Chris Powell: Conn.'s casino and ID nightmares

MANCHESTER, Conn. Alka-Seltzer commercials touting the product's supposedly soothing form of relief used to ask: Why trade a headache for an upset stomach?

That's the question that Connecticut faces with the legislation pending in the General Assembly to authorize a few more casinos near the state's borders to try to keep state residents from visiting new casinos in Massachusetts and New York. (The two Indian casinos in the southeast part of the state already have the Rhode Island border defended as well as it's going to be.)

Yes, revenue at the Indian casinos, shared with state government, has been declining and will continue to decline as Connecticut's neighbors keep more of their gamblers home. The racket that Connecticut and the Indian casinos have enjoyed for 20 years, drawing most gamblers from out of state, is nearly over and soon gambling won't be a winner for any state in the Northeast. Instead states will be plundering mainly their own people.

When its casinos were fleecing so many out-of-staters, Connecticut could rationalize the antisocial behavior engendered by casinos -- addiction, family destruction and theft -- and presume to recover its costs. No more. Casino gambling is becoming just another method of taxing the local population, the revenue drawn disproportionately from the poor and troubled, the very people government supposedly means to help.

Who wins in such a system? Only the casino operators and those employed by state and municipal government. The poor and needy might be helped as much just by getting rid of casinos entirely and imposing better priorities on state government, redirecting its resources more according to the needs of the population rather than those of elected officials and the special interests that control them.

But the legislation authorizing more casinos almost certainly will be enacted. Why? Because while it will mean more headaches and upset stomachs for ordinary people, none will be suffered by government's own employees. That's where most state tax revenue goes now and where most revenue from any new casinos will end up.

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Hartford, a "sanctuary city" like New Haven -- a city that refuses assistance to federal immigration enforcement authorities -- soon may follow New Haven in issuing its own identification cards to city residents to facilitate illegal immigration. Only illegal immigrants need such cards, other forms of identification being easily obtainable by anyone who can demonstrate citizenship or legal residency.

According to the Hartford Courant, Mayor Pedro Segarra estimates that as many as 20,000 of Hartford's 125,000 residents are illegal immigrants -- a sixth of the population -- and advocates of the ID cards say those people are "living in fear in the shadows." But then anyone violating the law may have reason to live in fear. That someone lives in fear does not necessarily make him virtuous.

An official of the Connecticut Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union says the city ID cards would "ensure that our friends and neighbors are embraced as equal citizens and residents." But most of those obtaining the cards would not be citizens at all; the cards would just allow them to pose as citizens so they might enjoy benefits meant to be reserved to citizens.

The Federation for American Immigration Reform notes that Hartford's ID cards, like New Haven's, probably would be used by many to create some false identifications, since the cities have little ability to verify whatever documents would be presented to obtain the cards and less interest in verifying them.

Indeed, the ID card project is meant only to nullify federal law, the sort of thing that was so contemptible when segregationist Southern governors did it to deny federally established civil rights a half century ago.

But these days liberal nullification has become respectable even though it aims to devalue not just citizenship but nationhood itself.

Chris Powell is managing editor of the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester, Conn.

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Don Pesci: The Rock Cats Shuffle

VERNON, Conn.

Facing what is certain to be a hard-fought gubernatorial campaign, Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy vowed that he would not intervene (read: invest state tax money in) a pre-arranged deal between officials in Hartford and the owners of the New Britain Rock Cats to reposition the baseball team in Hartford.

Chis Powell, managing editor of the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester, and the paper’s chief political columnist, noted wryly that any such “investment” on the part of Mr. Malloy would be redundant, since state taxpayers already provide Hartford, as well as other large non-self-sustaining cities in Connecticut, with sufficient funds that more than offset any expenses involved in relocating and housing the team.

The Malloy administration certainly has sufficient experience in providing tax funds to a number of companies in Connecticut that have moved from one town in the state to another, but this time, perhaps because of the proximity of an election, Mr. Malloy has turned his face to the wall. He had already gone on record as promising no new taxes, no union giveaways and no reductions in services. Any tax money doled out to Hartford, a one-party Democratic basket case, to facilitate the Rock Cats’ move from New Britain to Hartford would, considering the campaign pledges made by Mr. Malloy, have been politically awkward.

The crowd that turned out at the Town Meeting in Hartford to oppose the Rock Cats shuffle was not concerned with the political futures of those One Party Town politicians who brokered the deal months before it was announced as a fait accompli by Hartford Mayor Pedro Segarra. Opposition to the back- room deal was vigorous – and poetic.

Hartford resident Chris Brown stepped before the microphone and said:

In a starling announcement on the sunny fourth of June, From left field came a surprise that afternoon. With dicey-looking figures and mathematical wiggle room, We saw the latest road map to efficient fiscal doom. The numbers are inflated, optimistic fuzzy math, With details twice as blurry as a fuzzy photograph. If the goal’s creating jobs, I propose a better path. Make jobs of things we use in Hartford every day, Like my wondrous local library, underfunded, overfilled, Like repairing the streets and sidewalks that are crumbling away … These lower cost investments in the things you might find dull Will be longer term solutions to our economic lull. They are all more shovel-ready than a steaming load of bull.

