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Wednesday, November 7, 2012

LOBSTERGATE UPDATE

Last August I posted about a Hartford Police Officer who was being accused of stealing lobster from the Stop and Shop store on New Park Avenue.You can read that posting here.

That posting received the most comments ever on the blog and strong feelings were posted about the officers fitness to be a Police Officer based upon her judgement and choices she made. It also evolved to name calling that it was a racial issue.  I'm not sure what race had to do with it, since right is right and wrong is wrong . The only color that should have come into it was orange, when she dropped the larceny lobsters into the boiling water.

Sources are telling me that this latest Chapter in HPD scandals may be coming to a close soon.This will come as a relief to many officers who have repeatedly called me asking why she was still allowed to work the streets in a cruiser, covering the District area that the Stop and Shop is in none the less. I guess it is that old saying, innocent until proven guilty.

From what I have have been told, the guilt is about to be proven and the Officer continues to find herself in hot water. For anyone not aware, Stop and Shop has extensive video surveillance and anytime you make a purchase using you Stop and Shop card the purchase can be tracked and is recorded, so if you are scamming your purchases at the self checkout line , consider yourself forewarned.

Also, once those videos are obtained and used as part of a Police investigation they become "public Documents" as detailed under the Connecticut Freedom of Information laws. Now start reading between the lines here and make your own conclusions as to where this is going.

In accordance with the Freedom of Information Act, any blogger could request those videos to post  for the public to view. There is an exemption under the FOI laws that might actually prevent the release of those videos if they are part of an investigation that may result in criminal charges. If the videos could be used to prosecute the criminal case, that would prevent their release until an arrest was made. Until an arrest was made that would mean that they would not appear on a blog as public documents.

If there was no arrest, no criminal prosecution and the matter was handled administratively, that would mean the videos would then become public documents and they would be posted here. Hopefully that determination will be coming soon

URANIA WINS

The line of voters waiting at City Hall to vote, at this point the line wound through the atrium of City hall down the front stairs and out the back door of City hall, many of them sent their because the local polling places didn't know how to handle their requests for ballots
 
Four years ago, Urania Petit and the Working Families Party made history in Connecticut when Petit became the first third party registrar of voters elected on her own.Many have criticized the money spent for the third registrar, but the fact is the matter is that Urania is really the only one we are getting our money's worth from..

In a quote from the upset republican Registrar, he said that Petit's salary could fund elections in Hartford. The same could be said for Bramante and his salary. Ask Bramante how many voters he has registered in the last four years, Urania has registered over 10,000.

Yesterdays election operations clearly show how incompetent the Registrar's office is, and this is where I would agree with Bramante, we need better results for the money that is spent in that Office. It is probably the most incompetent operation at City Hall, and that is saying a lot when you look at City government operations. The office is ripe with political cronyism and money spent in a wasteful manner.

  Petit is the only Registrar that came up with budget saving ideas and ways to implement them for the last fiscal year. Unfortunately the Democratic and republican Registrar treat Petit as an outsider , and even though the Council responded to Petit's suggestions, Bramante and Vazquez, the Democratic registrar were financially reckless and proceeded to overspend their budget allocation by a couple hundred thousand dollars this year.

If Bramante wants to point the finger at expenditures, lets look at the Deputy Registrars. Each registrar has a Deputy Registrar they hand pick at a salary of $55,000 dollars a year. The Democratic Deputy, also serves as Clerk of the Senate at the legislature and still collects his full salary from the City, even when he is working full time at the Capitol while the legislature is in session. It would seem that if we can do without the clerk for months at a time, that might not be a position that needs to be filled in the Registrars Office, at least not on a full time basis.

I will be writing more over the next few days about the voting horror stories related to me by disenfranchised voters from Tuesdays election, including the voter who was told she couldn't vote because she was dead, the voter who was told that she couldn't vote because the records showed she had already voted by absentee ballot, even though she hadn't or the voter that was told she couldn't vote because she wasn't on the list, even though she was and the poll worker checking the lists apparently couldn't read.

