Overlong legislative hearings are for venting, not persuading

By CHRIS POWELL

Small but feisty, the Republican minority in the General Assembly made a big stink the other day about the Democratic majority’s deciding to terminate at midnight a public hearing on vaccine legislation. Hundreds of people who wanted to speak at the hearing lost their opportunity.

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It didn’t look good and the Republicans probably would have been foolish not to complain about it. But there really wasn’t much substance to their complaint.

For even with the most controversial issues, public hearings before the legislature are almost always needlessly exhausting. The relevant arguments are always made within the first couple of hours and what follows is mainly repetition and sometimes impotent venting. Meanwhile legislators duck out to attend other hearings, converse with constituents or lobbyists, get something to eat or drink, or use the bathroom. 

Seldom are all committee members present during a hearing. As it drags on, only a few committee members may remain at their desks, sometimes only two or three. Even when many committee members are present, as testimony becomes redundant some will immerse themselves in their laptop computers, and they don’t miss much.

So it’s hard to blame them.

Besides, people can express their views to the legislature without chewing up the clock at three minutes per speaker. For everyone can submit written testimony of nearly any length. That testimony is made available to all committee members and may reach more of them than spoken testimony does. Individual constituent contact with legislators outside of hearings may be far more effective than anything said at a hearing.

Yes, as the Republicans complain, the legislature’s Democratic majority has become more arrogant as it has increased. But limits on the public’s speaking time aren’t the worst of that arrogance. The Democrats’ recent use of the “emergency certification” procedure to call urgent votes on disparate legislation about which there was no emergency was far more objectionable — and a little ridiculous. 

The Democrats noted fairly that some of their “emergency” bills were old ones and already had hearings last year, so no one was sneaking something through — at least not this time. But by invoking a bogus “emergency” the Democrats were really confessing their inability to manage the session well enough to get its work done before this year’s earlier adjournment date.

The legislature’s tradition of unlimited debate even during the last days of the session does allow a minority to filibuster fatally much legislation that has ample support to pass. But such time pressures could be greatly reduced if not eliminated if the majority didn’t let legislators clutter the agenda with so much trivial legislation. 

A state like Connecticut — where public education is collapsing amid its refusal to enforce standards; where poverty, homelessness, and mental illness are exploding as times get harder; and where state employee salaries and pensions are cannibalizing the government — really doesn’t need to consider legislation directing the state’s flagship public university to undertake a study of unidentified flying objects. A study of those serious unaddressed issues might be helpful, if much scarier than UFOs.

Nor does Connecticut need the trivial legislation approved the other day by the Government Administration and Elections Committee to allow municipalities to experiment with ranked-choice voting. 

Ranked-choice voting — or “instant runoff” voting — enables voters to transfer their votes to second-choice candidates if their first choices don’t achieve a majority. In recent decades Connecticut has elected a U.S. senator (Lowell P. Weicker Jr.) and three governors (Weicker, John G. Rowland, and Ned Lamont) with less than a majority vote, even as ranked-choice voting might have produced different winners. 

Since ranked-choice voting may be complicated, it is worth trying only for the most important offices, not for municipal offices, where few are important, voter participation is low, and understaffed municipal election officials are unlikely to volunteer for the extra work.

Only the secretary of the state’s office might be competent to experiment with ranked-choice voting, and only elections for president, governor, and Congress are important enough to require decision by majority rather than mere plurality vote.

Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. (CPowell@cox.net)

Why should Connecticut waive law enforcement anywhere?

By CHRIS POWELL

Hearings of the General Assembly on proposed legislation almost always could use more critical questions, especially when such questions are not merely politically inconvenient but politically incorrect. 

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Such was the case the other day when scores of open-borders advocates spoke at the Judiciary Committee’s hearing on legislation proposed by Governor Lamont for more obstruction of immigration law, though the governor, Attorney General William Tong, and most Democratic state legislators keep denying that Connecticut is a “sanctuary state.”

The governor’s legislation would establish “protected areas” where Connecticut would pretend that immigration law enforcement is prohibited — places like schools, hospitals, and churches.

