Chris Powell: What about respecting ‘diversity’ of views on abortion?

“The Genius of Connecticut,’’ by sculptor Randolph Rogers, a plaster version of the bronze statue (destroyed) originally mounted on top of the dome of the Connecticut Capitol, is exhibited on the main floor.

Soviet poster c. 1925, warning against midwives performing abortions. Title translation: "Miscarriages induced by either grandma or self-taught midwives not only maim the woman, they also often lead to death."

MANCHESTER, Conn.

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 right-wing 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.

xxx

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).  

Chris Powell: Has abortion really become state’s highest social good? the phony U.S. debt-ceiling crisis

The rear of College Row at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn. From left to right: North College, South College, Memorial Chapel, Patricelli '92 Theater

— Photo by Smartalic34

MANCHESTER, Conn.

Maybe nothing less could have been expected from Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn., a citadel of leftist groupthink, but according to the university chapter of the Democratic Socialists, the university has agreed to pay for abortions for its students. Not for treatment of cancer or multiple sclerosis or Crohn’s disease or AIDS or other serious ailments, just abortions.

The university’s implication is that while those ailments are often fatal, abortion is the highest social good.

Wesleyan’s decision rhymes with the clamor at the state Capitol, where proclamations of fidelity to abortion rights trump the daily shootings in the cities, the repeat offenders running rampant, the collapse of public education, the worsening poverty, and the government’s shift away from public service to a mere pension and benefit society.

The people who extol abortion well may believe that it is the highest social good. Yet their clamor seems a bit out of place in Connecticut, where a Roe v. Wade policy on abortion was enacted years ago and will remain in force whatever other states do with their new freedom to legislate on the issue. In Connecticut, abortion anywhere, any time is challenged only by occasional calls for requiring parental notification for abortion for minors. While parental notification has broad support with the public, nothing can sway the abortion fanatics in control of the General Assembly’s Democratic caucus.

So abortion fanaticism may be meant mainly as a distraction from the defects of both the national and state Democratic administrations. It presumes that clamor about abortion can induce most people to forget about inflation, forever wars, open borders, and the soaring national debt as long as there is a chance that the law somewhere might impede abortion of viable fetuses.

The political judgment of Connecticut’s abortion fanatics may be correct. After all, so much nuttiness in the state now goes without serious challenge -- from transgenderism to unemployment benefits for strikers to reimbursing the abortion expenses of women in abortion-restricting states who come to this state for abortions.

Still, the fanatics might not  represent majority opinion or even anything close to it. If their power is mainly their ability to intimidate those who disagree, their position could actually be weak.

Connecticut won’t find out what the public really thinks until some people in public life try talking back -- calmly and rationally but firmly -- daring to attempt  argument.

xxx

Hysteria has overtaken the controversy over the limit on the federal government’s debt.

The other day Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned that the refusal by Republicans in Congress to raise the debt ceiling would cause a “constitutional crisis” that might cripple the economy and financial system as the government ran out of money and defaulted on some of its bonds.

Nonsense. Because it retains the power of money creation, the federal government can never run out of money. It can create money to infinity. The government prefers not to create money so frankly, since it might be inflationary, but the government has the power.

And of course the government can raise revenue in a way that won’t aggravate concerns about inflation. It can raise money the old-fashioned way: through taxes.

So why the insistence on more borrowing?

It’s because Congress and President Biden, like his predecessors, enjoy distributing infinite goodies without having to make current taxpayers pay for what they really cost. The burden is to be transferred to future generations -- and to other countries, which the U.S. government pressures to finance this country’s debt, and thus its parasitic lifestyle. The president and Congress believe that Americans have the right to live at the expense of the rest of the world.

Calling again for raising the debt ceiling, Biden says: “America is not a deadbeat nation. We pay our bills.” But we don’t  pay our bills, since borrowing to pay debt doesn’t repay debt at all. It just creates more debt.

Taxes  repay debt, but apparently a “constitutional crisis” is preferable to more taxes.

Chris Powell is a columnist for the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester. (CPowell@JournalInquirer.com)

Chris Powell: Students' vacuous righteousness; abortion phonies; stupidly erasing criminal records

Central Connecticut State University

MANCHESTER, Conn.

With a protest march on campus the other day, students at Central Connecticut State University, in New Britain, showed the world that they haven't learned what even kids in elementary school might be expected to know.

The students demanded that the university administration investigate a fellow student's complaint of sexual assault that had not yet been made formally to any police agency or to the university itself.

Instead, the accusation had been made by the complainant only on a social- media internet site, TikTok, which may be best known for posting videos encouraging young people to do stupid, dangerous, damaging, and even criminal things to get attention, the infamous "TikTok challenges."

As it turned out, the university had heard of the accusation on TikTok prior to the student protest march and already had hired some outsiders to investigate, the campus police and New Britain police apparently being considered incompetent.

Having handled the matter in such a strange way, the university was in no position to remind the student protesters that if you want the authorities to act against crime, the first thing to do is to report it to them. Central's campus is dotted with emergency telephone stations, and most young people these days would leave home in the morning without their shoes before they left without their mobile phones. But of course holding a protest march before there is anything to protest provides a rush of self-righteousness.

xxx

U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, the Connecticut Democrat seeking election to a third term, isn't the only candidate for senator who is dissembling on the abortion issue.

Blumenthal says his abortion legislation in Congress, the Women's Health Protection Act, would simply put into federal law the policy articulated by the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Roe v. Wade. But the Roe decision held that states properly could prohibit or regulate abortion after the viability of the unborn child, while Blumenthal's legislation would prohibit states from restriction abortion at any stage of pregnancy.

Blumenthal's Republican challenger, Leora Levy, recently deflected a request from Connecticut's Hearst newspapers to say what she thinks about South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham's legislation to outlaw abortions nationally after 15 weeks of gestation.

Levy used to support abortion rights. But during the primary campaign for the Republican Senate nomination, Levy declared herself to be completely anti-abortion and explained in detail why she had changed her mind. Now she seems to be changing her mind again.

“I am personally pro-life and I support exceptions for rape, incest and the life of the mother," she said in response to the inquiry from the Hearst papers about Graham's legislation. "When I am elected to the Senate, I will be accountable to the people of Connecticut for my votes and positions.”

