Foggy out there.
The GOP Congress passes bills to help endangered members, like our three Republicans. The Lower Farmington River and Salmon Brook Wild and Scenic River Study Act is one to tell the voters about, I'm sure.
Rell's connections to Rowland aren't hurting her, says the Waterbury Republican-American. We knew that.
Lawn sign violations in Stamford could get you fines of up to $90 per sign per day.
What else is happening?
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On Saturday, hundreds of people across the state (and New England) participated in 19th Annual Farmington River Watershed Association Clean-Up and the 10th Annual Connecticut River Watershed Source to Sea Clean-Up.
Here in Hartford on the South Branch of the Park River, Mary Rickel Pelletier of parkriver.org recruited Joe Barber and a bunch of Trinity College students to join in.
I gathered some Green Party folks, and Mary had a few other people cleaning. From about 1 to 345 pm, down by the bridge under Newfield Avenue, we pulled from the river and its banks:
• a gas stove
• a pickup truck roll bar
• a pickup truck tool box
• no less than 15 car tires and rims (not always connected)
• 4 shopping carts (including a gem from Caldors)
• six bicycles (none salvageable)
• 25 or more bags of litter/trash
• four golf balls
• at least 30 feet of pvc pipe
• two metal dining room chairs
• half a wooden adirondack chair
• an empty 55 gallon drum
• an empty trash can
• a metal table base
• two car bumpers
• one car steering column
• three steering wheels
• four car batteries
• two exercise bicycles
• multiple sections of chain link fencing
• a futon
• a car starter assembly
• a crack pipe
• a razr scooter
• a bird cage
And I know there are probably a few more choice items I am forgetting about, and who knows what environmental toxins we couldn't see. Within the one mile clean-up area, we saw a small oil spill. Further down, behind 900 New Britain Ave, we found a makeshift shelter that could've been a shooting gallery for junkies, a homeless hangout or just a drinking spot for kids that was full of urban debris like car seats, charcoal grills and a stash of aluminum siding. And downstream from that repository of crap dumped illegally, we found a mid-70s Trans-Am buried up to the dashboard in the river banks.
Aside from fueling my intense hatred for the automobile, the afternoon kindled my growing misanthropy. Studying the grotesque pile of refuse, I saw how self-government has been unable to check the environmental abuses of corporate capitalism.
Our local, state and federal governments fail to use the existing institutions available to them, like schools, to educate citizens about the environmental impacts of consumerism. Car companies are allowed to privatize the profit of their transit system, but we socialize the losses, like when people dispose of their dead cars in rivers.
On a most basic level, in CT we cannot even get a water bottle recycling bill through the legislature because of the powerful bottled beverage lobby. Yet we must expect more when it comes to preserving this planet.
The entire state of CT is a giant watershed of tributaries and wetlands from the melting snows of the Adirondacks, Berkshires, and the Green and White Mountain ranges. The Sierra Club should be embarassed for honoring Nancy Johnson. Shame on the Fifth District if it re-elects her. She is a sham. Environmental stewardship is more than passing throw-away legislation at the end of a session which saw you vote to abuse the environment with depleted uranium.
The Park River is what inspired Mark Twain to write Huckleberry Finn, and this is how we treat it. We're in trouble if we don't deal with this mess soon.
I've always been a fan of the idea of uncovering the Park River and getting rid of that miserable highway. Providence has a river flowing through its downtown, maybe Hartford should, too.
From Kevin Rennie (who writes about how the National Democrats are abandoning Chris Murphy):
Twelve-term incumbent Johnson knew early in this campaign cycle that Democrats were lusting after her seat. Unlike many incumbents, Johnson has no truck with complacency. The lady knows how to fight. That's one reason, The Washington Post noted last week, that Democrats are starting to think they need to look other places for vulnerable incumbents.
does this mean Alan needs a new campaign manager?
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