than $65,000 from January to June 2009, with an option to renew for another six months, to lobby for Hartford's wish list of $50 million for levee repair, and a few million more for a new public safety complex.

 

The city put the federal lobbying contract out to bid, and Mayor Eddie Perez's chief of staff Matt Hennessey and former mayoral aide Derek Donnelly winnowed the responses down to five finalists based on price, experience and other factors, according to City Councilman Matt Ritter.

 

Ritter and Council President Calixto Torres helped Hennessey and Donnelly, who was recently laid off, interview the five finalists. Baker Donelson gave the best presentation, Ritter said.

 

"Nancy Johnson was in the interview, but she was not the lead presenter," Ritter said. "She had three other people with her. She talked about what she does, more health care and things like that."

 

If Johnson will not lead Baker Donelson's team of former Congressional staffers to lobby for Hartford, why does her mug grace page one of Baker Donelson’s proposal? Ritter acknowledges may be a misplay on their part.

 

"It's probably because she is from Connecticut," he said. But the voters of Connecticut showed her the door, and voted in Chris Murphy, whose father is Ritter's boss at the Hartford law firm of Shipman and Goodwin.

 

Baker Donelson won because it has expertise in environmental issues, which would help with the levee, Ritter said. Nor does Baker Donelson represent a lot of other cities.

 

Even still, Ritter does not know if Johnson's lobbying proposal will pass.

 

"I don't know if we will have five votes," Ritter said. "It is a gamble. The fee is not contingent on them giving you success. They may not be able to get you success. I think it is a calculated risk worth taking now."

 

Councilman Luis Cotto doubts the need for such a $13,000 a month roll of the dice.

 

"That is hard pill to swallow," Cotto said. "$13,000 a month is more than I make a year. There is no guarantee. What has been our track record with lobbyists? Maybe we are wasting our money."

Link to the rest of the story...

If it's winter, it means one thing: Mayor Eddie's hot air is warming up my mailbox. Yep. The new Fall/Winter 2008 edition of the Mayor's Update, that despicable piece of taxpayer financed propaganda, arrived in the post this week (2009).

 

The Update reflects the pains of the recession/downturn, yet Mayor Perez fails to understand that in this terrible city budget climate, he should not even be indulging in such narcissistic political porn.

 

Where the Mayor used to spend $12,000 per eight-page issue of the Mayor's Update, the new Mayor's Update, probably cost $10,000, because it is only six pages.

 

The budget cut is stressing the Mayor's image-shaping abilities. Where he used to hold an 87 percent appearance rate in color action photos in the Mayor's Update - 16-for-19, August 2006 and 19-for-21, March 2008- the slimmer tri-fold design cuts his appearances down to 70 percent (10-for-14). Although, he probably deserves quality points for the celebrity photo-op with Bill Cosby.

 

We oughtn't be so generous in such tough times. The Mayor says we all have to do more with less. To be true to his word, the Mayor should have appeared in 13 of 14 photos. He is not meeting his maximum publicity for the taxpayers' buck. Is that old grifter is slipping? Has he lost his touch?

 

Link to The Mayor's Update v. The Hightower Lowdown ...

Jesse Jackson says that we should include graduation rates in collegiate football rankings in order to refocus the need for academic success in sport.

 

During a press conference at the International Bowl festivities on Friday, January 2 in Toronto, I asked him if he thought that we should pay college basketball and football players.

 

He wasn't ready to go the pay route, but acknowledged considerable issues with the system. I'll post the video from the interview soon. I really wanted to ask him how Fred Hampton would have viewed college sports today.

 

Maybe Jesse Jackson needs to read the story about Tampa Bay Buccaneers linebacker Derrick Brooks, in the December 1, 2008 edition of Sports Illustrated. The cover of this edition of SI highlighted a story about Oklahoma football whupping Texas Tech.

 

While seeing college football grace the cover of a major magazine, seems indicative of its importance in the professional sports hierarchy, the grandest evidence of the NFL using the NCAA as a free minor league in this edition comes from a pro: Brooks himself.

