VOTE TOMORROW: Gary Holder-Winfield - New Haven's next State Senator!

I predict it.   Let it be so!
Conscientious. Honest. Hard Working. Confident. and Still has a Heart.
Destined for greatness.

Christine Stuart - CT Women's Hall of Fame

There is an important event tomorrow night in Hartford. To be truthful, there are 5 or 6 important events tomorrow night in Hartford.  But this one is particularly cool. 

The Connecticut Women's Hall of Fame has an event scheduled which salutes some very important and interesting members of our community.

19th Annual Induction Ceremony & Celebration
Women's Perspectives:
Celebrating Voice and Vision
Thursday, October 18, 2012    6:00-9:00 P.M.
Connecticut Convention Center in Hartford, CT

Christine Stuart

I don't know them all (and "Annie Lou" Leibovitz certainly wouldn't remember me from 1971 in San Francisco) but, among the honorees is Christine Stuart, a hero of mine.

It is a rah-thah pricey event tomorrow night, so instead of attending (and CHEERING) I am sending a donation (last button on the link page) to the online news outlet CT News Junkie, owned and edited by Christine Stuart.

A coupla Cute Mugs

All donations and subscriptions assist in keeping this site active and able to cover politcial news in our state, along with the fun and cool site CT Tech Junkie ("Covering the Future. Today").

CT News Junkie is also a terrific place to advertise your company or organization. A lot of eyeballs see those ads every day.

2012 Inductees

Anne Garrels - Ground-breaking journalist and 23-year NPR Senior Foreign Correspondent best known for her coverage of conflicts around the world  
Annie Leibovitz - Internationally renowned photographer whose large and distinguished body of work includes some of the most well-known portraits of our time
Faith Middleton - Thought-provoking Connecticut radio broadcaster and celebrated host of The Faith Middleton Show, now in its thirtieth anniversary year on WNPR

2012 Voice and Vision Honorees (in alphabetical order)

Dr. Regina Barreca - Celebrated humorist, academic and author Professor of English literature and feminist theory, University of Connecticut
Jolie Rocke Brown - Award-winning and acclaimed soprano  Performance artist and music educator
Judy Dworin - Choreographer and creative force giving voice to women and human rights through dance/theater  Artistic Director, Judy Dworin Performance Project and Professor of Theater & Dance, Trinity College
Ed Johnetta Miller - Recipient of the prestigious Connecticut Governor's Art Award  Fiber artist, quilter, teacher, curator, lecturer, author
Dr. Marilyn Nelson - Recipient of the 2012 Frost Medal, former Connecticut Poet Laureate Professor Emerita of English, University of Connecticut
Annie Keefe - Theatrical visionary and award-winning stage manager  Artistic Advisor, Westport Country Playhouse
Bessy Reyna - Recipient of the Library of Congress CT Lifetime Achievement Award for Service to the Literary Community  Bilingual poet, opinion columnist and activist
Diane Smith - Emmy-award winning TV journalist, radio broadcaster, author  CT-N producer and host, former on-air personality at WTNH, WTIC-AM, and CPTV
Christine Stuart - Editor and reporter who pioneered online capitol news coverage 
Editor-in-Chief, CTNewsJunkie.com

Katharine Weber - Award-winning author  Teacher of fiction writing at Yale University, Columbia University and Kenyon College

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"Original journalism is expensive to produce. That's why you don't see as much of it in newspapers these days, because cutting reporters is the easiest way to improve the bottom line."

For individual annual membership donations of at least $60, CT News Junkie will send you a gorgeous CTNewsJunkie coffee mug.

A $99 dual membership for you and yours gets you two mugs  --  and continued coverage of Connecticut politics.

Click here.   NOW

Elephant at Worlds End

If this makes you feel anxious and insecure...It Should.

Paid Sick Days gets Inked

On Friday July 1st, while everyone was driving or stuck in traffic, Connecticut officially became the first state in the Union to enact Paid Sick Days legislation. 

Governor Malloy signed it into Law the day after this was posted online:

New Report Quantifies Paid Sick Days’ Value to Working Families
Published on June 30, 2011 by Vicki Shabo, Director of Work and Family Programs, National Partnership for Women and Families

For working families today, paid sick days can mean the difference between staying afloat and being unable to afford basic expenses like food and transportation – and this lifeline comes at minimal or no cost to businesses. This is the theme of a report released yesterday at a briefing co-hosted by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) and the National Partnership.   [...]

EPI’s new report, authored by Gould, paints a stark picture of what it means when a working parent’s job offers no paid sick days. In the best case, the worker takes time off without pay. For the average family without paid sick days, if one parent misses three-and-a-half days of work in a month, it loses the equivalent of the family’s entire grocery budget. Missing five days of work reduces the same family’s income to 84 percent of the amount needed to get by.

Even worse, taking an unsanctioned sick day means job loss. At a time when nearly half of all unemployed Americans have been looking for new work for six months or more, this is a cost that struggling families can’t afford to bear.     [...]

An EPI report released in March [...] showed that Connecticut businesses – many of which, beginning in January 2012, will be required to provide paid sick time to certain workers under America’s first statewide paid sick days law – will bear minimal costs as a percentage of sales (fewer than one-half of one percent).

I will be attending a conference next week in Washington DC, as a guest of the Working Families Party, to learn more about how legislation such as ours can be rolled out nationwide.

For now, I am very proud of the solid work done by Jon Green, Lindsay Farrell, and Joe Dinkin of the Connecticut Working Families Party. They were intelligent advocates, great organizers, and able to use humor and street theater to make serious points about the issue.

Thank you all and thank you to our legislators who voted this through the Connecticut House and State Senate.