All The Democratic News Fit To Print In and Around New Britain, CT (USA)

Wednesday, October 1, 2008

1 October 2008

Change of Polling Place: District 11 Voters Will Vote At Marconi Club

For the first time in a long time New Britain will have a new polling place in one of its voting districts on November 4th. Registrar of Voter Edward Dzwonkowski has announced that District 11 voters who in prior elections went to the Benjamin Franklin School (the Human Resource Agency) on Clinton Street will vote at the Marconi Society Hall, 15 Viet Street. All voters in the district will be notified by the Registrar about the new location. The district is in the 26th Assembly District.

For more information contact the Registrar of Voters at 826-3310. For a ride to the polls and campaign information call 827-9704. Democratic Headquarters is located at 385 West Main Street.

Back to the Future: Divisive Bozek Gets GOP Nod For State Senate

Tom Bozek, the former state senator and self-described "conservative Democrat", wants a soapbox to spew his racially divisive views and bizarre ideas on shrinking New Britain via the elimination of low-income households.

The New Britain Republican Party has obliged Bozek, anointing him as the Republican nominee for state Senate against Democrat Donald DeFronzo, who ousted Bozek from the state Senate in 2002 behind a broad-based coalition of Democrats and Unaffiliated voters. In that 2002 contest Bozek bitterly blamed more than 1,200 newly registered Hispanic voters for his loss.

Republican Town Chair Paul Carver sheepishly told the New Britain Herald on September 27th "nobody came forward but Tom. He's got a conservative record, and the committee did not want the seat to go unchallenged."

Bozek's nomination points to the sorry state of the local GOP. Of 3,600 Republicans in New Britain and a few thousand more in Berlin, local Republicans couldn't field any fresh, conservative blood to oppose DeFronzo.

Bozek, who still occupies a seat on the Democratic Town Committee in District 1, revived his tirades against "the professional poor" and "minorities" last year in an unsuccessful, independent bid for Councillor at Large. According to the Herald, Bozek is attacking public housing, Section 8 rental stipends and Senator DeFronzo again.

The 2008 Bozek isn't hiding his racially charged rhetoric and campaign against the poor:

"We have 11,000 kids, when we should have 7,000."

"These people destroy these places (public housing). They are 80 percent minorities...They can't make friends with people in their own neighborhoods."

While Bozek has been espousing an anti-public housing and anti-family housing stance for most of the last two decades, Senator DeFronzo points out that Bozek never introduced a bill on the public housing issue while in the state Senate. There is also a bit of irony in a candidate such as Bozek attacking the "professional poor" He is a big beneficiary of taxpayers as he cleverly worked the system to become "a double- or triple dipper" in receipt of public pensions -- the last being arranged by former Republican leader Lou DeLuca who employed Bozek briefly to qualify him for more income on the public's dime.

The nomination of Bozek by Republicans may ensure that the party filled a line on the November ballot. However, they are getting a candidate whose divisiveness and appeals to the lowest common denominator may shrink their numbers even more in 2008.


Wall Street Bailout:
American Prospect Economist Says Congressional Democrats Are "Thinking Small"

Robert Kuttner, a widely published economist based at American Prospect, is providing some of the best commentary yet on the economic emergency precipitated by the excesses of unregulated home mortgage and securities industries.

"Democrats will shortly become stewards not just of a temporary bailout but of a long term recovery strategy," writes Kuttner in a September 30th post "Learning from 1929". "They might as well begin by pointing us on the right path. That includes direct refinancing for homeowners, direct government involvement in the management of failing financial institutions that are recapitalized by government money, through something like the Reconstruction Finance Corporations of the Roosevelt era; and a transfer tax on stock and bond transactions, both to raise needed revenue and to damp down the kind of speculation that led to the meltdown. Then Congress can begin the task of regulating the financial system properly. The basic concept is that any financial enterprise capable of taking down the system requires the tight government supervision that in the recent past has been limited to commercial banks."

Kuttner suggests that the congressional Democrats are a long way from finding an authentic Democratic response that can effectively deal with the laissez faire and failed policies of Republicanism. Regulating the financial system correctly, argues Kuttner, is "the Democratic ideology. "But lately, that set of core convictions has gotten rusty. It needs to be reclaimed, and fast. Too many Democrats are still thinking small."

Not, it should be noted, is the thinking of U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney (D-2) who voted no on the amended Paulson proposal this week for all the right reasons. He was the only member of the delegation to do so.

Kuttner doesn't stop at the Wall Street "rescue". "Government will need to rely on substantial public spending to pull the wider economy out of the hole. Most of that can be raised by surtaxes on the wealthy and by transaction taxes on speculation, but it will also require a temporary increase in public deficits. Raise enough revenue to cover about $700 billion of financial recapitalization in year one, and in years two through eight use the proceeds for public works, infrastructure, good jobs, universal health coverage, expanded pre-kindergarten and child care."

Kuttner's corrections, in other words, call for a New Deal in the 21st Century, not just to quell the high-finance meltdown on Wall Street, but to reduce the economic insecurity felt by a growing number of working and middle income households. Let's hope that when the Congress votes again, more of Kuttner's formula will be part of the rescue.

1 comment:

Bio Fool said...

A quick word only. I have never voted Republican in my life. I prefer the party of FDR, JFK, and Obama/Biden. This time however I will throw one in for Tom Bozek. I have lived in New Britain my entire life (36 years). When he speaks of the 'Professional Poor'and mentions various buildings around New Britain turning into eye sores, and looking ghetto, nobody else but Tom has a set big enough to say so, although we all know exactly what he's saying. Just take a peek down by such places as Grove St. Gold St, or Silver St. (which my grandmother had a place on for years and it was nice)and see all the strewn about garbage, window screens removed in the summertime and just plain unsightly, nasty, unkempt establishments. This is not the landlord's fault in these places, especially if they don't even live there. It's the tennants. Plain and simple. When you are used to getting things for nothing or next to, then you don't respect them. I myself am pretty poor and don't live in the best house on the street, but I take my garbage out every week and I don't let the place look like a crack house. This I believe is part of what Tom Bozek is talking about in New Britain. Tom maybe isn't the most eloquent speaker around but he seems to be the only one who is willing to stand up and say the Emperor (in this case New Britain) is indeed naked. K.Carbone

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New Britain Democrats

New Britain, Connecticut, United States
New Britain Democrat is a digest of e-newsletters that present news, views and information from the New Britain Democratic Town Committee. John McNamara, the Town Chair, is the editor. Mailing Address: Post Office Box 2112 New Britain, CT 06050 John Valengavich, Treasurer