That is, fervent opposition to abortion is helpful in winning a Republican primary but not in winning an election. Levy is so principled on abortion that she now wishes the issue would just go away. Yes, Levy will be accountable for her positions after the election -- when it's too late for voters to do anything about being misled.

xxx

Erasing criminal records, thereby diminishing accountability from criminals, and increasing accountability from police officers have become great causes on the political left in Connecticut. The resolution of a recent case in Hartford Superior Court showed that the first cause can defeat the latter.

Over the objections of a prosecutor, Superior Court Judge Stephanie A. Damiani admitted a former Glastonbury police lieutenant, Kevin Troy, to two diversionary programs as he faced charges of drunken driving and interfering with police. Troy had gotten drunk, caused a rollover crash in Enfield, and then lied to police about it, telling them that someone else had been driving. Troy's completion of the programs will erase the records of his offenses.

Troy retired from the Glastonbury department after his arrest but is only 49 and might seek to return to police work elsewhere. With his criminal record erased, a big impediment to that will be out of the way.

Chris Powell is a columnist for the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester.

John O. Harney: Marketing abortion ruling; armed youth; ‘don’t say gay’ in Greenwich; not the ‘Flutie Effect’

Map by Tpwissaa

Greenwich, Conn., High School

From The New England Journal of Higher Education, a service of The New England Board of Higher Education (nebhe.org)

BOSTON

Could the anti-choice, forced-birth culture of the U.S. Supreme Court and many U.S. states present an advantage for New England economic boosters?

Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker told reporters that he had heard from a lot of companies that the recent Supreme Court decision removing the federal protection of the right to abortion may offer a big opportunity for Massachusetts to attract some employers whose employees would want access to reproductive-health services. Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont called on businesses in states that limit abortion access to consider relocating to Connecticut.

In the context of choosing where to start or expand a business, big employers have occasionally written off New England as “old and cold” compared with economically and meteorologically sunnier spots. However, a 1999 poll by the University of Connecticut’s Center for Survey Research and Analysis, while admittedly dated, found an interesting niche for New England. International site-selection consultants, accustomed to Europe’s pricey, regulated environments, were less concerned with New England’s notoriously high costs than domestic site-selection pros. Key issues for the international consultants were access to higher education, an educated workforce and good infrastructure. 

Peter Denious, chief executive of Advance CT, a business-development organization, recently told the Connecticut Mirror that such issues as diversity, equity and inclusion—and the state’s commitment to clean energy—could all help Connecticut align with the corporate goals of certain companies.

Our culture of active government, unionization and especially our human- resource development, could bode well once again in relatively enlightened New England.

Anti-semitism rising: The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) reported 2,717 anti-semitic incidents of assault, harassment and vandalism in 2021 in the U.S., the highest number since the ADL began tracking anti-semitic incidents in 1979, according to the group’s annual Audit of Antisemitic Incidents. These included more than 180 anti-semitic incidents in New England. And nationally, 155 anti-semitic incidents were reported at more than 100 college campuses. Meanwhile, tension between anti-semitism and anti-zionism, including the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement, is challenging on campuses and beyond

Packing heat. More than 1 million U.S. adolescents (ages 12 to 17) said they had carried a handgun in 2019-20, up 41% from about 865,000 in 2002-03, according to a study by researchers at Boston College’s Lynch School of Education and Human Development, using data from the National Survey on Drug Use & Health. The socio-demographic profile of the gun carriers also changed. Carrying rates grew from 3.1% to 5.3% among white adolescents, from 2.6% to 5.1% among higher-income adolescents, and from 4.3% to 6.9% among rural adolescents between, while rates among Black, American Indian/Alaskan Native and lower-income adolescents decreased.

“Don’t Say Gay” here? In April, Mount Holyoke College President Sonya Stephens wrote here that Florida legislation dubbed by opponents the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, was part of a nationwide wave of proposal laws linking divisive issues of race, sexual orientation and gender identity to parents’ concerns about what their children are being taught in public schools. These bills not only undermine the real progress that LGBTQ+ people have made in society over the past 50 years, Stephens wrote, but they also further erode trust in some of our most under-compensated public servants: school teachers and administrators.

On July 1, U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona noted that the Florida parents and families he’d spoken with said the legislation doesn’t represent them and that it put students in danger of bullying and worse mental health outcomes.

In Cardona’s home state of Connecticut, meanwhile, the Greenwich School Board adopted a new Title IX policy unanimously, but not without controversy. Edson Rivas and Colin Hosten of the Fairfield County-based Triangle Community Center Board of Directors wrote in Connecticut Viewpoints that the policy adopted by the Greenwich School Board “conspicuously removes any language referring to gender identity and sexual orientation” which was part of the original version of the policy introduced last fall. The board replied that “this policy covers all students, whether or not certain language is included.” But Rivas and Hosten aren’t buying it. “If the substance of the policy remains the same, as they say, then the only effect of removing the language about gender identity and sexual orientation is the linguistic pseudo-erasure of the LGBTQ+ community in Greenwich Public Schools.”

Truth to tell: Recently, the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) named 75 higher-education institutions to participate in the 2022 Institute on Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation (TRHT) Campus Centers as part of an effort to dismantle racial hierarchies.

As we at NEBHE and others have wrestled with a “reckoning” on race, gender and so many other wrongs, the “truth and reconciliation” concept has always made sense to me. Check out, for example, the thoughtful book Honest Patriots exploring how true patriots in post-World War II Germany, post-apartheid South Africa and the U.S. in the the aftermath of slavery and the genocide of Native Americans loved their country enough to acknowledge and repent for its misdeeds.

Under the AAC&U initiative, campus teams develop action plans to advance the parts of the TRHT framework: narrative change, racial healing and relationship building, separation, law and economy. The institute helps campus teams to prepare to facilitate racial-healing activities on their campus and in their communities; examine current realities of race relations in their communities and the local history that has led to them; identify evidence-based strategies that support their vision of what their communities will look, feel and be like when the belief in the hierarchy of human value no longer exists, and learn to pinpoint critical levers for change and to engage key stakeholders.

Among participating New England institutions: Landmark College, Middlesex Community College, Mount Holyoke College, Suffolk University, the University of Connecticut and Westfield State University.

