Chris Powell: Corrosive, politically correct lawlessness on immigration
Illegal aliens at U.S. border
With his attempt to prevent the U.S. Census from counting illegal immigrants, President Trump has a fair point. Since the Census determines the decennial reapportionment of the U.S. House, its inclusion of illegal immigrants conveys greater representation on the areas in which they live even though they are not citizens, cannot vote, and shouldn't be there.
Counting illegal immigrants for reapportionment purposes creates a system like the one used during the era of slavery, when the U.S. Census credited states for three-fifths of their slave population even though slaves couldn't vote, transferring their political power to their enslavers. Slave states thereby gained advantage over free states in House representation.
Democrats in Connecticut and throughout the country want the census to count illegal immigrants because they concentrate in Democratic areas, which is why Republicans oppose counting them.
But fair as the president's point is, he's absolutely wrong on the law. For while the Constitution did not anticipate as much illegal immigration as the country has today, it requires that the Census count "the whole number of persons in each state, excluding Indians not taxed." The Constitution could have required counting only citizens, or counting everyone while excluding non-citizens from House district apportionment, but it didn't.
Maybe this was an oversight. But with the Fourth, Fifth, and Six Amendments in the Bill of Rights, the Constitution provides basic protections for citizens and non-citizens alike -- protections for "the people" and "persons," not just citizens
Since Trump is so wrong on the law here, states and cities are suing to block his order about the Census. Connecticut is one of the plaintiffs, brought into the case last week by state Atty. Gen. William Tong. But while Tong faulted the president for lawlessness, he overlooked the lawlessness right under his nose on the same issue.
For even as Connecticut joined the Census lawsuit, New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker announced that he is strengthening the city's protections for illegal immigrants, protections that forbid police and other city employees from cooperating with federal immigration authorities or asking people about their immigration status. While these policies are not themselves illegal like the president's census order, they are meant to obstruct and nullify federal immigration law, and they do.
Mayor Elicker said he wants New Haven to be a "welcoming city." That's a euphemism for admitting everyone no matter what, including fugitives from justice and foreigners who violate immigration law and even intend harm to the United States. New Haven's longstanding policy, reiterated by the mayor, is that anyone who breaks into the country and reaches New Haven should be above the law.
This is not just a policy of nullification, the practice of Southern secessionists before the Civil War and segregationist Southern governors who defied federal civil-rights law in the 1950s and '60s. It is also a policy of open borders and devaluation of citizenship, the dissolution of the country. Further, while the mayor is inviting more illegal immigrants to New Haven, his city is suffering an explosion of violent crime and social disintegration, with shootings and multiple drug overdoses practically every day along with the erosion of the school system.
Quite without more illegal immigrants, New Haven already can't take care of itself, and its legal residents may feel less welcome. The mayor's posturing about illegal immigrants doesn't improve life in the city. It's a politically correct distraction from decline.
Chris Powell is a columnist for the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester, Conn.
Don Pesci: Taking down Columbus and a mau-mauing in New Haven
Bronze statue of Christopher Columbus, formerly situated at Wooster Square, in New Haven. The statue was removed by the city Parks Commission on June 24, 2020.
A video published by the New Haven Independent showing New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker being mau-maued by Los Fidel, not his birth name, the day after a Columbus statue had been booted from Wooster Square Park may not be a vote-getter for Elicker during his next campaign.
Two days after the removal of the statue by the Park Commission, not the city’s elected Board of Alderman, tempers were still sparking.
“You should have been here,” Fidel told Elicker.
“Everyone makes mistakes, and I make mistakes,” Elicker responded. In retrospect, Elicker confessed, “he should have been in Wooster Square rather than in his office at City Hall on Wednesday.”
On the day of removal, Elicker had been at a safe distance from the park in his office attending to business. Two days later, he ventured out and met with about 30 protesters who had cheered as the offending statue had been carted off.
“Sitting on the grass in a circle with the group,” The New Haven Independent reported, “Elicker spent most of the first hour listening to Fidel tell his story, interspersed with critiques of the mayor. (Watch the full conversation in the video above.)”
The video captures Fidel hurling imprecations at the mayor. “F**k you!” critiqued Fidel at one point.
His manners exquisitely intact, Elicker responded, “That’s not respectful.”
Fidel’s story was poignant:
“I’m looking at the f**king white devil," Fidel said at another point. He then apologized for his manner, and wiped away tears as he recounted getting punched in the back of the head and having slurs shouted at him Wednesday.
Fidel spoke of the many times he has been arrested over the years, for charges including felony possession of a deadly weapon and driving under the influence. He said his first arrest came at 13, and that the deadly weapon charge had to do with fishing equipment and was exaggerated by police.
He expressed how he has felt traumatized by law enforcement growing up in Bridgeport and living in New Haven for over 15 years.
"I’m a felon. I’ve been arrested for things I didn’t do my whole life," Fidel said. He said law enforcement has falsely targeted him. "I stabbed somebody in self-defense." He said he was charged with operating a "drug factory," when in fact, he said, he had less than an ounce of marijuana at his place. (According to court records, he has been found guilty of second-degree assault, probation violation, larceny, and reckless endangerment, among other offenses.)
To be sure, life in the city under the glare of the hypercritical police is no walk in the park. But Elicker’s problem, purely political, is a bit different than Fidel’s. Will the whole affair surrounding the removal of a mute statue help or hurt Elicker politically? It may seem obscene to people who are not professional politicians, but politicians, as a general rule, have an eye cocked on political loss or gain when they engage in politics. And politicians are always on the job, so to speak, always politicking, whether they are hugging babies or, in the midst of a Coronavirus outbreak, not hugging babies.
Other protesters joined in the conversation after Fidel had recovered his manners. “Disband police officers that have lost their legitimacy because they are working as an occupying force and stealing wealth from African-American communities,” one recommended.
Elicker responded that he was “prioritizing moving along appointments and seating the police Civilian Review Board… ‘I think there are opportunities to civilianize the police force,’ Elicker said. He said he sees opportunities to have police officers show up to fewer calls, which can be diverted to other responders,” the cri de coeur of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement.
So it goes in New Haven, and much of this is “deja vu all over again,” in Yogi Bera’s memorable phrase, for people familiar withThomas Wolfe’s still readable essays published in a book titled Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers.
Here is Wolfe carefully probing the difference between a confrontation and a demonstration in Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers:
A demonstration, like the civil-rights march on Washington in 1963, could frighten the white leadership, but it was a general fear, an external fear, like being afraid of a hurricane. But in a confrontation, in mau-mauing, the idea was to frighten white men personally, face to face. The idea was to separate the man from all the power and props of his office. Either he had enough heart to deal with the situation or he didn't. It was like to saying, "You--yes, you right there on the platform--we're not talking about the government, we're not talking about the Office of Economic Opportunity--we're talking about you, you up there with your hands shaking in your pile of papers ..."
