Will Connecticut keep fighting immigration law enforcement?

By Chris Powell

What will become of Joel Alexander Caiza-Nishue? What should become of him? Who will be responsible for what becomes of him? And who, besides himself, is responsible for what he is charged with doing?

Connecticut should think about these things.

Connecticut’s racial gap in education is actually a welfare problem

Why would Democrats dump Larson, Courtney, and DeLauro?

Are Connecticut Democrats as far left as Gov. Lamont’s rival?

Caiza-Nishue is the 18-year-old accused of reckless driving, traveling too fast for conditions, and operating without a license after crashing into and injuring two state troopers on Interstate 91 in Enfield last week. Federal immigration authorities say he is an illegal immigrant from Ecuador who entered the country in 2023. He is reported to be a high school student in Waterbury.

The feds have told state authorities they want Caiza-Nishue detained so they can take custody of him and, presumably, deport him. State authorities seem unlikely to cooperate. So presumably the feds will be waiting for Caiza-Nishue if he ever appears in person in state court.   

Will court authorities object then? Will the advocates and apologists for illegal immigration, of whom Connecticut has many, protest at the courthouse? Will some even try to obstruct Caiza-Nishue’s apprehension? 

Will the protesters include Governor Lamont, Attorney General William Tong, state legislators, and other officials who support illegal immigration and want to make sure that state government refuses to cooperate with immigration law enforcement in regard to any misconduct short of murder?

Or will the Caiza-Nishue case prompt some reconsideration of Connecticut’s official extremism on the immigration issue? That extremism maintains that nearly everyone who enters the country illegally and makes his way to Connecticut should be exempt from immigration law.

At Caiza-Nishue’s first appearance in court, made by video from a state jail, his public defender argued that his case is just another car accident. It is hard to imagine that, whatever his recklessness, Caiza-Nishue meant any harm. 

But it’s also hard to imagine that the troopers he is charged with injuring don’t resent that he may never have gotten a proper review by immigration authorities and that he entered and remained in the country illegally. Similar resentment is felt by the thousands of victims of crimes committed by illegal immigrants, no matter that, on average, illegal immigrants may be no more criminally inclined than the native-born. 

For citizenship inevitably exempts the native-born from such vetting while the federal government owes the country a proper review of everyone admitted from outside — an obligation that was deliberately forfeited by the previous national administration on a massive scale in a scheme to devalue citizenship and change the country’s political demographics.

Advocates and apologists for illegal immigration fairly complain that immigration law enforcement is full of violations of due process of law. 

This month a U.S. citizen who is an Army veteran was arrested by immigration agents as he arrived for his job at a marijuana farm in California during the chaos of a raid in which dozens of illegal immigrants were being arrested. His car windows were smashed, he was hauled out at gunpoint, and he was jailed for three days before his citizenship was established and he was released. It was outrageous.

Yet this environment was created by the advocates and apologists for illegal immigration. They didn’t object to the previous administration’s failure with the due process of law — the failure to enforce immigration law at all. To the contrary, as in Connecticut, they incentivized and facilitated illegal immigration, providing illegal immigrants with identification documents, driver’s licenses, medical insurance, food, and housing, and promising to obstruct immigration authorities with Connecticut’s so-called Trust Act. 

In doing all this, the advocates and apologists for illegal immigration have assumed dangerously that the intentions of all illegal immigrants are good.    

The advocates and apologists for illegal immigration say the country’s immigration system is broken. Indeed, and they were the ones who broke it, deliberately. Now, with an estimated 10 million illegal immigrants in the country, painstaking due process is impossible with any effective immigration law enforcement. 

Regaining control of the border will require years of deportations to undo and deter more of what the advocates and apologists engineered.  

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

Connecticut’s racial gap in education is actually a welfare problem

By Chris Powell

Connecticut long has been notorious for its big racial performance gap in education. State government should be equally notorious for not having figured out what to do about it even as the solution has been obvious to anyone taking the trouble to look at the failing students.  

Why would Democrats dump Larson, Courtney, and DeLauro?

Are Connecticut Democrats as far left as Gov. Lamont’s rival?

Hartford, Bridgeport schools urgently need state takeover

State government has had two primary responses to the gap. 

First, the state has established dozens of regional “magnet” schools that, while created for racial integration, were also seen as mechanisms for improving education for racial minorities. But the regional schools seem mainly to have stripped city neighborhood schools of their better students. They haven’t reduced the gap.