 

Long-time football writer Peter King scribed a story about all of Brooks' thoughts and preparation that went into one tackle in a game, called "What the 'Backer Sees." This gem of a piece explains how Brooks, a veteran defenseman, views the NCAA:

For years, Brooks has mentally catalogued the moves and tendencies of college players he might have to tackle one day. On that October afternoon in 2004, (running back Adrian) Peterson, then a 19-year-old Oklahoma freshman, burned Texas for 225 yards. On his third carry of the game, he broke off a 44-yard misdirection play.

He runs from color.

It may be surprising that a 10-time Pro Bowl linebacker would study players who are still three or four years from making it to the NFL. But even now, the day before he faced the Vikings, the 35-year-old Brooks settled into his den again to watch Florida quarterback Tim Tebow and running back Percy Harvin in the Gators' rout of South Carolina.

"Some people relax or get recharged by going to the Europe or going to the beach," Brooks said. "For me, it's studying young kids. The one edge I feel no one will ever have over me is the mental edge of knowing players."

If that isn't enough, how about this story in the Saturday, January 3, 2009 New York Times: "Barely Teenagers, Already Groomed for Stardom." The piece, filed under "NCAA" on the Times' website, discusses a new developmental all star game for talented middle school kids who seem bound for professional glory.

 

While at least one NCAA coach thinks it is pressuring kids too early, at least the organizers of this game are up front about their aims of creating professional players.

Organizers are billing the bowl as an event similar to the Little League World Series, but coaches and others say it opens a path toward professionalism already traveled by other sports, like basketball, golf and tennis. It is another example of America’s seemingly endless search for the next great star.

And for those who see organized, violent sports like football as creating a culture of tribal warfare that grooms kids for military life, look no further than this connection:

"The Football University Youth All-American Bowl is the brainchild of SportsLink Inc., a sports-marketing company based in Wharton, N.J., that operates the U.S. Army All-American Bowl, an annual all-star game for the nation’s top high school seniors.

I know I am a lonely voice out here talking about college sports as pro, when even Jesse Jackson doesn't agree with me. But to me, the evidence overwhelmingly shows that our society treats NCAA football as professional, but the students going through the NFL's developmental mill don't receive any of the millions of dollars it generates.

NCAA As Pro Sports...

Is NCAA Division I football a minor league for the NFL? The collegiate career of UConn running back Donald Brown answers that question affirmatively.

 

Brown led the nation in rushing this year, and capped his All-America 2,000-plus yard season by plowing the University at Buffalo defense for a career best 261 yards Saturday, January 3, 2009 in the International Bowl in Toronto.

 

More than 40,000 flocked to Toronto to pay to see Brown rack up more than 260 yards rushing. ESPN2 broadcast the game live, showing cable TV and sports land that Brown was now one of college's all-time great rushers. The press breathlessly reported on his decision to go pro.

 

The AP played it cutesy:

"OK, tell them, bud," Coach Randy Edsall said, slapping Brown on the back at the postgame interview table.

"I'm not coming back," Brown said. "I'm going to pursue the NFL."

He then apologized for saying three weeks ago that he planned to return to Connecticut for his senior season.

The nation's leading rusher said he made the commitment to return to stop speculation and negate a potential distraction for his team heading into the game.

The AP skirts the larger issue - instead of calling a fib a fib, the AP pawns Brown's school-sanctioned, coach-condoned dishonesty as taking one for the team. If he said he was going pro, we wouldn't win, therefore, it is okay for him to tell a white lie. What of the academic integrity of the school?

 

Perhaps our society has become a touch too accustomed to obfuscating, and justifying those half-truths to maintain order and self-interest. Before the bowl game, no matter its outcome, Brown decided he was going pro. Does Brown's mindset - his intent - cast into doubt his status as an amatuer?

 

Maintaining amateur status is a big deal. Shutters whir when a star high school player signs a commitment letter for a four-year scholarship offer from a big-time school. The amateur contract comes fully loaded with the NCAA's baggage: other than the academic fee waivers, players merit no payment, not even a hamburger from a coach.