Perhaps most deserving a critical question or two at the hearing was Norma Martinez HoSang, director of the Connecticut for All Coalition, an alliance of open-borders groups. HoSang said: “Families should be able to pray at church services, attend community meals or mosques or synagogues, and gather for holiday celebrations without worrying that law enforcement actions are outside the door. Patients should feel safe going to hospitals for emergency treatment, taking their children to pediatric checkups, or visiting community health clinics for vaccinations and prenatal care.”

No legislator asked simply: Why should someone breaking the law feel safe? Why should someone residing in the country illegally be exempt from immigration law enforcement anywhere?

People who have committed other crimes enjoy no such exemption from arrest. Indeed, anyone who testified at a legislative hearing that suspects in murders, assaults, robberies, or thefts should be exempt from arrest at particular places would be considered ridiculous. Maybe that’s why Connecticut has no law establishing “protected areas” where arresting people is itself a crime.

These “protected areas” are being proposed in Connecticut only to legitimize or facilitate illegal immigration, or, since federal immigration agents are not obliged to respect state-declared “protected areas,” they are being proposed just to strike a politically correct pose.

Connecticut and the country have so much illegal immigration — and have so much crime committed by illegal immigrants, even if, on average, illegal immigrants are better behaved than the native-born — precisely because the country generally and Connecticut in particular are viewed, or until recently were viewed, as being “protected areas.” That is, “sanctuary states.”

Not long ago even leading Democrats acknowledged that a major inducement for illegal immigration was the prospect of receiving government services, including housing, medical care, and education, and even driver’s licenses and other official forms of identification without having to attain citizenship or legal residency. 

This prospect became even more of an inducement under the previous national administration when most immigration law enforcement was suspended and millions of people were admitted without review, just told to attend an immigration court hearing at a distant date, whereupon they disappeared into the country and never appeared for their hearings.

Illegal immigrants would not have the fear cited by HoSang and other advocates of open borders — would not have to worry about being hunted — if proof of citizenship or legal residency was required from anyone seeking employment, schooling, housing, medical care, or anything else important in the United States. Living in the country illegally would be too impractical. Illegal immigration has been so easy and extensive only because, through mistaken compassion or political subversion, public policy facilitates it.

If government stops facilitating illegal immigration there will be much less of it. There already is much less now that the new federal administration has re-imposed ordinary control at the border.

Fear of being caught for violating immigration law can justify enacting “protected areas” only if one believes that anyone should be admitted to the country at any time and, if he reaches Connecticut, should be exempt from immigration law enforcement. “Protected areas” can be justified only if one believes that people who fear open borders and resent the crimes committed by illegal immigrants should just pound sand.

With his legislation Governor Lamont has become an enthusiastic nullifier of federal law and advocate of open borders.

Will anyone running against him make an issue of it?

Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. (CPowell@cox.net)

Suspension of fuel taxes won’t really save money

By CHRIS POWELL

Don’t make too much fun of Governor Lamont’s idea about suspending Connecticut’s fuel taxes while prices are soaring because of the war in the Middle East. But the idea isn’t such a boon either.

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For while money today is of course better than money later, the governor means only to finance the fuel tax break by moving state government’s money around a bit, not by reducing state government’s total tax burden. After all, he already had proposed to give $500 million in sales tax rebates to state residents, to be paid just a few days before his re-election is to be decided in November. He says the suspension of fuel taxes could be financed by reducing the sales tax rebates. The suspension of the fuel tax would just cannibalize part of the sales tax rebate promised in November. 

Another option the governor sees for financing suspension of the fuel taxes is to take the money from the $500 million emergency fund he and the General Assembly created late last year to replace federal aid canceled by the Trump administration for social programs. But then whatever money is taken from the emergency fund to replace the foregone fuel tax revenue won’t be available for the social service emergencies it was appropriated for.

In a pinch state government can always cheat a little more on its pension funds, which still have $35 billion in unfunded liabilities, a deficit that dwarfs the $4 billion in state government’s “rainy-day fund,” the money Democrats are eager to spend soon, since they don’t mind pushing pension debts even deeper into the future.

But in the end the only way state government can reduce its burden on the public is to become more efficient or to spend and tax less. There are ways of doing that but none that are as easy politically as just juggling money among state government’s accounts.