Another problem with over-incarceration. NEBHE has published a policy brief about the effects of higher education on incarcerated people in New England prisons and jails—and increasingly broached conversations about the dilemmas created by the world’s biggest incarcerator — America. Now, another byproduct surfaces: Children with an incarcerated parent have exceedingly low levels of education. The most common education level for respondents from a low-income family who had an incarcerated parent was elementary school, according to research by a group of Wake Forest University students who put together an article for the Nation Fund for Independent Journalism. The students set out to understand how the academic achievement, mental health and future income of children of incarcerated parents compare to those with deceased parents. Just under 60% as many respondents with an incarcerated parent completed a university education compared to the baseline of respondents with neither an incarcerated nor deceased parent.

Acquisition of Maguire: I first heard the term “Flutie Effect” in the context of former Boston College Admissions Director Jack Maguire. The term refers to the admissions deluge after the BC quarterback Doug Flutie threw the famed Hail Mary pass (caught by the less-famous Gerald Phelan) in 1984. Flutie won the Heisman Trophy, then pursued a pro career, first with Donald Trump’s New Jersey Generals in the USFL and then in the Canadian Football League, with a few bumpy stops in the NFL.

But Maguire attributed BC’s good fortune not to the diminutive quarterback but to the college’s “investments in residence halls, academic facilities, and financial aid.” In 1983, Maguire, a theoretical physicist by training, founded Maguire Associates and introduced the concept of “enrollment management,” combining sophisticated analytical techniques, customized research and deep experience in education leadership with a genuine enthusiasm for client partnerships. Maguire became a sort of admissions guru whose insights we have been pleased to feature.

Now, higher-education marketing and enrollment strategy firm Carnegie has announced it is buying Maguire Associates. Not to be confused with the foundation that administered the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, which recently moved to the American Council on Education, nor the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, which has encouraged disarmament, this Carnegie, also founded in the 1980s and based in Westford, Mass., is formally known as Carnegie Dartlet LLC. Its pitch: “We are right definers. We are your intelligence. We are truth revealers. We are your clarity. We are obstacle breakers. We are your partners. We are audience shapers. We are your connection. We are brand illuminators. We are your insight. We are story forgers. We are your voice. We are connection creators. …”

John O. Harney is executive editor of The New England Journal of Higher Education.

Chris Powell: Is abortion really that popular?

Bas relief at Angkor Wat, c. 1150, in what is now Cambodia, depicting a demon performing an abortion upon a woman who has been sent to the underworld

MANCHESTER, Conn.

Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont has sent an open letter to businesses in states that prohibit or sharply restrict abortion, encouraging them to relocate to Connecticut so that their employees can get abortions more easily. He also made the appeal in an Internet video.

Business observers laughed it off, since abortion rights don't figure at all in business calculations while Connecticut's high taxes and excessive regulation figure heavily, making the state lag in economic development.

But then it was wrong to construe the governor's appeal as having anything to do with economic development. It was really aimed at Connecticut's own voters as part of his campaign for re-election. The governor sought to persuade them that abortion rights in other states are more important than the deficiencies of government in their own state.

Despite the enormous clamor about abortion, opinion polls rank it low among national issues, even as the bigger national issues are working strongly against Democrats. The governor and Democrats elsewhere hope that abortion will distract from those issues.

But the governor and Democrats in other states seem to think not only that abortion ranks high as an issue but also that most voters are as enthusiastic about abortion as the Democrats themselves are. This belief is signified by the Democrats' marquee congressional legislation, the Women's Health Protection Act, which would legalize post-viability abortion, even abortion at the moment of birth, throughout the country, going far beyond and thus nullifying Connecticut's own law, which restricts post-viability abortion.

Connecticut's intelligentsia, overwhelmingly Democratic and enthusiastic about abortion, cannot fathom contrary opinion and fails to recognize that other states have restrictive abortion laws not because of any oppression of women but because many if not most women there, benighted as they may be, are not enthusiastic about abortion.

Instead of pretending that Connecticut's liberal abortion law might draw businesses from abortion-restricting states, Connecticut's abortion enthusiasts would become much more relevant by moving to the abortion-restricting states and trying to persuade the women there of just how backward they are.

xxx

Last week Connecticut Atty. Gen. William Tong affected outrage at the request made to the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority by water company Aquarion for a rate increase of 27 percent to be implemented over three years. "The last thing Connecticut families and small businesses need now is a double-digit water bill hike on top of steadily mounting surcharges," Tong said.

But inflation is raging and the company said it had not sought a rate increase in more than nine years. The attorney general took no note of this. Worse, Tong took no note of something else. On the very day when Aquarion's rate request was reported, state government imposed a 23 percent tax increase on diesel fuel, which will raise prices on everything shipped in the state.

The tax increase took full effect immediately -- it wasn't staggered over three years like the water company's rate request -- and the attorney general was silent about it. For price increases in the private sector are bad while price increases in government are OK.

After all, Tong, a Democrat, had struck his latest empty pose and achieved his uncritical publicity amid an election campaign, while sincerity in protecting the public against government's own price increase would have gotten him in trouble with his party, whose governor and legislative majority insisted on raising the diesel tax.

xxx

The degree to which the Lamont administration has raised taxes is being disputed in the gubernatorial campaign. Republicans want to count as increases the tax cuts that were legislated by recent Democratic administrations and then repealed once an election was over and before the cuts were to take effect.

However these prematurely repealed tax cuts are classified, the practice is grossly dishonest. Additionally misleading is that the controversy is somehow failing to count the biggest tax increase of the current administration -- the half-percent increase in the state income tax to finance a family and medical leave program most people will never be able to use for their emergencies, a program whose benefits are distributed as discretionary patronage.

Chris Powell is a columnist for the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester.

Chris Powell: Abortion deal possible but Democrats prefer acrimony

Soviet poster circa 1925, warning against midwives performing abortions. Title translation: "Miscarriages induced by either grandma or self-taught midwives not only maim the woman, they also often lead to death."

MANCHESTER, Conn.

Both political parties in Congress want to sustain the immigration controversy for partisan purposes more than they want a compromise that could resolve the controversy's two major components -- securing the borders while providing a path to citizenship for longtime illegal residents and their children, whose violation of immigration law was not their fault and who, as a practical matter, know no other home.

