Connecticut doesn’t need more meat; and why unionize government?

By Chris Powell

Environmentalists think that raising cattle for meat and milk harms the environment. Animal rights advocates and vegetarians think that eating living creatures is immoral. They have a point but the political struggle has not been going their way, especially since the world always confronts hunger and famine somewhere. 

Tong’s bluster on inflation scapegoats supermarkets

Is anyone really governor? And the solution is parents

State employees win again, electricity customers lose

So eventually the General Assembly may pass and the governor may sign legislation to allow the farmers in the state to raise and butcher rabbits and sell their meat for food. The argument is that some people would like locally butchered rabbit meat, rabbit meat is a staple in some cultures, and raising rabbits for meat might help sustain some farms as agriculture is declining.

It’s a weak argument.

Rabbits are said to be the third most popular companionate animals after dogs and cats. Rabbits have greater intelligence than many animals, they have a social nature, they can be trained to some extent, and they show loyalty to their owners. While some cultures eat rabbits, some also eat dogs and cats, and federal law prohibits the commercial slaughter and sale of dogs and cats for meat, presumably because of their suitability as pets.

So why shouldn’t rabbits be protected against raising and slaughter for food as dogs and cats are?

It’s not as if the country doesn’t have enough meat. Huge amounts of beef, pork, poultry, and fish are produced commercially. Nor does the country lack for the killing of sentient creatures and its coarsening of the culture. State government doesn’t need the expense it would incur with the commercial farming of rabbits for meat — inspection by the Agriculture Department of the farms and slaughtering facilities.

People in Connecticut hungry for rabbit meat can buy it from out of state via the internet or hunt the creatures themselves in the countryside, as they can hunt and butcher deer. But when there is plenty to eat and no overpopulation of annoying or dangerous wild animals, killing without necessity should be opposed.

*

Having just shrugged off his inability to compel state government employees to return to their normal workplaces, a consequence of the collective bargaining that hobbles state and municipal government in Connecticut and increases its costs, Governor Lamont should note the remarkable reform just enacted in Utah.  

The Beehive State has prohibited collective bargaining for government employees.

This doesn’t mean that state and municipal employees in Utah can’t organize and agitate about their compensation and working conditions. It doesn’t mean that government in Utah won’t pay attention to the desires and grievances of its employees. It means only that the agitation by Utah’s state and municipal employees won’t have the support of collective bargaining law — that state and municipal government won’t have to recognize and negotiate with unions formed by their employees.

That is, government in Utah will be free to put the public interest first in public administration and not be like Connecticut, where the public works for the government instead of the other way around — where the governor lacks the authority to order state employees to return to their workplaces.

Of course since Connecticut’s government employee unions control the majority political party, no serious reforms for government efficiency are likely here. But Utah’s example should prompt a few brave legislators in Connecticut to ask some critical questions.

How exactly is the public interest in Connecticut served by collective bargaining for government employees and the state’s binding arbitration law, which makes the union interest equal to the public interest when government employee compensation and working conditions are determined? 

How does the public benefit from collective bargaining’s constant evisceration of workplace discipline? 

How does the public benefit from the political machine that state law establishes and subsidizes with government employees to work against the public interest, as when union officials who are nominally state employees are paid by the state to do union work and politicking instead?  

Or is the main purpose of collective bargaining for government employees in Connecticut just to keep their political party in power? 

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

-END-

Tong’s bluster on inflation scapegoats supermarkets

By Chris Powell

Democratic politicians keep trying to blame inflation on manufacturers, landlords, insurance companies, and nearly everyone else in business. Most fervent in his scapegoating is Connecticut Attorney General William Tong.

Last week Tong, a Democrat, proposed legislation requiring food producers and supermarkets to put special labels on products whose packaging shrinks without an equivalent reduction in price — that is, products afflicted by “shrinkflation.” Tong calls “shrinkflation” a deceptive practice.

Is anyone really governor? And the solution is parents

State employees win again, electricity customers lose

A ‘moral budget’ needs more than pious poses

He underestimates the public’s intelligence. Few people may understand where inflation comes from, but most keenly notice its effects at supermarkets and in many other financial transactions. Inflation was a major issue in last November’s election. Smaller packaging isn’t fooling many people.

