Chris Powell: More absentee ballots means more election corruption; boffo at Bradley

MANCHESTER, Conn.

Judging by voter participation in Connecticut's most recent municipal elections, Hartford may be the most demoralized place in the state.

The Hearst Connecticut newspapers report that only 14 percent of Hartford residents who are registered to vote did so in last year's municipal election, when the city had the lowest voter participation among all Connecticut municipalities. The city's voter participation rate is actually far worse than reported, since, as with all other municipalities, many eligible residents don't even register to vote.

What is the City Council's idea for curing this civic demoralization? It's to diminish election security by mailing absentee-ballot applications for future elections to all residents on the voter rolls.

Of course, absentee ballots have been at the center of the recent election-corruption scandals in Bridgeport, where absentee ballot applications have been pressed on people who did not apply for them and completed absentee ballots have been stuffed by political operatives into unsecured ballot deposit boxes.

Absentee ballots are a necessity of democracy, but for election security their use should be minimized, not increased. For the more a voter is separated from the in-person casting of his vote, the more potential there will be for corruption. Requests for absentee ballots should be scrutinized for validation as much as the casting of completed ballots in person should be.

The Republican minority in the General Assembly is serious about this issue. The Democratic majority is not.

The Republicans propose to outlaw the mailing of unsolicited absentee-ballot applications, to require people voting by absentee ballot to include a copy of an identification document bearing a photo, to require municipalities to provide voters with photo identification without charge, the cost to be reimbursed by state government; to require municipalities to update and audit their voter rolls regularly, and to suspend use of absentee ballot deposit boxes, since the U.S. mail can do the job more securely.

xxx

PLEADING POVERTY: Should poor people have to obey the law in Connecticut? Legislation approved by the General Assembly's Judiciary Committee suggests that poverty should confer exemption from the law.

The legislation, sponsored by four Democratic state representatives, would forbid the suspension of driver's licenses for people who have failed to appear in court as ordered or who have failed to pay fines. Suspension of the driver's licenses of people who ignore court orders and judgments has been an incentive for obeying the law.

The rationale of the legislation is that poor people are less able to take time off from work to attend court and less able to pay fines, and of course they are. But if poverty is to excuse people from respect the law and the courts, why should they obey any law at all? 

Connecticut's courts already carry hundreds of cases of failure to appear. If the Judiciary Committee's legislation is enacted, the state is sure to experience much more contempt for law and an ever-growing inventory of "failure to appears" -- and somehow the Democrats will call it justice.

At Bradley International Airport

DILLON IMPROVED BRADLEY: In recent years Connecticut has put many millions of dollars into Bradley International Airport. Though the correlation between spending and improvement in state government is usually weak, the airport has improved much since the Connecticut Airport Authority was created to operate it and the other state-owned airports in 2013.

For the 11 years since then Kevin A. Dillon has been the authority's executive director, overseeing a great expansion of service at Bradley -- more international and nonstop flights, more airlines, better facilities, and more passengers, though the passenger total from the year prior to the virus epidemic has not quite been surpassed yet.

Bradley makes a huge contribution to Connecticut's economy, its business environment, and quality of life, for which Dillon must be credited. He plans to retire early next year. Before he leaves the authority should name something after him.

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

Chris Powell: Mental illness isn’t a problem of shortage of treatment

At Connecticut Valley Hospital, in Middletown, Conn., a public hospital operated by the state of Connecticut to treat people with mental illness. Opened in 1868, it was historically known as Connecticut General Hospital for the Insane and is in a 100-acre historic district listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

MANCHESTER, Conn.

When confronting a problem most people instinctively look first for its cause and try to eliminate it.

But such logic doesn't apply so much in government, as indicated by government's response to what is reported to be an explosion of mental illness among young people.

Teachers and school administrators throughout Connecticut say many more of their students are seriously troubled these days.

The commissioner of the state Mental Health and Addiction Services Department, Nancy Navaretta, reported the other day that one in seven teenagers is mentally ill and that suicide is the second-leading cause of death for 10- to 24-year-olds. State government's child advocate, Sarah Eagan, added that 48 Connecticut children between the ages of 10 and 17 killed themselves from January 2016 through September 2022.

So members of Congress, including Connecticut's U.S. Reps. Rosa DeLauro and Jahana Hayes, are sponsoring what they call the Expanding Access to Mental Health Services in Schools Act, which aims to put counselors or clinics in more schools. Educators and social-service people in the state are cheering them on.

But even if the legislation was enacted immediately it would be many years before it had any effect on the problem. For the legislation just sets up a federal agency for overseeing the training, qualifications, assignment, and compensation of school mental health counselors.

The legislation would appropriate no money at the outset. Money might be appropriated eventually, though like everything else at the federal level these days, money for mental health would have to get in line behind money meant to continue the war in Ukraine and support illegal immigrants.

So government might be far more helpful if it investigated the causes of the increasing mental illness of young people. Exactly why are so many more young people becoming mentally ill?

At a recent gathering at a school in Waterbury, Representative DeLauro attributed the mental illness epidemic to bullying, stress, isolation, and social media. 

But young people always have faced bullying, stress, and isolation. Youth is the primary time of life for apprehension, depression, and mental disturbance. So why have the causes of mental illness in young people become so much worse in recent years? 

Schools are notorious for failing to act effectively against bullying, perhaps because political correctness does not permit seriously disciplining students for misconduct. With a little political courage, school policy could be changed.

Social media are new, but parents can disconnect their children from social media by restricting their use of mobile phones. 

Other causes of stress among children and society generally are easy to see, at least if you're not a member of Congress. In recent years inflation has been worst with the top two necessities of life, food and housing. Food banks and housing authorities in Connecticut report that food and housing inflation have made many people desperate and that even fully employed people are having much trouble supporting themselves and their families. 

But few members of Congress, and none from Connecticut, take any responsibility for inflation and the stress it has put on society. Members of Congress are content to congratulate themselves for the patronage goodies they are distributing that have been purchased not with tax money but borrowed money, money that the country never will be able to repay.

Parenting was already declining throughout the country long before government's inflationary response to the recent virus epidemic. A third or more of American children are growing up without a father in their home, thus lacking the moral, emotional, and financial support a father ordinarily would provide. Impoverishing many of these households, inflation has weakened the parenting of many more children.

Mental illness among young people might be addressed directly by aiming at its causes -- by knocking inflation down sharply and ending the welfare system's subsidies for childbearing outside marriage. 

But instead advocates of the Expanding Access to Mental Health Services in Schools Act envision a lot more government employment and regulation, as if the bigger problem is the shortage of treatment for mental illness and not the explosion of mental illness itself.

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

Chris Powell: Lieberman often brilliantly navigated around the political shoals

Sen. Joe Lieberman and his wife, Hadassah, riding the United States Capitol subway system in 2011

MANCHESTER, Conn.

