CHRIS POWELL As recently as 50 years ago Connecticut politics still had traces of the old ethnic, racial, and religious resentments and rivalries that had arisen through the state's long history, resentments and rivalries that political party state tickets…
Posted: 27 May 2022 [09:00 PM] Posted: 20 May 2022 [08:21 PM] CHRIS POWELL Four months after the now internationally infamous "pizza sex" assignment was given to eighth-graders at Kennedy Middle School in Enfield, the town's Board of Education has not yet figured out how it happened. Instead the board purportedly…
HEALTHY LIVING: Jill Bertolini Symposium helps breast cancer patients Posted: 06 May 2022 [11:33 AM] The statistic is startling – according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), breast cancer is the most…
Posted: 26 April 2022 [01:06 PM] Joanie Wedler, Chuck Lewis and Franck Facchini Local public access TV, or public, educational and government access (“PEG”), has been in Connecticut for more than 40 years providing residents, municipalities, schools and community organizations with hyper-local programming…
Posted: 26 April 2022 [11:18 AM] John Kisluk I am asking and urging all Plainville tax payers to come out on April 26 between the hours of 6 a.m. and 8 p.m. at the Plainville Firehouse and vote no on the…
Posted: 15 April 2022 [08:02 PM] Someday, if the governor and state legislators ever tire of coddling the state employee unions and if the president and Congress ever tire of coddling investment banks and military contractors, maybe they should note what happened recently at Silver Lane…
Posted: 08 April 2022 [09:11 PM] Legislators of both parties in the General Assembly are congratulating themselves on the bipartisan juvenile justice bill that has come out of the Judiciary Committee, and well they should. For the legislation will do no more than provide the illusion…
Mayor's Corner: Charter revision needs involvement of all citizens Posted: 07 April 2022 [08:17 PM] The Charter of the City of Bristol, CT, acts as the constitutional document for citizens of our All Heart City. The Charter…
Posted: 04 April 2022 [08:55 PM] By CHRIS POWELL Connecticut may be paying the Sikorsky helicopter division of military contractor Lockheed Martin as much as $250 million to keep its facilities in the state for the next 20 years -- an average of…
Posted: 01 April 2022 [09:15 PM] Everybody in state government seems to love this tax-cutting stuff -- first the temporary suspension of Connecticut's 25-cents-per-gallon gasoline tax, and then a week of lifting the sales tax on most clothing purchases. The public will love it too. But…
Posted: 25 March 2022 [01:15 PM] By Jodie Maro Bristol To the Editor: Bristol, Plainville and Southington, you need to use your voices. FACT: Many residents have signed the petition against the burning of medical waste at the Bristol incinerator. The City of Bristol…
Posted: 14 March 2022 [08:29 PM] To the Editor: Re: Opinion by Jennifer Rubin. She is wrong on all points. From Day One of the Biden administration when the Keystone and oil exploration was killed. Soon afterwards gas prices began to rise and rise. Additionally, the…
Posted: 14 March 2022 [01:22 PM] Baseball at last. And please Mr. Commissioner, don’t bother apologizing to us fans. We want to watch ballgames, not union and management spokesmen explaining the still-unresolved international draft rules. To think that the owners actually threatened to…
Posted: 11 March 2022 [04:09 PM] Journal Inquirer Announcing goodies for various municipalities and organizations lately, Governor Lamont has been using government money to win support for his re-election campaign, as any incumbent would. But all the goodies awarded so far don't come close to…
Posted: 22 February 2022 [04:15 PM] Republican state legislators around the country are proposing to require public schools to post all curriculum materials on the internet as an accountability measure, and the other day they got powerful if inadvertent support from Enfield’s school system. Enfield’s school…
Posted: 22 February 2022 [04:14 PM] To The Editor: Just wanted to comment on two Items. First, the support that CT gives to Veterans, especially the disabled veterans (a prorated system with a max of $10,000 value off their house taxes) is a disgrace. Even with…
MAYOR'S CORNER: Transformational changes for this 'big small town' Posted: 05 December 2021 [02:10 PM] The first month in office has been busy here at City Hall. Transformational changes are already happening. Since being sworn in on…
