Hartford doesn’t need hockey; and state’s ‘values’ don’t help

By Chris Powell

Some people think that Hartford’s decline began in 1997 when the city’s National Hockey League team, the Whalers, left for North Carolina. Governor Lamont seems to be one of them, though the city’s plunge into poverty and dysfunction started at least 30 years earlier.

For a few years in the 1980s and ’90s the Whalers did manage to fill some downtown Hartford restaurants and bars on game nights as the team played at the Hartford Civic Center Coliseum. But most Whalers fans were suburbanites who quickly went back home, doing nothing to improve the city’s demographics. Even with a National Hockey League team the city kept losing its middle class.

Maybe NHL hockey could help Hartford a little more now since, thanks to a bailout from state government, the city has built a lovely minor-league baseball stadium near the coliseum, renamed the XL Center. With baseball in the warmer months and hockey in the colder ones, and with the housing the city is striving to restore downtown, maybe more middle-class people could be induced to live in the city again.

But hockey is an acquired taste and the governor’s enthusiasm for it in Hartford is not supported by history. The Whalers seldom filled their arena and the joke was that each game was like a Grateful Dead concert — the same several thousand people.

When the other day the governor said his administration is “ready” for the return of big-league hockey to Hartford at the XL Center, with the possible relocation of the Arizona Coyotes, he couldn’t have been serious. While state government is appropriating $100 million to renovate the arena, the project already is expected to run $40 million over budget, and a new team’s likely demand for government subsidies has not been acknowledged, much less addressed.

Indeed, in 1996, as the Whalers demanded that state government build them a new arena even as they couldn’t fill the one they had, the Journal Inquirer calculated that between financial bailouts of the team, discounted and unpaid state loans, and free use of the coliseum, state government was subsidizing the team by $32 per ticket sold, or $1,400 per spectator per season. This shouldn’t have been surprising, since the Whalers had only three winning seasons out of 18 in the NHL. (The Coyotes have had only two winning seasons in their last 10.)

How much per ticket will Connecticut have to subsidize another round of NHL hockey in Hartford, and where will the money come from? The remnants of state government’s federal emergency money are already being claimed many times over.

Improving Hartford’s demographics is a worthy project, but hockey isn’t likely to accomplish even a tiny fraction as much as a few new supermarkets would, and subsidizing new supermarkets for a while probably will be necessary to make the city’s notorious “food desert” bloom.

*

Like other Southern states, North Carolina has been enjoying more economic and population growth than Connecticut, but three Democratic state senators here have an idea for reversing the trend.

They note that North Carolina’s Republicans have given their nomination for governor to Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, a nutty Bible thumper, so the Democratic senators — Senate President Pro Tem Martin M. Looney, Majority Leader Bob Duff, and Deputy Senate President Joan Hartley — have urged Connecticut’s economic development commissioner to appeal to North Carolina businesses to flee their state’s impending nuttiness by moving here.

Duff says, “A lot of people come to Connecticut because they like our values.”

Unfortunately those “values” lately include government employee union control of public finance, high taxes, high electricity prices, ever-increasing mandates on business, nullification of federal immigration law, racial preferences, abortion of viable fetuses, boys impersonating girls in sports, sex-change therapy for minors, the concealment by schools from parents of the gender dysphoria of their children, pervasive euphemizing, and politics less competitive than Russia’s.

Bible thumping may be easier to live with. 

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

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Where did journalism go? And Cardona gets a pass

By Chris Powell

What’s going on here? It seems as if more former Connecticut journalists now are employed doing publicity for state government than there are journalists reporting about state government.

An unofficial list of recent transfers from journalism to government publicity in Connecticut includes:

— Samaia Hernandex, formerly with WTNH-TV8 in New Haven and WTIC-TV61 in Hartford, now at the Transportation Department.

— Christine Stuart, co-founder of CTNewsJunkie.com, now at the Department of Social Services.

— Rick Green, a former editor for the Hartford Courant, the Hearst Connecticut newspapers, and WTNH-TV8 in New Haven, now at the Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection.

— Julia Bergman, formerly with the Hearst papers, now in Governor Lamont’s office.

— Kaitlyn Krasselt, formerly with the Hearst papers, now at the Consumer Protection Department.