Joe Lieberman was Connecticut's most consequential politician of his era, holding high office in the state for 40 of the 42 years between 1971 and 2013, 24 of those in the U.S. Senate. He was also often an insurgent and sometimes crossed his party's establishment in a big way but got away with it, probably because he was calm and genial and quietly exuded integrity even when causing controversy.

Lieberman's involvement in politics began in New Haven with the anti-Vietnam war campaigns of 1968 and 1970, when he was not long out of Yale University. He shocked observers by winning a primary against the state Senate's Democratic majority leader, Edward L. Marcus, of New Haven, who had been distracted by his campaign for U.S. senator.

Instantly Lieberman was a star. Soon he was Senate Democratic majority leader. His ascent was stalled by his defeat for the U.S. House from the New Haven district in 1980 after a terrible campaign. But he remained so well regarded that he easily won the party's nomination for state attorney general, in 1982, whereupon he transformed the office into what it is almost everywhere now -- a noisy platform as "the people's lawyer," hectoring and suing bad guys and gaining spectacular publicity if not spectacular results.

The attorney general's office offered Lieberman a double opportunity -- not just for constant publicity but also, in 1988, for challenging Connecticut's Republican U.S. senator, Lowell P. Weicker Jr., without having to risk losing the attorney general's office, where his term extended to 1990.

After three terms in the Senate Weicker had a national reputation, gained first by denouncing President Richard Nixon, a fellow Republican, amid the Watergate scandal, then by slighting Republicans in other situations as Connecticut became more Democratic. Republicans resented renominating Weicker and Lieberman saw his chance. Since his liberal credentials were solid, he struck some conservative poses to appeal to Republicans sick of Weicker, who notably included National Review editor and columnist William F. Buckley Jr., a Connecticut resident.

Republican defections to Lieberman were probably decisive, as he won by just 10,000 votes, seven-tenths of a percentage point. 

In the Senate Lieberman was a reliably liberal Democratic vote, and he easily won re-election in 1994. But in 1998 he had the nerve, rare among Democrats, to scold President Bill Clinton, also a Democrat, for his affair with an intern in the White House. While Lieberman voted against Clinton's impeachment, his criticism of a president from his own party was taken as evidence of integrity. So when the Democrats nominated Vice President Al Gore to succeed Clinton as president in 2000, Gore chose Lieberman as his vice-presidential running mate in large part to signify some independence from Clinton.

Gore and Lieberman won the popular vote but lost the electoral vote. Lieberman simultaneously ran for re-election to the Senate in Connecticut and easily won again.

Lieberman's support for the U.S. war against Iraq in pursuit of imaginary "weapons of mass destruction" cost him renomination by the Democrats in a primary in 2006 narrowly won by Ned Lamont, now governor. But running as an independent and receiving most Republican votes, Lieberman easily won re-election and remained in the Senate Democratic caucus.

The next year Lieberman supported Republican Sen. John McCain for president over the Democratic nominee, Barack Obama. Still the Senate Democratic caucus didn't dare expel him.

Lieberman worked well enough with Obama, though he has been blamed or credited for keeping a "public option" out of the "Obamacare" national health-insurance legislation, something perhaps to be expected from a senator from a state with a big insurance industry.

Lieberman retired from the Senate in 2013, but when he died March 27 at 82 he was still much involved in politics through the No Labels movement, trying to recruit a presidential ticket to provide an alternative to the awful Joe Biden and Donald Trump. In any event, No Labels gave up that effort.

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

Chris Powell: Hartford doesn’t need hockey and state’s ‘values’ don’t help

At the XL Center, in Hartford.

— Photo by Enterprise8875

 MANCHESTER, Conn.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bible thumping may be easier to live with. 

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

Chris Powell: More discipline would mean less racism in schools

Harper's Weekly cover from 1898 shows a caricature of school discipline.

MANCHESTER, Conn.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Concert tickets are the least of the scam.   

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

Chris Powell: A heavy discounting of outrageous crime in Conn.; teachers aren’t underpaid

MANCHESTER, Conn.

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

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

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

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

Connecticut should want such hefty discounting of criminal justice to be over. But it won't be over any time soon.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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: Ban investors from taking over and looting charitable hospitals

“The Cunning Thief,’’ by Paul-Charles Chocarne-Moreau, depicting a thief about to steal a baked good.

MANCHESTER, Conn.

Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont and state legislative leaders have not yet completed their health-care proposals for the new session of the General Assembly but they should include legislation forbidding the sale of nonprofit hospitals to profit-making entities. 

Many nonprofit hospitals in Connecticut have been acquired in recent years by large nonprofit chains, such as Hartford HealthCare and Yale New Haven Health, and so may not be vulnerable to acquisition by profit-making entities. But many other nonprofit hospitals in the state may be -- the ones owned by smaller chains of nonprofits and the few nonprofit hospitals that remain independent.

Good luck to anyone who can start a private hospital and make money from it. But state government must protect the nonprofit hospitals insofar as they have been built over many years by community charity and voluntarism and their capital properly belongs to the community. An investment company's 2016 acquisition of three Connecticut nonprofit hospitals -- Waterbury, Manchester Memorial, and Rockville General, in Vernon -- has resulted in the liquidation of that community capital for private profit. 

The investment company sold the real estate of the three hospitals, paid the money to its investors, and then leased the property back so hospitals could continue operating but with the added expense of rent. This was essentially what in high finance is called a leveraged buyout. More simply it is looting.

Now the three hospitals are insolvent, operating under financial duress, and being offered for sale but there appears to be only one potential buyer, Yale New Haven Health, and it wants a subsidy from state government to make the deal. It's starting to seem as if the hospitals may fail before a deal is made.

The same situation has unfolded recently in Massachusetts, where an investment company bought the six nonprofit hospitals of Caritas Christi Health Care and eventually liquidated their real estate for profit for investors. Now those hospitals are insolvent and in severe trouble as well.

In a statement last month the entire Massachusetts congressional delegation wrote that the investment company "stripped out and sold the property from underneath these hospitals, creating hundreds of millions of dollars in profits for private equity executives while leaving the facilities with long-term liabilities that are magnifying -- if not creating -- the current crisis." 

The acquisition of nonprofit hospitals by private investors is a racket. Connecticut should outlaw it. If nonprofit hospitals can't survive financially, their assets should default to state government, which should reorganize them in the public interest, not the private interest, so the charity that built them endures.

Can armed civilian patrols reduce the violent crime in Hartford's Garden Street neighborhood, where two people were shot to death Feb. 10? A city pastor, Dexter Burke of The Light Church of God, thinks so and is organizing the patrols as well as a block watch and trash-collection efforts.

Hartford police will welcome the extra eyes and ears if not necessarily the extra pistols to be carried, though the people in the patrols will be licensed.

