When I was a kid I took over a small Courant paper route and built it into one of the largest in the state and won just about every carrier contest and prize offered- trips to DC, bikes, sports equipment, etc. This is back when the Courant was a real newspaper and it was easy to sell.

This morning during my morning ‘news surf’ I ran across a rather interesting article about the fired consumer reporter George Gombossy who apparently was terminated by the Courant over an article they refused to run that was uncomplimentary about a major advertiser- Sleepy’s. The story was carried on Connecticut Local Politics and others.

It is obvious to me that the Courant isn’t what it once was and will never be again…this brings me to Mr. Green and his ‘CT Confidential’. Prior to the BOE referendum here in Woodstock, I received a call from Mr. Green and he also spoke with Steve Rosendahl who spent at least an hour giving him a complete picture of the legacy of shenanigans of our BOE. When I spoke with Mr. Green, one of the first things I pointed out to him was the fact that a couple of weeks prior, he had written a glowing review of the Aljazeera Café- and that he lost me right there- I smelled a bag job coming. Scant days prior to the referendum, despite all of the evidence presented to him, again he pontificated on how wonderful the Café was and called this site "dark and foreboding" and yet referred to me as "his friend". We are not friends as I choose carefully and I also don’t consider truth and facts to be "dark and foreboding". As we well know Woodstock politics can be that way, but facts are facts- something Mr. Green obviously wasn't interested in.

This whole episode struck me as pretty strange considering that awhile back I had a couple of long conversations with Jim Farrell of the Courant who writes on education statewide. Jim was very upfront about that fact that Woodstock wasn’t on the radar screen and his editor wouldn’t be interested in anything coming from this area of the state, yet Mr. Green was clearly on a mission.

As I started to look into this, everything pointed back to Shipman & Goodwin, which as we know, Frank Baran and Lindsay Paul utilize almost daily as a consulting firm to protect the empire from us taxpaying "rabble". Upon information and belief it appears that they orchestrated the promotion of the Café and the opposing viewpoint concerning the referendum- and you can bet the house that we paid for it with our kids’ education dollars. The good news is that despite the outcome of the referendum, it seems to have had a significant effect on the behavior of certain members of the BOE. The bad news is that I have received the BOE check register for last fiscal year and the spending spree has reached yet another new record- article coming soon…

So, as it was so well stated this morning on the Cool Justice Report: "Holy Bed Bugs, RIP The Former Newspaper Known as the Hartford Courant".

Propaganda truly is the executive arm of the invisible government and Mr. Green and his rag are prime purveyors of it.