Second, the state has appropriated a lot more money for education in the mistaken belief, arising from the Education Enhancement Act of 1986, that student performance is a mainly matter of per-pupil spending and teacher salaries. This hasn’t reduced the gap either, though at some point there must be a link between teacher salaries and student performance in impoverished cities whose schools always have many staff vacancies because teachers don’t want to deal with so many poor students.

The problem always has been not per-pupil spending but per-pupil parenting. Teachers of the youngest students in poor areas quickly perceive this. Many students come to school without knowing letters, numbers, and colors, have limited vocabularies, and don’t know how to behave. Even in kindergarten many of them are already grades behind. 

Programs like Head Start and the universal pre-school for which Connecticut has started to save money alleviate these deficits but not for long when the kids keep returning to neglectful homes. The biggest advantage of these programs seems to be political, insofar as they are only remedial. Since the programs increase government spending and employment without solving the problem, they become self-perpetuating — perfect for those who run them. 

Decades of social science have shown that children generally do best after being raised in a two-parent household. But this month the great superiority of intact families for education was driven home by a study that was organized by the University of Virginia and drew participation from politically diverse organizations.

The study, “Good Fathers, Flourishing Kids — The Importance of Fatherhood in Virginia,” found that children tend to do much better in school when their fathers live with them and their mothers or at least are heavily involved in their lives.

Writing at the education news internet site The74Million.org, Robert Pondiscio, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a former teacher, noted that the study addressed the racial performance gap particularly.

“Most striking,” Pondiscio wrote, “is the report’s finding that there is no meaningful difference in school grades among demographically diverse children raised in intact families. Black and white students living with their fathers get mostly A’s at roughly equal rates — more than 85% — and are equally unlikely to experience school behavior problems. 

“In other words, the achievement gap appears to be less about race and more about the structure and stability of the family.”

That is, the achievement gap in school has little to do with school.

Unfortunately the study’s recommendations are not strong. Among them are to adjust education to include more elements appealing to boys, to hire more male teachers to provide role models, to increase school recess and physical education time, and to teach the “Success Sequence” of life — get a good education, get a decent job, and marry before having children.

While the “Success Sequence” is at the heart of the education problem, for many students teaching about it in school may be undone by the example set for them when they get home. 

The challenge of the racial performance gap in education isn’t to keep raising spending and placating the teacher unions. It is to discern and eliminate, over time, what encourages, facilitates, and subsidizes childbearing outside marriage: the guaranteed income government provides for harmful behavior. 

That is, the racial performance gap is mainly a welfare and culture problem, not an educational one.   

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

Why would Democrats dump Larson, Courtney, and DeLauro?

By Chris Powell

Why are the three most senior members of Connecticut’s all-Democratic five-member delegation in the U.S. House of Representatives apparently facing primary challenges for renomination next year?

Are Connecticut Democrats as far left as Gov. Lamont’s rival?

Hartford, Bridgeport schools urgently need state takeover

State government’s growth causes record spending on lobbyists

In the 1st District, the Hartford area, a member of Hartford’s Board of Education, Ruth R. Fortune, unknown outside the city, has filed to deny the Democratic endorsement to U.S. Rep. John B. Larson. Former Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin, a heavy hitter politically, is said to be thinking about trying to do the same thing.

In the 2nd District, eastern Connecticut, Kyle Gauck of East Hampton, another unknown, wants to wrest the Democratic nomination from U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney.

In the 3rd District, the New Haven area, U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro is being challenged for another Democratic nomination by a lawyer from the city, Damjan DeNoble.

Why? 

The challengers haven’t criticized the incumbents on issues or ideologies. Larson, Courtney, and DeLauro are traditional liberals in the Democratic mainstream with long records of success in their districts. Larson is in his 13th term, Courtney his ninth, and DeLauro her 17th. Only one seems ever to have had a close election for Congress, Courtney’s first in 2006. Any substantial dissatisfaction with them in the party has yet to manifest itself.

If there will be issues for a primary, one could be age. Larson is 76, Courtney 72, and DeLauro 82. 

Yet all three remain vigorous. In February while speaking in the House, Larson froze briefly as if he was having a stroke. But he said it was an adverse reaction to medication and he has manifested no problem since.