Maybe some food producers intend “shrinkflation” as deception, but it’s mostly something else — realism in marketing. Producers may have realized that their customers can’t afford as much as they used to buy and so may not always buy if the old, larger packaging carries a higher price. People don’t have to look too closely to see “shrinkflation” in many other places where they also get less for their money. With government, they often have paid more in taxes without getting more in services — another form of “shrinkflation.”

Since they have to do their own purchasing of raw materials and labor, producers are victims of inflation too.

At the producer level the U.S. economy isn’t as competitive as it should be. There has been too much consolidation and too little enforcement of antitrust law, and this has pushed up prices. But the big cause of inflation is the explosion in the money supply following the worldwide virus epidemic, particularly the explosion of the supply of U.S. dollars that has been caused by unprecedented borrowing by the federal government. 

Growth in the money supply and government spending has far outpaced production of goods and services. Today the federal government bestows all sorts of goodies on people without a thought as to how they should be financed. It is just assumed that everything new can be financed by borrowing, which is money creation since the bonds are purchased by the Federal Reserve and foreign governments.          

It’s not quite as bad on the state level, but bad enough, since so much state government spending is financed not by state taxes but by federal inflation money. 

Debt and inflation have soared during both Democratic and Republican national administrations. President Trump is making a spectacle of trying to reduce federal spending, but while the federal government is indeed full of patronage, graft, and waste, Trump’s own budget will keep federal debt soaring. Despite their party’s old reputation for financial responsibility, Republicans are now as addicted to inflation financing as Democrats long have been.

But last week with his choice of scapegoats — food producers and supermarkets — Attorney General Tong seemed to have forgotten that Republicans now are in control of the federal government and thus more responsible for inflation than Democrats. Additionally, last week inflation was reported to be rising substantially again.

So as a political matter Tong is now free to put the blame for inflation where it belongs — on the federal government and the other political party. Or is Tong worried that, if he stops scapegoating and tells the truth about inflation, some people might remember when the Democrats are back in power?

The attorney general could do much more to reduce consumer prices in Connecticut if he examined the state’s liquor industry.

The industry enjoys a huge “barrier to entry” — limits on retailing licenses, which defeat competition. Supermarkets are allowed to sell beer but not wine and liquor, though most people would like the convenience of one-stop shopping.

The liquor industry also enjoys state-mandated minimum prices on alcoholic beverages, defeating competition again.

Opposing the desire of supermarkets to sell wine, a lobbyist for the liquor stores says, “We just want to be left alone.” Nonsense — the liquor stores desperately want state government to keep enforcing their exemptions from competition. These exemptions would be fat targets for a populist politician. Tong’s bluster doesn’t make him one.

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

 

Is anyone really governor? And the solution is parents

By Chris Powell

Interviewed this week by WTIC-AM1080 morning host Brian Shactman, Governor Lamont remarked that state government is in good condition. But as the conversation turned to the loss of vibrancy in the cities, with so many former office workers now working from home, the governor noted that he wanted office workers, including state government employees, to return to their workplaces. In regard to the state employees, he added, “I lost in arbitration.”

Connecticut tells students they needn’t go to school

State employees win again, electricity customers lose

A ‘moral budget’ needs more than pious poses

So how good can the condition of state government be when its chief executive lacks the authority even to get its employees to return to their workplaces?

While the governor seemed to shrug off the situation, his expression of haplessness should have mortified people in the radio audience who want their government to work for the public and not the public to work for their government.

The leader of the Republican minority in the state House of Representatives, Rep. Vincent J. Candelora of North Branford, has proposed legislation to empower state government agencies to require their employees to work in state government offices. But Democrats overwhelmingly control the General Assembly and its Labor Committee, to which Candelora’s bill has been referred, and the state employee unions overwhelmingly control Democratic legislators generally and those on the Labor Committee particularly.

So does the governor want really want state employees back in their workplaces, to improve both state government’s efficiency and the environment of the cities? Or was he just striking a pose? Does the governor really want, instead, the continued support of the state employee unions during his prospective campaign for re-election next year? 

He will answer the questions by insisting on passage of Candelora’s bill — or by winking as it is discarded.

* * *

Years ago many people who worried about social conditions, including Connecticut U.S. Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, complained that television programs and movies had gotten too violent and sexually explicit, that children were spending too much time watching them, and that such entertainment was coarsening the culture and inspiring bad and even criminal behavior.