PRIVACY VS. JUSTICE: State legislators are intent on restricting release of data from the license plate reader cameras that some municipalities have installed to increase enforcement of speed limits. 

Some legislators want to protect privacy rights, insofar as everyone’s legal comings and goings are nobody’s business but their own, least of all government’s. 

In contrast, Democratic legislators seem to want to restrict release of the data more out of fear that federal immigration authorities might use it to locate illegal immigrants. Use of the data by immigration agents seems unlikely except in pursuit of illegals suspected of the most serous offenses, but many Democrats think that facilitating illegal immigration is the highest objective of public service, higher even than facilitating abortion and transgenderism.

Most people involved with the license plate reader data issue think all data should be deleted after 30 days, which should satisfy privacy concerns. 

But some police officials note that not all crimes become known to authorities within 30 days of their commission and that deletion of license plate reader data after 30 days is sure to be regretted eventually during investigations of serious crimes. Sometimes a body or other crucial evidence isn’t found in a deserted area until long after a crime. Old license plate reader data could help solve it.

Indeed, being able to discover where everyone was at the time of a crime would be a great gift to investigators and justice. But for the indefinite future the data storage necessary for that will be available only to God.

STICK WITH WILLIMANTIC: At 70 years old Windham Technical High School in that town’s Willimantic section is antiquated and needs replacement. State government owns land in nearby Mansfield that could accommodate a new school, but if one is to be built, it should remain in Willimantic. 

That little impoverished city needs the traffic and economic activity, and technical students would probably find more job potential there than in Mansfield, which is rural except around the University of Connecticut campus. 

Windham can make former mill property available for a new school and has a stronger claim on state government’s help.

Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. (CPowell@cox.net)

Public schools couldn’t meet new home-school standards

By CHRIS POWELL

In principle there’s nothing wrong with the basics of the home-schooling legislation that got a public hearing before the General Assembly this week. The bill would require people to notify local officials in person when they withdraw their children from public school to home-school them, to bring their home-schooled children to some sort of wellness inspection once a year, and to provide evidence that the children are learning.

But the legislation should prompt howls of ironic laughter.

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The legislation has arisen out of the case involving an abused girl who was murdered by her family and whose abuse and murder were concealed by a claim of home-schooling that fooled the state Department of Children and Families. It’s fair to worry that claims of home-schooling can conceal child abuse or worse. 

Unfortunately the howling has to start when one notices that child neglect and abuse in Connecticut are almost infinitely more frequent among children being public-schooled, children about whom state and municipal governments seldom do anything.

Thousands of public school students in the state — almost 20% of them — are chronically absent from school, but there are no longer any penalties for them or their parents, so the problem endures. In cities the chronic absenteeism rate is closer to 25%. When those children are absent it’s not because they are being home-schooled but because their parents are negligent.

A few weeks ago it was reported that Hartford’s schools have changed their policy and now accept young children who are not toilet-trained. School staffers were instructed to clean and re-diaper them. This change of policy indicates wholesale child neglect in the city, but no one advocating the new accountability requirements for home-schooling has taken note of it. Nor have the state Education Department and the Department of Children and Families.

Requiring parents of home-schooled kids to produce evidence of learning may be the biggest howler. For Connecticut’s public schools have no such requirement for their own students. Social promotion is policy throughout the state, with advancement from grade to grade and graduation achieved without having to learn anything except how to stash your cell phone in a Yondr pouch.

Two years ago Hartford’s school system was exposed for having graduated a young woman who was illiterate. She is unlikely to have been the only such graduate in Hartford or the rest of the state that year. The city’s school superintendent and the state education commissioner promised investigations but no explanation was produced and no state legislator has ever demanded one. 

Indeed, while the failures of public education in Connecticut practically scream for investigation, the General Assembly is deaf to the problem.

Why? 

First, it’s because the people who most deserve reprimanding — neglectful parents — are among the legislators’ own constituents. There are many in nearly every legislator’s district. The law should hold them to account. But standards are falling throughout society, and politics in Connecticut lacks the courage to restore them. 

