Welcome to The Now

 “ Very rarely do you have a film student come in to meet with somebody, to talk to them about what it is that they want to do — and not only talk to them but follow up in really rigorous ways. With Rashad, or with any student, it’s not about talent .” via CT Mirror .   “ This year we’ve seen such a skyrocketing of numbers that indicates how much people are willing to put their lives at risk in order to call attention to these conditions that are ultimately life-threatening for people. People are not willing to give up so easily or to have their spirits broken . ” via Prism Reports .  “ All cocaine produced in a year could fit on just over 1% of a single container ship. Imagine that scattered worldwide across innumerable boats, planes, vehicles, and people. ‘Bombing boats’ to stop drugs isn’t just cruel and illegal—it’s futile. ” via Common Dreams . “ I can’t even speak due to everything we saw. I lost my cousin, I was injured and he was martyred, not from the first ...

  Enter Josh Elliot : State Rep. Josh Elliott, D-Hamden, a liberal who recently predicted that Gov. Ned Lamont would not go unchallenged for the Democratic nomination if he runs in 2026, filed papers Tuesday creating a gubernatorial campaign committee. Unclear was whether Elliott was committed to an all-or-nothing run for governor or a campaign to test Democrats’ appetite for an alternative to Lamont, whose centrist politics on fiscal issues are a source of tension with some on the left. Elliott, who has called for a more progressive tax structure, said by text he will make a formal campaign announcement Monday in Hamden. Elliott, who declined further comment, ran for secretary of the state in 2022, staying in the campaign through the nominating convention, then opted to quit and seek reelection to the House. “I don’t think it’s an all-or-nothing,” said Rep. Anne Hughes, D-Easton, a progressive ally of Elliott. But she also cautioned against a comparison to 2022, saying, “I think t...

 It's possible that no one anticipated the voracity of ICE agents, but this has to be frustrating for Connecticut's residents:   On a recent Tuesday afternoon in a Hartford courtroom, a small crowd of about 20 people waited to be called before the judge. Some fidgeted nervously. None of them had a lawyer of their own. U.S. Immigration Judge Ted Doolittle called them forward, one by one, to the table facing him. An interpreter sat to his right, and an attorney from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security was on a video monitor. Those waiting their turn listened closely to the interpreter. “I am looking for a lawyer, but most either don’t answer or say that they are busy,” one woman told Doolittle. “I’ve looked for them, contacted a few, some didn’t answer and some didn’t want to take my case because they were working on other cases.”  The lack of an affordable and available lawyer was the common thread that bound this group together. Immigration courts fall under the fed...

  Mint Press News : The United States can't help but bomb hospitals. The Cradle : Palestinian Christians won't be allowed into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday.  Prism Reports : How did Obama's policies lead to borders under Trump? Scheerpost : Americans perception of Israel is changing, thanks to Gaza.  CT Mirror : No more Head Start for New England.

Quite heartbreaking : A few years ago, Dr. Steven Rogers, a physician in the emergency department at Connecticut Children’s Medical Center, started a new initiative. He wanted to screen every child age 10 and up who passed through the department for suicide risk. That’s around 15,000 kids a year.  “There’s lots of stigma around this question,” Rogers said. “I’d rather be able to identify kids who are low risk and need help versus when they’re an imminent risk or have already made an attempt.”   In Connecticut, 11 children have died by suicide so far this year, nine of those in the past few months. To put that in perspective, just six children 17 and younger died by suicide in all of 2023.  “I hope this isn’t a canary in the coal mine,” said Gov. Ned Lamont in late August at a roundtable event on youth suicide.  There were no clusters of deaths, according to the Office of the Child Advocate, and deaths were distributed across the state, as well as among races and...

Remember that this is currently a "blue state" with a Democratic Governor: Gov. Ned Lamont delivered his expected veto Tuesday of a vaguely written bill that was intended to provide up to $3 million in state aid to striking workers without explicitly saying so. Lamont was also opposed to a more transparent effort to provide jobless benefits, but he made no mention in his veto message of the rejected bill’s intent and instead focused on its lack of statutory standards. Without standards, Lamont wrote, “there is a risk of inefficiency, mismanagement and lack of transparency in their intended allocation.” The veto prompted an immediate backlash from labor leaders, including Ed Hawthorne, the president of the Connecticut AFL-CIO, which had made jobless benefits for strikers its top legislative priority. “Gov. Lamont has failed to hear the voices of thousands of working people who urged him to stand with striking workers,” Hawthorne said. “The governor had a choice — stand with c...

