Terry Cowgill

Bar Car

The recent failure of the Connecticut General Assembly to pass a law banning open containers of alcohol in vehicles raises an interesting question. Do we really need such laws? Evidently the NYT thinks it’s a no-brainer.

As I told a regular reader of this blog in an email a few moments ago, I really could care less whether passengers are sipping tea or doing boilermakers so long as the driver is sober. Driving while impaired is strictly prohibited. So, for that matter, is making such a disturbance in a car as to cause an accident, as drunken passengers might do. Sounds to me like we’re already covered.

Unless someone can provide compelling evidence that allowing passengers to consume alcohol will result in higher drunk driving rates, then I’m inclined to chalk this failed legislation up as a “feel-good” measure that would do nothing more than make lawmakers and victims of drunk driving feel like they are doing something about the problem.

BTW I’d put hate crimes in the same category. Lynching, beating, raping and murder are already serious crimes punishable by lengthy prison sentences, life in prison or worse. But hey, it makes us feel better when we can impose a special sanction on a criminal if he tortures another man just because he’s gay or African American.

The folly of that sentiment was best illustrated by the Texas lynching death of James Byrd, a black man who was savagely beaten by three white men, tethered to a car, dragged three miles and ultimately decapitated.

Civil right advocates were upset at then-Gov. George W. Bush for his opposition to hate crimes legislation. Even without such measures, two of the three men were sentenced to death and the third was given a life sentence. All this was accomplished without hate crime laws. Imagine that …

Hillary In Hartford

Don’t know who took this video of Hillary at Trinity College Monday. A friend of Colin’s? Who is the woman trying to clamp his mouth shut? His boss at The Courant?

From this clip, it doesn’t look like a very memorable speech. The most interesting part was the hug and kiss with Dick Blumenthal. As if to emphasize how forced it looked, the editor of the clip replayed the kiss. It doesn’t even look like his lips touched her cheek.

What are we to make of that, Dick? If that’s how you treat an old buddy from Yale Law School, what can Gov. Jodi Rell expect when you run against her in 2010? Broken fingers from a no-look handshake?

The Rovian Effect

Update 4:30 p.m. Monday: Choate Headmaster Edward Shanahan has now told the school Rove has pulled out. Guess Ed’s Courant op-ed didn’t change many minds.
Update 8:30 a.m. Sunday: Choate Headmaster Edward Shanahan makes a case for Rove in this morning’s Courant.

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I’m always amused when I hear people (mostly Democrats) moan and complain about what an awful mean person Karl Rove is and how he’s one of the main reasons that decent working people everywhere were talked out of voting their own economic self-interests and into putting greedy Republicans in office.

Since Rove left the White House last year, he has continued to make his presence felt. Now he has been invited to speak at Choate Rosemary Hall, the toney, old-money prep school downstate in Wallingford, Conn.

Evidently, a large number of Choate’s 836 students has risen up in protest that the school’s board of trustees has invited Rove to be this year’s commencement speaker. Students have used words like “heinous” and “evil” to describe the man widely thought to be “Bush’s Brain.”

They cite his advocacy for the Iraq war and his role in the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame as examples of his perfidy. Some students have suggested Stephen Colbert as a possible replacement. That tells you all you need to know about the state of popular iconography on the 118-year-old campus — and indeed in much of the nation.

Say what you want about Rove, but he is a serious person (and one of the premier political minds of our generation). Colbert is not. He is a gifted satirist with a rapier wit, but he is not Karl Rove (or Karl Marx, for that matter).

Continue reading The Rovian Effect…

Johnny II - The Movie

Regular readers know that I’ve long predicted that a certain convicted felon ex-Connecticut governor would soon enough return to his native city to become mayor. Well, it turns out I wasn’t very far off in my prognostication.

Just when you thought that the return of a political couple couldn’t get any more odious than the current reascension of Bill and Hillary, now we get word that Connecticut’s disgraced ex-boss, Johnny “Hot Tub” Rowland, will soon re-enter public life. Presumably, his wife Patty, pictured with Johnny above, will be a de facto part of the package.

The Nutmeg State’s blogosphere has been buzzing about Waterbury Mayor Sam Jarjura’s decision to put Johnny back in the middle of it all as the city’s economic development coordinator.

Hartford Courant reporters Ed Mahony and Jon Lender got some astounding quotes from a Farmington town councilman, a Republican who was involved in the FBI investigation that caught Johnny with his hand in the tiller. Get a load of this:

“This is a disgrace,” said Farmington Town Council Chairman Michael Clark. “It is like kicking sand in the eyes of every hardworking taxpayer in Waterbury … John Rowland says he has had a spiritual rebirth. Well, the spiritual rebirth I want to see is when he puts his hand on a Bible and promises to tell the whole truth to a grand jury, honestly and completely, which he has never done.”