Thomas Jefferson was thinking about a politician in Connecticut in 1801 when he wrote what was turned into the aphorism “Few die and none resign.” But at least until the era of Joe Biden and Donald Trump, age often correlated with wisdom rather than senility. In any case in Congress seniority usually correlates with power. 

Larson serves on the powerful House Ways and Means Committee and is the ranking Democratic member on its Social Security subcommittee. The primary legislation that would strengthen Social Security is his doing. It would be nice if he could see it through.

Courtney is on the House Armed Services Committee and ranking Democratic member on its subcommittee with jurisdiction over the submarines that get built in Groton back in his district.

DeLauro is ranking Democratic member of the House Appropriations Committee, which she chaired when the House majority was Democratic. She might be chairwoman again. Immense patronage is dispensed there.   

Are their constituents tired of all the goodies Larson, Courtney, and DeLauro have brought home over the years? Any Democrats replacing them might have similar ideologies but would start at the bottom.

Then there is the pitch for “generational change.” New Britain Mayor Erin Stewart, seeking the Republican nomination for governor, is making it, as is DeLauro challenger DeNoble, who says DeLauro has done a good job but isn’t the right person to represent her district for the next 15 to 30 years. Insofar as DeLauro would be at least 97 or at most 112 then, she probably wouldn’t argue. Maybe that’s why she has sought only two more years at a time.

Indeed, the “generational change” pitch is used by candidates who have nothing relevant to say about the issues, if they even know any issues.

Of course there are many issues Republican challengers might use against Larson, Courtney, and DeLauro — inflation, illegal immigration, taxes, transgenderism, poverty, social disintegration, and such. But that’s only if well-informed Republicans could be found to run and raise enough campaign money to be heard. 

Courtney’s district, the 2nd, can be competitive for an open seat but still would lean Democratic. The Hartford-area district hasn’t elected a Republican since 1956 and the New Haven-area district hasn’t elected a Republican since 1980. Despite any policy successes President Trump may achieve, his bad manners won’t make things easier for Republicans in Connecticut next year. 

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

-END-

Are Connecticut Democrats as far left as Lamont’s rival?

By CHRIS POWELL

Campaigns for next year’s elections in Connecticut for governor and Congress have begun already, 16 months ahead of Election Day. That gives them plenty of time to be meaningful. 

Hartford, Bridgeport schools urgently need state takeover

State government’s growth causes record spending on lobbyists

Does Trump’s budget really spell doom for Connecticut?

Because four incumbents on the Democratic side may face primary challenges — Governor Lamont and U.S. Reps. John B. Larson, Joe Courtney, and Rosa DeLauro — those campaigns could have plenty of meaning, though the challengers to Larson, Courtney, and DeLauro are unknown. 

Distressed that Governor Lamont doesn’t go along with the far-left elements of the Democratic Party enough — just most of the time — Hamden state Rep. Josh Elliott this week formally announced his candidacy to replace the governor as the party’s nominee. Unlike the other challengers who have recently declared, Elliott has plenty of issues and admits that he hopes mainly to push the Democrats even more to the left but not to do anything that would impair Lamont’s chances of re-election if the governor is renominated.

Indeed, Elliott’s challenge may help Lamont in the general election campaign by making the governor seem more moderate than he really is.

Elliott objects emphatically to the governor’s recent vetoes of a wide-ranging housing bill that would have restricted suburban zoning and extended rent control throughout the state, and a bill qualifying strikers for unemployment compensation.

Elliott wants state government to spend a lot more money on social programs and pay for it by raising taxes on the wealthy.  

Lamont, Elliott complains, makes it “very difficult for the legislature to get big ideas through under the ruse of the necessity of austerity, when we have billions of dollars of additional revenue coming in every year that, ultimately, only bring down the date of payment on pensions by a couple of years.”

Of course it’s all how one looks at it. “Only a couple of years” of payments to the state employee pension funds mean billions of dollars, which even a few liberals still think is a lot of money. Elliott’s observation might prompt some people to wonder why defined-benefit state employee pensions continue to have such priority in public finance and why they shouldn’t be phased out. 

But like all liberals, if Elliott is forced to choose between the genuinely needy and unionized government employees, his party’s political army, he will choose the unions every time.

Elliott sees Lamont standing in the way of a “fair” tax system. What is “fair”? Higher taxes, of course, preferably on a small minority, since social programs in Connecticut are not yet successful enough to convince most people that their own taxes should go up to pay for them.