The Oklahoma newspaper publisher and columnist Jenkin Lloyd Jones may have lamented it best. “We are drowning our youngsters in violence, cynicism, and sadism, piped into the living room and even the nursery,” Jones wrote. “The grandchildren of the kids who used to weep because the Little Match Girl froze to death now feel cheated if she isn’t slugged, raped, and thrown into a Bessemer converter.”

Jones and Lieberman were right but little came of it, since sex and violence sell, money is hard to resist, and having government fix the problem might have involved unconstitutional censorship. The problem really was for parents to solve, but many parents preferred to use television as a babysitter, whether the kids were watching “Sesame Street” or “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.”

These days social media are said to be bigger causes of psychological disturbance in children than television. So Connecticut Attorney General William Tong and some state legislators want state government to regulate social media to reduce their appeal to children.

There will be constitutional problems with this too, as well as practical problems, since social media technology is so much more advanced . Young people probably will figure out how to evade any regulation, creating an endless cycle of regulation and evasion even as state government already has more than enough to do. 

As with television years ago, the real problem with social media is a lack of parenting. Children have cell phones, computers, and internet service only if their parents provide them. Educators are discovering that the distractions and conflicts caused by social media can be eliminated just by banning cell phones in school.

But the attorney general and the legislators proposing to regulate social media excuse parents from responsibility. While many children these days have only one parent, if that many, regulation of social media by parents would be far more effective and fairer than regulation by government. Parents should not be excused. 

But then it’s much easier for politicians to scold businesses than their own constituents.

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

-END-

Connecticut tells students they needn’t go to school

By CHRIS POWELL

According to the recent results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a test given to students in fourth and eighth grades throughout the country and styled “The Nation’s Report Card,” Connecticut’s students are performing worse in reading and math than in 2019, before the national virus epidemic, which disastrously interrupted schooling nearly everywhere.

State employees win again, electricity customers lose

A ‘moral budget’ needs more than pious poses

Ending poverty isn’t the aim of state policy; enlarging it is

Connecticut’s scores remain slightly above the national average, but the scores of many states now are higher than Connecticut’s. The Yankee Institute’s Andrew Fowler reports that Connecticut’s fourth-graders rank 18th in math and eighth in reading, while the state’s eighth-graders rank 17th in math and fifth in reading.

Only 42% of the state’s fourth-graders are “proficient” in math and only 36% in reading. Among eighth-graders, only 36% are “proficient” in math and only 35% in reading.

It seems unlikely that Connecticut’s students will ever catch up. So why can’t the state improve?

Maybe it’s because the most damaging aspect of the epidemic wasn’t the interruption to schooling caused by the closings that were demanded by teacher unions and conceded by feckless municipal officials. Maybe the most damaging aspect of the epidemic was the advertising it did for Connecticut’s only consistent policy of public education: social promotion. 

That is, nearly every student who lost a year of education found himself advanced to the next grade or graduated anyway. This was a proclamation to unmotivated students and neglectful parents that there is no need to learn. 

Of course long before the epidemic students got hints of social promotion if they noticed that their most ignorant and disruptive peers were being advanced along with them. But the mass advancement of the uneducated emphasized that academic and behavioral standards had been abandoned.

Neglectful parents surely noticed this before conscientious parents did, since schools had relieved them of responsibility for their children. This explains the sharp increase in the chronic absenteeism of students, especially in impoverished cities. For why go to school when education doesn’t count even in school itself, when school is used mainly for babysitting? So chronic absenteeism is worst among older students, who can fend for themselves outside school.

But by now even many conscientious parents may have noticed the phoniness of public education in Connecticut, what with the scandal of the Hartford Public High School graduate who last September confessed to the Connecticut Mirror that she is illiterate. Now she is suing for $3 million in damages.

Originally Hartford School Superintendent Leslie Torres-Rodriguez said she would investigate and report about the illiterate graduate’s case, but she has decided to retire instead. The most recent word about the case from the commissioner of the state Education Department, Charlene M. Russell-Tucker, was that the Hartford school system was obstructing her own investigation. 

The Education Department has expressed no great concern about the long decline in student performance. The department and most state legislators seem more concerned about keeping illegal immigrant children in school.

Even impoverished Louisiana is trying harder than Connecticut. In recent years Louisiana has risen in national education rankings and now is endeavoring to stop social promotion at third grade with intensive tutoring. Most educators in Connecticut don’t even think social promotion is a problem.