The other week in Congress it was the same way with abortion. A majority could have been cobbled together in the Senate in favor of legislation nationalizing a broad but limited right to abortion, but the Democratic caucus in the Senate sought to go way beyond its purported objective of codifying the Supreme Court's 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade. The Democratic majority in the House already had passed a bill extending abortion rights beyond those laid out by Roe.

Among other things, the Democratic bill, supported in the Senate by Connecticut abortion fanatics Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy and endorsed by Gov. Ned Lamont, would have left to a doctor's discretion an abortion after the viability of the fetus, forbidden any parental notification requirements for abortions for minors, and forbidden even a 24-hour waiting period between a woman's first medical consultation and her abortion. The bill would have nullified even the lesser restraints of Connecticut's own very permissive abortion law.

The Democratic objective is all abortion all the time and any time, immediately on the spot and right up to the moment of birth.

The bill failed to get a majority of votes in the Senate. Several senators who voted against it indicated that they would support a less expansive bill, but the Democrats were not interested in negotiating such a compromise, even though it would have left them free to keep pressing for a more permissive law and though polls long have suggested that a compromise would reflect national opinion. Few people support unrestricted abortion just as few support prohibiting it -- the extremes that dominate the two parties on the issue.

With their all-or-nothing approach, the Democrats wanted to sustain the acrimonious controversy, perhaps to distract from the roaring inflation, shortages, and social disintegration that are making the Biden administration so unpopular and threatening a Republican takeover of Congress in November's election.

Neither side can acknowledge that the abortion issue is full of fair concerns and complications of law and morality that don't lend themselves to the usual sloganeering and posturing.

xxx

Much complaining in Connecticut politics and journalism has been done lately about the huge share of urban real estate that is exempt from municipal property taxes -- government property and property belonging to nonprofit schools and colleges, churches, social-service agencies, and so forth.

The most recent reminder came the other day from a report in The Hartford Courant, which noted that 51 percent of the value of real estate in the city is tax-exempt even as state government never gives the city all that is supposedly due under the state's payment-in-lieu-of-taxes program, or PILOT.

But the complainers fail to note, as The Courant failed to note, that quite apart from PILOT payments state government already reimburses Hartford and other cities about half their annual budgets.

Nor did the newspaper note that in 2018 under the administration of Gov. Dannel P. Malloy state government assumed Hartford's general-obligation bonded debt of more than $500 million -- a bailout of the city's decades of mismanagement. In effect state government also paid for the minor-league baseball stadium Hartford had just committed to build while on the brink of bankruptcy, and did build with serious delay and cost-overrun.

Connecticut's cities have been failing not because of any lack of money, since state government long has been throwing ever-increasing amounts at them. The cities have been failing because the ways the money is spent -- largely at state government's direction -- perpetuate poverty more than they eradicate it.

Perpetuating poverty, the spending also perpetuates political dependence. The cities never improve but that's OK, since they never stop providing huge Democratic pluralities.

Chris Powell is a columnist for the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester.

Abortion and ancient vs. modern rights; racism in public health?

Interior of the U.S. Supreme Court

MANCHESTER, Conn.

For years the political left has argued that medical insurance should be disconnected from employment. The national medical insurance law known as Obamacare began the disconnection, establishing government-subsidized insurance for private-sector workers and granting employers religious exemptions from providing insurance for contraception and abortion.

Nevertheless, last week the left exploded in rage when the U.S. Supreme Court, with two of its four liberal justices joining the five conservatives, upheld exemptions granted by the Trump administration to religious employers, thereby disconnecting contraceptive and abortion insurance from certain forms of employment.

Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal declared indignantly: "To the women of America, the message of today should be: You have a right to control your future. You have a right to control your body and your family and your health care, and we are going to fight as long and hard as necessary to make sure that right is protected."

But neither the Supreme Court nor the Trump administration has taken those rights away from anyone. The issue of the case was only who should have to pay for the insurance coverage in question -- and cost here isn't such a big deal, since most people can obtain contraceptives and even abortions for little or no cost from Planned Parenthood or similar organizations. Meanwhile government Medicaid pays for contraception and abortion for the poorest.

Besides, as Justices Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Neil M. Gorsuch wrote, if insurance for contraceptives and abortion is such an important right, the government itself could provide the insurance to everyone, not just the poorest.

The political left isn't pressing this issue out of medical necessity but rather to bludgeon people whose religious convictions the left considers backward. But the right to religious convictions, however backward they seem, is ancient and was placed in the Constitution more than two centuries ago, while the right to make someone else pay for your contraception and abortion is a very recent concept.

xxx

Now that local governments in New Haven, Windsor and Manchester, Conn., and other places have declared racism to be a "public-health crisis," what exactly is to be done about it -- and not just the supposed crisis but also the supposed racism?

Where exactly is the racism in public health? Who are the racists?

The examples offered are few and weak. Yes, the poor tend to live closer to pollution sources than the rich do, and poverty correlates with race, but housing always will be cheaper near pollution and someone always will be living closer to it than someone else.

Besides, pollution is not why the recent virus epidemic has afflicted people of color more than whites. The disparity in affliction also correlates heavily with poverty, and perhaps with biology as well, since medical authorities increasingly believe that darker skin pigment weakens immune systems by reducing the body's ability to produce Vitamin D from sunlight. (Maybe government should distribute Vitamin D pills without charge. At least that would be something.)

No, these public-health crises are being declared because cries of "Racism!" are more magical than "Open sesame!" Nobody in authority dares to talk back to such cries and attempt rational discussion, and why bother when they can be deflected with empty gestures? These days if racism is invoked as the cause of a problem, any local government might be glad to declare a crisis in flat tires, paper cuts or burnt toast.

Chris Powell is a columnist for the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester, Conn.

Don Pesci: 2 pro-abortion-rights senators seem to see no limits

Even the universe has borders and limits, both perhaps undiscoverable; so we are told by science. The big bang theory has not only a beginning but an end.

Charles Schumer, of New York, and Richard Blumenthal, of Connecticut, are two U.S. senators who fervently believe that abortion should be borderless, not hemmed in by reasonable regulations, such as those that they believe should govern the exercise of the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Laws are limits to human behavior that, we deduce from bank robberies, rapes and murders, may be overridden in some ungovernable people. The law is a red line saying thus far you may go but no further -- without risking some painful sanction.

