Branding something as varied and complex as an entire state is no easy feat — and it’s tougher still to condense that brand into a pithy catchphrase. So it may be no big surprise that the unveiling this week of Connecticut’s new tourism slogan — “Still Revolutionary” — was met with fairly limited enthusiasm among state residents.
Some thought it sounded better without the word “still.” Some thought it focused too heavily on one slice of the state’s history (and not one the state is particularly defined by, compared to, say, Massachusetts). And some thought it simply lacked truth-in-advertising – that Connecticut remains the yawn-inducing Land of Steady Habits.
State slogans also suffer from inevitable comparison to those Hall of Fame tag lines used to market Virginia and New York — you know which ones I mean. Coast to coast, every new slogan gets measured against those two, and inevitably comes up short.
“Still Revolutionary,” therefore, might seem more praiseworthy compared to vast pool of lesser-known tourism slogans across the land. To test that, below is a list of tourism slogans for all 50 states, though the list comes with several caveats. Most were culled from official state tourism websites. But a couple are state nicknames or economic-development slogans where the state does not have an officially designated tourism tag. A few are the slogans most recently used by states, but which have since been abandoned. Wisconsin’s “Live Like You Mean It” lasted less than a year, and the much-derided “Say WA” was mercifully deep-sixed in Washington State. In addition, some states have multiple slogans, while only one is listed here. And one — Iowa spelled with parentheses instead of the letter “o” – is merely the logo of the state’s tourism board, which does not appear to have an official slogan.
As for “Great Potatoes. Tasty Destinations”: that really was Idaho’s tourism come-on a few years back. It has been since been replaced by “Adventures in Living.” So it is now safe to visit again.
Got a favorite? Or one you despise? (Or a proposed correction to the list?) Add a comment with your thoughts.
| State | Slogan |
|---|---|
| Alabama | Sweet Home Alabama |
| Alaska | North to the Future |
| Arizona | Grand Canyon State |
| Arkansas | The Natural State |
| California | Find Yourself Here |
| Colorado | Come to Life |
| Connecticut | Still Revolutionary |
| Delaware | It's Good Being First |
| Florida | Your Florida Side is Calling |
| Georgia | Georgia on My Mind |
| Hawaii | The Islands of Aloha |
| Idaho | Adventures in Living |
| Illinois | Mile After Magnificent Mile |
| Iowa | I()WA |
| Indiana | Restart Your Engines |
| Kansas | As Big as You Think |
| Kentucky | Unbridled Spirit |
| Louisiana | Pick Your Passion |
| Maine | There's More to Maine |
| Maryland | Maryland of Opportunity |
| Massachusetts | It's All Here |
| Michigan | Pure Michigan |
| Minnesota | Explore Minnesota |
| Mississippi | Find Your True South |
| Missouri | Close to Home. Far from Ordinary |
| Montana | The Last Best Place |
| Nebraska | Possibilities...Endless |
| Nevada | Discover Your Nevada |
| New Hampshire | Live Free and… |
| New Jersey | Come See For Yourself |
| New Mexico | New Mexico True |
| New York | I Love New York |
| North Carolina | A Better Place to Be |
| North Dakota | Legendary |
| Ohio | So Much to Discover |
| Oklahoma | Oklahoma is OK |
| Oregon | We Love Dreamers |
| Pennsylvania | State of Independence |
| Rhode Island | Unwind |
| South Carolina | Made for Vacation |
| South Dakota | Great Faces. Great Places. |
| Tennessee | We're Playing Your Song |
| Texas | It's Like a Whole Other Country |
| Utah | What People Are Talking About |
| Vermont | Vermont, Naturally |
| Virginia | Virginia is for Lovers |
| Washington | Say WA |
| West Virginia | Wild and Wonderful |
| Wisconsin | Live like You Mean It |
| Wyoming | Forever West |
The Senate Finance Committee is taking yet another foray into the murky connection between drugmakers and drug pushers, launching an investigation into the tactics used to promote pain medications.
Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Montana, and Iowa Republican Charles Grassley, who for years has championed aggressive scrutiny of conflicts of interest in the pharmaceutical industry, sent letters Tuesday to drug companies, advocacy groups and academic researchers, seeking details on their financial ties. Days earlier, the American Pain Foundation, an advocacy group largely funded by drugmakers, voted to go out of existence. It’s unclear if that decision was related to either the Senate’s impending investigation or a ProPublica report several months ago detailing the group’s close ties to drug companies. The foundation received 90 percent of its funding from drugmakers, ProPublica reported, and its recommendations fit neatly with the agenda of its corporate sponsors.
More than 40 people die every day from overdoses of prescription painkillers, including OxyContin and Vicodin, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That figure has tripled in the last decade.
