Weicker, The GOP’s Ahab

“Connecticut Commentary,” as usual, anticipated former U.S. Senator and Governor Lowell Weicker’s remarks on WNPR by nearly a week.

On May 9, Don Pesci addressed Republicans in Westbrook and mentioned Mr. Weicker at some length:

“Both Mr. Weicker and Mr. Malloy are progressives. At the root of progressivism lies the sundering notion that if government is good, more government must be better. From here it is but a baby step to the equally absurd notion that government is the state. In fact, the state is all of us, the government merely an administrative apparatus designed, if you credit the U.S. and State Constitutions, to accomplish our reason informed will. Mr. Weicker, whose ego as U.S. Senator and Governor was infinitely expansive, took this absurd logic a step further and regarded himself as the state. I should like to call your attention to the hopeful tense in that last sentence: Mr. Weicker was, he regarded– past tense: There is a God.


 “But it never hurts to remind ourselves that there is a Devil too. 

“From time to time, Mr. Weicker shows up, most often at WNPR or in the op-ed section of the Courant, to advise Republicans what they must do to become a majority party. You will never guess: They must field candidates like Mr. Weicker. But these days only progressives pay him much mind...”

Mr. Weicker ought to have retired from politics -- eighteen years of which he spent as a Republican U.S. Senator -- an honored elder statesman whose opinions on his party should have been taken with less than a ton of salt. That did not happen, largely because Mr. Weicker thought it politically useful to define himself as a maverick within his own party. In this he was extraordinarily successful, and when a parting of the ways became necessary, no tears were shed within Republican ranks when Mr. Weicker retired from politics for good, shortly after he, as governor, had imposed an income tax on his state.

Connecticut’s slow and painful decent into a reckless spending ditch began with the Weicker income tax. Connecticut is now the only state in the union that has experienced negative job growth. Maverickism does have a dark side. It also has a bright side, at least for Mr. Weicker. Connecticut’s state Republican Party is Mr. Weicker’s  President Richard “You won’t have me to kick around anymore” Nixon. Even though Mr. Weicker’s notions of what is best for his cast off party are irrelevant to most Republicans, the maverick who once fittingly described himself as “the turd in the Republican Party punchbowl” will always have his version of Republicanism to kick around.  In pronouncing his party irrelevant, Mr. Weicker hardly noticed that his state party’s irrelevance coincided rather neatly with Mr. Weicker’s nineteen year reign as the nominal head of Connecticut’s GOP.

These bull bellowings are a little sad. Mr. Weicker is stuck in a time-warp groove: He repeats himself, and repeats himself, and repeats himself… No one, other than a few aged and crusty Jacob Javits Republicans or Democratic politicians eternally grateful for the Weicker income tax and the expansion of spending it occasioned pay him much heed these days.

Mr. Weicker’s views are set in mental concrete and do not change with the times.  As a U.S. Senator and the nominal head of his state party, Mr. Weicker favored opening his party’s nominating convention to non-Republicans, thus weakening the stranglehold on the state GOP of non-maverick, loyal Republicans. He now favors blowing up the nominating conventions altogether, because nominating conventions are, like all things Republican, irrelevant.  

When Teddy Roosevelt retired from politics, he shot a few water buffaloes in Africa. Mark Twain wrote up Roosevelt’s post presidential adventure as a mass slaughter of cows. Former President Jimmy Carter built housing for the poor and wrote books no one reads. Ronald Reagan, stricken with Alzheimer’s, retired to his ranch to await with his usual good humor the grim reaper. George Bush the younger took up painting and manfully restrained himself from commenting upon the idiocies of his successor.

There really is a life after politics. But not for Mr. Weicker. Like some raving Ahab, he has strapped himself to his own White Whale with his own harpoon lines, the victories and defeats of times past.  He and the whale, a metaphorical substitute for thwarted ambition, will go down together. Supported by the Republican Party in his state for nearly two decades in Congress, Mr. Weicker has no use for nominating conventions or political parties. The depth of his ingratitude is boundless, almost blasphemous.

When Starbuck in Herman Melville’s “Moby Dick” accuses Ahab of blasphemy, the old puritan cries out, “Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I'd strike the sun if it insulted me.”

On the last day, when the angels finally call Mr. Weicker, he will go out with a snarl on his lips and a curse against the fictional devils in his past he has not been able to exorcise. The moment will not be recorded by WNPR.

Who Killed Cock Robin? Connecticut’s Disappearing Surplus

This campaign year Governor Dannel Malloy had hoped to present voters with a tax rebate drawn from a budget surplus. The rebate, a slender $55 per person, disappeared because the budget surplus disappeared. On Tuesday, the bad news filtered down from the legislature’s nonpartisan Office of Fiscal Analysis; state income tax receipts for the current budget ending June 30 will fall $357 million short of what had been budgeted. The crystal ball gazers in the Malloy administration affected surprise; the governor was disappointed. He wanted everyone to know, however, that in the event Connecticut produces a future surplus, some of the over-taxation would be remitted to taxpayers by Mr. Malloy, assuming the governor is returned to office in the next election cycle.

A number of economists, the usual culprits, were trotted out to explain who killed Cock Robin.

The explanations were lucid and nuanced. One economist connected with UConn explained why “less than three months after the administration touted a $213 million surge in income tax receipts, on Wednesday, it likely will report a revenue loss close to twice that size,” according to a story in CTMirror.

“We are in a very, very different kind of world,” said Professor Fred V. Carstensen, who heads the University of Connecticut’s economic think-tank. Yes indeed, “Graduate assistants at The University of Connecticut, “according to the piece in CTMirror, “have voted to unionize -- making them the school's largest union, with 2,135 members.”

