Chris Powell: Tesla’s special deal with the Mohegans; a school for the sexually uncomfortable

The Mohegan tribe’s casino complex, in Uncasville, Conn.

MANCHESTER, Conn. 

Nothing may be more beautiful in politics than when influential but selfish special interests clash, catching squeamish elected officials in the middle, forcing them to choose sides on the basis of how much political harm each special interest could inflict on them. Choosing sides according to the public interest seldom occurs to elected officials, since they tend to equate the public interest with whatever gives them political advantage.

Such a clash was renewed in Connecticut the other day when automaker Tesla and the Mohegan Indian tribe announced that Tesla will start selling and delivering cars from a showroom on its reservation in the eastern part of the state.

This practice ordinarily would break state law, which prohibits automakers from selling cars directly and reserves that business for manufacturer-franchised and state-licensed auto dealers. Tesla doesn't use franchisees.

The law's purported premise is that dealers provide better consumer protection than manufacturers would. Of course, the law provides even better protection for auto dealer profitability.

But as a matter of federal law, Indian reservations have some sovereignty, and federal courts almost certainly would construe it in favor of Tesla's arrangement with the Mohegans, which is similar to arrangements Tesla has with Indian reservations in other states

Because of Connecticut’s law, state residents who want to buy Teslas have to leave the state, though Teslas can be viewed and leased at a Tesla showroom in Milford.

Tesla and the Connecticut Automotive Retail Association long have been tangling over the law. The General Assembly always has sided with the auto dealers, who have far more influence and thought they had won. Maybe now they have lost.

Gov. Ned Lamont and state legislators may resent the Mohegans for contravening state policy so dramatically, especially since the tribe usually portrays itself as a good partner with state government. More resentful still, the auto dealers now may propose legislation to wreck Tesla’s arrangement with the Mohegans, as by imposing a prohibitive fee on registering in Connecticut any vehicles for which there is no dealer franchise in the state.

But might car buyers in Connecticut, especially those with enough money to buy Teslas, be allowed to settle this issue for themselves?

New cars are expensive and people today tend to be attentive to their warranties. If car buyers are really so much more protected when buying from an auto dealer rather than direct from a manufacturer, the dealers association could advertise to that effect. Meanwhile, Tesla could advertise why people buying directly are adequately protected. Buyers could decide for themselves.

The world wouldn’t end, and state government could worry less about protecting the auto dealers and more about protecting state residents from failing schools and sewer systems, repeat criminal offenders, street takeovers by wild juveniles, crooked state troopers, grotesque cost-overruns on government construction projects, and other problems against which people can’t protect themselves.

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As sexual discomfort and gender dysphoria seem to be exploding among young people, a teacher is planning to open a private school in Ansonia for seventh- and eighth-graders with such conditions. It didn't get enough enrollment to start with the current school year and it will be surprising if it succeeds.

For tuition is planned to be $20,000 a year while parents of the potential students already may face high medical bills. Transportation will be a challenge. People may be reluctant to commit to a school that may not be around for more than two years, with students risking having to transfer back to school systems they fled.

Competition in education is good but the reasons it is needed aren’t. The main justification claimed for the new school is that many young teens with sexual and gender discomfort are frequently bullied by their peers and school administrators fail to act against it. The remedy offered by the new school is essentially segregation, so no students distressed by matters of sexuality and gender will ever have to deal with students not like them, and vice-versa.

Will that solve problems or just postpone them to when they are even more traumatic?

Apparently it is too much to ask government to figure out why more young people are distressed.

Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years (CPowell@cox.net).

The David Humphreys home, built in 1698, at 37 Elm St., Ansonia, which with other communities in the Naugatuck River Valley became industrial powerhouses in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Chris Powell: Native Americans could be pretty nasty, too

A man displaying himself as a Pequot warrior at the Pequot Museum at the Foxwoods casino in Connecticut

MANCHESTER, Conn.

Replacing Columbus Day with "Indigenous Peoples Day" on its school calendar, Manchester's Board of Education has concluded that the Italian navigator sailing for Spain should not be considered such a hero after all, since, in discovering the New World, he began the colonial subjugation of its natives.

This is fair criticism, and people are always free to change their minds about who should be honored with holidays, statues, and such. But the school board does not seem to have explained why "indigenous peoples" are any more deserving of special honor than Columbus himself. After all, these days nearly everyone in the United States is "indigenous," and back in Columbus' time and throughout the colonial era in the Western Hemisphere "indigenous" people weren't the noble savages of romantic myth but carried the same character and cultural flaws as the rest of humanity.

The "indigenous peoples" of old warred against each other as much as the European settlers warred against them. They even made alliances with the Europeans against other aborginals. Though it does not seem to be taught in many schools in Connecticut, this is precisely the state's own story. Indian tribes living here invited the Europeans in Massachusetts to settle among them as allies against the Pequots, an aggressive tribe that had moved into the area and was preying on the other tribes and whose very name is said to have meant "destroyers."

Before long the Pequots were destroyed themselves, nearly all of them exterminated, including noncombatant women and children, in what was essentially genocide committed by the warriors of an alliance of the Europeans and the Mohegan and Narragansett tribes.

Of course tribal wars go back through the Bible to the beginning of human history. There have always been aggressors and victims, and being "indigenous" never automatically conveyed virtue any more than it does today. So while there is a case for demoting Columbus and leaving his day unmarked, the only purpose of putting "indigenous peoples" in his place on the calendar is to advance the politically correct proposition that all of American history has been dishonorable and thereby to induce guilt to intimidate the public in the face of the PC agenda generally.

This political correctness contaminates public education throughout the county and now, with Indigenous Peoples Day, reigns in Manchester's schools as well as Bridgeport's, New London's, and West Hartford's.

But despite its many ugly aspects, American history on the whole exemplifies what used to be called the Ascent of Man, the gradual but steady extension of liberty and democracy and the improvement of living standards. The sacrifices made in pursuit of these objectives are profound though not always well-taught.

There is another reason Manchester's school board has not just erased Columbus Day from its calendar but declared it a different holiday to honor a whole class of people good and bad. That is, Columbus Day remains by law a state holiday for which government employees must be paid without working.

The board can call this paid day off whatever it wants, but until the General Assembly and the governor erase him, Connecticut is still honoring Columbus, and politically incorrect as he may have become, crossing the government employee unions is considered worse than politically incorrect -- politically fatal.

Chris Powell is a columnist for the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester, Conn,