I just love this ad. For all the reasons that you’ll think. h/t Kevin Drum.

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The business of voter registration is good, according to the Hour which reports registrars are seeing an uptick in voter registration. First the total numbers:

Currently, 20,525 Norwalkers are registered as unaffiliated voters; 14,182 are registered as Democrats; 9,550 are registered as Republicans; and 687 are registered as Independents. In addition, the city has 41 residents registered with the Green Party, 20 registered as Libertarians, and 10 as “others,” according to the registrars office.

Norwalk has about 85,000 residents.

Then the recent registrations:

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While we still await the Cambridge report, this from the Hour:

The state Department of Education is in the midst of an extensive process to improve Norwalk school district’s standing under No Child Left Behind.

For the fourth consecutive year, Norwalk has been named as a “District In Need of Improvement” under NCLB. The district could face federal loss of funding if status does not improve.

State legislation, adopted in a 2007 special session, identifies 12 school districts as having the greatest need for improvement. It also assigns more responsibility to the state Department of Education to support improvement activities.

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Police Chief Harry Rilling has another scandal on his hands, this time concerning more allegations of sexual encounters by Thomas Cummings. From the Hour:

A gay city police lieutenant was arrested Tuesday for allegedly enticing three 15-year-old boys and having sex with two of them in his Norwalk apartment, after a three-month investigation by Stamford prosecutors.

Lt. Thomas Cummings, 46, may have used the extra-duty job he worked often as Norwalk High School security to meet and seduce boys, according to three arrest warrants filed at Stamford Superior Court.

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Tuesday night the planning commission held the first of two meetings to go over the capital budget requests by department heads. For those not normally attuned to the intricacies of budgeting, capital budgets are budgets where you stick big ticket items that can either be depreciated, think fixed assets or equipment, or that extend beyond the fiscal year. At the pace of government that last bit could probably apply to the whole budget, but I digress.

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BoingBoing posts a video blog today about an art exhibit about rice. Well, not quite. They use rice to represent people, as in you and me, as we appear in population statistical. How many people live in a gate community in America and how many people who live in prisons, “roughy the same,” so insert comment about self built gilded cages.

More details here stan’s cafe, about why rice, why the show and what they do with the rice afterwards.

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When we last reviewed School House Rock, we saw that it took a lot of political flunkie talking to get bills through congress into laws. So it goes for getting appropriations through Congress to become funds for local municipalities. Norwalk has, according to the Hour, about $60 million in appropriations working through the system.

“Realistically speaking, nobody knows where it’s going to go,” said Mayor Richard A. Moccia. “Again, I think it boils down to the fact there are good earmarks and there are bad earmarks. If you call it an earmark, if you call it an appropriation, if it’s a bridge to nowhere in Alaska, it’s a bad appropriation. If it’s the $400,000 we received several years ago for the filter project, it’s a good appropriation.”

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While I’m a creature of the real time game day stats of rotisserie football, the not so ancient homage to the game of baseball fuels local political flunkies, Fred Wilms, Fred Bondi and Rick McQuaid. From the Hour:

“I do this for the pleasure,” Wilms said. “Even if the cards were worthless, I would keep doing it because I love baseball.”

All three men say their baseball-card collections are an extension of their love for the game. In an age of high-priced players and glossy baseball cards, the three politicians still regularly watch the game they love.

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This is news? From the Courant:

Greenwich election officials are having a problem for the upcoming presidential primary - not enough poll workers.

The town’s two registrars of voters say there’s a shortage of people to greet voters, read ballots and check IDs for the Feb. 5 primary.

GOP Registrar Veronica Baron Musca says moving up the presidential primary by a month has created a hardship for her office, which relies on many elderly residents to work the polls.

She says all of her people are in Florida for the winter as usual.

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With gas prices what they are, it’s no surprise that people are reluctant to fill gas tanks. It’s being noticed too. From the Hour:

Troopers noticed a dramatic jump in the number of vehicles that ran out of gas during the December snowstorms, and a local AAA branch reports an increase in similar service calls in the last three months of 2007.

“People are riding around with less gas in their tanks,” State Police spokesman William Tate said. “When they don’t expect to sit idle on the highway behind a crash or wait in the snow for a plow, they run out of gas. It was an eye-opener to see how many were stranded.”

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