— Brian Spyros, formerly with WTNH-TV8, now with the Connecticut Airport Authority.

— Hugh McQuaid, formerly with CTNewsJunkie, now with the state Senate Democratic caucus.

— Emma Rybacki, formerly with WTNH-TV8, also now with the Senate Democratic caucus.

— Joe Cooper, formerly with the Journal Inquirer, now with the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority.

— Alaine Griffin, formerly with the Hartford Courant, now with the Division of Criminal Justice.

— Will Healey, formerly with the Journal Inquirer, now with the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection.

— Jodi Latina, formerly with WTNH-TV8, now with Central Connecticut State University.

— Max Reiss, the former reporter for WVIT-TV30 in New Britain who went to Governor Lamont’s office, is now at electric utility Eversource.

The incentives of state government employment are well known: high pay, gold-plated medical insurance and pensions, zillions of paid holidays, and job security. The disincentives of employment in journalism are as strong: low pay, modest benefits, long and erratic hours, and the struggle to gain the attention of an audience whose literacy and civic engagement are collapsing.

Other factors also may prompt such transfers. Especially in Connecticut, journalists are sharply inclined toward the Democratic Party, the political left, and the politically correct, and the state administration is very much that way. Such journalists also tend not to put critical questions to those of similar leanings, and it is hard to imagine such an administration giving comfortable patronage positions to journalists who frequently aggravated it with critical questions.

A career in journalism is not quite a vow of poverty. But there is far less money in pursuing the public interest than in deflecting or subverting it.

*

Connecticut’s representative in President Biden’s cabinet, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona, formerly Meriden’s school superintendent and briefly state education commissioner, is among those enjoying exemption from critical journalism back home.

During the president’s State of the Union address this month Cardona was the “designated survivor,” the one person in the line of presidential succession assigned to stay away from the Capitol. Thanks to deficient journalism, he’ll likely be a political survivor back in Connecticut too.

For outside Connecticut, Cardona’s Education Department is a national scandal for its botching of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, used by tens of thousands of aspiring college students.

Three years ago the department was directed by Congress to make the new application more accessible and easier to use. But the Washington Post reported the other day: “The financial aid form debuted in December 2023, more than a year later than promised. It contains technical errors that make it impossible for some families to complete the application. Submissions are piling up at the Education Department, where officials are behind in processing applications, preventing colleges from issuing financial aid awards. A federal watchdog has launched two investigations and lawmakers are furious.”

Though the department’s incompetence has upended tens of thousands of college applications, many in Connecticut, news organizations here are ignoring the story and giving Cardona a pass.

Presumably he’ll still be treated back home as a hero for his frequent admonitions to keep spending more in the name of education amid ever-declining student proficiency and for his tweets pandering to the teacher unions.

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

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If schools had discipline, they would not have racism

By Chris Powell

Cromwell lately has been convulsing over a student’s at-first anonymous public complaints about racist or abusive conduct by other students in school. 

What was the first action taken in response by the school administration and the town’s Board of Education? Of course it was to hire a consultant — an expert in “diversity, equity, and inclusion.”

Cromwell’s school officials may have been surprised to discover that children can be bratty and even vicious quite apart from anything related to “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” Any personal characteristics can be targeted by childish brattiness and viciousness. Race is just one of many such opportunities. 

Nobody who has spent time with children needs a “diversity, equity, and inclusion” consultant to know that. But such a consultant will just help school officials look sincere.

If school officials were ever really sincere about misbehavior by students, instead of hiring a consultant they might make it a practice to have every student interviewed confidentially every month by a teacher, administrator, or guidance counselor and asked about any problems they were having in school. At these interviews students would be instructed in or reminded of the necessity of decent behavior and the penalties for misconduct.

Each meeting would be summarized in writing by the interviewer and the student would be invited to add his own comment before both acknowledged the summary in writing and the summary was placed in the student’s file. Specific complaints by a student would be promptly investigated. Due process would be provided and formal judgment issued, and upon any finding of misconduct, punishment imposed on the perpetrator.

Schools in Connecticut have a miserable reputation about their response to bullying, perhaps because discipline in school has become politically incorrect, which may be the precursor to much of the racism and misconduct being complained about lately.