The brave new world has arrived, even at Connecticut’s most pampered university. Mr. Malloy has consistently thrown tax dollars in UConn’s direction. The governor could well afford to be generous after having imposed on struggling workers in the state the largest tax increase in Connecticut’s history. Alas, it was not enough and, shortly after arriving at UConn, the university’s new president, Susan Herbst, raised tuition. UConn has become the prodigal son of Connecticut’s progressive governor. The disappearing state surplus, Mr. Carstensen was careful not to mention in his remarks to CTMirror, was to be carved out of that massive tax increase. But somewhere on the road to prosperity, the tax increase was offset by a decline in business activity.

From Economics 101, possibly still taught at UConn, we know this: Raising taxes during the state’s longest and most crippling recession is not likely to increase business activity. That was the message delivered by then President John Kennedy in 1962 to the New York Economic Club. And it is growth in business that floods national and state treasuries with surplus wealth.

In his eye-popping speech, Mr. Kennedy reasoned: 1) increasing taxes to finance future federal programs was no longer possible because there are rational limits to all good things, and successive tax increases had outstripped the tolerance levels of taxpayers, a situation remarkably similar to present conditions in Connecticut following two massive tax increases; 2) therefore, it would be prudent to increase future revenues by decreasing marginal tax rates, which in turn would increase business activity, thereby flooding federal and state treasuries with a net increase in taxes that later might be used to finance Great Society programs. Mr. Kennedy was right on all counts.

According to Don Klepper-Smith, once chief economic adviser to former Gov. M. Jodi Rell and presently an analyst with DataCore Partners in New Haven who is often cited in Connecticut news accounts, Connecticut is facing a “non-traditional business cycle,” and traditional tools previously used “for fixing the state budget in the two decades before the Great Recession” -- most notably a boost in the income tax – are no longer effective. In times past, Connecticut’s “heavy reliance on Wall Street and investment-related income taxes” brought the state budget from red to black.

Not anymore.

Following the CTMirror report, the Hartford Courant noted that all of Connecticut’s revenue streams were down. Projected Revenue was down $461.5 million since January. The state income tax, Connecticut’s largest revenue generator was down from $9.021 billion in January to $8.632 billion. The income, sales, corporate profits, inheritance and estate, and cigarettes taxes were all down.

The way to recovery for Connecticut – a long and painful road – was sketched out by Mr. Kennedy way back in 1962: Reduce taxes and excessive regulation; cut spending every year until Connecticut’s economy shows positive signs of recovery; extend the retirement period for state workers; de-unionize government operations wherever possible; end practices such as binding arbitration that drive up municipal costs; reduce municipal mandates and vote out anyone who has sacrificed the long term health of the state for temporary political advantages.

That would be a start along a path to recovery.

Pelto Introduces A Wrinkle

Were it not for Working Families Party votes in the 2010 gubernatorial election, Tom Foley might be governor today. This would have been a calamity, according to Malloyalists. “If you think our education policy is tough, just imagine what it would be like under Governor Foley,” writes Lennie Grimaldi on his widely read blog “Only In Bridgeport,” citing Malloy supporters.

 “Tom Foley,” Mr. Grimaldi reminds us, “received more votes for governor on the Republican line than Dan Malloy received on the Democratic line. The 20,000-vote difference was the Connecticut Working Families Party line where Malloy’s name also appeared for an extra 26,308 votes.”

The Working Families Party is the political arm of Connecticut’s powerful state employee unions, most especially teachers’ unions, and they deliver votes, campaign contributions and boots on the ground to Connecticut’s progressives. Progressive candidates such as Governor Dannel Malloy, once in office, are expected to show their appreciation by endorsing policies that benefit union workers.

So far, Mr. Malloy’ policies – particularly his budgets – have favored union workers and earned the plaudits of Connecticut’s Working Families Party. But the reformist instinct runs like a volcanic stream of lava in the veins of most progressives; and so, early into his first term, Mr. Malloy got it into his head that educational reforms were necessary. In Connecticut’s urban-scape, public schools had been faltering for decades. The governor’s contemplated reforms involved dispensing rewards for good teachers, a form of merit pay, and dismissing teachers who just weren’t cutting it.

Mr. Malloy immediately was forced to confront a series of practical difficulties. Given Connecticut’s elaborate union-made dismissal system, how do you construct a side-by-side process that would pass legal challenges? Answer: You have to show that the dismissed teacher is incompetent to teach. And how do you do that?  Answer: You tie teacher performance to student performance as measured by state-wide standardized tests. Without an objective means of measuring teacher performance, dismissals easily might be challenged as subjective. In a system in which both administrators and workers are unionized, the hiring and firing is done by unions through administrators, straw men immobilized by legislators and governors, like Mr. Malloy, whose futures are bound up with union interests.

Mr. Pelto is the voice of union interests in the battle against Common Core, an imperfect attempt to objectify student and teacher performance. He is nothing if not persistent.

The pitched battle against Common Core has brought together strange political bedfellows.  Common Core is opposed on the right by conservatives and libertarians who subscribe to the principle of subsidiary, which holds that important educational decisions should be made by the smallest unit affected by the decision. Education is a local affair; therefore, hiring and firing decisions should be made by school administrators, principals and superintendents of schools, a once simple process made needlessly complex by legislators who truckle to union leaders -- such as Mr. Malloy, who may be found marching on picket lines with striking union workers.

In pursuit of their ideal social arrangement, the Conservative/Libertarians sometimes blow the dust off President Franklin Roosevelt’s 1937 letter to Luther C. Stewart, then President of the National Federation of Federal Employees, and shout from the rooftops Mr. Roosevelt’s sentiments on the proper relationship between unions and government:

“All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service. It has its distinct and insurmountable limitations when applied to public personnel management. The very nature and purposes of Government make it impossible for administrative officials to represent fully or to bind the employer in mutual discussions with Government employee organizations. The employer is the whole people, who speak by means of laws enacted by their representatives in Congress. Accordingly, administrative officials and employees alike are governed and guided, and in many instances restricted, by laws which establish policies, procedures, or rules in personnel matters.

