Chris Powell: Military-industrial complex is fine with Conn. delegation

This building in the affluent Hartford suburb of Farmington, Conn., was United Technologies’ headquarters in 2015-2020.

— Photo by Daniel Pennfield

MANCHESTER, Conn

In his farewell address 60 years ago President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned against what he called "unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex." Since he was a military hero, perhaps only Eisenhower could give such a warning during the Cold War without risking denunciation as a Communist.

But Eisenhower's warning has never been heeded, and President Biden, with his defense secretary, is essentially proclaiming the victory of the military-industrial complex. The new secretary is retired Army Gen. Lloyd Austin, who upon leaving the Army a few years ago joined the board of directors of military contractor and Waltham, Mass.-based Raytheon Technologies Corp., which recently acquired Connecticut-based United Technologies Corp. Austin will have to sell Raytheon stock he received for serving on the board. It may net him as much as $1.7 million.

Acknowledging what will be his continuing potential for conflict of interest, Austin pledges to avoid decisions involving Raytheon for a year. But this can't worry Raytheon much about its investment in the general, since the corporation plans to be doing government business a lot longer than that.

With Austin at Defense and former Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen becoming Treasury secretary after receiving at least $7 million in speaking fees from big banks and investment houses in the last three years, the federal government's two most lucrative agencies will have been securely captured by their primary beneficiaries.

With the exception of Sen. Richard Blumenthal, the members of Connecticut's congressional delegation -- all supposed liberals -- are fine with this exploitation. After all, the state is full of investment bankers and military contractors and what's good for them may be considered good for the state. As for the country, that's something else.

Even Blumenthal's concern about Austin probably became a mere quibble. Federal law prohibits military officers from becoming defense secretary until they have been out of uniform for seven years, so Austin needed a waiver from Congress. Such waivers have been granted twice before. Blumenthal said that to uphold the principle of civilian control of the military, he opposed another waiver. But few other members of Congress objected to it, and Blumenthal and those others still had it both ways, voting against the waiver and then voting to appoint Austin once the waiver is granted.

Besides, with the Democrats in full control of the federal government, conflicts of interest and civilian control will barely register against the party's new highest objective in Cabinet appointments -- racial, ethnic and gender diversity. Austin is Black and so meets the decisive qualification.

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PAY AS YOU THROW?: The administration of Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont seems to have determined that state government no longer can make any money by burning trash to generate electricity at the state Materials Innovation and Recycling Authority's facility in the South Meadows section of Hartford. Such generation apparently is now much more expensive than electricity generated from natural gas, and the facility's equipment already needs renovation estimated to cost more than $300 million.

So the authority plans to close the facility by July 2022, turning it into a trash-transfer depot and shipping to out-of-state dumps the trash now being burned. This is not only retrograde environmental policy; it likely will raise costs for the authority's 70 client towns. As a result the authority and the towns are discussing how to reduce their "waste streams" -- possibly by charging residents a fee for every bag of trash collected, a system called "pay as you throw."

There would be some sense to this, since it would cause people to take more responsibility for their trash, the packaging of what they buy, and recycling. But this also would increase the risk of illegal dumping, even as Connecticut's roadsides and city streets are already strewn with trash.

It might be best for state or federal sales taxes or fees to recover in advance the disposal costs of everything sure to wear out, as the state already does with beverage containers and mattresses and used to do with tires.

Government needs to teach people more about the trash issue. But all that roadside litter suggests that many people are unteachable slobs.

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

Chris Powell: In Conn., on the nanny state and big wars

An old wet nurse symbolizing France as nanny-state and public health provider (color photomechanical reproduction of a lithograph by N. Dorville, 1901).

MANCHESTER, Conn.

Almost any issue will do when Connecticut U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal craves attention, so the other day he joined some pediatricians at the state Capitol to warn the world about computer games that contain advertising aimed at young children. Blumenthal said such games are against federal law and he asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate them.

The senator's complaint implied a belief that parents and guardians are incapable of protecting their kids against mere advertising and that, as a result, the federal government must do it, as if kids who are not yet even 10 can buy much if anything on their own. That's a good definition of the nanny state.

Meanwhile Connecticut's other U.S. senator, Chris Murphy, is pushing through the Senate a resolution to withdraw U.S. support for Saudi Arabia's intervention in the civil war in Yemen on account of the suffering there.

But Murphy acknowledges that the other side in that war is awful too, and the war in Yemen is not as much the United States's war as are the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. Those wars have caused even more suffering and the ones in Afghanistan and Iraq have been continuing without victory and without even an idea of victory far longer than the war in Yemen. Unlike the war in Yemen, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have killed or injured nearly 60,000 U.S. soldiers, while their civilian casualties and refugees are in the millions.

So where is Murphy's resolution to terminate the stupid, futile, imperial wars for which the United States bears primary responsibility? Opposing the war in Yemen while letting the bigger wars pass, Murphy is just striking a humanitarian pose on the cheap.

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MISSING THE REAL RACISM: Some people in New Haven are purporting to be shocked -- shocked! -- that the city's school system imposes serious discipline disproportionately on black students and especially black boys. The implication of the shock is that New Haven's school administration is racist.

But New Haven's school superintendent is black, as is the city's mayor, and New Haven may be the most politically correct city in the country. While racism can be found nearly everywhere, school discipline falls more heavily on black boys nearly everywhere for the same reason criminal justice does, including in Connecticut's criminal-justice system, which strives to keep people out of jail even when they are chronic and incorrigible offenders.

That is, black boys and young men misbehave more.

This results from their coming disproportionately from an environment of disadvantage -- poverty, child neglect and abuse, and fatherlessness, an environment increasingly perpetuated by the welfare system. All children need fathers but boys especially do to tame their natural aggression.

But the racial disproportion in child neglect and fatherlessness still cannot be discussed in polite company even in supposedly sophisticated Connecticut. So people who know better are left to suggest that the big problem in racially disproportionate punishment is the prejudice of those in charge of keeping order in school and on the street.

Child neglect and fatherlessness do far more damage than guns. Coming out of anarchic homes, neglected boys suddenly collide with authority, end up suspended or expelled from school or imprisoned, and never understand what hit them. The racism isn't in their collision with authority but in the indifference to their upbringing.


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