Elliott says: “We’re cementing a class structure in Connecticut, as opposed to helping people get into the middle class.” Yes, poverty in Connecticut has been worsening, in large part because of the shortage of housing.

But Elliott has yet to explain how people are helped to reach the middle class by the state’s main policy of public education, social promotion, which is graduating illiterates and near-illiterates from high school, or by welfare policy, which subsidizes childbearing outside marriage, deprives many children of fathers, and pushes them toward generational poverty. Like other liberals, including the governor, Elliott doesn’t notice those problems.

Even so, many Democrats are now so outraged at the prospect of any financial restraint in government that Elliott just might reflect the views of a majority of active party members, the ones who will vote in primaries. Republicans may hope so.

On the Republican side for governor, New Britain Mayor Erin Stewart, Greenwich state Sen. Ryan Fazio, and Westport First Selectwoman Jen Tooker are the likely contenders so far. 

Stewart offers remarkable political success in a Democratic city but has yet to say much about state issues and offers only a promise of civility, which is just an evasion of issues. Tooker is little known. Fazio has made a good impression in his short time in the legislature and seems to be the one most likely to say something that matters.     

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

-END-

Hartford, Bridgeport schools urgently need state takeover

By Chris Powell

How could Aleysha Ortiz go through the Hartford school system and be given a high school diploma without ever learning to read and write? Who exactly was responsible in every grade that advanced her anyway?

State government’s growth causes record spending on lobbyists

Does Trump’s budget really spell doom for Connecticut?

Protests haven’t explained what ‘free Palestine’ means

Maybe Ortiz’s lawsuit in Superior Court seeking $3 million in damages from the city will extract some answers, though more likely it will be settled to prevent accountability.

Rather than answer for what happened, Hartford Superintendent Leslie Torres-Rodriguez is retiring in a few weeks.

State Education Commissioner Charlene Russell-Tucker hired consultants to look into the Ortiz case but won’t answer specifically about it either. The commissioner’s excuse is what she calls Ortiz’s right to privacy, as if the young woman didn’t forfeit that right with the sensational interview she gave to the Connecticut Mirror last September and with her lawsuit.

Privacy? News of the scandal already has gone around the world. 

Of course the only people the commissioner is protecting are Hartford educators.

If not for a few Republican state senators who keep pressing the commissioner about the case, it would have been forgotten long ago despite its horrible implication. 

Democratic legislators and Governor Lamont, also a Democrat, act as if they have not noticed the case, even though the report submitted by the commissioner’s consultants and her use of the report as a substitute for specific accountability imply that the girl isn’t the only illiterate or near-illiterate to have been graduated by Hartford’s schools lately.

The report cites the Hartford school system’s severe shortage of staff, especially “special education” staff, with Hartford leading the state in educator vacancies — more than 200, including 50 “special education” teacher positions and 80 “special education” “para-educator” positions.

But the report adds that the problem in Hartford’s schools goes far beyond “special education,” since many students who are not disadvantaged and handicapped enough to be classified as “special education” are still slow learners and need extra help when none is available. They are referred to “special education” staffers who are already overwhelmed.

Of course this doesn’t mean that no students are coming out of Hartford’s schools with an education. It means that no academic data produced by Hartford’s schools can be trusted.

What will be done about it? Probably not much. The commissioner says the state Education Department “will intensify our support and targeted monitoring activities” in Hartford’s schools. But she doesn’t say how.

Will the department ensure that the vacant teaching positions are filled? Will the department require that all Hartford students are tested every year to prove they can read and write? 

Or will the department, the legislature, and the governor just keep waiting for the scandal to fade away?

The department says it is already giving extra scrutiny and support to the equally dysfunctional school system in Bridgeport, which has gone through five superintendents in seven years and where “special education” is also a mess. The department should have taken control of both Hartford and Bridgeport school systems long ago. Their problems are too big, their competence too small. 

But state government lacks the courage for that, since it would require removing all impediments to vigorous administration in the interest of the public and students. It would require taking responsibility.

Fixing city schools would require regular proficiency testing for all students, including a test for graduation. (Students who failed the test could be given certificates of attendance — if they really did attend much.) It would require holding parents responsible for their children’s excessive absences. It would require ending social promotion. It would require accountability at all levels.