 “Particularly, I want to emphasize my conviction that militant tactics have no place in the functions of any organization of Government employees. Upon employees in the Federal service rests the obligation to serve the whole people, whose interests and welfare require orderliness and continuity in the conduct of Government activities. This obligation is paramount. Since their own services have to do with the functioning of the Government, a strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to prevent or obstruct the operations of Government until their demands are satisfied. Such action, looking toward the paralysis of Government by those who have sworn to support it, is unthinkable and intolerable. It is, therefore, with a feeling of gratification that I have noted in the constitution of the National Federation of Federal Employees the provision that ‘under no circumstances shall this Federation engage in or support strikes against the United States Government.’"

It is needless to point out here that a progressive Roosevelt holding such views would be exceedingly reluctant to appear on picket lines; still less would he uphold the putative “right” of unionized workers to “prevent or obstruct the operations of Government until their demands are satisfied.”

But these hobgobblins do not haunt Mr. Pelto, whose immediate concern is to hasten a return to the mutually beneficial and unreformed status quo ante that prevailed between Connecticut’s progressive Democrats and teacher unions before Mr. Malloy was afflicted by the notion that he could not in good conscience allow the continuing deterioration of urban school systems.

To advance this end, progressive Democrats in the General Assembly, in concert with teachers’ unions, have proposed to “diminish the weight of the state's standardized test scores as a component of the new teacher evaluation system,” according to a story in the Hartford Courant. The Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium test is a replacement for Connecticut’s Mastery Test now being applied in 90 percent of Connecticut’s districts. Faced by increasing criticism from the left – i.e. Mr. Pelto and the Working Families Party -- Mr. Malloy has applied for a waiver to exclude the Smarter Balance test scores for a year, and Mr. Pelto has given indications that he might challenge Mr. Malloy in the upcoming gubernatorial race.

Mr. Malloy’s left flank is pushing him ever further to the left, and the right has lent a shoulder to the effort. Rather than confront his importunate and increasingly well-organized opponents on his left, Mr. Malloy has chosen to raise aloft his spook stick: “If you think our education policy is tough, just imagine what it would be like under Governor Foley.”

At some point – hopefully for Mr. Malloy on the other side of the upcoming election – reality will overcome the imaginings: Urban education is a wreck, no one is fixing it, and Mr. Malloy’s noble reform venture will be written off as necessary campaign collateral damage. Republicans, as usual, will survey the urban mess and pronounce it unfixable.

The McEnroe Itch

Any admission from Colin McEnroe, a Courant commentator and host of his own radio show on National Public Radio, “The Colin McEnroe Show,” that he is disposed to vote Republican should be taken, as Mark Twain once said, “with a ton of salt.”

Mr. McEnroe wrote in a December 07, 2012 column, “Searching The Ballot For Worthy Republicans,” that he was “itchin' to vote for a Republican.”  And he even provided some tantalizing biographical information: Both of his parents had been Goldwater Republicans. Political obligations to one’s parents, however, rarely survive a Yale education, the fifth commandment having been seriously eroded by sophomore year. Mr. McEnroe noticed that his father had been sliding towards the Democratic heresy at the end. In his later years, his father had “taken to slipping into the voting booth and quietly voting Democrat. I could tell this was happening because he slowly stopped saying anything about politics in front of my mother.”

Around the time he wrote his column, Mr. McEnroe had two rare opportunities to scratch his itch. And so did the Hartford Courant, which multiple times claimed or strongly suggested in its editorials that the GOP should offer up to voters more moderate (read: liberal), pragmatic (read: liberal), non-ideological (read: liberal) Republicans.

Of Ross Garber, then running for attorney general in a Republican Party primary, Mr. McEnroe wrote in his column, “I also would have considered voting for Ross Garber for attorney general, even though I have no significant problems with the Democrat who won, George Jepsen. I think highly of Ross, and I would have been able to say, ‘I do NOT always vote for Democrats. As recently as 2010, I blah-blah woof-woof.’"

Mr. McEnroe was robbed of the opportunity of voting in the general election for a Republican Party attorney general who suited his taste because the Republican Party nominee for attorney general that year was attorney Martha Dean, about whom Mr. McEnroe wrote, “Just the other day I was remarking to my colleague John Dankosky that perhaps we all should have voted for Martha Dean Christian Space Warrior™, because life would have been really exciting and because the state could have written down its debt by selling action figures. But I didn't vote for her because I was afraid to roll the dice on someone who might get the state bogged down in litigation with secular humanist mole people living in tunnels on one of Jupiter's moons.”

The ghost of Mr. McEnroe’s politically active father, not to mention the ghost of his Goldwater supporting mother, could have advised Mr. McEnroe that he might easily have registered as Republican that year so as to have had the pleasure of scratching his itch by voting against the “Christian Space Warrior™” and for his preferred Republican Party candidate, Mr. Garber, in the Republican Party primary. Perhaps that route was too troublesome for Mr. McEnroe; or, as seems more likely, the itch to vote Republican was not very itchy.

Mr. Roraback that year did make it past the Republican Party primary filter to become the GOP’s nominee for the U.S. Senate in Connecticut’s 5th District. Mr. Roraback edged out three other Republican Party U.S. Congressional contestants when Mark Greenberg, since pilloried by Mr. McEnroe, pledged his support to Mr. Roraback, who was without question Mr. McEnroe’s kind of Republican.

In his most recent column, “State Republicans Shouldn't Squander Chances," Mr. McEnroe writes, “The Connecticut GOP's leprous condition leaves too much room for rich guys who don't know what they're talking about and don't seem to care. Yes, Mark Greenberg, I'm looking at you.”