Posted: 10 August 2021 [07:13 PM] To The Editor: One point in the most recent Mayor’s Corner article I’m proud to see is our Police Chief Gould’s proactive steps to get involved in the regions joint task force on area car thefts. These crimes have…
Posted: 02 August 2021 [06:17 PM] To The Editor: The November election is now 3 months away, but it is not too soon to talk about why we need to re-elect our current leadership team. In the early and most uncertain days of Covid-19, our…
Posted: 02 August 2021 [06:16 PM] Consolidation of the banking industry is gaining speed, in part because technology increasingly allows routine retail banking functions to be conducted via the internet and cell phones, reducing the need for branch offices. But there is another reason: Government’s indifference…
MAYOR'S CORNER: Getting by with some help from our friends Posted: 05 April 2021 [01:56 PM] Mayor’s Corner There has been a lot of great news for Bristol over the last 30 days. First, Congressman John Larson called…
Posted: 26 March 2021 [09:04 PM] By CHRIS POWELL Political correctness and its cancel culture are starting to evoke the second great Red Scare and the tactics of Sen. Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s. Last week the talented young political journalist Alexi McCammond was pushed out…
Posted: 24 March 2021 [08:05 PM] By CHRIS POWELL With as much as $4 billion in discretionary largesse about to descend on Connecticut's state and municipal governments and school systems, economizing and improving services to the public will be removed from the agenda for a long…
Posted: 22 March 2021 [09:04 PM] By CHRIS POWELL What should the legislation now making another appearance in the General Assembly be called: "aid in dying" or "assisted suicide"? It depends which side you're on. "Aid in dying" makes it sound a lot nicer, just as…
Posted: 19 March 2021 [09:13 PM] By CHRIS POWELL As hundreds of millions of dollars in federal grants rain down on Connecticut's schools, a potentially decisive experiment in education is beginning. Bright markers should be placed on the current measures of every school system's performance and…
Posted: 17 March 2021 [10:14 PM] SOCIETY OF PROFESSIONAL JOURNALISTS For many years before the covid-19 pandemic, journalists “weren’t there,” to a huge extent, in terms of reporting on the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The controls keeping them…
Posted: 17 March 2021 [10:12 PM] By CHRIS POWELL Democrats in Congress, including Connecticut Sens. Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy, are excited about the chance of enacting a federal law to require background checks for all gun purchases and transfers. Republicans in the Senate long have…
Posted: 15 March 2021 [09:42 PM] By COALITION FOR EQUITY IN LEARNING To The Editor: In 2019, a student could show up to school, sit in their seat for the requisite hours, and go home, and we could have safely said that they had attended school…
Posted: 15 March 2021 [09:39 PM] By CHRIS POWELL New Haven is clamoring at the state Capitol for a bailout, if not as big as Hartford's three years ago. But the leaders of the General Assembly's Democratic majority, including New Haven state Sen. Martin M. Looney,…
Posted: 12 March 2021 [08:58 PM] By CHRIS POWELL Congratulations to one of Connecticut's forever members of Congress, U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, Democrat of New Haven, for teaching the country a wonderful political science lesson. Having ascended to the chairmanship of the House Appropriations Committee, DeLauro…
Posted: 11 March 2021 [09:02 PM] By CATHERINE M. CARBONE Dear Bristol Public Schools Family, One year ago today, we made the decision to close all of our schools and programs for eleven days, uncertain of what the future held for us. It is not an…
Posted: 09 March 2021 [08:57 PM] By PAUL BLUESTEIN To the Editor: On Friday, March 5, 2021, for the first time in 14 attempts spanning a quarter century, the Public Health Committee, by a vote of 24 to 9, moved bill HB6425, An Act Concerning Aid…
Posted: 09 March 2021 [08:53 PM] By JHADY RIOS To the Editor: Life has been far from normal since Connecticut discovered its first case of covid-19 last year. Yet bail bond agencies like 3-D Bail Bonds, Inc. took it upon themselves to continue serving regardless of…