I couldn’t have possibly said it that well. To throw a guy like Rowland right into the middle of the very environment (money and politics) that got him trouble in the first place is disgraceful indeed. It’s like taking an on-the-wagon drunk and telling him to put on an apron and get behind the bar.

Continue reading Johnny II - The Movie…

Sheff vs. Reality

It was a far-reaching decision when it was finally issued in 1996, but the case of Sheff vs. O’Neill still has me perplexed. Click here to read a fresh story on it in today’s Courant.

Most of us here in the Northwest Corner didn’t pay much attention to the 1989 lawsuit filed against the state alleging it was unconstitutionally responsible for maintaining racial and ethnic isolation in Hartford’s schools. The Connecticut Supreme Court ordered the legislature and the executive branch to come up with remedies, most of which the plaintiffs have found woefully inadequate.

Despite the efforts of the state in starting charter and magnet schools to attract white kids from the suburbs into Hartford, the capital city’s schools remain as segregated (and as poor) as ever: 98 percent poor and 95 percent non-white. Leaving aside whether the state’s efforts have been adequate, I wonder to what extent the whole concept of forced integration is either practical or advisable.

Continue reading Sheff vs. Reality…

Judge Sponzo, A NWC Hero, Is Dead

Judge Maurice J. Sponzo, a hero to the many NWC residents who followed (or were involved in) the Peter Reilly case, died last week in Simsbury We’ll have complete coverage in Thursday’s LJ print edition.

Ethics Enforcer?

Just what we need in Connecticut — another ethics chief with performance problems. I am no expert on these matters, but I suspect the allegations go way beyond the garden-variety complaints of a few disgruntled underlings.

Disclosure: I, too, once (or twice) fell asleep at my desk. But my employees loved it because they could get away with slacking while I dozed and dreamed up new ways to save the organization. For that, I got promoted. What a country!

Oh, Seven! Oh, Eight!

I’ve gotten a fair amount of feedback on my piece on the GWB effect on local GOP committees and party enrollment. It’s a little puzzling to me as to why people would make decisons about whom to support on the local level based on whether or not they like the president. But the phenomenon appears real, although to precisely what extent remains unclear.

We did not have room to publish the chart below in the print edititon, but look at the numbers:

I think the real story may be the rise in the numbers of people like me who don’t want to be associated with either party because they don’t feel the parties represent their interests.

A two-party system depends on healthy political parties but the GOP and Dems have moved farther apart in recent years, leaving hybrids and moderates to fend for ourselves. Of course, the two parties write elections laws that discourage participation from independents and third parties.

Nevertheless, look at how unafilliateds outnumber those in either party statewide and in every town in the NWC. This is not healthy.

Wednesday’s Thoughts

One of those epic battles between the executive and legislative branches is brewing in Washington. It looks like the Senate will issue subpoenas soon for Karl Rove and Harriet Myers to testify under oath about their roles in the firing of eight U.S. attorneys and, judging from what President Bush said yesterday, he will strongly resist.

First Read has been following this closely. Bush has offered to let the two be interviewed unrecorded and behind closed doors — a proposal that was summarily rejected by Sen. Pat Leahy, the Dem who chairs the Judiciary Committee. This is a matter that may very well be decided by the courts.

But the best part is it will provide some deliciously hypocritical moments. Just picture Hillary Clinton arguing against Bush’s claim of executive privilege when, as a New York Times analysis notes today, “legal scholars said that President Bill Clinton asserted the doctrine of executive privilege more often and more vigorously [than the Bush admin], including in the investigation of his relationship with Monica Lewinsky.”

And, of course, Republicans who castigated Bill for invoking executive privilege so often, will likely support GWB. All of this just serves to remind us that in the don’t-do-as-I-do department, Congress has no equal.

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And I’m sure Mike Flint will tee off on this one on Sunday. The Courant reports this morning that there is a movement afoot to make some or all of Connecticut’s legislators full-time employees. This would essentially dispose of the notion that Nutmeggers send citizen legislators to Hartford.

Continue reading Wednesday’s Thoughts…

You’ve Got To Be Kidding

Kudos to Rick Green for writing a spot-on column in yesterday’s Hartford Courant on school spending.

It was especially needed, given the timetable for school budgets, including the Region One and local school budgets in the Northwest Corner that are being finalized for a referendum and town meetings in May.

As even some Region One administrators have admitted, cutting program budgets may have a painful effect on educators and students, but as enrollments continue to decline there is little alternative, lest budgets be rejected by the voters and the cuts become severe.

But the larger point Rick makes is that with Gov. Rell’s budget proposal targeting billions in new aid to local school districts, someone needs to ask the question: “Will this improve our schools?” So far, most of the discussion has focused on the increased income tax burden town residents will shoulder versus the amount of aid the town will receive (or not receive) in return.

The simple fact is that there has never been a correlation established between school district spending and student achievement. Family income, yes: but school spending, no.

Continue reading You’ve Got To Be Kidding…