Burke is tired of the prayer vigils led by another city clergyman that always pop up following shootings in the city. While television news often publicizes them, the vigils do no more than display the righteousness and ineffectiveness of their participants.

Burke's accusation that Hartford's police are "unwilling or unable" to protect the neighborhood is less justified, since Hartford is full of poverty and crime, not just around Garden Street. Of course Connecticut's other cities are full of poverty and crime too, and nobody ever does anything about that either -- or at least nothing effective. 

Citizen patrols and block watches may help but may not reduce crime as much as push it into other areas. Still, that might not be so bad, for with more crime in middle-class suburbs, maybe state government could be prompted to examine  why nothing it does to reduce poverty and crime has much effect.

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

Chris Powell: Conn. uses electricity to hide cost of government

Millstone nuclear-power plant, in Waterford, Conn. State officials see the plant as vital to the state’s energy security.

MANCHESTER, Conn. 

Feeling unusually put-upon by state government, Connecticut's two major electric utility companies, Eversource and United Illuminating, are pushing back, which is good, since, whatever their faults, they are too easily demagogued against, as nearly everybody hates electric companies, electricity being too expensive.

Connecticut has the fourth-highest electricity costs in the country. But now the utilities, which formerly only grumbled privately about the biggest reason, are talking openly about it: government policy. 

Ranking of state electricity costs.\

The forthcoming rate increases, expected to be around 19 percent, are reported to be entirely the result of two state government mandates. 

The first mandate requires the utilities to purchase the production of the Millstone nuclear-power plant, in Waterford, electricity that sometimes is cheaper than other sources and sometimes isn't. State government has concluded that keeping Millstone operating is vital to Connecticut's energy security.

The second mandate requires the utilities to keep providing electricity to customers who consider themselves too poor to pay for it, whereupon that cost is transferred to customers who don't consider themselves too poor to pay and whose rates go up.

Quite apart from those mandates, Eversource long has estimated that 15-20 percent of its charges to customers arise from state mandates having little or nothing to do with the cost of the production or delivery of electricity. 

Then there is the failure of Connecticut to import more natural gas, largely the result of New York's obstruction of new pipelines from the west

The co-chairman of the General Assembly's Energy and Technology Committee, Sen. Norm Needleman, D-Essex, accuses Eversource of trying to make customers pay for a cash-flow problem the company suffered as a result of its recent "wind-power investment gamble." But even there state government has to share responsibility. After all, why would electric companies "gamble" on wind power if government wasn't encouraging "green" energy and setting targets for accomplishing it?

The state government policies affecting electric rates are not necessarily wrong. But recovering their costs by hiding them in electricity bills, as Connecticut does, is dishonest. It deliberately misleads the public into thinking that the utilities are responsible for high rates when they are the work of government.

There is no social justice in requiring electricity users who pay their bills to pay as well for users who don't pay. The cost of people who don't pay their electric bills easily could be drawn against everyone from general taxation. Even the much bigger cost of subsidizing Millstone could be paid directly from general tax revenue. 

Of course other taxes might have to be raised, but then people would see that it wasn't the big, bad utilities that took their money but that their own state legislators and governor did. Then people would be prompted to make a judgment on the policies behind the extra costs.

But hiding the cost of government in the cost of living is practically a principle of government in Connecticut. State taxes and the cost of state government policies are concealed not just in electricity rates but also in wholesale fuel taxes and medical and insurance bills so that energy companies, hospitals, doctors, and insurers take the blame, just as electric companies do.

Indeed, hiding the cost of government in the cost of living is now a primary principle of the federal government as well, with trillions of dollars in government expense being covered not by taxes but by borrowing, debt, the resulting money creation, and thus by inflation, which most people imagine is a force of nature, like the weather, something beyond human control. 

Inflationary finance prevents people from asking their members of Congress inconvenient questions, such as how much more war in Ukraine, other stupid imperial wars, illegal immigration, Social Security, Medicare and new subsidy programs can we afford?

With their new candor about the origin of high electricity prices the utility companies are taking a big risk. Through the Public Utilities Control Authority, the governor and legislators can punish the companies expensively for telling the truth. But state government's deception of the public is already expensive.     

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

Chris Powell: A Conn. fairy tale; hiding juvenile crime

A menstrual pad with wings

— Photo by Gsvadds

At Brookfield High School

MANCHESTER, Conn.

While few people were looking, and while most who were were too deceitful to explain or afraid to speak out, the Connecticut General Assembly passed, and Gov. Ned Lamont signed into law, a measure requiring public schools to distribute free feminine-hygiene products in at least one male restroom.

In anticipation of the law's date of implementation this coming Sept. 1, Brookfield's school administration installed such a vending device in a male bathroom at the town's high school. Boys being boys -- at least most of the time -- the other day some at the high school destroyed the device, thereby bringing the law more attention than it received while being enacted and causing Brookfield High Principal Marc Balanda to proclaim himself disgusted by the vandalism. Balanda called it "the work of immature boys, not men."

But whose work was the law itself? Responsibility rests with legislators and educators who want Connecticut to believe that there are no biological, anatomical, and psychological differences between male and female and that if people want to pretend about their natural gender, everyone else must pretend along with them.

The feminine-hygiene products dispenser law isn't the only manifestation of this pretense. The state Education Department advises schools to let students who consider themselves transgender use whichever restrooms they prefer. Some school systems direct their employees to keep a student's gender dysphoria secret from the student's parents if the student so desires. School athletic conferences require students claiming to be transgender to be allowed to participate in the sports of whichever gender they choose, though the policy remains under challenge in federal court by young women cheated out of championships by young men. 

Everyone in Connecticut must pretend, on pain of denunciation or worse, as in Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale, "The Emperor's New Clothes."

The law's advocates dishonestly defend it as a matter of helping poor students -- as if free feminine-hygiene products can't easily be made available in female restrooms and school offices rather than in male restrooms. 

Brookfield's state senator, Stephen Harding, wants the legislature to consider repealing the law. But he approaches the issue as if it is just another excessive state mandate on municipalities, not an excess of political correctness. Can the pretense here ever be confronted at the state Capitol?

Gender dysphoria is a burden to those who suffer from it. Schools should ensure that no one suffering from it is denied ordinary rights or harassed. But neither should gender dysphoria be used to deny the long-established rights of others, like gender privacy in restrooms, parental responsibility, and equal opportunity for girls and women in sports. The pretense here makes government ridiculous.

 xxx

Local television news reporters are good at showing up at a crime scene late, when witnesses have departed, and instead interviewing people who know nothing about the crime except what the reporters have told them. Typically the bystanders obligingly deplore the crime they didn't see and then are put on the evening newscasts.