Intimidation of this kind may not be “respectful” – but it works well enough in New Haven.
D0n Pesci is a columnist based in Vernon, Conn.
Better class of people
“I am obliged to confess I should sooner live in a society governed by the first 2,000 names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by the 2,000 faculty members of Harvard University.
— William F. Buckley Jr. (1925-2008), writer, TV personality and conservative public intellectual.
The first telephone directory, printed in New Haven in November 1878
Chris Powell: Hartford mayor confronts the mob while legislators pander
MANCHESTER, Conn.
Maybe black lives matter a little more now, but mainly, it seems, when they are taken by white cops. When they are taken by anyone else, that seems to be nobody's business.
For where are the protests of the murder of New Haven high school basketball star Kiana Brown, 19, shot to death a week ago as she slept at her home, apparently killed by a stray bullet fired from outside? And who is protesting the fatal shooting of Luis Nelson Perez, 27, on a New Haven street a few days later?
New Haven may be the most indignant city in the world but it gives its own social disintegration a pass. Indeed, the social disintegration underlying most wrongful deaths in Connecticut gets a pass not only in New Haven but throughout the state amid the clamor to end racism and defund the police.
At least Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin last weekend became the first elected official in Connecticut to talk back to the mob. Hundreds of protesters descended on his home, demanding that he take their wrath out on the city's cops. The mayor tried to explain why law enforcement should not be abolished but he was interrupted, jeered, and largely drowned out. The protesters wanted only to intimidate.
But Bronin's plan to create a civilian agency to respond to seemingly noncriminal incidents such as mental breakdowns and drug overdoses, eliminating police response, won't appease the mob and is not realistic anyway. For the mentally ill and the druggies are not always harmless. They quickly can become violent.
Does the mayor not remember the nearly fatal stabbing of a Hartford police officer two years ago as she responded to a commotion caused by a mentally ill woman resisting eviction from her apartment? Any social worker or therapist responding to the incident would have faced the same threat. Police already try to reduce tensions at incident scenes. Their authority to use force is more a help than a handicap. Social workers and therapists get less respect.
While Bronin got the mob treatment, Connecticut's state legislators are being let off too easily -- and not just by the protesters to whom they have been pandering. Nobody is asking legislators who was in charge while Connecticut's police became so unaccountable and social disintegration worsened, especially in the cities.
Last week state Senate President Pro Tem Martin M. Looney, D-New Haven, at least was asked if legislators would do anything about the provision in the state police union contract that allows concealment of brutality complaints. Looney replied that the current contract can't be revised but the law might be changed someday to forbid similar provisions in future contracts.
This was a dishonest dodge. For the General Assembly and Governor Lamont could nullify the secrecy provision by repealing the law authorizing state employee union contracts to supersede the open-government law, as the state police contract does. Then the contract wouldn't have to be changed. The legislature and governor also could repeal collective bargaining for the state police. Such a threat might induce the union to concede the secrecy provision immediately.
No one asked Looney how the state police contract provision came about and how it so easily got past the governor and those legislators who now are insisting that black lives matter. Just whom were the governor and legislators serving when they agreed to conceal complaints of police brutality? Not the public.
Feigning impotence, Looney and his colleagues still think that the contentment of government employees matters more than black lives.
Chris Powell is a columnist for the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester.
Mayor Luke Bronin
Urban, but less so
Hanover Theatre for the Performing Arts, in Worcster
Photo by Truthanado
From Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com
Some people are deciding, with the impetus of COVID-19 and, perhaps, recent public protests, to move out of big cities such as Boston. I suppose most of them will move to the sprawl and car culture of the suburbs. But I think that some others will move to smaller cities not far away from the big ones to try to keep some of the benefits of urban life, such as the proximity of services, cultural institutions and so on.
In southern New England that would include Providence, Worcester and New Haven, all of which, whatever their flaws, have many lovely neighborhoods, cultural assets, some dating back to their 19th Century economic apogees and some to the (incomplete) urban renaissances of the past couple of decades. Even troubled Hartford has many attractions. Then there’s the too often overlooked New London, with its colleges and dramatic location on Long Island Sound and the Thames River and ferry service to the East End of Long Island. And there are gorgeous old towns nearby.
I look forward to seeing what kind of inter-urban migration develops over the next year or two.
It might be considered a bit ghoulish at this point for smaller cities to try to recruit residents from the big metros but I’m sure it can be done politely.
Chris Powell: Whatever the pandemic, most prisoners are not good risks for release
MANCHESTER, Conn.
How high-minded and humane the clergy members and the civil-liberties union people sound as they clamor and sue for the release of all prisoners in Connecticut -- even murderers -- to protect them against the risk of virus contagion in their confined quarters. Hundreds of prisoners and prison staff members have gotten sick from the virus and seven prisoners have died.
But the complaint is nonsense. The state Correction Department already has released scores of prisoners who were near the end of their sentences, behaved well in prison, were considered good risks, and had family or friends to take them in. But even those prisoners will find it almost impossible to get jobs while the state's economy is so sharply curtailed. Unemployment creates bad temptations for parolees.
Most prisoners are not good risks. Most are not near the end of their sentences. Upon release many could not support themselves honestly even if the economy were operating normally. Most do not have housing and family waiting for them. And most still belong in prison.
For while Connecticut's justice system, like all justice systems, has gotten a few cases spectacularly wrong, convicting innocent men of serious crimes, for most people getting into prison in Connecticut requires career criminality. Indeed, the state is full of chronic offenders with 10, 20 or more serious convictions who still have been given little or no prison time and remain free despite their amply demonstrated incorrigibility.
Most released prisoners get in trouble with the law again within two years. While this is partly because they lack job skills and are released without a job and housing, this does not excuse the government for failing to protect society against them. People who cannot support themselves honestly or are so damaged psychologically that they cannot stop harming others must be locked up, epidemic or no virus.
While this should be obvious, it is hard to find any challenge to the sanctimony of the clergy and civil liberties union. But the other day an inhabitant of the real world, New Haven Police Chief Otoniel Reyes, provided a contrary view.
Chief Reyes told the city's Board of Alders that prisoners recently given early release because of the epidemic -- prisoners judged by the Correction Department to be the best risks -- are already causing trouble again in the city, reviving conflicts with old adversaries.
Some "are really violent and should not be coming out," Reyes told the board, adding that about 17 prisoners released early are now especially dangerous in New Haven again.
The chief said he wished that the Correction Department would consult with his department before releasing prisoners likely return to his city.