Student underperformance and chronic absenteeism are, with poverty, most severe among minority groups in cities. Yet, astoundingly, three state representatives from impoverished and heavily minority cities propose to make underperformance and chronic absenteeism even worse.

The legislators — Reps. Juan Candelaria, D-New Haven; Christopher Rosario, D-Bridgeport; and Geraldo Reyes, D-Waterbury — have introduced a bill to give all Connecticut students a holiday on Three Kings Day, a festival popular with Puerto Ricans.

Some Connecticut school systems already take a holiday on Three Kings Day, including those in Hartford, Bridgeport, New Haven, Waterbury, East Hartford, Manchester, and Windham — municipalities where chronic absenteeism is already high, student performance is low, and much more schooling, not less, is badly needed. 

A serious education system might link school holidays to student performance, granting them only when earned by proof of learning, not distributing them as ethnic patronage.

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

-END-

State employees win again, electricity customers lose

By Chris Powell

Since it would widen state government’s “fiscal guardrails” enough to increase spending by 3.8% in its first year and 4.6% in its second, Governor Lamont’s budget proposal for 2025-26 has plenty of room for winners. Who are they?

A ‘moral budget’ needs more than pious poses

Ending poverty isn’t the aim of state policy; enlarging it is

Stewart goes for governor with giddy superficiality

First, of course, are state employees. While the governor didn’t mention them in his budget address to the General Assembly last week and news reports don’t seem to have mentioned them either, the Yankee Institute’s Meghan Portfolio reports that his budget provides more than $370 million for raises for state employees even though their pay already has increased 33% since Lamont took office in 2019.

It’s not that Connecticut needs to keep paying big raises or any raises to maintain an adequate state government workforce. The raises are just the price of keeping the 45,000 unionized state employees and their thousands of spouses and dependents voting Democratic in next year’s state election.

State education aid to municipalities would rise and the state property tax credit to homeowners would go up $50 from $300, though as always the tax credit may just facilitate raising municipal government spending and taxes. The tax credit isn’t the fabled property tax “reform.” Indeed, there never will be any. Property tax “reform” is just the euphemism for raising other taxes.

The budget proposes more money for “special education” for disadvantaged students but not the state takeover that fairness demands for the cities, where those students are concentrated. 

State government would arrange supportive housing and therapy for 500 more homeless or addicted people.

Tradespeople would enjoy the elimination of their state licensing fees.

The budget would cover free breakfasts for all public school students, a boon especially for poor and neglectful households.

Strangely, the governor proposes to activate an endowment fund from which free pre-school would be financed for as many as 20,000 poor children in seven years. If pre-school is necessary, it should be built into school systems now and financed ordinarily with the rest of schooling.

As for the losers, large corporations would be taxed more and the 10% surcharge on the regular corporation tax would be extended again though it was supposed to be repealed years ago. Encouraging business does not rank high in this budget. 

The governor proposes far less money for higher education than the public colleges and universities wanted, but they are bloated and arrogant, as shown by the recent scandal involving the expense accounts of administrators in the State Colleges and Universities System. The governor took a well-deserved shot at them. 

The University of Connecticut and the State Colleges and Universities System “have excellent faculty,” the governor said, “but our colleges must focus on the students first, and the importance of higher education does not exempt our universities from making sure that taxpayers and students are getting the best value. They should not be immune to reform, and Connecticut State in particular must reimagine how we train our workforce for 21st-century jobs. Their student population is down 30%, most students don’t graduate, and costs keep escalating.”

While the governor’s budget proposes some overdue increases in Medicaid reimbursements for doctors treating the indigent, the state’s hospitals see disaster in the spending he proposes for them. Legislators may give the governor trouble here.

Riders of public transit buses and the Metro-North commuter rail line would face rate increases, but then it has been years since fares were raised.

Nonprofit social-service agencies doing what is essentially state government work would get an increase but not much even as state employees would get big raises again. The nonprofits just don’t do enough work for the Democratic Party.

Perhaps most disappointing to state residents who don’t make a habit of besieging the state Capitol with their hands out and instead just sullenly pay their taxes, the governor had nothing to say about the state’s high electricity rates, which are so high in large part because of dishonest state policy that hides taxes in electric bills. 

