Jennifer Abel

Greatest Hits

2011-07-19T20:08:00.000-07:00

For a Good Time, Call Jennifer: my brief career as a phone sex worker

Hell Hath No Furries

Manscaping

Face Crimes (the TSA/BDO story)

Public Service? (the DMV story)

Who do you call to get a better job?

Selling Out For Free

Jennifer's archived columns from the Guardian

The Great Unwashed

2011-07-12T18:51:00.000-07:00

The Great Unwashed: Venturing into the Shampoo-Free Life

first published in Healthy Life magazine, Autumn 2009

***

I shampoo my hair once a year whether it’s dirty or not.

Just kidding. It’s only been three months since my last shampoo, but I’m seriously thinking that – barring some extreme filth emergency involving bird poop or a headfirst tumble into a mud puddle – I’ll never shampoo again.

Before you crinkle your nose and say “eeew,” let me remind you that “shampooing” is not synonymous with “washing.” I still wash my hair almost every night; I just changed my old “shampoo, then conditioner” routine to “conditioner-only.” Three months into this experiment, it’s shaping up to be the smartest hair-care decision I’ve made since I outgrew my Goth phase and quit dyeing it black.

People have been washing hair for centuries, but modern shampoo – made of synthetic detergents that remove oil from your hair (along with whatever dirt the oil has absorbed) – has only been around since the 1930s. Early shampoos were so harsh, their own manufacturers recommended using them only once a week (hence the classic anti-date excuse “I can’t go out because I have to wash my hair”).

In the 1970s shampoo formulas became gentler, and daily shampooing became standard in America. But maybe that standard is wrong.

“It is good not to wash your hair every day,” said Ellie Canuteson, manager of the Complexions Spa and Salon in Albany. “It’s good not to shampoo it every day, too.”

Overshampooing causes two problems: it can dry hair out or, paradoxically, make it greasier than if you never shampooed in the first place.

Hair is dead tissue; that’s why it doesn’t hurt when you cut it. It also can’t produce its own moisturizing oils though your scalp does, a substance called “sebum.”

When shampoo removes sebum from your hair, your scalp compensates by producing extra sebum. So you wind up in a vicious cycle: the more you wash your hair, the more sebum you generate. But if you avoid shampoo altogether, eventually your sebum levels balance out and leave your hair healthier than ever before.

Or so I read on the Internet. A few months ago I searched for advice about my own hair, which alternates between wavy and curly (depending on the weather) and is just over two feet long with its curls and kinks straightened out. It also had dry, split ends no amount of conditioning treatments could eradicate.
I found entire chat forums dedicated to the care and feeding of long hair. Many members have hair falling past their knees (if their avatar photos are accurate), and they talked about shampoo the way Christians talk about the Antichrist. So I took their anonymous advice and cut shampoo out of my life.

I asked Ellie Canuteson what she thought of the no-shampoo scheme.

“I’m not a huge fan of it, the reason being your scalp does need to be cleansed … [it] does produce a lot of oil.” However, she says, “If you don’t produce too much oil, you can maybe go two weeks without shampoo.”

Coincidentally, two weeks after I quit shampoo is when my hair started looking like hell. The long-hair forums warned that if you stop shampooing, it takes anywhere from two to six weeks before your sebum levels reach equilibrium.

I needed three. The first week wasn’t bad. The second week, I looked exactly the way you’d expect when you hear “I haven’t shampooed in two weeks.” The third week was even worse: my hair was oily at the scalp and a frizzball everywhere else.

By week four I almost gave up. But then – it was almost like a fever breaking. I took a conditioner-only shower after another frizzy, oily day, went to bed that night ... and when I woke up next morning my hair looked fine.

Better than fine, in fact. Compared to my shampoo days, my hair is shinier, wavier and curlier than ever before.

“That would be because you’re not taking moisture out of it,” Canuteson said. “The more moisture you have, the more wavy, more curly it is … when people tell me ‘My curls aren’t what they used to be’ it might be because they’re stripping hair of its natural oil.”

That loss of oil also causes dry split ends. If you have long hair, see if this sounds familiar: when you wash your hair and let it dry naturally, most of it stays damp for at least two hours but your ends are bone-dry in minutes.

That was the case with me, until I quit shampoo. Now that my ends can finally retain moisture, I’m finding one or two split ends per month, as opposed to several in a single day.

My hair also gets less tangled. In my shampoo days I needed as much as 40 minutes to comb out my hair after shampooing.

“Great news! Global warming has ended!” my significant other said one night, after a typical shampoo job. “Advancing glaciers grip the earth in a new Ice Age, while civilizations collapsed and rose again.” He paused for effect. “All this happened while you took your shower.”

Despite the sarcasm he had a point – I did take ridiculously long showers, because I needed multiple applications of water and conditioner to comb out the post-shampoo snarls. Now, detangling is easy and my water bill has been cut in half.

Despite my enthusiasm for the no-shampoo regimen, the stylists I spoke to had reservations. Ellie Canuteson recommends at least two or three shampoos per month, and Colette Cristafulli, retail manager at Albany’s Jean-Paul Day Spa, was even more skeptical about my experiment.
“I do have clients who don’t wash their hair often, due to the curl issue or the frizz issue,” she said, but thinks switching to a gentler shampoo is better than cutting shampoo altogether. Cristafulli recommends formulas that are “sulfite-free and paraben-free.”

If you follow in my shampoo-free footsteps, there’s a few things you must remember. First, you will go through a period when your hair looks absolutely awful. Don’t quit shampoo today if there’s any event in the next month for which you need to look your best.

A boar-bristle hairbrush is excellent for redistributing oil from the scalp to the ends. And use the lightest conditioner you can find; those heavy moisturizing formulas are for shampoo users with low sebum levels.

Perhaps the best advice of all comes from Ellie Canuteson: “I think probably, if someone wants to do this, consult with your stylist.”

A Homeless Man And His Couch

2011-01-20T14:08:00.000-08:00

originally published in the New Britain Herald, July 31, 2009

***

We met Dennis Lorenzetti late on a Monday afternoon, as he sat on one of the granite benches by the bus stop on Bank Street. As we walked past he waved a small, faded photograph at us, obviously trying to get our attention. There’s no particular reason this homeless man should have caught our notice when so many more seem invisible, but we stopped to chat.

The photo showed his parents. Lorenzetti said his father died of Alzheimer’s and his mother of breast cancer. He also said his sister Lori had died in a car accident the night before (though we found no mention of her when we searched online). Lorenzetti said he used to live in Bristol, but now sleeps in New Britain since he lost his job two years ago.

We asked if there was anything we could do. He started to cry. “Give me my sister back,” he said. “Can you do that?”

No, but we could give him two dollars we had on hand. He said he didn’t want the money, though he did eventually put it into his battered wallet which, except for the photo and his social services card, was empty. Otherwise, his total possessions consisted of the clothes on his back and a filthy plastic shopping bag filled with aluminum cans salvaged from garbage bins.

He talked about many things: how he spends a lot of time in Central Park because he has no better place to go. The unfairness of the police who, he says, sometimes kick him out of the park although he has a legal right to be there. People who would kill him because he knows too much.

“I have problems with alcohol, I don’t deny that,” he said, though when we met him his eyes were clear rather than bloodshot.

We asked where he sleeps. “I sleep on a couch,” he said. “An old Puerto Rican man — I don’t know his name — he said he owns the building. I asked him if I could sleep on the couch, and he gave me a blanket and a pillow, too. Then he said ‘Wait right there, don’t move,’ and I thought he was going to call the police, but instead he came back with a big platter” — he held his hands more than a foot apart to show how big it was — “filled with chicken and rice and beans and bread and soda.”

We realized he was talking about an outdoor couch. We asked if we could see it. The question surprised him, but he led us through a few blocks of downtown streets to a litter-strewn alleyway between some old brick buildings. There we saw an incongruously colorful sofa with a blanket and pillow on it. The sofa hadn’t been there long; there was none of the rotting or waterstains you’d see had it been in a rainstorm.

There was no tarpaulin or waterproofing over it. We didn’t ask what he would do the next time it rained.

“I keep it clean,” he said, and sure enough the litter strewn through the alleyway stopped a couple feet from the sofa.

He wouldn’t let us take his picture, though he did let us photograph his bed. As we walked out of the alley some church bells started chiming.

“It’s like the voice of the Lord,” he said.

We turned in one direction to go back to our office, and he turned in another to go wherever he goes.

It rained the next morning. We returned to the alley and found no sign of Lorenzetti. His sofa and bedding were ruined.

Quitting Cigarettes No Help For State Budget Woes

2011-01-12T23:44:00.000-08:00

Orignally published in the New Britain Herald and Bristol Press, March 15,2009

***

Do you find your wallet depressingly light compared to a year ago? If so, take heart in knowing it’s not just you; the whole state’s broke these days. Connecticut’s facing a budget deficit of $8.7 billion over the next two years, and that deficit will only grow deeper after what I did last week.

Before discussing my responsibility for the state’s budget woes, I’ll point out that the human brain has a hard time grasping such abstractly huge numbers as “eight point seven billion.” Maybe this will help you picture it: If you made a million dollars a day, weekends and holidays included, amassing $8.7 billion would take almost 24 years.

How did a rich state like Connecticut wind up in such a fiscal mess? Charles Dickens figured it out over a century ago, when he had Mr. Micawber tell David Copperfield: “Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.”

In other words, don’t spend more than you have. But if you change pounds to dollars and make the numbers exponentially bigger, you’ll describe what happened to us. During the go-go bubble years, when property values and the tax assessments on them reached the stratosphere, not one local government — neither the guys running my town, nor the guys running yours — thought “Hey! Let’s take this opportunity to pay down some debt and build up savings.” Instead, they spent every dollar they had and borrowed even more, with the vague idea of paying off this debt sometime in the future.

Which would’ve been a fine plan, if not for the future’s nasty habit of eventually becoming the present. In Connecticut’s case, this happened at the exact moment the bubble popped. Now the state faces bills much higher than the twenty-ought-six Mr. Micawber warned against, and these revenue problems are compounded by my decision, last week, to stop paying state cigarette taxes.

There’s multiple ways to do this. You can buy tax-free smokes on New York State Indian reservations (disclaimer: this is extremely illegal if you get caught), or you can buy tobacco and roll your own, but I took the simpler method known as “Buy nicotine patches and quit smoking altogether.”

Naturally, this made my non-smoking friends turn Supportive with a capital S. “Congratulations!” they gushed. “Statistically speaking, you’ve just increased your lifespan by seven years!”

Which, in turn, only intensifies the government’s budget woes. The problem with increasing your lifespan by seven years is that those years are added to the wrong end of your life. I won’t get to spend seven extra years in my 30s; instead, I’ll spend additional time in the “retired old person collecting checks from the government” phase of my existence. I did a quick calculation on the back of an envelope: assuming Social Security and Medicaid still exist, then between lost cigarette tax revenues and increased old-age payouts, my decision to quit smoking will cost the state and federal government over 600,000 dollars, not counting inflation.

So, to all you people suffering in the wake of severe state budget cuts: I sincerely apologize for making your troubles worse. I was tempted to keep smoking, for the sake of The Children, but ultimately I’m just too selfish.

Who Gets A Raise? The Government

2011-01-12T23:43:00.000-08:00

originally published in the New Britain Herald and Bristol Press, March 8, 2009

***

“Hey, you!” I said to my boss. “Yeah, I’m talking to you. You know the money you’ve been paying me? It’s not enough. I want more.”

“Sorry, no can do,” my boss said apologetically. “We can’t afford more than we already pay. You know how dismal the economy’s been.”

“Whether you can afford it isn’t my problem,” I insisted. “My problem is, I want more money and if you don’t hand it over I’ll put a lien on your house or revoke your driver’s license or something.”

These are serious consequences. Most people, when told “Gimme more money or give up your house and driving privileges,” have no choice but to pay. Not my boss, though. He only laughed, and after a few confused moments I realized why.

“Oops,” I said meekly. “Never mind. For a moment there, I thought I was a government worker and you were ‘My Boss’ only in the sense of being ‘The taxpayers who fund my salary.’ But I forgot: unlike a taxpayer, you have the right to say ‘no’ when folks demand more than you can afford, don’t you? Dang.”

I blame my mistake on geography. I live in Connecticut, where towns and cities get most of their money from “property taxes,” which is the tax people pay if they want to own property. Unfortunately, owning “property” doesn’t always mean you have actual “money,” especially in today’s economy.

For the past umpteen years, Nutmeg municipalities had the habit of passing annual tax increases equal to or greater than the rate of inflation. When the economy was expanding and people’s wages rose each year, this was merely an annoyance. But nowadays, taxpayers facing pay cuts or wage freezes (if not complete loss-of-job) simply can’t afford higher tax bills. Yet their local councils are inflicting them anyway.

Even worse, tax bills are an all-or-nothing proposition. Most living expenses can be cut one way or other; turn down the heat to lower your utility bill, or buy cheaper cuts of meat to slash grocery costs. But if your city assessor says “You owe $7,000 tax on your house,” you can’t counter with, “How about I seal off the den, and you knock a thousand off my bill?”

Municipalities don’t write budgets the same way you do. When you plan a budget, you count how much money you have and then decide what you can afford to spend. Government does it backwards: count how much money they plan to spend and then set tax rates so they can afford it.

And if you say “Sorry, I can’t give you any more,” the government (unlike me with my boss) really can tell you, “Whether you can afford it isn’t my problem. I want more money and if you don’t hand it over I’ll put a lien on your house or revoke your driver’s license or something.”

I’ve lost count, these past few weeks, of how many stories this newspaper has printed about city-government workers getting wage increases while their private-sector counterparts do without. The rationale seems to be, “A basket-case economy is no problem when we can force taxpayers to fill the basket with money.”

Enjoy your pay raises, guys! I’ll be subsisting on oatmeal and memories so I can afford to fund them.

Change Liquor Laws, But For Right Reasons

2011-01-12T23:41:00.000-08:00

originally published in the New Britain Herald and Bristol Press, March 1, 2009

***

Behold what a badass I used to be: One weekend, back in my wild and tempestuous grad school days, I bought a bottle of bourbon at 9:17 p.m. And Scotch, and mixers too.

“I don’t get it,” you might say if you live in most parts of the country. “What’s badass about an over-21 adult buying liquor so early in the evening, then taking it home to share with age-appropriate friends?”

But if you live in Connecticut, as I do, you’ll recognize the rebellious nature of my youthful actions. Bottled alcohol sales here are illegal after 9 p.m., and all day on Sundays. Even 9 o’clock is permissive by historical standards; in my school days, alcohol’s witching hour fell at 8 p.m.

Of course, you can still buy liquor until 1 or 2 in the morning, if you go to a bar and drink it there. You just can’t take the safer option of driving home before drinking what you bought.

That’s what made my student self such a badass party hostess by Nutmeg State standards: I bought those bottles an hour and 17 minutes too late.

But I’m not confessing to any crime here. I obeyed the letter of the liquor law even as I violated its spirit — I simply crossed the nearest state line to a still-open liquor store. That’s easy in a tiny state such as Connecticut, where the border is rarely more than an hour away and usually less than that.

Ah, nostalgia. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the Good Old Days, when I was younger and the economy hadn’t started doing cliff-diver impersonations. Now with everything in freefall, some Connecticut lawmakers — even the governor herself — are suggesting we dismantle certain laws, such as the alcohol ones, written solely to make it harder for in-state consumers to spend money — and pay sales tax — close to home.

To that end, three state representatives from the border town of Enfield have proposed legislation allowing liquor stores open on Sundays, while Gov. M. Jodi Rell suggested allowing Indian casinos to serve alcohol far into the wee hours of the morning.

Naturally, there’s opposition to both proposals. Some argue the state has a moral duty to prevent alcohol purchases at certain dates and times. Others say the law should be changed only if it makes money for the state, and there’s no evidence expanded alcohol hours would do that. Sunday openings are even opposed by liquor-store owners far from the border towns, who enjoy taking time off with no fear their competitors might make sales in the meantime.

I don’t really have a dog in this fight. I rarely drink, never gamble, and wouldn’t dream of doing anything as bureaucracy-intensive as getting a liquor license. But I support these proposals all the same: Let the stores open Sundays, let the casinos serve drinks all night. Heck, let bars and restaurants do it too, if they wish.

Would this make money for the state? Maybe. Maybe not. But that’s not the question to ask, unless you like the implication “Citizens should only do things if the state makes money off it.”

Of course, I belong to the demographic old enough to engage in nostalgia. Maybe that’s why I get all crotchety at the suggestion I’m just a revenue source for the government, rather than the ostensibly free citizen of a democratic republic.

Stimulate Me

2011-01-12T23:39:00.000-08:00

originally published in the New Britain Herald and Bristol Press, February 22, 2009

***

You know those history-book photos of 1920s German housewives shoveling banknotes into their stoves? The captions explain that runaway inflation in the Weimar Republic made burning money cheaper than buying coal.

This will never happen to the American dollar, because anyone who tries burning it will have 15 environmental agencies write him up for pollution violations. Financial writers might discuss how dollar bills make an economical substitute for toilet paper, but there won’t be iconic photos for the history books.

Interesting times ahead, now that President Barack Obama has signed the stimulus bill. I personally couldn’t feel more stimulated if I wore a wet bathing suit and threw myself against an electrified fence. But I’m not bashing Obama for this. The stimulus proposal predates his administration, and a President John McCain would’ve signed one too.

Here’s how it’s supposed to work: Humankind has known for centuries that the world is round. Therefore, if the economy tumbles down after falling into a deep debt hole, the solution is to dig even deeper until you tunnel completely through the Earth and climb out the hole again.

If a principle works in geography class, it applies to economics too. Right? The stimulus builds upon last autumn’s Wall Street/banker/big-company bailout, which said the way to fix a trashed economy is to hand your money over to the folks who trashed it.

I remember when then-President George W. Bush speechified the bailout. “It will help American consumers and businesses get credit to meet their daily needs,” he said.

“That’s how we got in trouble in the first place!” I shouted. “ ‘Get credit’ is a euphemism for ‘Go into debt,’ and consumers shouldn’t do that just to meet their daily needs!”

“Stop yelling at the television,” my roommate said. “The TV people aren’t listening to you.”

“I know,” I said. “If they did, we wouldn’t be in this mess.” Long before the terms “housing bubble” or “subprime mortgage” entered the zeitgeist, I smelled a problem when, as a recent college grad owing nearly a year’s salary in student-loan debt, I kept hearing from banks who wanted to lend me more money than I’d make in 10 years.

“Are you nuts?” I demanded. “I couldn’t pay down a mortgage that size unless I won Powerball.”

“Stop yelling at your junk mail,” said my roommate.

“Yelling at junk mail is healthier than taking its advice,” I pointed out. So I ignored those mortgage offers and stayed in my apartment while the bubble ballooned.

“Houses historically cost about three years’ salary for the buyer,” I thought. “I’ll buy when they drop back to that level.”

So I smiled when the bubble started deflating last summer. My debts are paid off, I thought. I’ve saved a big down payment. Soon I can buy a house of my own.

But I didn’t reckon on the stimulus bill. Its backers think affordable housing is bad for America, so they’re spending nearly a trillion dollars to prop up house prices, whereas I’ll get up to $13 in tax rebates per paycheck.

I’ll use the money to buy an enormous novelty lollipop. This symbolizes what a sucker I was, rejecting a mortgage just because I couldn’t afford it. Turns out the smart move would’ve been going over my head in debt, crying victim when the bills came due and waiting for that sweet stimulus money to bail me out.

Safe At Last From Teen Terrorists At Taco Bell

2011-01-12T23:38:00.000-08:00

originally published in the New Britain Herald and Bristol Press, February 15, 2009

***

People of America, rejoice! I passed my Homeland Security check with flying colors, which means you can safely read my articles without worrying that you’re endangering the security of the homeland or anything.

I’m serious. When I started working for this paper full-time, I expected the HR lady to hand me a thick pile of forms to fill out. And she did.

I did not expect one of the forms to feature the words “Department of Homeland Security” written prominently atop it. Yet it did.

Why, you might wonder, is the identity of the arts and entertainment reporter for a couple of central Connecticut dailies considered a homeland security matter? Good question. Turns out it’s not just my identity they’re worried about; that Homeland Security document is the standard citizenship form everyone in America must fill out to take a job.

It probably makes sense for Homeland Security to keep track of such folks as nuclear-plant operators and secret-weapon manufacturers. The wrong person in a job such as that could cause serious damage. But art reporters? Retail workers? Every single job in America? How does Homeland Security find time to root out actual terrorist threats when they’re keeping files on every teenage Taco Bell employee in the country?

I can’t answer that question; I’m still struggling to figure out why three ounces of shampoo in a flier’s carry-on luggage is fine, while four ounces is a terrorist threat worthy of confiscation. But I have a theory. Maybe “national security” is just a catch-all excuse to justify government involvement in even the most minute aspects of ordinary American lives.

Think I’m kidding? Then consider this: Ten years ago, I would’ve laughed at anyone paranoid enough to say the federal government would claim jurisdiction over the toiletries I take on vacation with me. Today they can laugh at me for doubting them instead.

But I’m drifting away from my original point, which is: My presence here at the newspaper in no way threatens the safety of our country. Though this has more to do with editorial vigilance than anything Homeland Security’s up to. Fact is, I’ve been trying to hide secret security-threat messages in most of the stories I write, but whenever I do this, the damned editor and his so-called “improvements” ruin it every time.

For example, I tried giving one recent story the headline:

popular WEekend

AT The blACK

hisTOry MOnth aRRt shOW

The editor changed this to “Art exhibit reports high Saturday turnout,” then called me into his office and made tsk-tsk finger gestures while he lectured me about brevity, spelling, proper capitalization and other things I’m professionally obligated to care about. I responded with a finger gesture of my own, though I waited until after he’d turned his back.

In other news, unemployment rates have risen again, as the American economy shed another few dozen thousand jobs last month. Which is a terrible strain for the newly unemployed, but consider the silver lining framing those dark economic clouds: with less jobs for the government to keep track of, maybe they’ll have time to pay attention when the next “Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside The U.S.” memo lands on some overworked security officer’s desk.

It's Time To Wake Up And Smell The Marijuana

2011-01-12T23:36:00.000-08:00

originally published in the New Britain Herald and Bristol Press, February 8, 2009

***

Remember in “The Wizard of Oz” when Toto tugged at the curtain and revealed the fraudulent, unsustainable nature of Emerald City’s whole wizard-centric way of running things? For some reason that image occurs to me whenever our fine elected officials give their latest “My fellow Americans, regarding the economy, we’re screwed” speech.

Of course we are. Economies based on unpayable debts, rulers claiming fake magic powers — sooner or later, “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain” stops working, so you witness the “Come out and fess up” stage instead.

It happened in Connecticut last week. Things are so bad here, our governor went on TV to speechify the state’s economic woes. (Note to out-of-staters: This was a big deal because it’s the first televised speech she’s given in her four and a half years as governor. M. Jodi Rell usually prefers communicating with the masses via more traditional methods, like parade appearances.)

State tax revenues dropped sharply because people have less money to tax, which means they can’t afford another tax increase. Rell, to her credit, said she recognizes that. No tax hikes, she says, but budget cuts will be “painful” and require “sacrifice.”

She later noted, “We can do with fewer laws on the books.”

Amen. I personally favor a constitutional amendment mandating zero-growth legal codes: For every law enacted, an old one must be repealed.

Meanwhile, we’d save lots of money with the proposal of state lawmakers Martin Looney and Toni Harp of New Haven, who suggested following Massachusetts’ lead in decriminalizing marijuana on the grounds that we can’t afford to keep arresting and prosecuting people who use it.

The monetary cost is high enough. There’s also the question of whether an ostensibly free country should have the world’s highest prison population. One-fourth of the world’s prisoners are serving time in the United States, and half of all American prisoners are incarcerated on drug charges. That’s one-eighth of the planet’s prison population whose only crime was using or selling intoxicants no worse — and in many ways better — than alcohol.

If you think marijuana should remain illegal, then repeat after me: “America should take more than 40 percent of its adults, and 50 percent of its high school students by the time they reach graduation, and put them in prison. They all deserve criminal records.”

Seriously, that’s a conservative statistic of how many Americans have violated marijuana laws. Generally via smoking it. Often more than once. Most of us turned out fine.

If full enforcement of a law requires arresting and prosecuting nearly half of a country’s 300 million people, does this suggest something inherently wrong with the law? Or does it instead argue for the selective enforcement we have now, where poor and dark-skinned offenders become “drug felons” while their paler and wealthier cousins largely escape police notice?

Now a practical question. If a decriminalization bill passes the legislature, will Rell sign or veto it? In 2007 she vetoed medical marijuana, which is why Connecticut still prosecutes and imprisons sick people for treating themselves with the “wrong” medicine.

But these prosecutions happened before the economy entered meltdown mode. The threat of statewide financial collapse might change Jodi Rell’s mind where simple human compassion did not.

Belligerent Design Left Her In The Snow

2011-01-12T23:34:00.000-08:00

originally published February 1, 2009 in the Middletown Press, Bristol Press and New Britain Herald

***

The theory of Belligerent Design states that the universe was created by an intelligent being with a chip on his shoulder, who takes his aggression out on hapless humans such as you and me.

This theory isn’t taught in schools, due to opposition from the so-called scientific community over the lack of so-called evidence, but there’s no reason science and belligerent design can’t co-exist. Science concerns itself with “how” things happen. Belligerent design explains “why.”

For example, a scientist can tell you how natural forces such as evaporation, wind currents and temperature gradients combine to make winter storms like the one we had last week, which started off with snowfall before switching to ice that froze itself onto everything it touched.

But science can’t explain why — this is true — the snow-to-ice switch happened at the exact moment I started shoveling snow off my car to get to work. Science is also silent regarding why, when I left work that night, I spent 20 minutes chipping my car out from a block of solid ice, and the second I finished, the temperatures rose above freezing so the remaining ice melted off all by itself.

This was not coincidence. These were the actions of a belligerent designer.

Another reason I wholeheartedly embrace the theory of BD is that the alternative — at least for me — is admitting my problems are my own fault.

I swear, leaving the Southland and moving to Connecticut specifically for the weather sounded like a great idea when I first conceived it, on a hot August night after college when I drove home from a friend’s party at 2 a.m. and the bank-clock thermometers read 92 degrees.

“I’d rather have cold weather than hot,” my deluded young self explained to her friends as she boxed up her worldly possessions and moved north. “If you’re too cold you can always put on another sweater, but if it’s too hot you can only strip down so far before you start looking indecent.”

Of course, there’s a lot more to winter than dressing for the cold. I thought I understood that. “There’s nothing more picturesque than a New England landscape after a fresh snowfall!” I gushed. “Not like the gray, dreary rain we get down here. I’d rather have the snow.”

Idiot. I based this theory partially on fond memories of living here as a child. Sledding downhill on white blankets of snow before coming indoors to drink steaming hot cocoa … turns out the best way to appreciate the beauty of a Connecticut winter is to move away from it when you’re 6 and then, years later, when you’re all grown up and living in Virginia and it’s 92 degrees at 2 a.m., you can dream of northern climes and make a terrible decision ultimately leading to indignities such as the ones I suffered last week.

Not until too late did I realize my 6-year-old self had always been too young to drive and too short to scrape ice off the windshield. What did she know of winter? Nothing of relevance to adults.

The moral of the story is, don’t base important life decisions on your memories of first grade. But if you do anyway, Belligerent Design theory teaches that this is the Creator’s fault, not yours, for belligerently designing the human brain to make childhood memories so untrustworthy.

Spending And Saving, Saving And Spending

2011-01-12T23:28:00.000-08:00

originally published January 18, 2009 in the New Britain Herald, Bristol Press and Middletown Press

***

You know those free online e-mail accounts where you’re guaranteed no-cost access from every Internet connection in the world in exchange for being constantly pummeled by annoying flash ads, fluffhead celebrity news links and the occasional virus attack that crashes your entire hard drive?

I have one, and in recent days it’s been impossible to check my messages without seeing headlines raving about the hot new fashion trend gaining popularity in today’s pre-Depression economy: Shop your closet.

In other words, ladies (and a few gentlemen, too): Instead of buying new clothes, just wear the ones you’ve already got. It’s easy if you’re a grown-up who’s worn the same size for several years now.

Fashion writers didn’t invent “Shop your closet”; they gave the name to a trend already in existence. More Americans every day are shopping their closets, attics and even local food banks, because the economy keeps creating more people whose only choices are “shop your closet” and “don’t shop at all.”

I’m all set for clothes these days, so these articles tell me nothing I don’t know already. What would really help my finances is a story explaining how, if you’d like to save gas money and the Earth by driving a hybrid, you don’t have to spend tens of thousands of dollars because you can just “shop your garage.”

Except I don’t have one, since I live in an apartment. Even with a garage, I doubt I could reach in back and find some adorable little automotive ensemble I forgot I had. Neither can you, unless you belong to that tiny minority of Americans who own automotive junkyards.

But that’s good. If all car buyers could just shop their garage, the auto industry would demand more bailout money and when tax time came, you’d pay for it anyway. Since the garment industry hasn’t asked for a bailout yet, you can still safely shop your closet.

If too many people do this, however, our economy will sink even lower. Behold a paradox: You, personally, are better off if you have low spending, high savings and no debt. So is everyone else you know. But such habits provide none of the gasoline needed to keep our consumer-based economic engine running.

Picture two mirrors set up to reflect endless images into each other: one labeled “As more people lose jobs and investments, fewer can afford to buy things,” and the other “As fewer people can afford to buy things, more lose investments and jobs.”

It almost makes your conscience hurt, to think your economic survival runs counter to the common good. Is that an indictment of you or the system?

Things were easier after 9/11. Remember when Americans asked “What can we do as individuals to strike back against the terrorists who attacked our country” and the president said, “Go shopping?”

I bought socks the Saturday after the attack. I’d noticed, in the waning days of the pre-9/11 era, that my old socks were pretty stretched out, so when I replaced them it was very empowering to think “These socks won’t just keep my feet warm this winter, they strike a blow in defense of freedom and Western civilization. Take that, Osama!”

But there’s no way President Bush — or the President Obama we’ll have this Tuesday — can tell contemporary Americans “Buy more things and we’ll be fine.”

Meanwhile, I need warm socks because there’s a bone-numbing cold snap freezing my little corner of New England. I’ll shop my sock drawer to see if I have any old freedom socks left.