More than that, state government also would have to take responsibility for the worsening social disintegration throughout the state. It would have to explain the soaring need for “special education.” It would have to ask the biggest and most uncomfortable questions: 

How are uneducated young people supposed to support themselves? Where are all the neglected and troubled kids coming from? And what turned the cities into poverty factories?

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

-END-

State government’s growth causes record spending on lobbyists

By Chris Powell

Lobbyists in Connecticut have a bad reputation, and it may get worse with the recent report from the Office of State Ethics that spending on lobbyists exceeded $28 million in the first quarter of this year and may reach a record high by the end of the year.

Does Trump’s budget really spell doom for Connecticut?

Protests haven’t explained what ‘free Palestine’ means

Bears are likely to triumph long before ‘affordable housing’ does

Why is there so much lobbying? 

Mainly because there is so much government.

A telling clue is that that the organization spending the most on lobbyists in the first quarter was the Connecticut Hospital Association at $1.45 million. Other big spending on lobbyists in the first quarter also involved medicine: the Partnership for America’s Health Care Future, representing hospitals, medical insurers, and drug manufacturers, at $349,000; Hartford HealthCare at $248,266; the Connecticut Association of Health Plans at $230,370; Elevance Health and Affiliates with $214,940; and Yale New Haven Health System at $214,447.

Again, this spending was just for the first quarter.

No businesses are more subject to government spending and regulation than hospitals, medical insurers, and drug manufacturers. Modern medicine is now largely a matter of price-fixing and cost-shifting by government, what with Medicare, Medicaid, and legislative and regulatory mandates.

Even a small change in law, regulation, or government policy can have huge financial impact on the components of medical care, and, of course, huge impact on patients and policyholders.

Whether these laws, regulations, and policies are good or bad, they are pervasive, and so all the entities affected need to watch the government around the clock and intervene urgently on behalf of their interests. 

Legislators and governors are supposed to represent the public interest, but the lobbyists work at the state Capitol nearly every day while their constituents are just trying to make a living and to get home in time for dinner and some television. The programs they watch are not about public policy.

Many lobbyists are often well paid for subverting the public interest in favor of a special interest. So special interests sometimes provide disguises for their lobbyists. 

That’s why the Partnership for America’s Health Care Future doesn’t call itself what it really is — the Partnership for the Prosperity of Hospitals, Medical Insurers, and Drug Manufacturers — and why the Connecticut Education Association doesn’t call itself the Connecticut Teachers Union.  

Even so, lobbyists are crucial to democracy and the legislative process, especially on the state level. For while the governor and legislative committees can draw on expertise from the Office of Legislative Research and state government agencies, lobbyists often have much relevant information that government doesn’t have — and not just information but insight about policies and how they are likely to be received not just by special interests but the public as well.

Thirty-seven years ago, in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal in Washington, the General Assembly and Gov. Ella T. Grasso seemed to think that lobbyists were the nexus of political corruption. So a law was enacted requiring lobbyists to register with the Office of State Ethics and wear special badges on the job. The implication was that lobbyists had the plague and legislators shouldn’t want to be around them.

Caution was in order but it wasn’t because lobbyists had the plague and weren’t identifying themselves. It was because legislators had a sort of plague — the desperate craving for campaign contributions — and were easily tempted to seek them first from the special interests represented by the lobbyists. Tagged with badges, lobbyists became easier to shake down. 

Indeed, years ago neophyte candidates for the legislature who sought advice about raising campaign money were urged to visit the Office of State Ethics, ask for a list of all the lobbyists, and start there.

Things are a bit better now. Campaign contributions from lobbyists are restricted, and the state has a program of public financing of campaigns that diminishes need for special-interest money. 

But special-interest money still abounds in politics, and, as always, the best defenses against bad law and corruption are vigorous news organizations and an attentive public. They are much weaker these days.

——

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

-END-

Does Trump’s budget really spell doom for Connecticut?

By Chris Powell

According to Governor Lamont, the federal budget just enacted by the Republican majority in Congress and President Trump is nearly the end of the world.

Protests haven’t explained what ‘free Palestine’ means

Bears are likely to triumph long before ‘affordable housing’ does

Can Republican state legislators keep up their public-interest clamor?

The governor says the budget will have “devastating impact on millions of Americans for years to come and was passed for the sole purpose of giving tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires. It will amount to a massive income transfer from the poorest and most vulnerable Americans to the wealthiest.”