 

Brown, though, determined that his stellar achievement opened the door for a better remuneration deal from the NFL. He utilized the bowl game as a final advertisement to NFL teams interested in purchasing his services in the NFL Draft.

 

I would've liked to have asked Brown about his story, which is ethically tame compared to some of the more egregious corruption we've seen in college football over the past few decades.

 

The International Bowl fully credentialed a two-person video team from the 40-Year Plan.com. Armed with a camera, a question, and field passes for the floor of the stadium formerly known as the SkyDome as fully credentialed press, we were ready to interview away.

 

After the game, we took our interrogatory to the first player we could grab - UConn cornerback Jasper Howard. Howard had an eventful afternoon, fumbling a kick return or two, but playing solid defense. Did he think this game was professional entertainment?

 

Howard said he felt like he was a professional, with the atmosphere of all the fans and media and attention. Then Mike Enright, the football representative at UConn's Sports Information Office, told us no interviews were allowed on the field after the game. I said we had press passes. Enright said he didn't give a shit.

 

My videographer dutifully turned off the camera, knowing it wasn't fit for family entertainment. Soon enough, we will post a fuller report on this topic from the International Bowl. But when Enright cursed at me, I, dumbfounded, repeated his assertion: "You don't give a shit, Mike?"

 

Yes, he said, I don't give a shit. I suppose that being in Canada, claiming the First Amendment as protection wouldn't help much. So I pointed out that Donald Brown interviewed with a network television camera crew right behind us, in the chaos that was UConn's midfield victory celebration.

 

Mr. Enright told us that UConn does things for certain people. How does a media outlet get to be one of those certain people?

 

Is NCAA Division I College Sports Professional Fun?

As ignominious days go, this is an anniversary worth marking. Two years ago today, I found myself in jail for 13 hours, held on $75,000 bond, for the crime of intimating protest in the United States of America.

 

The details that I can release are here. I am prosecuting a federal civil rights lawsuit over the injustice I suffered, and it is progressing slowly. We should be deposing a number of arresting officers this week.

 

My attorney sent word last week that the defense will try again to depose me on Wednesday, January 14 at 10 in Hartford. I'm ready.

 

And finally, I am hoping that the state police will have completed a Freedom of Information Act request I submitted, modeled from the work of the Maryland branch of the ACLU.

 

The Maryland state police actively kept a database of more than 50 anti-establishment activists - whether they were anti-war, anti-nukes, anti-death penalty or pro-environment. This spying on community groups may be prevalent, and we need to stop it.

 

More later.

 

Free Kenny!

The Senator from Aetna finally responded to my early November suggestion that he vote to yank Lieberman's Homeland Security chairmanship.

 

Label Dodd's December 17 letter Exhibit A as to why people are cynical about writing their elected representatives.

Like you, I was very disappointed with many of the actions taken by Senator Lieberman during the 2008 presidential campaign.

Sidebar comment: What is a phone conversation between Dodd and Lieberman like? What kind of a relationship do they have? Does Lieberman even give a crap what Dodd thinks? I think not. Why? Read on.

Moreover, I understand the concerns of those who believe that Senator Lieberman should have been removed from the chairmanship of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs because of his behavior.

Sidebar Comment: Yet, Dodd also understands that his cheating on Aetna with Countrywide is as pathetic as Lieberman's marriage to McCain.

 

Cross-posted at MyLeftNutmeg

From my archives: I wrote this piece in spring 1994 for a magazine class my senior year at Syracuse University (Check out the .pdf from the prototype we called Seriously.) With all the press about heroin in the suburbs lately, I think this contribution to the dialogue remains valid. I tightened up a few words I couldn't live with, and I added a few details about the drug, but it 95 percent original.

I lived with Pat and Colin, the people in this story, the insane year that they started to do heroin. Last I heard seven or eight years ago, Pat and Colin were doing okay. I wish them only the best now. Hopefully, they’re lucky enough to be clean. And we're all lucky enough to be alive. Happy Holidays.

 

Rochester, NY, February 9, 1993. Today is Pat’s 20th birthday. His favorite band is playing at a small theater in town. He celebrates by snorting some heroin.