Case In Point : Rep. Robyn Porter, D-New Haven, who had neither filed papers creating a reelection committee, nor announced an intention to retire, was a no-show Wednesday night at her district nominating convention. Democrats in the 94th House District of New Haven and Hamden endorsed Steve Winter, a former city alder and longtime political activist, for the Democratic nomination without opposition. The assumption is Porter is retiring, though not giving notice. Aware that she had yet to file for reelection, House Majority Leader Jason Rojas, D-East Hartford, said he tried without success to reach Porter prior to the convention to inquire about her plans. She did not return calls or texts to Rojas, House Speaker Matt Ritter or others, nor she did return calls or a text from The Connecticut Mirror. Winter, 35, who lives in the same Newhallville neighborhood as Porter, said he expressed interest in running if Porter was retiring, but he arrived at the convention unsure if he would be a ...

  Very telling : President Joe Biden won the state’s Democratic presidential primary earlier this week, obtaining 84% of the roughly 65,500 total votes, according to tallies from the secretary of the state’s office. No other candidate managed to get even 3% of the vote. But about 11.6% of Democratic voters cast a ballot for “uncommitted,” a higher share than in 2020 and 2016. The uncommitted vote was seen as a way to protest Biden’s support for Israel after the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas and Israel’s invasion of Gaza. “They’re wasting their vote, and they are wasting my time,” Lamont said. “The hottest place in hell is reserved for those who stay neutral or can’t make up their minds at a time of moral crisis.” The uncommitted vote varied by town. In seven towns, more than 20% of voters choose uncommitted, although some of these towns didn’t exceed 300 votes across all candidates.

Hmmm ... Gov. Ned Lamont’s suggestion last month towards the end of his annual State of the State address that kids lock away their smartphones during the school day unexpectedly generated a wave of applause that still is resonating. “I’m getting a lot of feedback, more feedback on this than anything I’ve done in a while,” Lamont said Tuesday on a school tour. “And I think it really has hit a chord with parents and teachers, and the kids are OK with it.” Lamont, Attorney General William Tong and education Commissioner Charlene M.  Russell-Tucker visited Illing Middle School in Manchester, where school administrators are three months into a smartphone experiment begun before Lamont mused that schools might do well to emulate Beyoncé. The singer is one of the performing artists who sometimes require phones be locked in Yondr pouches, small neoprene bags that allow patrons to keep their phones but not use them to take calls or make recordings or photographs during performances. Manche...

From the CT Mirror : The General Assembly will consider emergency legislation Wednesday to spend $13.5 million to meet surging demand in winter energy assistance programs, top lawmakers announced late Tuesday. The measure will designate $10 million for the Connecticut Energy Assistance Program, the state’s primary winter heating assistance service, and another $3.5 million for Operation Fuel, a Hartford-based energy assistance nonprofit. Gov. Ned Lamont, who has been wary of using state funds to replace diminishing federal aid for energy assistance, indicated through a spokesman late Tuesday that he would support the measure. CEAP, which is administered by the state Department of Social Services, distributes federal Low Income Household Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) funds and is facing severe cutbacks. Congress rolled back LIHEAP funding this year to pre-pandemic levels. Connecticut has about $85 million to distribute this winter — well below the $110 million-plus it awarded last ...

Not something you'd want to hear considering the current housing climate: Black and Latino residents in Connecticut face higher chances of losing their homes as well as getting evicted across the state. That’s according to a report released this week by the Connecticut Voices for Children, an advocacy and research organization based in New Haven. The report shows the problem is worsened by restrictive housing construction laws and regulations throughout the state. It recommends more state government action to promote affordable housing. Any solutions would need to contend with sustained local opposition to denser housing, which shows no signs of dissipating any time soon. The report shows Black and Latino homeowners have higher rates of delinquencies on their mortgage payments, said Samaila Adelaiye, a research and policy fellow for Connecticut Voices for Children. “The percentage of Black and Latino households behind on mortgage payments is notably higher in Connecticut at 15.9% ...

 From the CT Mirror: Though Connecticut has eased state and municipal tax burdens on the poor and middle class significantly in recent years, it ranks behind 29 other states and the District of Columbia in one key fairness metric, according to a new report from a liberal Washington-based fiscal policy think-tank. The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy report ranked Connecticut’s tax system the 21st most regressive, meaning the poorest households pay the greatest share of their income and the richest pay the least. It’s one of 44 states with an overall tax system that worsens income inequality, according to ITEP; one of 41 that imposes the lowest rate on the top 1% of earners, and one of 34 that imposes the highest rate on its poorest. But in their 7th periodic “Who Pays” analysis of states’ tax burdens, ITEP analysts cited two areas that legislators and Gov. Ned Lamont recently made more progressive: lower state income tax rates for the middle class and a larger income tax c...

