Home  »  April, 2011

April 27, 2011

Watered Down but Not Drowned

Both the Chairman of the State Elections Enforcement Commission, Stephen Cashman, and former State Rep. Jonathan Pelto have keyed in recently on big changes to the State Elections Enforcement Commission included in the budget deal between Gov. Dannel P. Malloy and Democratic leaders in the General Assembly. There is no doubt that the State Elections [...]

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April 20, 2011

Disconnect-icut

Greater Hartford was dealt yet another economic blow as Hamilton Sundstrand announced today that they will lay off 200 machinists and move the jobs to Poland and Singapore. It wasn’t the only lousy news on the economic front this week. Though the state Department of Labor report showed a twelve-month increase in employment, Connecticut’s unemployment [...]

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April 18, 2011

What Common Cause Should Have Written

Several weeks ago, I wrote about my experience of hearing oral arguments in the US Supreme Court case McComish v. Bennett, which challenges a key component of publicly financed campaign systems, matching grants. As Connecticut is one of a handful of states experimenting with such a system, the constitutionality of this provision is of particular [...]

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April 17, 2011

Activism Changing the Terms of the Debate on Budget

As thousands of Connecticut residents undoubtedly race to finish their taxes, energetic subsets of their fellow Nutmeggers have been and continue to be engaged in civic activism that is changing the nature of the debate over taxation and spending in the Constitution State. Over the course of a remarkable seventeen town hall meetings, Governor Malloy has engaged the people of this state in a way unlike any in recent memory.

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April 11, 2011

All the way to the US Supreme Court

Just moments after the big clock overhead showed 10am, the Justices of the US Supreme Court took their seats on the highest court in America on Monday of this past week to hear a case with major significance for Connecticut. Hanging in the balance is a critical component of the state’s publicly funded campaign financing program that shelled out $27.1 million during the 2010 election cycle.

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