And second, legislators overlook the failures of public education because an examination would discomfort teachers and their unions. Teachers aren’t to blame for child neglect and abuse and chronic absenteeism; they see Connecticut’s social disintegration most intimately and must play the hands they are dealt. But teachers are to blame for much of public education’s unaccountability — binding arbitration of union contracts, the secrecy of teacher evaluations, the impossibility of firing inadequate teachers, and hostility to competition in education.

That hostility to competition in education may be the bigger part of the legislative campaign against home-schooling. Legislators know that if they make trouble for home-schooling parents, they will win political points, endorsements, and contributions from teachers and their unions, Connecticut’s most influential special interest.

So instead legislators scapegoat the home-schoolers, who probably get far better results with their students than the public schools do. Some proficiency testing could settle the matter but Connecticut practically forbids proficiency testing in public schools, especially at graduation, presumably because the results would be terrifying. Taxpayers mustn’t know the results but instead just keep throwing money.

Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. (CPowell@cox.net)

Greens would cripple democracy in guise of making state cleaner

By CHRIS POWELL

Connecticut’s so-called environmentalists are following the state’s employee unions in contriving new ways of destroying what is left of democracy and accountability in state and municipal government.

They want to put a “green” amendment in the state Constitution to guarantee everyone the right to a clean and healthy environment.

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How would the amendment define and guarantee such an environment? 

It wouldn’t, since such an environment can’t easily be defined. The amendment would simply transfer environmental policy from the elected branches of government, the General Assembly and the governor, to the unelected branch, the courts, which would define the amendment’s terms. The governor and legislators might actually like that, since it would exempt them from responsibility for the controversies and costs of environmental policy.   

The so-called environmentalists are also seeking tax legislation similar to what has been enacted in New York and Vermont and is under court challenge there. Their slogan is: “Make Polluters Pay.” That is, they would levy a huge tax on companies that have produced conventional energy — oil, natural gas, and coal — in the hope that the revenue would be used to mitigate the effects of the “climate change” they blame on the companies.

It’s hard to see how such a tax could be calculated and applied fairly, but advocates of the tax don’t care. They just want to punish the conventional energy industry in the belief that it is destroying the world even as most of the world’s progress has been a consequence of the inexpensive energy the industry has produced.

Besides, to make the polluters pay you have to identify them correctly, and the polluters are not the producers of oil, natural gas, and coal. They are the governments that have authorized and taxed use of those products and the billions of people who use them. Indeed, insofar as these products are already taxed, a special tax on their producers isn’t necessary. To “make polluters pay” it would be necessary only to raise the taxes already in place.

But then the so-called environmentalists would lose their corporate scapegoats and pious posturing, and people would have to confront their own responsibility for any “climate change” caused by conventional energy and weigh it against the value conventional energy brings to their lives. That might prompt intelligent discussion and argument about public policy — which would be the end of environmentalism as Connecticut lately has known it.

* * *

OPEN-AIR MENTAL HOSPITALS: Commenting last week on the two recent fatal shootings by Hartford police in separate incidents involving mentally ill men brandishing knives, this column lamented that the city had become an open-air mental hospital because of state government’s indifference.

Contrary to some responses to the column, this was no exaggeration. For two months ago Connecticut Public Radio reported that the squad of emergency social workers the city had established to respond to dangerous incidents of mental illness had answered more than 2,000 calls for help since it started in 2022. Hartford police say they typically get many hundreds of such calls every year, more than 1,900 in 2025 and another 341 so far in barely two months this year.

Connecticut Public Radio also reported that while the emergency social workers squad was deemed successful, city government recently reduced it to save money. 

Of course Hartford isn’t alone in experiencing more mental illness. While the increase is worse in cities, where people are poorer and more stressed, the whole country seems more frazzled than ever, even as President Trump and Governor Lamont want people to believe that they are more prosperous than ever and that social conditions are improving.

The surge in inflation likely to result from war-related impairment of oil supplies may drive many more people over the edge. Yet Connecticut already is unable to do much more for the homeless mentally ill than to call them off the street temporarily when winter nights get unusually cold. The General Assembly has many ideas for new spending but none involves putting a roof over the state’s open-air mental hospitals.

Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. (CPowell@cox.net)

Students visiting state Capitol insist money equals education

By CHRIS POWELL

High school students were brought to the state Capitol last week to rally with teachers, school administrators, and others on government’s payroll in support of big increases in state financial aid to municipal school systems.

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Legislators smiled and patronized the kids, thereby encouraging them in the lesson they were to be taught and teach others — that education in Connecticut is all a matter of getting more money.  

No one asked the students about controlling education’s costs or about where spending elsewhere in government might be reduced in favor of education, though state government lately has been full of scandals of waste, patronage, and extravagance.

No one asked them whether binding arbitration for the union contracts of school employees should continue to remove wages and benefits — the great bulk of school expense — from democratic control. 

While the students understood that inflation has put upward pressure on school spending, as on all spending, no one asked them whether the steadily declining enrollment in Connecticut’s schools should reduce pressure for more spending.

No one asked the students about the curious inverse relationship between school spending and student proficiency in Connecticut — why more spending has correlated with less learning for many years now.

Nor were the students asked about the chronic absenteeism of 25% of their classmates, the negligent parenting behind it, and government’s failure to treat the problem seriously.

The new federal scholarship program for students who might want alternatives to government-run high schools, a program that might save much money in public education by moving students to private schools at federal expense, was not raised with the young visitors either. Governor Lamont has not yet decided whether to let Connecticut participate in the program, though it wouldn’t cost state or municipal government a cent. Did the students know of the outside opportunities available to them? Probably not, but they weren’t asked.

Had the students noticed social promotion in their schools — the policy of advancing students from grade to grade and to graduation even if they have learned little, and did they realize how wasteful, unfair, and harmful this is to everyone, students, teachers, and taxpayers alike? Did they think something should be done about it? They weren’t asked.

Danbury Mayor Roberto Alves, who is also Democratic state chairman, noted at the rally that schools today bear much extra expense because they must educate thousands of “multi-language learners,” a euphemism for illegal immigrants. As a good Democrat, Mayor Alves supports lots of illegal immigration, but how much can Connecticut’s schools afford? Is its cost already far beyond their ability to pay? Of course that question wasn’t put to the students either, since, like all the questions they weren’t asked, it would have collapsed their “more money” platform under the heavy weight of reality.

But being used as props by the teacher unions and the elected officials who happily subordinate the government to them still may have been a good lesson for the students. They got to see the Capitol, meet legislators, learn about the legislative process, and gain the hope that you really can get what you want from government in Connecticut — if you’re also doing the bidding of the biggest and most pernicious special interest.  

Nor were the students told or asked about other legislation of great interest to their teachers. The bill would remove from municipal school boards the power to fire deficient teachers and vest it instead with independent hearing officers not chosen by municipal voters. Thus the little power remaining with school boards, and the little democracy remaining in municipal public education, would be greatly diminished.

It is megalomaniacal for teachers to be so sensitive on this point, since it is already almost impossible to fire public school teachers in Connecticut. Their evaluations are secret, exempt from public records law, and their performance is typically discussed at meetings that exclude the public.

A seminar on the teaching-firing bill might have been even more educational for the students visiting the Capitol.

Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. (CPowell@cox.net)

Democrats would nullify more; and parks won’t save cities

By CHRIS POWELL

Most Democratic officials in Connecticut insist that theirs is not a “sanctuary state,” a state that obstructs enforcement of federal immigration law, even as nearly every week they call for more such obstruction.

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The latest scheme of the nullification Democrats is legislation to prevent the use of Connecticut license plate camera data for immigration law enforcement in other states. The bill would forbid Connecticut police departments from contracting with license plate reader companies without a guarantee that Connecticut data wouldn’t be shared with anyone helping to enforce immigration law.

Such a law may please the nullification crowd but it’s hard to imagine any guarantee that would be effective and enforceable. An out-of-state police department might give such an assurance, but who from Connecticut would be assigned to monitor how that department shares it?

Besides, federal immigration agents aren’t going to arrest any illegal immigrant for having been in Connecticut at any particular time. Illegal immigrants are arrested for being anywhere in the country. License plate reader data is most likely to be used simply to narrow the search for an illegal immigrant, and immigration agents aren’t likely to use such data in pursuit of ordinary illegals but mainly in pursuit of illegals suspected of more serious offenses.