Bureaucratic Blunder Gets Into Your Pocket

2011-01-12T23:27:00.000-08:00

originally published in the New Britain Herald, Middletown Press and Bristol Press, January 11, 2009

With the economy careening toward Great Depression 2.0, socially responsible writers like me produce helpful news-you-can-use articles in the “How to save money for the tough times ahead” genre. So here goes: Clip coupons, brown bag your lunches, turn down the heat and put a sweater on.

And a bonus tip for parents whose children are in their “growing like a weed” phase (birth through college): Since your kids outgrow their outfits every three months anyway, you can save a bundle by shopping at consignment stores, thrift shops and other used-stuff emporiums.

Until Feb. 10. That’s the day a law called the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act is slated to come into force and effectively make it illegal to sell used clothing, toys or any other item for children below age 12. Goodbye, Goodwill. Sayonara, Salvation Army. Farewell, flea market.

What the law actually requires is that all such products for sale first be tested for lead and other harmful chemicals. If you’re a large, established company with an enormous operating budget, this’ll be inconvenient, but at least you can probably afford it. If you’re a little mom-and-pop business, a startup on a shoestring or a charity thrift store subsisting on donations, you probably cannot.

So if the law isn’t changed, on Feb. 10 all untested children’s clothes and toys for sale in new and secondhand shops across America will be legally deemed “hazardous waste” and dumped into landfills.

This is to protect The Children. Remember the thousand or so “poison Chinese consumer product” stories you saw last year? And all the outraged Americans who demanded government do something about them?

Government did. If you watch pharmaceutical commercials, you know that any prescription comes with nasty side effects, and it’s just too bad the prescription “Test every children’s item sold” has the side effect “Drive everyone out of business except the big chain stores and manufacturers.”

To lawmakers’ credit, they had the grace to act embarrassed when small at-home clothing and toy makers said these testing costs would drive them out of business. So there’s talk of exempting all-natural items, such as cotton or wool, from the test mandates. But no exemption for artificial materials such as synthetic dyes and polyester threads that are still found in every kid’s item in America. No exemption for hand-me-downs, either.

The Act passed unanimously in the House of Representatives (all five of Connecticut’s Congresscritters voted for it) and by an overwhelming majority in the Senate (both of Connecticut’s Senators voted for it) before President Bush signed it into law (at least he’s leaving).

So if you’re happy with the child-safety boost scheduled for February, make sure you call your elected officials and express your gratitude. “Thanks for driving up the cost of new items and making the sale of used ones impossible,” you can say. “And thanks for giving big retailers a boost, too. Obliterating the competition ought to help their bottom line.”

Perhaps the politicians — or their flunkies assigned to speak with constituents — will harrumph and tell you, “We’re looking into it. We didn’t realize how far-reaching this law actually was.” In which case you can reply, “Oh. Thanks for voting on a law without knowing what the hell you voted for, then.” And if you’re feeling double-extra-super grateful, you can add, “No wonder Congress voted itself a pay raise last year. You guys deserve it.”

You May Have Survived, But It Isn't Over

2011-01-12T23:25:00.000-08:00

Originally published in the Bristol Press, Middletown Press and New Britain Herald, January 4, 2009

***

The last presidential election was also the first one with voters too young to personally remember the 1980s. But this newly voting generation grew up hearing their elders speak of a decade dominated by mullet haircuts, Reaganomics and gory slasher flicks featuring a maniac who slices and diced his way through dozens of sexy (despite the mullets) teenagers until one of them finally manages to kill the maniac instead.

Of course, by the time this happens, the maniac’s already murdered most of the characters in the movie. There’s only one or two left at the end, but you get the idea that they’ll turn out all right: “Now that the Bad Man’s gone, our troubles are over.”

Too bad things don’t work that way in the nonmovie world. Imagine the real-life survivor of an ’80s slasher spree trying to explain this to the police: “I know I’m drenched in blood that isn’t mine, and there’s a lot of fresh corpses in that abandoned summer camp just behind me, but I swear: It was the serial killer you thought you gunned down umpty-squat years ago this very night. Or the evil school janitor who died in a fire and kills kids in their dreams.”

Cops almost never fall for stories like that. So if I were a character in an ’80s horror flick and managed to outlive the psycho killer and make it to the end credits, I’d turn to my surviving friends and say “The Bad Man is gone, but we’re still in a world of hurt.”

Which, coincidentally, is exactly how I feel when contemplating the upcoming inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama. Granted, I expect he’ll do a much better job than his predecessor. Of course, I’d say the same thing if America elected a Magic 8 Ball with half its fluid leaked out.

“Look here, Mr. President, another wad of Congressional legislation just plopped onto your desk. Do you want to sign it into law?” [Shake clunk shake clunk shake clunk] “‘Ask again later.’ Ah, you want to give it some thought, do you? That’s an encouraging sign. Especially considering all the troubles our country faces.”

But they’re not the sort of troubles you can relate to in an ’80s slasher movie. Contemporary American problems hearken back to the 1970s, the decade in which our country had to admit failure in a foreign war while our domestic economy and international prestige levels went straight to hell, followed closely by horror-movie writers in search of inspiration.

That’s why ’70s characters had it worse than their ’80s counterparts. “All right, I made it to the end of the script, but I still live in a world where the devil regularly possesses little girls or takes over a suburban home or knocks up a housewife with the Antichrist. And there’s earthquakes and sharks and ships that tip over, too.”

Problems such as these won’t vanish just because you get rid of one man. Neither will the problems facing America today.

Then again, the first time Americans faced ’70s-style problems, we were also cursed with ’70s-style presidents. Maybe this time we’ll get lucky.

Job-Hunting Tip: Sell Your Soul To Satan

2011-01-12T23:23:00.000-08:00

originally published as "Who do you call to get a better job?" Bristol Press, Middletown Press and New Britain Herald, December 28, 2008

***

The other night I tried selling my soul to Satan in exchange for a secure, fulfilling job offering a decent salary and opportunities for advancement (yes, America, that is what it takes nowadays).

Unfortunately, the growing world economic crisis has even hurt the soul market. With so many souls offered for sale, prices are dropping even faster than the real estate and stock markets combined. Forget about making a profit on any sales; you’ll be lucky if you get enough to cancel out your losses.

“I’m cutting back on personal spending these days,” the Devil said to me. “Who isn’t? If you’re selling your soul for a job, the most I can afford to offer right now is a temp gig warming office seats for big-industry CEOs while they fly to Congress to collect their bailout checks. Pays 20 bucks an hour plus travel costs. No bennies.”

I’m not desperate enough to even consider such an insulting offer. Yet. “Come back in a few months,” I told him. “Maybe I should see how the new year and new president work out, before committing to anything drastic.”

“Suit yourself,” Satan said. “The longer you wait to sell, the less you’ll get when you do. And that’s not even counting what inflation will do to the value of the dollar. C’mon. I can have you on a plane flying to Detroit tomorrow. Just sign here.”

But I shook my head, in lieu of saying “No,” and Lucifer vanished in a sulfurous puff of smoke.

The moral of this story is: Don’t try selling your soul to Satan, because whatever he offers won’t be worth it. And yet, the more I think about it, the more I like the idea.

The idea of leading a major company, I mean. I don’t suppose anyone reading this belongs to the board of directors of some huge corporation looking to hire a high-ranking executive officer? If so, look no further than me.

Granted, I have no idea how to run such a business. If you put me at the helm of your company, I’ll probably drive it into the ground, flush its stock value down the toilet and add most of its work force to the unemployment rolls.

What everyone else is doing, in other words. So why hire me instead of them?

Most corporate executives who trash their companies charge hundreds of millions of dollars each year for their services. I’m willing to trash your company for a mere half-million, plus health and dental.

This enormous salary differential could shore up your stock value. Preserve hundreds of jobs. Or fund your next round of executive bonuses and corporate retreats in Maui.

Also: I am a woman who was raised in the South. This means I know how to shed realistic-looking tears on demand. Maybe I can use this skill to finagle an extra few hundred billion out of the (mostly male) members of Congress when I visit Washington and tell them why the taxpayers need to pay for my company’s bailout.

Of course, “Trashing the economy and using taxpayer money to do it” is the sort of job you can’t take unless you sell your soul first. I’ll call Satan again tomorrow morning.

Soldiers In The War On Christmas

2011-01-12T23:21:00.000-08:00

Originally published as "Tis the season of many holidays," Bristol Press, Middletown Press and New Britain Herald, December 21, 2008

***

Happy Holidays! If you’re naïve, you read that and thought, “How nice. The writer’s expressing a goodwill message to all of her readers who celebrate various religious or secular winter-themed festivals this time of year.”

Which is ridiculous. When you see “Happy holidays” in December, the sane and savvy default interpretation is, “That’s a deliberate slap in the face of every good American who celebrates Christmas.”

Seriously, Christmas-tree owners, “Happy holidays” insults us all. And I’m not just saying that because I drank too much spiked eggnog; I’m saying it because I drank too much spiked eggnog while watching TV pundits and stop-animation specials pontificate about the War on Christmas.

Balls and nutcrackers! That wasn’t an epithet; I’m cataloguing the Christmas decorations on display in my house. Balls, nutcrackers, stockings and a tree. This is the nth consecutive year I’ve celebrated the holiday, and TV shows about how it’s threatened are part of my annual tradition.

Sometimes Christmas is in danger because there’s a fog so dense Santa can’t fly through it unless Rudolph with his nose so bright agrees to guide the sleigh that night. Or perhaps Christmas hinges on whether it snows in Southtown, and it looks like the Heat Miser won’t let it.

While flipping through the channels this year I heard Christmas Warrior Bill O’Reilly announce a new threat: mean scary people in America want to repeal Christmas as a federal holiday, and make everybody work instead.

Was this before or after Burgermeister Meisterburger outlawed toys in Sombertown? I don’t remember; these cartoon Christmas threats all blend together after awhile. Either way, I’m sure something will save the day before the last commercial break, and O’Reilly will still get to celebrate Christmas with his family.

That said, if life really does imitate children’s holiday specials, I don’t want to side with the bad guys. So why didn’t I start this column with “Merry Christmas,” rather than insult you with “Happy Holidays?” God knows, given the current state of the newspaper industry, writers like me can ill afford to insult our readers.

But I also can’t afford to insult my friends, especially not the ones who invited me to parties celebrating “Hanukkah” or “Eid” or “the solstice” or whatever. I’m not picky, this time of year; friends are friends and a party is a party, no matter which holiday justifies it.

That said, I’m glad that my parents refused when my childhood self asked them to convert to Judaism so we could have eight days of Christmas every year. Not all holidays are created equal, and “We had a day’s worth of lamp oil last over a week” doesn’t compare to “Santa Claus comes down the chimney and gives you cool stuff.”

The problem with Hanukkah is that the whole “eight days of lamplight” thing stopped being impressive once humanity discovered electricity. Nobody cares about lamp oil anymore. The holiday would hold more appeal for modern Americans if it switched focus so that a day’s worth of gasoline lasted over a week. And the menorahs and dreidels could be decked out with festive strings of colored light bulbs shaped like little gas stations.

Wow. That last paragraph might be the single most offensive thing I’ve ever written. Especially to embattled soldiers in the War on Christmas, under fire from annoying reminders that other people celebrate winter holidays, too.

Of Shooting Galleries And Gun-Free Zones

2011-01-12T23:17:00.000-08:00

Originally published as "Who has advantage in a Gun-Free Zone?", Bristol Press, Middletown Press and New Britain Herald, December 14, 2008

***

You know those amusement-park shooting galleries where you use an air rifle to knock down multiple rows of moving mechanical ducks? The way they work is, you shoot at the targets all you want, and none of the targets can shoot back.

Most schools and workplaces operate on the same principle. Aside from that, they’re quite different from arcade gun ranges. When you read about shooting sprees in gun-free zones, you’ll notice that the shooters wield weapons far more lethal than any air rifle. And they don’t fire at plastic ducks, either.

Behold one of the great paradoxes of modern criminal psychology: Signs that say things such as “This is a gun-free zone” or “Guns are absolutely not allowed here” don’t deter the sort of people who are already ignoring society’s much-stricter prohibitions against mass murder.

Too bad. Gun-free shootings are common enough that English has evolved clichés to describe them: post-office fatalities gave Americans the phrase “Going postal,” while “School shooting” even has its own Wikipedia entry.

But don’t panic. School shootings that lead to fatalities occur in America roughly once every two months, on average. That’s statistically negligible, in a country of more than 300 million. Even when you add office and workplace shootings to the equation, you’re still more likely to die in a car accident than from a bullet fired in a gun-free zone.

Yet the shootings draw interest in ways that car accidents don’t. Why’s that? Maybe the sense of legally enforced helplessness has something to do with it. Accidents happen all the time. Everyone accepts that. As for deliberate attacks ... it’s unlikely some nut on the highway will come gunning for you in his car. But if one does, well, at least you’d be in a car, too. There’s no defensive-driving equivalent to the gun-free zone, no legal requirement that grants attackers advantages over their victims.

And no shortage of well-meaning people who think disarming law-abiding citizens will make it harder for criminals to shoot people.

The Second Amendment to the Constitution guarantees “the right to keep and bear arms.” Of all freedoms in the Bill of Rights, it’s the only one that Americans can’t legally exercise without written permission from the government. If you’re looking to get this permission for yourself, I can’t tell you how to do it, since the requirements vary from state to state and even city to city.

But whatever the gun laws in your locality, I can tell you this: If you’re unlucky enough to get shot, the guy who did it was probably ignoring those laws anyway.

No matter how many speeches a politician gives in favor of gun control, it’s a safe bet that his own bodyguards are still packing heat. Even if he’s giving a speech at a school or post office or other gun-free zone. The Secret Service and other professional-bodyguard types apparently don’t trust the ability of “No guns allowed” signs to keep shooters from hitting their targets.

That’s the difference between public servants and the public they serve. Our servants’ lives are considered much too valuable to risk in a gun-free zone.

Unreasonable Search In This Free Country

2011-01-12T23:16:00.000-08:00

Originally published in the Bristol Press, Middletown Press and New Britain Herald, December 7, 2008

***

Click it or ticket. And pity my old junior high civics teacher, for if he’s still in the education biz he’s had to write all-new lesson plans. The ones he used to teach my class about the Constitution and its amendments are obsolete.

For example: When he explained the prohibitions against “unreasonable searches and seizures” without “probable cause” (segue here into lesson about search warrants), he led a class discussion in which we mentioned the police checkpoints we saw on old movies showcasing the unpleasantness of life under the Nazis or Soviets.

But not in America. This is a Free Country — you could hear my teacher pronounce the capital letters, when he said that — and one benefit of living in a Free Country is this: Unless government has good reason to suspect you, personally, of wrongdoing, they have to leave you alone. And “You’re traveling on a public thoroughfare” doesn’t count as probable cause.

Civics teachers can’t say that anymore. And I’m dating myself by telling you this story; my classes obviously took place before 1990, when the Supreme Court decided that American police could hold checkpoints so long as the cops agreed to first say “We’re looking for drunken drivers” (though they can still keep, rather than toss back, any other fish swept up in their net).

Americans who live within 100 miles of an international border have been driving through checkpoints since 1976, when the Supreme Court allowed police to have them so long as cops agreed to first say “We’re looking for illegal immigrants.” This Fourth Amendment rollback failed to result in a situation where Americans 33 years later could think, “Wow, sure is nice living in a country where illegal immigration’s not a problem,” but the courts still continued adding to the list of acceptable checkpoint excuses. Nowadays, even pippy-poo excuses such as “We’re looking for unbuckled seat belts” are justification for cops to ignore the probable-cause clause.

And brag about it on billboards and TV. Click it or Ticket. Over the Limit, Under Arrest.

As a frequent driver who lives in Connecticut, I’ve lost track of how many checkpoint encounters I’ve had the past five years. Even when the cops see I’m all sober and buckled up, they still grill me about what I’m doing and where I’m going, since driving at rush hour, or 8 p.m. on a Friday, now qualifies as probable cause.

Check out this excerpt from a recent news story about a seat belt checkpoint in the little town of Plainville: “The police department concluded the two-week national Click It or Ticket Campaign [and] conducted 36 safety checkpoints ... which resulted in 277 enforcement actions.”

No mention of how many hundreds or thousands of drivers were affected when police sealed off the roads and let traffic back up while everybody waited their turn to prove they’re behaving themselves. But the cops admitted writing 230 tickets for seat-belt irregularities and another 47 for violations such as using a cell phone or lacking proof of insurance.

What would my old civics teacher have said, had my gawky young adolescent self raised her hand and told him, “When I grow up, I’ll live in a country where police brag about traffic checkpoints where they snagged some people with outdated registration paperwork. No, the cops won’t have Russian or German accents; I’ll still live in America”?

Probably sent me to the principal’s office for being a smartass.

Prosecutions Can Be The Real Drug Crimes

2011-01-12T23:12:00.000-08:00

Originally published in the Middletown Press, Bristol Press and New Britain Herald, November 30, 2008

***

The good thing about drug crimes, as opposed to crimes such as (for example) murder, is that if you committed any in your youth, nobody cares when your adult self admits this. Society still frowns on those who say, “Yeah, back in school I used to kill people every weekend,” but admitting an equally frequent history of illegal drug use won’t necessarily stop you from having a successful career or being elected president of the United States.

Barack Obama set a historic precedent: the first American presidential candidate to openly admit “Yes, I did inhale. And drink. And even snort,” and still get elected. But woe unto him if his detractors ever learn the secret of time travel, because they will destroy his entire career before it starts, telling some late-1970s cop “That Barry Obama kid’s using illegal intoxicants. Go get him.”

Somewhere in a parallel universe, the teenage Barack Obama got arrested for one of his numerous drug-law violations. Alterna-Obama spent his young adulthood making license plates and fending off attacks in prison shower rooms. He got out on parole a few years ago, but hasn’t amounted to much. (In that universe, as in ours, most good jobs are off-limits to convicted felons.) Your parallel-universe counterpart never heard of him.

In our reality, Obama’s drug use never attracted police attention, so he turned out fine. He even got elected president, on a platform of “change,” though it’s a safe bet he won’t change our policy of imprisoning people who committed the same crimes, if not lesser ones, that he did.

Intoxicants other than alcohol have been illegal in America for more than four generations now. The rationale is that drugs destroy lives, so the government figures that instead of giving drugs the chance to destroy your life, you should let prison do it for you.

It’s like waiting for the other shoe to drop, which can be very stressful, so the law just grabs the shoe and beats you senseless with it right now.

Barack Obama, like this columnist, was lucky: Our youthful selves never got caught violating the various state and federal drug laws we broke. So we both outgrew our habits without a criminal record tarnishing our names, and nowadays, instead of committing crimes of intoxication, we stick to perfectly legal alcohol.

So long as you’re over 21 (Obama wasn’t when he started drinking), you can legally booze up until you throw up and pass out on your bathroom floor. The only exception was in the 1920s, when Prohibition led to the rise of bootlegger gangsters as vicious as the worst Colombian drug lords of today.

Until booze became legal again, at which point respectable businessmen re-entered the market and the whole gangster bootlegging business collapsed.

But Prohibition crimes, like drug crimes, are considered harmless when they’re in the past rather than the present. This is especially noticeable if you watch movies, which portray drug dealers as scary, violent types, whereas bootleggers were charming, handsome businessmen such as John F. Kennedy’s dad or “the Great Gatsby” played by young Robert Redford.

The respectability of bootleggers past is also seen in sports such as NASCAR, which got its start when backwoods moonshiners souped up their autos to escape pursuit by cops and revenue agents, predecessors to today’s Drug Enforcement Administration. Perhaps in 80 years there will be an equally popular sport that got its start when ingenious smugglers devised ever-more-clever airtight compartments in which to hide pungent contraband from drug-sniffing dogs.

How To End Either Global Warming Or The Affordable-Healthcare Crisis

2011-01-12T23:10:00.000-08:00

Originally published as "Let's swap the roles of health, car insurers," Middletown Press, Bristol Press and New Britain Herald, November 23, 2008

***

During the recent presidential election, two issues got a lot of coverage: America’s affordable-health care crisis, and that whole mess about global warming and carbon emissions. Fortunately, I’ve discovered a plan that will completely eliminate one of these problems.

Unfortunately, solving one problem will make the other worse. But that shouldn’t bother American voters, since they’re already accustomed to choosing between the lesser of two evils.

I discovered the plan while visiting my doctor — sorry, my “primary care physician” — for one of those good-health checkups insurance companies pay for once a year. A standard visit: half an hour filling out paperwork, 25 minutes alone in an examination room, three minutes with my doctor and a stethoscope, plus a couple weeks’ worth of time and phone calls getting the appointment in the first place.

The co-pay cost me $30. I have no idea how much my doctor billed the HMO.

Later that afternoon, I decided to get my car’s oil changed. No problem: drove to the first quick-lube shop I saw, waited 10 minutes and paid $25.

Anyway, here’s my Health Care or Environmental Salvation plan: Ordinary Americans will be able to afford medical costs by getting coverage through their car-insurance companies. Conversely, to end carbon emissions (by making driving too expensive for ordinary Americans to afford), let the HMOs handle auto insurance, too.

The great thing about car insurance companies is that you only deal with them for big-ticket items and handle everyday maintenance yourself. This makes automotive care affordable for almost everybody, which leads to more driving and more pollution.

Unless the HMOs handle it. Need an oil change? Then call your primary car mechanic and make an appointment through his secretary to determine that your car does, indeed, need an oil change, and you’ll be allowed to schedule a visit to an oil-care specialist three weeks from next Tuesday (don’t forget to ask your boss for time off work), and your mechanic bills the HMO some huge amount but your co-pay is only $25, plus another $20 for your primary car mechanic visit.

What happens when your tires start going bald? Once your PCM confirms this diagnosis in writing, the insurance company will pay for a new set at the tire shop five towns over from where you live (i.e., the nearest one belonging to your HMO’s automotive provider network. The other 19 tire shops in your area are off-limits to you).

Of course, if you want to buy a new car, you’ll need your PCM to check it over and look for pre-existing conditions. If the car’s in less-than-perfect shape, you might not qualify for coverage at all. Sucks to be you.

And let’s not forget gasoline! It’s extremely dangerous when used improperly, so instead of allowing folks to buy it willy-nilly, it’ll be prescribed on a need-only basis. Since you’re not legally responsible enough to determine that need on your own, your primary car mechanic will authorize how much gas you need, which station you can buy it from, the proper octane rating and whether you really need gas at all.

That said, you can get around the need-only restrictions if you’re friends with a mechanic who might be persuaded to prescribe you some gas for purely recreational purposes. Though if you try this, you both run the risk of arrest and prison time. The government takes recreational prescription use very seriously.

Conspiracy Theorists Gear Up For Obama

2011-01-12T23:08:00.000-08:00

Originally published in the Middletown Press, Bristol Press and New Britain Herald, November 16, 2008

***

The problem with conspiracy theorists is that they funnel so much attention onto individual trees, they completely miss the reality of the forest.

Consider the 9/11 Truth movement. Bush and Cheney have spent nearly eight years arguing that the American government should be allowed to do things such as torture people, spy on citizens without warrants, lock them away without trial and other frighteningly unconstitutional acts. Worth complaining about, perhaps.

Meanwhile, the Truthers have focused on the best ways to uncover a complex conspiracy involving radical America-hating Muslims who committed a mass-suicide fake terrorist attack as a favor to America’s president, thus giving the Great Satan an excuse to consolidate power over his own people and invade a Middle Eastern country with rich oil fields.

The idea, admittedly, has a certain appeal. It would have been comforting, during the gloomiest days of the Bush administration, to think “At least the country’s being led by brilliant Machiavellian geniuses who know exactly what they’re doing.”

Or maybe “stupid Machiavellian geniuses” is more accurate. At some point, the conspirators still said to each other: “When we bring down the World Trade Center, it’ll give us an excuse to invade Iraq. We’ll blame it on a bunch of suicidal fanatic hijackers. But we’ll have to say they were Saudi hijackers, because there’s no way we could get hold of any fake Iraqi passports for a conspiracy of this magnitude.”

Too bad Cheney never thought to hire a copy editor. Someone with a sharp eye, who could’ve pointed out irregularities that the American public might find suspicious. (This writer was qualified and available at the time.)

But that’s a digression. Point is, the 9/11 movement will likely shift its attention away from the White House once Bush leaves it. Fortunately, President-elect Obama won’t suffer any deprivation, since he’s busy with conspiracies of his own.

The right-wing parts of the Internet claim Obama isn’t merely America’s first nonwhite president, but our first illegal immigrant radical Muslim Marxist terrorist president as well. To summarize the arguments for his preemptive impeachment:

OBAMA blah blah MARXIST wah wah TERRORIST robble robble NOT AN AMERICAN CITIZEN mumble mumble THAT’S NOT HIS REAL BIRTH CERTIFICATE yabba yabba TAKE AWAY OUR GUNS blithery blithery HUSSEIN OBAMA yappity yappity DANGEROUS HIPPIE RADICALS giggity giggity OSAMA BIN LADEN IN THE LINCOLN BEDROOM.

And that’s without even playing the race card.

Are any of these allegations true? America can only hope so. Obama’s probably not capable of demolishing the World Trade Center and fooling the world about who did — that requires the genius of a George W. Bush, possibly with an Illuminati/Mossad connection — but if we’re lucky, he is at least smart enough to have spent several years serving as a U.S. senator without anyone realizing he’s secretly been an Indonesian citizen all along.

He was a precocious little chap, too, bribing some obscure Hawaiian court clerk to alter his birth certificate while still just an infant. That bodes well for us. America’s in bad shape these days. We need a leader with wisdom, foresight and maturity beyond his years, and if half these anti-Obama conspiracy theories are true, he’ll do fine.

Smuggling Six Ounces Onto A Plane? Easy.

2011-01-12T23:05:00.000-08:00

Originally published in the Middletown Press, Bristol Press and New Britain Herald, November 9, 2008

***

Three is a popular fairy-tale number: three bears, three wishes, third time’s the charm, and three ounces is the most shampoo frequent flyers can haul in their carry-on bags without terrorists hijacking the plane.

That last example’s not just a fairy tale; it’s an official United States Government anti-terrorism policy in effect since 2006, when the Transportation Security Administration first implemented its airport Rule of Three.

That’s the rule saying you can’t have more than three ounces of shampoo, hairspray, conditioner or any other liquid or gelatinous grooming product on an airplane. These items, along with such others as suntan lotion, bug repellent and moisturizer, must conform to the Rule of Three or else share space on the same TSA forbidden-danger list that includes dynamite, hand grenades and flare guns.

Confession: We committed a federal crime. Last time we flew out of state, we violated national security by smuggling nine ounces of shampoo — six over the limit — in our carry-on bag. We hid the shampoo in plain sight; two TSA agents looked right at it and said nothing. Now we wonder: Would it be ethical for us to tell you how we broke federal law and got away with it?

Tough call. What if somebody reading this turns out to be a terrorist who wants to blow up an airplane but needs nine ounces of shampoo to do it? And since the TSA will only let him have three he’s all discouraged and sad and about to give up, until he does an online search for “Shampoo-smuggling techniques” and finds this column here.

The government says a lot of people could die if we share our smuggling expertise with you.

Or maybe not. On Oct. 2, TSA director Kip Hawley announced that the agency might suspend the Rule of Three next year, if they’re allowed to buy some expensive scanning equipment first. So if we get in trouble for disseminating knowledge in violation of the anti-terrorism laws, we can just look innocent and say “Oops! That column wasn’t supposed to run until next year, or whenever Kip Hawley in his infinite wisdom decided to end the Rule of Three because under his leadership America became strong enough to handle the threat of clean-haired vacationers. Who let this go to print early? It’s probably some intern’s fault. Or the editor’s. Definitely not ours, though.”

So we’ll tell you the secret (if you’re an overprotective parent, have your kids leave the room now): The way to carry nine ounces of shampoo onto an airplane in violation of the Rule of Three is to decant it into multiple small bottles of less than three ounces each.

And we did.

We used a variety so TSA wouldn’t get suspicious: Two ounces in a bottle whose label proclaimed it to be the complimentary hand lotion found in hotel bathrooms. Another 1.5 in a “Hand Sanitizer” jar. Two ounces honestly identified as the shampoo they were. And so on.

The woman ahead of us in the screening line carried only five ounces of shampoo, but TSA confiscated it anyway because it was in a single five-ounce bottle. Our nine ounces made it through just fine because we, unlike that woman, are self-taught hazmat experts who know how to safely transport shampoo through American airspace — in dribs and drabs that don’t combine to break the Rule of Three.

Gay Marriage: A Threat To Traditional Marriage, Or Whatever

2011-01-12T23:03:00.000-08:00

(originally published as "Change in Constitution Won't Change Marriage," Middletown Press, Bristol Press and New Britain Herald, November 2, 2008)

***

The other day we almost went to our Significant Other and said, "I love you, honey. Wouldn't it be nice if we got married?"

But we didn’t, because the last time we said that some other people started shouting “No! This horrible, unholy union must be stopped, even if it takes a Constitutional amendment to stop it. Allowing this travesty of a marriage would destroy everything we hold dear!”

Luckily, the only folks who say this are our parents. Nobody else in America cares if we get hitched or not, and they certainly don’t suggest amending any state- or country-level constitutions to keep us in perpetual bachelorhood.

That’s because we’re heterosexuals, defined as “people who want to marry folks with completely different sets of certain gender-specific body parts we can’t talk about in a family newspaper like this one, so for propriety’s sake we’re not going to define it.”

Being heterosexual also means we have no interest in getting same-sex married, so we were very concerned on Oct. 10 when the Connecticut Supreme Court ruled that equal-protection clauses in the state Constitution apply to state-granted marriage privileges, too. No more civil unions. Marriages for all.

What does this mean? The Family Institute of Connecticut explained on its blog: “We are up against powerful interests who are thrilled to have a bare majority of unelected judges undemocratically force same-sex ‘marriage’ on Connecticut.”

Of course, if anyone amends the state Constitution to specifically forbid same-sex marriages, that would invalidate the state court’s ruling allowing them.

That’s why the Family Institute wants Nutmeggers to vote “Yes” on Election Day, in demanding that Connecticut host another constitutional convention.

“The Family Institute calls same-sex marriage ‘judicial tyranny!’” we said. “Sounds ominous. What’ll we do now that the court is forcing same-sex marriage on us?” We paused to consider the implications. “Serves your parents right. Maybe they’ll realize I wasn’t such a bad catch after all.”

Our unimpressed Significant Other replied: “The gay couple down the street is upgrading from a civil union to a marriage. How does that affect us?”