But Dan Haar of the Hearst Connecticut newspapers reports that, by quadrupling to $40,000 the federal income tax deductibility of state and local taxes — the “SALT” deduction, which Democratic leaders in Connecticut and other high-tax states long have supported — the new budget will substantially reduce federal income taxes for hundreds of thousands of middle- and upper-middle class Connecticut households.

As for the “massive income transfer from the poorest and most vulnerable Americans to the wealthiest,” the poor don’t pay federal income taxes, nor, in Connecticut, state income taxes. The “income” for the poor about which the governor is worried is actually what in a less politically correct era was called welfare.

The governor says the new budget will “bankrupt” the federal government by running a deficit in the trillions of dollars, requiring borrowing to cover the gap. But the federal government long has run huge deficits under Democratic administrations as well, which never bothered Democrats in Connecticut. Besides, since the government can create money out of nothing, it can never go bankrupt; it can only continue to devalue the dollar — something else that has never bothered Connecticut Democrats.

The new budget, the governor says, “slashes critical safety-net programs, particularly Medicaid and SNAP” — food subsidies — “that so many hard-working American families need for their health and survival.”

Yet in recent days there have been reports from all around the country about massive fraud in the Medicaid, Medicare, and SNAP programs — some involving providers in Connecticut.

Indeed, a few months ago the governor’s own public health and social services commissioner retired after it was disclosed that she had countenanced the termination of an audit of Medicaid fraud in which the governor’s former deputy budget director and a former Democratic state representative have been indicted and a Bristol doctor has pleaded guilty.

Just last week state prosecutors charged an acupuncturist from Milford with defrauding Medicaid of $123,000.    

All this fraud doesn’t mean that the Republican administration in Washington or the Democratic administration in Connecticut will be competent and determined enough to substantially reduce fraud in Medicaid, Medicare, and food subsidies. But maybe a reduction in those appropriations is necessary to provide some incentive to look harder.

“With a federal administration insistent on eliminating critical safety nets,” the governor said, “it is going to be nearly impossible for any state to backfill the billions in federal cuts we are going to face. … We will be meeting with our colleagues in the General Assembly to discuss next steps.”

Those next steps may be interesting. 

Will the federal cuts in Medicaid and food subsidies be so compelling as to cause the governor and legislators to cancel any of the grants they grandly announce practically every week for all sorts of inessential projects around the state?

Will the cuts be so compelling as to cause the governor to reconsider the blank check his administration has issued for illegal immigration? 

Will the cuts be so compelling as to cause the governor to reconsider the pledge he made to the state employee unions in April? “Every year that I’ve been here you’ve gotten a raise,” he told the unions, “and every year I’m here, you’re going to get a raise.”

Raises despite the cuts in the safety net? Despite natural disasters? Despite plague? Despite nuclear war?

Or will the cuts prompt the governor to call the legislature into special session, proclaim that state government simply can’t economize, and propose to raise taxes going into an election year?

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

-END-

Protests haven’t explained what ‘free Palestine’ means

By Chris Powell

Another protest was held at the state Capitol the other day against Israel’s war with Gaza (but not Gaza’s war with Israel). Participants again called for “free Palestine.” But no one seems to have asked what they meant by that and they haven’t explained.

Bears are likely to triumph long before ‘affordable housing’ does

Can Republican state legislators keep up their public-interest clamor?

Murphy smears an industry on which his state depends

What exactly do the protesters mean by Palestine? Their slogan, repeated at the Capitol, is “from the river to the sea” — the Jordan River to the Mediterranean — which includes the entirety of Israel and more. It signifies Israel’s destruction, which indeed long has been the objective of the regime that controls Gaza and invaded Israel two Octobers ago after years of firing missiles into Israel.

And what exactly do the protesters mean by “free”? Do they mean a place with freedom of speech, press, religion, and sexual orientation? Do they mean sexual equality and due process of law? 

Of course there is nothing like all that in the places ruled by Palestinians. 

Or by “free” do the protesters really mean free of Jews? Ironically Israel is the only place in its part of the world where Jews and Palestinians live together in the same political jurisdiction.

Journalists never ask even the simplest critical questions at these protests. Maybe they’re afraid they wouldn’t survive whatever answers they might get. 

WHERE TO PUT HOUSING: Maybe there’s a simple solution to Connecticut’s housing shortage and the disagreement between Governor Lamont and the Democratic majority in the General Assembly over the housing legislation the governor recently vetoed.

