nonprofits

Have you noticed that nothing is ever quite funny enough?

Last night I was reading a story in the New Yorker and glancing at the cartoons and kind of gasping at how not funny they were. Hey, this is the New Yorker! It's not like there's some place else for all the better cartoons to go.

I was in the parking area next to Yale Bowl two Saturdays ago as word spread around the clumps of tailgaters that there had been a fatality in one of the lots. Details were sketchy, but everyone seemed to know that people had been hit by a motor vehicle. And for a lot of us, the shadow of that tragedy hung over the whole day. My son was with me, and he has a knack for summing things up. "Imagine dying because you decided to go to a football game," he said sadly.

Last week, Howard Baldwin made a splash when he proposed putting more than $100 million into the XL Center with the goal of bringing an NHL hockey team back to Hartford.  But as WNPR's Jeff Cohen reports, a report commissioned by the state in 2006 says that no amount of renovations could retrofit the arena to the standards of the NHL. Baldwin is the chairman and CEO Whaler Sports & Entertainment.  He says that a refurbished XL Center would create 1,500 new jobs a year and boost economic activity in downtown Hartford.  Baldwin wants to update the arena's seating, concessions areas, mechanical systems, and surrounding streetscapes.  And a video promoting his vision says the upgrade... "...provides the economic foundation to enable NESE to pursue a National Hockey League franchise in Hartford."

When I was a kid, my parents fell into the practice of dropping me off at churches they themselves had no intention of attending.

So for a while, in the 1960's, I joined the Universalist Church on Fern Street in West Hartford. I went to services and Sunday school and, somewhere around sixth grade, I joined a Youth Fellowship there.

Every year, more than 75,000 eyewitnesses identify criminal suspects in the U.S., and studies suggest that as many as a third of them are wrong.

Nearly 300 people nationally have been exonerated thanks to DNA evidence, and that number is expected to rise.  Meanwhile, many guilty people have been let to live free.

Today, where we live, Connecticut’s new task force to look at eyewitness testimony and its reliability.

Federal transportation officials have officially committed $275 million for a busway from New Britain to Hartford.  As WNPR's Jeff Cohen reports, state officials say construction will begin this Spring. The state says that when the busway opens in 2014, it will be a bus-only stretch of road with 11 stops and service every three to five minutes, carrying an estimated 16,000 passengers a day.  The half-billion dollar project has drawn criticism from those who say it's too costly to those who say it's the wrong transportation plan to begin with.  At a press conference, Governor Dannel Malloy defended the busway as he celebrated it.

Yesterday’s national “day of action” for Occupy Wall Street was meant to mark the movement’s two-month anniversary...but it also came just after a forceful eviction from the park in lower Manhattan where the protests started.

More than 100 people chanting and carrying signs marched through downtown Hartford yesterday, calling for jobs, public safety and infrastructure investment, and an end to corporate greed.  As WNPR's Jeff Cohen reports, the march was part of a national protest to declare an economic emergency. The culmination of the rally was to be the occupation of a busy onramp to Interstate 84.  On the way there, people from labor groups, community organizations, and the Occupy Hartford movement talked about what brought them out.

We keep hearing that the job prospects for young workers aren't very good. So, what if they start their own businesses? 

Today, we're live from the Oakdale Theater in Wallingford for the last Small Business Breakfast of the year. It's taking place as part of the Greater New Haven Chamber of Commerce Business Expo.

The panel looking into the state's response to two damaging storms this year heard from electricity providers today/yesterday. As WNPR's Jeff Cohen reports, the panel want to know what needs to happen to keep the lights on the next time weather strikes. Executives from United Illuminating and Connecticut Light & Power appeared before the panel. Joe McGee is the body's co-chair, and he was particularly interested in two areas of inquiry.  First, he wanted to know whether the prospect of fining utilities could prompt them to do more before a storm approaches. 

New York did not cover itself in glory last night as it used the wee small hours of the morning to play rough with the press and Occupy Wall Street.

Reports are jumbled, but there doesn't seem much doubt that reporters doing their jobs were shoved around and in some cases arrested.

These are not the tactics of a free society.

By the end of  2010, over 15 percent of the nation’s population lived below the federal poverty line— that's just over $22 thousand dollars for a family of four.

Over a ten-year span, the US saw the poor population grow by 12.3 million, driving the total number of Americans in poverty to a historic high of 46.2 million.

...and the number of those poor people living in the suburbs increased by 25%. New research from the Brookings Institute explores how poverty is shifting from inner cities to the suburbs.

Today CL&P faces their final deadline to have everyones power back on. Are you still in the 1%?

Jewett City, a community of 2.5 square miles in southeastern Connecticut, has its own power company, owned by the town. There are seven non-profit companies like this in the state. They're small, which means they can coordinate closely with other branches of government. Heck, they can coordinate with branches on trees.

Governor Dannel Malloy deployed the troops six days after the snowstorm that tore down powerlines and left millions of Northeast residents in the dark.

Still, as of this morning, 300 thousand customers are without power in Connecticut - making the state the slowest to respond.  

Some residents in the hardest-hit areas are forming “vigilante” tree crews to clear debris - something that CL&P officials say could be dangerous.  

Yesterday, Wolfie and I walked the Wallace Stevens route with our friend the Hartford film-maker Helder Mira and intern Andrew Kufta. We started at the first marker.

President Obama just unveiled a new plan to help homeowners avoid foreclosure...but what other help is out there?

The state of Connecticut is working to help homeowners as well...sponsoring a mortgage assistance event  on Tuesday November 15.  

In the audio embedded here, you'll hear Wednesday afternoon interviews with Gov. Danel P. Malloy, energy and environment commissioner Dan Esty, a vice-president for CL&P, an electrical workers' union official, a key state legislator and a consultant on how utilities can change their infrastructure to make it more storm-resistant.

You're about to meet Poster Boy, an artist who defaces and rearranges advertising posters so that new messages appear. His work is up at Real Art Ways and we recorded this interview late last week.

The state legislature is calling a special session tomorrow. It’s a tale of two bills: Jobs and Jackson Labs.

Governor Malloy has unveiled a jobs plan.  It’s focused on small business growth, startup investments for innovative firms, and streamlining the process for business to get things done.  
These are all ideas that the governor and legislative leaders expect to get some level of bi-partisan support.