“If you’d ever watch ‘Queer Eye for the Straight Guy’ you’d know that’s a foolish question,” we said. “Think how fabulous their wedding is going to be! How can we measure up to that? How can any couple measure up to that, if one of them’s a straight guy? So now when straight couples get married in Connecticut, everyone will compare them to gay weddings and think ‘Eeew, how tacky’ and that’ll cheapen respect for the entire institution of marriage.”

If ours were a healthy relationship, our Significant Other would’ve given us lots of sympathy and support right about then. But no. Instead, we got that look most people only make when they’ve heard something stupid, and spent the night sleeping on the couch.

None of this would’ve happened if not for that Supreme Court ruling. Considering how badly our own relationship was damaged after the court forced same-sex marriage on Connecticut, we hope the Family Institute succeeds in its attempts to amend the state constitution before things get any worse. Surely that will solve the problems facing marriages today.

Face Crimes

2008-07-18T00:01:00.000-07:00

originally published in the Hartford Advocate September 13, 2007

Face Crimes

Bradley airport may have behavior detection officers checking you out. Smile at the airport so they don't think you're a terrorist.

By Jennifer Abel

Let's play "Name That Background Noise," where the Advocate lists the sounds of a given location and you guess where it is. Ready? Here goes: "Take off your jacket and shoes. I'm confiscating your shampoo because it's in a four-ounce bottle and any bottle bigger than three ounces is a terrorist threat. Seriously, that's our official policy."

If you guessed "an airport checkpoint staffed by the Transportation Security Administration," you win! For your prize, here's some useful advice (which the losers should also heed): next time you fly somewhere, schedule it for when you're in a good mood and can remain so even if TSA says they're taking your deodorant so nobody can hijack the plane with it.

The good mood's important because a bad one might attract attention from Behavior Detection Officers, TSA agents trained (more or less) to wander through airports looking for secret hidden facial expressions that indicate you're up to no good.

Seriously, that's their official duty. "There are physical and psychological signals that manifest themselves when an individual is ... feeling fear and anxiety [such as] trying to hide a fear of discovery," said Ann Davis, a TSA regional spokesperson in Boston.

TSA's Web site says the same thing with slightly different words, describing BDOs as people who go around "identifying potentially high-risk individuals based on involuntary physical and psychological reactions."

They're talking about something called "microexpressions," which supposedly make a person's hidden feelings visible, albeit briefly, to anyone who knows how to look. Paul Ekman, a professor emeritus of psychology at UC San Francisco, discovered the phenomenon nearly 40 years ago.

Early in his career, Ekman determined that certain facial expressions remain consistent across all societies. Though cultures disagree on some facial issues, like whether eye contact is respectful or rude, feelings like disgust, sadness, fear and their opposites look identical on faces all over the world. This implies a biological, rather than cultural, component. Ekman catalogued the myriad involuntary muscle movements that make these faces. Here's how they tie in to microexpressions: say you're feeling some intense emotion like anxiety. You want to hide this, and you're a good actor, so for the most part you're successful; everyone who sees your face thinks you're happy.

But at some point, you'll still make the muscle movements that form the "anxious" expression. Anxiety might only flash on your face for a fraction of a second, but it will appear.

Ekman discovered this during slow-motion studies of videotapes.

In one famous example, he viewed a tape of a woman who'd suffered through a bout of severe depression, but insisted to her off-camera psychiatrist that she was feeling much better and not entertaining suicidal thoughts, so could she please have a weekend pass home?

The woman was lying but her doctor believed her. (Fortunately, she confessed the truth before leaving that weekend.) Ekman, while studying the tape, caught a look of utter desperation that distorted her features for only a few frames. Her microexpression told the truth where her macroexpression (and words) did not.

But Ekman, in a 2006 interview with Scientific American, cautioned that knowing what a person is feeling isn't the same as knowing what they're thinking. Identifying anxiety, for example, doesn't let you know "whether a person fears that I'm seeing through their lie or that I don't believe them when they're telling the truth." Or any of the other reasons they might feel anxious in an airport.

Nationwide, TSA hopes to have a total of 500 BDOs by 2008. Does Bradley International have one on staff? An airport spokesperson referred the question to local TSA administrator Daniel Lee, who sounded puzzled when he heard why the Advocate was calling. "I haven't had the media call before" to ask about BDOs, he said. But "there is a BDO at Bradley," though he had to check with his boss before discussing what the job entails.

Next morning he called back. "Did I say bee-DEE-oh? ... I meant bee-AY-oh. Bomb Appraisal Officer." TSA keeps a bomb guy at Bradley, Lee confirmed, but "with BDOs, we don't tell the public whether we do or do not for obvious reasons. If a terrorist knew what airports have BDOs, they'll avoid them."

Lee referred further questions higher up the command chain. "I can't give you any additional information ... if you have questions about BDOs, give Ann Davis a call."

Ann Davis, the TSA regional director in Boston, was friendly but not too informative. She spoke in generalities, and only confirmed specifics if the Advocate mentioned them first.

What does a BDO do? "The BDO is essentially a security officer trained in our SPOT program," Davis replied. That, like her earlier mention of involuntary "physical and psychological reactions," closely mirrors the wording on the TSA Web site, where a July 2006 press release about new career opportunities in the agency lists "Behavior Detection Officers who execute TSA's Screening Passengers by Observation Technique (SPOT) program."

Neither Davis nor the Web site mentioned the term "microexpressions," but Davis, when asked, admitted that's what all the psycho-physical wording alluded to.

But consider: Ekman's shown a remarkable success rate finding and interpreting microexpressions — when given unlimited time to study individual tapes. That's quite different from walking through a busy airport seeking microexpressions in the crowd.

"Well, I'm personally not trained in the techniques," Davis said when asked about that.

Also, BDOs are reputed to work in teams; if one detects a suspicious look, for example, he'll approach the person and try to start a conversation to glean more information. Considering how Americans are supposed to be always on alert in airports these days, it seems counterintuitive to quell suspicions of anxiety by sending a stranger to start up a chat.

Their training covers that possibility, Davis said reassuringly.

Ah, yes, the training. Ekman needed decades of experience and advanced education to achieve his microexpression proficiency. TSA agents, meanwhile, have been known to do things like confiscate a one-inch plastic gun from a child's GI Joe doll, apparently unaware that such toy weaponry is no actual threat. How do BDOs compare to the TSA rank and file?

"Behavior Detection Officers come from our security officer corps, and receive additional training," Davis said.

What credentials are needed to become a regular TSA security officer, then? And how much training to upgrade to the behavior detection ranks?

The minimum requirement to be a TSA security officer is "A GED or equivalent ... high school equivalency," Davis said. A BDO gets an additional "four days of classroom instruction ... and on-the-job training."

Dr. Michael Stevens did a lot more than that to become Director of Clinical Neuroscience at the Olin Neuropsychiatry Research Center in Hartford. He's also done much research on the issue of psychopaths, which is why we called him.

A psychopath in this case is loosely defined as someone who is sane, in that he's in touch with the same reality as the rest of us, but completely lacks any conscience or sense of empathy.

Such people also lack the emotions, like fear and anxiety, which BDOs are supposed to spot, but Davis assured us a BDO would still be able to spot one. "They're under stress," Davis said.

"Again, the more someone tries to suppress that, the more some of it shows through."
Stevens disagrees. "A psychopath would not feel the emotions," that manifest themselves as microexpressions, he said.

But to be honest, the psychopath factor isn't much of an issue when dealing with terrorists of the 9/11 sort.

"The current crop of primarily religious terrorists are not psychopaths," says Robert Trestman, a professor of medicine and psychiatry at the University of Connecticut Health Center. However, if such terrorists "are comfortable in their belief they will not demonstrate the anxiety ... if they have come to terms with ... what they are doing, the anxiety you expect won't be there." They won't attract attention from the BDOs either.

So the TSA, implemented after the World Trade Center attacks to upset future terrorist plots, is hiring new agents who probably won't have much luck in stopping terrorism. Of what use are they, then? According to Davis, they've had success in standard law enforcement. "The program has resulted in a lot of arrests, ranging from illegal immigrants ... to individuals with drugs or large amounts of cash." They may not stop the next Bin Laden, but college kids with marijuana brownies had better watch out.

Checkpoint Charlies

2008-07-17T23:58:00.001-07:00

originally published in the Hartford Advocate June 21, 2007

Checkpoint Charlies

West Hartford will be conducting drunk driving checkpoints on June 22 on New Britain Ave. So, you've been warned.

by Jennifer Abel

You already know that you shouldn’t drive drunk, and you know the reasons why. But should you choose to ignore these reasons and drive drunk in West Hartford on June 22, make sure you avoid the lower end of New Britain Avenue. The cops are setting up a drunk checkpoint there, and you’ll totally get busted.

Wow – a newspaper advising its readers how to break public-safety laws without getting caught. Sounds edgy and rebellious, right? Nope. Actually, by helping drunks avoid the checkpoint we’re semi-cooperating with the police, who must make at least a token attempt to get the word out in order to qualify for DUI-enforcement grants from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

“Grant money from the [NHTSA] goes through the state Department of Transportation,” which then doles it out to cities and towns, according to Lieutenant David Dubiel, who handles traffic control for West Hartford. Of course there are restrictions on how these funds are spent. “We can’t buy equipment,” says Dubiel, but are limited to funding overtime pay for officers to either perform “roving patrols” (driving around with an eye out for trouble) or staff “sobriety checkpoints.”

And they can’t keep it secret. “[According to] parameters established in case law, [a checkpoint] has to be announced to the media,” said Dubiel. Though what the media then does with the announcement is up to them: “Say, I tell the Hartford Courant, but I can’t force them to print it.”

That’s okay — there’s no force necessary for the Advocate to do the right thing. So remember, everybody: if you’re drunk in West Hartford this June 22, or even if you’re sober and just don’t like the idea of innocent citizens having to pass through police checkpoints, stay the heck away from New Britain Avenue.

Before 1990, checkpoints in America were mostly seen on television, when low-rent stations aired old black-and-white movies about life under the Nazis or Communists. “Your papers, citizen.” Pre-1990 civics teachers bragged to their students that Americans are protected from that sort of thing by the fourth amendment to the Constitution, which guarantees: “The right of the people to be secure … against unreasonable searches and seizures … but upon probable cause.”

In other words: you can’t be stopped for searches or questioning unless the cops have a warrant or at least a very good reason to suspect you’re up to something. No “fishing expeditions” netting the innocent in hopes of catching a few guilty along with them are allowed.

Then, in the 1980s the Michigan State Police decided that drunk driving was too big a problem for the fourth amendment to cover it. The police started setting up random checkpoints, inspecting all drivers on a given road to ensure none had been drinking. Challenges to this went all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in 1990 (by a 6-3 vote) that such checkpoints were indeed permissible.

Actually, when then-Chief Justice William Rehnquist wrote the Court opinion he agreed that “a Fourth Amendment ‘seizure’ occurs when a vehicle is stopped at a checkpoint.” But the Court decided this seizure without probable cause was only a “minimal intrusion of civil liberties,” and acceptable since reducing drunk driving is a legitimate concern of the government.

Ironically, Michigan’s Supreme Court later banned checkpoints within the state.

One of the arguments cited by the court were multiple studies showing checkpoints to be less effective than roving patrols in catching drunk drivers. (That the patrols avoided violating the fourth amendment was an added bonus.)

The Supreme Court ruling in favor of checkpoints had precedents: in 1976, for example, the Court said that checkpoints could be used within 100 miles of an international border, to determine drivers’ immigration status. Carving this exception to the Constitution was supposed to solve the illegal-immigration problem that plagued the country 31 years ago, the theory being that in exchange for a little fourth-amendment rollback, by 2007 or so illegal immigration would be a complete non-issue in America, border walls and INS crackdowns in New Haven notwithstanding.

Anyway, Dubiel thinks the purpose of the cops’ having to announce checkpoints to the media might be to keep constitutional bruising to a minimum. “Theoretically, the practical reason for the announcement [involves] the fourth-amendment rights against search and seizure,” he said.

When asked whether he found roving patrols or random checkpoints more effective in increasing the safety of the streets, Dubiel didn’t hesitate to answer.“I find roving patrols more effective … our last roving patrol we found a stolen car. There are no checkpoints for that.”

West Hartford’s town council voted to accept the NHTSA grant at the last council meeting. When you look at the agenda for a meeting in West Hartford (or any other municipality in America) you’ll usually see one or two items that you know will be rubber-stamped into acceptance with no prior debate.

One of the acceptance no-brainers on the last agenda was this: “Resolution to appropriate funds awarded the Town of West Hartford under the Federal Highway Safety Program for the purpose of expanded DUI enforcement.” No councilmember will vote to turn down free federal money, especially not in the name of public safety and double-especially not when the town’s having budget problems.

“The grant request was processed some time ago,” said Mayor Scott Slifka. “It’s for work we’ve done throughout the year, with the exception of [the upcoming checkpoint].” Slifka also said that the town helps fulfill the grant’s prior-notice requirement by mentioning future checkpoints on its “list serve,” a free e-mail subscription service offered on the town website. So if you’re wont to drink and drive in West Hartford then shame on you, and don’t forget to add your e-mail address to that list.

Coffin Nails Fill State Coffers

2008-07-17T23:54:00.000-07:00

originally published in the Hartford Advocate August 2, 2007

Coffin Nails Fill State Coffers
Is taxing smokers fair?

By Jennifer Abel

Hey, smokers! You should inhale a nice, refreshing cigarette while you read this. Maybe two. The exact number doesn't matter; what's important is that you smoke cigarettes purchased instate from a licensed retailer in full compliance with all tax regulations.

Speaking of which, did you notice the price increase that went into effect on July 1? That's because the per-pack state tax went up again. Connecticut now gets two dollars for every pack you buy. That, in turn, explains why you need to keep smoking: according to the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, the state expects to collect $400 million from tobacco this year. If every Nutmegger gave up nicotine tomorrow, we'd face a $400 million budgetary shortfall.

Not that anybody in the government's going to come right out and tell you to keep smoking. Nor are they likely to mention that non-smokers cost society far more money than smokers; a non-smoker will (statistically) live up to seven years longer, costing state or federal pension plans another seven years' worth of payment checks. The more people smoke, the richer the government gets.

That leads to a conundrum: Connecticut's one of the wealthiest states in the nation. The majority of smokers are low-income people. Why is a rich state balancing its budget on the backs of the poor?

"Since most people don't smoke, it's not hard to get majority support for an increase in cigarette taxes," said Jacob Sullum, a senior editor for Reason magazine (published by the nonprofit Reason Foundation). "The share of American adults who smoke is down to about 20 percent. As a group, they are less affluent and less politically influential than nonsmokers, and they are widely reviled for their unhealthy, disgusting habit. So when you ask people whether the government should take money from an unpopular minority ... I guess anything less than 80 percent support should be counted as a victory for fairness."

With 20 cigarettes in a standard pack, the state gets a dime for every cigarette smoked here. But some smokers, for whatever reason, want to avoid this tax. Doing this is quite simple (though illegal): just buy cigarettes from someplace with a tax rate lower than Connecticut's.

If you have friends in low-tax states, it's easy to have them buy cheap cigarettes and mail them to you. However, not everybody has connections in tobacco country. The most popular means of buying out-of-state smokes is to order them over the Internet, but smokers who avoided taxes this way got an unpleasant surprise last month.

"The Department of Revenue Services will begin sending notices ... to Connecticut residents who owe the state taxes," said a DRS press release. "The initiative is part of an effort by the agency to ensure taxpayer compliance with state cigarette laws."

Those laws, of course, basically boil down to "give the state a dime for every cigarette you smoke." And a federal law called the Jenkins Act makes it very easy for the state to find out who's been keeping that money for themselves.

"The Jenkins Act dates back to the 1940s," said Sarah Kaufman, a spokesman for the DRS. "It requires retailers who sell -- at the time it was mail order -- to individuals out of state" to give the state its customer lists, so revenuers will know where to send the tax bills.

Anyone who bought Internet cigarettes in 2005 or 2006 can expect to receive a DRS back-tax bill, Kaufman said. This is partially to help fill the state's coffers, and partially to make things fair for Connecticut cigarette sellers.

"If people buy over the Internet to avoid the taxes, that's hurting businesses that sell cigarettes here," Kaufman said. So does quitting smoking to avoid the taxes, but that's all right. "Our position is, if people quit, there's no tax. It's just, we are, by the nature of this agency, our mission is to uphold the tax laws of the state of Connecticut."

Not every Internet customer will get a bill for back taxes, though. While most mail-order companies are required by the Jenkins Act to hand their customer lists to the government, one subset of retailers is exempt: Indian tribes who sell tax-free cigarettes are technically sovereign nations where U.S. law doesn't apply.

"We argue that they are bound by the Jenkins Act; they argue they are not," Kaufman said. And so far "they" seem to be winning; Indian reservations have not yet turned their customer records over to the DRS.

Indian tribes in Connecticut make money from their casino monopoly, but one state over, in New York, (untaxed) cigarettes are the primary income source.

Allofourbutts.com is just one of many New York-based Indian cigarette sellers, this one run by the Seneca Indian Nation. The Advocate called to ask if the tribe turned its customer records over to state revenue departments. "We're exempt from that right now," said the woman who answered the phone (and preferred not to be named). "They're trying to get our information, but so far they haven't."

The key words here are "so far." Given America's shaky record of upholding treaty obligations with Indian tribes, it probably wouldn't be wise to put your faith in such treaties now. (Assuming you wanted to buy tax-free cigarettes in the first place, but you really shouldn't do that.)
Hypothetically, suppose you bought such cigarettes in person and paid with cash? There would be no record to trace. Such Indian tribes in New York aren't as common as those who make mail-order sales, but they do exist.

The nearest one seems to be the tribe running the Poospatuck Smoke Shop on Long Island (a 190-mile round trip from downtown Hartford, according to Google maps). Poospatuck "hasn't done mail-order [cigarette sales] for two years," said the woman who answered their toll-free number. So how do they sell cigarettes?

"It's like a store. You come in, you make your purchase and you leave. There's no [customer] records kept."

Sarah Kaufman of the DRS said that you can only bring one carton of out-of-state cigarettes home with you; any more than that and you're expected to pay the full $20 per carton tax. Considering gas prices these days, it's not worth $20 to drive all the way to Long Island and back just for a single carton of cigarettes. You'd need to buy at least four or five, which would be illegal.

Of course, the chance of getting caught is very low, unless the state decided to have drunk-driving-style checkpoints looking for untaxed Indian cigarettes.

"We're not going to have checkpoints," Kaufman said when asked about the possibility. "We're not the Gestapo."

Public Service?

2008-07-17T23:51:00.000-07:00

originally published in the Hartford Advocate December 6, 2007

Public Service?
The DMV hates your phone voice (no offense). We tried reaching them on the phone and were sent on a great Mario-Brothers-like adventure. So you'd better try to talk to them in person instead.

By Jennifer Abel

An online search for Web pages containing the phrases “Department of Motor Vehicles” and “Hell” yielded nearly 63,000 hits, though a more refined search for “Hell” and “Connecticut DMV customer-service phone tree” showed no responses at all.

This glaring omission demonstrates why you can’t rely too much on the Internet for information. Or maybe it just shows the strangeness of the thoughts you get after your seventh or eighth hour spent climbing the branches of that non-hellish (according to the Internet) phone tree at the DMV’s “Telephone Center.”

Best not to call them at all. DMV doesn’t like phone chats anyway. It all but says so on its Web site: “Branch [o]ffice telephone numbers are not listed due to the overwhelming amount of phone calls that are received daily. We feel that you would be better served in the [b]ranch [o]ffices by having line staff on the counter to expedite transactions and have phone calls referred to a centralized location.”

Some might say they’d be served better yet by not having to go to the branch office at all. These are the people likely to call the Telephone Center, because they think calling DMV on the phone must be more convenient than going there during normal business hours or on Saturday.

They’re wrong. The Telephone Center’s main purpose is to minimize if not eliminate the time agents spend talking to you over the phone; going to a branch office and immersing yourself in the full-body DMV experience is actually the lesser of two evils, annoyance-wise.

It’s not known if this is a deliberate strategy on DMV’s part; maybe the bureaucratic equivalent of “always go clubbing with friends less attractive than you?”

I’m not the first person to fail in an attempt to reach an actual human over the DMV’s phones. A few weeks ago I tried calling to get an on-the-record comment for a story. When you call the Telephone Center you’re told that dialing zero to speak to an agent won’t work unless you’re specifically invited to do so.

And I never was. No matter which numbers I picked, I kept getting kicked back into the same never-ending Mobius loop of pre-recorded choices.

“Before you are able to speak to a phone agent, you must choose the DMV issue that you are inquiring about from the menu,” explains the Web site. I did, and continued reading: “After you choose an issue you must then choose specific topic before you will be asked if you want to speak to an agent. Please be patient.”

I was. For half an hour. Then I hung up and drove to the DMV’s main office in Wethersfield, where I was eventually directed to spokesman Bill Seymour. After getting my comment for the story at hand, I asked him, “Did you know it’s impossible to reach a human being through the phone number on your Web site?”

Seymour laughed. “I hear that complaint from a lot of people.”

I’ll bet he does. So I thought: why not climb through and map out the whole phone tree? See if those dial-zero invitations actually exist, and determine where in the foliage they’re hidden.

And “hidden” is exactly the right word; the invitations are tucked behind the point where most people would hang up in frustration.

If you do want such an invitation, here’s the punch-code sequence most likely to lead to one: after dialing the main number, you press 1 to access the automated system, press 1 again “for information on vehicle registration, Internet renewal, safety inspection or emissions,” and press 1 a third time “for vehicle registration.”

Now wait. The DMV voice actress will recite eight different options ranging from registering a used vehicle to information about new registration stickers. (With a cuticle trimmer, you can accomplish valuable hangnail-maintenance tasks during this time.)

Then you’re told to press “pound” to repeat that list, “9” to return to the previous menu, or “star” to go back to the main menu. And then — finally — you’re invited to press zero to speak to an agent.
But you might be on hold for a couple of hours. You’re probably better off just going to the DMV.

By your second day perched in the phone tree you might ponder the Nintendo corporation which, being based in Japan, has no known connection with the Connecticut DMV. But the video games in the company’s popular “Mario” franchise share traits with the phone tree all the same.

Resist the temptation to make the obvious joke about how both experiences are improved by the consumption of magic mushrooms. The salient point is, Mario sometimes stumbles upon hidden “warp zones” that whisk him off to entirely different levels of the game, and there are warp zones hidden in the Telephone Center too.

Ponder this hypothetical: Say you live in New Britain or a suburb thereof, and want directions to your nearest DMV safety inspection facility. So you call the Telephone Center, and you’re given the address of the DMV Web site and advised to seek answers there.

Press 1 to access their automated system, and you’ll be given the address of their Web site, where you can find answers to many questions. Then you’re asked to choose from five different options. Choose option 1 again, “for information on vehicle registration, Internet renewal, safety inspection or emissions.”

You’ll be told the address of the DMV Web site, where you can get many questions answered. Then you’re given more options; when you press 3 for safety inspection, you’re given the address of the DMV Web site, where many common questions are answered. Now more phone options: press 2 for directions to safety inspection facilities. And did you know that many DMV-related questions are answered on the department’s Web site?

Behold the final three options: press 1 for Enfield, 2 for Hamden or 3 for Wethersfield.

“Wait a minute,” you might say at this point. “I live in New Britain or a suburb thereof, remember? None of those choices help me.”

To quote the Web site: Please be patient. Pick any of those options — it doesn’t matter which — and sit through the long list of different ways to reach a given inspection center. When that’s over, press 9 to go back to the previous menu. (If you try this while the message is still playing, it won’t work.)

Now you’re back to the previous menu, which has changed from the original: press 1 for Enfield, 2 for New Britain or 3 for Wethersfield.

That’s the New Britain safety inspection center warp zone, and once you’re in it you’ll never be invited to press 2 for Hamden again unless you hang up and start over. Doing so grants access to the Hamden warp zone, which will kick you out of the safety-inspection listings entirely, and into a list of photo-ID centers in the Derby/Milford area.

After leaving the warp zones behind, you’ll find the phone-tree sub-levels most notable for their complete lack of tact. Are you a resident non-citizen looking to schedule an appointment to get your first-ever driver’s license in Connecticut? Then press 1 to access the automated system, 2 for information on driver’s licenses, 2 again for first-time Connecticut licenses, and 1 for non-citizens.

Now you sit through a recording that’s several minutes long, and eventually you’ll be invited to press 1 to schedule an appointment over the phone. That’s when you’re told it’s not possible to schedule appointments over the phone.

I called Bill Seymour just as he was leaving for a meeting. Since he had no time to chat, I sent him an e-mail with a variety of questions ranging from “How many agents does DMV have to work the phones” to “In light of the already-long hold times to reach an agent, how much of a problem would it be if a journalist were to publish the ‘cheat codes’ telling readers exactly which sequence of buttons they must press to be invited to speak to an agent on the DMV phone tree?”

There are 22 agents working the phones, Seymour replied. In calendar year 2006, the phone center received 1,054,523 phone calls, of which 400,210 led to actual conversations and 37,979 were ”abandoned,” meaning the caller disconnected ”before going through the first menu option.”

And using cheat-code shortcuts to speak to an operator “could produce longer wait times for a live operator,” Seymour wrote. “The system was set up for achieving some forms of efficiency.”

Since this e-mail arrived mere seconds before deadline, there was no time to ask exactly which forms of efficiency the system’s set up to achieve.

The Right To Dissent

2008-07-17T23:46:00.000-07:00

originally published in the Hartford Advocate September 20, 2007

The Right To Dissent

School officials clamp down on student blogger

By Jennifer Abel

Food for thought and mental indigestion: even though you've committed no crime, government agents whose six-figure salaries come out of your tax dollars can make you spend most of your waking hours in a lockdown facility. When you're not there, they can still regulate what you write, say and do. And when election time rolls around, if these government agents don't like who you voted for they can decide your ballots just don't count. Best of all, they'll tell you with straight faces that they're teaching you how to be a free citizen of a democracy.

So far the above paragraph only applies to students enrolled in Connecticut's Region 10 school district. But if Region 10's administration gets its way, it will eventually apply to every public-school student in America.

Get this: a few months ago Avery Doninger, a Burlington resident who is now a senior at Lewis Mills High School in that town, sat at home and wrote a Livejournal blog entry that referred to unnamed school administrators by the misspelled insult "douchbags."

So Lewis Mills principal Karissa Niehoff, with the approval of Region 10 superintendent Paula Schwartz, removed Doninger from her elected position as secretary of the class of 2008. And a month later, when new class elections were held, they wouldn't allow her name on the ballot. Though Doninger was still elected in a write-in campaign, Niehoff and Schwartz chose not to count those votes, rationalizing that referring to administrators as feminine hygiene supplies was inappropriate for a Class Leader.

Had Doninger said this at school, or directly to an administrator, they'd probably be right. But can public schools dictate students' off-campus, non-illegal behavior all throughout the school year? If the Doninger case becomes a binding precedent, the answer will be "yes."

It all started last April, after Doninger and some classmates had spent several months trying to organize an at-school student music festival called "Jamfest."

"I'm a student council representative and I was helping to organize it," Doninger said. But the kids couldn't use the school auditorium to host the event. The giant building that houses the high school, Har-Bur Middle School (a punny abbreviation for Harwinton and Burlington, the two towns of Region 10) and the district administration offices has been undergoing construction for well over a year.

"They demolished the [old] auditorium," Doninger said. And the new auditorium always had problems, said the administration: audio, lighting, something. So "they kept pushing back the date ... to April 28."

Then that date was put on hold, apparently because no adult could be found to work the sound system. The administration didn't want to entrust the task to a teenager even though, according to Doninger, "there were kids who knew how — one whose job is to do it in Torrington." Also, "we were told it was 'the taxpayers' auditorium' ... the school owned the old auditorium, but the new one is owned by Region 10, the whole community uses it."

So Doninger and her friends decided to go straight to the taxpayers and ask permission to use their collective auditorium.

Doninger's mother Lauren described what happened next. "[Doninger and some classmates] went to the school computer lab and sent a mass e-mail to taxpayers, asking them to tell the central office to let them" use the auditorium. And "it had an effect. People started calling [superintendent] Schwartz's office."

If you check the Lewis Mills Web site you'll find the school's list of "Student Expectations," which include personal and academic goals like developing an "awareness of rules and responsibilities of citizens in a democratic society."

So Avery Doninger and her friends did the sort of thing civics textbooks gush about: wanting permission to use property collectively owned by the taxpayers, the kids asked them directly, and received overwhelming support. The people have spoken! Thus did Superintendent Schwartz, acting in her capacity as a well-paid public servant, cleave to public opinion and allow Jamfest to proceed, and everyone involved lived happily ever after.

Just kidding. If it happened that way you wouldn't be reading about it here. What really happened, according to Doninger, was this: "The next day Ms. Niehoff said 'I need to talk to you ... as of now Jamfest is cancelled' ... she said, 'Mrs. Schwartz is really upset, getting all these calls and e-mails.'"

The Advocate couldn't talk to anyone in the administration (that's usually the case when there's pending litigation) to ask their side of the story. So let's continue with Doninger's: the cancellation of Jamfest left her in a vile mood, so she went home and made the infamous "douchbag" blog post. As a result, she was removed from the class secretary position she already held for her junior year, and forbidden from running again as a senior.

The Doningers decided to go to court, and hired attorney Jon Schoenhorn to represent them. "We just wanted the school to count the votes for Avery and reinstate her as class secretary," said Lauren Doninger.

But on Aug. 31, Judge Mark Kravitz ruled with the administration, reasoning that since Doninger wrote something on a Web site that could be read by people at school, that's essentially the same as if she'd stood up in class and shouted it.

"There's three lines of cases that allow restrictions on student's first amendment rights," says Schoenhorn. "One ... developed in the '80s, and had to do with indecent, vulgar or obscene language in school. You can't yell 'fuck you' in the hallways. That is the standard the judge has applied to the Internet."

Free speech isn't the only right granted by the first amendment, which contains other rights that schools can arguably curtail. For example, Doninger's right to freedom of religion probably wouldn't allow her to give in-school speeches exhorting classmates to convert. But suppose she wrote such an essay on her blog. If Kravitz's ruling stands, wouldn't it be possible for school administrators to punish students for religious commentary posted online, too?

"It could," says Ethel Sorokin, a retired attorney who's now president of the Center for First Amendment Rights in Hartford. "Carrying the authority of the school so far out of the school is inappropriate ... schools are supposed to teach citizenship, but students aren't allowed to behave like citizens ... schools should allow students to dissent."