Nearly everyone admits that the state needs a lot more housing. The disagreement is over where to put it. So in the special legislative session the governor may call in the fall, he and the legislature could select one town, authorize any and all types of housing to be built there, and change its name to Somewhere Else. That’s where the opponents of new housing always say it should go.

Maybe there’s another solution, almost as simple, for building housing without antagonizing the neighbors.

Connecticut’s cities and inner suburbs are full of dilapidated properties that are eyesores, nuisances, and even dangers: abandoned factories, vacant shopping centers, rundown tenements, and such. Just about anything that replaced those properties would be an improvement.

So state government could legislate punitive annual taxes on those unused or underused properties, foreclose on them if they were not quickly refurbished or the punitive taxes paid, exempt the lots from municipal zoning, auction them to developers exclusively for housing development, and, if the housing wasn’t built within a year, foreclose on them again and repeat the process until the housing was built.

In such a system cities and suburbs would replace unproductive eyesores with new taxpayers and economic growth. Nearby properties would become more attractive. There would be lots of new housing and a new constituency for bus and bicycle transportation without new suburban sprawl. 

The only people offended by this would be those who prefer crumbling eyesores to new homes, and any such people deserve to be offended.

POVERTY ISN’T A VIRTUE: Democratic elected officials are outraged that the new Republican federal budget includes tax cuts for “the rich” and well-to-do but not the poor. Given the soaring national debt, its spectacular interest costs, and the resulting weakening of the dollar, there probably shouldn’t be any federal tax cuts at all.

But complaints from Democrats about tax cuts for “the rich” ring hollow, just as their bleating about the poor does. For taxes can’t be cut for people who don’t pay any, only for people who do, and the poor don’t pay federal income taxes, only federal excise taxes like those on gasoline. Not even Democrats propose cutting gas taxes. They want conventional energy to be expensive, though this batters the poor. 

In any case, contrary to the Democratic bleating, poverty is not a virtue and doesn’t automatically make people deserving. The able-bodied are obliged to support themselves, and even the poor should pay some taxes and feel that they have “skin in the game.”

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

-END-

Bears are likely to triumph long before ‘affordable housing’ does

By Chris Powell

With Governor Lamont’s veto of the wide-ranging housing bill recently passed by the General Assembly, Connecticut towns aren’t likely to reach the “fair share” quotas of “affordable” housing the bill set for them. But the legislature’s failure to approve other legislation may ensure that each town ends up with another quota — a quota of bears.

Can Republican state legislators keep up their public-interest clamor?

Murphy smears an industry on which his state depends

Democrats think Trump is a worse enemy than Iran

Confrontations with bears in Connecticut have been increasing rapidly, and according to the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, there were more than 3,000 last year. These included two attacks on people and 67 of what might be called “bearglaries,” in which the hungry creatures broke into people’s houses. Bear attacks on livestock are up too. 

A few days ago a bear attacked a man as he walked with his dog on his property in North Canaan. He escaped with scratches.

According to the environmental department, Connecticut has far more bear confrontations than neighboring states, though neighboring states are estimated to have more bears than Connecticut’s 1,200 or so. Maybe Connecticut has so many more bear confrontations because, except for Rhode Island, Connecticut’s neighbors allow bear hunting while Connecticut doesn’t.

The increasing conflicts with bears prompted some legislators in the recent session to propose authorizing bear hunting. But the bears have a lobby organization as influential as the government employee unions, and it also frightened the legislators out of protecting the public.

The bear lobby argues that people who put bird feeders in their yards or fail to secure their trash barrels are to blame for the increasing confrontations. Certainly bird feeders and trash barrels are attractions, but as the many “bearglaries” show, removing feeders and securing trash barrels has little deterrent value. Providing access to bird feeders and trash barrels may actually discourage bears from breaking into houses for food.

In any case, the bears are already rampant in Connecticut and won’t be going away on their own. Unmolested and having no natural predators, they will reproduce at an estimated rate of more than two cubs per year per mother. A doubling of the state’s bear population every three years seems possible, with the population pushing steadily into the eastern part of the state. As long as Connecticut’s feckless policy toward bears is only to shoo them into a neighbor’s yard, more confrontations are inevitable, with or without bird feeders and trash cans, and within a decade every town in Connecticut could have a dozen bears as permanent residents. 