In a recent letter to Gov. Ned Lamont, 70 clergy members said releasing prisoners early to avoid virus contagion is "a profoundly moral and ethical issue" -- as if the health of prisoners should be the only consideration here. Consumed by sanctimony, the clergy members give no thought to the safety of others, not even in troubled cities like New Haven where serious crime is a daily occurrence.
This doesn't mean that all prisoners should be denied any chance of redemption. It means that anyone who works his way into prison in Connecticut is already a hard case and that health risks, inevitably high in prison anyway, are no reason to keep inflicting him on everyone else.
Chris Powell is a columnist for the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester, Conn.
Chris Powell: Too much stress from 'high-stakes' school testing? Get used to it!
“Anxiety’’ (1894), by Edvard Munch
Parents and educators alike increasingly complain that "high-stakes” testing in school causes too much stress for students and fails to provide a complete measure of their learning.
A few weeks ago at a meeting of the New Haven Public School Advocates organization, a city Board of Education member and pediatrician, Tamiko Jackson-McArthur, said the prospect of final exams and mastery tests gives students headaches and insomnia. "High-stakes testing does not take into account the social well-being of children,” Jackson-McArthur said, adding that she does not permit her children to take such tests. She echoed calls for less formal and more opinion-based measures of learning.
Of course, there now may be far more stress on everybody than an occasional test imposes, what with school suspended everywhere amid the virus epidemic and children stuck at home all day with parents or relatives, who in turn are stuck with them all day. But if those “high-stakes” tests are abolished and there are no test scores, just a teacher's evaluation of whether a student did well with book reports or a science fair project, the tendency may be to conclude that, as in Lake Wobegon, all students are above average.
For without "high-stakes” tests there will be no verifiable and comparable measures of learning in basic subjects. Teachers are already under great administrative and political pressure not to fail anyone, and Connecticut's main educational policy long has been social promotion. School systems no longer have the political strength to uphold standards.
While students may get anxious as a "high-stakes” test approaches, why shouldn't they become so? Life itself sometimes involves high stakes and requires an ability to handle stress. Gaining that ability is what growing up is about, since Mommy and Daddy won't be around forever.
Besides, in a system of social promotion, how much stress can there really be? It may be impossible for any Connecticut student to get to third or fourth grade without realizing that his learning or lack of it has no bearing on his advancement. By high school most students have realized that not only will they be graduated even if they learn nothing but also, if they desire it, they will be promoted to a community college or state university where they can take remedial high school courses, just as most freshmen in Connecticut's community colleges and state universities do.
Mastery tests, college entrance examinations, and other standardized tests are not perfect but they are probably the most comprehensive educational measures possible. These measures long have been conveying poor performance, and if the risk of stress to students is to be eliminated, what incentive will many students have to perform any better?
That so many high school and even college graduates these days are skilled for little more than menial employment argues powerfully for more anxiety in education, not less.
Of course, it is easy for those who have already endured the trials of school and growing up to disparage the anxiety of today's students. But not all of today's grown-ups are as educated as they should be.
They may remember Alice Cooper singing (screaming, really) decades ago, "School's out forever!” Amid the virus shutdown they may wonder: Why couldn't they have done it before we got too old to enjoy it
Chris Powell is a columnist for the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester, Conn.
Chris Powell: Hartford (Rail) Line would work better if cities along it did, too
Hartford Line train in Hartford
Lauding the increase in passenger traffic in the first 18 months of the Springfield-Hartford-New Haven commuter railroad -- the Hartford Line -- Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont remarked the other week that he found it "astounding" that central Connecticut had gone without a commuter railroad for so long.
While the increase in traffic indeed is encouraging -- the millionth passenger appears to have ridden the restored line around Thanksgiving -- the long lack of commuter rail service between Springfield and New Haven is really not astounding at all. Because of the automobile and the commitment of government to highways, commuter rail service became deeply unprofitable in the 1950s and died in central Connecticut after the bankruptcy of the New Haven Railroad, in 1961. Amtrak's interstate service on the route long has been infrequent and clunky.
Commuter rail service from New Haven to New York survived the New Haven's bankruptcy because New York and Connecticut state governments have operated it with big subsidies as part of the Metro-North Railroad system. Heavy rush-hour traffic on the highways from New Haven to New York keeps the train attractive there despite the rickety tracks and bridges. But highway traffic between Springfield and New Haven seldom is bad enough to induce people to get out of their cars to take buses or the new commuter trains.
For passengers the new Hartford Line service is great and inexpensive, just $8 per ride. The line will get better as more stations are built. But when the service began in June 2018 every passenger trip was being subsidized by state government in the fantastic amount of $59. That subsidy was entirely operating cost, not counting the $700 million spent rebuilding the line. Even now, with ridership increasing, the subsidy per passenger trip is still about $56. A bus ride for a parallel trip costs a fraction of that.
It will be a miracle if the Hartford Line's per-passenger subsidy can be reduced someday even to $40, since the area served lacks the necessary population density and workforce flow patterns and since another prerequisite of a successful commuter railroad isn't always available: frequent bus, taxi, or subway service at major destinations.
But the Hartford Line seems like a far more promising transportation project than another heavily subsidized recent project, the Hartford-New Britain bus highway, which added little to commuting options that were already available. The Hartford Line's reach and service area are far greater. In a state that chose to encourage economic growth instead of just to cannibalize itself to pay pensions to government employees, something like the Hartford Line would be a much greater asset for "transit-oriented development."
Further, of course, highways represent government subsidies just as the new commuter railroad does -- so much so that highways have been given their own revenue streams with special taxes on gasoline and tires. Where population density is high and highways are already crowded, shifting subsidies toward mass transit makes sense.
Maybe the best government could do to build ridership on the Hartford Line would be to improve the demographics and commerce of the cities along it -- Springfield, Hartford, Meriden, and New Haven -- something that should be done for its own sake, quite apart from the success of the new railroad.
Improving the demographics of those cities will require examining what in government policy is perpetuating instead of eradicating the poverty there and thus driving self-sufficient people away from "transit-oriented development."
Chris Powell is a columnist for the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester, Conn.
Chris Powell: Enough of Fotis, please, and cheaper housing needed in suburbs
Fotis Dulos’s police booking photo
For eight months most television evening newscasts and newspaper front pages in Connecticut have highlighted the disappearance of Jennifer Dulos and the suspicion cast on her estranged husband, Fotis. Now Fotis has killed himself and Jennifer remains missing and presumed dead and her body may never be found. Yet the TV newscasts and the newspapers are still full of them. Why?
In the last few days it has been because of the jostling by relatives over the couple's mansion in Farmington. The couple's general estates may be contested as well, not just by relatives but also by bondsmen and even Fotis Dulos's lawyer, Norm Pattis, who imagines the state prosecuting Fotis's estate for murder to oblige the lawyer's wish to clear his late client's name -- or maybe just to keep the lawyer's meter running.
