Considering Joe Biden’s age — and endless fumbling — the selection of a vice president has never been more important. Heck, even many Democrats aren’t so sure Biden is going to finish his first term. So the question now is: Do you want a President Harris?
Posts tagged as “Column of the Day”
TRUMBULL — The chairman of Trumbull’s Police Commission has come out against a legislative attempt to reform Connecticut’s policing, and opposing what he termed the “knee-jerk” nature of current legislative efforts.
Former First Selectman Raymond Baldwin Jr., who also spent 14 years as an officer in the Trumbull Police Department, wrote to Trumbull’s legislative delegation Saturday, a day after the state General Assembly’s Judiciary Committee held a 13-hour listening session on the proposed legislation, LCO 3471.
“I wish to express my serious concern about legislation being proposed in the Connecticut State Legislature which I believe will greatly impede our police officers’ ability to protect, not only our citizens, but our officers themselves,” Baldwin wrote. “These proposed measures will also make recruitment of new officers and the retention of currently employed ones extremely difficult.”
It may seem odd, but Gov. Ned Lamont and I agree on something, that the raises for state employees that went into effect on July 1 should have been delayed. Weeks ago in a letter to the governor we asked him to use his authority to delay the raises. Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, on June 9, Governor Lamont reported that the State Employees Bargaining Coalition had rejected his calls to put off raises, and he was powerless to do anything about it. This is where our agreement ends.
While more than 600,000 of our friends and neighbors have been forced to file for unemployment benefits as a result of the devastation caused by COVID-19 in Connecticut, the governor claims to be powerless to stop the second installment of 5.5 percent pay raises for state employees, the first of which was paid out last year. Simply put, the stakes are too high for his weakness and hand-wringing.
By executive order, utilizing his emergency powers, Governor Lamont had no trouble doing what he felt was right, making numerous decisions including, among other things, the decision to close thousands of Connecticut small and local businesses, closing houses of worship and giving undocumented immigrants $3 million in assistance. Yet despite these extraordinary steps, the governor has been unable to find a way to break away from the backroom deal negotiated with powerful government employee unions by his predecessor, Gov. Dan Malloy, and rubber-stamped by the Democrat majority in the State Legislature.
As leaders, it is our job to find a way to do the most difficult things. Governors of New York, California, Virginia and Pennsylvania, all Democrats, have all made decisions to adjust state employee compensation in light of the incredible crisis our respective states are facing. Governor Lamont should do likewise. State law allows for both the governor and the legislature to amend existing contracts if certain conditions exist, including overriding public health and safety concerns or if it is in the best interests of the public. Given that we are facing an estimated $2 billion deficit next year it is clearly in the state’s best interest to at least delay the raises for three months. That would give our budget experts the time to better assess our financial health.
In 2017 Attorney General George Jepsen indicated that in the most extreme circumstances, the state could take action to amend existing labor contracts. Governor Lamont has demonstrated his willingness to use his authority to exact sweeping changes that have affected the lives and livelihood of every single resident, family and business in Connecticut during this crisis. The governor has asked a lot from the people of Connecticut. He also asked stated employees to help and, unfortunately, their union said “No.” And because he counts on organized labor for his election, he basically replied “OK, thanks so much; sorry to bother you.” Where there is a will, there is a way.
Delay the raises, force the unions to sue you in court or meet you at the bargaining table. I, my fellow Republicans, and more than a few Democrats will charge with you up that hill. I believe the circumstances have never been more dire, as our state has been confronted with a global pandemic that has taken the lives and livelihood of our friends and neighbors. The governor must act.
If grocery store clerks, UPS workers, bus drivers, police officers, sanitation engineers, oilfield hands and people who work in meat processing plants are essential workers, why aren’t teachers?
As the pandemic invaded one community after another, millions of brave souls went to work every day, often putting their lives at risk, to keep Americans fed, warm and safe. Thousands of doctors, emergency medical teams, nurses and firemen knowingly exposed themselves to sick patients; many became ill themselves. The heroism of these people, confronting a little-understood disease, cannot be overstated.
Now our nation urgently needs our children to go back to school, for the good of our youngsters and working families. But public-school teachers are balking. Instead of working with officials to facilitate reentry, they are requiring exorbitant safety measures that make returning to the classroom all but impossible.
Some are making demands that have nothing to do with health precautions, but rather target Democratic political priorities, like defunding the police.
For instance, United Teachers Los Angeles released a paper decrying “our profoundly racist, intensely unequal society” and stating that “Police violence is a leading cause of death and trauma for Black people… We must shift the astronomical amount of money devoted to policing to education and other essential needs…”
For good measure, the Bernie Sanders-style polemic also calls for “Medicare for All” and insists on a moratorium on charter schools.
Dear A.G. [Sulzberger, Publisher] - It is with sadness that I write to tell you that I am resigning from The New York Times. I was hired with the goal of bringing in voices that would not otherwise appear in your pages... The reason for this effort was clear: The paper’s failure to anticipate the outcome of the 2016 election meant that it didn’t have a firm grasp of the country it covers... But the lessons that ought to have followed the election—lessons about the importance of understanding other Americans... and the centrality of the free exchange of ideas to a democratic society—have not been learned. Instead, a new consensus has emerged in the press, but perhaps especially at this paper: that truth isn’t a process of collective discovery, but an orthodoxy already known to an enlightened few whose job is to inform everyone else.
The gap between state government and the people it serves grew wider this week. As the state’s finances continue to deteriorate and hundreds of thousands struggle with unemployment, state employees received $350 million in raises.
No state employee got a better deal this week than Hartford State’s Attorney Gail Hardy. The veteran prosecutor was suspended from her powerful position for four days in June in the aftermath of The Courant story revealing last fall that Hardy had taken as long as a decade to complete mandatory reports on four police-involved shootings in the Hartford region.
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
Connecticut’s finances are considerably worse than even the ugly scenario Gov. Ned Lamont’s administration painted in early May, if the analysts behind a new private study are correct. The coronavirus-induced recession could erode more than $6.5 billion in state revenues next fiscal year — two-and-a-half times the gap administration officials predicted — if researchers from Arizona State and Old Dominion universities are correct. The last time Connecticut faced a deficit close to $4 billion, in 2011, then-Gov. Dannel P. Malloy and the legislature responded with tax increases worth more than $1.8 billion.
Simultaneously with five shooting incidents within a few hours in Bridgeport last week, two of them fatal, one of the wounded being a 13-year-old girl, the City Council agreed to consider the demand of local "social justice" protesters to defund the city's police department. Three days later four more people were shot in Bridgeport. One was killed.
How amazing it is that, by invoking longstanding state law empowering him to declare an emergency and rule Connecticut by decree, Governor Lamont can close businesses, eliminate the jobs and incomes of hundreds of thousands of people, impoverish them and their families, devastate the economy for years to come, commandeer the hospitals and nursing homes, and impose regulations on anyone seeking to go out in public, but he can't cancel or postpone the $350 million in 5½-percent raises scheduled for state government employees July 1.