But the problem of bratty and vicious kids and ineffective school administration is an old one, and the General Assembly may be even more oblivious to it than Cromwell seems to be. 

After testimony from parents, teachers, psychiatrists, and others about hateful conduct among school children, the legislature’s Committee on Children recently proposed legislation to appoint a “task force” to study it. Apparently the need for more discipline in school has not occurred to the committee.

Some Democratic legislators have soared beyond obliviousness on the issue. They have proposed legislation to prohibit colleges and universities from questioning applicants about any criminal records and discipline for misconduct in high school. That’s the Democratic Party’s approach to crime generally these days: to conceal it in support of claims that crime is down as society disintegrates. 

One hardly needs to consult an expert in “diversity, equity, and inclusion” to figure out what will happen when word reaches high school students about the law forbidding colleges and universities from questioning applicants about their misconduct. Misconduct will be liberated.

It’s still early in the legislative session and craziness like the college legislation may be weeded out. But given the legislature’s far-left Democratic majority, it’s just as likely that the college legislation will be amended to impose fines and prison time on any admissions officer who asks an applicant if he has murdered anyone lately.

*

MORE HIDDEN FEES: Governor Lamont has a great idea. He wants the General Assembly to pass legislation to prohibit hidden fees on event tickets, hotel and short-term rental bills, and food and beverage sale and delivery services, “fees that are tacked on at the end of a consumer’s transaction.”

But why stop there? For the biggest perpetrator of hidden fees in Connecticut is state government itself. 

It’s not just the “public benefits” charges concealed in electricity bills — transferring to paying customers the cost of electricity used by customers who don’t pay, along with charges for government undertakings irrelevant to electrical generation.

It’s also the wholesale tax imposed on fuels and the cost of state mandates on medical insurance, health care, and municipal government, costs passed along discreetly to customers and taxpayers.

Concert tickets are the least of the scam.   

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

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Trooper isn’t the biggest reason why mentally ill man was killed

By Chris Powell

Mubarak Soulemane shouldn’t be dead.

He shouldn’t have been shot to death by state Trooper Brian North in January 2020 as he sat in the car he had hijacked, boxed in by police cruisers under a highway overpass in West Haven after a long chase from Norwalk. The car’s doors and windows were shut, and while Soulemane was holding a knife when he was shot seven times by North, he was in no position to harm anyone but himself. 

Police dashboard and body camera video gives the strong impression that the trooper had been overwhelmed by the adrenaline of the chase.

At the trial in Milford Superior Court where he was acquitted of manslaughter last week, North testified that he considered Soulemane’s knife an immediate threat to another officer. But that officer didn’t fire, and North appears not to have expressed his rationale for firing to investigators at the scene of the incident, only much later after getting advice about the only defense in law that would be available to him.

Nevertheless, the legal standard for use of deadly force by an officer is whether he reasonably could have thought that his life or someone else’s was in immediate danger — not that anyone actually was in danger, and criminal convictions must be proved beyond a reasonable doubt. 

Those requirements left North’s jury plenty of room.

The jury might not have wanted to ruin the trooper’s life and career for anything less than a malicious act, even if police are not supposed to let themselves be overcome by adrenaline after a provocation. The jury especially might not have wanted to ruin the trooper’s life and career on account of someone as chronically troublesome as Soulemane had been though he was only 19. The jury chose to see the incident as the trooper presented it: justifiable homicide.

While the jury may have gotten only a simple assertion of Soulemane’s troublesomeness arising from chronic mental illness, this may have been enough to build sympathy for the trooper. 

When Soulemane was killed four years ago his family members told news organizations that, while living in New Haven, they often had called police for help restraining him amid his violent outbursts and he had been taken to Yale New Haven Hospital at least 10 times.  

His sister told the Connecticut Mirror: “It was a constant battle: Mubarak versus schizophrenia.” His brother told the Hartford Courant he always feared that the young man’s life would end as it did.

That is the bigger reason Soulemane shouldn’t be dead.

For his own family, while now lamenting the trooper’s acquittal, foresaw perfectly well what was coming. Nothing worked for the young man but nothing effective was done to protect him or to protect society from him. He should have been placed in a locked facility long before he was killed. 