Mr. Roraback was the Courant’s kind of Republican too, uber-liberal on social issues and what has been called in Connecticut a “fiscal conservative” on economic issues. Indeed, Mr. Roraback styled himself during the general campaign a fiscal conservative and a social liberal. On the social issue front, Mr. Roraback’s bona fides were unimpeachable – almost. As noted in Connecticut Commentary,  Mr.  Roraback’s cousin, Catharine Roraback, “was a civil rights attorney in Connecticut best known for representing Estelle Griswold and Dr. C. Lee Buxton in the famous 1965 Supreme Court case, Griswold v. Connecticut, which legalized the use of birth control and created the precedent of the ‘right to privacy’ later employed by an imaginative Supreme Court to rid the United States of its anti-abortion demons.”

Mr. Roraback had been praised by the Courant in previous editorials for having had a perfect attendance record in the state Senate. He never missed a vote, according to The Register Citizen Papers: ”Since beginning his service in the General Assembly on Jan. 4, 1995, Senator Roraback has cast 7,432 votes and has been present for every vote taken in his 15 legislative sessions.” Mr. Roraback’s score card on social issues was perfect, as noted by the usual left of center rating agencies. And Mr. Roraback had far more political experience under his belt than his Democratic challenger in the 5^th District, Elizabeth Esty, the wife of Governor Dannel Malloy’s Commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP).

The Courant fulsomely endorsed Mr. Roraback over other challengers in the Republican Party primary, noting with some relief that ”Mr. Roraback is a fiscal conservative but not an ideologue” – i.e. not a social conservative.

Yet in the general election, the Courant endorsed Ms. Esty over Mr. Roraback, the Republican Party endorsed candidate embraced by Mr. Greenberg who, according to Mr. McEnroe, “doesn’t know what he’s talking about” and “doesn’t seem to care,” a formulation that, as it rolls off Mr. McEnroe’s tongue, may mean little more than this: “Mr. Greenberg’s political prescriptions for what ails the United States do not correspond to my own.”

The Courant’s general election endorsement of Ms. Esty over Mr. Roraback was soddened with remorse: “… it is hard not to endorse Mr. Roraback. In his 18 years in the legislature, he has been a thoughtful and productive lawmaker with a reputation for hard work and personal integrity. There's no reason to think that wouldn't continue in Washington, should he be elected.”

Mr. McEnroe’s political prescriptions for most large issues affecting the nation are, as always, amusing but amorphous.

Neither the Courant nor Mr. McEnroe will have a future opportunity to scratch their respective itches and endorse or vote for Mr. Roraback as a Republican U.S. Congressional candidate in the 5^th District, because some months ago he was appointed by Mr. Malloy as a Superior Court Judge, removing Mr. Roraback as a potential candidate for the U .S. Congress.

Both the Courant and Mr. McEnroe no doubt were pleased with the selection. It eliminated permanently a terribly inconvenient itch. 

The Stink War

 “The ink war.” That is how Tom Dudchik of Capitol Report styled the controversy between Chis Powell, the icon busting editor of the Journal Inquirer and, following a rebuttal editorial in the Hartford Courant, pretty much everyone else manning the barricades on the left who ever lifted a pen or pounded a keyboard in defense of the liberal view of the decline of print media.

The controversial pieces are printed here as they appeared, in chronological sequence; first, Mr. Powell’s initial column; then the Courant’s editorial rebuttal; then, an interview with Jim Romenesko; then Mr. Powell’s response to what he regards as the distortions of his critics; and finally a Courant rebuttal accusing Mr. Powell of having defended the indefensible – namely, himself. Unprinted here are a slew of editorials and commentary pieces all, more or less, bearing the same message: that Mr. Powell has attacked all single parent moms; that he is a holdover from those glorious days of yore when print media enjoyed a monopoly on dispensing information; that he has failed to understand properly the regrettable inroads made on the monopoly by the internet and the loss of advertising that has impoverished many newspapers; that he is a closet misogynist who has unjustly denigrated the poor.

The whips and scorns the left is so eager to brandish have been left out of this account for space reasons.

In the good old days of print journalism – when, for instance, George Bernard Shaw and G. K. Chesterton were pulling each other’s hair in British papers – newspaper editors thought it proper to print in full both the newspaper’s points on some controversy of the day and hearty rebuttals written by controversialists who defended an opposing point of view.

This is no longer done. Instead, editorialists and commentators generally summarize whatever points they wish to demolish in print, running in full only their own invaluable opinions.

In a bow to old and perhaps more just journalistic processes long abandoned, the remarks of Mr. Powell and some of his critics are here published in full – without additional remarks.   

Journalism's problem may not be the Internet 

By Chris Powell

Posted: Saturday, September 28, 2013 12:15 am

Journalism is hailing the acquisition of The Washington Post by Internet retailing entrepreneur Jeff Bezos, figuring that he has both the genius and wealth to develop a new self-sustaining model of journalism. This may be a bit presumptuous.

For as much as Bezos' company, Amazon, has done remarkable things, its decisive business strategy was only sales tax evasion, an advantage that seems to be coming to an end as Congress prepares to enact legislation allowing states to collect sales taxes on Internet purchases. If the future of journalism rests with the Internet rather than with the old business models of declining profitability -- newsprint and the broadcast airwaves -- the Internet model of profitable journalism still hasn't been invented yet. And if such a model was even close at hand, the Post under its longtime owners, the Graham family, could have well afforded to undertake it without any help from Bezos.

Further, while the decline of journalism coincides with the rise of the Internet, the Internet may not be the primary cause at all.

Certainly the Internet has given journalism a powerful competitor for public attention, just as radio and then television did. The Internet is a far more powerful competitor because, unlike radio and TV, it allows people to indulge their particular interests at any hour of the day to the exclusion of everything else, to live always in the narrowest of worlds rather than in a broad one. For example, thanks to the Internet someone well might know nearly everything about the Boston Red Sox, Miley Cyrus, and sunspots and yet be unaware that an airplane had just crashed a few streets away, that the governor had just been sent to prison for corruption, and that town government had just raised property taxes again.