But such silly journalism the other week was actually useful. A group of young people went on a car-theft spree, including a carjacking at a gas station in West Haven, and led police on a chase through several towns before being stopped back in West Haven. Some of the perpetrators ran off but police captured two 14-year-olds, one of them armed with a loaded handgun.

Pressed by a TV reporter to comment later, a woman who was pumping gas at the station where the carjacking occurred and had seen nothing speculated that the incident demonstrated the need for more "programs" for young people.

Many people may feel the same way. But while Connecticut long has had many "programs" for troublesome youths, their car thefts lately are more numerous than ever. 

What exactly are the "programs" for 14-year-olds with guns stealing cars? How successful are they? Do any involve confinement or is that now forbidden? And how will people ever find out while state government keeps juvenile court secret? 

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

Sculptures depicting a family of horses; (left to right) mare, foal and stallion, at the entrance to the Brookfield Municipal Center and Town Park.

Chris Powell: Mutilation is mutilation; social-service industry complains about fiscal ‘guardrails’

Transsexual woman July Schultz displaying her palm with "XY" written on it at an demonstration.

Road sign near Kapchorwa, Uganda, in 2004

MAN CHESTER, Conn.

What’s the difference between “female genital mutilation” and “gender-affirming care”?

“Female genital mutilation” is an ancient barbaric practice prevailing in some cultures in Africa and the Middle East. Some adherents mistakenly think that Islam requires it. It is committed against minor females and is euphemized as “purification.” 

“Gender-affirming care” is the euphemism for sex-change therapy and is a modern barbaric practice associated with  politically correct cultures in North America and Western Europe. It is committed against minors of both sexes and involves anatomy-altering drugs and surgery. 

Female genital mutilation is prohibited by federal law and 41 states but not by Connecticut, so last week state legislators, 30 civic groups, and victims of the practice announced that they again will try to have it outlawed in the forthcoming session of the General Assembly. Legislators are rushing to endorse the proposal, though following the dubious practice of states that outlaw abortion, the advocates of outlawing female genital mutilation in Connecticut also want the law to criminalize taking a minor out of state for mutilation.

But meanwhile there is no effort in the legislature to prohibit “gender-affirming care” for minors, though Connecticut law presumes that minors lack the judgment to make such serious decisions, prohibiting them from purchasing alcohol, tobacco, and guns and from entering contracts and getting tattoos.

Medical research increasingly connects bad physical and psychological outcomes with “gender-affirming care,” and many who received it as minors come to regret it. 

So in their consideration of female genital mutilation, legislators should ask why surgical and chemical mutilation and alteration shouldn’t be forbidden for all minors, delaying such practices to adulthood. What’s bad for the young goose is bad for the young gander as well, regardless of political correctness and however many other genders there are imagined to be.

DON'T WHINE, SPECIFY: Connecticut's social-services industry is complaining about the "fiscal guardrails” that state government has imposed on itself for the last few years at the behest of Gov. Ned Lamont and leaders of both parties in the General Assembly. The “guardrails” function as the limit on state spending that was promised as an apology for the state income tax in 1991 but was never delivered.

The industry has a point. Paid by state government, the industry provides many services that state government is obliged to provide and does so far less expensively than they would be provided by state government’s own employees, whose compensation is far higher than that of social-service organization employees.

But the industry's complaint is empty, for the industry never specifies any state spending that is less important than its own.

For many years state government has been primarily a pension-and-benefit society for its own employees. By law and union contract the compensation of state employees takes precedence over everything else in state government. Twenty percent of state government’s revenue now is used for government employee pensions, in part because for decades state government bought votes by overpromising while underfunding benefits. The social-services industry didn't object.

Even now much money could be transferred to social services if state government economized with its employees, as by freezing salaries instead of paying generous raises. 

But the social-services industry doesn’t press for that either.

Indeed, practically every week brings an announcement from the governor about financial grants from the state to municipalities and other entities for discretionary purposes. Last week’s disbursements included $9 million for roads, sidewalks, and recreation trails in 10 small towns. No one would die if the money wasn’t spent that way. Without the state money the towns might proceed with some of the projects at their own expense.

But the social-services industry could make a plausible assertion that some of its underfunded work is a matter of life and death.

State government is never efficient. It is full of inessential, excessive and patronage spending. The social-services industry should try to earn more money by showing how it could be obtained without more taxes -- that is, by correcting state government’s mistaken priorities.
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years (CPowell@cox.net).

Chris Powell: Conn.’s foolish EV promotion program

Graphic by Mliu92

MANCHESTER, Conn.

Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont and leaders of the Democratic majority in the General Assembly are planning to call a special session of the legislature next week to enact the strict California standards for auto emissions that were declined by the General Assembly's Regulations Review Committee in November. Back then two Democratic legislators on the committee from working-class districts seemed to understand that the California standards, outlawing sale of new gasoline-powered cars as of 2035, would leave the working class much poorer than the elites who can afford to toy with electric vehicles.

The governor is said to be giving assurances to legislators, especially those from racial and ethnic minority groups, that the ban on new gas-powered cars could be postponed by new legislation if the performance of electric cars doesn't improve as much as is hoped and if the necessary huge expansion of the state's electricity grid and production doesn't proceed fast enough. The governor and other advocates of the California standards insist that mass conversion to electric cars is inevitable.

But if electric cars are inevitable because they will be so good that everyone will demand them, why must consumer choice be prohibited? Why must Connecticut commit to an expansion of its electricity grid that will cost billions of dollars when there is no plan for it and no idea of how it is to be financed?

The inadequacy of electric vehicles was powerfully demonstrated by the recent frigid weather across the country, with thousands of EVs stranded because batteries don't hold their charges in extreme cold and charging stations are not nearly as common as stations only selling gasoline. And would the people of Connecticut approve outlawing new gasoline-powered cars in another 11 years if they had to decide right now on how to pay the conversion costs? Of course not.

The California standards legislation is mainly a lot of politically correct posturing to lock Connecticut into a future that almost certainly will  not turn out exactly as hoped. It is a "buy now, pay later" scheme whose cost is open-ended.

Repealing or postponing the California standards if things don't progress as hoped won't be so easy. By that time, various interest groups will have sprung up to profit from the new policy whether it's working or not and they may be influential enough to block any changes.

Hearst Connecticut newspapers reporter and columnist Dan Haar has noted the special tawdriness of the special session idea. The Democrats, Haar writes, want to enact the California standards before the legislature's regular session begins in February, while the public is not paying close attention and public hearings won't be required.   

Before anything is put into law, the governor and other advocates of the California standards should offer a detailed plan and specify its costs and its method of financing, thereby allowing the public to make an informed decision while there is still a choice about paying. 

Besides, Connecticut has far more compelling claims on public policy and public finance than whatever its gasoline-powered cars may be contributing to "climate change." Nothing Connecticut or even the whole country can do with auto emissions will come close to offsetting the carbon dioxide and pollutants that inevitably will be put into the atmosphere in coming decades by China, India, and the rest of the developing world.