“Overdoses on narcotic painkillers have become epidemic and it’s becoming clear that patients aren’t getting a full and clear picture of the risks posed by their medications,” Baucus said in a statement.
Health advocates have long been concerned with conflicts of interest in medicine. A dozen years ago, the Courant explored the financial links between drugmakers and academic researchers, finding that industry cash had changed the culture of scientific inquiry at top universities, with some researchers skewing studies to assure favorable outcomes and taking money to promote the drugs they were studying.
A federal appeals court Tuesday blocked an Illinois law that made it a felony to record police officers performing their duties in public, saying the broadly worded statute likely violates the First Amendment.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit issued the preliminary injunction in a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, which has plans to record police activities during protests in the Chicago area. Fearing arrest, the ACLU put those plans on hold, and filed suit.
Illinois officials argued that the law was necessary to protect the privacy rights of police officers and those they are speaking to. But in a 2-1 decision, the court ruled that the law’s broad reach — making it illegal to record any conversation without consent, regardless of whether the parties have any expectation of privacy — went too far.
“The expansive reach of this statute is hard to reconcile with basic speech and press freedoms,” the panel wrote. “The Illinois eavesdropping statute restricts far more speech than necessary to protect legitimate privacy interests; as applied to the facts alleged here, it likely violates the First Amendment’s free-speech and free-press guarantees.”
Under Illinois law, eavesdropping is a Class 4 felony. But it is elevated to a Class 1 felony — with a maximum penalty of 14 years in prison – for anyone recording police officers, even if they are within earshot and the recording is not surreptitious. The law applies only to audio recording. Taking pictures or recording silent video is not illegal; but turning on a microphone criminalizes the act.
Last month, the Connecticut Senate gave its support to a bill that would make police officers subject to civil litigation for interfering with a person recording the officer or a colleague performing police duties.
As my colleagues Chris Keating and Daniela Altimari report, the Connecticut House of Representatives today overwhelming approved changes to the state’s racial-profiling law, to make sure data is collected during police stops and to make sure it gets analyzed.
The Alvin W. Penn Racial Profiling Prohibition Act was first passed in 1999 in an effort to amass data that would indicate whether certain police officers or agencies were mistreating motorists on the basis of race or ethnicity. But most departments don’t report their data to the state, and the African-American Affairs Commission, which under the current law is responsible for analyzing the data, has for years said it lacks the funding to do so.
Earlier this year, the Courant obtained data on more than 100,000 traffic stops reported by police departments, and an analysis of that data showed that black and Hispanic motorists were significantly more likely to receive a ticket or court summons during a motor-vehicle stop, compared to white motorists pulled over for the same violation. Proponents of the bill said the analysis put hard numbers behind their longstanding belief that black and Hispanic motorists face harsher treatment when pulled over. Critics said the analysis merely revealed flaws in the data-collection system the state has used for the past decade.
Under the revisions approved today, the Office of Policy and Management will develop a standardized form to be used during police stops, and OPM will also take over responsibility for analyzing and reporting on the data. The racial-profiling bill now goes to Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, who has said he will sign it.
Connecticut’s entire Congressional delegation sent a letter this week to the chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, urging the watchdog agency to investigate the Veterans Support Organization, a Rhode Island-based nonprofit that has raised millions of dollars, much of it via camouflage-clad 
solicitors who stand outside grocery stores and other shops.
The unusual letter was in response to complaints by officials with the Veterans of Foreign Wars, who are concerned that VSO is employing solicitors who claim to be volunteers, but are actually paid a commission based on the money they bring in. The senators and House members also expressed alarm at the group’s finances, noting that VSO collected $5.8 million in fiscal year 2010, but spent only $379,000 on grants to veterans and veteran groups.
“We urge the FTC to continue to prosecute sham charities and protect the credibility and effectiveness of legitimate nonprofit organizations that really help America’s heroes,” the delegation wrote.
Several years ago, the Courant ran a lengthy investigation of veterans charity, noting their inefficiency and identifying those that spent pennies on the dollar — and in some cases, less than a penny on the dollar — for charitable purposes.
So how does the Veterans Support Organizations stack up? It’s a complicated question, because the way the charity keeps its books, it counts all of the commissions paid to those solicitors – reportedly up to 30 percent – as part of an “on-the-job training program” for down-on-their-luck veterans and others.
As a result, the group in fiscal year 2010 claimed to spend not one penny on fundraising expenses, and attributed 70 percent of its $5.7 million in spending to that job-training program, which was also the source of virtually all of its fundraising. That purported jobs program has come under fire not only for allegations that solicitors falsely claim they are volunteers, but also because some have given the false impression they are military veterans. The nonprofit in fiscal 2010 spent more than $70,000 on uniforms — which it also classified as a charitable program expense — and in recent years solicitors have generally been dressed in fatigues, camouflage or khakis when collecting money.