 

"I started using it because all the other drugs I was using weren't getting me high enough," Pat says. "It me feel unbelievable. It was dangerous, uncharted territory."

 

Syracuse, NY, May 12, 1993. Sunlight, rare in Syracuse, shines into Pat's bedroom. It is the last day he will live in Syracuse. After spending the last two years tripping on LSD, freebasing cocaine and selling marijuana to pay for his habit, he has now flunked out of two colleges.

 

Tomorrow, he will move home to Rochester to run his landscaping business. He watches his favorite soap operas, but he feels alone and bored. He snorts a bag of heroin.

 

Pat's friend stops in, and Pat asks him for a ride to Tully, 20 minutes due south. Pat wants to check on his blue Volkswagon van because the man servicing it lives on a street endangered by a mudslide.

 

On the way, they stop for some hot French fries. Pat has a few, then throws up on the side of his friend's station wagon.

 

"Heroin gives me an upset stomach," Pat says. "I'll clean it off later."

 

They pull up to the street his van is on, but a policeman sits in his car, watching the mudslide area, blocking the road. With pupils shrunken to pinheads, Pat says he will get them past the cop.

 

He chats with the cop for 10 minutes, but gets nowhere. So they leave.

 

Rochester, NY, May 20, 1993. Pat mows some laws and earns enough cash to pick up his van, then tour with Phish and the Grateful Dead. Sumer means live music under the moon and drugs.

 

"Heroin took you to another place where you had no cares about anything but yourself and the drug that you were on," Pat says. "I lost all grasp of reality. It basically really fucked me up."

 

Chicago, IL, June 16, 1993. Pat gets a scare when his friend Colin's heart stops beating for two minutes after shooting up outside a Dead show. Someone saves Colin using CPR. The dreamy narcotic high of heroin results because the opiate slows your metabolism. Too much heroin will make the heart stop beating.

 

Colin's been injecting heroin since his birthday in May. But Pat decides that since he only snorts, he has little to worry about. Delivery mechanisms don't matter: once heroin enters the bloodstream, cells undergo a chemical change in which they need it to function, thus creating an almost instant addiction.

 

"It started once in a while," Pat says. "It turned into a way of life. They it took my life away."

 

Continue "It Took My Life Away..."

To amuse myself on a snowy afternoon, I made this handy chart comparing the accomplishments and not-so-accomplishments of the two elected female Republican Party Governors: M. Jodi Rell of Connecticut and Sarah Palin of Alaska.

 

After spending some time thinking about them, the inescapable conclusion struck me: although separated by a continent thousands of miles wide, Rell and Palin aren't that different.

 

This comparison should've been done long ago, and it will only be valid for a short while, because very soon, a third GOP female governor will assume office.

 

Arizona's GOP secretary of the state Jan Brewer will accede to the governorship after Democratic Governor Janet Napolitano assumes her position in the Obama administration as head of the Department of Homeland Security.

 

Will Jan be like Sarah or Jodi? Already Jan's a syllable short, so read while the readin's good.

 

Veep:
Rell: Relatively obscure but popular governor who made McCain's short list.                                   
Palin: Relatively obscure but popular governor who sank McCain's chances.

 

Higher Ed:
Palin: Filed through six colleges, but eventually earned a bachelors' degree.
Rell: Dropped out of two schools, never graduated, but holds two honorary doctorate degrees.

 

Political start:
Palin: Three terms as city councilor in Wasilla.
Rell: Five-term state representative from CT's 107th District.

 

Maiden Name:
Palin: Heath.
Rell: Reavis.

 

A Figure in History the Guv Could Relate To:
Palin: Machiavelli - Backstabbed mentor to run for higher officer.
Rell: Colonel Klink – "I know nothing." Feigned ignorance and indignation after corruption scandal sank her mentor and predecessor.    

       

Western Zodiac:
Palin: Aquarius - Truthful, talented, original, freedom loving, aloof, opinionated, proud.
Rell: Gemini - Quick, entertaining, charming, youthful, capricious, unpredictable, flirts.