 Mint Press News: The Western countries who are giving Israel military aid .  CT Mirror: the medicine(s) being used to battle Opioid deaths . CNN: Spotify firing around 1,500 employees .

 Of course the question of why did CT need pandemic funds for education instead of just asking for money specifically for education should be asked.

Looks like the media is getting involved : A judge granted a motion by the Connecticut Mirror and The Day newspaper of New London to intervene in a lawsuit that could decide whether the Connecticut State Police release the names of troopers who are under investigation for allegedly falsifying or failing to report information on traffic stops. Superior Court Judge Rupal Shah issued an order on Monday granting the media organizations’ request to participate in the lawsuit, which was initiated by the Connecticut State Police Union in order to prevent the state from disclosing the names and badge numbers of more than a hundred state troopers. An audit performed by the Connecticut Racial Profiling Prohibition Project, which collects data detailing the race and ethnicity of people who are pulled over by police in the state, identified roughly 130 current and former state troopers who had a significant number of traffic stops between 2014 and 2021 that could not be corroborated using other da...

Very interesting development : Gov. Ned Lamont on Monday backed the chief state’s attorney’s decision to hand over to federal authorities a criminal investigation into state police who allegedly submitted tens of thousands of phony traffic stop tickets to Connecticut’s racial profiling database.  “I think it’s appropriate,” Lamont said. “I think Pat Griffin, the state’s attorney, thought it was important to step back and let them. We’re gonna coordinate in any way we can, be absolutely forthcoming, no stone left unturned.”  The governor’s comments were in response to a recent statement from Griffin, Connecticut’s top prosecutor, who first told WTNH News 8 that he has relinquished control of the criminal probe into the potential wrongdoing to the U.S. Department of Justice. “I think DOJ brings the tools and the resources necessary to conduct this investigation, on the one hand. On the other, I think that the investigation will be thorough,” Griffin said. “I think that it will b...

  One in particular is diapers (can't make all the women give birth and than not provide something, right?):  Over the past 10 years, distribution at Doug Adair’s Nashville diaper bank has swelled from a couple of thousand diapers a year to nearly 3 million. Running the bank, Adair has learned and relearned the critical role diaper access plays for families. But it hasn’t always felt like most other people knew that.  “I think more about diapers than anybody my age that is not wearing them — yet,” said Adair, a 68-year-old former mortgage banker turned diaper banker who got into this line of work because, in his words, he asked the second most expensive question he has ever asked in his life: “What can I do to help?” Adair started Nashville Diaper Connection because there were only two places where families could get free diapers in Nashville in 2013, and one of them had a six-week waiting list. The city has no federal, state or local assistance program for diapers speci...

 From a baby boom and working from home to deaths and evictions, read about how one state adapted . 

 Or more accurately, revert : A federal pandemic policy that guaranteed Medicaid coverage to hundreds of thousands of Connecticut residents is coming to an end. Typically, people who receive Medicaid, known as HUSKY in Connecticut, go through an annual process to confirm whether they still qualify for the program. But, during the pandemic, the federal government instituted a policy, known as “continuous enrollment,” that prevented states from kicking people off of Medicaid, even if they no longer qualified or failed to update their eligibility information. But, on March 31, continuous enrollment will end, kicking off a year-long process called “unwinding,” where everyone whose Medicaid coverage has been extended as part of the public health emergency will need to reevaluate their eligibility. In Connecticut, around 434,000 residents have had Medicaid coverage extended at some point over the past three years under the continuous eligibility rules. “Just the numbers alone make this r...

 Or rather, they can't get an accurate one : The first analysis of how Connecticut’s police officers use force in the course of their duties provides some insights, but officials on Thursday warned about drawing conclusions because of a lack of standards in data collection and incomplete participation among police departments. The report, issued by the University of Connecticut’s Institute for Municipal and Regional Policy, collected data from nearly 1,300 use-of-force reports submitted by 60 police departments across the state for incidents in 2019 and 2020. Connecticut is only the second state in the country, after New Jersey, to start collecting and independently analyzing use-of-force reports from all of its police departments. But in a presentation to the Police Officer Standards and Training Council before the report was released to the public on Thursday, the institute’s director, Ken Barone, cautioned against drawing too many conclusions from the data or trying to compare d...