The leader of the state Senate’s Democratic majority, Bob Duff of Norwalk, says, “The more you learn, the more concerned you get about these license plate readers and the trouble they can cause.” What “trouble”? That immigration law might be enforced?

Do Duff and other advocates of the legislation really mean to prevent sharing license plate reader data even in pursuit of an illegal wanted for murder, rape, or robbery? It seems so. 

Journalism in Connecticut seldom puts serious questions to the immigration law nullifiers — nor any questions, really — so mere posturing on the issue usually gets a free ride here. 

How can advocates of the license plate reader data legislation deny that it will make Connecticut even more of a “sanctuary state”? They won’t have to deny it, because they won’t be asked.

Liberals long have scorned suburbs for environmental degradation – for chewing up the countryside with roads, houses, and cars and increasing air pollution via commuting. Yes, the common desire for a little space, peace, and privacy at home comes with a cost.

But now some liberal Democratic groups — the Center for American Progress, Justice Outside, and Conservation Science Partners — are lamenting that most members of minority groups live in cities that are “nature-deprived” areas, suffering greater pollution from industry and highways, along with oppressive heat, flooding, and crowding, which, all together, pose greater risks to physical and mental health.

Yes, city life has its disadvantages. But it has its advantages too, like less expensive housing, cultural and entertainment amenities, and public transit. If cities didn’t have their advantages, they wouldn’t have so many residents.

Of course cities could be nicer. But their main problem isn’t being “nature-deprived.” In Connecticut the main problems of the cities arise from the poverty of most of their residents, which is a matter of their lack of parenting, education, and job skills. Poverty in Connecticut has been worsened lately by state government’s failure to reduce the cost of living by facilitating housing construction and economizing.

The more job skills people gain, the more likely their incomes are to rise and to enable them to live in areas that are less “nature-deprived.” There will be similar results if more housing is built, more businesses locate in the state, and government cuts costs.

Obvious as that may be, it isn’t happening in Connecticut, and in any case there is so much more to prosperous, healthy cities than re-integrating them with nature, as the state has a reason to know well. Because of good urban planning a century ago, Bridgeport has 45 parks comprising 1,800 acres and is nicknamed “the Park City” — but it is also Connecticut’s poorest and most troubled. More nature isn’t going to help.

Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. (CPowell@cox.net)

Just another week in Hartford as state legislators look away

By CHRIS POWELL

Last week Hartford was the scene of three horrible incidents. 

First a 17-year-old honor student at Hall High School in West Hartford was shot and killed and another young man was shot and critically wounded at around 2 in the morning in the heart of downtown, near the People’s Bank Arena. Police believe the student had been having a night out with friends and was not the intended target.

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Then a mentally ill man was fatally shot by police in his apartment when he raised a knife at them and at family members who had called for emergency social workers to help with a “mental health crisis.” The family says they hadn’t wanted police to respond but the police say the social workers asked them to come along, which is often prudent. The family’s lawyer accuses the police of triggering the man and is threatening to sue them.

And then a mentally ill man walked onto Blue Hills Avenue carrying a long knife and refusing appeals from friends and orders from police officers to drop it. From a safe distance the cops accompanied him as he walked in the street. Then he approached them as if attempting “suicide by cop.” A stun gun failed to bring him down so an officer obligingly shot him. He made it to a hospital in critical condition but died a few days later. Presumably there will be another lawsuit against the city.

What is most remarkable here?

First is that no official notice of these incidents has been taken by state government, apart from an investigation by liquor authorities of possible underage drinking at two bars near the scene of the high school student’s murder. 

Underage drinking may explain why the student was where he was shot at 2 in the morning but is unlikely to have anything to do with why or by whom. Underage drinking has nothing to do with the disproportionate poverty and crime in Hartford and Connecticut’s other cities, nor with the many other “stray bullet” shootings there in recent years, shootings that also have escaped official notice at the state level.

For while Connecticut’s cities are small, such incidents there are considered the natural order of things and the cities’ own responsibility, though the cities are essentially wards of the state, receiving hundreds of millions of dollars in state financial aid every year even as they are largely incapable of self-government.