Legislators should push this issue into the budget as they rewrite it.

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

-END-

A ‘moral budget’ needs more than pious poses

By Chris Powell

Members of the clergy held a press conference at the state Capitol this week to protest restraint in state government spending, the infamous “fiscal guardrails.” They called for a “moral budget” — that is, a lot more spending on social services, schools, and housing.

Ending poverty isn’t the aim of state policy; enlarging it is

Stewart goes for governor with giddy superficiality

Trump and Democrats trade license for lawlessness

A Unitarian minister from Manchester charged that restraint with the state budget is “impoverishing the people.” He complained that state government is trying too hard to reduce the vast unfunded liabilities of its pension system.

A Baptist minister from Hartford agreed, screeching that state government “is trying to inflict a crisis on the welfare of the people.”

While the clergy members implied that state government should let the unfunded pension liabilities rise, they didn’t specify where the extra social-services money should come from. Of course if pressed they probably would call for raising taxes on “the rich,” but “the rich” and the comfortable already pay nearly all state income taxes.

Setting tax rates is serious business. They should be set according to a calculation of what is fair and effective and doesn’t scare taxpayers away, not according to how much more money is needed to satisfy any interest group at the moment.  

But if state government’s commitment to pension solvency is obstructing a “moral budget,” the clergy members should examine the pension fund problem closely in search of a balanced solution.

After all, the less that pensions are properly funded, the longer that pension payments will have to be drawn from taxes into the future, thereby diverting state tax revenue from other purposes. Conversely, the sooner pensions are properly funded, the sooner more state tax revenue will be available.  

Additionally, state government’s pension fund is a function of state employee salaries, which have increased by a rather extravagant 33% since Governor Lamont took office seven years ago. State employee insurance coverage and fringe benefits remain high as well. 

If the compensation of state employees wasn’t so high, the burden of properly funding their pensions wouldn’t be as high either and more money would be available elsewhere in government. 

So would the clergy members favor economizing with state employees for a while with a salary freeze, as Republican state legislators propose? Would the clergy members favor economizing anywhere in state government so the budget could be made more “moral”?

Indeed, why provide state government employees with defined-benefit pensions at all? Why not have state government just make limited contributions to the individual retirement accounts of state employees, the retirement plans that are presumed good enough for most people in the private sector? This would save billions. Why should state government employees be treated so much more generously than taxpayers?

Such are the questions governors and legislators must ask themselves whenever they devise a budget. Of course they seldom think very critically; usually they just yield to special-interest pressure. But even when they decide which special interests to please and which to disappoint, they realize that, as the old saying goes, “to govern is to choose,” and that Charles de Gaulle was right with his elaboration: “To govern is always to choose among disadvantages.”

In contrast, it often seems that belonging to the clergy in Connecticut does not involve choosing at all but just striking pious poses, as if God is fooled as easily as their congregations.

PUT THE CROSS AWAY: A teacher in a public school in New Britain is striking a pious pose too. She has been suspended for refusing the superintendent’s directive to remove a large crucifix she displayed beside her classroom desk, and now is suing to get her job back, claiming First Amendment freedom of religion.

But freedom of religion isn’t the freedom to promote religion on the job in a public school, an environment that, under the same amendment, must be religiously neutral. If, as the teacher says, she wants to look at a cross occasionally for strength and comfort, she can keep one in a desk drawer out of everyone’s sight but her own.    

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

Ending poverty isn’t the aim of state policy; enlarging it is

By Chris Powell

Nearly everyone on state government’s payroll, directly or indirectly, is beseeching Governor Lamont and the General Assembly to loosen the “fiscal guardrails” that have constrained spending and have allowed state pension funds to grow slightly faster than their obligations.

Stewart goes for governor with giddy superficiality

Trump and Democrats trade license for lawlessness

‘Intervention’ in Bridgeport is just cover for a bailout

Leading the clamor to spend more are social-service groups and their legislative allies. They want the state’s Medicaid program to cover diapers. They want another $9 million for community food banks, contending that more than 10% of Connecticut’s population is “food insecure.” And they advocate a $600 “refundable tax credit” for low-income households, cash for people who don’t pay income taxes.

They hold news conferences where they cheer and congratulate each other as if they don’t understand the disaster behind their proposals: the explosion of poverty in a state that purports to be doing well. 