But policy in Connecticut is to let the chronically disruptive mentally ill run loose rather than make room for them in mental hospitals, of which the state now has few, just as state policy is to let repeat criminal offenders run loose and commit more crimes so elected officials can boast of reducing the prison population.

Three weeks ago another chronically mentally ill young man was shot by state police in Bolton after threatening himself and family members with a knife and then threatening the responding officers. He has survived and will be released but probably won’t be handled any more effectively than Soulemane was.

The only consolation in the Soulemane case was the courage and integrity of Connecticut’s new inspector general of police, Robert Devlin, who ably prosecuted North and established that the state now has an independent system for holding police to account. At least the case may remind officers that, tough as their work is, they must keep their adrenaline in check. 

Of course the case also should remind Connecticut of the necessity of keeping the chronics in check. But that isn’t even on state government’s agenda.

——

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

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Crime without consequences hastens Connecticut’s decline

By Chris Powell

What happens when there are no consequences for misconduct? 

With Connecticut full of repeat criminal offenders on the loose, and with juveniles stealing cars and committing mayhem with impunity, having realized that government won’t punish them, almost anyone might have a clue about where social disintegration is coming from.

But few Democrats in the General Assembly have a clue. They already have enacted laws erasing records of most criminal misdemeanors and many felonies for offenders who have not been convicted in the past 10 years. Last month Democratic legislators proposed prohibiting landlords from rejecting prospective tenants on account of criminal records more than three years old. And last week Democratic legislators proposed prohibiting colleges and universities from asking applicants about their criminal histories and school disciplinary incidents.

In asking applicants about their misconduct, colleges and universities want only to protect themselves against people who don’t know how to behave. 

But misconduct among young people is, along with poverty, racially disproportionate. So instead of considering how to reduce poverty and misconduct — indeed, instead of considering why poverty policy long has failed — Democrats have decided that Connecticut should just prevent the public from learning about misconduct, as if what people don’t know can’t hurt them.

That premise is straight out of the platform of the totalitarian regime in George Orwell’s “1984”: “Ignorance is strength.” But the public’s ignorance is strength only for the regime. After all, the less the people of Connecticut are allowed to know about crime, the less Connecticut’s regime will have to explain why its claims that crime is down are so contrary to the social disintegration seen nearly everywhere.

*

CRITICAL QUESTIONS LACKING: What’s left of journalism in Connecticut often seems incapable of asking critical questions even when grotesque ironies fall from the sky with a heavy thud right in front of news people.

The other day New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker reported that the city clerk who was telling federal immigration authorities about suspicious marriage license applications had good reason to be suspicious but lacked city authority to tell the feds and thus had violated city rules. The mayor said the clerk had retired rather than account for what she had done.

But no one asked the mayor why it was wrong for the clerk to violate city rules when New Haven itself, as a “sanctuary city,” long has been obstructing enforcement of federal immigration law, issuing identification documents to illegal immigrants to facilitate their lawbreaking and forbidding city police from assisting federal immigration agents.

Other than the city’s commitment to nullification, there’s nothing wrong with anyone’s reporting to federal authorities suspicion of lawbreaking.

Meanwhile Governor Lamont has proposed legislation to remove the “drive-only” designation from the driver’s licenses Connecticut issues to illegal immigrants. The governor and fellow nullifiers fear that the “drive-only” designation on Connecticut licenses may expose an illegal immigrant if he is stopped by police in states that don’t nullify immigration law.

No one in journalism seems to have asked the governor how the legislation to ensure that Connecticut driver’s licenses keep facilitating illegal immigration squares with his comments in two national television interviews last month, wherein he acted as the drum major for the Democratic Party’s sudden but pretend pivot on illegal immigration. In those interviews the governor said immigration policy should be much stricter, the southern border should be closed, and he had offered President Biden the use of the Connecticut National Guard for border security.

A spokeswoman for the governor says the driver’s license legislation means to show that Connecticut is a “welcoming” state. That’s the euphemism for a nullifying state.

As a result the governor may be seen outside Connecticut as one of the Democrats returning to sanity on the immigration issue while back home he remains the enabler of the open-borders extremists who control the party in Connecticut. 