Blumenthal knows, perhaps better than most, that one way to set limits to the sometimes audacious behavior of businesses is through the establishment of regulations. As attorney general of Connecticut for more than 20 years, Blumenthal earned his political spurs by applying a legal birch switch to the backsides of Connecticut businesses and others.

When Blumenthal vacated his sinecure to make a successful run for the U.S. Senate, he left behind more than 200 unsettled cases quickly dismissed by the next attorney general, George Jepsen. Blumenthal’s victims, hung out to dry on hooks in the attorney general’s offices for many years, were now free to resume pursuing the American dream if – big “if” – they had not been driven into penury by some of Blumenthal’s punishing tactics, the most successful of which was to encumber a business’s assets until the business compliantly acceded to terms dictated by Blumenthal.

Blumenthal is well known in Connecticut for his unyielding opposition to abortion regulation and two Trump appointed justices of the U.S. Supreme Court, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. But Blumenthal, the “Senator from Planned Parenthood” has now been trumped by Schumer. Hectoring a crowd of abortion advocates on the steps of the U.S Supreme Court, and sounding a bit like Huey Long at his boisterous worst, Schumer said this: “I want to tell you, Gorsuch; I want to tell you, Kavanaugh. You have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.”

Schumer’s harangue was intended as a threat; it was directed as a threat to two specific Supreme Court Justices; and it was received as a threat by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who responded with great temperance in a written statement, “Justices know that criticism comes with the territory, but threatening statements of this sort from the highest levels of government are not only inappropriate, they are dangerous. All Members of the Court will continue to do their job, without fear or favor, from whatever quarter.”

Schumer later blamed his threat to the court justices on Brooklyn, according to the New York Post, – “Sen. Schumer cites his NYC roots in non-apology over Supreme Court squabble: 'We speak in strong language’”.

Speaking from the floor of the U.S. Senate, Schumer offered, “I should not have used the words I used yesterday. They didn’t come out the way I intended them to. I’m from Brooklyn. We speak in strong language. I shouldn’t have used the words I did, but in no way was I making a threat. I never — never — would do such a thing.”

Schumer accused Republicans of “manufacturing outrage” over his own threats to Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh. That fish won’t fly.

In an opinion piece in the New York Post, George Conway III, a lawyer and adviser to the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump super PAC, wrote “Schumer’s words, however, were unmistakably intimidating: ‘I want to tell you, Gorsuch.’ ‘I want to tell you, Kavanaugh.’ ‘You (emphasis original) will pay the price.’ ‘You won’t know what hit you if …’ The emphasis is mine, but the meaning is clear: If you don’t do as we say, something bad will happen to you….”

There is some talk of censure in the air. Would Blumenthal support the censure of a fellow senator who has threatened two Supreme Court justices -- not of course with body harm, but with political repercussions -- if the high court failed to decide a pending case related to abortion in a way that did not satisfy abortion-rights extremists?If Blumenthal has been asked the question, his answer to it has not appeared anywhere in Connecticut’s media. Perhaps the media feels it might be indelicate to put such a question to Blumenthal who so far has resisted every effort, however reasonable, to regulate Big Abortion. Blumenthal spearheaded the effort to deny the Supreme Court placement of both Gorsuch and Kavanaugh. Schumer’s threatening remarks, it may be argued, simply carries the Blumenthal effort a logical step forward.

Don Pesci is a Vernon, Conn.-based columnist.

Patty Wright: Newly blue Maine expands access to abortion

The Maine State House, designed by Charles Bulfinch, and built 1829–1832. Bullfinch also designed the famous Massachusetts State House, with its iconic gold dome.

Via Kaiser Health News

While abortion bans in Republican-led states dominated headlines in recent weeks, a handful of other states have expanded abortion access. Maine joined those ranks in June with two new laws ― one requires all insurance and Medicaid to cover the procedure and the other allows physician assistants and nurses with advanced training to perform it.

With these laws, Maine joins New York, Illinois, Rhode Island and Vermont as states that are trying to shore up the right to abortion in advance of an expected U.S. Supreme Court challenge. What sets Maine apart is how recently Democrats have taken power in the state.

“Elections matter,” said Nicole Clegg of Planned Parenthood of Northern New England. Since the 2018 elections, Maine has its largest contingent of female lawmakers, with 71 women serving in both chambers. “We saw an overwhelming majority of elected officials who support reproductive rights and access to reproductive health care.”

The dramatic political change also saw Maine elect its first female governor, Janet Mills, a Democrat who took over from Paul LePage, a Tea Party stalwart who served two terms. LePage had blocked Medicaid expansion in the state even after voters approved it in a referendum.

Clegg and other supporters of abortion rights hailed the new abortion legislation: “It will be the single most important event since Roe versus Wadein the state of Maine.”

Taken together, the intent of the two laws is to make it easier for women to afford and to find abortion care in the largely rural state.

Nurse practitioners like Julie Jenkins, who works in a small coastal town, said that increasing the number of abortion providers will make it easier for patients who now have to travel long distances in Maine to have a doctor perform the procedure.

“Five hours to get to a provider and back ― that’s not unheard of,” Jenkins said.

Physician assistants and nurses with advanced training will be able to perform a surgical form of the procedure known as an aspiration abortion. These clinicians already are allowed to use the same technique in other circumstances, such as when a woman has a miscarriage.

Maine’s other new law, set to be implemented early next year, requires all insurance plans ― including Medicaid ― to cover abortions. Kate Brogan of Maine Family Planning said it’s a workaround for a U.S. law known as the Hyde Amendment that prohibits federal funding for abortions except to save the life of the woman, or if the pregnancy arises from incest or rape.

“[Hyde] is a policy decision that we think coerces women into continuing pregnancies that they don’t want to continue,” Brogan said. “Because if you continue your pregnancy, Medicaid will cover it. But if you want to end your pregnancy, you have to come up with the money [to pay for an abortion].”

State dollars will now fund abortions under Maine’s Medicaid, which is funded by both state and federal tax dollars.

Though the bill passed in the Democratic-controlled legislature, it faced staunch opposition from Republicans during floor debates including Sen. Lisa Keim.