The proposals indicate otherwise — that more people can’t support themselves and their children, even if for years now state government has not seemed to expect people to. Households headed by a single woman with little education and income and no significant job skills but with several young children to support are often cited in news reports as if their poverty is surprising. 

Such poverty is surprising only insofar as Connecticut simultaneously glories in free, round-the-clock contraception and abortion. Indeed, last week the governor grandly announced the state’s first contraceptives vending machine.

But the cause of the worsening poverty seems not to interest advocates of the new spending. Nor do they seem to wonder why poverty has worsened despite government’s longstanding programs to alleviate it.

State government’s bookkeeping is well monitored by the auditors of public accounts, but its policies and programs are seldom audited for results. Appropriating and bestowing money have become ends in themselves.

Breaking away from Trumpian Republicanism, Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan, once a top aide to President Ronald Reagan, offered some advice to Democrats last week. “Most of all,” she wrote, “make something work. You run nearly every great city in the nation. Make one work — clean it up, control crime, smash corruption, educate the kids.”

Noonan meant well but misunderstands the situation. For from the Democratic perspective, the cities they control work very well — they create and sustain the hapless underclass that is the rationale for the government class and that produces the election pluralities on which the party of the government class relies. A self-sufficient population is not the policy objective; perpetual dependence on government is.

For what else can explain the 60-year decline of cities in Connecticut and nationally and the horrifying failure of their schools? After all this time the people in charge can’t be so stupid to have missed this. They must be assumed to intend the most obvious results of their administration. Auditing the results would call those longstanding policies and programs into question and compel a change not just in policies and programs but a change in regime. 

So results must not be calculated. For prosperity isn’t political power in Connecticut anymore. Poverty is.

‘SANCTUARY’ IN NEW LONDON: Now that the federal government is starting to enforce immigration law again, some cities are declaring that they really aren’t “sanctuary” cities after all, or at least that they don’t want to be known as such, lest the Trump administration try to penalize them for obstructing enforcement. 

Among these cities is New London, where Mayor Michael Passero recently told the city’s newspaper, The Day, that while the city has a reputation as a “sanctuary” city, the City Council’s 2018 resolution on immigration doesn’t mention “sanctuary” at all and says only that the city will observe state and federal law and be a welcoming place.

In a technical sense the mayor is right. But then everyone in authority in New London seems to support Connecticut’s “Trust Act,” which forbids municipal police from most cooperation with federal immigration authorities. Since the “Trust Act” makes Connecticut a “sanctuary” state, all its municipalities are “sanctuary” cities. “Welcoming” is euphemism and no defense.

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

-END-

Stewart goes for governor with giddy superficiality

By Chris Powell

Outlining last week her potential candidacy for the Republican nomination for governor, New Britain’s Republican mayor, Erin Stewart, said that while her likely Democratic opponent, Governor Lamont, is a nice guy, “he’s not evoking excitement in anyone.”

But hadn’t Connecticut just had too much excitement from the first few days of the new administration of President Donald Trump? Who wants more?

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Asked what she would do differently than Lamont, Stewart chirped, “Everything!” — which was just evasion. 

Stewart couldn’t say much more for herself than that she had revived New Britain in her 11 years as mayor, as if the governor hadn’t been a big help with that, and that Connecticut needs a “new generation of leadership,” as if anyone cares much that she is 37 and the governor is 71. 

Any Republican who can win six elections for mayor in a city as Democratic as New Britain must have at least congeniality going for her, but as Stewart introduced her potential candidacy she was giddy and superficial. Like any Republican running for governor in a state as Democratic as Connecticut, Stewart will have to give voters better reasons to replace the entrenched regime. 

There are such reasons, but if, as expected, Lamont seeks a third term next year, his not being as exciting as Trump won’t be one of them. Those reasons will have to involve policy and arise from insightful analysis that explodes the conventional wisdom that Connecticut is in great shape and offers compelling alternatives.

Since Connecticut’s Republican Party has been reduced to a small minority in the General Assembly and lacks any statewide constitutional officers or members of Congress, maybe wishful thinking will persuade it that a bright, young personality is its best chance. After all, there is no one of much renown and ambition on the party’s bench. 

But whoever the Republican nominee is, giddy superficiality will wear thin fast, especially since news organizations won’t give any Republican the fawning treatment they give Democrats. 