Only critical questions from journalists back home may stop the governor from playing both sides of the issue.

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

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If Trump is an appeaser, Himes is a warmonger

By Chris Powell

According to Connecticut U.S. Rep. Jim Himes, a Democrat, former President Donald Trump, a Republican, is guilty of “appeasement” because of his skepticism about the war between Ukraine and Russia. Himes says Trump is skeptical of the war “because he got impeached over Ukraine” and is more of an appeaser of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin than British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain was of German dictator Adolf Hitler.

Really? Trump’s motives are always fairly questioned, but Himes’ speculation about them is just politically partisan distraction from the critical questions about the war. Indeed, Himes’ disparagement of Trump is reminiscent of the disparagement of opponents of the Vietnam war in the 1960s and ’70s. Back then anyone opposed to the war was likely to be called not just an appeaser but a communist too.

Skepticism about the Vietnam war was expressed mainly by Democrats, who were mostly liberals. Skepticism about the war in Ukraine is expressed mainly by Republicans, who are mostly conservatives and who are being disparaged just as liberals were during the Vietnam era. Opposing stupid imperial wars still gets one’s patriotism and motives questioned. One doesn’t have to be Donald Trump.

Advocates of the war in Ukraine, like Himes, owe the country more than such disparagement. They owe the country good arguments and specific objectives for the war, and an opinion on how much war the country can afford. 

Assertions that, if Ukraine doesn’t win, Putin’s Russia will reconquer eastern Europe aren’t persuasive. Russia could have reconquered eastern Europe years ago, long before the war in Ukraine, and declined. Instead Russia wanted mainly to sell its oil and gas, not to subjugate people who still hate their former overlords. 

Maybe it is no coincidence that the areas of Ukraine now occupied by Russia are ethnically Russian and Russian-speaking and seem largely content with Russian rule, maybe because the Ukrainian government tried to stamp out their language.

So what do Himes and other advocates of the war think United States objectives in the war should be? Should they include dislodging Russia from Crimea, annexed in 2014, and the other ethnically Russian parts of Ukraine?

What are the chances of achieving that without nuclear war? 

Should the United States wage another “blank check” war? Should it be waged without regard to particular territory, mainly to bleed Russia, with Ukrainian casualties and property damage merely incidental?

Or would peace along the current lines of control be better?

Calling Trump an appeaser doesn’t answer such questions. Indeed, calling Trump anything has little effect on his support, even when the disparagement is perfectly accurate, since he seems to have become the embodiment of many fair resentments about government and politics, some of which involve the disastrous failures and crazy policies of the national administration Himes would sustain.

Indeed, as long as Himes and other advocates of the war in Ukraine decline to specify war aims, the more they may deserve to be called warmongers.

* * *

AVOID THE GUILT TRIP: Yale University in New Haven has joined the country’s new ritual abasement. The other day the university — named after a British colonialist and slave trader in India more than three centuries ago — formally apologized for that connection to slavery and others, published a book about them, and pledged to address racial disparities in its city.

It’s all nice and politically correct but Yale is no more obliged to apologize for slavery than the rest of the country is — nor more than the rest of the world is. For slavery was not peculiar to the United States, and the world has often been built on atrocities and injustice, just as it still is being built on overcoming them.

History must be taught, especially since so many students graduate ignorant. But suggestions that guilt endures, like Yale’s apology, are mistaken and politically opportunistic. Everyone’s ancestors had faults and virtues. The lesson to be drawn isn’t guilt but the duty to strive to continue what used to be called the ascent of man.

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

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A grossly premature parole; and teachers aren’t underpaid

By Chris Powell

Next time the governor and state legislators boast about the decline in Connecticut’s prison population, remember the recent report in the Hearst Connecticut newspapers about the state Board of Pardons and Paroles.

By a vote of 2-1 after a hearing in January, the board approved parole for a Bridgeport man who had served only 26 years of a 60-year sentence for an especially outrageous crime in 1995. He kidnapped a 16-year-old girl from her home in Pennsylvania and took her to Bridgeport, where he imprisoned her for weeks, molesting her, stabbing her, burning her with a cigarette, and mutilating her, carving his name into her chest with broken glass.

