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) 

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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)

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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)

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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)

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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)

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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.

——

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

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What nominated Mamdani in New York City is trouble here too

By Chris Powell

Far-leftists in Connecticut’s Democratic Party are so excited by Zohran Mamdani’s victory in the Democratic primary for mayor of New York City that they are starting to think about challenging Governor Lamont if he seeks the party’s nomination for a third term. 

Murphy smears an industry on which his state depends

Democrats think Trump is a worse enemy than Iran

If only Connecticut Democrats hated crime as much as gun rights

Having vetoed unemployment compensation for strikers and a housing bill that, while cheered by the left, was more bluff than substance, the governor has just polished his reputation as a moderate at the expense of leftist support. But Lamont’s reputation as a moderate is still overdone. He has pledged to keep giving the state employee unions everything they want and he remains as much a supporter of illegal immigration, transgenderism, and political correctness as any leftist.

Though Mamdani’s victory scares moderate Democrats as well as the political right, it too may be overdone. For Mamdani’s two top opponents in the primary were badly compromised. A federal criminal indictment, canceled by President Trump, caused Mayor Eric Adams to withdraw from the Democratic primary and to try get re-elected as an independent instead. That left former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, disgraced by a sexual harassment scandal that forced him to resign four years ago.

By some calculations Mamdani’s vote total in the primary was only 9% of all New York City voters, and it’s a long way to Election Day with plenty of time for Adams or a Republican nominee to seize the flag of moderation. There’s also plenty of time for Mamdani’s critics to mock his public record and the likely expense of his platform.

Like many on the left, Mamdani believes that nearly everything desirable should and can be free. He wants free public transit, free child care, a freeze on apartment rents (but not a freeze on the expenses landlords must pay), and groceries subsidized by city-operated supermarkets. 

Who is to pay for all this? Not the recipients of the goodies but “the rich,” on whom Mamdani would raise taxes — if he could, but he can’t, since New York City income tax rates are set by state government, not city government. That is, his platform is a fraud.

But Mamdani has a point, and it resonates especially with city residents: The cost of living is too high. Indeed it is, and not just in New York City but in many other places, like Connecticut. Unfortunately, like most leftists, Mamdani is not interested in bringing costs down; he just wants to transfer them to others, perpetuating a vicious cycle.

That cycle began with government driving up the cost of living, especially the cost of housing, with inflation and taxes, crushing the poor and the once-middle class. This caused people to seek more free stuff and subsidies from government, prompting government to oblige (and, of course, to grow), thereby driving inflation and taxes up more, causing people to demand still more subsidies and free stuff and government to oblige, and so on.

Why can’t so many people afford to feed themselves and care for their children anymore? Why haven’t wages kept up with inflation?

These questions don’t interest elected officials, probably because they would implicate themselves by asking. But answers can be inferred.

Wages aren’t keeping up with inflation because work skills aren’t, since public education, having reduced itself to social promotion, is not producing as many people equipped to support themselves and their children. 

Welfare policy has wrecked the family, depriving millions of homes of fathers and breadwinners. 

Government’s mistaken financial priorities, like the supremacy of government employee unions, has diverted money from important services to the public. 

The admission of millions of illegal immigrants has depressed the wage base for the less-skilled labor being produced by public education.     

Mamdani’s victory is a measure of New York City’s impoverishment by government. People will always vote for free stuff if the plan is to get someone else to pay for it, and, as the French economist Frederic Bastiat discerned long ago, government is the great fiction by which everybody tries to live at the expense of everybody else.

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

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Murphy smears an industry on which his state depends

By Chris Powell

To hear Connecticut U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy tell it, President Trump dispatched Air Force bombers and Navy submarines to destroy Iran’s nuclear bomb-making facilities because the “war industry” is so influential in Washington.

Democrats think Trump is a worse enemy than Iran

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On the leftist-leaning MSNBC cable television network the other day, the senator agreed with his interviewer’s suggestion that there was a big gap between the opinion of Democratic members of Congress and the opinion of ordinary Democrats about the attack on Iran, with Democrats in Congress far less opposed to it than ordinary party members.

“There is a war industry in this town,” Murphy said of Washington. “There’s a lot of people who make money off war. The military — I love them, they’re capable — but they are always overly optimistic about what they can do. … The war industry spends a lot of money here in Washington telling us that the guns and the tanks and the planes can solve all our problems.”

“All our problems”? That was hyperbole worthy of President Trump. 

Of course there is a “military-industrial complex,” as President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned as he left office in January 1961. But it just wants its products to be manufactured and purchased by the government and cares little about whether they are actually used. 

Contrary to Murphy’s suggestion, Trump didn’t consult military contractors about attacking Iran. The president may have had mixed motives, including bad ones — like the desire to be seen as a tough guy and war leader decades after evading the military draft — but pleasing the “war industry” wasn’t one of them. 

While Eisenhower’s remark long has been construed as scorn for military contractors, he actually acknowledged their necessity. He had been a general of the Army when the United States found itself badly unprepared for the world war into which it was dragged in December 1941.