That is, traditional journalism, especially newspaper journalism, remains indispensable for conveying local and state news and providing some understanding of public policy, there being few exclusively Internet-based sources of information about those things. But do local and state news and some understanding of public policy remain indispensable to most people?

Even in a supposedly prosperous and well-educated state like Connecticut, how strong can demand for those things be now that half the children are being raised without two parents at home and thus acquiring developmental handicaps; 70 percent of community college and state university freshmen have not mastered what used to be considered basic high school skills; poverty has risen steadily even as government appropriations in the name of remediating poverty have risen steadily; and democracy has sunk so much that half the eligible population isn't voting in presidential elections, 65 percent isn't voting in state elections, and 85 percent isn't voting in municipal elections?

This social disintegration and decline in civic engagement coincide with the decline of traditional journalism just as much as the rise of the Internet does.

Indeed, newspapers still can sell themselves to traditional households -- two-parent families involved with their children, schools, churches, sports, civic groups, and such. But newspapers cannot sell themselves to households headed by single women who have several children by different fathers, survive on welfare stipends, can hardly speak or read English, move every few months to cheat their landlords, barely know what town they're living in, and couldn't afford a newspaper subscription even if they could read. And such households constitute a rising share of the population.

These days in Connecticut if you want to know what's happening in your geographic community -- your town and your state -- rather than just your virtual community, the Internet is of little help; you still have to read newspapers or their Internet sites.

If you don't want to know or couldn't care less, that's your right, but then the problem is much bigger than journalism.

  

Chris Powell Can't Pin Newspaper Woes On Welfare Moms

Editorial, The Hartford Courant

6:07 p.m. EDT, October 2, 2013

It is no secret that print journalism faces enormous challenges today, but we don't think these challenges were brought about by welfare moms. That puts us at odds with the Manchester Journal Inquirer's managing editor, Chris Powell.

Many students of the industry ascribe the decline in print journalism to the rise of the Internet and the migration of classified advertising to sites like Craigslist. In a column that's getting a lot of attention online, Mr. Powell instead proposes that the real villain is a breakdown of the social fabric, epitomized by rent-cheating, barely literate welfare mothers.

Mr. Powell says, and here we agree, that newspapers are still indispensable for conveying local and state news and providing understanding of public policy. But he seems to think many people cannot comprehend this information "now that half the children are being raised without two parents at home and thus acquiring developmental handicaps." He's wrong: Nearly 70 percent of Connecticut children live with two married parents and have since 2008, according to the Census Bureau. We couldn't substantiate his claim about developmental handicaps.

He says newspapers can still market themselves to "traditional households — two-parent families involved with their children." But newspapers "cannot sell themselves to households headed by single women who have several children by different fathers, survive on welfare stipends, can hardly speak or read English, move every few months to cheat their landlords, barely know what town they're living in, and couldn't afford a newspaper subscription even if they could read."

Aside from his stereotyping, and general nastiness, newspapers never relied on people who couldn't afford to buy the paper, and fortunately there aren't many such people. Mr. Powell says such families are increasing, but the numbers say otherwise. There are 28 percent fewer households getting welfare today than a decade ago. Many of them are headed by grandparents, not single women, and many recipients are working, according to the state Department of Social Services.

And journalism readership is greater than ever. More readers saw Mr. Powell's column online than in print, and that includes caring single moms.

The challenge for the industry is to create a business model that supports quality journalism, however delivered. We're working on it.

The challenge is also to chronicle and change with the times, not hearken back to supposed good old days. Journalism needs to evolve, be dynamic, embrace the future, not run to a mythic past, while insulting people and getting facts wrong to boot.

The media's job is to portray the world as it is, not as Ronald Reagan might have seen it. Mr. Powell often is an effective provocateur and commentator, but this rant is unworthy of responsible journalism. 

Controversial Journal Inquirer Editor: “If My Opinion Is So Wacky, Why Bother With It?

From, JimRomenesko.com

October 4, 2013

Manchester (Conn.) Journal Inquirer managing editor Chris Powell was blasted earlier this week after he wrote that “newspapers cannot sell themselves to households headed by single women who have several children by different fathers, survive on welfare stipends, can hardly speak or read English, move every few months to cheat their landlords, barely know what town they’re living in, and couldn’t afford a newspaper subscription even if they could read.”

The Hartford Courant said “this rant is unworthy of responsible journalism.” It’s “off-base on many levels,” added Matt DeRienzo.

Will Bunch put Powell down “as Exhibit A for exactly how NOT to save newsrooms.”

Kirsten Lambertsen ‏nominated the managing editor “for @WhiteWhine of the month. Make that, the year.”

What does Powell have to say about his critics and the online reaction to his column?

“Well, for starters, I was surprised to find myself becoming so important,” he tells Romenesko readers. “After all, the world is full of opinions, including wacky ones, so what makes the opinion of an editor in Connecticut who is of no particular renown so deserving of criticism nationally? If my opinion is so wacky, why bother with it? Hell, the federal government has just been incapacitated. Aren’t there a few more important things to upset commentators?”

He says he never blamed welfare mothers for the decline of the newspaper business.

Rather, I correlated the decline of the newspaper business — the decline of the news business generally, really — with the social disintegration all around us, and cited quite a few examples, including the collapse of public education and participation in elections. The disintegration represented by childbearing outside marriage, a frequent topic in my writing, was a prominent example because it underlies so much of the social disintegration generally, as it is child abuse and neglect. Even the liberal-originating social science has been confirming this lately.

Many single mothers took the now-infamous paragraph of criticism about welfare mothers as an attack on them, but the paragraph criticized only WELFARE mothers in some VERY SPECIFIC CIRCUMSTANCES.