It is hard to see how news organization should consider Connecticut so interested in probate details that are not only without relevance to anything that matters but also without the horror, heartbreak, and prurience that sustained attention to the Dulos case for so long.
While the substantial wealth of the Duloses may have made the case more interesting, Connecticut remains horrifyingly full of domestic violence among people of all economic classes and ethnicities. Several such cases lately have involved illegal immigrants who should have been deported long before they killed their girlfriends or romantic rivals. News organizations pay little attention to seemingly ordinary domestic violence cases, though any of these cases might have more relevance to how Connecticut and the country operate than who ends up with the Dulos mansion.
xxx
For racial and economic class integration, Connecticut needs more inexpensive housing in its suburbs. Rising housing prices may seem great for those who already own their homes but they are bad for society generally, since housing is as much a necessity of life as food and electricity. Rising housing prices are less a sign of prosperity than of worsening economic inequality.
But government's sometimes awful operation of inexpensive housing is often why suburbs want no part of it, as the New Haven Independent inadvertently demonstrated the other day.
The newspaper told how city police officers had gone to a public housing project and bravely subdued a mentally ill man who threatened his wife with a knife and then brandished it at the officers, daring them to kill him. The police could have shot him but managed to disarm him short of that. He was taken by ambulance to a hospital.
It turned out that the man had caused a similar incident with a knife elsewhere in the city last year. In that one it took an hour for the cops to persuade him to put the knife down.
Since the state no longer operates institutions of confinement for the chronically mentally ill, except for those who have already killed someone, people like the chronic case in New Haven increasingly are placed not just in public housing projects and other subsidized units but also in projects meant for the frail elderly. So advocates of putting more such inexpensive housing in the suburbs should explain why anyone should want to live near chronic cases state government fails to handle properly.
One of the heroic cops in New Haven said he hoped that the mentally ill guy would get "the help he needs." It sounds wonderfully humane but that mentally ill guy is a chronic case precisely because "the help he needs" doesn't exist. The help society and his neighbors in New Haven need is protection from him. He'll be back soon.
Chris Powell is a columnist for the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester, Conn.
Judith Graham: What to do if your home health-care agency ditches you
Craig Holly, of Connecticut, was determined to fight when the home health agency caring for his wife decided to cut off services Jan. 18.
The reason he was given by an agency nurse? His wife was disabled but stable, and Medicare was changing its payment system for home health.
Euphrosyne “Effie” Costas-Holly, 67, has advanced multiple sclerosis. She can’t walk or stand and relies on an overhead lift system to move from room to room in their house.
Effie wasn’t receiving a lot of care: just two visits every week from aides who gave her a bath, and one visit every two weeks from a nurse who evaluated her and changed her suprapubic catheter, a device that drains urine from a tube inserted in the abdomen.
But even that little bit helped. Holly, 71, has a bad back and is responsible for his wife’s needs 24/7. Her urologist didn’t have a lift system in his office and had told the couple it was safer to have Effie’s catheter changed regularly at home.
Holly wasn’t sure what to do. Call his congressman and lodge a complaint? Write a letter to the director of the home health agency owned and operated by Hartford HealthCare Corp., one of the largest health care systems in Connecticut?
Things snapped into focus when Holly attended a late November presentation about Medicare’s home health services by Kathleen Holt, associate director of the Center for Medicare Advocacy.
If you’re told Medicare’s home health benefits have changed, don’t believe it: Coverage rules haven’t been altered and people are still entitled to the same types of services, Holt told the group. (For a complete description of Medicare’s home health benefit, click here.)
All that has changed is how Medicare pays agencies under a new system known as the Patient-Driven Groupings Model (PDGM). This system applies to home health services for older adults with original Medicare. Managed-care-style Medicare Advantage plans, which serve about one-third of Medicare beneficiaries, have their own rules.
Under PDGM, agencies are paid higher rates for patients who need complex nursing care and less for people with long-term chronic conditions who need physical, occupational or speech therapy.
Holly got lucky. When he reached out to Holt, she suggested points to bring up with the agency. Tell them your wife’s urologist wasn’t consulted about a possible discharge from home health, doesn’t agree with this move and is willing to recertify Effie for ongoing home health services, Holt advised.
Within hours, the agency reversed its decision and said Effie’s services would remain in place.
A Hartford HealthCare spokesman said he couldn’t comment on the situation, citing privacy laws. “Our goal is to continue to provide the right care at the right place at the right time with the orders reflecting the specific treatment goals and medical needs of each patient,” he wrote in an email.
“No patients have had services reduced as a result of Medicare’s implementation of the PDGM program.”
But therapists, home health agencies and association leaders say that patients across the country are being told they no longer qualify for certain services (such as vitamin B12 injections or suprapubic catheter changes) or that services have to be cut back or discontinued.
What should you do if this happens to you? Experts have several suggestions:
Get as much information as possible. If your agency says you no longer need services, ask your nurse or therapist what criteria you no longer meet, said Jason Falvey, a physical therapist and postdoctoral research fellow in the geriatrics division at Yale School of Medicine, in New Haven.
Does the agency think skilled services are no longer necessary and that a family member can now provide all needed care? Does it believe the person receiving care is no longer homebound? (To receive Medicare home health services, a person must be homebound and in need of intermittent skilled nursing or therapy services.)
“If the therapist or the agency says that Medicare doesn’t cover a particular service any longer, that should raise red flags because Medicare hasn’t changed its benefits or clinical criteria for home health coverage,” Falvey said.
Enlist your doctor’s help. Armed with this information, get in touch with the physician who ordered home health services for you.
“Your physician should be aware if you feel you’re not getting the services you need,” said Kara Gainer, director of regulatory affairs for the American Physical Therapy Association.
“Doctors should not be sitting on the sidelines; they should be advocating for their patients,” said William Dombi, president of the National Association for Home Care and Hospice.
Take it up the chain of command. Meanwhile, let people at the home health agency know that you’re contesting any decision to reduce or terminate services.
When someone begins home health services, an agency is required to give them a sheet, known as the “Patient Bill of Rights,” with the names and phone numbers of people who can be contacted if difficulties arise. Contact the agency’s clinical supervisor, who should be listed here.
“Call us and trigger a conversation,” said Bud Langham, chief strategy and innovation officer at Encompass Health, which provides home health services to 45,000 patients in 33 states.
Also, contact the organization in your state that oversees home health agencies and let them know you believe your agency isn’t following Medicare’s rules, said Sharmila Sandhu, vice president of regulatory affairs for the American Occupational Therapy Association. This should be among the numbers listed on the bills of rights sheet.