SCAPEGOATING ISN’T FREE: New Haven’s firing of four police officers involved in the case of an arrested man who became paralyzed during his transport to police headquarters in 2022 was politically correct. But it has started to cost the city money.

The officer who drove the van carrying the man has been reinstated by the state Board of Mediation and Arbitration, which determined that firing him was grossly excessive for his supposed offense. The officer continued to drive the van to police headquarters instead of waiting for an ambulance after the man complained he had been badly injured, his neck broken when the van stopped short to avoid a collision and he went flying off his seat. The van’s passenger compartment had no seatbelts.

So the state board replaced the officer’s firing with a 15-day unpaid suspension, and now he will receive a year and a half of back pay.

The state board has upheld the firing of an officer who was accused of treating the injured man callously at headquarters. The appeals of the two other fired officers continue.

It was a terrible incident and the city paid the man $45 million to settle his damage lawsuit, but the proximate cause of his injury wasn’t any misconduct by officers but the city’s longstanding failure to install seatbelts in prisoner vans. City government made scapegoats of the officers to satisfy public anger.

So now New Haven will pay for city government’s negligence a second time.

PROFITABLE PUNISHMENT: An employee of the state Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services has been charged with creating fraudulent voter registration cards during a registration event in Torrington last September. She is accused of changing party affiliation entries on the cards from unaffiliated or Republican to Democratic.

Judging from recent state government employee disciplinary cases in the Public Defender Services Commission, the Administrative Services Department, and the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, she could be in big trouble. That is, she may be facing a year or two of paid leave.      

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

-END-

Trump and Democrats trade license for lawlessness

By Chris Powell

What exactly was President Trump up to this week when he tried to impose a “temporary suspension” on federal government grant payments? His people said it was to make sure that such payments align with the policies of his new administration. 

‘Intervention’ in Bridgeport is just cover for a bailout

Alphabet people needn’t be so terrified in Connecticut

Could Lamont ask Trump for help with electricity prices?

Surely many grants are stupid political patronage. Indeed, a few decades ago — back when liberal Democrats could recognize stupidity — a liberal Democratic senator from Wisconsin, William Proxmire, became famous for the “Golden Fleece Awards” he bestowed on stupid federal spending.

But if the grants to be temporarily suspended are authorized by federal appropriations law, it is hard to square their suspension with the president’s constitutional duty to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.”

Dozens of lawyers, including Connecticut’s attorney general, rushed into court and won an injunction to keep the money flowing. They may prevail if the case is tried. After all, why did the Trump administration have to terrify everyone by suspending everything at once instead of identifying and acting on proper targets, if any, one at a time?

Probably the president wanted to show he’s ready to extort his adversaries and make them beg him for priority clearance of their constituents’ funding. 

In any case Trump’s people had been warning that the president’s power is enormous and that it would be costly to cross the new Republican administration. 

So here we are. The courts will sort it out.

Maybe the most pathetic thing in all this that the officials denouncing Trump for acting unconstitutionally, for neglecting to see that the laws are faithfully executed, are the same ones who lately have been striving to obstruct enforcement of federal immigration law, where, remarkably, Trump is doing his duty. 

Unfortunately this hypocritical group has much representation in Democratic Connecticut, including Governor Lamont, Attorney General William Tong, and New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker. Just a few days earlier the governor had thrown himself into the ranks of the nullifiers and insurrectionists, pointedly telling all immigrants, legal and illegal, well-meaning and evil-intentioned alike, “You’re welcome here.”

That is, Connecticut doesn’t care about observing federal law — or didn’t until Trump tried to suspend the state’s federal grants. Trump’s obstruction of federal law is bad but Connecticut’s is good.

Meanwhile Tong ranted hysterically. Trump, he said, had “stolen” the grants. In fact they remained where there had been, mere digits in Treasury Department computers.

Elicker again pledged to defend all illegal immigrants and said Trump is wrong that there are only two genders. The mayor insisted that there are really many more, at least in New Haven.

Connecticut’s ever-weakening and ever-more politically slanted journalism is complicit in this. 

Would the governor have commented so blithely about illegal immigration if he thought that he might be asked a few critical questions? 