State government has been prattling about equalizing, integrating, and improving public education at least since the state Supreme Court decision in Horton v. Meskill, in 1977, and 47 years and tens of billions of dollars in extra expense later nothing of substance has changed. Indeed, in recent years Connecticut's per-pupil costs have risen even as school enrollment and student performance have declined.

On top of that, homelessness and crime now are rising in the state amid other signs of social disintegration.

So why should anyone think that state government will succeed with a similarly grandiose project, conversion to electric cars, and that even if it was successful it would make any practical difference anyway?    

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

Chris Powell: ‘Baby bonds’ are doomed to fail

MANCHESTER, Conn.

Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont and state Treasurer Erick Russell this week invited the state to celebrate a disaster. They announced with rejoicing that almost 8,000 children born in Connecticut since last July 1 have qualified automatically for state government's "baby bonds" program by virtue of the coverage extended to their parents by Medicaid, government medical insurance for the poor.

Another 15,000 children are expected to be born into Medicaid -- that is, born into poverty -- in Connecticut this year, and 15,000 or more every year after that in perpetuity. Wonderful!

Most parents whose households get Medicaid were unprepared to support children in the first place. Such households are usually headed by unmarried women whose children have little if any commitment from fathers. With its "baby bonds" program at least state government acknowledges that such households are where poverty begins.

So now Connecticut is investing $3,200 on behalf of each new Medicaid baby in the expectation that the bond's value will increase to $11,000 or more by the time the child reaches age 18, whereupon the beneficiary will be able to liquidate the bond for cash for higher education, purchase of a home, or investment in a business or retirement plan.

“In just six months the first-in-the-nation Connecticut baby bonds program has put more than 7,000 working families on a pathway to the middle class and is transforming the future of our state," the governor said. "This gives our young people startup capital for their lives and ultimately will help break the cycle of intergenerational poverty for thousands of families.”

The governor's forecast makes some happy assumptions: that escaping poverty is mainly about access to cash and that the beneficiaries of baby bonds will reach 18 well-parented, well-educated, skilled and employable enough to make their own way in the world, and not demoralized from neglect at home and in trouble with the law.

The Department of Children and Families, the courts and the Correction Department know better than such assumptions about kids born into Medicaid.

The baby bonds program also assumes that its beneficiaries will reach 18 knowing how to manage money. Since even the program's advocates recognized the shakiness of that assumption, baby bond recipients are to be required to pass a test of financial literacy, at least if the people running the program 18 years hence remember to devise one.]

‘
But recipients of baby bond cash will not be required to have mastered basic courses in high school, nor even to have graduated from high school. Indeed, linking baby bond cash with educational success would have made the case for the program much stronger. But such a link would have impugned all public primary education in Connecticut, whose main policy is just social promotion.

Treasurer Russell acknowledged that baby bonds are not a "silver bullet" and that breaking the cycle of poverty will require far more action. "How we support those kids along the way will go a long way in determining how prepared they are to seize this opportunity," Russell said. So he has organized a study committee about that.

Such an inquiry should have long preceded baby bonds. 

For starters it should have asked how children are diverted from poverty by a welfare system that rewards childbearing outside marriage, depriving them of fathers, and by schools that advance them without requiring them to learn anything.

What most improves a child's chances is well documented: a stable family with two devoted parents who know the necessity of education and work and who set the right examples. The children of such families long have avoided poverty without baby bonds. 

As the governor notes, young people going out into the world need some capital to get started with. But the better part of that capital is not the money thrown at problems by elected officials too lazy or scared to examine them. The better part of that capital is intangible: what is put into the minds and character of children as they grow up.

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

Chris Powell: Turn off the weather hysteria on TV news

— Photo by snowKing1

MANCHESTER, Conn.

Local television newscasts in Connecticut are usually trivial. But when winter comes and there is any chance of a few inches of snow, TV newscasts are liberated from all pretension to meaning, and they crown their triviality with redundancy.

As they did the other week, for several days ahead of a potential storm they strive to scare their audience about the dangers ahead. On the eve of the storm they devote most of each half hour to "informing" their viewers that the state Transportation Department and municipal public-works departments are preparing to plow, salt and sand the roads, as if this isn't what they always do and have done for decades. Reporters are often reduced to doing live dispatches from sand and salt barns. 

The obvious is repeated half hour after half hour, as if all meaningful activity in Connecticut has come to a halt and as if the state has never seen snow before.

During the storm itself the TV newscasts delight in broadcasting from their four-wheel-drive vehicles to inform their viewers that it's snowing, as if their viewers lack earlier technology -- windows.

Deepening the suggestion of doom, some TV stations give names to the winter storms they glory in, as the National Weather Service gives names to hurricanes. Since a hurricane must have winds of at least 74 miles per hour, it can do enough damage to prove memorable in some places and thus to merit a name. But to earn a name from a TV newscast, the only threat a winter storm needs to pose is to the relevance of the newscast itself, and indeed most such storms will not be memorable at all.

Meanwhile the newscasts will warn people with heart conditions against shoveling too much snow, and warn all viewers against putting their hands in a snowblower while it's running. Such is the estimation of the intelligence of the local TV news audience.

This charade of local TV newscasts is called "keeping you safe." But when the charade is operating, Connecticut has even less journalistic protection from wrongdoers and malfeasance. Indeed, that seems to be the point of the weather hysteria of local TV news -- to fill time with the trivial and redundant because it is so much less expensive than reporting about anything that matters, which usually requires investigation.

This principle of killing time is observed by local TV newscasts even when there is no weather to frighten people with. For the typical newscast is full of reports that consume 90 seconds to convey just 10 seconds of information.     

Of course newspapers, competitors to television, are full of triviality and redundancy too. But at least readers can turn the page and dispose of the product at their own pace. Viewers of live TV newscasts can't fast-forward past what they don't need to watch.

Presumably the triviality and redundancy of local TV newscasts continue because market research tells TV stations that triviality and redundancy are what their audience wants -- especially since most local TV news is broadcast in the morning when people are rising, dressing, making breakfast, getting ready for work, and seeing children off to school, and in the evening when people are reconnecting with family, making dinner, reviewing mail, and getting kids to do their homework.

The breakfast and dinner hours are not suited to profundity from TV, so during those hours local TV news usually provides what is only incidental information, less compelling than the immediate information of home life.

Even so, at least national television occasionally has done serious journalism.

So could local TV newscasts not find 10 minutes every other weekday for news that means something, news relevant to society's or government's performance, news that wouldn't be forgotten as fast as last week's Storm Jack the Ripper or yesterday's murders, robberies, fires, and car crashes?

Those things really aren't all Connecticut needs to know.