“Maine people should not be forced to have their hard-earned tax dollars [used] to take the life of a living pre-born child,” said Keim.

Instead, Keim argued, abortions for low-income women should be funded by supporters who wish to donate money; otherwise, the religious convictions of abortion opponents are at risk. “Our decision today cannot be to strip the religious liberty of Maine people through taxation,” Keim said during the debate.

Rep. Beth O’Connor, a Republican who says she personally opposes abortion but believes women should have a choice, said she had safety concerns about letting clinicians who are not doctors provide abortions.

“I think this is very risky, and I think it puts the woman’s health at risk,” O’Connor said.

In contrast, advanced practice clinicians say the legislation, which will take effect in September, said this law merely allows them to operate to the full scope of their expertise and expands access to important health care. The measure has the backing of physician groups like the Maine Medical Association.

Just as red-state laws restricting abortion are being challenged, so are Maine’s new laws. Days after Maine’s law on Medicaid abortion passed, organizations that oppose abortion rights announced they’re mounting an effort to put the issue on the ballot for a people’s veto.

This story is part of a partnership that includes Maine Public Radio, NPR and Kaiser Health News. Patty Wright is a reporter at Maine Public Radio.

Don Pesci: The moral deracination of the West

Members of Bound4LIFE in Washington, D.C., symbolically cover their mouths with red tape in anti-abortion demonstration.

Leftists are winning the culture war, the war on Western Civilization, because rootless politicians have shown themselves unwilling to enter the lists and do battle with the new morality.

For this reason, American culture is being redefined – reinvented, as the leftists would have it – by social anarchists with knives in their brains. It has become fashionable among New York leftist politicians to wink at, and even to publicly celebrate, infanticide. No assault on traditional sensibilities, it would seem, is beyond the pale.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s notion that third trimester abortion is too close to infanticide to be tolerated by men and women of conscience is now regarded as embarrassingly quaint by New York’s smart set, among whom are Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, not his birth name.

Moynihan was a sociologist, the author of “The Moynihan Report,” a professor at Harvard University, a top adviser to President Nixon, and a four-term U.S. senator representing New York. He was also a proud liberal. Today, it is very nearly a philological sin to call the new moralists “liberal” in the sense in which liberalism had been embraced by Moynihan or, here in Connecticut, by such prominent governors as Abraham Ribicoff and Ella Grasso.

In Europe, the moral deracination – which, of course, marches under the banner of moral rectitude – has proceeded at an alarming rate. The Netherlands in 2005 stole a march on other morally backward-looking states by becoming the first country to decriminalize euthanasia for infants with presumed “hopeless prognosis and intractable pain. “ Nine years later, Belgium amended its 2002 Euthanasia Act to extend the rights of euthanasia to minors.

People living in the United Sates have always fancied that, though conjoined historically to Europe by history and ties of affection, there was an ocean separating us. Modern communications have removed this cultural prophylactic. Historical differences also have served as a barrier to disruptive ideas that in Europe plunged France into a bloody revolution centered on fatal utopian ideas.

Under Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin – socialists all – fascism and the totalist state were necessary and indispensable political instruments in creating what all three thought of as “the new man,” a mechanist free at last of a Western culture that had imprisoned humankind in religious and cultural chains. In a future shaped by mechanistic ideology, politics and brute force, the very nature of man would be irreversibly altered. This is, as Roger Scruton points out in his brief and indispensable history of the conservative movement in the Western world, Conservativism: an Invitation to the Great Tradition, the original sin of socialism, the absurd notion that the world may be made over anew by a transcendent state. For Mussolini, the fascist administrative state was a secular god clothed in omnipotence and omnipresence. “Everything in the state; nothing outside the state; nothing above the state” – such was the fascist definition of social bliss.

History, tradition, subsidiary political organizations such as family and church, a constitutional state, a media determined to declare the truth at all costs, modesty in politics, the good manners of polite society, respect for women, personal honor, the protections a state holds out to “the least among us” -- the infirm, the aged, the poor, victims of unfettered abortion – all these blessings were, in effect, walls and barriers that prevented a false god, the omnipotent and omnipresent state, from clawing away from us our God-given rights and responsibilities with its mechanical, inhuman talons.

U.S. Sen. Dick Blumenthal, for two decades Connecticut’s attorney general/regulator-in-chief, regards any limitation of abortion, however practical or reasonable, as proceeding from immoral premises, and he continues to insist falsely that regulations concerning third trimester abortion deprive women of a right to unfettered abortion. Limiting abortion to the first two trimesters of a pregnancy does not remove a presumed right to abortion; it simply designates the time frame in which an abortion may be legally appropriate.

At the end of May, Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont and Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz sent a missive to women who own businesses in Alabama, Georgia and Missouri pronouncing themselves “appalled at… actions that erode the ability of women to make informed decisions about their health and bodies” and inviting women who own businesses in such states “to relocate your operations to a state that supports the rights of women and whose actions and laws are unwavering in support of tolerance and inclusivity.” The carefully constructed sales pitch does not once mention the word “abortion.”

Indeed, any discussion of unregulated abortion on demand, at any time for any reason, is delicately dropped from the polite conversations of the political new moralists. But the euphemisms – “informed decisions” about “health and bodies” – serve to cinch the point without discomforting women, also concerned about their health and the bodies of their unborn children, whose birth decisions may have been informed by the prevalence of ultra-sound images that show late term fetuses bearing a striking resemblance to newly born children, Moynihan’s enduring point.

The new moralists have not yet raised abortion to the level of a new secular sacrament, but the Orwellian letter from Connecticut’s governor and lieutenant governor suggest that the state’s discarded motto “Still Revolutionary” may in the near future be replaced by a new sales pitch to states considering relocation – “Connecticut: The Abortion State.”

Don Pesci is a Vernon, Conn.-based columnist.

Chris Powell: Abortion measure assumes that women are stupid

Judging from the dishonorable and irresponsible men by whom they become pregnant, many women in Connecticut are not very smart. But are they really so stupid that they need more than a minute to distinguish an abortion clinic from a "crisis pregnancy center" that opposes abortion?