Beth Duffy, chair of the Region 10 Board of Education, takes a different view. Though she wouldn't speak to the press, at a school board meeting on Sept. 10 she handed out a release telling the school's side of the story. "Despite what has been reported in the press ... Ms. Niehoff and Mrs. Schwartz did not infringe on Avery Doninger's First Amendment rights ... citing Constitutional rights as protection for bad behavior does that incredible document a grave disservice."

Schoenhorn countered. "Obviously, whatever document they're talking about isn't the U.S. Constitution," said Schoenhorn. "Are they talking about Azerbaijan?"

"Free speech is [to protect] what we dislike, not what we like," Sorokin added.

So which should prevail: Doninger's Constitutional right to be critical of authority, or the administration's presumptive right not to have its authority criticized? Schoenhorn has filed an appeal, but doesn't yet know when it will be heard.

The Thought Crime Law

2008-07-17T23:43:00.000-07:00

originally published in the Hartford Advocate January 3, 2008

The Thought Crime Law
All of Connecticut's Congresspersons signed the Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act, and none of them want to talk about it. So we called Dennis Kucinich, who read the bill and wouldn't sign it.

By Jennifer Abel

Full disclosure: according to a staff member from the office of Hartford’s own Congressman John Larson, this article is “not a good story.” It wasn’t worth our time to write it, nor the Congressman’s time to discuss it, and probably not worth your time to read it either. Nothing to see here, people. Move along.

Worthwhile or not, the story’s about a bill that recently passed the House of Representatives and looks on track to pass the Senate and be signed into law. Over 98 percent of Congressmen, including all five from Connecticut, voted in favor of it (the final count was 404 to 6), and when a bill passes with such a high majority it’s usually easy to find among that 98 percent a few Congressmen willing to go on the record to say “I voted for this incredibly important bill because blah blah blah.”

Not this time. No one who voted for the bill wants to talk about it. And when we called Larson’s D.C. office hoping to chat, staff member Emily Barocas said: “I used to be a journalist — I was on NPR — so I know where you’re coming from. I know what it’s like to want to get that big scoop, but this isn’t it … I know a good story from a bad story. This isn’t a good story.”

Maybe not. But we’d already spoken to Ohio Congressman and presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich, who’d told us he voted against the bill because it’s “unconstitutional” and “a thought-crime bill.” And a representative of Hawaii, Congressman Neil Abercrombie said his boss voted no because he felt the bill gave law enforcement too much power, and didn’t sufficiently protect individual rights.

So without mentioning any names to Barocas, we thanked her for the advice but said that since we’d already been in touch with 33 percent of all Congressmen who’d voted against the bill, we’d just go ahead and write about it anyway.

What is this Bill of Mystery, that Congresspeople will vote for yet not discuss? It’s called the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act, also known as HR 1955, and one of the first things it says is that “Congress finds … The Internet has aided in facilitating violent radicalization, ideologically based violence, and the homegrown terrorism process in the United States by providing access to ... terrorist-related propaganda to United States citizens.”

The bill also says that “preventing the potential rise” of individual domestic terrorists like Tim McVeigh “cannot be easily accomplished solely through traditional federal intelligence or law enforcement efforts.”

Fine. The Internet helps terrorists and fighting terrorism is hard. So what does the bill plan to do about this?

“You should ask Representative [Jane] Harman of California,” Barocas said when we asked. “She wrote the bill, not Congressman Larson. He wasn’t even a co-sponsor.”

Good idea, except Harman never returned calls seeking comment. (Nor did anyone from the offices of the other four members of Connecticut’s Congressional delegation: representatives Chris Shays, Chris Murphy, Joe Courtney and Rosa Delauro.) Besides, we said to Barocas, since the Congressman voted for the bill he must have felt it worthwhile legislation. Perhaps he could tell us why?

“You ask what this bill allows [law enforcement to do] … the answer is nothing,” Barocas said. “It creates a grant communities can use to stem the tide of homegrown terrorism.”

That caught us by surprise, since we never realized there was a tide of homegrown terrorism threatening to wash over the country. Neither did Texas representative (and GOP presidential candidate) Ron Paul. He was absent the day of the House vote, but in a speech against the bill, Paul called it “an unwise and dangerous solution in search of a real problem. Previous acts of ideologically-motivated violence, though rare, have been resolved successfully using law enforcement techniques, existing laws against violence, and our court system.”

Which goes back to the question, “What does this bill allow law enforcement to do about terrorism that it couldn’t do before?” But Barocas didn’t consider the question worth passing on to her boss. “I just fail to see how having the Congressman answer these questions would be necessary … the more you study this bill the more you realize there’s nothing sinister here. I’ve been a journalist and I know there’s just no story here.”

Congressman and Presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich must’ve been unaware of the bill’s lack of storyness when he agreed to talk to us about it. When we asked why he voted it down, we expected him to say something pithy about the importance of civil liberties.

Instead, Kucinich said in a how-obvious tone of voice, “I voted against [the bill] because I read it, which is why I voted against the PATRIOT Act … you’d be surprised how many bills pass because people don’t have time to read it [before voting]. That’s what happens when you’ve got bills flying through the air like confetti at a special-interest parade.”

Or when Congressmen feel that writers and co-sponsors are the only ones who can be expected to know what a given bill says. At any rate, Kucinich wasn’t the only Congressman to compare HR 1955 to the PATRIOT Act; Connecticut’s Chris Shays did as well. In a press release urging his fellow legislators to vote for the bill, Shays wrote: “[Bunch of stuff about the dangers of terrorism.] Then came Sept. 11, and we did wake up somewhat. We reorganized our government and created the Department of Homeland Security. We passed the PATRIOT Act … I think it is absolutely important we pass this legislation.”

But explaining why it’s so important was something the Congressman couldn’t squeeze into his schedule.

The bill says nothing explicitly ominous. It even specifies that “The Department of Homeland Security’s efforts … shall not violate the constitutional rights, civil rights or civil liberties of United States citizens or lawful permanent residents.” So what’s the problem?

“Essentially,” said Kucinich, “the bill moves to criminalize thought by giving an overly broad view of the threat of homegrown terrorism.” Hence the problem: not that the bill threatens anything specific, but that it’s far too vague.

Dave Helfort, a spokesman for Congressman Neil Abercrombie of Hawaii, explained why his boss voted against the bill: “After looking it over, he just had a problem with the possibility that it went too far, opened the door to possible violations of privacy … [Abercrombie is] very sensitive to the possibility of giving too much power to law enforcement out of fear and overreaction.”

HR 1955 is written in the vague and eye-glazing bureaucratic language common to government documents (never “help” when you can “facilitate”), and sounds innocuous if you don’t read too closely.

“Violent radicalization,” one of the threats the bill seeks to curb, is defined there as “the process of adopting or promoting an extremist belief system for the purpose of facilitating ideologically-based violence to advance political, religious or social change.”

Acts of violence are already illegal, whether stemming from extreme beliefs or not. But “adopting” or “promoting” beliefs is supposed to be covered by the first amendment, which Kucinich said “protects freedom of speech, which should also include freedom of thought — thought usually precedes speech, unless you’re talking about Washington — this undercuts the first amendment, [because] lines like ‘ideologically based’ … says government should police ideas, not conduct.”

Or maybe he’s just being paranoid, to assume that our government, in the name of fighting terrorism, might step on civil liberties in the process.

Emily Barocas stopped taking our calls once it became obvious she wouldn’t dissuade us from writing this non-story. We made one last round of calls to Connecticut’s Congressional delegation in hopes of getting some pro-bill quotes to write here. But the staffers who returned our calls would only speak off the record, and said pretty much the same as Barocas: not that they’d ever worked for NPR, but they just couldn’t understand why we’d bother writing a story about this incredibly minor and unimportant bill.

Thy Brother's Keeper (And Thy Bank's, Too)

2008-07-17T23:37:00.000-07:00

originally published in the Hartford Advocate September 27, 2007

Thy Brother's Keeper (And Thy Bank's, Too)

Protecting the assets of wealthy lending institutions is your personal responsibility. Seriously.

By Jennifer Abel

Here's how the five stages of grief play out when you learn that your lucky self is at risk of identity theft because you're one of the 106,000 taxpayers whose names and social security numbers were on the laptop stolen from the Department of Revenue Services last month:

Denial: I don't believe this!
Anger: Dang government, always making innocent people miserable.
Bargaining: I'd give anything for competent leadership.
Depression: Yeah, right, that'll happen (sniffle).
Acceptance: I can't afford to move to Amsterdam.

Once you complete the final phase you can start taking steps to regain control of your destiny, by contacting either Equifax, TransUnion or Experian, the three credit-reporting agencies listed on the DRS letter, and telling it to put a credit alert on your accounts. Whichever agency you call is legally obligated to contact the other two on your behalf.

What's the benefit of a credit alert? According to a Sept. 14 press release from Attorney General Richard Blumenthal (who did not return our calls for this story), "Credit alerts require companies to make a good faith effort to verify the identity of anyone seeking credit or a loan. Alerts must be renewed every 90 days."

Envy me, reader, for the security that's temporarily mine: over the next three months minus the time it takes for this to get to print and thence to you, if anyone contacts the Gigantobank Corporation to say "Hi, I'm Jennifer and I'd like to take out several thousand dollars in high-interest, unsecured credit-card debt," Gigantobank has to make a good-faith effort to ensure it's actually me before burdening my credit record with a legal responsibility to pay them back this money.

This is a special privilege, not a default setting. After I activated it for myself by calling the first company listed on my DRS form letter, I made a few more phone calls in hopes of learning why anyone need bother with credit alerts anyway.

"Protect yourself from identity theft." That phrase, in quotation marks, yielded 141,000 hits in an online search. Take the quotes away and it's nearly two million. Who in America hasn't heard it at least that many times? It's a bona fide part of the zeitgeist. Yet the assumption behind it is false.

The classic identity theft scam works something like this: the thief manages to convince Gigantobank he's actually you, and borrows money in your name. It will be a very annoying and time-consuming process for you to straighten out the mess, but at least you're not liable for the money Gigantobank lost.

Read that last sentence again: it's not your money you're protecting. So how did it become your responsibility (or mine) to protect the assets of wealthy corporations which, in most cases, we've never even done a lick of business with?

The folks I spoke to said that expecting financial companies to make sure it's really you they're lending money to would bring the credit card industry to its knees, which would be an undesirable outcome.

Let's say you've just been informed of the presence of one or more previously unknown credit cards in your name. It's up to you to prove that it's not yours. No "innocent until proven guilty" assumptions apply. Why can't you just tell the company "I never borrowed this money, and if you think I did then prove it?" Why is the onus on you to prove your innocence?

"That's simple," said Jay Foley, executive director of the Identity Theft Resource Center. "The fact that your personal information was used to open the account."

But calling it my "personal" information sounds like a bit of a stretch these days, doesn't it? Given how commonplace identity theft cases and database security breaches are, it seems folly for credit-card companies and the like to continue pretending that on all God's earth, the only person who could possibly know my social security number and date of birth is me. My credit alert requires companies to make a good faith effort to ensure I'm responsible before loaning money in my name. Why isn't that standard practice?

Foley spoke for several paragraphs that boil down to: this would kill the credit industry as we know it. "If it fell to credit card companies to prove the individual opened the account ... if I walked into a Kmart, or a Wal-Mart, or a Sears," he'd no longer be able to apply for and receive on-the-spot credit.

Nessa Feddis, from the American Bankers Association, put it more succinctly. "If consumers were simply allowed to make the statement 'I owe you nothing' and avoid payment, all consumers could simply make the declaration and avoid paying legitimate debts."

Well, all consumers could certainly try that. But the assumption of innocence until guilt is proven hasn't prevented society from imprisoning criminals, most of whom vehemently deny having committed the crime for which they were convicted. It's up to the prosecution to prove guilt. Why isn't that the case with debts incurred via identity theft?

"Criminal transactions are far less frequent and presumably more serious than loan transactions," Feddis said. "Resolving every loan dispute would clog the courts and make loans far more expensive ... the burden of proof in a criminal case is stronger than in a civil case."

Speaking of civil cases, consider this: if a thief steals your identity, you are (at least) not required to pay the actual bills your identity thief rang up. But neither are you entitled to compensation for the dozens of hours you'll spend clearing up the mess. And if you're unfortunate enough to suffer additional financial consequences, like being denied a mortgage or even turned down for a job because of your unjustly low credit score, you can't sue for damages in a civil court. Why not?

"State laws often allow victims to get compensation from criminals," Feddis observed. "Whether the victim is entitled to compensation from others ... is a matter of state law and tort law. It is no different from any other case where someone incurs damages due to someone else's actions."

Oh, but it's very different from such cases. If I, as a private citizen, make an honest mistake that causes you to be rejected for a loan or denied a job, you can sue me for damages in civil court. But if you suffer this same consequence due to the honest mistake of a credit-card company or credit reporting agency, you have no legal recourse at all.

"Unfortunately, that's right," said Jay Foley. "As much as I hate to say that, that's true."

Money Down A Rathole

2008-04-09T09:01:00.000-07:00

originally published in the Hartford Advocate August 30, 2007

Money Down A Rathole
West Hartford's rodent crackdown penalizes victims and perpetrators alike

By Jennifer Abel

Before discussing the very serious rodent problem plaguing West Hartford, let's get the obvious joke out of the way: "I always knew it was full of rats but figured they had offices in Town Hall, heh heh heh." (Actually, where the current controversy's concerned, it's the West Hartford/Bloomfield Health District most likely to be discussed in rat-like metaphors, but we'll get to that later.)

Jokes aside, there really is a rat-infestation problem in the Elmwood section of town, though of the four-legged rather than political variety. The problem's been ongoing for at least a year, residents say.

"You get up in the morning, walk your dog, you see rats all over," said Rick Dean. "Rats in the road, rats in people's yards, rats on the sidewalk ... especially on garbage day, that's when they all come out to eat."

Dean's neighbor James Cyr concurs. "On the street, around the houses, underneath the porches, they're all over the place."

The species infesting Elmwood is the Norway rat, which has been called "the most destructive animal in North America." It's also one of the fastest-breeding mammals on Earth.

"They can have a litter of young every 21 days," says Steve Huleatt, director of the West Hartford/Bloomfield Health District. "Up to 16 in a litter for this particular species." Statistically, around half of each litter will be female, and newborn females reach reproductive maturity in four months. Also, rats have no mating season, but breed year-round. Do the math: it won't take long for a small rat problem to spawn a big one.

About the only good thing to say regarding the Norway rat is that it wasn't the species that helped spread the Black Death through medieval Europe. That dubious honor goes to the black rat. Still, a plague of Norway rats is nothing to get complacent about. Not that anyone is. Plenty of people in Elmwood have hired the services of exterminators, but the problem's too big for any one property owner to handle.

"One homeowner makes his yard rat-unfriendly, so they just move next door," Huleatt said on Aug. 21, at a public meeting the health department held at the Elmwood Community Center. Since piecemeal exterminations won't solve the problem, the department plans to arrange a single-night mass rat-killing sometime in the near but indeterminate future. At the meeting, Huleatt and West Hartford's mayor Scott Slifka announced that they would put out a Request For Proposals in search of a contractor capable of handling such a huge task.

So far, so good. It's the health department's plans in the interim that have homeowners irate. The department sent letters to 88 people in Elmwood, ordering them all to clean up their rat-infested properties and hire an exterminator.

James Cyr got one of the letters. It says he "was found to be in violation" of local codes because "rat burrows, rodent tracks, and/or other signs of rodent activity were observed on the property."

That's true. The burrows are in a narrow strip of space between Cyr's small garden shed and the high fence separating Cyr's yard from the one behind it. The Advocate came by a few hours after Cyr had buried most of the burrows under fresh dirt, but the rats had already re-dug one of their exit holes.

"I cover one hole, they dig a new hole," Cyr says. He'd had an exterminator come by just that afternoon (at a cost of $75), but "he said there's not much he can do. He can drop the [poison] bait here, but you've got to go to the source to solve the problem."

The source is the yard behind Cyr's. The Advocate peeked over the fence into the yard of a shabby multi-family home and saw a veritable ratopia: piles of rotting garbage, old plant matter half-decayed into compost, and at least a half-dozen enormous rat-burrow entrances near a row of loosely covered garbage cans.

The letter from the health department says "whenever infestation is caused by failure of the owner to maintain a dwelling in a reasonably pest- insect- or ratproof condition, extermination shall be the responsibility of the owner."

But Cyr's infestation isn't caused by any failures on his part: his garbage is kept in a locked shed surrounded by enormous bricks buried deep in the ground. "I did that so the rats can't burrow their way into my garbage shed," he said. His yard is immaculate; the Advocate couldn't find so much as a stray grass clipping, let alone enormous rat-friendly compost piles like the kind behind his neighbor's house.

There's two ways you can wind up with rats on your property: make it a rat-friendly zone, or live close to someone who has.

When the Advocate called Huleatt to ask why people like Cyr received copies of the letter, Huleatt said it's because "for whatever reason, they've either allowed or permitted those rats to get into their yard."

"I'm not 'permitting' the rats to come into my yard," Cyr said with obvious disgust. "I'm doing everything I can to keep them out. How am I supposed to keep them from burrowing into my yard? Should I cover it all in concrete?"

No. That would probably violate town zoning codes. Until the mass kill hopefully wipes out the Elmwood rat problem, homeowners like Cyr have to grin, bear it and literally pour money down the ratholes in their yard, by hiring exterminators who freely admit they can't solve the problem unless they can go to its source.

Will Cyr at least be reimbursed for his exterminator fees? Steve Huleatt said, "I don't know."

Dead Dog Blues

2008-04-08T14:31:00.000-07:00

originally published in the Hartford Advocate November 22, 2007

Dead Dog Blues
Alan Weisenberg's old pet Chihuahua was confiscated by Animal Control, and later died. He is now being charged with cruelty to animals for letting it live so long.

By Jennifer Abel

Picture a female named Bambi, age 18 or 19 years old. But before investing too much energy in the wrong image, you should know that Bambi is a dog. A Chihuahua, in fact, equivalent to a centenarian in human terms.

So the fact that she died last month really isn't any surprise, but the fact that her owner's facing jail time maybe is.

It's an odd tale. On one side there's Alan Weisenberg, a 58-year-old West Hartford man who is by most accounts a responsible dog owner. Then there's Karen Jones, a town Animal Control officer who is by most accounts a responsible dog warden.

Until Sept. 17, the day Weisenberg says she threatened to arrest him on animal cruelty charges if he didn't have Bambi euthanized.

The dog died in her sleep on Oct. 5, and two weeks later Weisenberg went to the police to turn himself in after learning of an Oct. 16 arrest warrant in his name. Now he's waiting for his Dec. 11 court date, where he faces up to a year in jail.

"[Jones] said, 'when dogs get old ... we should put them down.'" Weisenberg recalled in an interview with the Advocate. "I said, 'Who are you to tell me to put my dog down? If she's dying, she can die at home with her family."

By all accounts the dog was in poor health. "[Bambi's] left leg had arthritis," Weisenberg said. "I used to carry her outside, she liked the warm weather ... I guess it made her arthritis feel better."

Weisenberg knew his old dog didn't have long to live. "I've had her since she was a pup ... I didn't want to put her down. If she was showing she was in pain, crying or something, then I would've said 'All right.' But she didn't."

The incident happened on a warm day on Sept. 17. Usually, when Weisenberg went to work he brought his two large mongrel dogs with him and left Bambi in the house. But that was a particularly nice day, and Bambi wanted to stay outside. And so: "Never done this before, but I had a cord about 15 feet long, and tied her to a tree outside while I went to work for five or six hours. Someone — they never said who — called [town officials] to say they thought the dog was dead."

An elderly, arthritic dog sprawled on a sunny sidewalk might well be mistaken for a dead one.

So far this sounds, at most, like a routine misunderstanding. Weisenberg didn't know Bambi had become a law-enforcement issue until he left work, "got home, and saw a cop and the dog warden."

Bambi was already in the Animal Control truck when he got home, Weisenberg said, so he couldn't simply carry her back inside. Weisenberg says Jones wanted the dog euthanized almost from the start. "She said if you let me put the dog down, I won't charge you with anything."

Weisenberg's roommate Rick Bouchard said he was there and confirms Weisenberg's account of the conversation between the dog owner and the animal control official. "She was threatening to arrest [Weisenberg] and fine him if he didn't release the dog to her," he said.

Weisenberg refused. Animal Control took Bambi to Avon's Farmington Valley Veterinary Hospital, where she stayed for 10 days until Weisenberg's attorney Fred Boland sent police a letter demanding the dog's return.

On Sept. 27 another animal control officer took Bambi to Newington's Fox Clinic, a low-cost facility run by the Humane Society. After being checked by a vet, the dog was released back into Weisenberg's custody.

"She was always thin," Weisenberg said, "but they gave me back a skeleton ... they put her in a kennel somewhere where she was scared to death, probably a cubicle with a hard cement floor ... she was so happy to see me."

Bambi died in her sleep Oct. 5. Weisenberg mourned his dog and figured the matter over. But police were preparing an arrest warrant, completed and dated Oct. 16. Bouchard was the first to learn of its existence.

"I was emptying the garbage about nine, 9:30 at night, and then four cops with flashlights came up — I think it was three police and the animal investigator there — they asked me if I was Alan. I told them no ... I imagine they knew I wasn't Alan; they did not ask for ID." Weisenberg turned himself in the next day.

This is the part of the story where police are supposed to give their version of events. But with Weisenberg's court appearance pending, neither Officer Jones nor Chief of Police James Strilacci can speak to the press. They did return our calls long enough to say they couldn't say anything, and Jones added "I'd be more than happy to help you out after the case is taken care of ... and help you write a good story."

Their version of events can be found in the arrest warrant affidavit, which Boland gave us as soon as he got a copy (two days after we first spoke to Weisenberg). It describes a dog suffering not from old age, but neglectful ownership.

Weisenberg and Boland both say events were twisted just out of focus of the truth.

For one example, the warrant says that Jones felt the dog needed emergency care, but "Weisenberg insisted the dog was fine, just old and that he did not have the funding to pay for her care and might soon be losing his used car business."

Boland and Weisenberg's version of the encounter is that Weisenberg wanted to take Bambi to his own vet rather than the one recommended by Jones because "business has been slow and the Fox Clinic is cheaper."

Parts of the affidavit read a bit ambiguously: one section notes that Bambi was tied to the tree by a 20 foot rope, and later says ,"A bowl of water was visible but at least 15 feet away from where the dog lay collapsed," implying that it was out of Bambi's reach. The report also says the dog lacked shelter.

It's true there's no doghouse in Weisenberg's front yard, but there is a crabapple tree whose sprawling branches provide shade (at least in September; by late November the tree's a largely leafless skeleton). A 15- or 20-foot rope tied to the trunk would be just long enough to let the dog escape the shade and sun herself at sidewalk's edge.

The police report says the Farmington Valley Veterinary Hospital recommended euthanizing Bambi when she arrived on Sept. 17.

But a "to whom it may concern" letter from the Fox Clinic, dated Oct. 31 and referencing the Sept. 27 visit, made no such suggestion; it says Bambi showed no signs of physical abuse or cruelty, but that Weisenberg was advised to "eliminate outside tethering for extended periods of time because of age and health issues." So keeping Bambi outside on Sept. 17 was probably a bad idea (though whether it rises to the level of criminal animal cruelty is another matter).

The state Animal Control Division is a branch of the Department of Agriculture. We called to ask under what circumstances a dog owner could be legally compelled to put his pet down, and were surprised to learn the answer is "none." If a dog is violent the state can confiscate and destroy it, but the owner's not obliged to do so. Therefore, if Jones tried forcing Weisenberg to euthanize the dog, she far overstepped her authority as an Animal Control officer.

But the man who answered the phone at Animal Control seemed very surprised to hear who we were talking about. "That sounds out of character for [Jones]," he said.

Get Off Your Lazy Omnipotent Ass And Help Us

2008-04-08T14:07:00.000-07:00

originally published in the Hartford Advocate "Up Front" section July 12, 2007

Get Off Your Lazy Omnipotent Ass And Help Us
Alabama Governor declares a pray-for-rain week for his state.

The drought parching the Southeast has been particularly devastating for Alabama, whose primary industry is agriculture. So Governor Bob Riley has adopted a take-charge, proactive solution to the problem, and issued a proclamation declaring June 30 through July 7 as "Days of Prayer for Rain" week in the state. "I encourage all Alabamians to pray individually and within their houses of worship for sufficient rain," said the press release given by the governor's office.

So how did it work? The good news: last week scattered showers dropped nearly a half-inch of rain on some parts of the state. The bad news: it'll take at least 14 inches to get water levels back to normal. Theological speculation as to why the prayer week failed: Riley asked all Alabamians to pray. That means Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and probably a few Pastafarians too. So you know at least one person in the state prayed to a false and non-existent God, thus annoying the real one enough to negate any brownie points the statewide prayer vigil might otherwise have racked up.

Between The Lines

2008-04-08T09:44:00.000-07:00

originally published in the Hartford Advocate June 28, 2007

Between The Lines
Tax activists would love to suggest some cuts to the town budget, only the budget isn’t itemized, so where does the money go?

By Jennifer Abel

You know how some people say that complaining is useless unless you offer some constructive criticism, too? The West Hartford Taxpayers’ Association admits it can’t find much constructive to say.

Get this: a few months ago, when next year’s proposed town budget came out, the association was dismayed to find that once again, tax bills would increase at a rate roughly double that of inflation.

"A lot of people are thinking of leaving town because they can’t afford the taxes," said association president Theresa McGrath. So the WHTA held a petition drive and collected enough signatures to force the referendum, where voters defeated the proposed budget by a margin of nearly three to one.

Score one for the taxpayers’ association. Then ask the obvious question: if they think the budget is too high, what cuts do they recommend?

"I don’t know," McGrath admitted as she sat on the back deck of her modest two-bedroom home and pored through a copy of the budget on the patio table before her. It’s a massive document, that budget, and looks quite impressive: high-quality binder, glossy colored separators, and an overall sense of graphic design much higher than you’d expect for a small-town municipal budget.

Pretty dull reading, though. Nonetheless, McGrath has spent hours poring over it. So why can’t she suggest any cuts?

"The budget is not a line-item budget," she said. "Each department shows a dollar increase, but they’re not telling us what they’re spending it on."

Here’s what she means: suppose you need to cut expenses, and think maybe you can trim a few dollars from your grocery bill. By listing individual food purchases, you can look through them and say "I can save money here by replacing steak with ground beef, and there by replacing Domino sugar with store-brand."

But you can’t do that if all your groceries are lumped together into a single line item labeled "Food." And that’s how West Hartford’s budget is written.

"Wages and salaries for the town manager’s department increased by 18.2 percent [from last year]," McGrath said, pointing out the relevant statement in the budget book. "We were told by his office that his salary wasn’t increasing this year. They said that large percent increase resulted from moving the previous town manager’s salary from another portion of the budget."

Did they say which portion? "No. So we don’t know if that portion of the budget was [correspondingly] decreased."

McGrath showed other vague examples: "fringe benefits" for one town department increasing nearly 40 percent, and "special allocations" for another increasing 127 percent (in this case, $470,000).

Naturally, the Advocate asked the town manager about these increases. Or tried to, anyway — he didn’t return our calls. His secretary says he was stuck in various meetings.

Anyway, those increases were in the old budget, the one rejected in the referendum. Maybe the new version will be more to the association’s liking?

"Nobody’s seen it yet," said Judy Aron, the association’s vice-president, on June 22. "The budget’s supposed to be discussed at the next town council meeting [on June 26], and presented to the Finance and Budget Committee the next morning at eight a.m. … Nobody’s put it on the [town] website. How can we discuss the budget if we haven’t seen it?"

Don't Know Their Assets From Their Elbows

2008-04-08T09:21:00.000-07:00

originally published in the Hartford Advocate March 22, 2007

Don't Know Their Assets From Their Elbows
Reassessment promises higher tax bills for West Hartford

by Jennifer Abel

Life’s full of things that work well individually but clash together. Like plaids and stripes. Toothpaste and orange juice. And high home values and low tax rates.

Wait, what’s wrong with the last pair? West Hartford property owners will soon learn.

"[There’s] going to be a significant tax increase for many people," says Judy Aron of the West Hartford Taxpayers’ Association. Here’s why: every so often, town governments throughout Connecticut reassess the properties in their jurisdictions, to determine their values for tax purposes. West Hartford’s latest assessment (called a revaluation) took place last year, and residents received their property-value notices in October.

The last revaluation before that was in 1999. And between then and 2006 came this thing called the "housing bubble," where home prices rose far faster than incomes. According to Joanne Ferraresso, the city’s director of sssessment, in 1999 (through 2005) the average assessment for a single-family home in West Hartford was $135,570, compared to $234,300 last October.

That’s an increase of over 70 percent, and even that only applies to homes fair-to-middling by city standards. Overall, "values rose anywhere from 60 to 200 percent," says city spokesperson Renee McCue.

Quite a windfall for anyone who wants to sell a house bought in 1999, but a mixed blessing for those who simply wish to keep living where they are. More value in the home means more value to be taxed.

So where do those low tax rates come in? Next month, in light of the increased assessments, the town’s going to lower its mill rate, used to determine property taxes.

Though mill sounds like million it actually comes from the Latin mille, meaning thousand. It’s a dollar of tax on every $1,000 in value, and since West Hartford’s mill rate was 46.19 last year, homeowners had to pay $46.19 for every $1,000 their home was worth. But this year, "our town manager mentioned something about the mill rate going down almost 10 points," said Judy Aron. "But the reality is, the value of homes have gone up proportionately more than the mill rates will go down."

Actually, the rate is likely to drop at least 15 points, according to the town manager’s report to the council. Though it’s too early to say for sure, the new rate is expected to be around 31.43.

Not low enough, says Aron. She calculated that, with her home’s increased assessment, the mill rate would have to go down to 24.69 for her tax bill to match last year’s. What’s worse for homeowners is that they’re paying taxes on profits they won’t see unless they sell their house. "We’re paying taxes on unrealized capital gains," Aron said.

Ferraresso agrees. "The basis for property tax in Connecticut is ad valorum, meaning it’s based on the value of the property, not your ability to pay or the services you use."

The mill rate is calculated every year, basically by taking the cost of the city budget and dividing it by the property on the grand list. Since the list remains essentially the same between revaluations, residents see their mill rates rise each year and recognize that for the tax increase it is. This year, with the rate drop, some might not realize how much they’ll owe until their tax bills arrive in June.