Powell says he’s not surprised by the “abusive” emails and calls that the Journal Inquirer received after his column went viral. “That’s always the case when there’s controversy and when people don’t have to identify themselves,” he writes in an email. “More disappointing to me is the continuing general refusal to recognize the social disintegration.”

Will he address his critics in a future column?

There’s a possibility, he says, “but I can live with letting the column speak for itself. ….Besides, while criticism can sting, my 15 minutes of fame will be up today or tomorrow.”

So social disintegration isn't a problem for news?

By Chris Powell

Posted: Monday, October 7, 2013 1:30 am | Updated: 6:24 am, Mon Oct 7, 2013.

Journalists from Bangor to Salt Lake City and from Philadelphia to Miami have launched themselves into smug ridicule in recent days, their headlines proclaiming that an editor in Connecticut had blamed single mothers for the decline of the newspaper industry. It seems to be the national journalistic pile-on of the month, overshadowing even the shutdown of the federal government.

It is also a distortion.

Rather, that editor -- this writer -- wrote in a column that the decline of newspapers and the news business generally may correlate less with the rise of the Internet than with social disintegration, as represented by the collapse of public education and voter participation, the failure of government to alleviate poverty, and the growth in welfare-dependent households, particularly those headed by unmarried, unskilled, and largely illiterate women who have several children by different men.

It was the latter example that set everyone off.

It was said to be an attack on all single women, all single women with children, and all households with unconventional parenting. But the column criticized an entirely different group.

It was said to be "misogynist," as if in the era of women's equality certain women are not to be held responsible for their anti-social behavior.

It was said to be "racist," as if the inability of much of the population to speak and read the national language does not impugn immigration policy and risk disunity.

Some critics disputed the column's assertion that half the children in Connecticut are being raised in households without two parents. The figure is arguable but the Washington-based research group Child Trends reported last year that more than half of children nationally born to women under 30 are now born outside marriage. Meanwhile the fatherlessness rate approaches 90 percent in Connecticut's cities and exceeds 50 percent in many public schools in inner suburbs, dragging education down.

So why argue the exact percentage if not to suggest that this phenomenon is not a problem? And if it is not a problem, why is Connecticut spending $800 million a year on its Department of Children and Families?

For many years now even the liberal social science research has reported that childbearing outside marriage is far more than a problem -- that it is a society-wide catastrophe.

Poverty and the ignorance it imposes are not environments for selling newspapers or any news -- nor for preserving democracy.

Disputing the column, the Hartford Courant said welfare rolls are down. But food stamps, government disability benefits rolls, and earned income tax credits are way up. Indeed, as National Public Radio reported in March, disability is the new welfare.

The Courant's dismissal of the relevance of all this to civic life and journalism is refuted by the newspaper's own circulation figures, its long having had more home-delivered subscribers in suburban West Hartford than in Hartford itself though Hartford has a far larger population -- one far more dependent on welfare.

The Courant also faulted the column for "general nastiness," as if the newspaper's own premier columnists, Colin McEnroe, Kevin Rennie, and Jim Shea, have achieved their audiences with a devotion to subtlety.

The challenge to the news industry, the Courant says, "is to create a business model that supports quality journalism, however delivered." But there can be no such model if society keeps impoverishing itself.

The news industry, the Courant adds, should "embrace the future, not run to a mythic past." But of course for the Courant's parent company, Tribune, which is selling its newspapers, the future is television -- a future without any need for literacy. And there was nothing mythic about a past where Americans were educated, read, participated, and voted.

Chris Powell Doubles Down On Blaming Poor Moms

Editorial, The Hartford Courant

Journal Inquirer Editor Bemoans 'Distortion' Of Earlier Column, But Message Seems The Same

5:57 p.m. EDT, October 7, 2013

Chris Powell, managing editor of the Journal Inquirer, seems intent on finding a fall girl for the woes of newspapers. Once again he's blaming women.

He wrote in a Sept. 28 column, "Journalism's Problem May Not Be The Internet," that newspapers' real problem was "single women who have several children by different fathers, survive on welfare stipends, can hardly speak or read English, move every few months to cheat their landlords, barely know what town they're living in, and couldn't afford a newspaper subscription even if they could read."

This bizarre theory was trounced nationwide. We'd hoped it had been put to rest.

But now it comes again.

In his latest column, Mr. Powell accuses critics of "distortion." He says he was really saying the culprit for newspaper woes is "social disintegration," as represented by a host of ills, including "the growth in welfare-dependent households, particularly those headed by unmarried, unskilled, and largely illiterate women who have several children by different men."

Sounds like the same argument.

There are some worrying socioeconomic trends in the U.S. But unwed and welfare-dependent mothers aren't responsible for newspapers' fate. The rise of online journalism is. Rather than bemoan this, journalists have to jump on the jet.

Mr. Powell has been a zealous advocate for open government and other worthy causes. If only he could harness that energy toward engaging in the future of the news industry rather than blaming the blameless.

Foley Charges Partly Vindicated By Critic

There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea -- T.S. Elliot

Kevin Rennie, a Harford Courant columnist, is regarded by some in politics as the Torquemada of Connecticut commentators – especially in matters of what one might call political ethics. Many politicians have felt his bite and winced.

After an appearance on WFSB’s “Face the State” with Dennis House, Tom Foley, who is expected in the near future to announce his bid for governor on the Republican Party ticket, had much to wince at.

In the most recent Rennie column, Mr. Foley was still mercilessly flailed – “Foley served a dog's breakfast to viewers in his return as a candidate for governor. Foley was a flailing amateur. He's been unable to provide proof for some of his allegations, despite claiming they met some journalistic standard that lives a solitary life in Foley's head” – but into this whipping crept a softer tone.