Damage awards against the cities, like the $45 million New Haven paid to the man who was paralyzed in 2022 because a prisoner transport van lacked seatbelts, are to a great extent paid by all taxpayers in the state. Most just don’t realize it.  

Second is that as politically correct as “de-escalation” sounds with the chronically mentally ill, it doesn’t always work — unless it is meant mainly to shift the blame for government’s failure with the mentally ill to the police.

Third is that Connecticut is full of chronically mentally ill people who, while usually not violent, are still not capable of caring for themselves, including most of the homeless population — people for whom there are no mental hospitals or secure “supportive housing” or even enough rudimentary shelters. In Connecticut mental hospitals are now deemed politically incorrect and more retrograde even than letting people freeze to death outdoors or attempt “suicide by cop.”

Fourth is that, given the thanklessness of the jobs and the scapegoating of the people doing them, a time may be coming when no one will want to be a cop in any city in the state. 

Meanwhile the new session of the General Assembly is full of proposals to spend more money on trivial and ineffective programs, as well as patronage for the friends and lovers of legislators, legislators who are always looking the other way while Hartford, Bridgeport, and New Haven function as Connecticut’s open-air mental hospitals. 

Insofar as the cities help confine problems state government has given up on, at least in that respect something can be said to work. 

Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. (CPowell@cox.net)

Federal aid really isn’t free; and stop exalting abortion

By CHRIS POWELL

Commenting a few weeks ago about the public water system disasters from failed pipes in Waterbury, Connecticut U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal said, “There is no free water, just like there is no free lunch.”

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But Blumenthal had been summoned to help with the problem precisely because there is free water, or at least what, to Blumenthal and most others, looks like free water. That is the free water produced when municipal water system modernization is financed not by its immediate beneficiaries, the jurisdictions that long neglected their water systems, but by the federal government.

Blumenthal and Waterbury’s U.S. representative, Jahana Hayes, want Congress to appropriate all sorts of federal money for water system repairs, because federal money is easier to find than municipal and state money. At least it was easier to find until Donald Trump returned as president, Republicans won a majority in Congress, and the government’s priorities changed.

The great virtue of federal government money is that, unlike most state and municipal government money, much of it doesn’t have to be obtained by taxes. It can be created just by typing on computers at the U.S. Treasury Department and Federal Reserve. Technically the money is borrowed into existence, distributed to the federal government’s favorites, and spent. This increases the national debt and the government’s spectacular interest costs, and these costs increasingly are “paid” by the government’s purchasing and thereby extinguishing its own debt — which is to say that it is really paid by inflation, a tax most people don’t understand and so can’t easily place blame for. 

Members of Congress, especially Connecticut’s, love to be seen distributing goodies to their constituents at federal expense because their constituents and journalists seldom question them about the inflation arising from such goodies. Hardly anyone asks where inflation comes from. 

There’s more unfairness here. Waterbury’s water system disasters are entirely the fault of the city itself and state government, which over the years have given priority to other things, things with more political support from special interests. And now Blumenthal and Hayes would legitimize this neglect by arranging for the rest of the country to pay to correct it so Connecticut and Waterbury can continue pursuing their mistaken but politically profitable financial priorities.

Financed by federal money, the repairs to Waterbury’s water system won’t quite be free, but they’ll be free enough to allow Blumenthal and Hayes to pose as heroes while few of their constituents will be able to identify the true cost.

Among the things Connecticut state government considers more important than maintenance of public water systems and nearly everything else state government does is abortion. Indeed, elected officials in Connecticut often seem to think abortion is the highest social good and facilitating abortion is the noblest objective of government.

This abortion fanaticism was reiterated recently when Governor Lamont decided to give the main provider of abortion in Connecticut, the state’s chapter of Planned Parenthood, $10 million from the $500 million slush fund the General Assembly authorized him to spend to compensate for cuts in federal financial grants to state and municipal government and non-governmental social-service agencies. Since 2024 Planned Parenthood had already gotten more than $6 million from state government.