Of course the perpetrator already had an extensive criminal record. For years after his conviction he denied the crime and brought fruitless appeals. He accepted responsibility only when seeking parole. 

Prosecutors opposed his application but the board granted it in large part because he had participated in various programs in prison. His victim said she did not oppose parole but is still recovering from her ordeal and just wanted it to be over.

Connecticut should want such hefty discounting of criminal justice to be over. But it won’t be over any time soon. Thanks to President Biden and U.S. Sens. Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy, the state is about to get a federal judge who, during the recent virus epidemic, called for the release of all prisoners, including the most violent.

*

While there is no constituency at the state Capitol for improving the ever-declining performance of students in Connecticut’s public schools, there is a huge constituency for spending more money in the name of education even as student enrollment declines. That constituency is so large that no one at the Capitol dares to talk back to it even as it spouts nonsense.

More nonsense came the other day from Kate Dias, president of the state’s largest teacher union, the Connecticut Education Association. “The critical thing to remember,” Dias told education money seekers at the Capitol, “is we’ve never fully funded education.”

But exactly what is “fully funded”? Dias didn’t say, but “fully funded” seems to mean whatever the teacher unions want.

If education was “fully funded,” Dias added, “my teachers wouldn’t have a starting salary of $48,000. … We’ve never actually done the really hard things that we need to do that would allow our teachers, our pre-K, everyone to make reasonable middle-class wages in Connecticut.”

Teachers in Connecticut aren’t middle class? According to the CEA’s national affiliate, the National Education Association, the average teacher salary in Connecticut is $81,000, which doesn’t count excellent benefits and much time off during the summer.

And if Dias is sore about an average starting salary of $48,000, that may be the fault of teacher unions themselves for negotiating contracts that allocate most increases in school spending to people who are already employed and union members. Why raise salaries for people who aren’t paying union dues yet?

Where is the elected official or political candidate who dares to ask how increases in education spending correlate with student performance, or how student performance correlates with anything beyond family income and parenting? Any such elected official or candidate soon would find scores of teachers in his district vigorously supporting his opponent’s campaign.

Indeed, that seems about to happen to state Sen. Douglas McCrory, D-Windsor, an administrator with the Capitol Region Education Council, who — remarkably, since he is a Democrat — may be the General Assembly’s most vocal advocate of charter schools and school choice.

McCrory is being challenged for renomination by a school board member in his home town and by an official of a union that represents school employees in Hartford. 

More than improving education, McCrory’s opponents may want to make sure that schools don’t ever have to compete for students — that school choice is limited to families who can afford private schools.

Special interests are political machines that are very good at getting their people to vote. The public interest has no political machine.

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

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The parade of dependence slogs through the state Capitol

By Chris Powell

Hearings of General Assembly committees long have been largely matters of special pleading, but increasingly they are the setting for an endless parade of people, most of them able-bodied, who say they are unable to take care of themselves and their families and need more subsidies from state government — for medical insurance, housing, electricity, home heating, food, school lunches, higher education, and such. 

On top of that Connecticut now is said to have 119,000 “disconnected” young people, most of whom nevertheless have mobile telephones that must be connecting them to something, if not to their schooling, especially since many are chronically absent. Of course in turn these young people and others are said to need more teachers, counselors, and even psychiatrists, what with the epidemic of mental illness supposedly sweeping Connecticut’s schools.

These needs may be genuine. But as they compete for public funds, legislators are obliged to try to figure out where this tidal wave of dependence is coming from. Why can’t so many more people take care of themselves and their children these days?

Of course one reason is inflation, which arises in large part from the federal government’s profligacy. Another is state government’s failure to facilitate housing construction, in part because few middle-class people want the underclass living nearby.

The unprecedented illegal immigration of recent years is not enriching the country. It has worsened the housing shortage, increased welfare expenses and crime, and driven down wages for unskilled labor. It looks like part of a broader government policy of proletarianizing the country, diminishing self-sufficiency, increasing dependence on government, and strengthening the political machine of the government class.

But child neglect may be the biggest part of the problem. How do government subsidies for childbearing outside marriage, depriving millions of children of fathers and a two-parent upbringing, help children become self-sufficient? How does Connecticut’s policy of social promotion in school prepare anyone for a life beyond menial work — or crime?