The Veterans Support Organization has also run afoul
of charity laws in Tennessee, leading to a negotiated $20,000 settlement. And consumer reporter Arnold Diaz sent an undercover producer to interview solicitors last year, and caught them making false claims about how the group spends its money.
Despite the controversies, it’s a lucrative operation for founder Richard Van Houten. In fiscal year 2009, he collected $120,000 as chief executive officer. The following year, donations more than doubled – and so did his salary, reaching $255,000.
For more details on the group’s finances, click the image below.
A few weeks ago, a television anchor in Beijing fired off a short message on Weibo, China’s version of Twitter, warning readers to watch what they eat. “Text message from an investigative reporter,” Zhao Pu 
wrote. “Do not eat yogurt (the thick kind) or jelly, especially children. Their contents are truly frightening. I won’t speak about it in detail.”
Microblogs aren’t a great vehicle for delivering investigative reporting, but had this message been sent from a journalist in the U.S., one imagines it would have quickly dissolved into the vast sea of social-media chitchat.
Not so in China.
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The showroom-clean 2004 Toyota Avalon offered on Hartford’s craiglist site may seem like a steal at $2,135. But that stealing, sadly, will come at the expense of any overly 
eager car buyer willing to fork over the money.
The craigslist ad is a fake — one of scores of bogus car ads that continue to pop up every day on the popular classified-ad site. Last October, I wrote about the craigslist used-car scam, describing the clever methodology crime rings in Romania have perfected to steal nearly $50 million from more than 15,000 victims.
Six months later, the scammers show no sign of letting up, as illustrated by a spin through Hartford’s craigslist offerings. The 2005 Acura TL for $2,617? Fake. The 2007 Lexus IS 250 with air-conditioned seats for $2,350? Fake. The 2006 Nissan Altima “Janice Johnson” is willing to let go for the same $2,350? Fake, fake, fake.
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For his The Bottom Line column and blog, the Courant’s Kevin Hunt toted two gold coins and a silver bowl to a dozen pawn shops, jewelers and gold-and-diamond exchanges to see how widely prices varied in the booming market for precious metals.
We’ve all seen the ads for Good Ole Tom’s and Fast Eddy, as well as pitches from more-staid buyers, including tony suburban jewelry stores. With gold prices rising and a recession squeezing consumers, it’s a growing business.
So who ponies up the most money? In his column, Hunt said the pawn shops and gold-and-diamond exchanges he visited generally offered more than jewelry stores. But his top advice: Do your homework and know what your goods are worth before shopping for offers.
The chart below shows what various stores offered to pay for Hunt’s bounty, with the highest offer more than 50 percent above the lowest. Click the image for an interactive chart with more figures.
Today is AIDS Awareness Day at the State Capitol, and it’s telling that such an event even exists. Those around in the 1980s might find it odd that the scourge of AIDS and HIV would need a day of awareness, but activists say those at risk – and those who hold the purse strings for prevention and research – have grown lax as medical advances have chipped away at the epidemic.
But as the chart below from the state Department of Public Health shows, even as the rate of new diagnoses has slowed, more people than ever in Connecticut — more than 10,000 — are known to be living with HIV (and the actual number infected is likely far higher). And AIDS in 2010 killed another 182 citizens.
“Over the past decade, the number of people living with HIV/AIDS has doubled, yet funding has never kept pace,” says Shawn M. Lang, director of public policy with the Connecticut AIDS Resource Coalition coalition. “We are painfully aware of the realities of the budget but have lost 34 percent of our funding over the past five years.”
According to the coalition, HIV finds a new victim every 9½ minutes nationally and it’s estimated that 25 percent of those with the virus don’t know it. Click here for a fact sheet with additional information on HIV and AIDS in Connecticut.
The Courant’s Jenna Carlesso has an eye-opening piece today on hotel, restaurant and other expenses charged to purchasing cards by Hartford city and school officials.
Conference and dining expenses are commonplace in any large organization. But at the same time the city is cutting expenses and trying to close a $56 million budget gap, top officials were racking up big bills at tony eating establishments, including Morton’s steakhouse, Salute and Feng Asian Bistro. Hotel bills in the hundreds and even thousands of dollars were also run up, including stays at the Marriott Long Wharf and Nine-Zero hotels in Boston and the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas.
Especially curious is a $150 charge at Coach, the fancy handbag store, by Kinsella Magnet School Principal Pamela Totten-Alvarado — who had her city purchasing card revoked last year, and who won’t comment on the Coach shopping spree other than a description that it was a reward for a student at the school.
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