Let Them Eat Cake

2008-04-04T09:49:00.000-07:00

originally published in the Hartford Advocate March 27, 2008

Let Them Eat Cake

How much tax money does West Hartford's Board of Education spend on catered meals for itself? They won't tell us.

By Jennifer Abel

The current West Hartford school budget is close to $118 million, about $11,670 per student. According to the CIA World Factbook, this is more than the per capita income of 141 of Earth's 230 nations.

According to the board of education it's still not enough to teach the kids, so they're requesting an extra $7.5 million next year.

There's already grumbling in town about how taxes, once again, are rising higher than inflation. And since the school budget is over 60 percent of the town's total, much of that grumbling's directed toward school spending. It's mostly off-the-record, though, because people who speak against school spending are branded as selfish.

The budget's not presented in a line-item form that lists individual expenses. So when we first heard complaints about the board allegedly having breakfasts and lunches catered to meetings on the taxpayers' dime, we didn't know if this was a big deal or not because we couldn't go to the budget and read "Refreshments: X dollars."

Are we talking "coffee and donuts" or "five-course banquets"? A woman at the Avon Board of Ed. said she usually makes coffee for meetings; Simsbury said they'll provide a meal if they are scheduled back-to-back during the dinner hour. This sounds reasonable; is that what West Hartford's doing?

It'll be simple to ask the board of ed. about this, we thought. Their offices are right on the top floor of town hall. So we stopped by and were eventually referred to Chip Ward, the finance director, who responded to our question with a friendly smile and the suggestion that we make a Freedom of Information request. We handed over the FOI letter we'd printed out in case he said that.

When writing FOI requests, remember that if the person wanted to give you this info, you wouldn't be jumping through FOI hoops to begin with. So you must word your letter carefully, lest you leave a loophole through which the answer can escape.

Alas, we goofed. Our Feb. 6 letter asked, among other things, the cost and number of catered meals provided at board of education meetings. Ward's response, dated Feb. 14 and received Feb. 28, said: "Catered meals are not provided at board of education meetings. They have been provided at an ad hoc basis at special meetings." Oops. Ward mentioned one meal that cost $254.15, and was listed in the budget under "Communications."

Our next letter on Feb. 29 was much wordier and covered (we hope) all meetings having anything to do with the board in any official capacity. Ward's response, dated March 5, said "please be advised that as we are in the midst of budget preparation, it will take several weeks to compile the information requested."

Which means we didn't get it before the school budget hearing on March 27. So how much money are we talking about here? We have no idea.

Billing For The Billets

2008-04-04T09:46:00.000-07:00

originally published in the Hartford Advocate March 6, 2008

Billing For The Billets

In Connecticut, when you get out of jail, you may get a bill from the state for your room and board

By Jennifer Abel

Afew years ago the Chinese government made a great humanitarian leap forward by outfitting "death vans" with lethal-injection tools and then driving through the countryside executing prisoners along the way. This was a huge improvement over the old system, where they shot you in your own village and then billed your family for the bullet. As the Times of London reported in 2005, "Death by injection costs the state about £63 but is free to the victim's relatives."

Connecticut's pay-for-your-punishment plan differs from the old Chinese model in significant ways, the most important one being that executions are mercifully rare and always free of charge. Prison sentences are another matter; the Department of Corrections runs a spotty program to make (some) inmates pay for their incarceration.

The intent is to recoup actual costs. So we called to let DOC brag about the program's success. The annual Corrections budget "for this year is about $665 million," said spokesman Brian Garnett. The individual cost per inmate depends on where they're kept. "Typically, they're charged the rate of their facility. Minimum security ranges from $50 or $60 [per day], maximum security up to $150."

But he didn't know how much money the DOC got from inmates; that question's for the Department of Administrative Services, which handles the collections.

Spokesman John McKay told us "We had 781 cases in 2007, collected $3.3 million out of those cases." That's just under 0.5 percent of the annual cost.

One reason it's so low is that not every inmate's slated for reimbursement. "There's a tracking system," McKay said. Those who are asked to pay back include "anyone [who] receives a windfall, proceeds from a claim or any type of lawsuit, they're required to reimburse the state."

That also includes inheritances, but "not income," according to McKay. Say for example that a corrupt ex-governor went to prison, got out and then used his connections to land a cushy six-figure consulting-type job at taxpayer expense. How much money did former Governor Rowland pay for his stint in the clink?

"Rowland was in a Federal prison," McKay pointed out. "That doesn't apply."

Many people like the idea of having the state charge for the punishments it doles out. "I'm a law-abiding citizen and I don't get free room and board, so why should criminals?" they say.

We posed the question to Bridgeport attorney Antonio Ponvert. "The measure of our society and how advanced we think we are is ... how we treat the least among us," he said. "If people want to punish and then exact that last ounce of blood, that says something about our society and what kind of people we are."

Thing is, even though Connecticut's program has the stated goal of "fiscal responsibility" rather than "screw you," in practice it seems to work more like the latter.

Take the case of Mark Strickland. He was no angel; several years ago he served time for sexual assault and multiple burglaries. While in prison he won $250,000 in a court settlement against a third party. And had his victims then sued him for damages, we'd cheer them on.

But the state sued him instead. Strickland got that money from a local diocese of the Catholic Church, because back in the '70s he was a little boy unwillingly involved in what later became known as "that priest-molestation scandal."

After paying the state for his time in stir and his lawyer's fees he had only $40,000 left. Last anyone heard, he's living in poverty somewhere in Florida. Although he'd be slightly better off nowadays, according to state Rep. Mike Lawlor, who said that the law changed in 2004. "Now attorney's fees and the costs of the case are excluded."

What's not excluded are cases against the DOC itself. If you're an inmate who sues for mistreatment, or the family member of an inmate killed by the guards, the DOC will pay out any judgments and then take the money right back. "I've had cases," said Ponvert, "where someone's killed in custody [and the state wants] reimbursement for the very day he was killed."

In 1999 a paranoid schizophrenic inmate named Bryant Wiseman stopped receiving his anti-psychotic medication. Two days later he died while being restrained by prison guards. His mother brought a wrongful-death suit against the DOC, and lost. Had she won, however, the state would've charged for the tender loving care her son received in its custody.

We told Ponvert we understood how the program was legal — obviously, because the lawmakers said so — but couldn't understand how it was constitutional. If you take away a man's liberty, then turn around and charge him for the privilege, how does that not run afoul of the "double jeopardy" clause? You can't punish someone twice for the same crime.

"It may not be legal," he said. "I think it's unconstitutional interference with federal civil rights standards [which] allow a citizen to sue the government if the government infringes on their constitutional rights."

It's hard to feel sympathy for some of the folks swept up in the payback net. And yet, we speculated to Ponvert, you could say that crime and punishment is the one area of government that should always run a deficit. Taking away a man's liberty is such a serious matter that you don't want it to be cheap and easy and convenient.

"It all comes back to two things," Ponvert said. "One is enlightened self-interest. No matter how anti-prisoner you are, 95 percent of them are going back into the community ... do you want them living under a debt they'll never be able to satisfy?"

More ominous, says Ponvert, is the message this sends to prison guards. "It allows guards at the DOC to mistreat people with impunity, and creates disincentives to behave like decent human beings according to the Constitution."

Slaves To The Snow

2008-04-04T09:42:00.000-07:00

originally published in the Hartford Advocate March 6, 2008

Slaves To The Snow

Why can the town government force you to shovel their sidewalks? Nobody seems to know.

By Jennifer Abel

Ah, the sublime New England joy of awakening to discover that overnight, Mother Nature has quilted the earth beneath a gentle blanket of snow.

That idyllic morning scenario only applies to apartment dwellers, or homeowners in the sticks. Those in West Hartford or anywhere else urban enough to have sidewalks in front of their houses have to get dressed and go shovel off some town property; specifically, that sidewalk we mentioned.

This is hardly unique to West Hartford. It applies pretty much wherever public walkways exist. Here in Connecticut the rule is generally that the sidewalk is public property, but you personally have to maintain it, while in other states it's more the sidewalk is yours, but everybody gets to use it and you have to make sure there's no snow or ice in their way.

Walking through snow and ice is, of course, very annoying and you can slip if you're not careful. Shoveling sidewalks is also annoying, which is probably why the government figures "better you should do it than us."

Disclosure: our current living arrangement makes us exempt from any sidewalk-maintenance regulations. And no matter how annoying the sound of scraping shovels might get, we're too well-bred to even think about ever opening our window and shouting "Stop shoveling so loudly! You're disturbing us here in our cozy warm bed!"

But when West Hartford's e-mail alert service sent out a reminder that the town expects everyone to clean out their sidewalks within 12 hours of snowfall's end (and is also sponsoring some wholesome activities for children), we did call to wonder how these snow-removal mandates got around the 13th amendment to the Constitution.

That's the one which reads "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime where of the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." This includes West Hartford, most of whose residents lack criminal records.

Town police recommended we bring our questions to the corporation counsel (the attorneys who handle legal matters for the town). Assistant counsel Kimberly Boneham told us "the General Assembly has two statutes allowing towns to require homeowners to clear ice and snow off the sidewalks."

We had no doubt the town was acting within the confines of the law, we told her; what we couldn't understand was how the law passed constitutional muster in the first place. "The court interpretation is 'for the greater good,'" Boneham said.

But there's no "greater good" exemption in the 13th amendment. Boneham suggested we speak to the legislature, so we called the state Senate clerks' office to ask if anybody had ever tried challenging the sidewalk regulations on constitutional grounds, assured him that yes, we were serious but wouldn't be offended if anybody laughed, and after a slightly awkward pause the guy told us, "You'd have to look that up in the [legislative] law library."

And we would've done it, too, only we didn't have time because we had to scrape all the ice and snow off our car.

No Smokin' Babes

2008-04-04T09:39:00.000-07:00

originally published in the Hartford Advocate February 28, 2008

No Smokin' Babes

A new law will ban smoking in cars with children

By Jennifer Abel

Think of the children! Seriously, think about them for a second: awww. Truly they are precious, and fragile in many ways. When new laws are proposed in the name of "the children," that generally means more restrictions on adults.

State Senate bill 268, "An Act Prohibiting Smoking In Vehicles With Minor Children," is no exception. It's currently before the Children's Committee, where it was introduced by Senator Henry Genga of East Hartford.

When we called Genga about the bill he told us, "Last year it was introduced ... from a request from a boy who was 9 years old."

America is unique among the world's democratic republics, few of whom let 9-year-olds so much as vote, let alone help write the laws of the land. Though the child's vision was diluted in committee, Genga said: "We reduced it to 'no smoking in cars with small children' ... it's enforceable, and it's practical."

The bill defines smoking as the act of holding "a cigarette, cigar, pipe or similar device ... in the immediate proximity of [the] mouth." It need not actually be lit. And Genga's "small children" are those required to ride in child-restraint seats: 6 years or younger and weighing less than 60 pounds. When asked the rationale for this legislation, Genga recited the usual statistics about how secondhand smoke is very bad for you: poisons, toxins, bronchitis, asthma, allergies, cancer and death.

"I don't believe people know how bad secondhand smoke is to small children," he said.

We wondered about that ourselves, we told him. Up through the mid-'90s you could smoke pretty much everywhere: restaurants, waiting rooms, common areas of shopping malls. Through the '60s and '70s you could even smoke in hospitals and doctors' offices.

"We didn't know then how bad it was," Genga said.

Right, we said, but if secondhand smoke is as harmful as all that, why don't most Americans old enough to remember the 20th century have lung disease by now? And why aren't all the Baby Boomers dead?

"Every time a bullet is fired at someone, do they die?" Genga asked. We didn't agree that smoking upwind of a person is analogous to shooting at them, but Genga told us, "[The Surgeon General] said in 2006, 'There is no risk-free exposure to secondhand smoke.' It raises the risk of health problems 20 to 30 percent in non-smokers."

Which brought us back to our original point, we said; if secondhand smoke is that dangerous then most adults over 25 should have lung or respiratory problems by now, because as kids their exposure to —

"I'm not focusing on that," Genga said impatiently. "I'm focusing on the little children. In cars. An enclosed space."

So if enclosed spaces are the issue here, will the bill make an exemption for smoking in open-top convertibles?

No, Genga said firmly. "If you're in a vehicle with a child in a restraint seat, no smoking."

A public hearing on the bill is scheduled for 11 a.m. on Feb. 28, in room 1C of the Legislative Office Building. Those who wish to speak can sign up starting two hours beforehand.

Poker Buddies, Wink Wink

2008-04-04T09:29:00.000-07:00

originally published in the Hartford Advocate and Fairfield County Weekly, August 14, 2007

Poker Buddies, Wink Wink

It's illegal to play poker for money, unless you're on tribal land or among "friends"

By Jennifer Abel

Here’s a riddle: how is playing cards like having sex? Answer: it’s legal for two (or more) consenting adults to do it together so long as nobody gains financially. But the second capitalism gets involved, then you are (according to the government) an officially Bad Person who deserves to go to jail. Poker’s pretty popular these days, both in person and online, so the Division of Special Revenue is reminding everybody not to play for money. Paul Young, the division’s executive director, said in a press release last month that Connecticut law makes gambling illegal in most instances.

“Poker is clearly a prohibited form of gambling and soliciting others to partake in a form of prohibited gambling is a violation of the State’s criminal statutes,” Young wrote. “We also have the Tribal agreements to consider.”

These tribal agreements boil down to: it’s legal for the state’s Indian tribes to make money from poker games, and illegal for everybody else.

That sounds straightforward, if unfair. But here’s a confusing wrinkle: playing poker for money is illegal outside of an Indian casino, unless it’s done among friends.

They say a stranger is a friend you haven’t met yet. How long does it take for a stranger to acquire legal friend status for poker-playing purposes in Connecticut? Richard Blumenthal, the state attorney general, is the guy ultimately responsible for prosecuting and penalizing those who violate the poker laws. He told the Advocate, “The rule has always been: gambling is prohibited in state, but social games are permitted. Permissible forms include people who know each other, with a social connection.”

However, social connections made via the Internet don’t seem to apply. As Paul Young said, “The opportunity to wager over the Internet on a variety of activities, including casino games, is very attractive to many people; however, such activity is illegal in Connecticut.” But why should the law distinguish between social activities that take place online versus in meat-space?

“It’s an illegal activity,” Young explained. Before anybody can play Internet poker without going to jail, “there has to be a law on the books permitting it.” And there isn’t. So the Advocate asked: where card games are concerned, would it be accurate to say that which is not allowed is prohibited?

“It is prohibited,” Young agreed.

Unless it’s among friends. So how long does it take for two strangers to legally qualify?

“We haven’t really traveled down that road … I think it’s something the courts would have to work on,” Young said.

The Advocate also wondered if sexual activity could form the foundation of a legal friendship. If you meet a stranger at six o’clock and have sex with him at six-fifteen, can you legally play poker in the afterglow?

There’s really no polite way to ask a government official such a question, so you really can’t blame the director of Connecticut’s Division of Special Revenue for adopting a rather frosty tone of voice when he answered, “I wouldn’t be able to judge that.”

Sincere advice: it’s not worth having sex with somebody just so you can play poker later. Instead, go to a teenage jewelry store like Claire’s or The Icing, where you and your poker buddy can buy matching necklaces declaring yourselves “B.F.F.” (Best Friends Forever). This jewelry will turn your skin green if you wear it too long, but green skin beats the heck out of a jail sentence.

Putting Is Such Sweet Sorrow

2008-04-04T09:24:00.000-07:00

originally published in the Hartford Advocate March 15, 2007

Putting Is Such Sweet Sorrow

West Hartford’s venture into the mini-golf business annoys the skatekids

By Jennifer Abel

Despite golf’s reputation as a rich man’s game, it’s downright proletarian in Connecticut. Town governments throughout the state own and subsidize courses. Even working-class cities like Waterbury and Norwich sport municipal golf facilities, so it’s no surprise a wealthy town like West Hartford does too: two in fact, the course at Rockledge and the course at Buena Vista.

No, a city golf course isn’t bragworthy in Connecticut. But West Hartford’s about to join a more exclusive circle, though "exclusive" might be the wrong word for a mini-golf course, which the city intends to build at the Buena Vista complex.

Subsidized mini-golf courses are nowhere near as common as their more couth cousins; only Stratford has one, at its Gulls Landing park. So how’s that working out? The course is closed for the season, but according to The Putting Penguin, an online "unofficial guide to miniature golf courses," it’s a shabby example of the genus Minigolfus made tolerable by its low admission price.

"The carpets are very worn and definitely need to be replaced," says the site’s review. "The water hazards also need to be cleaned … the bricks that line the course are loose." If Gulls Landing is any indication, the difference between a publicly and privately owned mini-golf course is like that between the American and Canadian sides of Niagara Falls.

Mini golf. The phrase inspires visions of sticky children hitting balls into the mouths of clowns or between rotating windmill blades. And (no slight intended against the many fine people in the miniature-golf industry) it could even be said that involvement in the business demeans the majesty of government, somehow.

But West Hartford’s course will be completely tasteful, says Jim Capodiece, the city’s director of leisure services.

"The intention is to fit it into the environment, not to make it a circus type of course," he said. Capodiece can’t yet predict when the course will be complete; the city is currently "regarding conceptual plans" with a course designer.

To call these publicly owned golf courses "subsidized" isn’t entirely accurate. As Capodiece said, "Buena Vista golf course [covers its] operating costs. … Some years the golf course runs a little on the positive side, some years a little negative." (The current rates for a nine-hole game vary from nine or ten dollars for city residents to twelve or thirteen for out-of-towners.)

Capodiece and the city say the mini-golf addition would be a wonderful recreational opportunity for families, and they’re almost certainly right. But would it improve the current status quo? Not everyone says yes. City resident Ed Lennig thinks that replacing any part of Buena Vista’s current set-up with a mini-golf course would be a loss.

"[Buena Vista] is one of the best family courses around," Lennig said in a phone interview. "A good training course if you’re teaching your kids how to play the game." He credits Buena Vista’s family friendliness to its small size. It’s a nine-hole course, only half the standard 18 where, Lennig says, "if someone can’t play well it takes them forever to play through … a kid learning to play might swing at the ball a few times and when he finally hits it, it only goes five yards."

The loss of a great training course: one potential reason to oppose the city’s future mini-golf proposal. But there’s another (even ignoring any possible "government-owned mini-golf" concerns): there’s plenty of wholesome family stuff to do in West Hartford already. Some say the course’s estimated $300,000 cost could be better spent appealing to other age groups. Like maybe teenagers. With an interest in skateboarding.

Chau Pham, a junior at Hall High School, discussed in an e-mail the mini-golf course and other developments going on in town. "It seems as though these developments are directed more toward either older or younger generations," he wrote.

Pham belongs to Build Us A Skatepark, a local lobbying group that hasn’t quite got around to lobbying the city yet but has been gathering members on social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook.

"As of right now, it’s just kind of a collection of people," says the group’s teenage leader and founder, Devin Castaldi-Micca. "We haven’t actually begun lobbying or thinking about it."
The group’s members are frustrated by the lack of legal places to skate in the city. So where do they skate? "Pretty much all over, anywhere there’s asphalt," said Castaldi-Micca. "The Center, but you get kicked out in five minutes. … Sometimes they even call the police."

Pham said such a park would benefit not only skateboarders, but the rest of the town as well. "The town itself would be free of teenagers just barely skimming the law to catch a good ride and we would not have to be so fearful of being punished for just carrying our skateboards in a high-traffic area."

Although the group hasn’t formally petitioned the city yet, Capodiece was nonetheless aware of their concerns. "We’ve heard from a variety of youth groups who want a skatepark … one group came forward about six months ago, and we told them about the processes necessary to request this, but we haven’t heard back from them since."

The city’s not averse to the idea of a skatepark, Capodiece says. "I believe there may be some discussion in this year’s budget to take capital improvements money to build a skatepark … it depends on how much money other groups can raise. I don’t think you’ll see the town pay the entire bill, unless we get a grant."

So why pay the cost of a mini-golf course? "A mini-golf course would be a revenue producer; a skatepark wouldn’t."

Hell Hath No Furries

2008-04-03T18:01:00.000-07:00

originally published in the Hartford Advocate November 1, 2007

Hell Hath No Furries

For some people, dressing up like a stuffed animal is more than just a hobby. It's a way of life. Our reporter attends the 2007 Furries convention.

By Jennifer Abel

When I said I'd be going to a Furry convention incognito as a black cat, the response was almost unanimous: what the hell's a Furry?

What fun to answer. Furries, I explained, are like transvestites with an added twist: instead of claiming to be a woman trapped in a man's body, they say they're animals in human bodies. And wear animal outfits called "fursuits," similar to the costumes worn by cartoon characters at theme parks only with openings in sexually strategic places.

"How do you know all this?" came the next question, which I answered with links to sources ranging from "those crazy Americans" British documentaries to a 2001 Vanity Fair piece that still inspires growls among Furries — who say the portrayals of bestiality, animal-suited sex and a near-complete lack of social skills in the article — misrepresents Furrydom as a whole.

At any rate, when I learned there'd be a Halloween convention called FurFright at Waterbury's Grand Hotel I immediately e-mailed a request for a press pass, and got a polite-yet-firm response discussing their strict no-media policy (common among Furry gatherings, I learned, since the Vanity Fair story).

Thus I went undercover, after visiting a Halloween store to buy a belled collar, velvet cat ears and a nice piece of tail (30 inches, if you think length matters).

The best-known fan conventions, or cons, are probably the Star Trek gatherings where aficionados pay good money to wear Vulcan ears, discuss Federation arcana and rub shoulders with actors from the show.

Furrydom got its start at sci-fi and comic cons featuring art displays of human-animal or human-alien hybrids. (Think of all those sexy aliens from Stars Trek and Wars who look exactly like hot women wearing body paint and forehead prosthetics.)

Broadly, "Furry" refers to any fan of anthropomorphic-animal art or literature. Furrydom broke out of the sci-fi/fantasy ghetto and became its own subculture in the '90s, when the Internet made it easy for people with diverse interests to find each other.

FurFright was harder to get into than any sci-fi or comic con I've seen. Con admission's usually easy: fork over your entrance fee and get a badge. The Furries demanded photo ID. You also had to fill out an electronic form with your name, age and address, and choose from a list of available species; I picked "Feline/Cat."

The man at the registration desk looked suspiciously at my driver's license. Glanced at his computer. Back at the license. Now at me. Did that e-mail put my name on a media blackball list?

Then I remembered. "The change-of-address sticker's on the back," I said of my license. "And my hair's black because I was still Goth then."

He laughed and held the license next to my face. "I guess it does look like you."

How disheartening.

But despite the difficulty getting in, the convention looked much like any other: people in street clothes, folks in full costume, and others in everyday garb with a con accessory or two: no superhero capes, but plenty of animal tails poking out from shirt bottoms.

The day's first discussion panel, advertised as an "icebreaker," was moderated by a man in his 40s who wore jeans and a Trix Rabbit shirt, and called himself Wally Wabbit. There were also three men who self-identified as a Skunk, Coyote and Dog. Coyote wore jeans, a T-shirt with a picture of his namesake, a tail and paw-shaped bedroom slippers. Everyone else wore street clothes. (By dint of my ears and tail, I looked more animalistic than half the people there.)

Skunk, a nice-looking man somewhere in his 30s, introduced himself as a computer engineer from the Boston area. Coyote had another technical job. Both recognized me as someone who'd never been to a Furry convention before.

That's another difference between a Furry con and its sci-fi/fantasy predecessors: the majority of the Furries knew each other, either from earlier cons or Internet chat rooms. Walk through a sci-fi or comic con and you'll get no shortage of party invitations to check out some space-opera bootleg or a copy of the latest anime craze. I found no open invitations from strangers among the Furries.

The dealers' room, another convention staple, had a strict no-photographs rule, likely due to the original artwork for sale within. Most showed human bodies with animal heads and tails, usually in everyday human situations.

A few dealers had albums with adults-only warnings on the covers. The animal-accented human bodies inside were nude, posing alone or in softcore situations with others. (There's no apparent bias against interspecies coupling in Furrydom.)

Still, the adult stuff was rare and hidden from view. Everything else was child-safe: animal T-shirts, high-quality plush dolls and cartoons of the sort you find in kids' books. By fan-convention standards, it was all pretty tame.

Beside the dealers' and panel rooms, most convention space focused on social activities: group-action video games and Dance Dance Revolution machines, or tables for card and board games. Another room showed animal-themed movies like Chicken Run all day.

Outside the dealers' room I ran into Coyote, who invited me to join a group of fursuiters for dinner at a nearby buffet.

"I'm not a fursuiter," I said.

"Yes, you are," he replied, pointing to my ears and tail. I smiled and agreed to meet him later.

Earlier, I'd noticed a room labeled "Headless Lounge, for fursuiters, performers and staff only." Once I knew I qualified as a fursuiter, I went in for a look.

And left almost immediately. The room was far too cold for anyone in street clothes. Multiple fans spinning full blast amplified the already-high air conditioning, and enormous tubs of ice and chilled drinks covered the tables. People in fursuits with the heads off reclined on the floor. The Headless Lounge was a cooldown room, protecting people in heavy fursuits from dehydration or heatstroke.

When a few dozen of us met in the lobby for dinner, those of us with cars were asked to give rides to those without. I drove Skunk and his friend Monkey (in full-human garb) to a nearby buffet.

Monkey, a college student, mentioned his concern over the next big Furry con: it was scheduled for when he'd be at home, so he needed an excuse to give his parents.

"Your parents don't know?" I asked.

"No. They wouldn't approve."

"I don't see why. I've seen much weirder stuff at sci-fi and comic cons than anything here."

"Media sensationalism," Skunk said. "When the media does a story about Fur fandom, they pick the weirdest, most extreme people and say we're all like that."

No comment from me. I later asked him what the real, non-sensational face of Furry fandom looks like.

"It all varies," he said. "Some people just like anthropomorphic art. As for people relating to animals, it ranges from 'I think they're cool' to 'I have traits in common, like I'm quiet as a mouse,' to 'Yes, I am a wolf in a human body and I must run free with my furry brothers!'"

I laughed. "Still beats being a Klingon. So what makes you a skunk?"

"I like the striking colors ... and I was a maladjusted kid. When a skunk walks into the room, everybody leaves."

After dinner the con was more crowded, and lots of full-fursuiters milled about. Over the low murmur of voices I heard the constant click of cameras: Fursuiters showing off their costumes and posing for pictures.

Skunk suggested I attend the "Friday Furpocalypse" which, despite its ominous name, consisted of organized games ranging from relay races to Furry-themed versions of game shows. During the "Furry Match Game," a man wearing a hunter costume and carrying a giant plush carrot walked in, stalked by a terrifying mutant rabbit with enormous fangs and oversized claws.

Children's cartoons, Red Cross fundraisers, team sports and adult content kept discreetly out of sight. How wholesome.

Every half-hour I went to the bathroom to take notes in a private stall, and at 9 p.m. wrote: "May as well have gone to a Catholic school Halloween party. The dance starts in half an hour. Maybe something will happen there."

When I heard the strains of "Hungry Like The Wolf" emanating from the ballroom, I walked in to see a little toddler girl dancing with someone in a bunny suit. A minute later the girl abandoned the bunny to pull a cartoon fox onto the dance floor. She got more excited each time a new animal entered the room (good thing the mutant rabbit had left).

One man leaning against the wall surveyed the scene with a proud expression. "She's definitely my daughter," he smiled at me. "Look how much fun she's having."

"Of course," I said. "She's in a roomful of giant stuffed animals all come to life and dancing with her."

"You know," her father said reflectively, "I haven't been to a con since Anthrocon [another Furry gathering] a few years ago. These are the only people I trust. There's definitely a friendly vibe here."

There was. But what about the sex vibes I'd hoped to find? If I'd peeked behind every hotel-room door I probably would've found something, but that's true at any gathering of hundreds of people far from home. The Furry convention wasn't a sex thing but the exact opposite: an innocent world of children's-book animals, where a 3-year-old can roam with impunity and a maladjusted kid can enter the room with nobody leaving.

In 2002 a sociologist named David Rust published "The Sociology of Furry Fandom," based on surveys he'd taken in the late '90s. Rust noted that Furries tend to have a higher percentage of homosexuals than the regular population, but the "perception that Furries tend to be sexually overt and promiscuous" is "skewed."

And while the Furries obviously have a shared interest in anthropomorphic themes, their defining characteristics found by Rust were "a higher tolerance (than within mainstream culture) for displays of affection or friendliness" and for "variety in sexual orientation and activity."

Still, none of that sexual openness was visible to me. At 11:30 p.m. I attended an adults-only panel called "Safety Furst." Was this, then, where the infamous Furry sleaze was to be found? Maybe a lesson on how to do bunnysuit bondage without suffocating your partner?

Nope. Same safe-sex/anti-STD lecture you can find in any middle school.

Backdoor Dealings

2008-04-03T17:40:00.000-07:00

originally published in the Hartford Advocate April 3, 2008

Backdoor Dealings

A proposed bill that would get DCF off the back of homeschooling parents is caught in a political war between competing lawmakers

By Jennifer Abel

There's a bait-and-switch scam going on in the General Assembly where the homeschooling bill 162 is concerned.

Originally proposed by Rep. Arthur O'Neill, it's supposed to clarify a legal hitch causing problems for Connecticut parents who homeschool.

Here's the deal: when parents withdraw their children from school to teach them at home, the schools have been calling the Department of Children and Families and reporting the parents for "educational neglect." We wrote about this last summer: in all cases the charges against the families were deemed "unsubstantiated," but defending such charges is stressful and expensive for the families.

The problem is that state law doesn't really specify what a parent must do to withdraw his children. So O'Neill proposed a bill which, if ratified, would modify section 10-220 of the state statutes, which lists "Duties of boards of education." Under O'Neill's bill, if a parent sends written notice of intent to withdraw his kids, "the local or regional board of education shall accept such notice and shall deem the child withdrawn immediately."

This draft went to the Legislative Commissioner's Office to be written in bill form, and came out entirely different: the LCO version says nothing about the duties of school boards but would alter section 10-184 of the statutes, "Duties of parents." And it says that if a parent "intends to provide the child with equivalent instruction" at home and sends a letter saying so, the school principal or superintendent "shall immediately accept such notice as evidence the child is receiving equivalent instruction."

Deborah Stevenson, an attorney who heads NHELD (National Home Education Legal Defense), finds this unacceptable. "It's not enough to accept the letter, you must consider the child withdrawn," she argues. "Evidence is not proof."