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

Chris Powell: In Connecticut and elsewhere, ‘dollar stores’ reflect poverty

— Photo by Michael Rivera

MANCHESTER, Conn

Like the rest of the country, Connecticut is seeing an explosion of "dollar stores,’’ such as Dollar General, Family Dollar and Dollar Tree, discount retailers that are causing alarm in some quarters because, while they sell food and consumer goods, they don't offer fresh meat, fruit, and vegetables and they are feared to be driving  traditional food markets out of business. As a result, some municipalities around the country are legislating to restrict or even prohibit "dollar stores’’.

Now, The Hartford Courant reports, a University of Connecticut professor of agricultural and resource economics, Rigoberto A. Lopez, has published a study supporting this resentment, linking the growth of "dollar stores’’ to unhealthy diets in "food deserts" and the failure of regular grocery stores.

But "dollar stores’’ aren't doing anything illegal or immoral. They wouldn't be successful if they weren't providing goods that people want and at low prices. Nobody seems to be accusing the "dollar stores’’ of using unfair trade practices or violating anti-trust law. If "dollar stores’’ are doing better than traditional grocery stores, competition is what a free-market economy is about. People can choose where to shop.

Critics of "dollar stores’’ don't like that. They seem to think that they should be allowed to decide not just where people shop but also what they eat. 

Of course there is a problem. "Food deserts" are real but retailers aren't to blame for them. Poverty is, and the expansion of "dollar stores’’ is largely a measure of worsening poverty for many in the country as a whole as well as in Connecticut.

Too many people don't eat enough fresh food quite apart from their ability to pay for it, and combine bad eating habits with poverty and the problem is worse. 

But poor households qualify not just for government housing, energy and income subsidies but also for federal food subsidies -- Food Stamps are now the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program -- and if they live responsibly they can afford fresh food if they want it, and if they can travel outside their "food deserts."

That's the other part of the problem. Like other retailers, full-service supermarkets won't make as much money by locating in poor neighborhoods as they will make in middle-class and wealthy neighborhoods. By avoiding poor neighborhoods, any retailer will suffer less theft as well.

So Hartford's city government is considering opening its own supermarket. Whether city government has the competence to run anything well is always a fair question, since the poverty of so many city residents is inevitably reflected in city government itself. But there probably will be "food deserts" in cities as long as their demographics are so poor. A city government supermarket in Hartford won't solve the problem.

Indeed, a good measure of the long decline of Hartford from what was considered the country's most prosperous city a little more than a century ago to a struggling one is the decline in the number of chain-owned supermarkets in the city -- from 13 in 1968 to only one or two today.

Because of this poverty there isn't much retailing left in Hartford generally. For years city residents have done much if not most of their shopping in West Hartford and Manchester. West Hartford's downtown long has been far more vibrant than Hartford's, because that is where the middle and upper classes -- the people who have money to spend, people who many years ago might have lived in Hartford -- have moved.

Blaming "dollar stores” for poor nutrition among the poor is just an excuse to ignore the causes of poverty. More than a study of the impact of those stores, Connecticut could use a study of what pushed Hartford and its other cities from prosperity to privation -- such as fathers who don't father, mothers who don't parent well on their own, schools that don't educate, policies that produce dependence instead of self-sufficiency, and government that takes better care of itself than its constituents. 

The decline was underway long before Ronald Reagan, Donald Trump or either of the Bushes became president. But even as the "dollar stores’’ spread across Connecticut, no one in authority seems to have any curiosity about what happened.         

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

Downtown Hartford in 1914, during “The Insurance Capital’s’’ heyday.

Chris Powell: Criminal convictions shouldn’t be a secret

MANCHESTER, Conn.

Connecticut law is full of mistaken premises, and more will be added in January when the criminal records of an estimated 80,000 people will be privatized -- not exactly erased but removed from public access under what is being called the “clean slate” law. The records involve convictions for misdemeanors more than seven years old and "low-level" felonies more than 10 years old committed by people not convicted of anything since.

The rationale for the new law is, first, that it's not fair that old convictions should be known, and, second, that public knowledge of convictions is a huge impediment to people seeking housing and employment.

But why shouldn't convictions be impediments to getting housing and jobs? 

Since most criminal charges are substantially discounted in plea bargaining to avoid trials, most people who have been convicted have already received extra consideration from the government. So what is fair about eliminating all trace of their discounted offenses? 

What is fair about depriving landlords and employers of basic information about people for whom they may become responsible? 

What is fair about keeping people ignorant of what their government has done?

Of course, society also has an interest in having everyone honestly employed. But people have to compete for jobs and housing, so why shouldn't people who have not committed crimes have an advantage over former offenders? Why shouldn't former offenders have to try harder to show they are worthy of trust?

Criminal convictions are not the biggest impediment to finding housing these days. The biggest impediment is the sharply rising price of housing that results from general inflation and the general scarcity worsened by municipal zoning. Connecticut is said to need at least 90,000 more housing units for its current population. If the state suddenly had another 390,000 units, rents would be much lower and landlords wouldn't be so picky about tenants. Eliminating public access to conviction records will not build more housing.

Criminal convictions are probably not the biggest impediment to obtaining jobs either. 

Gov. Ned Lamont himself hinted as much this month when he announced that the "clean slate" law would take effect in January. The governor noted that Connecticut has a labor shortage and "desperately" needs former offenders in the workforce. The worse the shortage of labor, the more that employers will be willing to overlook old convictions, if former offenders can demonstrate their ability to do the job -- and ability to do the job is almost certainly the biggest impediment to employment for former offenders.

Lack of a good upbringing, education, and job skills push people toward crime, and Connecticut, with a welfare system based on destroying families and a school system based on social promotion, is full of people who lack what they need to support themselves. Indeed, if one's education and job skills are strong enough, even the worst offenses may be readily forgiven.

Such is the lesson of the rocket scientist Wernher von Braun, the first hero of the United States space program. 

Von Braun's career during World War II was with the Nazi government of Germany. He designed the infamous V-2 rocket bomb, became a major in the criminal SS military force, and was awarded the Iron Cross by Adolf Hitler himself. (Years later a biography of von Braun was titled "I Aim at the Stars," prompting the American comedian Mort Sahl to say it should have been subtitled "But I Sometimes Hit London.")  

Nevertheless the U.S. government hired von Braun as soon as the war ended. His rocketry skills overcame any concern about his record as a Nazi criminal mastermind. 

Instead of presuming that erasing criminal records will somehow qualify people for housing and jobs, state government should provide a year or so of paid employment, basic medical insurance, and rudimentary housing for former offenders who are not yet able to support themselves, allowing them to build the creditable record everyone needs to gain employment and housing.

Better still, state government should fix the failures of its welfare and education systems. 

