Author Archives: cxpowell

Remarks by Chris PowellAcademy of New England JournalistsBoston, MassachusettsThursday, November 16, 2006 (Presented by James H. Smith) Please forgive me for not being with you to thank you in person for the Yankee Quill Award and my election to the Academy of New England Journalists. I had a longstanding commitment to be far away fromContinue reading “Yankee Quill Award remarks, November 16, 2006”

By Chris Powell As recently as 50 years ago Connecticut politics still had traces of the old ethnic, racial, and religious resentments and rivalries that had arisen through the state’s long history, resentments and rivalries that political party state tickets tried to assuage. Yankee Protestant Republicans scorned immigrant Catholics. While the Irish and Italians bothContinue reading “Democrats’ silly obsessions bring back ticket balancing”

By Chris Powell Republicans, Connecticut U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy charges, are partly to blame for the May 14 massacre in Buffalo because many of them espouse the “Great Replacement Theory” that the murderer says motivated him. This is the belief that powerful people are conspiring to change the country’s racial composition, replacing whites with BlacksContinue reading “There’s more to ‘replacement’ than Sen. Murphy acknowledges”

By Chris Powell Legislation sponsored by Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal — supported by Connecticut’s other senator, Chris Murphy, and Governor Lamont, Democrats all — which was narrowly defeated in the Senate on May 11, titled the Women’s Health Protection Act, isn’t nutty just because it would authorize all abortions all the time, right up toContinue reading “In Connecticut, Democrats are the abortion extremists”

By Chris Powell Four months after the now internationally infamous “pizza sex” assignment was given to eighth-graders at Kennedy Middle School in Enfield, the town’s Board of Education has not yet figured out how it happened. Instead the board purportedly is stuck contemplating just [ITALICS] how [END ITALICS] to figure out how it happened. TheContinue reading “Enfield school chief conceals source of ‘pizza sex’ lesson”

By Chris Powell About 17% of state government employee positions have been left vacant, in part so Governor Lamont can improve state government’s financial position. Prison employees are required to work abusive amounts of overtime even as they are at high risk of contracting COVID-19. The state police lately felt so short-staffed that they sankContinue reading “If state government is doing so well, why fill its many vacancies?”

By Chris Powell Both political parties in Congress want to sustain the immigration controversy for partisan purposes more than they want a compromise that could resolve the controversy’s two major components — securing the borders while providing a path to citizenship for longtime illegal residents and children whose violation of immigration law was not theirContinue reading “Deal on abortion is possible but Democrats prefer acrimony”

By Chris Powell Especially in Connecticut elected officials claim credit for trying to solve the problems they themselves created. It happened again recently with legislation proposed in the General Assembly to require larger municipalities to create “fair rent” commissions with power to cancel or reduce residential rent increases. Yes, along with housing prices generally, rentsContinue reading “Why can’t Connecticut ever lift the poor to middle class?”

By CHRIS POWELL Empty gestures and distractions abounded last week in government and news reporting in Washington and Connecticut. In Washington the Biden administration and White House correspondents celebrated the appointment of the first Black presidential press secretary — and not just a Black one but a member of a sexual minority. The appointment distractedContinue reading “Running on empty gestures in Washington and Hartford”

By Chris Powell Abortion and gender dysphoria are serious issues worth serious discussion. But you’d never know it from listening to Connecticut’s two U.S. senators, Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy. They offer only hysteria to rile up their supporters, fanning the flames of the culture war. According to Blumenthal, the Supreme Court’s leaked draft decisionContinue reading “Blumenthal and Murphy escalate the culture war with hysteria”