To the Editor: This election cycle, residents of New Britain will have the opportunity to elect a mayor who puts the interests and values of working-class people first, State Representative Bobby Sanchez. From our city’s poor performance regarding vaccination rates…
Posted: 12 August 2021 [07:02 PM] Posted: 10 August 2021 [07:14 PM] To the Editor: I, like former New Britain Democratic Town Committee (NBDTC) member Alicia Strong, believe that the people of New Britain should select their candidates for mayor and common council. I respect that Ms. Strong and her colleagues…
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 COLUMN: Time to celebrate. It's summertime! Posted: 31 May 2021 [07:18 PM] New Britain It is finally summer time here in New Britain, and if you have lived in this city for any extended…
Posted: 28 April 2021 [11:48 AM] At the Greater New Britain Chamber of Commerce, our mission is to “Promote the economic, industrial, professional, cultural, commercial, educational, and civic welfare of Greater New Britain.” In order to follow through on that mission statement, it is…
Posted: 26 March 2021 [09:05 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 [09:14 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…
FRIDAY FICKS: It's about seeing the unseen Posted: 18 March 2021 [08:06 PM] By CARL R. FICKS JR. The mind can play tricks, preventing you from seeing what is, or always has been, right in…
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 [09:00 PM] By NICHOLAS MERCIER At the recent meeting of the New Britain Common Council, a resolution was proposed by Alderman Salerno and Alderwoman Beloin-Saavedra. The stated purpose of this resolution was to "clarify" the roles and responsibilities of the School…
Posted: 12 March 2021 [08:59 PM] By ROSEANN BUCHIERE To the Editor: Mayor Erin Stewart, New Britain schools need to do better - and not with more money. It’s time to stop throwing more money into a failing system. Put the blame on the teachers…
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…
MAYOR'S COLUMN: New Britain Recovers aims to save lives Posted: 09 March 2021 [09:15 PM] The month of March signifies the end of a cold winter and the beginning of spring. We begin to get…
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 [08:59 PM] By ROGER BAKER To the Editor: The new meter parking on Arch Street seems a little discriminatory. Funny how the meters STOP directly after the Five Churches Brewery. My wife and I travel 45 miles from southeastern Connecticut to support…
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…
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 [07:50 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 [09:13 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 [08:59 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: 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 [09:02 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…
MAYOR'S COLUMN: Celebrating African Americans who made a difference in our city Posted: 10 February 2021 [09:21 PM] The Mayor’s Column is back here in the New Britain Herald! I took a little break, but I am excited to use…
Posted: 10 February 2021 [09:15 PM] By CHRIS POWELL Democrats ran against Herbert Hoover for 20 years after 1932. Now they seem to be planning to run against Donald Trump for another 20. The Democrats' second attempt to impeach the former president even though he has…
Posted: 08 February 2021 [09:06 PM] By CHRIS POWELL With Governor Lamont discouraging "broad-based" tax increases, many fellow Democrats in the General Assembly are planning to raise taxes around the edges. Most industrious may be Senate President Pro Tem Martin M. Looney of New Haven. Looney…
Posted: 05 February 2021 [09:14 PM] By CHRIS POWELL Maybe Connecticut should be grateful to the Desegregate CT organization for having just provided a map detailing how local zoning regulations make it almost impossible to build multifamily housing in most of the state. But didn't nearly…
Posted: 03 February 2021 [08:56 PM] By CHRIS POWELL From the legislation they have placed before the General Assembly's Education Committee, you might think that state Reps. Jeffrey A. Currey, D-East Hartford, Jillian Gilchrest, D-West Hartford, and Nicole Klarides-Ditria, R-Seymour, just awoke from long comas. Their…
Posted: 01 February 2021 [08:24 PM] By CHRIS POWELL President Biden's new education secretary, Miguel Cardona, lately Connecticut's education commissioner, says he will give priority to the issue of college loan debt. About 45 million U.S. residents, nearly 14 percent of the population, owe an estimated…
Posted: 27 January 2021 [08:58 PM] By JOHN DUBE To the Editor: We hear a lot from Chris Powell (usually without identification) these days in the Opinion section of the Bristol Press. But I’m puzzled as to why that is after reading his cavalier dismissal…
Posted: 27 January 2021 [08:53 PM] By RICHARD BARANOWSKI To the Editor: Federal and state Democrats will be meeting soon to raise your taxes. Do you really understand how much money in taxes you are currently paying? Let me help with a little math. Start…
Posted: 27 January 2021 [08:51 PM] By CHRIS POWELL Nearly everyone in Connecticut knows that its capital city, Hartford, is a mess, and that its largest city, Bridgeport, is too. Yet for saying so about Hartford in an essay in The Wall Street Journal on New…
Posted: 25 January 2021 [05:14 PM] By CHRIS POWELL At least President Biden has some sense of his high office, knows how to behave in public, and unlike his predecessor, Donald Trump, is not likely to become a cosmic embarrassment on account of his demeanor. No,…
Posted: 19 January 2021 [07:33 PM] By CHRIS POWELL As he skips the inauguration of his successor and shuffles off to his resort in Florida, has Donald Trump destroyed the Republican Party? Some political observers think so and of course Democrats hope so. Trump's petulant and…
Posted: 18 January 2021 [08:46 PM] By CHRIS POWELL Last week this column examined the government pension racket in Connecticut through the example of the "retirement" of New Haven Police Chief Tony Reyes, who is only 49 and is giving up his city salary of $170,000…
Posted: 17 January 2021 [09:02 PM] By DANTE TAGARIELLO To the Editor: Just last week, two Democratic state senators from Fairfield County, Sens. Will Haskell (Wilton) and Alex Kasser (Greenwich), have once again proposed a bill to support highway tolling. Both senators have proposed the…
Posted: 13 January 2021 [08:49 PM] By CHRIS POWELL Everyone agrees that Tony Reyes has been a great police chief in New Haven, having been appointed in March 2019 after nearly two decades of rising through the ranks of the police department. But the city will…
Posted: 11 January 2021 [04:31 PM] By CHRIS POWELL Does any state do more posturing against racism than Connecticut does only to get such meager results? A week ago West Haven's City Council joined the 19 other municipalities in the state that have declared racism a…
Posted: 06 January 2021 [08:47 PM] By CHRIS POWELL When Bob Stefanowski was the Republican nominee for governor two years ago, he was mocked by Democrats for being light on the issues - for advocating repeal of the state income tax without specifying how to reduce…
Posted: 04 January 2021 [09:04 PM] By KATE MCOMBER To the Editor: The arts are essential and they need our help. In March, the City of Hartford asked the Greater Hartford Arts Council to survey a number of local arts organizations about how they were…