One of Mr. Foley’s supposed boneheaded allegations was that the relationship between Governor Dannel Malloy’s former media liaison and flack catcher, Roy Occhiogrosso, and Connecticut crony capitalist head of state was unseemly, profitable to them both and unethical under the standard of ethics embraced by Jesus Christ -- even though the bi-profitable relationship was perfectly legal. A transcription of Mr. Foley’s remarks may be found here at “Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes From A Blue State.”

In the course of his “Face the State” interview, Mr. Foley noted that he was relying on multiple reliable sources who wished to remain anonymous, after which he spoke the fatal words: “But these are all things that have been told to me by more than one reliable source, and so it meets a journalistic standard.”

The intake of breath among Connecticut scriveners was audible from New London to Hartford. One could smell brimstone in the air: Who does he think he is, Woodward or Bernstein? These were the two renowned reporters who, relying at the beginning of their investigation chiefly on a single reliable source, “Deep Throat,” finally shoved Tricky Dick Nixon off the political stage? “Deep Throat” remained anonymous for decades after the Nixon putsch, finally outing himself just before he kicked the bucket.

The gauntlet thrown down to Connecticut’s media by Mr. Foley – just investigate this stuff – has now been taken up in part by Mr. Rennie.

And the result is a softer, more gentle Rennie:

“This is state government, so there's always money to be found for friends, no matter what the condition of the economy. I overstated the case last week when I wrote that the contract to Global Strategies had been awarded by competitive bid (emphasis mine).

“Three insiders at Access Health CT invited three public relations companies to submit proposals for the lucrative contract. They did not open the process to the many firms that could meet the basic requirements of a public relations contract whether with innovative or stale ideas. The insiders included former Enfield Democratic state Rep. Kathleen Tallarita, Access Health CT's head of government relations and communications. In 2012, Tallarita became the rare suburban legislator to lose her seat in a party primary.”

This sort of thing happens frequently in Connecticut politics: Backs are scratched; friends are rewarded, enemies punished. Good investigative reporters occasionally uncover dubious, possibly unethical practices when a gored enemy plops a story on their desks. These sources are generally given protective anonymity as the reporter turns over a few rocks and examines the hitherto undisclosed swarm of ethical muck beneath them.

In a one party state, the possibility of such disclosures is markedly reduced. And there is no reporter in the state who does not now know that Connecticut has crossed the bar: The state’s entire U.S. Congressional Delegation is solidly Democratic; the Democratic Party boasts in Mr. Malloy its first Democratic governor in more than two decades; the state’s General Assembly is solidly Democratic. We know from the history we do not wish to repeat that the one party state is more successfully corrupt than the state that has an active two party system in which political power is evenly and justly shared. It’s what you think you know for certain and don’t that kills you. In a one party state the rocks are larger and more immovable.

Moving the rock that seals the tomb requires a media that is unflinchingly non-partisan, alert, energetic and courageous.

Sandy Hook And Common Sense

A recent Courant editorial, “Sandy Hook Panel's Focus Turns From Guns To School Safety,” begins with the following lede: “Officials can turn a school into an armed camp, in an effort to make it safer, with metal detectors, bulletproof glass, armed guards and armed teachers. Or they can take a different approach.”

Naturally, the Courant, which is averse to “armed camps,” prefers a different approach. Schools “can promote good basic building security measures for access and corridor control. They can train faculty and staff to embrace the post-9/11 mantra: If you see something, say something. They can make smaller-scale changes that are easier to implement and pay for, such as more security cameras and, importantly, help for troubled students.”

Will this solution work in Connecticut schools? The obvious corollary question is: Work to do what? We were told by an assortment of politicians days after Adam Lanza shot his way into Sandy Hook Elementary School that Connecticut and the nation at large would have to craft legislation to prevent such events from happening in the future. All the decision making politicians in Connecticut jumped on that band wagon. Their script appeared to have been written somewhere in central casting, so uniform was it.

The first line in the editorial carries a load of unsupported rhetorical freight. Who are the politicians in Connecticut who said after the assault on the school they wanted to turn all Connecticut schools into “armed camps.” This was a rhetorical spook under the bed from day one. And the other rhetorical spook on a stick was the AR-15 “assault weapon.” An assault weapon is any weapon used successfully in an assault. Lanza arrived at the school armed to the teeth. He left an semi- automatic shot gun – an assault weapon? – in the trunk of his car, shot his way into the school with the AR-15, and committed suicide when armed first responders appeared on the scene.

That is what we THINK happened; we are still awaiting a criminal report from the state police and Danbury State Attorney Stephen Sedensky III, months after we were told it would be available by mid-June. In this particular incident, one wants to know whether “corridor control,” or a staff prepared to “say something” after they’ve seen something, or any of the “smaller-scale changes that are easier to implement and pay for, such as more security cameras and, importantly, help for troubled students,” would have altered the turn of events.

To ask the question is to answer it. These measures may be proper and advisable, but Adam Lanza would have brushed by them quickly during his murderous assault.

Among the first people Lanza shot when he broke into the school was school psychologist Mary Sherlach who, under happier circumstances, would have been pleased to sit down with Lanza to ease his psychological burdens.  On this occasion, she was not a bar to his murderous intentions. And frankly we should be prepared to acknowledge that an “armed camp” might have been an effective preventative – even though we are not prepared to turn every school in the state into am armed camp. The first responders, whose appearance in the school brought a stop to the mayhem, were not armed with Freudian text books, and they were successful in thwarting more slayings BECAUSE they were armed.

Sherlach and Sandy Hook Principal Dawn Hochsprung were the heroes of the day. No song about heroism can be sung loud enough to do them justice. They both put themselves in the line of fire to save their students, and they are rightfully remembered as heroes who, in laying down their lives, showed the greatest love possible. So too with the first responders who put themselves in harm’s way to save the lives of blameless little children: They were all heroes. But the first responders, we ought to remember, were successful BECAUSE they were armed.