 

Chinese Zodiac:
Palin: 1964, Year of the Dragon - Magnanimous, stately, ambitious, loyal, imperious, tyrannical, demanding, prejudiced, dogmatic.
Rell: 1946, Year of the Dog - Honest, intelligent, attractive, loyal, cynical, lazy, cold, judgmental, stubborn, dogged.

 

Electoral use of racism:
Palin: Political speeches and rallies about “The Real America” unleashed wave of hate speech.
Rell: Prevented first black candidate for Governor from appearing in televised debates.

 

Compassionate Conservativism:
Palin: After pardoning turkeys, interviewed with TV news in front of turkeys being slaughtered.
Rell: Couldn’t pardon Michael Ross, stood by as state prison-industrial complex slaughtered him.

 

Rell, Palin on Media, Mass Transit, Marijuana and More...

Ron Pitz of Knox Parks is keeping us informed. He sent me an e-mail with an explanation from the powers that be about the tree removal on the Mass Mutual site. Earlier, he had informed us of the destruction of the trees.

 

Apparently the soil surrounding the Mass Mutual building is contaminated with arsenic and according to the EPA and the DEP, the top layer of soil has to be removed in order to remediate it. The trees needed to be removed to complete this soil remediation process.

 

The fact is, arsenic in soil as well as other soil contaminants like lead, will stay in the soil until the soil is disturbed which releases it into the air. Tree roots will hold contaminants in place in the soil keeping the contaminants locked in place with little or no run off as long as the roots keep the soil from eroding.

 

Disturbing the soil with activities such as removing the trees and digging out the stumps will release the contaminants into the atmosphere and soil will erode washing contaminates into storm drains where eventually they will end up in the Ct River.

 

They have plans to replant some of the trees after the remediation process but this corner will never be the same….The site should have been left intact.

 

If they have plans to turn the corner into residential use then this process could not have been avoided. You can’t have kids playing in contaminated soil……..I have not heard of any immediate plans for the building so why be so quick to destroy such an important part of the essential urban forest?

Yeah - I'll agree the destruction of the trees was quick. And I would be they knew the neighbors might get mad. God forbid the Hartford dispatch Josh King to an Asylum Hill NRZ meeting.

Elsewhere around Hartford, Heather Brandon with a first person view from the Charter Revision Commission meeting last week. City Council representation by district? It is being discussed. And along with that change, I'd like public campaign financing for the mayoral race, and instant runoff voting.

 

More pictures of work on Contaminated soil...

Before I ramble, Ron Pitz over at the Knox Parks Foundation just sent me an e-mail entitled "Elm Trees." It's worth printing:

 

"By any chance have you had the misfortune to go by the old Mass Mutual building in Asylum Hill lately? Those 'caretakers' have destroyed most of the trees on that property which were some of the largest and healthiest trees in Hartford.

 

"That corner used to be the oasis in the urban desert for us. I would go out of my way to drive by that spot and show the inner city young adults in my program those specimen trees. This gave them an opportunity to see what kind of a legacy they are leaving by planting trees and what the small trees they are planting would look like at maturity.

 

"Just imagine the carbon that those giants sequestered and the oxygen that they produced. This is another huge loss for Asylum Hill and the city as a whole....."

 

Ron, I bicycled by there recently, and failed to see it partly because my indignation at that part of Asylum Hill is reserved for the demolition of the last of the old row house buildings on Fraser Place. That's what Ron meant by "another huge loss." Hey, why leave anything standing?

 

I also probably missed the trees because I bicycle at night - it is law school exam time, and you need a break when you need a break.

 

Law school exams represent the worst of the educational process. The system demands that you condense 120 hours worth of learning into a three-hour essay.

 

It's roughly 120 hours because the semester is 15 weeks of classes. Each class represents about three hours weekly of actual instructional time, bolstered by a minimum of five hours preparation (often more) for each class.

 

Compression is somewhat beneficial for real life, but it seems arbitrary. For my last exam this semester, I was allowed one – yes, exactly one – sheet of paper, for the most complicated class I have taken yet. At least we're not killing trees.

To the rest of my meandering column for print media...