Contact Medicare’s ombudsman. Unlike nursing homes, home health agencies don’t have designated long-term ombudsmen who represent patients’ interests. But you can contact 1-800-Medicare and ask a representative to submit an inquiry or complaint to the general Medicare ombudsman, a spokesman for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services said. The ombudsman is tasked with looking into disputes brought to its attention.
File an expedited appeal. If a home health agency plans to discontinue services altogether, staff are required to give you a “Notice of Medicare non-coverage” stating the date on which services will end, the reason for termination and how to file a “fast appeal.” (This notice must be delivered at least two days before services are due to end.) You have to request an expedited appeal by noon of the day after you receive this notice.
A Medicare Quality Improvement Organization will handle the appeal, review your medical information and generally get back to you within three days. In the meantime, your home health agency is obligated to continue providing services.
Shop around. Multiple home health agencies operate in many areas. Some may be for-profit, others not-for-profit.
“All home health agencies are not alike” and if one agency isn’t meeting your needs “consider shopping around,” Dombi said. While this may not be possible in smaller towns or rural areas, in urban areas many choices are typically available.
Contact an advocate. The Center for Medicare Advocacy has been hearing from patients who are being given all kinds of misinformation related to Medicare’s new home health payment system.
Among the things that patients have been told, mistakenly: “Medicare ‘closed a loophole’ as of Jan. 1 so your care will no longer be provided after mid-January,” “Medicare will no longer pay for more than one home health aide per week,” and “We aren’t paid sufficiently to continue your care,” said Judith Stein, the center’s executive director.
Some agencies may not understand the changes that Medicare is implementing; confusion is widespread. Advocates such as the Center for Medicare Advocacy (contact them at here) or the Medicare Rights Center (national help line: 800-333-4114) can help you understand what’s going on and potentially intervene on your behalf.
Judith Graham is a Kaiser Health News journalist.
Chris Powell: Yale isn't why New Haven is poor
Yale’s OId Campus at dusk
Listening to some of the speakers at the Martin Luther King Day memorial service in New Haven last week, anyone might have thought that Yale University is why the city has so many poor people. Connecticut State Treasurer Shawn T. Wooden was especially overwrought. According to the New Haven Independent, Wooden asked: "Is it fair for a city as poor as New Haven to give a $146 million tax break to institutions as wealthy as Yale University and Yale New Haven Hospital?"
But New Haven doesn't provide that tax break. It's state law that exempts charitable, religious and nonprofit educational institutions such as Yale and its hospital from municipal property taxes. If Wooden, a Democrat, ever dares do more than preach to the choir, he could raise this issue with the governor, also a Democrat, and the General Assembly, which has a comfortable Democratic majority. Yale may be the biggest nonprofit in Connecticut but it's not the only one, and they all enjoy the exemption.
Yes, with an endowment of $30 billion, Yale is a filthy rich nonprofit. The joke is that Yale is a hedge fund masquerading as a university. But Yale is not why New Haven has so many poor people. The university and its hospital provide most of the better-paying private-sector jobs in the city and most of its commerce, cultural life, and appeal to the rest of the world. Without the university New Haven might blow away or be indistinguishable from Bridgeport, which might kill for a "problem" like Yale.
No, New Haven has so many poor people for the same reasons Connecticut's other cities do. The cities have much cheap housing, state welfare policy produces generational dependence instead of self-sufficiency, and state education policy fails to educate the unmotivated, instead keeping them unmotivated with social promotion.
But Yale does pose a special problem for New Haven, just as being the seat of state government poses a special problem for Hartford. Along with ordinary tax-exempt property like churches, university property in New Haven and state government property in Hartford are so extensive as to remove from the tax rolls half the land area of the cities.
While both cities are heavily subsidized by state government, Hartford gets far more. It gets not only the many state government jobs located there but also state payments in lieu of taxes as well as the benefit of state government's outrageous recent assumption of $500 million of the city's bonded debt, whereby state government essentially reimbursed the city for the $80 million baseball stadium it couldn't afford but built anyway as it neared bankruptcy.
By comparison Yale's annual $12 million voluntary payment to New Haven in lieu of taxes is pitifully small.
Speaking in New Haven last week, Treasurer Wooden, the former leader of Hartford's City Council, a stadium advocate, and a perpetrator of the city's insolvency, failed to acknowledge this unfairness.
With $30 billion in its accounts, Yale could afford to make a much larger annual payment to New Haven, which was a pillar of the platform of the city's new mayor, Justin Elicker, in his campaign last year. Indeed, the General Assembly should consider reducing the property tax exemption of any institution that controls such a disproportionate amount of a municipality's land area.
Not that this would improve New Haven much. For unless Elicker can change things, most of the extra money would be used only to increase compensation for employees of the city's incompetent and sometimes corrupt government
Chris Powell is a columnist for the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester, Conn.
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Dining on the rails
From Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com
One of my fondest travel memories is eating in train dining cars, with most of my experience going way back to before Amtrak, on the likes of the New Haven, New York Central and Pennsylvania railroads. The food and service were remarkably good, considering the lines’ dubious finances and it was pleasant to watch the passing scenery through the window and brood. Compared to other modes of transportation, trains are good to eat on, read on, and, especially, brood on. And you can go for walks.
A drawback, or an allure, of the dining cars is that you sometimes have to share a table. Practiced train travelers learn how to determine whether the other person(s) wants to chat, or be left alone, and how to politely convey whether you want to talk. Decades later, I remember some of these conversations.
Sadly, Amtrak is ending traditional dining-car service on many overnight trains, starting with eliminating those east of the Mississippi, citing the desire by Millennials for more “flexible” and “contemporary’’ eating options. Another treasure of gracious living is derailed.
For a good overview of Amtrak’s current status, please hit this link.
'Planning with people'
Edward Logue, far right, presents some Boston redevelopment plans to Mayor John Collins and Cardinal Richard Cushing.
From Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com
Hearing of the publication of Lisabeth Cohen’s new book, Saving America’s Cities: Ed Logue and the Struggle to Renew Urban America in the Suburban Age, reminded me of cities I lived in or near over the decades, though it didn’t particularly remind me of Providence.
When I lived in Connecticut, in the early and mid ‘60s, Edward Logue (1921-2000) was already something of a national figure for his sometimes too confident efforts to push urban renewal in New Haven, where he was the city planner. He was determined to create a “slumless city’’ through assorted public-housing projects and a huge downtown mall. He did help save and/or improve some neighborhoods but overall he failed to turn around the city, home of very rich Yale University, of which he was an alumnus. Indeed, the city, run by the also “visionary” Mayor Richard Lee, continued to decline during their tenures, in part because of the destabilization caused by their tearing down of some lower-middle-class neighborhoods. Well aware of New Haven’s rising crime rate, I learned to walk fast through the city, whose train station I often used in the ‘60s.