Mr. Brown’s poetry recital was interrupted twice by raucous applause. People in the audience were resisting the move for two reasons: 1) They felt that the priorities of the city fathers, all Democrats, were woefully misplaced. Hartford’s real needs would not be met by the relocation to the city of a baseball team; and 2) Those who arranged the deal months earlier had not consulted them concerning the move.

"People talk a lot about the declining faith in government," said Joshua King, who lives on Broad Street. "This is why. This is it."

"When the mayor came on, one of his biggest words was transparency," said Evelyn Richardson of Enfield Street. "How do you hold 18 months of [secret] meetings and call that transparency?"

Mayor Pedro Segarra issued a response through a spokeswoman: "We have understood from the beginning that this project would require public discussion, participation and dialogue. Just like tonight, there will be many opportunities to learn more about how this revitalization will be an asset to the community for years to come."

Mr. Brown touched most of these points in his poem: Public discussion should precede, not follow, major decisions. Without pre-discussion the “government of the people by the people and for the people” is thrown to the three winds. Mr. Segarra wears his arrogance well. To say in the face of such heated resistance “there will be many opportunities to learn more about how this revitalization will be an asset to the community for years to come" is to say – the only role the public may play in matters of this kind is to hear and accept supinely the decisions that have been made for you by your betters.

This is the usual posture of most political leaders in one-party political operations -- countries, states, towns or, for that matter, families ruled by stiff-necked autocrats.

The real problem with Hartford is that it is suffering all the ills of a one-party autocracy. Always and everywhere in history, the autocrat, the patron, the Jefe, is interested chiefly in maintaining his status through the abject obedience of his subjects, who receive benefits dispensed by the one party operation without their participation or consultation. Real democracy upsets his carefully constructed apple cart.

Jefe knows best.

Don Pesci (donpesci@att.net) is a writer who lives in Vernon.

Chris Powell: A bridge too far for Malloy?

MANCHESTER, Conn.

Connecticut Gov. Dan Malloy's prospects for a second term may be determined by how many more times before Nov. 4 that troublesome 118-year-old railroad drawbridge in Norwalk malfunctions and stops traffic on the busiest commuter rail line in the country, Metro-North. Accidents and other breakdowns on Metro-North in the last year have discredited state government more than anything else has.

While Metro-North is a New York state agency, Connecticut is responsible for the maintenance of its own tracks and rail cars, whose neglect is acknowledged and arises far more from the administrations of Malloy's predecessors than from his own.

While the railroad was being neglected, Gov. Lowell P. Weicker Jr. found millions of dollars for subsidizing a professional hockey team in Hartford and buying the Bridgeport zoo. Gov. John G. Rowland found hundreds of millions for the Adriaen's Landing project, in Hartford, and the Rentschler Field football stadium, in East Hartford. And Gov. Jodi Rell found hundreds of millions for the ineffectual bloat she called education and for stem-cell research. Now the financial and political bills have come due under Malloy.

But the current governor isn't entirely innocent. For he found hundreds of millions for the bus highway from New Britain to Hartford, and its imminent completion is corresponding embarrassingly with the trouble on Metro-North. The governor also has found hundreds of millions for what he calls economic development, grants to politically favored corporations, what others call corporate welfare. And he has worsened the education scam.

The obsolescence of the Norwalk drawbridge has been known for many years. So if upon taking office the governor had decided that fixing the railroad rather than building the busway would be his signature transportation project, Connecticut would not now be facing a problem he admits is outrageous.

And just as Malloy is getting stuck with the financial and political costs of his predecessors, he will bestow on his successors his own financial and political costs, like the foregone taxes and loan repayments from the politically favored companies; the operational expense of the busway, whose buses likely will run mostly empty even if New Britain's minor-league baseball team leaves for the $60 million stadium proposed by Hartford officials; and worsening social promotion from elementary school to college.

Governors are not really peculiar this way. Municipal officials neglect basic maintenance of everything from schools to sewers so that money can be diverted to increasing the compensation of unionized municipal employees. The assumption is that roofs will leak and heating systems fail on someone else's watch, or at least after the next election.

There is just nothing glamorous about maintenance and there is no fun in budgeting for it, nothing shiny to put one's name on, no heroism in proclaiming that something that long has worked and has been taken for granted will continue working because it was properly cared for. What has been taken for granted will continue to be.

Dazzled by office and the deference of supplicants, politicians need the public to keep them grounded in the real world, even as civic engagement in Connecticut, as measured by voter participation, long has been declining.

But at least a few dozen Hartford residents turned up at this week's City Council meeting to scold Mayor Pedro Segarra and council members for their stadium scheme. The people complained that stadiums never produce municipal revenue, that they amuse mainly outsiders, and that the urgent needs of the city are prosaic --such as maintenance of schools and roads.

Having arrogantly pronounced the stadium a "done deal" just a few days earlier, the mayor and City Council President Shawn T. Wooden quickly backtracked to say that more communication about the project is needed. This got them out of the meeting alive but scrutiny can only kill the stadium plan.

Chris Powell is managing editor of the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester, Conn.