That is the presumption of legislation causing controversy in the General Assembly, as it has done in other states, to punish anti-abortion shops for deceptive advertising. Abortion advocates accuse the anti-abortion shops of posing as abortion clinics to lure pregnant women and dissuade them from having abortions. The anti-abortion shops and their supporters deny deceiving anyone, but the anti-abortion shops and the abortion clinics are in brutal competition with each other.

Connecticut's Unfair Trade Practices Act already authorizes the state Department of Consumer Protection to sue businesses that have caused loss to customers through deception, so the proposed legislation might be redundant if what the anti-abortion shops do is construed as trade and commerce. But the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that a California law compelling anti-abortion shops to make certain statements to clients is probably an unconstitutional violation of the First Amendment.

In any case the proposed legislation in Connecticut is largely a mechanism by which the pro-abortion side aims to intimidate the anti-abortion side and to frighten legislators into striking pro-abortion poses. The claim that a woman's visit to an anti-abortion shop may critically delay her access to medical treatment is hardly persuasive when, if she is seeking an abortion, all she has to do is ask if the shop will provide or facilitate one.

The proposed legislation is part of the political left's larger campaign against freedom of speech generally. But the more the left practices intimidation here, the less it may persuade the country that there is nothing questionable about abortion, not even abortion of late-term, viable fetuses and infanticide. Indeed, the Democratic Party, the party of the left, is already giving the impression that it considers abortion the highest social good.

This is crazy fanaticism.

xxx

Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont's open letter to the state, published last week, was a welcome preface to his budget proposal, due this week. But it invited questions.

The governor called attention to the problem of "fixed costs" -- pension, salary, and other commitments set by law and contract that already consume more than half the state budget. Saving the state will require unfixing them, returning them to the democratic process. Will the governor have the courage to propose that?

The governor also suggested repeal of some sales-tax exemptions. Altogether sales-tax exemptions cost state government an estimated $3 billion every year. But while fairness might argue for repeal of some exemptions, any expansion of the sales tax would remove more money from the private economy unless the overall tax rate is reduced. So fairness alone here will not be cause for celebration.

In remarks to business leaders, the governor said that he would propose sharply curtailing state government's bonding, restricting it to necessities. Indeed, for many years the bonding package has been the political pork barrel, with both parties feasting on inessentials to buy votes.

Only the details of the governor's budget will establish where he aims to take Connecticut. But in his campaign he promised change, and change can mean only restraint.

Chris Powell is a columnist for the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester, Conn.

Chris Powell: Abortion and the Kavanaugh-Ford hysteria

Christine Blasey Ford in her appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

MANCHESTER, Conn.

According to Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal, Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh's primary accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, has no reason to lie by claiming that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her 36 or so years ago when they were in high school. But by making her accusation so late -- not just decades after the supposed incident but years after Kavanaugh was nominated as a federal judge and only upon his nomination to the Supreme Court -- Blasey Ford has entered politics, and everyone in politics has reason to lie or exaggerate.

Of course, this doesn't mean that Blasey Ford is lying or exaggerating. Any accusation of sexual misbehavior against a teenage boy is plausible. This means only that whatever may have happened decades ago did not bother Blasey Ford enough to complain about it until it could be used to stop Kavanaugh's appointment to the Supreme Court. As she is a liberal Democrat while Kavanaugh is a conservative Republican presumed to be skeptical of the court's precedent in the abortion case of Roe v. Wade, Blasey Ford well could be doubly bothered.

This follows the pattern set by Anita Hill's accusation of sexual harassment against Clarence Thomas upon his nomination to the Supreme Court, in 1991. Hill had worked for Thomas at two federal agencies in Washington and followed him from one agency to the other so she could continue working for him even after the supposed harassment began. For years after she left government employment, Hill maintained cordial relations with Thomas, even seeking and receiving help from him. Hill did not complain about Thomas until liberals opposed him for the Supreme Court out of fear that, as a conservative Republican, he would tilt the court against abortion rights.

Of course this didn't make Hill a liar or exaggerator either. But it put her into politics too and thus gave her reason to lie or exaggerate, just as Blasey Ford entered politics by joining the opposition to Kavanaugh only when abortion rights were again in question. Blasey Ford has even said that if Kavanaugh were confirmed she would have to move to New Zealand. Only her politics would require that.

But far from handicapping her, Hill's belated accusation against Thomas made her a celebrity and won her a career as a law professor and liberal heroine. Blasey Ford can expect something similar.

By contrast, Kavanaugh, like Thomas, can expect only to be forever suspected as some sort of sex criminal. Maybe Kavanaugh will deserve it -- as long as the country has resolved that youthful misbehavior can never be forgiven no matter how long ago it happened and that people who haven't grown up by age 17 can never grow up. If so, Connecticut should eliminate secrecy for its juvenile courts and all the probationary gimmicks that erase convictions in adult court.

The hysteria over the accusations against Kavanaugh has destroyed all standards of politics and journalism and is threatening to destroy legal standards. To prevent another conservative vote on the Supreme Court, the most defamatory and unsupported allegations, along with hearsay and rumor, once barred by the old rules of fairness and libel are being sensationally published and broadcast by news organizations in their crazed search for anyone who can disparage the nominee's character as it might have been 36 years ago.

This is being done by institutions that had no trouble excusing the contemporaneous sexual misbehavior in office, of Ted Kennedy, Chris Dodd, and Bill Clinton, all Democrats who, perhaps not surprisingly, were sure that the Bill of Rights covered abortion.


Chris Powell is a columnist for the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester, Conn.

Chris Powell: Liberals extol precedent when it serves them

U.S. Supreme Court Building.

Liberals throughout the country applauded three years ago when, proclaiming that the U.S. Constitution requires states to confer same-sex marriage, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed 44 years of precedent in constitutional law as well as practice going back to the adoption of the Constitution, in 1789. 

Liberals in Connecticut also applauded three years ago when the state Supreme Court ruled capital punishment unconstitutional, thereby reversing the state and federal constitutions themselves, which always have explicitly authorized capital punishment and still do. 

But a few weeks ago liberals criticized the U.S. Supreme Court for reversing its 41-year-old decision holding that government agencies could require their employees to pay dues to unions they didn't want to join. The precedent should have stood, liberals said, because it  was precedent and much policy had grown up around it. 