Unlike housing developers, bears don’t observe zoning regulations. So odds are that, if state law doesn’t change, bears will be disrupting many suburbs and rural towns long before those towns get their first “affordable” housing.

It’s understandable why government employees come first in Connecticut, far ahead of the public interest. They are numerous and politically organized and have their own political party, so politicians are afraid of them. But why do bears have to come second, still far ahead of the public interest? 

Unlike taxpayers, bears are not an endangered species. Other states manage to stand up to them. Except for the political timidity of the state’s elected officials, why should bears be any more protected in Connecticut than coyotes and poisonous snakes?

WHO NEEDS ‘BABY BONDS’?: A month ago Hartford Mayor Arunam Arulampalam announced he had rounded up an extra $3 million in city funds and various grants for the city’s ever-dysfunctional school system.  

Aleysha Ortiz wants that money instead. She’s the recent graduate of Hartford Public High School who is suing the city because, despite the diploma the school gave her, she was illiterate. She’s suing for damages, and last month her lawyers offered to settle for … $3 million.

If Ortiz wins she’ll have invented a great racket for indifferent students and their neglectful parents. Fail to learn in school, say nothing about it publicly until social promotion graduates you, and then sue and cash in for life. By comparison the “baby bonds” about which state government is so proud will be chump change.

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

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Can Republican state legislators keep up their public-interest clamor?

By CHRIS POWELL

Being so small, the Republican minority in the General Assembly struggles just to be heard. Making a difference is usually out of reach. 

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But the Republicans can take credit for what most state residents may consider the top achievement of the legislature’s recent session: the removal of some secret taxes from Connecticut’s electricity bills, so-called “public benefits” charges that have little or nothing to do with the actual generation and delivery of electricity.

For years the legislature and governors have used the “public benefits” charges to conceal the expense of programs that might not have enough support if they had to be financed by ordinary appropriations and taxes. Stuffing the “public benefits” charges in electricity bills not only raised the money for those programs; it also gave the false but politically desirable impression that electricity rates went up because of the big, bad utility companies. 

It has been years since the utilities made any money generating electricity. State law drove them out of that business and, while most people don’t understand it, the utilities just buy electricity from generation companies on behalf of customers who don’t bother to select their own generator. The utilities can be blamed for their delivery costs but the cost of electricity itself is now set by markets in which residential and business users can shop for the lowest rate, though most don’t.

Connecticut’s largest electric utility, Eversource, has estimated that as much as 20% of electricity bills in the state have represented “public benefits” costs, costs that include the electricity used by people who say they can’t afford their bills and so have gotten state government to pay them. Such welfare expense never should have been charged to electricity users particularly; it should have been placed in the welfare budget and financed by regular taxes. 

Republican legislators long have been clamoring about this issue, and this year they gained traction with it by holding informational meetings around the state, urging people to complain. Many did. Most state residents have been sore that Connecticut has nearly the highest electricity costs in the country, and eventually even Democratic legislators and Governor Lamont supported bipartisan legislation that removed many “public benefits” charges from electricity bills.

But the spending at issue won’t stop, since it is virtually forbidden for state government to economize. Instead much of the “public benefits” spending has been transferred to the regular state budget, where it will be financed not by taxes but by borrowing, as incredible as that may seem. Not only will Connecticut residents still be paying what used to be the “public benefits” charges; they’ll be paying bond interest too. But at least the charges will be paid by a broader base of taxpayers, not just by electricity users.

Connecticut needs Republican legislators to continue their clamor about questionable spending. There is plenty of it but attacking it won’t be as easy as it was to attack high electricity bills, which afflict nearly everyone. For most of the questionable spending is attached to influential special interests, especially government employee unions, which can mobilize far more dependents than the so-called environmentalists who believe that the “public benefits” charges are necessary to save the world. Since Connecticut is a one-party state, these special interests now are closely tied to the ruling party, the Democrats.

Even so, a public interest endures in Connecticut, and it isn’t complicated to articulate it. It just requires the courage to defy the special interests and figure out how to gain publicity amid news organizations that are almost as connected to the ruling party as the special interests are.

Since Republican legislators are a small minority, obliging the special interests won’t get them anywhere. For Republicans have nothing to offer them. But even unarticulated, the public interest is vast, and as the Republicans just showed with the electricity issue, and showed six years ago when they assisted the grassroots movement against reinstating highway tolls, the public interest is powerful when mobilized. 

There’s nothing to do but keep trying.

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

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