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

Chris Powell: New Haven welcomes immigration lawbreakers

Before passports: New Haven as it appeared in a 1786 engraving

Illegal immigration might substantially change the ethnic composition of New Haven.

MANCHESTER, Coon.

For 22 years, ever since the Arab terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Americans have been urged by various government agencies: "If you see something, say something." Having done just that may cost New Haven's registrar of vital statistics her job.

The registrar, Patricia Clark, had been alerting federal immigration authorities to dozens of marriage licenses involving immigrants -- licenses that struck her as questionable -- just as guidance from the state Public Health Department recommended she do, independent of the national policy of reporting things that don't seem right. When her superiors discovered this in November, they suspended Clark with pay pending investigation.

Why? Because New Haven has declared itself a "sanctuary city" and its policy long has been to nullify federal immigration law. 

Mayor Justin Elicker says, "New Haven is a welcoming and safe city for everyone, regardless of background or document status." That is, immigration lawbreakers are welcome in the city. New Haven has gone so far as to issue city identification cards to illegal immigrants to facilitate their remaining in the country illegally.

State government doesn't go quite as far but issues special driver's licenses to illegal immigrants for the same purpose.

The premise of these nullification policies is that the desire of anyone anywhere, whatever his motive, to live in the United States trumps the interest of the United States in remaining a sovereign nation by controlling its borders and judging the admissibility of foreigners and what they intend to do here.

Connecticut and New Haven persist in these policies despite the turmoil lately on display just over the state line in New York City, where, as in other "sanctuary cities," the Biden administration's open-borders policy is bankrupting city government, causing reductions in services to legal residents, driving down the local wage base, driving up housing costs, and worsening the shortage of housing.\

The New Haven registrar is in trouble for being a good citizen and public official in trying to uphold federal law against a city policy that, while dressed up in political correctness and humanitarianism, is essentially treasonous. 

Most illegal immigrants mean no harm. But there must be rules to keep immigration orderly and assimilable and ensure that the country remains democratic, secular, and safe from religious and ethnic fanaticism. Letting people enter or remain in the country illegally, unvetted, in the age of international terrorism is crazy. 

Some illegal immigrants do mean harm. Some have been deported many times and still sneak back in and commit crimes. The hapless immigration system has many repeat offenders, just like Connecticut's criminal-justice system.

At least six of the 9/11 terrorists violated U.S. immigration law, either by overstaying their visas or falsifying their visa applications. If New Haven and other "sanctuary cities" keep having their way -- indeed, if the Biden administration stays in power -- nothing like that may ever be caught before the damage is done.

xxx

Another contradiction of a premise of Connecticut education policy was broadcast throughout the state the other day but wasn't noticed. The study and advocacy group Education Reform Now CT reported that while Connecticut has racially diversified its public school teaching staff in recent years, the increase in teachers from racial minorities has not matched the increase in students from minority races.

Competition for good minority teachers is intense even as state government can't control the racial composition of its student body. So any increase in minority staff is a credit to school administration. Integration and diversity are important objectives.

But learning is a higher objective than racial integration, and ever since the state Supreme Court's decision in the school-integration case of Sheff v. O'Neill in 1996, Connecticut policy has presumed that minority students learn better in a racially integrated environment. So what's the big deal if teaching staffs are, on average, whiter than their classrooms? 

If, as the complaint from Education Reform Now CT suggests, minority kids will learn best in a segregated environment, education in Connecticut has a lot of rethinking to do.      

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

Chris Powell: Adios school integration, and college is way overpriced

Capitol Community College, in Hartford.

“The Problem We All Live With” (1964 oil) painting), by Norman Rockwell, dramatizes efforts to integrate Southern schools in the face of intense racism. U.S. marshals are escorting the little girl to a newly integrated school.

MANCHESTER, Conn.

For decades, even before the Connecticut Supreme Court decision in the school-integration case of Sheff v. O'Neill,. 27 years ago, educators have been telling the state that racial integration in education is crucial to better student performance, especially for children from minority groups. In response, Connecticut built and operated dozens of regional schools at a cost of billions of dollars to induce minority students from the cities and white students from the suburbs to mix voluntarily.  

While the regional schools have moved thousands of students around, they have produced little integration, particularly in Hartford, which was the center of the Sheff case. Student performance throughout the state has continued to decline. But the political correctness of it all has produced high-paying jobs for many educators and has made them feel better about themselves.

Whereupon last week the state community college system repudiated racial integration in education without anyone noticing it.

The system announced a partnership with Morehouse College, in Atlanta, through which students of color who graduate from Capital Community College, in Hartford, in two years with an academic average of at least 2.7 will be guaranteed admission to Morehouse as juniors on their way to a four-year degree.

Morehouse is a prestigious "historically Black" institution, and according to Connecticut's Hearst newspapers, state community college officials said "studies have shown that Black students who enroll in historically Black colleges and universities are more likely to earn their degrees and have more income than those who attend non-HBCU institutions."

Surprise! Racial integration is not such a boon in education after all.  

"HBCUs like Morehouse College inherently believe in the success of their students," community college system President John Maduko said, implying that other schools couldn't care less about how their students do.

So having long strived to integrate its students in primary education, Connecticut now will strive to resegregate them when they get to higher education.

The irony passed without comment from the state's education bureaucracy and the rest of state government. Have those billions spent on regional schools been wasted? Who cares? Now let's cost people billions more by making them all buy electric cars.    

Meanwhile, the even more expensive failure of higher education is getting less notice than the failure of lower education.

Bloomberg News reported last month that changes to the federal college student loan program made since President Biden took office have facilitated forgiveness of more than $127 billion in debt, which has been transferred to taxpayers.

The problem of student loan debt is presented as a matter of the heavy burden that prevents borrowers from advancing to homeownership and family formation.

But this is only a subsidiary scandal. The bigger scandal is the grotesque overpricing of higher education. If higher education was worth what is charged for it, millions of young people wouldn't be stuck with heavy debt for so long. They would get jobs paying them enough so that they easily could discharge their debt soon after graduating.

The loan system itself is largely responsible for inflating the cost of higher education. The more money is available, the more colleges and universities will absorb it, as by establishing courses and degrees that bestow few job skills. 

A 2014 study by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York found that many college graduates end up in jobs that don't require college education. A study a year earlier by the Center for College Affordability and Productivity reported that there were 46% more college graduates in the U.S. workforce than jobs requiring a college degree.

College grads often earn more than other people. But is this because of greater knowledge and skills or because of the credentialism that higher education has infected society with?

Nothing has been done about this problem, since college loans are less of a benefit to students than to educators and college administrators, the ultimate recipients of the money and a pernicious influence on politics. 

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

Chris Powell: Enough pandering and stereotyping already!

Statue of Christopher Columbus in New Haven. In 2017, the statue was vandalized before Columbus Day, with red paint splashed on the statue and the words "kill the colonizer" spray-painted along its base.

