Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

“ It is shameful and disgraceful that this measure should be before Congress ” – U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal Even on a contentious issue such as abortion, it may be possible for people to draw proper distinctions between health care and abortion. Those who confuse the two ought to be asked to furnish four instances in which an abortion not performed to save the physical life of a mother improves the “health care” of the mother. Abortions performed after 20 weeks of a pregnancy -- the point at which, scientists tell us, the fetus feels pain -- certainly do nothing to improve the heath care of an aborted baby.

We all know that criminal laws have a disparate impact on cities. The famous bank robber Willie Sutton, once asked why he robbed banks, replied with disarming honesty “because that’s where the money is.” Likewise, asked why drug prosecutions are more prevalent in Hartford than they are in, say, tony Greenwich, an honest prosecutor, if there is such an animal, might reply “because that’s where the drug dealers are." The answer to the question why are there more drug runners in Hartford than Greenwich is a little more complex.

I’m going to put some figures before you in the hope they will not put you to sleep. Americans – mindful of a dictum attributed to Disraeli by Mark Twain that there are three kinds of lies: lies, dammed lies, and statistics – tend to drift off as soon as you drag out the numbers. But, I assure you, these numbers are reliable and pertinent to this discussion. The figures immediately below are taken from Pew Research, because that organization is less prone to “lying” – or, if you prefer, statistical manipulation -- than most politicians on the make who fluff figure for their own sometimes nefarious purposes. For six decades, since the 1963 March on Washington led by Martin Luther King, black unemployment, relative to white unemployment, has hardly budged.  You may recall the official title of MLK’s march on Washington: “The March on Washington for Jobs and Liberty .” Today, as then, black unemployment is double that of whites. There will always be discussions concern...