President Biden has issued a flurry of executive orders related to climate change, including one designating climate change a national security threat andone rejoining the Paris Accord.
The primary security threat by this new climate-change name looks the same as the leading national security threat in traditional terms: China. The totalitarian Communist dictatorship is responsible for almost 30% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
China’s emissions are not only the world’s most, but they are increasing every year. U.S. emissions are about half as much and have been decreasing for over a decade.
The evidence is piling up that schoolchildren, teachers and staff are safe in schools. Indeed, the evidence suggests schools are the “safest place” for them to be, as CDC Director Robert Redfield said last November. Yet, teacher unions and other school employee organizations are ignoring mounting evidence that support Redfield’s words.
Last week, the Centers for Disease Control released its first two studies of in-school spread of COVID-19, first, a study of the experience of 17 Wisconsin schools that operated in-person from August through November.
I am not famous, but I am somewhat infamous, at least to leaders of two big public sector unions, the Connecticut State Employees Association (CSEA) and the statewide teachers union, Connecticut Education Association (CEA).
After a long summer of frequent violence and riots attending protests and after the recent horrific assault on the Capitol, it is especially meaningful to remember that non-violence was the bedrock of Martin Luther King's activism.
Remembrance is enriched by discovery of new previously unknown dimensions of the person or event. King spent college summers in Connecticut working on tobacco farms. It was the first time he ventured outside the Jim Crow South. He said it was an eye-opening experience.
Marvelously, high school students and teachers in Simsbury have just completed a years-long project to memorialize King's time in Connecticut. The CT Hearst newspapers have a wonderful article by Robert Marchant describing King's summers in the Nutmeg state and the Simsbury high school project.
Earlier this month, just days before the first Connecticut health care workers were administered the newly-approved coronavirus vaccine, a coalition of public school employee unions demanded Governor Lamont close schools - and extend all school employees a full-pay-no-layoff guarantee.
December 28, 2020
What a striking juxtaposition between the selfless dedication of health care workers who have been treating patients hospitalized with serious – and highly contagious – cases of COVID-19 for nine straight months and the selfish outlook of the 14,000 petition signers, who, only over the last three months, started again to interact with school-age kids, who present the lowest risk of transmission of all segments of the population.
December 30, 2020
To demand the closing of schools is tantamount to desertion on the field of battle. The top generals in this war -- Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Robert Redfield, Director of the Centers for Disease Control, and Surgeon General Jerome Adams -- have all said schools should be open. Fauci said this earlier this month even as the current surge of the virus was well under way.
January 4, 2020
School children themselves have virtually no risk from COVID-19. Of the 225,000 COVID-related deaths for which the CDC has demographic data, there have been only 130 school-age COVID-19 deaths, while 195 died of the seasonal flu during the 2019-2020 school year.
Schoolchildren do become infected. But do they spread the virus? That is a fair question for adult school employees.
Some studies published in the summer and early fall "suggest" that children may be "potential" spreaders, but they do not conclude that they are. Significantly, both Dr. Fauci and Director Redfield called for schools to be open after the publication of these studies, about which, presumably, they were aware.
President Trump finalized a "most favored nation (MFN)" or "best price," prescription drug pricing rule on Nov. 20. The goal of the MFN concept is to deliver fair drug prices to Americans. The MFN best-price concept mandates the same price for Americans and wealthy Europeans, who have been paying about one-third of what Americans pay. It does so by empowering Medicare to require drug sellers to give it the "best" (lowest) price charged any other buyer.
December 8, 2020
The MFN construct does not diminish drug company profits, which fund critical R&D and discovery of new life-saving drugs. The concept does not impose government-set prices upon drug manufacturers, who would be free to set whatever price would maximize sales and profits.
While there is controversy as to whether the just-finalized rule genuinely implements the concept, the MFN approach should be followed. Opponents of the rule should work to improve it, not oppose it.
“The Only Good Thing About Donald Trump Is All His Policies.” So proclaimed an opinion column headline in 2018. The converse might be said of apparent President-elect Joe Biden. He may be likable but he offered little vision and said nothing about policy in his victory speech a week ago— nor much during his entire campaign.
November 14, 2020
Biden, so far, is defined by who he is not: Donald Trump.
Biden’s message consisted almost exclusively of a still-life image of safe sequester in a well-disclosed secure basement location.
Biden claims a mandate, but his prime raison d’etre will depart 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. on Jan. 20. Then what?
THE question in the 2020 presidential race is whether the polls are missing “hidden” Trump supporters, just as they did in 2016.
November 2, 2020
If they miss again, a big part of the overlooked population may be the nation’s 800,000 cops. Randy Hagler, President of the Fraternal Order of Police in North Carolina, the largest police union in the state, says, “I never answer poll calls. If I do by mistake, I hang up right away. I think most police do the same.”
If polls are failing to capture the police, they are missing something hidden in plain sight. Every major police organization has endorsed Trump. Police groups nationwide have endorsed Republicans in overwhelming numbers at all levels of government. In this year’s 46 races for U.S. senate and governor, major police organizations have endorsed only three Democrats, including two whose Republican opponents have also received major police endorsements.
President Trump challenged Joe Biden in the first debate to name one police endorsement he’d received. Mr. Biden couldn’t—virtually all police organizations have endorsed Mr. Trump. Police groups are endorsing Republicans at every level of government, many for the first time and by overwhelming votes.
October 22, 2020
The nation’s largest police organization, with 355,000 members, is the Fraternal Order of Police. Patrick Yoes, the national group’s president, tells me every officer among the FOP’s membership has a vote. The process starts with officers voting at 2,100 local lodges, each of which votes at the state level. Then, at the national level, every state lodge casts a vote -- this year, unanimously for Mr. Trump.
Recent public announcements concerning Connecticut’s fiscal condition have come out in separate disjointed fashion. Taken together, they spell impending crisis.
October 12, 2020
It is no surprise that the state is facing an enormous deficit this year (and into the future), due, in part, to the sudden economic shutdown occasioned by the pandemic.
However, in larger part, the crisis has been long coming and widely anticipated. It is a function of the bill coming due for decades of paying state employees massively overgenerous, yet woefully underfunded, compensation. It is unlikely that Connecticut will have money both to continue state operations and to fund employee retirement benefits.
October 12, 2020
On the first of this month, Governor Lamont released his official deficit mitigation plan, as required after Comptroller Kevin Lembo made the obvious official, namely that the state faces a deficit of $1.8 billion in the current year’s budget of approximately $21 billion.
No one really knows where the state and the country are headed economically. The good news is that the state’s rainy day fund has grown to $3 billion since 2017. Lamont said he would use most of the fund to close the budget gap, leaving little for the next fiscal year and beyond.
October 12, 2020
Just days before, the governor announced his hiring of Boston Consulting Group to find $500 million in annual state savings, primarily from workforce attrition. The goal is to automate or eliminate many job functions, so that the expected retirement before mid-year 2022 of an estimated one-third of the state’s 49,000-person workforce will require the fewest possible replacements.
Of course, Lamont could have saved one-quarter of BCG's savings target by using his emergency powers to cancel the $135 million state employee pay raise last July 1st.
October 19, 2020
That would have caused employees little pain, as demonstrated by a recently released Yankee Institute study, which found that Connecticut’s state and municipal employees (excluding teachers) are paid about $20,000 per year more than their private sector counterparts. That translates into an aggregate annual premium of almost $1 billion for 49,000 state employees, assuming they and municipal employees enjoy equivalent pay.
