Connecticut Governor's Race

 

Republican Bob Stefanowsk 

It looks like Republican Bob Stefanowski is not doing well in his quest to become Governor of Connecticut. After eight years of the disastrous administration of Democrat Governor Dannell Malloy, 2018 looked like the year when Republicans could not only win the Governorship, but also gain at least one of the legislative houses.

But Stefanowski’s campaign seems to be following the same path that led other millionaire candidates like Linda McMahon and Tom Foley to flop on election day. Each of them lost close elections because they could not overcome massive Democrat majorities in cities like Bridgeport, Hartford, and New Haven.

Stefanowski’s campaign seems to be conceding the urban vote in the hope of overcoming it with slight majorities in suburban and rural areas. His plan to eliminate or phase out the state income tax will not get him votes in the inner cities whose residents, including college students, are largely exempt. It won’t even help him win many votes among suburbanites who believe that it is either impractical, or that it will only add to already high property taxes. 

Stefanowski would be much better off in calling for a reduction in the state sales tax, a regressive tax that effects everyone in the state, even those in the inner cities. It is a regressive tax in that the poor pay the same rate as the rich. The tax is the same on diapers as it is on luxury items. I also suspect that a reduction in the sales tax would have great appeal among senior citizens. 

If you check out Stefanowski’s website, you will find a sound economic idea like eliminating business taxes is presented as if it would only benefit businesses.  He fails to point out that business taxes are really paid by those who buy the products and services provided by business. A business must inevitably pass on taxes and administrative costs to consumers or else it must go out of business. 

Stefanowski is a millionaire businessman, and he can’t help looking like a millionaire businessman even if he insists on calling himself Bob. But his campaign should not have been about business, or even about bringing business principles to government. It should have been about fairness for all the people of Connecticut. 

He could have gone to Bridgeport, Hartford, and New Haven and asked people if they had pensions that would guarantee them 70% of their highest salary after working only 35 years. He could have asked them if they even had pensions or benefits at all comparable to those enjoyed by state union employees. He could have asked Seniors if their Social Security checks came anywhere near the retirement benefits of public service workers.

Stefanowski could even have taken a more popular position on tolls and proposed just placing them on I95 at the Greenwich and Rhode Island entrances in the same way as New Hampshire and Delaware. In addition to raising money for needed infrastructure repair, such a moderate proposal would have been a popular vote getter. 

No matter how sound your policies may be, you must win the election to have any chance of implementing them. What’s the good of having good ideas, if you never get a chance to implement. Stefanowski’s Democrat opponent, the far-wealthier Democrat Ned Lamont from Greenwich, the wealthiest town in the state, does not look like a businessman. His strategy is to appeal to the Democrat base made up of public service unions, depressed cities, and suburban women upset about the supposed threat to women’s rights posed by the likes of Trump and Kavanaugh.

Democrat Ned Lamont

Stefanowski has little time left to make a dent in that coalition. Is it too late to go to Bridgeport and Hartford and express concern about the crime rate and the poor schools in those cities which have been controlled and mismanaged for decades by Democrats? It’s worth a try. Otherwise, he will share the fate of McMahon and Foley who spent millions only to come up short.

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Kavanaugh Hearing Conclusion

    

Tarred and Feathered

I did not watch last week’s Senate confirmation hearing that featured the dramatic confrontation between Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford who has accused him of sexually molesting her 36 years ago when she was fifteen years old at a house party. Fortunately, important matters kept me out of the house since I had no desire to listen to what has turned into a national disgrace. 

Nevertheless, on the way home my wife and I turned on the car radio right in the middle of Judge Kavanaugh’s spirited and emotional defense. Actually, I thought something might have been wrong with the reception since it seemed to keep breaking up. Only later, did I discover that it was Kavanaugh himself breaking up in tears as he defended himself from the charges.

I thought that Kavanaugh did an excellent job although it seemed obvious that nothing he said would have had any impact on the Democrat senators on the committee whose minds were made up long ago. One commentator remarked that how you felt about Roe v. Wade determined how you felt about Kavanaugh’s guilt or innocence. 

I did not hear Christine Blasey Ford present her charges but have read about her testimony and the subsequent charges that have come forward. It seems to me that it is not just a question about who is lying and who is telling the truth. It might also be instructive to consider the consequences of their versions of the truth.

I believe that it would have been the easy way out for Judge Kavanaugh to admit that as a drunken teenager he groped a fifteen-year-old and threw her on a bed at a wild house party. He did admit that he liked to drink beer, and it seems that drunken house parties were common in the high school set in which he traveled. He could even have claimed that given his semi-inebriated state, he had no recollection of the incident.

He could then have gone on to say that if foolish and shameful things he did while as a teenager were going to be held against him and disqualify him for office, then many people now in office, even in the Senate, might have to resign their positions. 

But Kavanaugh did not say that. Rather he proclaimed his innocence and argued that it was his behavior and career as an adult that should determine his qualifications to serve on the Supreme Court. Incredibly, the impassioned defense of his innocence only made his detractors more certain of his guilt. Whether Kavanaugh is confirmed or not, his reputation has been tarred for life.