They weren’t asked. But does the governor really see no difference between legal and illegal immigration and between vetted and unvetted immigrants? Did Connecticut make preparations — in housing, education, health care, and policing — for its more than 100,000 illegal immigrants, or would preparations have called attention to the problems sure to result from the Democratic policy of open borders? Should state government appropriate the additional $250 million being sought for medical insurance for its illegals, or are there more legitimate needs?  

This isn’t “whataboutism,” the term used in a radio interview this week by Connecticut U.S. Rep. Jim Himes to dismiss defenses of Trump that cite equally grave misconduct by the president’s adversaries. 

No, this about how politics is losing all rationality and moral authority. 

Joe Biden refused to enforce immigration law and illegally forgave billions in student loans, so why shouldn’t Trump think he can disregard appropriations law? Pardoning his son and — prospectively — the rest of his crime family, Biden liberated Trump to pardon all of his crime family, the Capitol rioters. 

Disgrace on one side now quickly becomes license for the other side. Who in politics still has the right to pound his chest and feign indignation, or even just to criticize? Not many in Connecticut.  

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

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‘Intervention’ in Bridgeport is just cover for a bailout

By Chris Powell

Last week Governor Lamont and his education commissioner, Charlene Russell-Tucker, went to Bridgeport to discuss what news organizations described as state government’s “intervention” in the impoverished city’s horribly performing schools. But the “intervention” was mainly for show. 

For the State Board of Education’s three-part plan for the city’s schools practically proclaims that improvement is impossible.

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The state board will appoint a “technical assistance team” to supervise the school system’s “special education” efforts with its most disadvantaged and handicapped students. That is, the school system is incompetent with “special education.”  

The state board will provide training in proper behavior to members of the city’s Board of Education, which is notorious for incompetence and fractiousness.

And since Bridgeport has gone through five school superintendents in the last seven years and now is looking for another one, Commissioner Russell-Tucker will have power to approve or reject the city board’s next choice. That is, the board can’t be trusted with its most important hiring decision.

Pandering to the teachers in his audience, the governor said he wanted the city’s schools to spend their money on what happens in the classroom, not on administration. But his commissioner’s plan signifies that Bridgeport’s schools grossly lack administration, and most of the money they spend is already spent in classrooms — that is, on teacher compensation.

It seems that the Bridgeport school system problem that has gotten the attention of the governor and commissioner is just the system’s $32 million deficit, which had begun to prompt budget cuts when the latest superintendent put herself on leave. Spending cuts are not allowed in Connecticut schools, since that would enrage the teacher unions, a big part of the regime’s political army. 

Being so superficial, the commissioner’s plan for Bridgeport’s schools seems meant mostly to provide political cover for a financial bailout by state government. For the big false premise of education in Connecticut remains in force — that student learning correlates with spending, even though learning actually has been declining as more money is spent and correlates mainly with how much parenting students get and how financially secure their parents are.

Really, what could even the best school superintendent and the best teachers in the world do with a student population like Bridgeport’s?

Bridgeport’s schools have almost 20,000 students and 92% are classified as “high needs” — that is, they live in poverty at home or are homeless; they have only one parent, if that; they have physical, mental, or learning disabilities; and they don’t speak English well if at all. Nearly a third of all Bridgeport students are chronically absent; nearly half of high school students are. Only 20% perform at grade level in reading and only 12% in math.

Last week Commissioner Russell-Tucker said the situation with Bridgeport’s schools is urgent. Nonsense — it is routine, the same catastrophe it has been for years, like the longstanding catastrophes of the schools in Connecticut’s other cities. All Connecticut’s cities are poverty factories by design. If not for the recent administrative chaos in Bridgeport’s schools, no one in authority in state government would have noticed even now.

School systems so overwhelmed with neglected children should be broken up and their students distributed to less overwhelmed systems, and state government should figure out where all the child neglect is coming from.

A few weeks ago two Republican state senators, Stephen Harding of Brookfield and Eric Berthel of Watertown, asked Commissioner Russell-Tucker what she thought about the formal social promotion policies of many city school systems, including Hartford’s, school systems that were recently exposed as prohibiting teachers from giving failing grades to students even if they never learn anything and never show up for class. Last September a recent graduate of Hartford Public High School sensationally confessed that she is illiterate, and now she is suing for $3 million in damages.

The commissioner replied that her department has a committee studying school grading practices and it plans to report to the legislature … next January. By then another year of education will have been lost. So much for urgency.

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

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