The statue was removed on June 24, 2020.

MANCHESTER, Conn.

Has Connecticut been more Balkanized or less so by Groton's decision to replace its observance of Columbus Day with a holiday that will be both Italian Heritage Day and Indigenous Peoples Day?

Columbus is now considered politically incorrect for having helped to open the Western Hemisphere to the European exploration and colonization that displaced the hemisphere's original inhabitants, who had spent hundreds of years displacing each other without European interference. Political correctness lately has elevated them to the "noble savages" of old romantic literature. 

But a century ago Columbus was a worldwide hero, and since he was Italian he was appropriated for a national holiday apologizing for the scorn that had been heaped on the Italian immigrants of recent decades, as scorn had been heaped on the Irish immigrants before them and even then was being heaped on Jews. 

So in Groton and other places Italian Heritage Day will be what Columbus Day was meant to be all along, more a sop to people of Italian descent than a tribute to the great navigator. Meanwhile the descendants of the inhabitants displaced long ago by the Europeans are getting Indigenous Peoples Day, also as an apology for the abuse their ancestors took, as if most people in the United States now aren't just as "indigenous" as anyone with "indigenous" ancestors.

Why must the country keep patronizing ethnicity? While people may gain much identity from their ethnicity, no one has earned anything by it. It is simply bequeathed to them and they deserve no credit for it any more than anyone should be disparaged for it. But politicians love to pander on the basis of ethnicity, especially when they have little to say about anything that matters. 

It is 2½ centuries since the national charter declared that all men are created equal. Lately the charter seems to have been amended to add that, as George Orwell wrote, some are more equal than others.

The pandering to people of Italian and "indigenous" descent as if they deserve an apology or special recognition of their acceptance is especially silly in Connecticut. The state has the country's largest percentage of people of Italian descent and two of its three largest Indian casinos, which enjoy lucrative monopolies bestowed on the premise that today's reconstituted tribes are owed tribute for the wars lost by their ancestors nearly four centuries years ago. Apparently the fantastic wealth given to the tribes by the state, much of that wealth being extracted from people who are far more oppressed than the proprietors of the casinos ever were, isn't apology enough. Supposedly a special holiday is needed too.

But there is already a holiday that celebrates everyone in the country: Independence Day, July 4. It marks the supreme principle of equality under the law. When will that ever be enough?

For that matter, when will high school sports teams and their followers acknowledge that mascots drawn from an ethnic group -- particularly those drawn from Indians -- constitute stereotyping and that stereotyping ethnic groups is offensive?

That has yet to dawn on school systems in Windsor, Canton, Killingly and Derby, though most towns have replaced their Indian mascots, and state law penalizes use of such mascots by withholding financial aid drawn from the Indian casinos. 

Windsor and Canton remain the "Warriors," which may sound ambiguous but is not, since the teams formerly used Indian imagery with the name. Killingly's teams are the "Redmen" and "Red Gals," a reference to skin color, also confirmed by past use of Indian imagery. Derby still gets away with "Red Raiders" because it has the endorsement of a minor tribe, the Schaghticokes, which long has been trying to curry favor with palefaces in hope of winning casino rights.

The stereotype here is undeniable -- that of ferocity and brutality. No team calls itself the Fighting Bunnies. 

State government's financial incentives to replace Indian mascots haven't finished the job. Such mascots should be forthrightly outlawed by the next session of the General Assembly.

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

Chris Powell: In Connecticut and elsewhere, to raise incomes raise job skills

In East Hartford near the Connecticut River on a gloomy day.

— Photo by JJBers

MANCHESTER, Conn.

East Hartford's new mayor, Connor Martin, has a vision and a prescription for his town of 51,000.

“We're no longer going to be this blue-collar town, this poor community that we get labeled as," Martin says. "We have to start raising the household median income, bring in revenue through economic development, and bring in retail, entertainment, and shopping.”

Great -- but how?

Raising incomes should be the objective of government throughout the country, especially since inflation-adjusted incomes for many people have been declining for years under the pressure of soaring inflation -- currency devaluation caused by the federal government's policy of financing huge increases in spending not through taxes but money creation. 

These days whenever presidents and members of Congress announce millions or billions to be spent on various goodies, there is little mention of how they are to be financed. Money creation is assumed to be able to do it, which means inflation. State officials are just as culpable for inflationary finance insofar as the goodies they announce are financed by federal grants.

Meanwhile, prices of necessities rise, real incomes fall, and most people can't understand why their living standards are sinking even as they are invited to credit the elected officials announcing goodies financed by inflation.

So how is Mayor Martin going to raise the incomes of ordinary people in East Hartford?

He's not going to do it by reducing inflation, since municipal officials have no power to do so. Since the mayor is a Democrat, he won't even be asking Connecticut's members of Congress to reduce inflation, since, while they are among those responsible for it, they are all Democrats too. They will leave the inflation problem to the Federal Reserve, which has been raising interest rates to slow economic demand, create unemployment, and lower living standards some more.

East Hartford could raise the incomes of its residents as some other towns in Connecticut do it: by impeding inexpensive housing and keeping the poor out. While East Hartford has some good middle-class neighborhoods, it also has many dilapidated apartments and tenements that could be acquired by the town and razed, with the lots sold to developers for construction of condominiums and luxury apartments that current town residents could not afford. Such redevelopment is called "gentrification." 

Driving poor people out this way has the advantage of reducing the number of neglected and poorly performing schoolchildren, cutting education expenses.

Such policy wouldn't be very fair, but poverty is a burden, not a virtue, and Mayor Martin has acknowledged that East Hartford doesn't need more poor people. He's not alone in this. The mayors of Hartford and New Haven have said they would like to relocate many of their poor to the suburbs.

But how can incomes in East Hartford and other poor cities and towns be raised without making life even harder for the poor people there? 

No one in authority in Connecticut seems to have the policy for that. Indeed, policy in Connecticut works strongly against raising the incomes of the poor by failing to qualify so many of them to earn more. Welfare policy weakens the family while education policy -- social promotion -- sends young people into adulthood without the skills needed to earn good incomes.

Mayor Martin mistakenly equates "blue collar" with poverty. But "blue-collar" work can pay well and is often the work that society most needs -- machinists, mechanics, electricians, carpenters, plumbers, and such, people who do real things. Teaching and nursing may not be considered "blue-collar" jobs but they also pay well and are within reach of the working class. 

Manufacturers in Connecticut have thousands of well-paying jobs they can't fill because of a lack of qualified applicants.   

Can East Hartford increase the job skills of its many poorly performing young students, thereby increasing their earning power, while building the sound and affordable housing that would be needed to keep them in the state as their incomes rise? Can Connecticut?\

Any mayor who could achieve that might deserve to be governor, even president.

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