Besides, acceptance of the letters isn't really the problem: "School districts were accepting them, but not considering the children withdrawn, then calling DCF and charging them with educational neglect."

The new language came out just before the Children's Committee held a public hearing on the bill. "[They] announced a hearing on the original language, but didn't ... realize the language had changed before the hearing." So they voted to revert back to O'Neill's original.

Then the bill went to the Education Committee, where Sen. Thomas Gaffey and Rep. Andrew Fleischmann sit. The Education Committee, in turn, rewrote the bill.

"The last day, Gaffey comes out at committee meetings with another version of this bill with revised language. Nobody asked him to," Stevenson said. Gaffey's "evidence" version, according to Stevenson's interpretation, would not provide parents a way to withdraw their children, but instead give schools authority to decide whether or not to remove a child from its rolls.

And one more thing, Stevenson said, "Gaffey ... said 'O'Neill is fine with this [new] language.'"

Rep. O'Neill disagreed. "I never said 'I support this language' to anybody," he told us.

And what does he think about the changes to his bill?

"Unfortunately, the Education Committee leadership feel that given the choice between listening to Deborah Stevenson or the Department of Education, they'll give the benefit of the doubt to folks they feel are expert, neutral types."

With due respect, we said, we weren't certain the Department of Education could be called "neutral" toward a law which would remove children from their jurisdiction.

"I think the department does have a bit of a bias," O'Neill said. "They may acknowledge there's a right [to homeschool], but I think they're deeply skeptical."

Homeschool advocates like Stevenson feel the Education Committee version of the bill is even worse than the current status quo, we noted.

"Yeah," O'Neill said. "For the first time, it would require parents offer formal notice ... in my bill, once you get that piece of paper, that would be the end of the discussion," O'Neill said.

One more thing, we said: reading the new version of the bill, we couldn't figure out what, exactly, a parent must do for his kids to be withdrawn from school.

"I think you've got it right. The way it's written, if a school takes the attitude 'we own the children,' this helps them. They can go to a judge and say 'may,' not 'must'... it opens the door to aggressive lawyering."

Sen. Gaffey did not return our calls but Rep. Fleischmann did, and said the homeschoolers' concerns about the rewording of the bill were unfounded. "They're mistaken," he says of critics of his version of the bill. "Bills can be worded many ways and accomplish the same ends."

We said that O'Neill himself had concerns with the revisions to his bill.

"That's interesting," said Fleischmann, "because he had discussions with ... Senator Gaffey ... [and said] he was comfortable with the language we were working on.

We indicated O'Neill had told us otherwise.

"I'm really disappointed at the mismatch between the statements Rep. O'Neill made [in the legislature] and what he's saying [to us]," Fleischmann said. "Apparently he changed his mind."

We called O'Neill again to discuss our chat with Fleischmann.

"I explained to [Fleischmann] I was doing this on the homeschoolers' behalf, and they were not happy ... that was the only conversation I had with him," O'Neill said.

Hookers Are Bad, Sez Blumenthal

2008-04-03T17:38:00.000-07:00

"News brief" originally published in the Hartford Advocate April 3, 2008

Hookers Are Bad, Sez Blumenthal

In a March 27 press release, Attorney General Richard Blumenthal declared himself shocked — shocked! — to discover that hookers sometimes advertise on Craigslist.

"In spite of rules banning such content," the release indignantly sputters, "Craiglist's [sic] 'erotic services' section is rife with ads containing explicit language and images bordering on pornographic, as well as hourly rates and descriptions of services clearly sexual in nature." In a letter to Craigslist attorneys, Blumenthal declared himself "especially troubled that Craigslist has disregarded and dismissed this serious and growing problem."

An informal poll of our male acquaintances indicates that they do often find something growing when they gaze upon such ads. However, they did not classify such growth as a "problem" and we find it impossible to view it as anything "serious."

At any rate, Blumenthal notes that his previous attempts at a cure only made the presumptive disease worse: "As a small step in response to my concerns, Craigslist now requires anyone posting a listing in the erotic services section to provide a phone number. This step, however, will hardly deter the prostitution problem on the site, and may indeed make it worse. Many of the most graphic solicitations already include a telephone number to enable prospective patrons of their services to contact them."

We probably shouldn't have laughed as hard as we did, when we read that. In fact, we probably shouldn't have laughed at all.

— Jennifer Abel

Barking Mad

2008-04-03T10:48:00.000-07:00

originally published in the Hartford Advocate March 29, 2007

Barking Mad

A Zoning Debate Over 22 Shih Tzus In One House Has West Hartford Going To The Dogs

By Jennifer Abel

Does the law exist to serve people, or do people exist to serve the law? The question sounds like fodder for a college bull session among legal majors, but it’s more than academic for West Hartford resident and dog owner Faith Kilburn. “If the law is capricious and arbitrary, and I can show no harm is caused, then what’s it all about?” she asked.

Basically, it’s about a town ordinance limiting residents to ownership of no more than two adult dogs (three if the person has a kennel permit). The rule has the most rational of rationales: even if you think government should be hands-off regarding what people do with their property, you’d probably agree that a person in his own home shouldn’t have to listen to the constant barking (or smell the unpleasant odors) too many of a neighbor’s dogs can generate.

But Kilburn says her Shih Tzu lapdogs — all 22 of them — cause no problems for her neighbors and the neighbors agree, to such extent that two dozen of them signed a petition requesting that the town make an exception and let Kilburn keep her dogs (who are elderly by canine standards and not likely to be around much longer anyway). So far the zoning board has refused, and Kilburn took it to court after it denied her latest request for a special-use permit last December.

“I filed the court documents almost immediately,” she said. “I had to, because of the fines. They said they could fine me up to $5,000 per month.”

Nobody on the zoning board could or would comment, so only Kilburn’s side can be told. But the zoning board’s position is undeniably backed by the law.

It all started on a Monday morning in 2004 when Kilburn got a phone call from town officials. “[They] said, ‘Faith, someone said you have 16 dogs,’ and I said, ‘No, I have 22.’”

Answers like that make town officials ask to inspect a home. Kilburn says she invited them over that day, but not until Wednesday did officials from the boards of zoning and health come by.

“They came into the house and their eyes got wide as saucers, and they said, ‘How do you do it? Everything is so clean and wonderful!’ … they looked for cleanliness, which they found, and my vet wrote a letter saying all the dogs’ shots were up to date. The vet said nobody could take care of the dogs as well as Faith, and it would be cruel to break them up.”

So the dogs weren’t being mistreated, or living in squalor. What was the problem? Town Zoning Enforcement Officer Eva Espinosa could not be reached for comment and assistant officer Joseph Masi, citing pending litigation, referred questions to Joseph O’Brien, the corporation counsel for West Hartford.

“I believe it was a complaint from a neighbor,” O’Brien said, though he didn’t know the name of the complainant. Kilburn suspects it’s the one who discussed her Shih Tzus at a recent town meeting and said, “I just want the law enforced.” (The neighbor could not be reached for comment.)

All right: there’s at least one person who’s annoyed, if not by the dogs themselves then by the fact that their existence in Kilburn’s home flouts the law. But Kilburn’s immediate neighbors, whom the law presumably protects, signed a petition saying they don’t need its protection.

One of the petition signers was Elizabeth Mayo, whose backyard borders Kilburn’s. Has Mayo had problems with the dogs?

“No, we haven’t,” she said. “We directly back up on [Kilburn’s] property, and the dogs are not a problem.” But surely, 22 dogs must get noisy sometimes. “No, not at all. They’re very quiet. I can’t say that I ever hear them barking.” Emmet Whittlesey, whose signature also graces the petition, agrees.

“We’ve lived here 30 years or so, and I don’t ever know that [the dogs] are there.” And what does he think of the town’s attempts to evict them? “It’s absurd.”

It’s easy to argue for a law’s enforcement when breaking it harms someone. But when nobody’s being hurt, the arguments for enforcement get Kafkaesque. Kilburn describes the reasoning she’d heard from the zoning board when she was denied her special-use permit last December:

“They said it was because they’ve already given me enough time to get rid of the dogs … in 2004 they told me I had to get rid of all but three of them.”

So they won’t let her keep the dogs because she didn’t get rid of the dogs?

“Yes,” Kilburn said. “[Robert] Roach [of the zoning board] said to me, “We don’t want to see you back in this chamber again, because you’ll just ask for another special-use permit.” Roach did not return calls seeking comment.

So the only complaint about the breaking of this law is that the law’s being broken. Are laws upheld for the greater good, or only for their own sake? Faith Kilburn will soon find out.

Beaten Into Submission

2008-04-03T10:38:00.000-07:00

originally published in the Hartford Advocate March 27, 2008

Beaten Into Submission

Avery Doninger called her school administrators "douchebags" on her blog and was banned from student elections. Now she is fighting for freedom of speech in U.S. District Court.

By Jennifer Abel

Connecticut prides itself on being modern and progressive, so if you tell the average school administrator here, "You run your schools like they did in North Carolina way the hell back in 1837," he'll probably be insulted. But if you say this in the Region 10 school district, covering Harwinton and Burlington, there's a slim chance they'll smile and reply:

"Yes, that 1837 case down South involving a schoolmaster who beat a 6-year-old girl badly enough to leave visible marks on her body for two days was, we felt, a student-discipline precedent worth citing in our defense against Avery Doninger's first-amendment lawsuit."

Seriously, they did that. The school's arguments in the suit against Lewis Mills High School principal Karissa Niehoff and Region 10 superintendent Paula Schwartz are a joy to behold when you know the hilariously disturbing contexts Doninger's attorney Jon Schoenhorn discovered surrounding them.

We told you about Doninger last September. She's a senior at Lewis Mills in Burlington, and during her junior year served on the student council and as class secretary. As a council member she helped organize an annual music festival called Jamfest, originally to happen in January but repeatedly cancelled and re-scheduled by the administration, which cited problems with the school's newly constructed auditorium.

"They kept pushing back the date ... to April 28," Doninger said. Then the teacher who was to handle the lights had to cancel. The school wouldn't let a student work the lights even though, Doninger said, one worked part-time doing just that at a Torrington theater. And another thing: "They told us it was the taxpayers' auditorium. ... It belongs to everyone in Region 10, not just the school."

So Doninger and her friends went to the computer lab and sent taxpayers a mass e-mail seeking permission to use the auditorium. The people responded by telling Superintendent Schwartz to let the kids have their concert. And the next day in school:

"Ms. Niehoff said, 'I need to talk to you ... as of now Jamfest is cancelled. ... Mrs. Schwartz is really upset, getting all these calls and e-mails.'"

At home that night Doninger wrote an angry LiveJournal blog post that began "Jamfest is cancelled due to douchebags in [the] central office." When Schwartz learned of the post a week later, she stripped Doninger of her class secretary position and forbade her from running in the forthcoming election. Though Doninger's name wasn't on the ballot, the students wrote it in anyway and Doninger won the election — or would've if the administration had counted her votes. They didn't.

Doninger and her mother sued for reinstatement, and on Aug. 31, Judge Mark Kravitz ruled with the school, arguing that writing something on a publicly available blog is basically the same as shouting it in the classroom, and can be punished accordingly. Schoenhorn filed an appeal which was heard this month at the Second Circuit Court in New York; a verdict's expected within 30 days.

Region 10's attorney Thomas Gerarde did not return calls seeking comment, and school officials never discuss pending litigation, so the school's defense brief will have to speak for itself.

The school says Doninger deserved to lose her secretary position because the douchebag post showed she lacked "good citizenship." What does that entail? The school hasn't specified, but Principal Niehoff, in earlier testimony, said that if Doninger replaced the arguably vulgar term "douchebags" with "jerks," "meanies" or "expletive deleted," she'd face the same consequences. The implication seems to be that "good citizenship" means "never criticize authority."

The brief adds that "the inculcation of the values of good citizenship and civility to public school students is not a recently fashioned mission designed to provide school authorities a license to suppress speech. ... Rather, this mission has been a core of the American fabric for more than 150 years ..."

The first citation after that is from a 19th-century ruling called State v. Pendergrass, which the brief quotes as follows (ellipses are from the original):

"One of the most sacred duties of parents is to train up and qualify their children, for becoming useful and virtuous members of society; ... the teacher is the substitute of the parents ... and in the exercise of these delegated duties is invested with his power."

The defense brief doesn't mention that this case involved a severe beating inflicted upon a little girl in North Carolina. Nor does it mention the violent context of the next cited quote, from the 1859 case Lander v. Seaver: "Language used to stir up disorder or insubordination, or to heap disgrace upon the schoolmaster has always been subject to punishment."

"That case," said Schoenhorn, "was about a Vermont teacher who beat a student at his home ... [the teacher] lost the case. It looks like they didn't even read the cases. If you're gonna cite cases in a brief you'd better read them first so they don't blow up in your face."

So here's where matters stand now: Region 10's administration argues that it has rights of censorship and punishment over everything students write or say, on-campus and off. If the courts agree, no students in the country will be allowed to ever criticize their teachers. And the justification for this includes some pre-Civil War cases where teachers argued for their right to beat the snot out of disobedient students.

Selling Out For Free

2008-04-03T10:31:00.000-07:00

originally published in the Hartford Advocate June 7, 2007

Selling Out For Free

Canton’s first selectman does unpaid promotional work for developers

By Jennifer Abel

Everyone agrees it’s unethical for an elected official to profit from her position by doing public-relations work for a private company. But is it still a problem if she does this work for free? That’s the conundrum puzzling Canton now.

Here’s the story: four years ago the W/S Development – S.R. Weiner company proposed paving over a golf course in Canton to build a big shopping mall ("lifestyle center") called The Shoppes at Farmington Valley.

A residents’ group called CARE (Canton Advocates for Responsible Expansion), led by president Tom Sevigny, opposed the project. Other town residents, including First Selectman Mary Tomolonius, spoke in favor of it. And CARE ultimately lost — the Shoppes opened in 2004.

Now W/S Development hopes to build similar complexes in other towns, while Tomolonius urges said towns to let the developers in. Furthermore, she’s not speaking as a private citizen, but as the first selectman of Canton.

"W/S Development was really terrific to work with. … W/S Development has been a fantastic neighbor to Canton. … Overall, I can say this has just been a great project for Canton. We’re thrilled with the Shoppes here in Canton."

That’s from a letter she wrote (on official town stationery) in January 2006 to the Board of Selectmen in Reading, Massachusetts. It’s posted on the promotional Web site for Park Square, another lifestyle center W/S hoped to build in Reading. Tomolonius repeated her "great project/we’re thrilled" lines in a video on another W/S Web site, this one hoping to convince Canton’s neighbor Cheshire to welcome a Shoppes of their own.

Tom Sevigny wants to know: who’s this "we" Tomolonius calls thrilled? There are plenty of Cantonites unhappy about the Shoppes, especially since they morphed into something quite different from what the developers first proposed.

"It was originally going to be a ‘Main Street’ with little shops, maybe some office and residential space," Sevigny said. After beginning the project, the scope changed. "Then they said they needed big-box stores like Kohl’s and Shaw’s [because] the market wouldn’t support the little shops." Furthermore, they also "threatened to pull stakes and leave if they didn’t get their changes approved."

Being left with a half-finished project would have been an expensive white elephant for the town. Sevigny views this as a form of bait-and-switch with overtones of blackmail. But Tomolonius pooh-poohed any such suggestion when the Advocate dropped by her office to ask.

Yes, plans changed but "Obviously, when doing something of that scale, like a house, … you make a plan, then make changes as you go along." Little local stores, major national chains — minor changes, really, says Tomolonius. Also, folks at W/S Development "consider [the Shoppes] a lifestyle center, a new type of development, quote unquote, they have the little stores on one side and the big box on the other."

Well, maybe that explains why Tomolonius pushed for the Shoppes in Canton. But what made her decide to promote the company to other towns?

"They had asked me to do something," Tomolonius replied in a matter-of-fact tone. Is she getting paid?

"No!" she answered incredulously.

Even without payment, does she think maybe it might be a little inappropriate for an elected official to promote a private company?

Tomolonius blinked and answered in the same friendly-yet-perplexed tone. "They had asked if I’d do it." And she doesn’t understand why anybody in Canton thinks this is an issue at all — she’s just giving her impressions of the company, and isn’t even being paid.

"Whether she’s being paid or not paid isn’t really the issue," says Sevigny. "The problem is … it was a controversial project." Yet none of the controversy is mentioned in Tomolonius’ official endorsements.

Camille Anthony, a selectman for the town of Reading, Massachusetts, served as board chairman when W/S proposed building a lifestyle center called Park Square there. So when Tomolonius wrote her endorsement letter, she addressed it to Anthony.

Did Reading’s board of selectmen solicit opinions from towns where Weiner had built other properties? "No," she said firmly. "[The letter] was sent unsolicited to the selectmen … we did not appreciate the company having other selectmen" try to persuade them.

The tactic didn’t work. Though the promotional Web site’s still up, the town rejected Park Square. "It was a four to one vote, turned down," Anthony said. "It was an inappropriate development for the site."

So Reading muddles on without Park Square tax dollars. "The number one benefit of the Shoppes … is the commercial revenue that we’re now seeing," Tomolonius’ letter says in part. "As every taxpayer in the town knows; (sic) most of our taxes were dependent on residential taxes. Now … we are seeing a significant shift form (sic) the residential burden to the commercial and that’s a real positive for our town."

Well, lower taxes for homeowners certainly sound good. How much did Sevigny’s tax bill go down once the Shoppes opened for business?

He laughed. "They haven’t. Taxes still go up every year … the first year we had a rush of money from the Shoppes, but even then they cut the education budget."

Tomolonius says taxes would have gone up even more without the Shoppes.

Tomolonius didn’t go out of her way to inform Canton of her promotional work. Sevigny only learned of it after a friend in Cheshire called him to ask, "Did you know your first selectman’s in the [promotional] video?"

Why, no, he didn’t. But he easily found the video on the home page of the Shoppes at Cheshire promotional site.

Based on the video, visitors to W/S Development properties should wear lots of sunblock, since the sun is always shining and there’s no shade in the common areas. (The main difference between a shopping mall and a lifestyle center is apparently this: malls are smaller, indoors and climate-controlled.)

The video’s narrator made the same point as Tomolonius about tax burdens shifting from residents to businesses, and also said things like "The high-quality architectural vernacular creates the look and feel of a New England village center," (while the camera zoomed in on this ornamental yellow tower thing that looks somewhat like a boxy church steeple).

Canton doesn’t have a town board of ethics, so the Advocate called other town ethics commissions and, without mentioning any names, asked how they’d rule if their first selectmen did such volunteer work.

"I personally would consider it inappropriate," says Gilbert Lowell, who sat on the Ethics Commission for East Windsor. "He’s an elected official, he’s supposed to be working for the town … whether he’s getting paid or not isn’t the point."

Adam Sharaf of Simsbury was more nuanced. "There are people who believe it is not necessarily ethical for a sitting selectman to come out publicly for or against a current land-use application … I’m not saying one way or the other."

But this land-use application isn’t in the selectman’s own town. And remember, this hypothetical selectman isn’t getting paid.

"The old Simsbury code required some remuneration to the official [for a violation to occur]," said Sharaf. "But we changed that. The new code is much broader … if it has an appearance of impropriety … it clearly raises a specter."

Family Values

2008-04-03T10:27:00.000-07:00

originally published in the Hartford Advocate June 14, 2007

Family Values

Constitutional protections don’t apply to Department of Children and Families investigations

by Jennifer Abel

When accused of a crime you’re guaranteed certain constitutional rights, like the right to face and confront your accusers, have a jury trial, know the charges against you and see what evidence the state has to support them. But none of these apply if you’re investigated by the Connecticut Department of Children and Families.

"The [DCF] is not a law enforcement agency and does not charge citizens with crimes," department spokesman Gary Kleeblatt said in an e-mail. "Therefore, the agency has no involvement in the enforcement of constitutional rights that relate solely to criminal activity (jury trial, confront accuser)."

"It’s a gimmick," charges Michael Agranoff, an Ellington-based attorney who specializes in defending parents in DCF cases. "Making [these cases] civil instead of criminal is a gimmick to get around the fourth, fifth and sixth amendments to the Constitution."

While DCF does not have the authority to impose prison sentences, Agranoff says: "The ultimate penalty you can face [with DCF] is TPR, Termination of Parental Rights. … Most people I know would rather spend a year in jail than lose custody of their kids."

David and Sherry Preusch of Trumbull faced that threat when they started homeschooling their son William (now 12) in March 2006. William has "functional abdominal pain," a not-uncommon childhood ailment that can almost be described as overactive stomach butterflies: When the boy suffered extreme anxiety, this manifested itself as severe gastro-intestinal pains. And since much of William’s anxiety stemmed from social problems (like bullies) at school, it made sense to his parents to pull him out and educate him at home.

"We tried to work with the school, have him assigned to a class where he had a lot of friends [rather than] a class where he didn’t know anybody," said Sherry.

"The school refused to work with us," David added.

There’s no point in asking for the school’s side of the story; due to the confidentiality laws surrounding children, neither school nor DCF personnel are allowed to comment on specific cases. What might the school say if it could speak on its own behalf? Perhaps that its overworked employees, already facing demands from dozens of parents, had little patience for requests they might have interpreted as "give my little one special treatment lest he get a tummyache."

But if that were the case, the school would have viewed it as a mercy when the Preusches pulled William out. That’s not what happened.

"On Wednesday, I think March 1, we had a meeting with the school," Sherry Preusch recalled. "That Tuesday or Wednesday, my husband sent them a letter, certified mail, return receipt requested, saying we’d be homeschooling our son in accordance with the state statutes … [the school] reported us to DCF on the seventh."

This in itself is not remarkable. "Parents who withdraw their children from public schools to start homeschooling are being reported to DCF for educational neglect," says Deborah Stevenson, the Preusches’ attorney (and the director of National Home Education Legal Defense).

Attorney Agranoff agrees, and explains why. "This isn’t [written] DCF policy, but … DCF considers the schools the first line of defense [against child abuse]."

Kleeblatt insists the department has no bias against homeschoolers. "Homeschooling is not a form of neglect." But DCF still must investigate if a school reports a family.

Back to the Preushes: after the school reported them to DCF, a social worker arrived at their home. "She told me we were being investigated for educational neglect," Sherry Preusch said. "She said the school said William had 34 unexcused absences."

Here’s where things started getting strange. The Preusches showed the Advocate the school’s attendance records for their son: there were indeed 34 absences, but all listed as excused. Why did the school report otherwise? The Preusches had no idea, but figured once they showed the attendance record to the social worker, the investigation would end.

They were wrong. The social worker wanted the Preusches to sign releases granting access to William’s medical records.

"We couldn’t figure out why they needed the medical records," David said. "We gave authorization … our attorney said if we didn’t, they’d kick the investigation up to a higher level because it looks like we’re hiding something."

On dragged the investigation. The Preusches didn’t know why suspicions of educational neglect led to so many questions about doctor visits, and demanded to see the file DCF had against them.

"We were told we had no right to see the files," David recalled.

"Parents always have the right to see evidence against them," Kleeblatt counters.

On April 13, 2006, the Preusches finally received word that DCF had unsubstantiated the claims. But not until May 3 did the Preusches see their files and learn the truth: though the investigation started as one of educational neglect, DCF actually suspected Sherry Preusch had Munchausen’s Syndrome by Proxy, a mental disorder wherein parents deliberately make their children sick in order to get attention and sympathy from medical personnel.

Why should DCF claim to be investigating one charge, while actually investigating another? "Without reading the actual report, we can’t comment on this case," Kleeblatt said. "However, it is very common for additional claims to surface after an investigation has been opened."

No doubt, but the Preusches knew nothing of the additional claim until they saw their file, three weeks after the case was over. Why wasn’t it given to them sooner?

"DCF receives 30 – 50 requests a week for copies of case records," Kleeblatt wrote. "We make every effort to provide them to the client within 30 days. However, state and federal confidentiality laws are quite strict. … Information about persons other than the requestor or the requestor’s children must be redacted. This is a time-consuming process and a large case record may take weeks to properly redact."

In other words: to ensure families don’t know who’s accusing them, sometimes the files must be withheld for several weeks. Meanwhile, Kleeblatt says DCF investigations must be completed within 45 days. He didn’t conclude, "therefore, parents with large case records aren’t likely to get their files while their cases are still active," but that’s the only way the numbers add up.

Connie Kain of Ridgefield had a DCF experience similar to the Preusches’. When Kain adopted her two daughters from Russia, she didn’t know the girls had emotional problems stemming from their early years in hellish Russian orphanages.

"They were never played with, never picked up, never held, never made eye contact." Kain said. Denied these vital emotional connections as babies, Kain’s daughters find it hard to make them now: "They hate adults, hate people trying to love them, and think all adults are out to get them." Since her daughters’ school couldn’t or wouldn’t meet the girls’ special needs, Kain pulled them out for homeschooling, and the school reported the family to DCF.

As with the Preusches, Kain was originally told the investigation dealt with charges of educational neglect; only later did she discover she was being investigated for emotional neglect as well. And she never saw her file or the evidence against her until well after the case was closed.

"DCF never gave me anything in writing … [one day] I asked them if I could record the meeting … and the social worker got incredibly upset, and walked out to get her supervisor. The supervisor was hostile: ‘No, no, you don’t tape my social worker.’"

"There is no law that requires DCF to permit conversations to be recorded," Kleeblatt said. "There is no official DCF policy … decisions are made on a case-by-case basis."

"DCF does an important job," Michael Agranoff says. "Children do need protection ... But DCF can do its job without resorting to extra-legal, unconstitutional tactics."

Teach The Children Well

2008-04-03T10:24:00.000-07:00

originally published in the Hartford Advocate May 31, 2007

Teach The Children Well

Homeschooling parents claim the Department of Children and Families is threatening to take custody of their kids

By Jennifer Abel

Connecticut students must spend a minimum number of days in their classrooms each year, or face penalties ranging from failing grades to truancy charges. For kids with medical problems, meeting these attendance requirements can be a challenge.

Some parents who have chosen to homeschool such children claim they’re being harassed for it, after their children’s former schools reported them to the Department of Children and Families for truancy and educational neglect.

"These are not isolated instances," says Deborah Stevenson, director of the National Home Education Legal Defense (and attorney for the cases mentioned here). "Apparently, these instances are becoming quite routine."

But Gary Kleeblatt, a spokesman for the DCF, says these instances never happen at all. "It’s just not done … no parent who schools a child at home should be concerned [about] educational neglect for that reason."

Three points need to be made. First: Parents investigated by DCF aren’t found "guilty" or "not guilty;" Kleeblatt says claims are either "substantiated" or "not substantiated."

Second: None of the DCF personnel in these cases were allowed to speak about them, due to confidentiality laws surrounding children. Even Kleeblatt can only speak about general policies, nothing specific.

And third: Kleeblatt says DCF policy is the opposite of what Stevenson claims is happening. The implication is that she and her clients are lying about everything in this story.

The DCF is currently investigating Rocky Hill resident Christine Canfield over her 9-year-old daughter Jessie. It all started because "[Jessie] has a lot of medical issues," Canfield said. "I wanted to keep those private so she wouldn’t be embarrassed."

Jessie missed a lot of school, but always had doctor’s notes explaining why. Then the school decided to stop accepting them.

"After [Jessie’s] last illness in January, [the school] wanted me to sign medical releases to talk to the doctors … and they said Jessie couldn’t come back to school until I did."

So Canfield decided to homeschool her, and filed a formal Notice of Intent with the school board on February 8. That afternoon the school called DCF, which visited Canfield the next day.

"The DCF investigator said there was an anonymous complaint of ‘educational neglect due to truancy.’ Initially I laughed. I knew where this came from."

She soon stopped laughing. The social workers "wanted to come in and basically invade my home … they said they were conducting an investigation and I was being uncooperative."

Kleeblatt says DCF never forces itself on families, but tries to persuade them to let social workers look around the house and talk to everyone there. Then "if the answer is no, despite our best efforts to convince them it’s in their best interest, we walk away. … We get a court order."

Which DCF is apparently trying to do with Canfield. The day after speaking to the Advocate, she and Stevenson were due in court. How did that go? Stevenson said: "A social worker from DCF is recommending a finding of educational neglect and a commitment of the child to the DCF … the next step is a status conference in early June."

When asked about this, Kleeblatt reiterated that DCF would never seek custody "unless a child is in imminent danger."

But Kleeblatt also said homeschoolers aren’t investigated for educational neglect in the first place. How did this Canfield business even start?

"Did they have permission to homeschool?" Kleeblatt asked.

No. Stevenson says it isn’t needed.

"You’re just assuming everything you’re being told is accurate," Kleeblatt replied. "I’m assuming someone who homeschools has to tell the state [and] show the state the curriculum."

Fine, let’s assume that. What curriculum must the parents show?

That’s for the Board of Education to say, Kleeblatt replied. "If you want to know the requirements, I’m not the one you should ask."

But if DCF doesn’t know the requirements, how do they know what to look for when they suspect parents aren’t meeting them?

Kleeblatt paused. "I’ll have to get back to you on that." And he soon did: "It’s less complicated than I thought." No permission is needed; filing a Notice of Intent as Canfield did is sufficient.

Then why the investigation? The answer must lie in the evidence DCF has against her. But confidentiality makes the file immune to Freedom of Information requests, so the Advocate can’t see it. Neither can Canfield or her attorney.

Stevenson says DCF will "rarely supply the person accused or their attorney with copies of the allegation. … Sometimes they’ll read the allegation slow enough that you can write it down." And no looking at the evidence. "You don’t know who said what or what you’re defending against."

Kleeblatt says that’s nonsense. "We always make the files available to the parents."

Windsor Locks resident Isabelle Hall-Gustafson begs to differ. She says she hasn’t seen the file DCF keeps on her and her 12-year-old son David, whose medical problems caused multiple absences.

He also had doctor’s notes, but according to Hall-Gustafson, "The principal said there were too many diagnoses; he wouldn’t believe them anymore. … He [said David’s] always got one excuse or another, never the same diagnosis.’"

DCF social workers visited Hall-Gustafson on April 9. She allowed them to enter her home and interview the family.

"One week later, my son said, ‘I don’t feel so good but I have to go to school so I don’t get arrested for truancy.’" That day, "He went to the school nurse four times, said, ‘I’m in pain,’ but she sent him back to class each time. … [At home] he went to the bathroom and … the toilet bowl was filled with blood."

Off to the emergency room. David missed school because he was in the hospital, but his mother says the school reported him truant. That led to her homeschooling David at the end of April, and now she’s awaiting a court hearing like the one that has Christine Canfield worried about losing custody of Jessie.