Posted: 08 March 2021 [09:02 PM] By JEANINE AUDETTE To the Editor: In a recent article in the Waterbury Republican on Feb. 28, Plymouth’s Mayor Merchant was quoted as saying, “The Terryville Library is by appointment only and there’s no programs.” I am sure he must…
Posted: 08 March 2021 [08:57 PM] By CHRIS POWELL Gambling and intoxicating drugs mainly transfer wealth from the many to the few and the poor to the rich, so it is sad that state government is striving to get into the business of sports betting, internet…
Posted: 05 March 2021 [06:23 PM] By CHRIS POWELL By a 3-2 vote, Connecticut's Commission on Compensation of Elected State Officials has recommended small raises, a bit more than 1%, for state legislators and the top state elected officials - the governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general,…
Posted: 03 March 2021 [08:50 PM] By CHRIS POWELL Legislation can't be right when its premise is wrong, and a big premise of the proposals to legalize recreational marijuana in Connecticut is wrong. That is, the proposals presume that racial minorities deserve special reparations for the…
Posted: 01 March 2021 [07:08 PM] By CHRIS POWELL Nice guy that he was, Joseph D. Duffey, who died last week at age 88, was not a terribly adept politician. He was not outgoing or a glad-hander but a soft-spoken Protestant clergyman. But from 1967 to…
MAYOR'S COLUMN: Bristol focusing on business support as covid crisis hits one-year mark Posted: 28 February 2021 [08:47 PM] By ELLEN ZOPPO-SASSU March marks one year of living with covid in communities. So much has happened over the last 12 months…
Posted: 26 February 2021 [08:59 PM] By CHRIS POWELL Everyone is entitled to be sick and tired of the virus epidemic, and no one is more entitled than Governor Lamont, whose administration has been consumed by it. Most people were happy with the administration's handling of…
Posted: 24 February 2021 [04:07 PM] By CHRIS POWELL Connecticut should prohibit pensions for state and municipal government employees, not because they are bad people or especially undeserving but for several solid policy reasons. First, most of the taxpayers who pay for those pensions don't enjoy…
Posted: 22 February 2021 [07:49 PM] By CHRIS POWELL Does recognizing that the "war on drugs" is a failure and that people are entitled to be left alone in their personal lives require not just legalizing marijuana and taxing it heavily but also putting state government…
Posted: 19 February 2021 [09:11 PM] By CHRIS POWELL Having just gotten big raises amid an economic depression with horrible unemployment in Connecticut, the state employee unions have proclaimed that they won’t consent to Governor Lamont’s budget proposal to freeze state employee salaries for a while.…
Friday Ficks: Why you need a white rabbit now Posted: 18 February 2021 [08:58 PM] One of the most iconic psychedelic rock songs is "White Rabbit," written by Grace Slick and released when she joined Jefferson Airplane…
Posted: 17 February 2021 [09:22 PM] By CHRIS POWELL Without taking much notice, Connecticut lost a hero of journalism and justice the other day: Donald S. Connery, 94, who lived in Kent for almost 60 years even as he traveled and reported from around the world…
Posted: 15 February 2021 [07:46 PM] By CHRIS POWELL Since Governor Lamont mused the other day that he has rather enjoyed being able to rule by decree for the past year without having to bother with the General Assembly, maybe it's not so surprising that most…
Posted: 12 February 2021 [09:10 PM] By GARY HENRIKSON To the Editor: The House managers have made a compelling argument in Donald Trump’s impeachment trial. Trump’s use of incendiary language and violent imagery to willfully incite the deadly neo-Nazi mob of his minions to storm the…
Posted: 12 February 2021 [09:06 PM] By STEVE WHINFIELD To the Editor: There are bills where unity can be met. Our country is split on many issues and we now have a president who wants to build unity in a time where none exist. I…
Posted: 12 February 2021 [09:04 PM] By MARGARET PEALER To the Editor: I for one am wondering why our illustrious mayor is taking down trees all over Bristol. Then she widened Riverside Avenue then turned around and made the three lanes down to two and put…
Posted: 12 February 2021 [09:02 PM] By CHRIS POWELL Nearly everyone will forever remember some admired or even beloved teachers whose insight, enthusiasm, and caring pointed students in the right direction. Of course there were and are some mediocre, incompetent, and even malicious teachers too, but…