On the other hand, Christine Blasey Ford’s unsubstantiated accusation has made her a national hero in the eyes of half the population. The very fact that her story cannot be substantiated also means that it can never be proved that she was lying. 

Actually, it would not matter to many of her supporters if Dr. Ford was lying or not. They firmly believe that lying and false accusations are just one weapon that they can employ if their cause is just. They can shout down and disrespect opponents whose ideas they cannot abide.

In the recent hearings was it just a senior moment that led Senator Diane Feinstein to wait six weeks to ask the FBI to investigate Dr. Ford’s letter? Why did one of Feinstein’s staffers leak the letter after Dr. Ford had requested confidentiality? Why did demonstrators seek to disrupt the hearings in the first place? Why did Yale Law students travel to Washington to protest, in effect, against due process and the right of accused to be presumed innocent until proven guilty? 

I would not be surprised if Dr. Ford went on to a new position at a more prestigious university. I would also not be surprised if book deals, lecture tours, TV appearances, and a movie are also being proposed. We just have to look at Anita Hill’s rise to fame and position after her accusations against Judge Clarence Thomas years ago. Hill is a darling of the feminist movement while Thomas serves in relative obscurity on the Supreme Court. 

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Clerical Sexual Abuse Reports

                                         

The recent findings of a Pittsburgh grand jury investigation into sexual abuse of minors by Catholic clergy in a number of Pennsylvania churches have shocked the nation as well as the Catholic faithful. The grand jury investigated claims of sexual abuse of minors over the past 70 years. Headlines indicated that around 300 priests had abused around 1000 children. Even more shocking were the lurid details in the more than 800-page report.

Here are some facts about the report. During the past seventy years a total of 5000 priests served in the six dioceses under investigation. The 300 accused clergy were not all priests. Some were religious brothers, deacons, or seminarians.  But let’s say that they all were  clergy in one form or another. The 300 accused made up about 6% of the 5000 who served during those years. *

I use the word “accused” because so far none of the accusations of sexual abuse that took place over 30 years ago have been verified by either the grand jury or the dioceses involved. The district attorney is seeking to change the statute of limitations law so that prosecutions can be launched.

Nevertheless, based on other studies it is likely that half of the 300 accused were indeed guilty. That leaves about 150 guilty parties. That figure conforms with earlier studies that have indicated that the abusers made up about two to three percent of the clergy. That is, for every 100 clergymen, three were probably guilty as accused. 

The Pennsylvania report also confirmed earlier studies that demonstrated that the great majority of the victims were teen-age boys. To put it another way, of the small percentage of clergy who violated their vow of chastity and became sexual predators, the great majority were homosexual men. They were not pedophiles because by definition, pedophiles prey on pre-pubescent boys and girls. 

Experience as a practicing Catholic for over 70 years makes me suspect that homosexuals made up a larger percentage of the clergy than 2%. I also believe that majority of them were true to their vows. Most homosexual men do not prey upon teen age boys. But the facts remain. Most of the men who were creditably charged were homosexual men who abused multiple young men.

Although the Pennsylvania grand jury study got a great deal of attention, it was basically old news. Most of the cases occurred in the last century at the time of the outset of the sexual revolution in the sixties and seventies. Most of the clergy named in the report are either dead or long deprived of their clerical positions. What was new and surprising was the accusations of homosexual activity in Catholic seminaries.

This news tied in with the news that charges of sexual abuse of young men by Cardinal Theodore Mc Carrack, the former head of the prestigious diocese of Washington D.C., had been found creditable. McCarrack has been accused of not only molesting teen-age boys but also seminarians over a long period of time. The charges were so creditable that Pope Francis asked Mc Carrack, already retired as Bishop of Washington, to resign as a member of the College of Cardinals.

Mc Carrack’s case seems to have been just the tip of the iceberg. Many reports are surfacing that seminaries in the latter part of the last century had been infiltrated by homosexual priests who preyed upon young candidates for the priesthood. Some even suggest that to get along, you had to go along, and that seminarians who resisted either wound up in poor assignments, or just left the seminary. 

The good, the bad, and the ordinary can be found in any organization. Some of the priests and religious I have encountered in my lifetime as a Catholic have approached sainthood, but the great majority have been ordinary with the same faults and failings of anyone else. 

But the bad, although few, can be like the proverbial worm in the apple and make everyone look bad. Experience and common sense make me believe that a small percentage of heterosexual clergy were not true to their vows. Indeed, I think that many of the men who leave the priesthood have a lady in waiting. 

Nevertheless, the great majority of sexual molesters were homosexual men whose influence in the past seems to have far exceeded their numbers. Mc Carrack’s case is a sign that homosexual influence went from the seminaries to the highest ranks of the Church. Commentators have suggested that the problem in the seminaries has largely been eliminated but that problems still exist in the highest ranks of the Church.