This sounds pretty suspicious. Two parents insisting the schools have it in for their sick children, and the schools can’t tell their side.

Might there be more than the mothers admit? Perhaps the school suspects they’re abusing their children, or even suffering from "Munchausen’s syndrome by proxy," a mental disorder wherein parents, in order to garner sympathy, deliberately make their children ill.

But Stevenson is willing to state on the record that neither Canfield nor Hall-Gustafson are being investigated for physical abuse, only truancy and educational neglect. Kleeblatt implies (but would never say) that Stevenson’s being dishonest. If she is, it would take mere seconds for DCF to expose her as a liar.

Ridgefield resident Connie Kain believes her. Kain had similar DCF problems after she began homeschooling her two sick daughters. Her story sounds as fishy as the previous two — except DCF eventually found the claims of neglect unsubstantiated. Last December Kain notified the school she would withdraw her daughters. And one month later the school reported the family.

"School officials are … supposed to report any incident to DCF within a certain number of hours," Kain said. "What was the incident? Why did they wait so long?"

No way of knowing. But on February 23 she received word that DCF had finally deemed the charges unsubstantiated.

All throughout the investigation, Kain says, neither she nor Stevenson ever got to see the file against her. She finally got it three months after DCF unsubstantiated their claims. "We asked in writing for their accusation. Here’s [DCF’s] tactic: We put everything in writing or an e-mail; they would call and leave voice mails." Kain also says she was forbidden to tape-record meetings between herself and DCF.

Kleeblatt can’t comment on any specific cases, but continues to insist there’s no way any of this can be accurate, as it’s all in violation of DCF policy. Kain disagrees. "That’s how they operate. … They have a reputation [for doing this] and that reputation has to come from somewhere."

Does Not Compute

2008-04-03T10:19:00.000-07:00

originally published in the Hartford Advocate May 24, 2007

Does Not Compute

One legislator wants to enlist computer techs in the war against child abuse. But should techs be scanning your computer while they fix it?

By Jennifer Abel

Chances are good that when you see evil a part of your mind screams, "Do something!" And when that evil’s done to a child, the bit of your brain that evolved to protect the next generation chimes in: "Yes, do something NOW!" Such urges are part of being human, but if you’re not careful they lead to the state of mind that’s made "Think of the children! Won’t someone please think of the children?" such a comedy cliché.

That said, children do need someone to think of them from time to time. Therefore, section 17a-101 of Connecticut’s general statutes defines a class of people known as mandated reporters, whose professions instill in them the legal (as opposed to merely moral) obligation to report child abuse to the authorities.

Mandated reporters include counselors and therapists, coaches and day-care workers, school and medical personnel — basically, anyone whose work puts children in their care. And state Representative Tim O’Brien recently proposed adding another job to the list: computer service technicians.

The addition was added to House Bill 7408, one of the many proto-laws that float about during the average legislative session. O’Brien said in an e-mail interview, "This issue was brought to my attention by New Britain Police Sgt. James Wardwell, who is an expert in the arrest of online sexual predators. I have attached a statement by him in support of this legislation."

The statement is actually an April 4 letter Wardwell wrote to the General Assembly. Five states already have legislation requiring techies to report child pornography when they find it; Wardwell and O’Brien want Connecticut to go further and mandate the reporting of any form of child abuse or neglect. (Though how much non-porn abuse would be found on a computer is debatable; few people who neglect their children, for example, keep files saying, "To do today: not feed offspring again.")

James Wardwell is a forensic computer examiner who’s worked on a depressingly large number of severe crimes against children, including sexual assault. His letter to the General Assembly says, "One of the most disturbing child abuse cases I investigated all started by one individual reporting … what he saw. The ensuing investigation identified three additional young children who were actively being drugged and raped."

You’d think a cop who’s spent his career tracking down such criminals would become jaded and cynical. Not Wardwell: He’s a friendly guy who’s pretty laid-back when not actively pursuing a case. And he firmly believes that adding computer techs to the mandated-reporter list would save untold numbers of children.

It’s true that many, if not most, child pornography cases began when someone reported something he’d found on a computer. But these reports took place without a law requiring them.

Paula Baldwin is a spokesperson for Best Buy and its "Geek Squad" of computer-repair agents. She wrote in an e-mail that all Geek Squad employees are trained in protocols governing what to do if child porn is found on someone’s computer, but at the same time nobody goes looking for it.

"It is important to understand that Geek Squad Agents are never to search the content of a customer’s computer and are instructed to only open those files that are necessary to perform the service … requested by the customer," Baldwin said. "In the event that child pornographic materials are discovered … [we] inform management and notify the appropriate authorities."

While Baldwin stressed that Geek Squad members only look at the files needed to do their jobs, O’Brien and Wardwell were just as quick to add they’d never dream of asking anyone to do otherwise.

"The IT person should never go beyond the scope of their normal job," Wardwell said in a phone interview with the Advocate. "They shouldn’t go hunting for [illegal files] … only whatever they come across over the normal course of their activity."

O’Brien agreed. "It is certainly not my intention that the technicians would take on the role of investigators."

Ray Kaplan of Kaplan Computer Repair in Manchester is a little skeptical of such claims. He’s never found child pornography on a client’s computer, but says that "we’ve had local law enforcement — I won’t say which departments — come in and say ‘if a gentleman fitting a certain description comes in, can you look for this.’"

They had a warrant, right?

"They didn’t have a warrant. Look, I’m a dad. I have five daughters. I don’t want [kids getting hurt], but where do they cross the line? What if a guy’s got a young girlfriend — they don’t wear signs saying ‘I’m 17, I’m 18.’ … How do we know if a girl’s 16 or 19? So I report the guy — he’s not doing anything illegal, and now his wife’s going to divorce him. … Is he going to sue me?"

No. He can’t. The whole point of the proposal, according to O’Brien, isn’t even to force computer guys to do the right thing, but "to offer the cover of state law" to anyone who makes a good-faith report of suspicions of abuse.

So Kaplan couldn’t be sued, but he worries about the impact on his business all the same. "Are people going to bring their computers into a store where they think we’ll look through all their photos?"

Most people who find evidence of a child being assaulted or raped will report this to the police, law or no law. As for those who wouldn’t — according to O’Brien’s bill, if a technician found child pornography and did not report it, he’d face a fine of between $500 and $2,500, and mandatory attendance at an education program run by the Commissioner of Children and Families.

So how effective would this new law would be? If someone’s callous enough to do nothing when he knows a child’s being raped, is the threat of a fine and a seminar enough to spur him to action?

When asked, O’Brien reiterated his earlier point about protecting those who make reports in good faith. "Sgt. Wardwell can probably best elaborate on how the legislation can expand the number of incidents reported," he said.

Wardwell’s elaboration: "I think knowing there is legislation and knowing society takes [child porn] seriously will help to that end. It may not change his morality."

And one more question: Since O’Brien keeps emphasizing that this is about protecting good-faith reports rather than compelling them, why not ignore the entire mandated-reporter idea and simply push a bill offering immunity to anyone making an abuse report in good faith?

"The problem with the approach you suggest is that it would imply that it is not … important to report all instances of sexual abuse against children," O’Brien responded.

The current mandated-reporter statute directs the Commissioner of Children and Families to develop educational programs for said reporters. However, the skills required to recognize signs of abuse in a child with whom you interact have nothing to do with what computer service people do at their jobs. Would computer technicians be required to attend these classes?

O’Brien said no, and the legislation would (if necessary) be reworded to specify this. He added: "I consider this legislation to be an alternative to the highly flawed ‘MySpace’ legislation. … Blumenthal’s pushing the MySpace bill to regulate social networking sites, forcing people to identify themselves or use credit cards" to join.

So matters stood as of May 17. The next day, O’Brien called the Advocate to report that HB 7408 had died in committee, but either he or another representative would re-introduce it in the near future.

However, O’Brien said, after talking with attorneys he decided the new proposal, when it arrives, will differ from the attachment to the now-defunct HB 7408.

"To clarify all the issues … it will be outside of the mandated-reporter statute. … They’ll be required to report, but the sanctions that exist in the statute won’t be there. The attorney recommended … immunity. It’ll be a legal obligation, but no sanction, and they’ll be protected from liability." In other words, computer technicians will be required to report evidence of abuse, but if they don’t the law has no teeth with which to bite them.

"It sounds like a well-meaning, good idea that would be impossible to work," Ray Kaplan says. "Someone into that sort of thing … the possibility of them labeling a file ‘child porn’ is small. … I mean, anyone with three flickering brain cells would disguise the file."

Damming The Stream

2008-04-03T10:15:00.000-07:00

originally published in the Hartford Advocate May 10, 2007

Damming the Stream

Will a new royalty structure for music kill Internet streaming radio like Pandora?

By Jennifer Abel

So are you reading this on paper or online? The Advocate’s accountants need to know: When you see this story in print they have to pay a penny, but read it on the Web and you cost them a dime.

Just kidding. Newspapers aren’t charged for articles based on the number of readings. Even if they were, there’s no reason a reading on the Internet should cost more than the land-based variety.

It’s different with songs, though. At least that’s what the government thinks, which is why on July 15 the legally mandated royalty payment rates for music will change: Internet radio stations, or Webcasters, will pay far more than terrestrial radio (the mildly ironic term for traditional stations broadcasting over the airwaves) to play the same songs.

Small Webcasters say the rate increase will drive them out of business. John Whalen’s one of them. He currently runs GDradio.net out of his home in East Hampton, and wonders about the station’s future if the new royalty plan kicks in.

"I play entire Grateful Dead shows from opening to encore," Whalen says. "Legal bootlegs."
The term sounds oxymoronic but it’s not. "I have a sweetheart deal with Grateful Dead Productions," Whalen said. "The Dead has an agreement: If you don’t seek financial compensation, they don’t charge." Deadheads could openly record concerts they attended back in the day, and Whalen plays such recordings on his Webcasts now. "Jerry Garcia said, ‘Once I play a note, it’s yours.’"

Though he gets a bit of money from the few ads and donation pitches on his site, for the most part Whalen’s station qualifies as a labor of love, not a source of "financial compensation" sufficient for Grateful Dead Productions to seek money from him.

Since Whalen plays recordings that idealistic hippie musicians gave away for free, why’s he even worried about the new royalty set-up? Because the Dead played some songs that Bob Dylan wrote, and under the current plan, Internet and terrestrial radio both pay songwriters’ fees for the music they play.

So Whalen currently pays about $240 a year to Sound Exchange, the performance rights organization that collects royalties for music played over digital media the way groups like ASCAP or BMI collect royalties for music broadcast on TV or terrestrial radio.

But if the rate change goes through, Whalen’s annual royalty payment will jump to $2,160, and he’ll owe another year’s royalties for the music he Webcast in 2006.

Internet and terrestrial radio stations currently pay royalties as a percentage of their revenues. After July 15, Internet radio will pay an additional fee based on the number of songs they play multiplied by the number of individual listeners they have (with a $500 annual minimum). Terrestrial radio won’t have this per-listener cost.

Why not? Practically speaking, because there’s no way to count the number of people listening to a terrestrial broadcast, the way you can count visitors to a Web site. But the official rationale is that playing a song on the radio helps promote it, and the value of that promotion to the artist offsets any loss of royalty payments.

Any Webcaster will tell you that’s a bitter irony. "A lot of Webcasters won’t be able to afford the new rates … [which] will hurt a lot of independent artists who rely on word-of-mouth to sell their music," Whalen says. And though his station focuses on a band with a long-established reputation, there are many smaller stations focusing on more obscure bands who rarely or never get mainstream radio play.

Waterbury Webcaster Joe Antonio runs OCSD Radio, which might qualify as one such station. His focuses on hip-hop and R&B, with a lot of old school or relatively obscure tunes, "in addition to the 40 songs they play on Hot 93.7."

It sounds common-sensical that a large number of small independent radio stations with relatively few listeners each can promote a more eclectic range of music than a few big radio stations who require mass appeal to stay in business. But Richard Ades, a spokesman for Sound Exchange (and thus a strong supporter of the new royalty structure), disagrees. "There is no promotional value to Internet radio," Ades emphatically says. "CD sales are way down."

Maybe for those 40 songs Antonio mentioned, but what about the lesser-known artists that small Webcasters play, but that get no airtime from corporations like Clear Channel?

A non-issue, Ades insists. "Webcasters say ‘this’ll put us out of business,’ which is not true."

The Webcasters beg to differ, saying that the new per-stream per-listener rate will cost more than their total revenues. But if they could magically transform themselves into terrestrial stations with the same number of listeners, their post-July costs would drop 90 percent.

Ades agrees that the discrepancy between Internet and terrestrial radio isn’t fair. That’s why Sound Exchange wants to see terrestrial radio pay the same rate Webcasters will.

Now consider the costs for terrestrial radio stations that also stream their broadcasts online. They already pay for songs twice, but after July their Webcasts will cost 10 times as much as their broadcasts.

Bothersome enough for radio run by wealthy media conglomerates. Worse for non-profit stations whose royalty obligations will change from "percent of revenue" to "number of songs times number of listeners."

Kim Grehn is the vice-president of radio for WNPR, Connecticut Public Radio. Currently, said Grehn, royalties for the small amount of music NPR plays are covered by "a joint agreement with the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. … It’s a blanket agreement" that covers NPR’s live Webcasts as well. But switching their Webcast payment scheme from the current agreement to a listener-times-song strategy might be more than NPR can afford. Grehn’s not sure.

"I’m depending on NPR’s legal staff to figure [the payments] out," he said.

Of course, even a non-profit organization like NPR has far, far more money and resources at its disposal than a small Webcaster like John Whelan the Deadhead or Joe Antonio the R&B fan. And Grehn sounds even more pessimistic than they do about the future of Webcasting.
"Internet radio is just getting off the ground. I think this may end up killing it."

This House Is Pooped

2008-04-03T10:05:00.000-07:00

originally published in the Hartford Advocate May 10, 2007

This House Is Pooped

Tax assessor gives new meaning to the term "home improvement"

By Jennifer Abel

Want to double the value of your house? It’s easy: Just flood your basement with raw sewage and soak a couple hundred gallons of heating oil into the foundation. This advice sounds counterproductive — few realty agents will say, "Add some toxic waste" when you ask, "How can I make my house more valuable?" Yet, if West Hartford’s tax assessments are accurate, Linda Gilnite’s modest home nearly doubled in value after a sewer-main failure gave it the poop-and-goop treatment.

Gilnite lives with her sister and elderly mother in a tidy Cape house at the bottom of a hill on Elmfield Street. It’s a pretty place on a sunny May afternoon, with neat little houses surrounded by green springtime lawns. But it didn’t look so lovely in October 2005, when a week-long storm dropped over a foot of rain, far more than the town’s sewage system — run by the Metropolitan District Commission — could handle. So one night the sewer main belched its contents all over Elmfield Street and the houses lining it.

The droning sound of generators roused the Gilnites from sleep. "My sister got out of bed, opened the cellar door, and saw four feet of — she thought water," Gilnite recalled. "We didn’t know it was raw sewage."

The water people flush down their toilets (and whatever they added to that water beforehand) flooded Gilnite’s basement. The fire department came out to help Elmfield residents pump out their basements, but couldn’t do much for the Gilnites. "They started pumping our basement when they thought it was water, but stopped when they realized it was raw sewage."

The filthy water kept rising, completely filling Gilnite’s basement and seeping onto the first floor. And it toppled Gilnite’s heating-oil tank, so at least a hundred gallons floated atop the muck.

Gilnite is still fighting the MDC over just how much compensation she is owed. But for now, she and her family have a more immediate concern: property taxes. Last October, one year after the flood, West Hartford did a townwide reassessment to determine the taxable value of property in town. In October 2005, before the sewage flooded her basement, Gilnite’s house was assessed at $72,870, for tax purposes. By October 2006 that changed to $138,400.

But in reality: "My house is worth nothing," Gilnite said. This isn’t just her opinion; a Realtor gave her a written estimate saying the house could sell for just over $200,000 — after it’s decontaminated. Until then, there’s no point even sticking a "For Sale" sign in the yard.
So Gilnite went to town hall to appeal her case to the Board of Assessment Appeals. "The assessor kept scratching out prices," Gilnite recalled. "He said he didn’t know how much to say the house was worth."

Gilnite didn’t have a copy of this document on hand, so last week she went to town hall to get a copy. Everybody in the assessor’s office was friendly and helpful to Gilnite and any media representatives with her, but the document wasn’t in her file.

"How convenient," Gilnite said suspiciously. But half an hour later, after she’d returned home, someone called to tell her that, while the original document couldn’t be found, a scanned copy of it was available. It’s a little hard to read, the way copies of copies usually are, but you can make out the words "The house is contaminated and unsellable."

Despite this, Gilnite received a letter from the Board of Assessment Appeals on April 2, saying, "the Board has decided there will be no change to the assessment."

Pawn Shop Gets Pwned

2008-04-03T09:58:00.000-07:00

originally published in the Hartford Advocate May 3, 2007

Pawn Shop Gets Pwned

West Hartford maintains its rich-town reputation

By Jennifer Abel

There’s really no polite way to tell somebody, "We don’t want your kind around here," though town governments who say such things often dull the sting by using bland bureaucratic phrases like, "Application denied."

Seth Boynick, a commercial real estate broker and town native, had his application to open a pawn shop on Park Road in West Hartford unanimously voted down by the town council last month, despite a complete lack of statutes or zoning codes forbidding such businesses. Not that Boynick should take this personally.

"[The rejection] was really more about the type of business, not about the applicant," said Art Spada, West Hartford’s deputy mayor. "Seth’s a good guy."

Most people would love to make a living off of their hobbies, and Boynick’s no exception. That’s why he wanted to open a pawn shop: as a self-described "inveterate collector" of antiques, ranging from old tools to fountain pens and cigarette lighters, he "became a denizen of pawn shops" about 12 years ago, when he discovered them to be full of such items.

Pawn shops are best known as places where people can get short-term loans by leaving something valuable as collateral. If the loan isn’t paid after a certain time, then the collateral becomes the pawnbroker’s property and is sold for a profit.

But Boynick says this describes only part of the business. "A pawnshop [can be] a lender, but it’s also a secondhand shop," he says. Up to 50 percent of items in a pawnshop are sold outright, he added, not used as collateral for loans. Think of a low-tech version of eBay, letting people make money off the junk in their attics.

Boynick envisioned his store as being mostly an antique den and secondhand shop, with a small percentage of his business coming from actual pawned items. He also planned to move his real estate office into the building.

However, pawnshops have an unsavory reputation; fairly or not, they’re viewed as places where criminals can fence stolen property, and addicts finance a fix. To prevent this from happening, pawn shops are strictly regulated; Boynick would have been required to check IDs, keep a registry of sellers and do other things to ensure that even if a criminal did sell stolen property, he would be quickly caught.

Not good enough for West Hartford. Chief of Police James Strillacci wrote the chiefs of police in other towns to get their opinions of allowing a pawn shop to open. Cops in other towns apparently had nothing good to say about the business. "The chiefs’ advice was, ‘If you don’t have them, don’t let them in,’" Strillacci said.

Boynick points out that this argument could be used to keep out several businesses. "Sometimes the gas stations at Bishop’s Corner won’t have cigarettes because somebody sold to a minor … liquor stores and pizza places are often robbed."

Strillacci, for his part, admits the town has never before denied an application on the basis of increased police protection. "I don’t think anybody applied for a pawn shop [license] before. … We don’t normally reject businesses [for this reason]."

So why make an exception in Boynick’s case? The criminality concerns sound like a red herring; given how heavily pawn shops are regulated, Boynick’s proposed shop would only be a haven for criminals if Boynick were dishonest enough to let it. And the council itself has nothing but good to say about him, so surely they needn’t worry that Boynick would turn out to be corrupt?

"Seth’s not the questionable component," Spada said when asked. "Even if Seth follows the letter of the law … having some mechanism for people to get cash [in exchange for property] opens it up to a criminal element."

As for Strillacci, he has a surprisingly low opinion of the effectiveness of the laws he’s sworn to uphold: "You’re not naïve enough to think the law won’t be broken." Perhaps, but surely West Hartford’s finest could handle it?

What really annoys Boynick, even more than the implication he wants to open a den of thieves, is his perception that the council decided against him before he even made his application. When he first began the process of trying to open his shop, "the regulations seemed to allow a pawn shop. [The] zoning [board] agreed."

But pawn shops, due to their reputation, hold a unique position in zoning codes. For most businesses, getting an application is almost a rubber-stamp process, but pawn shops have to win a popularity contest: They can’t come to West Hartford unless the council votes to let them in.
Boynick got a runaround. "Zoning said talk to the police. … Police said talk to town hall. They said, ‘We’ll get back to you,’ but they never did."

Boynick presented his case at two Department of Public Safety meetings before going before the town council. In all instances, his meetings were cancelled and rescheduled at the last minute.
"They were being a little cavalier with a taxpaying citizen’s time," Boynick recalled.

At the second meeting of the Department of Public Safety, according to Boynick, Town Manager James Francis, annoyed by the lack of hard evidence to justify keeping Boynick out, asked, "Is there something we can use against him?"

Francis, who did not return calls seeking comment, didn’t verify this.

And it’s quite possible that Boynick’s memory isn’t entirely accurate in that regard. After all, the town didn’t need anything to "use against" Boynick to reject his application; the unanimous council vote against him was enough.

The Spirit's Willing But The Flesh Is Cold

2008-04-03T09:49:00.001-07:00

originally published in the Hartford Advocate April 26, 2007

The Spirit’s Willing But The Flesh Is Cold

Nature doesn’t play along when PETA tries to save her creatures

By Jennifer Abel

If you like to anthropomorphize Mother Nature it was either very mean or extremely funny, what she did to the two young ladies from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals during their little demonstration in Bushnell Park last week.

Behold Nature in all her glory: PETA says it’s wrong to wear clothes or accessories with animal origins. But convincing Americans to abandon fur, leather and wool is a pretty tough sell, so PETA devised a flashy marketing campaign: have a pair of attractive women (one blonde, one brunette) dress in skimpy little policewoman costumes that look like black leather but are actually made of critter-friendly oil-based synthetics.

Such outfits aim to garner male attention. The time and place to acquire it, according to PETA’s game plan, was Bushnell Park at noon on an April day, with plenty of workers out enjoying their lunch hours and buying carnivorous meals from the vendors’ wagons around the park’s periphery.

The blonde’s name was Lina Barbieri. She’s up from Brazil visiting friends in the area, but took time out of her vacation to demonstrate on PETA’s behalf. The brunette is Ilze Jece from Latvia, here in America for a PETA internship. Did she feel a little shy about wearing such skimpy apparel in public?

No. "I’ll gladly bare some of my skin if it will help save animals’ skins," Jece replied in a press release.

Well said. Many men who don’t care a whit about animals will nonetheless stand behind such a statement and she who utters it, too. At least, that was the idea.

The plan called for Barbieri and Jece to stroll through the park on April 17 handing out violation notices from the "Department of Public Decency" to anyone committing the "fashion felony" of wearing anything once attached to an animal.

Here’s where Nature started acting impishly: "noon on an April day" implies gentle sun-kissed weather, but on demonstration day the remnants of a vicious wintry nor’easter blew cold, gray and rainy all over Connecticut, including Hartford and Bushnell Park.

Few people ventured to the park for lunch. Those who did mostly huddled in warm and waterproof coats, many of leather or wool. It might’ve been possible to convince the park-goers to exchange their coats and boots for PETA-approved alternatives, but two shivering and goose-pimpled young ladies wearing barely more than a bikini maybe weren’t the best salespeople to make the pitch.

PETA’s campaign coordinator, Matt Rice, scheduled the event long before anyone could have foreseen the misery of the weather.

A few minutes before noon, a small white car with the PETA logo stenciled on the door pulled into a space at the edge of the park. The windows started fogging as soon as the engine cut off, and soon went opaque.

Rice sat in the front seat while Jece and Barbieri, wearing warm animal-friendly coats over their costumes, sat in the back. All three exited the car when an Advocate reporter in a full-length leather coat approached with press pass in hand.

PETA has a bad reputation in some circles for infamous demonstrations such as throwing paint on fur coats. But the three in Bushnell Park were friendly and (despite their outfits) low-key people who didn’t endorse the destruction of property, speak rudely to those dressed in leather or try to push tickets on those who didn’t want them.

Jece and Barbieri held stacks of "decency tickets" explaining why plant- or synthetic-based clothing was preferable to animal derivatives. Rice, for his part, tried distributing glossy pamphlets printed with graphic pictures showing just how unpleasant a slaughterhouse can be. The combination, it was hoped, would convince park-goers to immediately renounce all things animal, at least where their wardrobes were concerned.

And it might have worked on a warm, sunny day. But on April 17, anyone compassionate enough to consider wardrobe modifications for an animal’s sake would also look at the two shivering women and think, "I wish I had a warm wool blanket, possibly stuffed with swan’s down, to wrap around these poor shivering lovelies." That wasn’t the message PETA hoped to convey.

One might guess that environmentalist groups dedicated to the salvation of cute furry things have overwhelmingly female memberships. Maybe there’s some truth to the stereotype that women who see something small and cuddly feel a biological imperative to protect it.

But on Tuesday, the few people who were willing to accept PETA’s message were overwhelmingly male. Does this shatter the stereotype that men don’t care about certain cute things, or reinforce the stereotype that men care only about certain other cute things?

Hard to say. But men willing to chat with the two fetching ladies were in the minority last week. A couple seemed happy to accept a decency-violation ticket from Barbieri or Jece, but most wanted only to finish whatever business brought them to the park, so they could go back inside.

Jece and Barbieri approached state employee Wesley Moore as he waited in line to buy a sandwich from a vendor. His leather work boots caught their attention, but Moore, explaining that he needed his boots for work, declined to accept a ticket.

"See, that just doesn’t work for me," he said as the two PETA girls walked away. He made a vague gesture toward the two backsides almost but not quite covered by faux-leather shorts. "Is it the message, or the messenger?"

Not sure, but neither one seemed to make much of an impression as he stood outside in a cold storm wind. He paid for his meat sandwich at the vendor’s wagon and hurried back out of the weather.

Bad Medicine

2008-04-03T09:43:00.000-07:00

originally published in the Hartford Advocate April 19, 2007

Bad Medicine

The state may allow marijuana use for medical purposes, but there is still strong opposition. Should a pot-smoking paraplegic go to jail then?

By Jennifer Abel

There’s this guy Mark Braunstein in Waterford who’s living the intellectual hippie-Bohemian dream life: He’s on the faculty at a small artsy college, has a cool book-lined apartment in the school’s Arboretum, and is ignored by the cops even though they know he smokes pot two or three times a week.

But here’s the snake in his Eden: a 1990 diving accident left Braunstein paralyzed from the waist down (though he can walk after a fashion with crutches). Local law enforcement overlooks his marijuana use because it suppresses the painful and debilitating muscle spasms in his legs.

Now the state might pass into law a bill known as the Compassionate Use Act, allowing sufferers of certain conditions to treat their symptoms with marijuana. The law’s passage would make Connecticut the thirteenth state to allow medical marijuana, and guys like Braunstein wouldn’t need the cops’ sufferance to smoke anymore than they do to down an aspirin.

Not that Braunstein would. "I don’t do pharmaceutical drugs," he says. "That’s the main reason I went straight to pot" after the accident. Pun intentional, but what’s he got against mainstream medication?

"Pfizer’s near here," he said, motioning toward his window. "You go look at it at night, and it’s like something out of Dante’s Inferno. … Marijuana is a natural herb. Smoking’s not natural, but neither is swallowing a pill. At least with marijuana I have control over what I put in my body."

But some say what he puts there is best left illegal. State representative Toni Boucher is an ardent opponent of the Compassionate Use Act. When asked why Braunstein shouldn’t smoke though it makes him feel better, Boucher said "[Marijuana] is an illegal substance and he has many alternatives."

True. Yet Braunstein says marijuana works so well for him that a small dose every two or three days is all he needs to treat both his spasms and the pain. Also, he’s one of those vegan-granola types who won’t even eat white sugar, and brags that he’s taken "pharmaceuticals" only four times since his accident: three during surgeries and once to treat a pinched nerve. If he prefers a natural chemical like THC, marijuana’s active ingredient, to various artificial ones, why should anyone care?

"There’s a [legal] pill that does the same thing marijuana does," Boucher replies. And so there is: Marinol, THC in pill rather than plant form. Therefore (Boucher continued), there’s no need to rely on the plant kingdom for your medicinal needs. After all, "We have aspirin, which comes from the bark of a tree. Should people stop taking aspirin and start chewing tree bark instead?"

Probably not. But if Braunstein eats willow bark rather than aspirin, why should he go to prison?

"[Marijuana] is a Schedule I drug. It’s against the law," Boucher replied during an interview. It’s also bad for you: "If you want to continue to live well, you have to find a different way. … [Marijuana] ruins lives."

Maybe so, but putting sick people in prison so they can’t destroy their lives sounds self-defeating. Why does Boucher support it?

Because, she says, it’s bad for children and young teens to smoke marijuana. And she’s correct, but what has that to do with Braunstein? Kids shouldn’t drink booze either, but Braunstein can.
You can’t compare marijuana to legal alternatives like alcohol and Marinol, Boucher says. "It can cause cancer and respiratory problems."

Boucher fears if the Compassionate Use Act passes, marijuana will make sick people sicker and snare children into self-destruction. That’s why, where medical marijuana is concerned, "there’s more harm than good in promoting it."

And so it went: why should it be illegal for Braunstein to smoke? Because marijuana’s bad for you. So bad those who smoke it should go to jail? Yes, because it’s against the law. Why? Because it’s bad for you.

How long did Boucher think that paralyzed guy at the college should spend in prison?

There followed a long silence broken by Boucher’s response: "That’s a ludicrous question."

Indeed it is, but the law makes it relevant. If Braunstein deserves prison, then for how long?
Boucher says that’s not for a legislator to decide: "We’re not the judiciary."

In Connecticut, first-time possession of four ounces (two or three spice jars) is a felony punishable by up to five years. But that’s negotiable, unless possession occurs within a third-of-a-mile radius of a school (the "drug-free school zone.") Possession in a school zone mandates a two-year minimum sentence, and Boucher strongly supports drug-free school zone laws.

An agent with the Drug Enforcement Agency was willing to speak on the record about the importance of upholding anti-marijuana laws, but when asked how long guys like Braunstein should be in jail the agent went off the record to say that the DEA wouldn’t likely arrest a paraplegic for smoking pot in his house.

That’s good news for Braunstein. But when those charged with upholding the law refuse to on moral grounds, might that raise questions about the morality of the law itself?

