WTIC 1080 'Todd Feinburg': Previewing the Special Session

We talk to columnist Red Jahncke who warns anything can happen when legislators fill the capitol for a special session on Monday, including tolls. Jahncke is a free-lance writer and president of the Townsend Group.

Listen below or click here to listen on WTIC.

Red Jahncke

Red Jahncke is a nationally recognized columnist, who writes about politics and policy. His columns appear in numerous national publications, such as The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, USA Today, The Hill, Issues & Insights and National Review as well as many Connecticut newspapers.

Column of the Day

Progressive Democrats Take an Inch and a Mile

By Kimberly Fiorello, Former CT State Representative - Posted on Feb. 1, 2023

Hartford Democrats Hartford Democrats propose to increase the highest personal income marginal tax rates to 7.49% and 7.20% and establish a 1% and 0.75% surcharge on net gain from sale of capital assets for top earners.

Last week, as reported, something called the “Cap The Rent CT” campaign was launched online by the Connecticut Democratic Socialists of America, some Democrat politicians, and more than 200 supporters. As you might have guessed, this “Cap The Rent CT” campaign seeks to apply state-wide in Connecticut the type of rent control that exists in New York City.

This is happening as another, similarly well-organized group called DesegregateCT is rolling out its third try to thwart local control of zoning by denouncing local planning and zoning commissions as racist. This year’s campaign is a slight variation from their push in 2022 and their ambitious, multi-faceted attempt in 2021.

While some developers may see opportunity in activist efforts to override local zoning controls because it would remove obstacles to the building of large apartment complexes, I wonder if developers are aware of which way Connecticut laws are trending and their effect on the rental business model.

In 2022, Connecticut passed a law mandating a “fair rent commission” for every municipality with a population of at least 25,000. And last year Connecticut launched a new program to provide “free” legal services for low-income renters in eviction proceedings.

● Read in CT Examiner
● Read here on The Red Line

The border crisis has never been worse. And Biden seems fine with it.

By Marc Thiessen, Washington Post Columnist, Dec 14, 2022 - Posted on Dec. 16, 2022

Last year, President Biden presided over a record crisis at the U.S. border with Mexico. This year, by every conceivable metric, that crisis got far worse.

December 14, 2022

In the 2021 fiscal year, we had more than 1.7 million encounters at the Southern border. That was a record … until this fiscal year, when it rose to almost 2.4 million. And the 2023 fiscal year, which began in October, has already seen more than 500,000 encounters — putting us on track to exceed this year’s record.

That’s not all. In 2021, there were nearly 390,000 known “gotaways” — migrants we know evaded U.S. Customs and Border Protection and slipped into the country; this year, the number of gotaways grew to more than 600,000. In 2021, there were 15 terrorism watch list arrests at the border; this year, that grew to 98 (and who knows how many violent criminals were among the gotaways).

As bad as that is, things are about to get worse when Title 42 — the Trump-era public health order that has allowed border officials to turn away hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants to prevent the spread of covid-19 — expires on Dec. 21. When migrants can no longer be expelled under this order, even more will try illegal crossings — and the floodgates will truly open. Yet the Biden administration is pushing for a cut in funding for detention beds in the omnibus spending bill from the current level of 34,000 to 25,000 just as the need for these beds will dramatically increase.

● Read in Washington Post
● Read here on The Red Line

WTIC 1080 ‘Todd Feinburg’: Previewing the Special Session