A recent letter sent to Pope Francis by Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, an Italian prelate who had served as Papal nuncio or ambassador to the United States for years, claimed that he had told Pope Francis about Mc Carrack’s record five years ago but that the Pope had declined to take action.  Moreover, Vigano claimed that some other high ranking prelates in Rome were part of a powerful homosexual lobby. Vigano has even called upon Pope Francis to resign. So far, the Pope has remained silent but has convened a bishop’s conference early next year to address the issue. The media in America has also been largely silent on the Vigano accusations perhaps because they deal with homosexual predators.

My own bishop has tried to address the new revelations by calling for the faithful to pray and attend masses of reparation. I fail to see why the faithful have to offer reparation. More and more it seems to me that the laity make up the real strength of the Church and that the hierarchy has much to account for.

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*Details of the report have come from an article by William A. Donovan, the President of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, that appeared in the Sept. 2018 issue of Catalyst, the League’s periodical. Donovan is a partisan but he is a trained sociologist who has read the whole report, and written about the clerical abuse scandal for years.

Kavanaugh Confirmation Hearings

                                          

The Senate hearings for the confirmation of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court made it clear that the opposition was more than about the obvious issues. The idea that Kavanaugh’s appointment will somehow protect President Trump from impeachment is absurd. A President is charged or impeached in the House of Representatives and then tried in the Senate, not the Supreme Court.

Democrat politicians do fear that Kavanaugh would tip the balance of the court on abortion and lead to the overturn of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. Roe v. Wade is not a law but a Supreme Court ruling that overturned state laws restricting or banning abortion. If the Supreme Court were to overturn that ruling, it would be up to the individual states to pass new laws banning or restricting abortion in their jurisdictions. Otherwise, women would still be free to choose abortion.

No matter what you think about abortion or Roe v. Wade, it should be clear to any fair minded person that a very large percentage of the abortions performed since the original ruling have involved black women. White women have accounted for about half of the approximately 50 Million abortions performed since 1973 but black women who make up a much smaller share of the total population have accounted for about 20 Million abortions or 40% of the total. It is clear that Roe v. Wade has played a significant role in limiting the increase of the black population in this country.

Some sociologists think that this phenomenon is a good thing and that abortion has worked to keep down the crime rate and poverty rate in the country, especially among the “lower classes.” That was certainly the objective of Margaret Sanger, the famed birth-control pioneer on the 1920s. 

Back then Sanger would not have been called a racist. She was a “eugenicist” a word derived from the so-called science of eugenics that claimed that some races and ethnic groups were inherently inferior to others. She argued that immigration from some poor countries like Italy where poverty, ignorance, superstition, immorality, and crime prevailed should be restricted. She also believed that blacks were inherently inferior, and that they should be discouraged from “breeding,” or reproducing themselves.

Eugenics provided a kind of scientific basis for laws in the South prohibiting “miscegenation”, or marriage between members of different races. They said it led to “mongrelization.” In the 1930s the Nazis in Germany became the greatest advocates of eugenics. It provided a scientific basis for policies to eliminate not only the Jews, but also any inferior racial or ethnic types. Their idea of a master race was a creation of eugenics. Of course, eugenics went out of favor after World War II and the Holocaust.

Many years ago I went to a conference where a female, black doctor predicted that abortion would eventually lead to the disappearance of the black race in America. I don’t think her prediction will come true but it is clear that abortion has kept down the population of blacks in this country.

I think the real objection to Judge Kavenaugh is that he is a white male who is also intelligent and successful. Moreover, he is also a Catholic who seems to take his faith seriously unlike many Catholics in high places today. His record as a judge is so outstanding that Democrats had to largely ignore it and ask for millions of documents in order to try to dig up some dirt. At the hearings it was obvious that critical questioners sought to demonstrate that the judge would make decisions harmful to women, blacks, and other minorities.

But why would a white racist be opposed to abortion when it is clear that it has been so successful in keeping down the black and Hispanic population in this country? You would think that racists would be all in favor of abortion. Or would it be better to say that, despite their words and intentions, the supporters of abortion today are the real racists.

During the Vice-Presidential debate before the last election, Republican candidate Mike Pence, another conservative white male, made an unabashedly Pro-Life statement, and argued that the State has an inherent interest in supporting the right to life of the most vulnerable of its citizens. He noted that as Governor he had worked hard to make Indiana a pro-adoption state. 

His opponent Tim Kaine did note that he was Catholic and proud of his Catholic heritage and education. But he argued that despite his personal opposition to abortion, he had done nothing to oppose it as Governor of Virginia, and would certainly support Hillary Clinton’s intention, if elected President, to provide federal funding for abortion.

The Democrat strategy is very cunning. They can appear to be the champions of women, especially the poor and underprivileged, but at the same time, they support measures that have kept the population of Blacks and Hispanics down. Despite contemporary left-wing rhetoric on behalf of the under-privileged, it is still outcomes or results that count. 

The young Progressives of today have been brought up viewing popular TV shows like Law and Order where the great majority of criminals are successful white males. Only rarely are the villains women, black, Hispanic or members of the LGBTQ minority. Nevertheless, the liberal creators and producers of these shows, like Harvey Weinstein of the famed Miramax studio, or Leslie Moonves of ultra-politically correct CBS, are now the ones being charged with sexual abuse of women. Despite professed good intentions, could the media support for abortion be regarded as racist? 

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