Such questions should be asked, but state Comptroller Sean Scanlon isn’t asking them. Instead he is advocating legislation to require medical insurance policies to cover fertility treatments not just for same-sex couples but also for single women. This would be another subsidy for fatherlessness, which correlates heavily with educational failure, physical and mental illness, crime, and unhappiness in life. 

As an elected official Scanlon may be delighted with the prospect of hiding still more of the cost of government — another subsidy for childbearing outside marriage — in the cost of living, as the subsidy will be financed by increases in medical insurance premiums, just as the welfare cost of continuing electricity service to people who don’t pay is covered by higher charges to people who do pay, not by state government.

But Connecticut needs no more fatherless children.

Connecticut could use some elected officials who, as the parade of people with their hands out slogs through the state Capitol, remember the wisdom of Theodore Roosevelt, who once was liberal authority. 

The first duty of a citizen, Roosevelt often said, is to pull his own weight.

In an address in Paris just after he left the presidency he added: “In the long run, success or failure will be conditioned upon the way the average man, the average woman, does his or her duty — first in the ordinary, everyday affairs of life, and next in those great occasional cries that call for heroic virtues. 

“The average citizen must be a good citizen if our republics are to succeed. The stream will not permanently rise higher than the main source, and the main source of national power and greatness is found in the average citizenship of the nation. Therefore it behooves us to do our best to see that the standard of the average citizen is kept high, and the average cannot be kept high unless the standard of the leaders is very much higher.”

Yet now the Democrats again offer the country Joe Biden and the Republicans again offer it Donald Trump.

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

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Must Connecticut be as crazy as Alabama?

By Chris Powell

Where is it written that the crazier Alabama, Texas, or Idaho get, the crazier Connecticut must get too? 

But that seems to be the premise of the leftist faction of the Democratic majority in the General Assembly when it comes to abortion.

Alabama lately became famous for the Bible-thumping decision of its Supreme Court that, as a matter of law, frozen human embryos must be considered children. Freed by the U.S. Supreme Court’s reversal two years ago of its 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade, Alabama and other conservative-leaning states have virtually outlawed abortion, many of them with the support of a majority of their residents. 

But Connecticut law on abortion is unaffected. Connecticut maintains the policy articulated by Roe: that abortion is legal prior to the viability of the fetus and that state government may restrict abortion afterward. As a practical matter, Connecticut also allows the abortion of viable fetuses if a pregnant woman and her doctor claim the law’s mental health exception for late-term abortions. No one challenges such claims.

That’s still not enough for the many abortion fanatics among Connecticut’s Democratic state legislators. They reportedly are about to propose an amendment to the state Constitution establishing a right to abortion at all stages of gestation. They already have proposed legislation to force medical providers to provide abortion services even if doing so violates their consciences or religious beliefs. Such a law would force the most sincere providers among them to leave the state if they would continue their careers.

The nominal rationale for the constitutional amendment is that someday public opinion in Connecticut may turn in favor of banning abortion. Nobody really believes that but such an assertion builds the political hysteria desired by the all-abortion, all-the-time movement.

The nominal rationale for the legislation forcing medical providers to violate their consciences or religious beliefs is that some rural areas of the state are an hour or so distant from abortion clinics — as if some rural areas of the state aren’t also distant from supermarkets, dentists, restaurants, bars, police stations, and all sorts of conveniences, and as if people don’t account for this when choosing where to live.

The real rationale for the legislation is to stamp out contrary consciences and religious beliefs. Ironically, the people doing this stamping out tend to be the same ones who prattle about the benefits of “diversity.” That is, it’s great if people look different as long as everyone thinks and votes the same way. 

If you believe that there is something worth respecting in a viable fetus — an unborn child capable of living outside the mother’s womb — get lost. There can be no “diversity” for you.

* * *

STOP HIDING CRIME: Figuring out what to do about former criminal offenders is a challenge.

State law already holds that part of the solution is to conceal many convictions. Now the General Assembly is considering whether to prohibit landlords from considering convictions more than three years old when evaluating potential tenants.