And now that President Trump's nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court is suspected of inviting a challenge to the abortion rights declared in the court's 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade, liberals -- including Connecticut Democratic Senators.Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy -- again are freaking out about possible disrespect for precedent. But Roe itself also reversed precedent going back to 1789, since prior to Roe abortion law always had been left to the states. 

Of course when it comes to the Supreme Court these days respect for precedent doesn't really concern liberals or conservatives. Their concerns are only policy and power. If precedent gives them policy and power, they support it. If it doesn't, they oppose it. 

With the  court led by Chief Justice Earl Warren Court in the 1950s and '60s liberals began elevating their policy desires to constitutional requirements, since constitutionalizing an issue could push democracy out of the way when it became inconvenient. Now that they are in power nationally, conservatives are playing this game too. 

As a result the country is being led to believe that the Constitution is just anyone's wish list, requiring whatever one likes and prohibiting whatever one dislikes, led to believe that there is no distinction between what the Constitution says and what policy should be. 

But contrary to the suggestion of Connecticut's senators, Gov. Dannel Malloy, and other leading Democrats, there is no danger that the U.S. Supreme Court will criminalize abortion. For the court has no such power. Even if the court reverses Roe, abortion policy would just return to the states and Congress. 

Connecticut generally favors legalizing abortion, at least prior to fetal viability, and so state law permitting abortion likely would be preserved. But state law on abortion goes against  public opinion by letting minors obtain abortions without the consent of their parents or guardians, even as this policy has concealed the rape of minors. Ironically, while waiving parental consent for minors getting abortions, Connecticut law requires it for minors getting tattoos. 

Startling as it might seem in Connecticut, opinion in some states is hostile to abortion and opinion nationally would prohibit late-term abortion, which the Roe decision itself indicated states could do. Further, many legal scholars who support legal abortion acknowledge that, as a matter of law, Roe was mostly judicial contrivance. 

But Democrats seem to think that they can win on this issue only by generating enough hysteria to prevent any honest discussion that recognizes distinctions. 


Chris Powell is a columnist for the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester, Conn.
 

Don Pesci: These progressive Conn. pols are libertarian about two grim things

The Republican plan to abolish and replace Obamacare has now collapsed. After much huffing and puffing, Republicans pulled their replacement plan, such as it was, shook the dirt of medical-care reform from their feet, and vowed to move on to the next big issue -- tax reform. One imagines U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D.-Conn.), who made some frantically intemperate remarks in the House before the Republican replacement plane crashed and burned, was delighted.

 U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D.-Mass.), move over: Mrs. DeLauro has now become the chief progressive maenad of Congress. She brought to her performance suitable demagogic props, a large sign that said “Get Old People,” the words arranged horizontally and the first letter of each word – G-O-P – in fierce bold script. C-Span captured the historic moment here. Mrs. DeLauro was not wearing her pussy hat at the time; so the members of the House were spared that indignity.
 

Seen from a progressive bubble, Obamacare is a crashing success. It is, in fact, a political success but a real-world wreck from within, and it has been so from the beginning. Obamacare has never been more than a program hardwired to fail that would lead, when it did fail, to universal health care, a nationwide government healthcare program palely imitating European models that would drive many insurance companies -- unable to compete with a tax-supported, progressive driven healthcare system – out of business.

Under a universal healthcare system one fourth of the economy in the United States would move from the private to the public sector, and insurance companies in Connecticut would become boutique providers serving rich people – mostly wealthy Republicans who, in DeLauro’s view, want to Get Old People (GOP). Mrs. DeLauro’s gerrymandered lair is Connecticut’s 1st District, an impregnable progressive fortress; so then, she need not fear that she will be undone politically by championing a lost cause.

And Obamacare is a lost cause. Even in her home state, insurance providers have pulled out of the program with their pants on fire; premiums have skyrocketed across the nation, and the coroner has been sent an e-mail.

The authors of the U.S. Constitution supposed that legislators would be unwilling to pass ruinous laws under which they themselves would suffer. How quaint! Barack Obama himself is now wealthy enough to buy retirement properties worth millions anywhere in the world the chooses to live, in or outside the United States; socialist Bernie Sanders owns three houses; millionaire Connecticut U.S. Sen. Dick Blumenthal had money enough to send his children to expensive private schools that many of Mrs. DeLauro’s constituents could never afford.

Politics has been good for Mrs. DeLauro and her millionaire husband, Stan Greenberg, both of whom own expensive property in the Washington Beltway, where they entertain similarly minded progressives in lavish splendor that might bring a blush to the cheek of the Great Gatsby.

It may strike some hearty rationalists as unseemly that two millionaire politicians who favor partial birth abortion and euthanasia – which clips life it its beginning and end – should profess such a touching concern for old people. Only on questions of life and death are Mrs. DeLauro and Mr. Blumenthal, the Senator from Planned Parenthood, excessively libertarian. Blumenthal, who never met a regulation he didn’t like, would leave Planned Parenthood – which makes most of its profits from abortion – as the only unregulated big business in America.

China still pursues a policy of forced abortion; in that totalitarian country women, liquidated as infants in the womb, are perceived as somehow less valuable than men. International Planned Parenthood has in fact been working hand in hand with the population control program in China, almost since its inception. China joined the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) in 1983.

In December of last year, Women’s Rights Without Frontiers wrote a letter to President Donald Trump calling for “a full-scale investigation of International Planned Parenthood to determine the exact nature of its operations in China… Transparency is demanded by the fact that IPPF receives taxpayer dollars from the United States and other nations as well.  I believe it is impossible to partner so closely with the Chinese Communist Party’s forced abortion machine without being complicit in its atrocities.  This is especially the case when this year we learned that the number of abortions in China is not 13 million, but a staggering 23 million a year.”

What a pity the group did not address its petition to Mrs. DeLauro, defender of the poor and oppressed, or Mr. Blumenthal who, as the Senator from Planned Parenthood, may possibly exercise more leverage with the IPPF than does Mr. Trump and the entire Republican Party which  -- as we all know, thanks to Mrs. DeLauro’s campaign bumper-sticker outburst in the House – wishes to oppress if not euthanize their grandmothers.

Don Pesci (donpesci@att.net) is a political and cultural writer who lives in Vernon, Conn.