No matter. According to opponents of the Compassionate Use Act, some questions are so ludicrous they’re better left unasked.

Manscaping

2008-04-03T09:33:00.000-07:00

originally published in the Hartford Advocate July 12, 2007

Manscaping

The complete body hairlessness of Brazilian waxing may be coming to a regular guy near you

By Jennifer Abel

"Deep in the Brazilian jungle, where the sun never shines through the dense undergrowth onto the dark forest floor, bulldozers are clear-cutting the rain forest."

That's the family-friendly way to mention "Brazilian," "clear-cutting," "undergrowth" and "where the sun never shines" in the same sentence.

The naughtier alternative discusses Brazilian waxing, a depilatory procedure that clear-cuts a path through one's personal undergrowth down where the sun never shines (unless you tan in the nude).

Incidentally, when Brazilian rain forests are stripped away the denuded land is often used for farming. Thus, there exist both family-friendly and other ways to mention "threshing," "plowing," "cross-pollination" and "what often happens after Brazilian clear-cutting" together, too. But that's for another day.

Truth be told, Brazilian waxing doesn't actually "cut" a path through anything; neither blades nor bulldozers are used. Instead, molten wax is poured on the skin where unwanted hair grows, so that when the wax is ripped off the hair goes with it.

The name, by the way, refers not to Brazil's rain forests but its beaches, where thong bathing suits first became popular. The thing about a thong is, the only way to avoid having hair poke out from the bottom when you're wearing one is to avoid having hair at all.

Thus, Brazilian waxing as we know it today was born, and in 1987 seven sisters from Brazil introduced the technique to America when they opened their waxing salon in Manhattan.
Search online for celebrities who have bragged about their Brazilian waxes and you'll find a list of people ranging from fictional characters like Samantha from Sex and the City to allegedly non-fictional characters like Kirstie Alley and Jennifer Grey.

Note these are all women. Where men are concerned, paring the pubic patch is still rare enough to warrant its own cutesy gender-specific name: manscaping.

It's no surprise waxing is mostly a female activity. Women tend to fuss over their appearance more than men (except for bodybuilders and gay guys, uncoincidentally the two groups of males most likely to get their own yards manscaped). Even if there existed no gender primping differentials, the technique might remain a largely female preserve due to simple logistics. Women's naughty bits, due to their comparative smoothness and lack of squishiness, are much easier than men's to wax: just pour, rip and you're done. Compare that to the experience of an anonymous writer for the salon-review Web site LetsGoSpa.com, after he went to the Danusias Day Spa in New Britain in search of a professional to go lumberjacking in his pelvic forest:

"I started in the area below the scrotum (between that and the anus). I held one leg up and stretched the area taut and Vicky applied the wax. She matted the strip down and Rrrrrrrrip! off it came. I have to say, the pain was not as bad as I had imagined. We did this with my other leg held up as well & the most embarrassing part was next to come. I did want the backside done, and that required turning over and getting on all fours & she asked if I could stretch myself taut again. The only way this was possible (picture this) is to balance on my head and spread my cheeks apart with my hands."

Throughout history, pubic hairstyles have changed almost as much as public ones. Ancient desert cultures, including the Egyptians, used waxing-like techniques to remove hair, more for reasons of hygiene than style: hair's a handicap where sand lice thrive. In Islam, which started in a desert region, hairlessness for the purpose of cleanliness became a religious requirement, since the Sunnah commands adults of both sexes to keep their armpit and pubic regions free of hair.

The first sexist-overtoned defoliation seems to have sprouted (sorry) in ancient Greece. Statues from the era show men looking as hairy as a mammal can get, whereas the women were expected to keep their labial lawns mowed. Two thousand years or so later, this dichotomy allegedly led to a catastrophic wedding night for the Victorian critic John Ruskin. Something — nobody knows for certain just what — about his first sight of a nude adult woman so traumatized him that he never consummated his marriage, nor any other relationship. One of his biographers speculated that, since his knowledge of the female body stemmed from Greek statues, it was the sight of his wife's pubic hair that so sprained his libido.

The Romans took a more gender-neutral stance toward the denuding of the naughty bits, with both genders getting theirs plucked in public bathhouses. When the philosopher Seneca the Younger lived above one of them he complained in a letter about the screams of the Empire's fashionistas keeping up with styles down below.

Actually, Seneca didn't complain so much as brag how the racket didn't disturb his philosopher's sense of inner tranquility. But Seneca's experience doesn't apply to modern times: Rome has long since fallen, and present-day zoning codes make it unlikely anyone would live above a modern salon where painful depilatory procedures take place.

Seneca presumably heard males and females yelping in equal numbers. Trendy places like New York are reclaiming this gender equality in pruning the curled branches, but in Connecticut, which is somewhat more provincial, it's still a largely female preserve. At Cromwell's Parisian Salon and Day Spa, "We'll get maybe 50 or 60 females a week," said manager Michelle Salafia. "For men, maybe one or two in the last few months. At least, we had one or two inquire about it."

Salafia couldn't quite remember whether they actually went through with it, but at least it sounds as though Parisian would sell its services to any male looking to buy them. By contrast, many Connecticut salons that do Brazilian waxes won't accept male customers at all.

"We don't do any men's waxing below the waist," said Michael Sokol, owner of Picasso's Salon and Day Spa in Enfield. "The girls don't feel comfortable doing men. We don't make the girls do anything they're not comfortable with."

The woman who answered the phone at the Lavender Fields Day Spa in Plainville said almost the same thing. "We don't offer [Brazilian waxes] to men because none of the girls are comfortable doing it."

In Seneca's time depilators didn't have the luxury to pick and choose who they'd pluck, since the task of intimate hair removal was left to slaves. Our modern free-will system is better both for the hair-removers and those on whom they work; if you're going to lose your basic mammalian attributes down below, the last thing you need is for the de-mammaling to be done by some resentful, underfed person happy for the chance to get away with inflicting pain on you.

No need for slaves, anyway. As more men show an interest in transforming their shrubbery into topiaries, more businesses like the Danusias Day Spa will find it profitable to offer the service. Vicky, the aesthetician mentioned in the earlier spa review, said when asked that about 20 percent of her Brazilian wax customers are men. She thought that might be a slight increase over years previous, though she had little time to talk to the Advocate, since she had another customer waiting.

That said, if Connecticut's ever going to enjoy a reputation as trendy and with-it as Manhattan's, Nutmeg menfolk are going to have to get on the ball and offer up theirs for manscaping. Simon Doonan recently reported in the New York Observer that the downsizing of the subwaist workforce, at least in Manhattan, is starting to make serious inroads with heterosexual non-bodybuilders.

Even in the big city, however, the bald-balled seem to prefer anonymity. As one nameless man said to Doonan, "I have no fucking idea why you gay guys are so into that God-awful Danish modern furniture. It's freaky and ugly. But I've totally gotta give it up to you on the ball-waxing."

Civil Arrangements

2008-04-03T09:27:00.000-07:00

originally published in the Hartford Advocate November 15, 2007

Civil Arrangements

You can get a civil union, but no one is sure how to change your last name, even the people who wrote the law

By Jennifer Abel

Don’t you hate those annoying Sisyphus dreams where you keep trying to do some absurdly simple task, and fail again and again? Frustrating as they are, at least you get the eventual satisfaction of waking up and realizing you were only dreaming.

Hartford residents Tiffany Washington and Jennifer Moyer were wide awake when we spoke to them for this story. On Oct. 1, the couple went and got civilized — no, unionized — well, whatever the term is for “entered into a state-recognized civil union together,” they did it.

“We had a wedding ceremony in Massachusetts on Sept. 22,” said Washington. But the Nutmeg State doesn’t recognize same-sex marriages, so “we had to come back to Connecticut to have a civil union … Oct. 1 is our legal date in Connecticut.”

That’s also the anniversary of the day Connecticut’s civil union law went into effect in 2005. Since then, getting civilunified is supposed to be the legal equivalent of getting married, at least where the state’s concerned.

However, the federal government doesn’t recognize civil unions. This means that, for example, civilly unionized employees of the state can get dependents’ health benefits for their partners, but federal employees living here cannot.

Washington and Moyer both work in public schools and qualify for each others’ benefits. No problem there. They also want to merge their last names together into Moyer-Washington.

Problem there. “I was under the impression that Connecticut’s civil union offered the same rights, protections and benefits as marriage,” Washington wrote in an e-mail. “My friend … got married Aug. 18. Her last name changed with her marriage certificate. … I have to pay $150 to have my last name legally changed as well as have a notarized letter sent to probate court in order to join my name with my spouse’s.”

Over coffee, Moyer and Washington told of a runaround. “I called the [Hartford] city clerk and asked about a name change,” said Washington. “She said I’d have to do the same as anyone who wanted a name change.”

That’s a lengthy, pricey process. “We’d each have to go to probate court, pay $150 each, get judicial approval, have that letter notarized, take that back to court — I think that’s the end.”

“No, the newspaper,” Moyer reminded her.

“A woman in City Hall said she thought we had to put a notice in the newspaper,” Washington continued. “I called [governor] Jodi Rell’s office … the woman in probate court didn’t know. Nobody does. I didn’t know this was such as issue.”

In Greek mythology, Sisyphus was condemned by the gods to spend eternity pushing a boulder to the top of a steep hill, a simple task he could never complete because whenever he got near the summit, the boulder would roll back to the bottom of the hill.

But getting to the bottom of Washington and Moyer’s difficulties sounded like a less-than-Sisyphean task. The question’s simple enough: are post-marital name changes handled at the state or federal level?

The probate court in Hartford is state-level and handles a variety of matters including legal name changes. Specifically, they handle situations where you get a new name because you just don’t like your old one, a different matter from name changes reflecting alterations in marital (or civil-unital) status. But the woman who answered the phone when we called wasn’t sure how civil-union name changes went through.

“I don’t know if that [civil union] certificate would be sufficient … as far as Social Security or [the Department of] Motor Vehicles was concerned,” she said.

Staff members in Hartford’s Town and City Clerk’s office referred questions back to the probate court. A call to Governor Rell’s press office led to the suggestion we call state representative Mike Lawlor, who helped write the civil union legislation.

“Normally,” Lawlor said, “when you get married, you’re entitled to go to motor vehicles to get a new license — not probate court.” Driver’s licenses are a state matter, so civil union equal-protection laws apply. However, Lawlor added, “it’s the social security and federal side of this raising problems. The feds won’t recognize same-sex unions no matter what.”

Though Lawlor can’t speak on behalf of the federal government, he was very clear that at the state level, civilly unified couples in Connecticut are “entitled to change their name by going to [the DMV].”

Tiffany Washington wasn’t too encouraged when we told her this. “The civil union form doesn’t have the new last name on it,” she said. “DMV requires forms with the new and old last name [and] said you have to have a legal document with your before and after names.”

Oh. “Connecticut state law is very clear,” Lawlor said the next day. “Whatever state law applies to marriage applies to civil unions … I have someone checking this out.” In the meantime, Lawlor suggested calling the Motor Vehicle Department.

When you call the contact number listed on the DMV Web site, you’re told that dialing zero to speak to an operator won’t work unless you’ve been explicitly invited to do so. The Web site itself says “After you choose an issue you must then choose specific [sic] topic before you will be asked if you want to speak to an agent.”

After a half-hour’s worth of futile attempts to reach a human over the phone, this reporter gave up and drove to the DMV office in Wethersfield where, after being directed to multiple offices and windows, she finally got to meet DMV spokesman Bill Seymour.

“We don’t change names as an originating authority,” he said. “We must have documents from the originating authority to make the requested change … a marriage license, divorce decree or probate court documents.”

Oh. After thanking Seymour for his time, this reporter requested a contact number for future reference, and asked “Did you know it’s impossible to reach a human being through the phone number on your Web site?”

Seymour laughed. “I hear that complaint from a lot of people.”

It is, at least, easy to reach a human when you call Love Makes A Family, the Hartford-based organization seeking equal marriage rights for same-sex Connecticut couples. We asked assistant director Carol Buckheit if she knew anything about civil union name changes.

“To tell the truth, I know of couples who changed their names, but I’m not sure how,” she said, and suggested we speak to former LMAF board member Peg Otto. “She and her partner moved to San Diego, but come to Connecticut to visit their grandchild.”

Otto, meanwhile, said she’d had no trouble getting her driver’s license name changed, “but quite frankly I was with Love Makes A Family at the time and called our attorney … this is not the first time I’ve heard of people having problems.”

Otto also chose a strategic DMV branch: “I purposely picked a remote place, I went to the Enfield DMV … I carried with me my civil union document, but they didn’t even ask to see it.”

The next day, Rep. Lawlor forwarded a letter he’d received from the Office of Legislative Research, which said, “Pursuant to state law … DMV recognizes and accepts a civil union certificate … in the same way that it does a marriage certificate, divorce decree or probate court order … DMV’s [Web site] may not have been updated to show civil union certificates as valid documentation. However, this is an oversight.”

We, in turn, forwarded the letter to the future Moyer-Washingtons, who, as of press time, have not yet gone to the DMV, but promised to let us know if their rock rolls back downhill again.

For A Good Time, Call Jennifer

2008-04-03T09:08:00.000-07:00

originally published in the Hartford Advocate and Fairfield Weekly, April 5, 2007

For A Good Time, Call Jennifer

My Brief Career As a Phone Sex Worker

By Jennifer Abel

"Oh yes," I sighed. "Yes. Right there. Please - oh! Oh, God. Harder. Please, oh God, Simon, don't stop. Oh yes Oh, yes ooooooh." My words melted into incoherent moans.

"You like that, don't you?" Simon's husky voice demanded.

"I love it," I gasped.

"You smell so good," he groaned. "Oh my God." He literally screamed upon reaching his finale, and I turned my head just enough to keep his loud cries out of my ear. "That was amazing," he finally said. "Thank you."

"No, thank you," I murmured.

"You have a great day, Jennifer," Simon said, and hung up the phone. I resumed normal breathing as I scrawled in my notebook: "Simon, hardcore sex call, came and went in eight minutes. Thanked me before hanging up, very nice of him." I would've written more but the phone rang again, so I picked up the receiver for another performance.

***

My phone sex career was (ahem) conceived the previous week, when I strolled into my boss's office and said "Good morning, Alistair. I saw a help-wanted ad for a phone sex line. No experience necessary! And I'm told I have a nice phone voice. Can I try it?"

Editors always smile when their writers say such things. "If you feel comfortable with that, go right ahead."

"I don't feel comfortable at all," I said cheerfully. "I expect I'll be quite awful. But won't it be fun to write about?"

With a fast Internet connection you can find a phone chat job in under a minute. I signed on with a company that runs psychic hotlines and straight and gay sex lines for men. After filling out the online application I got an e-mail telling me it was being processed, and meanwhile here's the pay scale, job requirements and password to a restricted Web site where I could print out an employee handbook.

Two words for anyone who wants to get rich giving phone sex: don't bother. In theory, you can make up to 40 cents a minute, but to get that you have to do at least 60 calls a week with an average call length of 10 minutes or more. If your calls average six minutes or less, you only make a nickel a minute and risk being fired. (And you're only paid for when you actually talk, not the time spent waiting for the phone to ring.)

But the deck's stacked so a high average is hard to get. For example, you have to hang up if you get a call from a minor, but that means a five-second call bringing down your average. There's no appeals process to say, "Yes, that was a short call but it doesn't count."

If, despite the low pay, you still want to work in phone sex, the other main requirements are a land-line phone connected by a wall cord (nothing cellular or cordless, lest a 10-year-old with a ham radio listen in) and a quiet place to work without interruptions.

The next morning Alistair looked quite interested as I explained how the pay scale worked, but when I mentioned the need for uninterrupted privacy he gave me an intent look. "Are you sure you're up to this? Emotionally?"

"Oh, sure," I said airily. "It'll be -"

"Seriously ," he said, so I changed tone too.

"Seriously? If I were looking for an actual second job, I wouldn't even consider this. But it'll be a funny story."

"All right. But you stop the minute you start feeling creepy. I'm serious."

"Of course I will," I promised.

***
Sex lines, psychics and other pay-per-call services started in 1980, when the FCC ruled that phone companies couldn't put limitations on the content or ownership of so-called Dial-It services, where customers could call phone numbers (usually in the 976 exchange) for weather forecasts, horoscopes and other oft-updated information and have a per-minute fee added to their phone bill.

Once businesses other than the phone company could run paid calls, there appeared almost immediately a service known as "dial-a-porn," where customers could hear recordings of women describing graphic sex acts. Naturally, dial-a-porn inspired laws to shut it down on obscenity grounds until 1983, when the Supreme Court deemed such content bans unconstitutional.

Now phone sex is a billion-dollar-a-year industry, and when the numbers come out for 2007 a couple hundred of those dollars will have been shelled out by guys talking to me.

***

While waiting for the chat line to process my application I implemented a half-assed training program: I watched the fake-orgasm scene in When Harry Met Sally and read the sample scripts in my employee handbook.

Success in phone sex requires a good voice, salacious imagination and ability to talk drop-dead raunchy without embarrassment. The third one matters most in phone porn, where even Jenna Jameson's libido won't help you if superimposed over the vocabulary of a nun.

The third one worried me. I know how to flirt but that's all implication and innuendo - everything phone sex is not. Those sample scripts used nouns and verbs I don't even utter to the gentlemen who've applied them to me. However, English is a versatile language. Many of its rude words do double-time as syllables in terms so respectable even a nun can say them. So I practiced the full-length versions as a prelude to the vulgar abridgements.

"Cockamamie," I said. "Tittering pussy-willow dictator." I also bought a large bottle of chocolate liqueur.

On Sunday a woman from the chat line called to give me my extension, pass code and the toll-free number I'd call to log in.

To simplify matters I decided to use my real name and description (minus a few years off my age). The important part of the message dealt with my ideal man. The preferred answer was "breathing," but I had to be pickier. Though the handbook talked about many different types of callers I could expect, they basically fell into two categories: men who took the lead in calls, and men who expected the woman to.

A phone-sex call with me taking the lead? No. I needed an introduction that would enflame the take-charge guys while leaving the meek ones cold. So I described myself as a hot 27-year-old and added "I like a strong man who knows what he wants and knows how to get it. If that's you then pick me so I can give you what you want."

***

Alistair agreed next morning when I suggested I take the afternoon off to sit alone in my empty apartment and wait for obscene phone calls.

I went home at noon. Of course I had to eat lunch first, and the coffee table needed clearing, and hey, here's that barrette I was looking for, better put it away so I don't lose it. . . By 1:30 p.m. I stopped procrastinating.

But I better use the bathroom before I start. And I should really -

The phone rang. I answered and heard a recording from the Dispatch Center, saying they needed agents to work the lines now so stay on if I could.

Oh, hell! I grabbed a notebook and pen and downed the shot I'd poured. After a few seconds I heard, "Thank you, agent 5380. Please enter your four-digit passcode followed by the pound sign." I did. "Thank you. You are now logged out. Press one to log in."

Two o'clock. The phone rang at 2:01 p.m. and a recorded male voice said "Hardcore sex call. Press one for hardcore sex call." Here goes.

"Hey, it's Jennifer," I said softly. Complete silence. "What's your name?" More silence. I pressed one again, and hung up after hearing more nothing. I got three more silent calls, and at 2:08 I hung up to log out and in again. The phone rang before I could.

"You're 18 or 19 and hold nothing back. Press one for 18 or 19 and hold nothing back."

What happened to 27? I pressed one and said, "Hey, it's Jennifer," for the fifth time in eight minutes, doubting anyone would actually answer.

But a man's voice said hello! It was Jay, my first phone sex partner.

Phone sex is like the real thing, in that no woman's good her first time and if she says she was she's lying. Jay expected my clueless virgin self to take command of the situation and I had no idea how, so I asked "What do you want me to do for you, Jay?"

He wanted to hear me have a good time. With no assistance from him.

The handbook says phone performers do better if they get into a fantasy. Okay: I'm in a diner eating lunch with Billy Crystal. Moan. Gasp. A few soft-core phrases from the manual. I sounded a little stilted but Jay got the happy ending he sought and hung up just after I heard the telltale gasping on his end of the line.

A successful call from Jay's perspective but a failure from the company's viewpoint, lasting only three minutes.

The next two callers were jokers; I actually heard the third guy's friends snickering on the line. And between those two I picked up the phone to hear, "You are a mistress with a strap-on dildo."

Like hell I am. I hung up.

Discouraged, I logged out after the third caller and e-mailed an update to my editor: "I am very very bad at this, here."

Good editors always respond with prompt encouragement and guidance. "I'm sure it takes practice."

I logged back in.

Alistair was right: it does take practice. After an hour I could stretch calls out for eight to 12 minutes, though my average was still pretty low: I hung up on one kid so young his voice hadn't changed yet, and 30 seconds into "press one for a 15-minute credit card call" I heard a beep and a metallic voice: "You have one minute left."

By 4:30 my routine, when sanitized, boiled down to: "Let me unzip you. Wow, that's impressive. I'm inspired to do things to it - My shirt is off. Behold the grandeur of the twins. Oh, it must be cold in here - I'll remove my underwear too. What, you'll do it for me? Forsooth, that feels nice."

And the Foley artistry. The first time a caller wanted to hear me being spanked, all I could think to do was draw my knee up next to the receiver and slap it. It worked until I started laughing and failed to disguise that as passionate gasps.

For imitating Clintonian acts I filled a small bowl with water, to wet my fingers when I needed to start sucking on them. This technique also conveys helpful voice-muffling qualities. Some guys even like the occasional gagging sound, which proved useful when I swallowed water down the wrong pipe and had a coughing fit.

"You chokin' on me, baby?" the caller asked.

"Yes - cough - you're so big I - cough - don't know if I can - cough handle it - cough oh God - ha hamf humf."

But I couldn't rise to all challenges (or get the caller to, which is the same thing). One call went well until the man said he'd just used my mouth as a toilet and wanted to know how that tasted. "Hell on a biscuit, honey, how should I know?" I wanted to say, but that would be unprofessional. So I guessed. "Uh, salty?"

Must've guessed wrong. He hung up.

***

Not counting the disconnects and kid hang-ups, I took around 24 calls that day. Most of the guys wanted a quick phone roll in the hay, but a few had an emotional component to their fantasy. Simon, the one who told me to have a great day before he hung up, acted like his first time with a woman he'd long loved.

But they were rare. Most of the guys liked name calling, with dirty bitch, nasty slut and filthy whore punctuating their chats. I don't know if that's standard for phone sex or the result of my "strong man" message (why strength should mean abuse is another question). And I could hardly interview the guys about their motivations when they were paying by the minute to chat with me.

By quarter after six I felt pretty jaded. "Press one for hardcore sex call."

"Hello, Jennifer," my caller said pleasantly. "My name is Nikolai and I'm a dominator. I'm looking for a pretty woman to be a submissive. Would you like to do that, Jennifer?"

You know how sometimes you don't notice your refrigerator running until it shuts off? His voice struck me like that. All my calls, even minus their X-rated content, shared a quality I hadn't noticed until Nikolai spoke without it: a pay-by-the-minute rather than conversational tone. He spoke in complete sentences with clear enunciation. None of my other callers sounded like they'd willingly read a book in their lives.

This man sounded like the men I know.

As for his request, all I knew about S&M were its pop culture handcuffs-and-black-leather stereotypes. His familiar tone made me slip out of character, so I answered with my normal voice instead of my breathy oh-yes one: "I don't know. What would that entail?" I quickly amended, "I mean, I've never done that before."

"Really? You haven't?" He sounded genuinely surprised.

Oops! Go in for the save. And don't use words like entail. "Maybe you could show me how." I paused. "You'd be nice to me, wouldn't you, Nikolai? You wouldn't hurt me?"

Bingo. "Oh, I'll hurt you, you stupid little slut. You deserve it. But I won't hurt you as badly if you do what you're told."

He sounded angry and the abrupt change surprised me, but I figured it part of his game. Spanky-spanky, I thought. Middle-class suburban vanilla S&M play. I've seen it in skits on Comedy Central.

"I'll do what I'm told," I said. This at first entailed my repeating the statement along with his name and various affirmations. He made me describe my appearance and then said, "I'm going to put a lot of bruises on that pretty white skin."

All day I'd heard fantasies I found repulsive, but Nikolai's were the first that would cause actual damage if played out. He wants to bruise me? Even as a fake-out that bothered me, and my real voice re-appeared when I said "No, I don't want you to do that."

And from his next response crawled the slimy fantasy that slithered through the stinking wasteland of his libido: he said he'd rape me, strangle me, and cut off body parts I'd much rather keep.

I let out my night's only genuine gasp, and almost hung up. But no - I wanted to see what these calls were like, right? Hell of a story. Besides, it's only a phone call with some distant stranger.

So I stayed on, and faked neither bewilderment nor horror when I asked, "Why - why would you want to do such a thing to me?"

"Because you deserve it, you stupid little bitch."

All right, I can see where this is going. I'm supposed to beg him not to. I did.

The storyline got worse. Three minutes into it he started threatening my (imaginary) little sister, too. Again I almost hung up, but suggested he do things to me instead. He agreed.

"Get down on all fours, you dirty bitch. I just kicked you in your side. I just smashed your pretty little face. How does that feel?"

He called me pretty dozens of times in the context of destruction: bruise my pretty skin, rip out my pretty hair, smash my pretty face. If the beating were real I'd've been dead six minutes into the call.

I've long known sadists existed, but only in the abstract; I'd never actually talked to one. Doing so was like feeling pain after a lifetime of only reading about it.

And this sadist who daydreamed of torture and murder was the only man all day who sounded like the ones I know.

I think I lost it. At some point the call became almost real: this man wants to do horrible things and I have to talk him out of it!

Fifteen minutes later he started building up to the climax of his story: he wanted to hear me say, "I'm a stupid little slut who deserves to be raped and strangled and have my tits cut off."

That's what almost made me hang up at the start. I didn't hang up now, but I couldn't say that sentence. I'd spent the whole day in character uttering words I'd never said before, but I did. Not. Want to say that sentence. I spent several minutes trying to bargain out with less extreme variants. Finally, I managed to choke out the phrase and added, "But please, don't do that! Please?"

Silence. The air collapsed, somehow. I thought he'd hung up. Then he spoke again, in the same friendly, cultivated, every-man-I-know tone he'd introduced himself with 20 minutes before.

"Thanks for playing along with this, Jennifer. Bye-bye."

I logged out for good soon after. A few calls came through but none lasted more than two minutes - I'd lost whatever competence I'd gained.

I'd been had. The son of a bitch wanted a mind fuck, not a phone one.

***

The next night I thought I'd change my greeting and try one more shift to collect more data, but my password didn't work and I got a curt e-mail saying the company "is no longer purchasing your services." Too short a call average, I guess.

That's how you get fired from a phone sex line. At five cents per minute, I made around three or four dollars. I don't mind being a phone-porn failure, but it was damned annoying to sit in Alistair's office later and admit, "OK, you could maybe make the argument I was just a tad overconfident when I told you I could handle this."

But I would've been right, had I quit before that call from Nikolai. There's a warped lesson on the value of perseverance. And I learned another useless lesson from the night's events: a sense of ironic detachment strong enough to sustain you through spanking your knee and fellating your fingers won't do jack to prevent a sadistic murder fantasy from scaring the hell out of you.

Obvious in retrospect, isn't it?

There's a lot of paperwork required to claim your first and only paycheck from a sex chat line. But I won't cash it when it comes. No, I'll buy a dollar-store frame and keep it on my desk, and then someday - if God is good to me - an unsuspecting person walking through the office will say, "Why, Jennifer, whatever is that check?" And I'll flash a smile filled with sunshine and innocence, and say "That's the cumulative lifetime royalties from my career in phone porn."

Oh God, oh please, oh yes.

Mezuzah Misgivings

2008-04-03T09:02:00.000-07:00

originally published in the Hartford Advocate April 5, 2007

Mezuzah Misgivings

A West Hartford man is pulled over, asked about drugs, because of …

By Jennifer Abel

When you hear the phrase "Jewish transportation analyst who visits his mother on weekends," the words "potentially threatening gangsta-type" probably won’t leap to mind. Maybe that’s because you’re not a cop in West Hartford.

New Haven resident David Aron is a 23-year-old transportation analyst who drove to West Hartford on March 25 to visit his parents and take his 15-year-old sister Rachel to a movie. But they missed their movie after a police officer, Eric Butkiewitz, pulled them over and questioned them for at least 20 minutes. Over what? Presumably a windshield obstruction.

"We were on our way to a theater in Berlin, driving by Rockledge Country Club, and saw a cop car parked there," Aron later explained in a phone interview. "As I passed him he pulled over and started following us. … When he turned his lights on, I pulled over onto the entrance ramp."
Naturally, Aron wanted to know what he’d done.

"I said, ‘Officer, what seems to be the problem?’ He didn’t answer, just asked for my license and registration."

Such situations can be intimidating. Aron asked again what was wrong.

"[Butkiewitz] hesitated before he told us," Rachel Aron recalled. "I thought that was odd." But eventually the officer told the pair he’d pulled them over because of the mezuzah hanging from Aron’s rear-view mirror.

A mezuzah is a small tube containing a scroll inscribed with a Jewish prayer. Aron’s is slightly smaller than a pencil and considerably smaller than the pine-tree air fresheners and graduation tassels that adorn cars throughout the state. Nonetheless, Butkiewitz said, Aron’s mezuzah violated the state ordinance against objects obstructing a driver’s view out the windshield.

License and registration, please. And a snag: Aron had his driver’s license but not his just-issued registration with him.

Butkiewitz returned to his car, presumably to look for Aron on his computer.

"The cop came back and told me to get out of the car … and told me to put my keys on the back of the car," Aron said. "He asked if I had any drugs on me. I said no. … He asked if they could search us."

Since Butkiewitz did not return calls seeking comment it’s not known why a mezuzah-wielding Dodge Shadow set off a false reading on his drug radar, nor why he was so surprised by Aron’s refusal: "I said, ‘Officer, I do not consent to a search.’ He said ‘Really? Why would you not consent to a search? Do you have anything to hide?’ I said, ‘No, but I do not consent to a search’ … unless they had probable cause."

By now a second officer had arrived on scene. Butkiewitz noticed Rachel at that point. "They said, who’s that in the car with me? I said, ‘my sister.’ Then they asked if I had drugs in the car."

Eventually, Butkiewitz let the siblings on their way with nothing more than a written warning. The West Hartford police department, when asked, said it does not keep track of how many warnings and tickets are issued for items hanging from rear-view mirrors.