Author Archives: cxpowell

By Chris Powell Some people may privately celebrate the steady decline of the Catholic Church in Connecticut, which worsened last week as Hartford Archbishop Leonard P. Blair announced the closing of two more churches in Waterbury and the merger of three others there. The church is resented for its opposition to homosexuality, its exclusion ofContinue reading “Decline of Catholic Church isn’t improving Connecticut”

By Chris Powell Next week’s installment of Connecticut’s annual suspension of sales taxes on clothing and shoes may be a reminder that government is very good at bribing people with their own money. Sales Tax-Free Week is promoted as state government’s special benevolence to families with children about to return to school and in needContinue reading “Week’s sales-tax suspension is a bribe we pay ourselves”

By Chris Powell Government’s subsidizing and thereby encouraging and legitimizing parental irresponsibility isn’t the only cause of the country’s long-worsening child neglect. Government causes the problem in other ways too. The next most important cause of child neglect may be persistent inflation, which is always underreported in government economic data, since the criteria for measuringContinue reading “How much should Connecticut let parents be irresponsible?”

By Chris Powell Most people in Connecticut want to support the police, especially now that social order seems to be breaking down throughout the state. But last week the state police union provided another reason why such support is not always deserved. The union announced that its members had taken a vote of no confidenceContinue reading “Public’s confidence counts more than trooper union’s”

By Chris Powell During last year’s campaign for governor, leading Democrats from Governor Lamont on down may not have known that they were probably being hypocritical by criticizing the Republican nominee, Bob Stefanowski, for doing consulting work for a company connected to the Saudi Arabian government.  But now that it has been disclosed that theContinue reading “Lamont has Saudi link too; and put homeless in motels”

By Chris Powell Connecticut is full of repeat criminal offenders. It is unusual to find any serious crime in the state whose perpetrator didn’t already have a substantial record.  State government’s most recent report on recidivism found that 43% of people released from prison in the state were convicted and imprisoned again within three years.Continue reading “Where’s the emergency money to stop repeat offenders?”

By Chris Powell Who is to blame for the death last month of the 2-year-old Hartford boy who, along with his four sisters 12 and younger, was left unattended by his mother as she went to work as a taxi driver only for the boy to fall out a window of their squalid third-floor apartment? Continue reading “Hartford boy’s fatal fall indicts welfare premises”

By Chris Powell The ritual observances of the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 suggest that some people want the United States to apologize for ending a war that Japan still cannot bring itself to apologize for starting. Two wrongs indeed would not make a right. But the pietyContinue reading “Japan and U.S. both needed atomic shock to end their war”

By Chris Powell Recent days in Connecticut have provided more than the usual causes for alarm. — In Hartford a 2-year-old boy fell out the window of a third-floor apartment and soon died of his injuries. He and his four siblings, all under 12, had been left alone by their mother as she went toContinue reading “Connecticut wasn’t always this way — What happened?”

By Chris Powell Everybody seems to be investigating the traffic ticket scandal in the Connecticut state police, exposed by an audit a month ago. It contended that about 25,000 tickets state troopers wrote over several years were phony — reported only to a state police database, not to the Judicial Department, which would have triggeredContinue reading “Connecticut’s racial problems go far beyond fake tickets”