Tag: Connecticut

Unforgotten: Connecticut’s Hidden History of Slavery

CT Public Radio www.npr.org/podcasts/organizations/s546

It’s a history lesson many of us didn’t get in school: Slavery has deep roots in Connecticut and across New England. Enslaved people helped build the foundation of much of this state. Get to know some of these men and women and the lives they lived. Hear from descendants who reflect on their loved ones. And learn from historians and experts going on a journey of discovery to recover this hidden history. In this five-part episode podcast from Connecticut Public, Report-er/Producer Diane Orson and Editorial Consultant and Curator Frank Mitchell talk about some of the issues in, and around these stories.

Visit www.ctpublic.org/unforgotten to learn more, including additional videos, photos and digital stories.

Medicare 4 All CT Action Alert on Universal Healthcare in CT! | Action Network

We need you to contact our CT Legislators to support Universal Healthcare! We now have two opportunities this week to make our elected leaders hear our demands!

We have all been made exhausted by this year of the pandemic, but our healthcare system has been making us tired even long before then. We now have a real chance of making a statewide single-payer system a reality in Connecticut that would ensure we can all be in good health no matter our wealth!

Write to The Human Services Committee to tell them to support this bill! Click here to be taken to the letter writing form!

Then, Next Tuesday, March 30, at 2 PM EST, you have a chance to speak to our legislators at the General Assembly when The Human Services Committee will hold a public hearing on S.B. 1090, a bill that we at MEDICARE 4 ALL CT have written that will study the benefits of a HUSKY for All program. As Bernie Sanders would say, WE WROTE THE DAMN BILL!

 

This key bill will finally allow resources to go into a formal study that will prove to everyone in Connecticut for all that not only will the costs of single-payer healthcare create a great savings for the people of Connecticut, it will finally ensure that everyone can be covered and finally be healthy!

Do you have your own healthcare story you need to tell? Are you a member of a union or organization that wants to be able to focus on other issues for your members? Do you have astronomically high co-pays, deductibles, and premiums that make it almost irrelevant to have for-profit healthcare coverage at all?

Then please step up to say ENOUGH IS ENOUGH! Follow these steps to take action NOW!

  • Use this form here to contact all members of The Human Services Committee to tell them you support S.B. 1090 and that they need to vote to move the bill on to the next step of the legislative process! Vote to send SB1090 out of committee!
  • You can draft written testimony to submit to the committee or simply submit “Say YES to S.B. 1090!”. If you have any questions or need any assistance writing your testimony, please sign up here and we will contact you for help.
  • If you plan to submit oral testimony over Zoom, please register here before Monday, March 29, at 3 PM.
  • The order of speakers to deliver oral testimony will be randomized and published by the Committee by 8 AM EST on the day of the hearing.

Green Party of Connecticut Calls Dems’ HR 1 a ‘Poison Pill’ Linking Needed Voting Reforms to Attacks on Third Parties, Independents

An otherwise progressive proposal that would enhance voting rights for many Americans is being used in a stealth attack by the Democratic Party to suppress third parties and to entrench the power of rich people in choosing who Americans can vote for. The Green Party of Connecticut supports many of the important reforms in HR 1, the so-called “For the People Act,” but calls on Democrats to amend the bill to truly do what it says – protect democracy.

Justin Paglino, the Green Party’s 2020 candidate in Connecticut’s third congressional district, said of H.R. 1, “Reforms in this bill that empower voters are welcome, including early voting, public disclosure requirements for donors to corporate Super PACs, and a plan to end partisan gerrymandering. But hidden in HR 1 are measures whose clear purpose is to strengthen establishment power and weaken voices of dissent. HR 1 skyrockets the amount of money that party leadership can give to a candidate from $5,000 to $100 million – and that is not a typo! Even worse, at a time when 62 percent of US voters say we need a new major party, HR 1 dramatically raises the hurdles that third parties already face, instead of lowering them. HR 1 quintuples the donation threshold candidates must meet to earn matching funds, and eliminates the 5%-of-the-vote threshold for federal grants, a provision that has long been the light at the end of the tunnel for third party candidates.”

Paglino, who recently announced his intent to run for Congress again in 2022, added “Connecticut’s third congressional district shows exactly what’s wrong with our election laws. The two-party system has given us a thirty-year incumbent Democrat who refuses to support widely popular policies such as Medicare for All or a Carbon Tax, and Republican challengers whose only prerequisite qualification is that they have large sums of money to run their campaigns.”

New Haven To UI: Not One More Dime | New Haven Independent

by Markeshia Ricks, Sep 13, 2016 ©2016 New Haven Independent

New Haveners concerned about a proposed rate increase said that they want United Illuminating to have the infrastructure to withstand superstorms, but that they’ve already paid for it.

The electric company is asking the state Public Utilities Regulatory Authority (PURA) to grant a more than $100 million distribution rate increase over a three year period. The increase would generate $65.6 million next year, $27.1 million the following year and another $13.4 million in 2019. This would raise individual customer bills by an average of about $30 a month over that three-year period, according to the Office of Consumer Counsel.

The counsel’s office opposes the rate increase. It also came out for reducing by almost $10, to $7.63, a residential fixed charge that UI levies.

UI said it needs the increase to replace poles and wires and make other investments to avoid power outages during major storms.

More than 35 residents from New Haven and other parts of the state attended a PURA hearing Monday in the Hall of Records at 200 Orange St. to oppose the rate increase. They said some people already can’t afford their bills. And they argued that the rate increase de-incentivizes energy-efficiency efforts.
Several people also argued that UI is primarily seeking to line the pockets of its new parent company, Spain-based Iberdrola.

Frank Panzarella said that stats already showed during the last rate increase request that Connecticut residents are having trouble paying their bills. He asked what made UI think that customers can afford to pay more. [….]

For the complete article, visit: New Haven To UI: Not One More Dime | New Haven Independent.