In Boston, Ed Logue performed duties somewhat similar to what he handled in New Haven. He was an integral part of a huge effort to create what was called “The New Boston’’ in 1961-68. I worked in Boston as a reporter in 1970-71, when I saw much of his recent handiwork. The city, for so long down-at-the heels, was starting to look better – in general – though some of the new buildings were/are cold and sterile-looking.
While Mr. Logue undertook some actions that led to evisceration of some neighborhoods – some probably worthy of evisceration, such as honky-tonk Scollay Square -- he learned from the social damage he inadvertently helped create in New Haven not to willy-nilly tear down some beautiful old buildings that could be repurposed, and he consulted neighborhood leaders more than he had in New Haven. But he also was one of those pushing to create Government Center as a Scollay Square replacement whose unfortunate centerpiece is the hideous City Hall Plaza, which planners have been trying to “fix’’ ever since.
When I moved to New York, Mr. Logue was there, working on big redevelopment projects.
Mr. Logue had some big successes in reversing urban decline in some neighborhoods, along with some abject failures. He found that cities are more complicated than even the smartest and most well-meaning city planner can imagine, and that while there’s a role for top-down planning, even involving what may be unpopular decisions (if only in the short term), old cities have physical and social fabrics that are easier to tear apart than to repair. So his belated motto became “planning with people.’
What brought back some big cities, notably New York and Boston, more than planning and urban renewal, included the growing fatigue with car-based and “boring” suburbia, as well as demographic change, which brought lower crime rates and a growing percentage of single people. Then there were the multiplier effects of increasingly thriving industries in certain cities, such as technology in Greater Boston and finance in New York. Some cities became “hot’’ again.
As for Ed Logue, he spent the last part of his life happily living in rural, or maybe call it exurban, Martha’s Vineyard, amongst other refugees from urban angst.
Chris Powell: Latest Conn. immigration case reveals subversive goal
With the border wall separating them, to the left lies San Diego, Calif., and on the right Tijuana, Mexico.
Nobody denies that Domar Shearer, a 23-year-old man from Jamaica, is in the United States illegally, having overstayed a visa three years ago. Nobody denies that he was recently arrested in a domestic disturbance with his wife in Ansonia. Nor does anyone deny that he has been working illegally at a restaurant in Bridgeport.
But Shearer is the latest cause celebre of Connecticut's immigration law nullification movement, enjoying support not just from a New Haven-based organization of immigration law obstructors, Unidad Latina en Accion, but also the state Judicial Department, the state public defender's office, a U.S. senator, and newspapers.
Shearer became a cause the other day when federal immigration agents went looking for him at the courthouse in Derby as he arrived to resolve his criminal charges. The public defender's office let him hide there for hours until court closed and the agents left. Then the nullifiers escorted him to a "safe house" in New Haven, home to thousands of other illegal immigrants, many holding identification cards issued by the city to facilitate their lawbreaking.
The nullifiers portray as an injustice the pursuit of illegal immigrants at courthouses. They say it discourages illegals from seeking justice. But then the people being pursued aren't entitled to be in the country in the first place and the immigration agents would not pursue them at courthouses if those weren't good places to find them.
Of course the nullifiers' idea of justice has no room for federal immigration law. Their premise, which has been largely incorporated into Connecticut law, is that anyone who is in the country illegally and makes it to Connecticut should be exempt from immigration law enforcement unless he is a terrorist.
That is, the objective of the nullifiers is open borders, the end of the United States.
Thanks to the Shearer case, at least this objective must be admitted now. One of the newspapers celebrating Shearer's escape to the underground, the New Haven Independent, even published a photo of him with his rescuers holding revealing signs. One reads, "Erase all borders." Shearer himself holds a sign bearing, in Spanish, an obscenity about immigration agents.
Connecticut U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, who issued a statement supporting Shearer against the agents, should contemplate those signs. Legalizing people who long have lived in the country illegally but productively and without committing offenses is a worthy objective of immigration law reform along with securing the borders. Both liberal and conservative presidents, including Ronald Reagan, have supported it. So is legalizing people who were brought into the country illegally as children and know no other home. But in assisting people who want to erase the country's borders and degrade immigration agents, the senator has forgotten his oath of office.
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ABORTION COMES FIRST: The Connecticut Catholic Conference's annual report on abortion in the state, published this month, shows that Connecticut continues to nullify the law in another way.
That is, the report says Connecticut abortion clinics are attracting minors from states that require parental notification for abortions -- this state has no such law -- and that abortion clinics here increasingly violate state law's requirement to report the ages of abortion recipients.
That is, the report is a reminder that Connecticut law considers abortion more compelling than protecting children against rape.
Chris Powell is a columnist for the Journal Inquirer in Manchester, Conn.
Chris Powell: Connecticut's toll trauma
Gov. Ned Lamont's plan for imposing tolls on Connecticut's highways has devolved over a few months from 50 tolling stations producing about $800 million a year to just 14 stations at bridges needing renovation, where a mere fraction of that $800 million would be raised.
So what happened to the plan? The governor, a Democrat, eventually calculated that while his party has comfortable majorities in both houses of the General Assembly, a majority can be built for tolls only on the smallest scale, since the Republicans are opposed and many Democrats are fearful of retaliation from their constituents.
Some of the governor's ideas for transportation improvements are compelling, like bringing more passenger service to Tweed New Haven Airport or a serious amount to Sikorsky Memorial Airport,. in Stratford, along with modernizing the Metro-North commuter railroad from New Haven to New York. But putting tolls all over the place would be far too visible to voters. It also would be a regressive form of taxation, falling mainly on the poor and middle class, whom the Democrats purport to represent. Meanwhile the state's ever-rising taxes are inducing people with higher incomes to leave the state, which continues to lose population relative to the rest of the country.
Democratic legislators are usually willing to raise taxes, so their reluctance with tolls indicates a change in political atmosphere. Such a change was also indicated by the most notable result of this year's municipal election campaigns -- the defeat of New Haven Mayor Toni Harp by Justin Elicker in the Democratic primary and then again in last week's election, where Harp ran as the candidate of the government employee union-dominated Working Families Party. Harp had just raised New Haven's property taxes by 11 percent and her administration lately was full of costly incompetence.
Since Democratic legislators fear tolls and since even overwhelmingly Democratic New Haven seems sick of taxes, people here slowly may be wising up. So the government class may be vulnerable if Connecticut ever has an opposition party not led by President Trump.
In any case, tolls are not really for transportation purposes. Rather they are for allowing the state's Democratic regime to avoid economizing in the rest of government in favor of transportation.
Tolls will let state government continue to overlook its mistaken and expensive policies with education, welfare, and government employees, where ever more spending fails to improve learning, worsens the dependence of the unskilled, and makes public administration less efficient and accountable.