It’s not that Planned Parenthood is in any financial trouble. The Connecticut Catholic Public Affairs Conference asserts, and Planned Parenthood’s Connecticut chapter hasn’t denied, that the organization has an endowment of nearly $50 million. Even people who consider abortion to be the highest social good might wonder whether, in light of Connecticut’s many compelling problems, like homelessness and mental illness neglected by state government, it might have been more responsible for state government to require Planned Parenthood to spend down some of its endowment before giving the organization still more money.

Quite apart from state government’s financial irresponsibility and the challenges to the morality of abortion, particularly late-term abortion, it may be fair to wonder why, in this age of comprehensive contraception, some of it subsidized by government, people shouldn’t pay at least for their own abortions.     —

Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. (CPowell@cox.net)

Can Connecticut Democrats rise above identity politics?

By CHRIS POWELL

Why are some people Democrats and others Republicans? 

Personal identities have always had something to do with it. Some people inherit party affiliations from parents. Many Democrats come from the working and government classes. Many Republicans come from the propertied and professional classes. 

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Ethnicity often has had something to do with it as well. 

Many Irish immigrants to Connecticut became Democrats because Republicans were in charge when the Irish arrived and were often hostile to newcomers. The next wave of immigrants, the Italians, found themselves in a rivalry with the Irish and so many became Republicans. 

Upon their liberation after the Civil War, Blacks became Republicans because Democrats were aligned with the former slave states. Blacks began migrating to the Democrats in the 1960s when Republicans took them for granted and Democratic leaders became more aggressive about civil rights and racial equality.

Political culture is involved as well. The anti-Vietnam War movement originated as a largely youthful rebellion in the Democratic Party during a Democratic presidency and within a few years the party had become not just anti-Vietnam but also the party of sex, drugs, rock ‘n’ roll, and perpetual protest. President Richard Nixon exploited the resulting fear of civil disorder and had the Republican Party pose as the representative of the “silent majority,” the cultural establishment.

Nowadays the cultural establishment is Democratic and politically correct in the extreme, supporting open borders and transgenderism in sports and thereby boosting President Trump, who delights in denouncing  all things “woke.”

Political correctness is based to a great extent on identity politics, the assignment of the electorate to interest groups based not on public policy but on mere personal characteristics. Democrats see identity politics as a recruiting tool, though it may alienate as many people as it attracts. 

Identity politics was the object of an appeal made this week by the vice chairwoman of Connecticut’s Democratic State Central Committee, Vanita Bhalla, who urged people to join one of the state party’s “caucuses.”    

“Our caucuses,” Bhalla wrote, “are where Democrats come together around shared experiences, organize, and make sure our party reflects the full diversity of Connecticut. They help shape policy conversations, strengthen relationships across communities, and bring new voices into our work at every level. Joining a caucus is a great way to meet like-minded people.”

But the 10 Democratic caucuses Bhalla identified actually proclaim insularity and conformity, implying that members of each group think the same and want something for themselves as a special interest rather than something benefiting the public generally. The special interests the Democrats imagine cultivating with caucuses actually may be hard to figure out.

As policy matters, the LGBTQ+ Caucus may want state government to support the claim of transgender people to a right to participate in sports contrary to their biological sex, and to support sex-change surgery for minors. The Women’s Caucus, at least a caucus of Democratic women, may want state law to endorse late-term abortion. The Black and Hispanic caucuses may want more state financial aid to the municipalities where most Blacks and Hispanics live.

But what do the Asian-American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Caucus, the Disability Caucus, the Immigrant Voters Caucus, the Muslim Caucus, the Small Towns Caucus, and the Veterans Caucus want in public policy that differs from what most other people, or at least most other Democrats, want for everyone?

Do these caucuses ever go beyond the personal identity interest and approach the national or state interest — the public interest? Indeed, as these caucuses suggest, is it really possible to approach the public interest only after people are sorted into identity groups? If caucuses are necessary — and local Democratic town committees insufficient as forums — why not organize them according to policy issues instead?

Organizing people by identity groups risks stereotyping and caricaturing people — the opposite of the “diversity” the caucuses are supposed to reflect. But then “diversity” isn’t really the objective. Getting votes is, whatever the cost.

Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. (CPowell@cox.net)