Jeff Cohen at WNPR has more on the story, you can read it here

Monday, October 29, 2012

DRAMATIC SANDY VIDEO

The video below is of a Con Ed substation flooding and shorting out in Manhattan during Hurricane Sandy. The substation was at  E14th Street and the FDR

Monday, October 22, 2012

ITS URGENT TO IMPLEMENT THE FAITH BASED INITIATIVE

As is typical in Hartford, we tend to love meetings and planning but far too often those meetings don't translate into action on our streets. I hope that will not be the outcome of the "Faith based initiative" being spearheaded by Hartford's Police Chief James Rovella and Hartford City Council members.

Two meetings have been held so far and a lot of great ideas have been put on the table and several of the key players in the "faith community" have been at the table during the first two meetings held. Ideas on the table don't save lives in our streets, actions do.

The initiative needs to hit the streets for several reasons, but two that I want to mention here. One of the driving forces behind the initiative and planning was Council assistant Jean Ward. Jean organized and set up the meetings. In a verification of the saying that "only the good die young" Jean passed away two weeks ago of a brain aneurysm. From what I have been told, she was stricken during a sendoff for one of her sons who is in the military and was being deployed to Afghanistan. She never regained consciousness and died the following day

What greater tribute to her than to carry on her work and make sure the initiative gets off the ground and saves lives of our young people by preventing senseless violence.

Another reason is an unfortunate shooting death that took place this weekend. Sam Saylor has been at the initial meetings and took part in the formation of the Faith Based Initiative. Sam lost his son  to a shooting during an altercation behind the Betnances School Saturday afternoon. Shane Oliver was pronounced dead at Hartford Hospital about 6:18PM Saturday after efforts to save his life were unsuccessful.

The initiative can't start soon enough to cut down on this senseless violence.

THE CHAMELEON SENATE CANDIDATE.


I have been pretty clear that I support Chris Murphy for Senate, but I think I also need to make it clear how disgusting I find the McMahon Senate campaign to be. You never know from day to day what she stands for or which side of her mouth she will be talking out of.

The icing on the cake were her Obama ads that began running late last week. This woman will say or do anything to accomplish her quest to buy a Senate seat. She was nominated as a Republican, but I'm not sure how any self respecting Republican could possibly vote for her. She has essentially jettisoned the Romney campaign and any support for her Republican counterparts in her attempt to ride the coattails of President Obama in a heavily Democratic state.

To add to the fact that she will say or do anything, watch the video below when she explained why she voted for Mitt Romney in the August primary. What changed Linda? Maybe your support in the polls and now you need to jump on the Obama train? Even though she was apparently able to purchase the support of Hartford's 3rd District Rep. is she able to buy out Obama voters now also. I sure hope people aren't crazy enough to fall for this

It is also interesting how she urges to vote for her on the Independent line. Is McMahon embarrassed to actually admit she is running as a Republican. She seems to have avoided the Republican label at all costs, as if it is a bad thing





Does anyone in their right mind think that Linda McMahon will be an asset to President Obama as she would like us to believe through her advertisement. It is a ploy by a disgusting campaign to confuse voters into supporting someone that has no place representing anyone in the US Senate.

What changed from her overwhelming support fro Romney in August as she stated in the video above to her love of Obama now. I want someone in the Senate that we can trust, and that is not Linda McMahon. I hope the voters see through this and I hope the Republican Party now shows her the same level of respect she is showing to them as she solicits votes at any cost. And to anyone that would fall for her ad campaign, does anyone think that Linda McMahon will make President Obama's next term any easier?

Capitol Watch at the Courant had a column about this today, read that posting here, try to read the comments, it would appear that this strategy for the add seems to be backfiring with voters according to the comments

THIS COULD BE INTERESTING

What if the debate questions and answers were all put to music and song. That might get more people to pay attention