Connecticut needs profound reform in these respects, and enacting tolls will only reduce the pressure on elected officials to choose the public interest over special interests.
The state's most fearsome special interest, the Connecticut Education Association, the teachers union, inadvertently illustrated one of those choices the other day. The union issued a report about “sick” schools -- schools that, because of deferred maintenance and lack of improvements, suffer from mold, excessive heat, and such.
But school maintenance and improvements are neglected in large part because state law requires binding arbitration of teacher union contracts, thereby giving teacher compensation priority in budgeting. There's no binding arbitration for “sick” schools, so maintenance and improvements are often deferred in favor of raising teacher pay.
What's really sick here is the law, since it serves only the special interest, letting it cannibalize the rest of government.
Chris Powell is a columnist for the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester, Conn.
Chris Powell: Prosecute kids for wearing blackface? Perpetual poverty in New Haven
Promotional poster for Spike Lee’s 2000 film Bamboozled, about a disgruntled black television executive who reintroduces the old blackface style in a series concept to try to get himself fired, and is instead horrified by its success.
Kids can be horrible -- stupid, cruel, hateful, sadistic, reckless, and worse. But in spite of the indignation lately contrived by the Connecticut chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, wearing blackface is not high on the scale of youthful offenses.
The other week, at a press conference outside a middle school in Shelton, Conn., one of whose white students recently posted on the Internet a photo of herself wearing blackface, the NAACP suggested that kids deserve to be shot for that kind of thing or at least criminally prosecuted for a "hate crime."
On top of that, according to the Valley Independent Sentinel, the NAACP demanded that Shelton authorities account to the organization for the progress of the "investigation" of the incident and include the organization in a mandatory discussion with students and school staff about racial diversity.
Make wearing blackface a "hate crime"? That's fascism. For no matter how offensive the blackface-wearing student was, and no matter what she meant, if anything, she did it on her own time to her own looks in her own life. A school can disapprove of certain things that rise to public attention, and of course a school always should be teaching decent behavior, but First Amendment freedom of expression in one's personal life is and must remain inviolate. The government has no authority to punish it.
In peacefully protesting racial oppression in the segregationist South, the civil rights advocates of a half century ago struggled and even died for freedom of expression. The NAACP was part of that struggle. Now the organization wants 12-year-olds prosecuted for putting on makeup and making faces.
But it's even more ironic. Lately the NAACP has supported Connecticut's new laws increasing leniency for juveniles who commit crimes like car theft. So now in Connecticut juveniles can get caught stealing cars twice before a court can impose any punishment on them. Many of those juveniles are black. But the NAACP thinks wearing blackface is worse than car theft.
Most kids grow up. The premier of Canada wore blackface when he was young. So did the governor of Virginia. They lately were caught through old photos and repented. Blackface is not who they are now. Most of the kids in Connecticut who lately have advertised themselves wearing blackface have been reprimanded and likely will grow up too. With luck many of Connecticut's young and coddled car thieves will not only grow up but stay out of prison.
The NAACP should grow up as well. There are far more serious things to be indignant about.
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WHY THE PERPETUAL POVERTY? Fresh from his victory in New Haven's Democratic primary for mayor, Justin Elicker has urged Yale University students to devote some time to civic life in the city. According to the Yale Daily News, one student snarked back, "We're a university, not a soup kitchen."
Elicker replied that some city residents "can't put food on the table" while Yalies enjoy an all-you-can-eat dining hall.
But despite that snarky student, Yale is not quite the bastion of privilege it once was. Now about half Yale's students receive the university's own scholarships under "need-blind" admissions policy so that even kids who grew up dining at soup kitchens and don't have much money can get into the university.
Also the other week CTNewsJunkie reported that Connecticut is the only state in which poverty recently increased. So Yale students and Elicker himself might perform a great civic service if they could ever determine why poverty and urban policies are failing so badly.
Chris Powell is a columnist for the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester, Conn.
Chris Powell: 'Nonprofit' Yale, with its vast endowment, is overwhelming New Haven
Yale’s Old Campus at dusk
Without Yale University, there might not be much left to New Haven beyond the daily shootings, drug overdoses, indignant demands for nullification of federal immigration law, and good pizza. Even so, Yale may be getting too big not just for New Haven but for Connecticut as well. Indeed, the university seems to be slowly taking over the city, which might be an improvement if it wasn't so undemocratic.
The New Haven Register reported the other day that the university this year converted six buildings from commercial to educational or medical use, thereby rendering them exempt from city property taxes and costing the city $3 million a year. Five months ago the university said it will build a neuroscience research center on the part of the Yale New Haven Hospital campus formerly owned by St. Raphael's Hospital, thereby keeping that prime property off the city tax rolls as well.
Meanwhile Yale's endowment has just broken $30 billion even as the finances of city government and state government remain a mess.
Sometimes nonprofit organizations fall too much in love with the endowments they amass from the tax exemptions conferred by state and federal law. Yale may be an egregious example of this. The university could not acquire much more property for nonprofit use in New Haven without demolishing the city's already weak tax base, and Yale's $30 billion endowment already might cover free or heavily discounted tuition for all ]the university's students for decades.
Unless it plans to acquire the rest of New Haven or even the state, how much larger an endowment does Yale really need?
According to the Register, Yale pays the city $5.6 million a year in property taxes on its nonexempt property and about $12 million more in a voluntary payment and a fee for fire protection. That's nice but still a fraction of what the university might pay without its property tax exemption.
From time to time state legislators and others have proposed taxing university endowments rather than repealing the property tax exemption for all colleges and hospitals, since Yale's endowment is so big that it easily could be taxed without touching any other endowments. The second largest such endowment in the state is said to be that of Wesleyan University in Middletown, only $1 billion. The endowment tax proposals have not gotten anywhere in the General Assembly.
But as Yale slowly consumes New Haven and as nonprofits and government agencies encroach more on the property tax bases of Connecticut's other cities, the rationale for tax exemption for nonprofits weakens, especially as crushing student loan debt shows that higher education is greatly overrated.
Bernie Sanders is not president yet, so any big stash of money is not automatically a target for communistic confiscation. But as long as donations to colleges and universities are tax-exempt and diminish the income tax revenue that otherwise would be collected from the donors by the state and federal governments, huge endowments like Yale's are fairly questioned. It's no matter that such endowments may be growing more from profitable investment than from fresh donations, since they originate mainly in donations that were tax-exempt.
But any revenue from taxing Yale's endowment should flow to state government, not city government, since state government already reimburses half the city's budget and city government is even less competent than state government. The best use of any new revenue for state government might be just to cut state taxes, since “property tax relief” is just a euphemism for raising municipal spending.