On reflection Eisenhower said: “Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action. … We can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense. We have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. … This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. … Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. … In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.”

The “war industry” that Senator Murphy accuses of complicity in Trump’s attack on Iran includes jet-engine manufacturer Pratt & Whitney in East Hartford and Middletown, for which 1st District U.S. Rep. John B. Larson is always cheerleading. It includes nuclear-submarine maker Electric Boat in Groton, for which 2nd District U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney spends much time supplicating. And it includes Sikorsky Aircraft in Stratford, whose fortunes are guarded by 3rd District U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro. 

In turn Pratt is a subsidiary of Raytheon, EB a subsidiary of General Dynamics, and Sikorsky a subsidiary of Lockheed-Martin, all giants of military contracting.

Yet Larson, Courtney, and DeLauro, all Democrats like Murphy, quickly expressed opposition to Trump’s attack on Iran. While they also voted against impeaching the president for the attack, their voting to impeach Trump for disregarding the War Powers Act when they had condoned similar violations by Democratic presidents might have seemed hypocritical. 

Serious journalism might ask Murphy if his Democratic colleagues in Connecticut, so supportive of the military contractors in their districts, are tools of the “war industry” he thinks induced the president to attack Iran.

Eisenhower was right. As totalitarian nations pursue ever-more devastating weapons, the United States needs to keep ahead of them, even if this country doesn’t need as many nuclear warheads as it has. Whether and how to use those weapons will always be a matter of judgment for elected officials. 

By scapegoating military contractors to gain more approval on the far left, Murphy showed his lack of judgment and exceeded Trump’s own posturing and demagoguery.

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

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Democrats think Trump is a worse enemy than Iran

By Chris Powell

Members of Connecticut’s congressional delegation are probably right that President Trump should have sought the approval of Congress before launching last weekend’s attacks on Iran’s nuclear bomb-making infrastructure. That is the clear implication of the Constitution’s placing with Congress the power to declare war, and it is the command of the federal War Powers Act. 

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But then most of Connecticut’s members of Congress, all Democrats, were in office and offered little objection when Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, both Democrats, went around the world bombing stuff. Without formal congressional approval, Clinton ordered attacks on Kosovo, Sudan, and Afghanistan, and Obama ordered attacks on Libya and Syria.

But Trump is a Republican.

Of course in principle democracy requires the public’s ratification of decisions to go to war, and the United States now is openly at war with Iran. Vice President J.D. Vance’s contention that the United States is not at war with Iran but with its nuclear bomb-making program is a distinction without a difference, just an articulation of war aims. More to the point, as a practical matter Iran has been at war with the United States for many years, insofar as Iran, as Trump noted last weekend, is the world’s main sponsor of terrorism and this terrorism has killed many U.S. citizens.

Also as a practical matter, Congress retains control over the war with its power of the purse. It can pass legislation forbidding spending for war against Iran. 

But the legal questions are separate from the question of what the U.S. position toward Iran should be. So far the Connecticut delegation has failed on that question.

U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy says Iran poses no immediate threat to the United States. That is contradicted by the many years of Iran’s sponsoring terrorism against Americans and others. Additionally, if the United States has an interest in a stable and peaceful Middle East, where so much of the world’s oil is produced and where the United States has formal or informal allies, Iran’s long campaign of subversion there is very much a threat to this country.

Criticizing Trump’s attack on Iran, U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney quotes Gen. David Petraeus’ query about the second war with Iran’s neighbor, Iraq: “Tell me how this ends.”

This is not really profound. For the second war with Iraq was an invasion, a land war of conquest with thousands of soldiers pursuing imagined “weapons of mass destruction” as well as “regime change.” No one, at least not yet, is advocating the conquest of Iran, whose regime is built on oil installations that can be easily destroyed from a distance with bombs and missiles without conquest.

Yes, there’s no telling how far Iran will go with retaliation. But there long has been good reason to fear that the end sought by an unmolested Iran would be mass murder, especially in Israel, whose destruction the ayatollahs long have pledged and have been very tempted by, Israel being so small geographically, a “one-bomb country.”

Trump says the war with Iran ends with Iran’s capacity to make nuclear weapons, but that is wishful thinking. Even without nuclear weapons Iran’s theocratic fascist regime may remain in power, continuing its terrorism and subversion, chanting “Death to America” along with “Death to Israel,” and pursuing an objective that is broader still — the forced religious conversion of the entire world. If the ayatollahs stay in power, they are sure to continue their war even without nuclear weapons.

The United States is a continental country, not a one-bomb country. But even one nuclear bomb — detonated in Washington or New York or another city — could inflict catastrophic damage that might last a century. Democratic leaders, most still supporting open borders, through which such a bomb might pass, should reflect on this danger, as the Israelis long have been reflecting on it while being attacked by Iran’s proxies. 

At last the Israelis have drawn the proper conclusion. But the only conclusion Connecticut’s Democrats seem able to draw is that if Trump did it, it must be wrong.   

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

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