According to the editorial, it is good that the commission appointed by Governor Dannel Malloy, a 16-member panel of experts charged with studying “measures to improve school security, mental health services and gun violence prevention,” has taken sufficient time to compile its report, because the state thereby “avoided the panicked response seen in a few parts of the country of arming teachers, which is a potentially greater risk than the one it is supposed to prevent.”

Courant editors should be challenged to cite a serious piece of legislation proposed by anyone in the Connecticut’s General Assembly that would arm teachers.

That has happened elsewhere in the nation. The nation’s federalist structure is such that it allows states to serve as experimental stations, and in time we will see whether arming teachers is a more successful measure in turning away school assaults than, say, the psychological profiling of students.

It’s telling that the paper is lobbying for “sufficient time” so that the panel of experts might create a state-wide camp of psychologists armed with predictive models to prevent future Sandy Hook-like assaults, even as the paper eagerly joined in the PANICKED rush for legislation that preceded the criminal report everyone is still waiting for. An indeterminate date has now been assigned to the release of that report. The Courant permitted itself to wonder in a previous editorial what the hang-up is, since it is unlikely anyone else will be charged in the crime.

The gun legislation so far passed by the General Assembly does not rely on the necessary hard data that would have been available to legislators had a preliminary criminal report been released earlier in camera to legislators who, rushed by political exigencies,  were in the process of creating a comprehensive gun restriction bill. Heeding common sense, the editors at the Courant should have understood early on that the way to build a legislative sand castle in the air is to deprive legislators of the hard data – the ground – that is necessary in all sound legislation.

Malloy, Gun Manufacturers And The Public Good

Guns are highly regulated in Connecticut, which means that gun manufacturers must satisfy two kinds of clients: those who buy guns and state regulators.

Before Connecticut passed its latest gun regulations, it was possible for gun manufacturers in the state to submit to the State Police finished prototypes for products so that the manufacturer could receive a nod of consent before the company invested money in producing the product.

The arrangement was a happy one for manufacturers, the General Assembly and Connecticut’s governors. Governors and state legislators charged with protecting the public – presumably from criminals rather than law abiding owners of guns -- were given a veto over products before they appeared in the marketplace; manufacturers were assured before production that their product either was or was not legally compliant; and because many regulations and laws are necessarily ambiguous and opened to reasonable interpretation, lawyers with tiger’s teeth, ever on the prowl for deep pocket industrialists who run afoul of the law, were kept at bay. Everyone was happy with the arrangement.

A worm has now crept into Eden’s apple.

“I was told to get a lawyer, figure it out and if I’m wrong I’m going to have to deal with it,” Stag Arms owner and President Mark Malkowski confided to a reporter. “It’s my responsibility to interpret…I was told we were no longer allowed to bring prototypes in.”

Over at the Hartford Courant, a left of center paper, business reporter Dan Haar –not a member in good standing, one supposes, of the local branch of the Tea Party movement – lodged a reasonable objection:

“That means Stag, and any other manufacturer seeking to design a rifle within the rules, and any retailer who offers that product in Connecticut, must take a risk when it comes to figuring out a regulation — a high risk, since selling assault weapons could be viewed as a crime.

“It seems reasonable to ask a law enforcement agency to tell citizens what is and is not legal. We expect that of town building departments, tax authorities and countless other local, state and federal offices.”

Mr. Haar wonders whether the new policy might have drifted down to the state police  from the Malloy administration “since it’s no secret that Malloy and many legislators are in a running tiff with the gunmakers, and some resented Stag’s efforts to design a new AR-15,” so that the new design might conform to new legislative strictures.

The inevitable consequence of the new procedure will be to drive cost conscious gun manufacturers in Connecticut, already skittish and eyeing exit signs, away from Connecticut into the arms of such business poachers as Texas Governor Rick Perry. One manufacturer, PTR, already has pulled up roots and moved to South Carolina.

Now then, the operative rule in any politics worthy of the name is that things happen in a certain way because politicians WANT things to happen in a certain way. In states like Connecticut in which a single party is dominant and political resistance is not a practical option, the path to political success is made straight by the use of power rather than persuasion. In such a regime, every effective bar to political force – the resistance of an opposing party, the opposition of a critical media, constitutional prescriptions, the consent of the governed, the opposition of an informed and aroused citizenry -- is dangerously lowered to facilitate the refashioning of the state in the mode of a permanent political oligarchy based on ideological presumptions rather than class or wealth. Such political reinventions are rolling stones that eventually flatten what Edmond Burke called in his “Reflections on the French Revolution” the indispensable platoons of democracy:

“To be attached to the subdivision, to love the little platoon we belong to in society, is the first principle (the germ as it were) of public affections. It is the first link in the series by which we proceed towards a love to our country, and to mankind. The interest of that portion of social arrangement is a trust in the hands of all those who compose it; and as none but bad men would justify it in abuse, none but traitors would barter it away for their own personal advantage.”

Under such a reinvented system, ambitious and arrogant ideological oligarchs are permitted a free hand to reshape states according to their own ideological preferences. The mark of the true ideologue is his disposition to reinvent the multifaceted social wheel, the intricate and self-reinforcing substructures of a society that promotes prosperity and democracy.

At some point, citizens of Connecticut may find it necessary to reject a paternalistic government that subtly subverts such platoons of democracy as a viable two party system, constitutional prescriptions that advance the liberties of the governed rather than the liberties of politicians, independent legislatures and judicial departments, a tripartite system of governance in which the centralization of all governing authority is tempered by a necessary deference of government to a rule that maximizes individual liberties, free churches, strong family units, the upward mobility of an economic system made possible by the creative choices of a moderately and fairly regulated free enterprise system.

If “government is force” – as George Washington said – it must be used sparingly to support the public good, which often is inversely related to the “good of politicians” disposed to use force for the advancement of their own narrow political ambitions.