Criminal convictions follow people around and can burden them for a long time. But then why shouldn’t they? Why shouldn’t former offenders have to do more to prove themselves than people who have never caused trouble? Why should prospective landlords, employers, and romantic partners be obstructed in protecting themselves? Why should landlords and employers be obstructed in protecting their tenants and employees?

While the labor shortage may be reducing the reluctance of employers to hire former offenders, the housing shortage is worsening their plight. But the employment and housing problems faced by former offenders actually arise from something bigger than their criminal records: their lack of education and job skills, which often correlates with crime. 

Concealing criminal records helps former offenders only by increasing risk to everyone else. So the only fair solution is to improve education and facilitate housing construction. Since that’s not likely to happen in Connecticut, state government should operate more halfway houses for former offenders as they rebuild their lives.

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

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State treasurer repudiates parental and women’s rights

By Chris Powell

According to state Treasurer Erick Russell, a wave of fascism is sweeping over Connecticut. 

In an essay in the Hartford Courant last week, Russell wrote that several state legislators have “proposed legislation targeting transgender children,” legislation signifying “fanaticism” and an “extreme vision” that would deny rights to people. 

What exactly is the legislation’s tyranny? It would require schools to notify parents if their children manifest gender dysphoria and prohibit boys who impersonate girls from participating in girls’ competitive sports.

There is nothing extraordinary about these proposals. Schools always have been expected to notify parents if their children suffer some injury or ailment in school, even a minor one. Gender dysphoria is a life-changing mental disorder. If parents aren’t entitled to know about that, they are hardly parents at all.

That children afflicted with gender dysphoria might not want their parents to know is no excuse. Children also might not want their parents to know about their grades or misbehavior in school. But children are not in charge. The law long has held that they are not fit to make important decisions — for example, to make contracts, to buy alcoholic beverages, tobacco, and guns, to get tattoos, and to drive before they are 16.

All precedent in law and custom supports the right of parents to know what schools know about their children. Connecticut law is not explicit about this in regard to gender dysphoria particularly, but in light of precedent and custom it shouldn’t have to be, even as some school systems have adopted policies to conceal a student’s gender dysphoria from parents. 

Hence the proposed legislation. Contrary to Treasurer Russell, it doesn’t “target transgender children” or deny them any rights they already have. It just confirms parental responsibility. The fanatics and extremists here are those who, like Russell, would destroy parental responsibility.

As for the proposal to prevent boys who impersonate girls from participating in girls’ scholastic sports, it only reflects the longstanding premise of federal civil rights law requiring equal opportunity for girls and women. Since boys and men are generally bigger and stronger, girls and women can’t have equal opportunity if boys and men are allowed in competitive sports with girls.

Again, the fanaticism and extremism here belong to those who, like Russell, reject the longstanding premise of civil rights law. It’s not as if separating males from females in competitive sports denies opportunity to anyone. Boys and men remain free to compete against boys and men. Preserving the rights of girls and women requires the separation. Russell would revoke their rights.

But even as Russell, with his essay, joined the aggressors in the culture war, he posed as a victim of society because he is Black.

“Growing up in New Haven,” Russell wrote, “it was unimaginable that someone from my community could become state treasurer. We had no reason to think that was possible. There were no examples around us to demonstrate that successful careers in the fields of finance, government, or law were within our reach.”

Really? Connecticut’s treasurer’s office has been held by a Black man or woman for 52 of the last 61 years. For 11 of those years, 1975 to 1986, the office was held by a Black political leader from Russell’s hometown, New Haven: Henry E. Parker. 

Russell’s office has refused to respond to repeated inquiries about his age, but he seems to be about 35, which would put his birthdate in 1988 — when Francisco L. Borges, a Black political leader from Hartford, was treasurer. Since then for all but four of Russell’s estimated 35 years, Connecticut’s treasurer has been Black.

That’s because the state’s majority political party, the Democratic Party, in its accelerating descent into tribalism, has enthusiastically reverted to the primitive political tactic of “balancing” its state ticket by race and ethnicity, reserving its treasurer nomination for a Black candidate, a tactic that was in effect long before Russell was born and one that now gives him extraordinary privilege even as he falsifies history so he can pose as having triumphed over oppression.

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

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