Chris Powell is a columnist for the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester, Conn.
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How to do urban renewal
Hartford’s Constitution Plaza, an urban-renewal project that drove out many residents in what had been a stable neighborhood
From Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com
Tom Condon wrote a nice piece for The Connecticut Mirror on how to do and not do “urban renewal’’ with a focus, of course, on the Nutmeg State. A few particularly important things: Don’t tear up and/or divide city neighborhoods with huge limited-access highways, and try to avoid replacing structurally sound and attractive old buildings with sterile glass and steel structures.
When I lived near New Haven in the early and mid ’60s I remember how arrogant “urban renewal’’ tore apart that city. Without the presence of very rich Yale University as a moderating force, the well-meaning renewers, especially then Mayor Richard Lee and city development director Edward Logue, would have done even more damage to downtown New Haven. The repair work has been underway now for a generation, and the place looks much better.
Mr. Condon’s cites a new book by former New York City planner and Yale Prof. Alexander Garvin called In The Heart of the City. As explanation for the turnaround in some cities in recent years, he cites crime reduction, the creation of Business Improvement Districts to clean and promote downtowns (Providence has one) and the rise of the Internet, which has let companies sharply reduce the space they need for storage of documents. This has freed up a lot of space in buildings – space that can be converted to housing, this increasing population density downtown, which has provided more customers for local businesses and reduced crime (more eyes on the street), in a kind of virtuous circle.
To read Mr. Condon’s article, please hit this link.
Chris Powell: New Haven's biggest problem
New Haven.
Anyone who fears for manufacturing in Connecticut should visit New Haven, where it seems that half the indignation in the country is produced.
The outrage of the moment is what may be a case of mistaken identity last week in which police officers from Hamden and Yale University shot at a car they stopped on Dixwell Avenue in New Haven because it fit the description of a car said to be involved in an attempted armed robbery a mile away in Hamden. A passenger in the car was wounded but no evidence linking the car or its occupants to the robbery has been found. The state's attorney's office and the state police have taken over the investigation.
Horrible as such a mistake by the police here would be, cases of mistaken identity in police work happen all the time and some have far worse results. Some are caused by the negligence of officers, others by devastating coincidence. This one may have been compounded by the officers' lack of judgment if not trigger-happiness.
But because the occupants of the stopped car are black, the protests in New Haven presume without evidence that the incident was part of a nationwide police scheme to murder black people. "No justice, no peace, no racist police," the protesters chant, though the Hamden officer in the incident is black himself and first worked as an officer in New Haven, where he was trained.
The protesters, many of them students at Yale, want the officers fired and prosecuted immediately, before any investigation. That reflects the university's political correctness. They also want the university police disarmed and suburban officers forbidden to pursue criminal suspects into New Haven.
So much for the mandatory regionalism advocated by New Haven Sen. Martin M. Looney. But the rest of the New Haven area might be glad to have less to do with the city if its miserable demographics were not producing so much of the region's crime. Over the weekend prior to the incident on Dixwell Avenue four people were injured in three shootings in New Haven, and even as protesters were chanting away at another rally last Thursday night, a riot broke out at a street party elsewhere in the city, one teenager getting shot and another injured by flying glass.
Of course there were no protests of that violence, since it was typical for New Haven, nor any expressions of sympathy for those assigned by government to protect society against the anarchy of city life. In this respect New Haven is not much worse than Hartford or Bridgeport.
Connecticut does not hold its police to account as well as it should but it has been improving. There are mechanisms for accountability and some recognition that officers in all towns represent the state as a whole. So if Connecticut is really to be a state, the pursuit of violent felons cannot stop at town lines.
So why, despite their worsening demographics, are Connecticut's cities not only largely walled off politically but, as the protests in New Haven show, trying to wall themselves off from due process of law and even law itself? For neither can Connecticut be a state if law in the cities is only a polite fiction.
Chris Powell is a columnist for the Journal Inquirer in Manchester, Conn.
Chris Powell: Raising tobacco-purchase age would do little for city kids
Why do officials in politically correct cities like Hartford, New Haven and Bridgeport put so much effort into posturing on issues over which they have no serious jurisdiction? Maybe it's to console themselves for their ineffectuality with important matters like the worsening poverty, ignorance, and demoralization of their constituents.
Last week Hartford was at it again as its City Council prepared an ordinance raising to 21 the age for purchasing tobacco products. A week earlier Bridgeport had adopted an ordinance purporting to outlaw homemade plastic guns.
Even as Hartford prepared the tobacco ordinance, several of its high school students got sick in school after consuming marijuana-laced brownies given to them by other students. Marijuana possession by minors is illegal but of course it has been decades since that prohibition deterred anyone, and now both Connecticut and the country are starting to figure that the prohibition might as well be repealed and marijuana sold legally and taxed.
So why does Hartford think that raising the age for tobacco purchases will accomplish anything? Why does Hartford think that minors won't continue to purchase tobacco through older friends, as they do with alcoholic beverages?
And what about the bigger question of the age of majority? How sensible is society when it proclaims 18-year-olds mature enough to vote, serve in the military, and make contracts but not mature enough just to smoke and drink?
Poor judgment will always be part of youth. But an ordinance purporting to protect kids against tobacco in a city where most kids have no father in their home and many have no real parent at all is worse than poor judgment. It's a sick joke by shameless adults.
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VINDICATING THE FLAG: Another flag-salute case has arisen from a public school in Waterbury.
Twenty-five years ago the city's school system tried to punish a black high school student who, calling herself a Communist, refused to salute the flag at the start of the school day. She beat the school system in a lawsuit because school administrators somehow had overlooked or deliberately disregarded a renowned U.S. Supreme Court decision from 1943 forbidding schools from coercing students into making expressions of belief. That decision upheld freedom of conscience, which the country then was defending at profound cost in a world war.
In the new Waterbury case some nonwhite students allege that a teacher has been mocking and shaming them for refusing to rise for the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag, which they say is their way of protesting racial discrimination.
A trial may be needed to determine exactly what has been happening but there should be no doubt about the long-established right not to salute the flag -- just as there should be no doubt that the right not to salute the flag is a powerful reason for saluting it.
Of course the country has not achieved perfect justice. But it never will. It can only keep improving. With its proclamation of "liberty and justice for all," the Pledge of Allegiance will always be largely aspirational. But the heroes of the civil rights revolution 50 years ago accepted this and always carried the flag into the struggle. They succeeded and changed the country and thereby vindicated the flag.
A good teacher would explain this to his students as he acknowledged their right not to salute the flag. If they still refused to salute, he would let them be undisturbed, since, after all, their liberty still would be pretty good advertising for the country.
Chris Powell is a columnist for the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester, Conn.