Author Archives: cxpowell

By Chris Powell Amid dissension and turnover at Hartford’s Wadsworth Atheneum, an art museum of international standing, Hartford Business Journal editor Greg Bordonaro wrote the other day that the city has an “image problem,” especially when compared to West Hartford, about which The New York Times recently published a report lauding, among other things, theContinue reading “Changing Hartford’s sad image requires changing its reality”

By Chris Powell Anyone watching television news in Connecticut last week might have gotten the impression that the state was being invaded by Nazi stormtroopers and the Ku Klux Klan. Prompting the hysteria on the airwaves was, first, the arrest of a student at the University of Connecticut at Storrs for spray-painting a swastika onContinue reading “Bloviating about trivia fails to remedy Connecticut’s racial problems”

By Chris Powell Recent leftist street theater in Connecticut raised issues that deserve more analysis than street theater can provide. First, unionized members of the faculty of the four regional state universities brought their 14–foot inflatable skunk to Southern Connecticut State University for a rally protesting “stinky” contract proposals by the Board of Regents. UnionContinue reading “Leftist street theater clouds Connecticut’s college and insurance disputes”

By Chris Powell After raising taxes, concealing public records and the whitewashing of history seem like the highest objectives of the Democratic majorities in the General Assembly. The Democrats would erase a range of misdemeanor and felony convictions a few years after such convictions are entered. The Democrats see this as a civil rights measure,Continue reading “Democratic legislators strive to keep Connecticut ignorant”

By Chris Powell While there is a compelling reason to raise taxes on the rich, it’s not the reason motivating many Democrats in the General Assembly, who would increase both state income and capital gains taxes on the rich and impose a special state property tax on their expensive homes. These Democratic legislators want mainlyContinue reading “The one good reason to tax the rich more isn’t Connecticut’s”

By Chris Powell Nearly everyone in public life in Connecticut has seemed to feel compelled to kowtow to and marvel at the verdict in the case of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin as if his conviction was a triumph of justice against the odds. In fact Chauvin’s killing of George Floyd may have beenContinue reading “Why marvel at a verdict that was hardly in doubt?”

By Chris Powell State Treasurer Shawn Wooden has brought to Connecticut a proposal that has been floating around the country for a few years now. Wooden would have state government endow “baby bonds” for poor children, opening $5,000 savings accounts for them at birth with the proceeds made available to them at age 18 forContinue reading “Treasurer Wooden’s ‘baby bonds’ won’t provide the crucial human capital”

By Chris Powell Legislators from Hartford, New Haven, and Bridgeport last week gathered at the state Capitol to offer their solution to the horrifying explosion of violence in Connecticut’s cities. They would throw money at it with “violence-prevention programs.” For centuries parents were pretty good “violence-prevention programs,” but few young people in the cities haveContinue reading “Horrifying violence in cities evokes only empty responses”

By Chris Powell Until a few days ago television stations in Connecticut were broadcasting a commercial showing a Black woman who says she is a doctor and wants to persuade “people who look like me” that COVID-19 vaccine is safe, adding emphatically, “because it is.” Or does the woman just play a doctor on TV?Continue reading “TV commercial’s dishonesty sabotages vaccine campaign in Connecticut”

By Chris Powell For the sake of democracy, comity, equality of opportunity, and prosperity, Connecticut, like the rest of the country, needs integration — racial, economic class, and ethnic. Exclusive zoning in the suburbs long has hampered that, and it’s getting worse as housing prices are soaring. But advocates of the anti-zoning legislation in theContinue reading “Violence and depravity in cities sustain exclusive zoning”