The Connecticut State Capital (Hartford, CT)

A Connecticut legislative committee is currently considering a bill that could put the Nutmeg State at the forefront on the issue. A provision of House Bill 5528 would require a shareholder majority approve political spending. The bill would require:

Notwithstanding any provision of the general statutes, for corporations incorporated in this state, shareholders shall annually authorize a political activities budget for the corporation by a majority of votes representing all outstanding shares. For corporations not incorporated in this state, but registered to do business in the state or with shareholders residing in the state, shareholders in the state shall authorize spending related to the state’s elections. Fiduciaries voting on behalf of investors shall disclose such vote to investors.

Another provision in the draft bill would require that the corporations’ boards of directors approve each expenditure over $10,000.

The Connecticut Business & Industry Association, predictably, has opposed these rules, calling them “an intrusion into a corporation’s constitutionally protected right to free speech” and warning that the “regulatory hurdles” of allowing the people who actually own a corporation to have a say in the political speech of that business would “will not make Connecticut appealing as a place to do business.”

But as Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, a professor at Stetson University College of Law and an expert on election law, noted in her committee testimony, “though the Supreme Court majority in Citizens United conceptualized corporations as collections of individuals with joint First Amendment rights, it is unclear how shareholders can voice their opinions collectively without a consent process.” By passing this bill, she says, “Connecticut can be the mouse that roars, exhibiting national leadership in this post-Citizens United America.”

If corporate political expenditures are really about protecting free speech, as the 5-4 Supreme Court majority said, measures like this could make sure that the people who actually make up the corporation are the ones deciding whether to speak, how much to speak, and what to say.

The settlement appears to be the largest the U.S. has ever paid in a lawsuit over residential raids, and it is the first to include compensation as well as immigration relief. The men were among 30 people arrested in a raid the day after New Haven began offering identification cards, so critics including New Haven’s mayor claimed the federal sweep was retaliation for the new policy. U.S. immigration officials denied the retaliation claims, saying planning began the year before.

New Haven Mayor John DeStefano, who put the ID program into place, said the settlement highlights faulty immigration policies in the U.S. “Today’s settlement is bigger than a lawsuit. It is about who we are as a nation,” DeStefano said.

– Zachary Bernstein

Rather than having her claims addressed, Ahmad received allegations of her own. Learning of her report, Ahmad’s harasser decided to falsely accuse her of terrorism to the FBI. And rather than fully investigate what was happening, the University of Bridgeport just expelled Ahmad altogether:

After reporting the sexual harassment in April 2009, Ahmad said she was approached by two university security directors who told her someone had made allegations against her and they threatened to call the FBI and have her arrested.

Later, two FBI agents knocked on Ahmad’s apartment door, questioned her and left a business card, according to the lawsuit. She said she learned that her harasser or his associates had fabricated a story falsely accusing her of being a terrorist in apparent retaliation for having made a sexual harassment complaint against him.

“Ahmad was racially profiled and discriminated against because of her race, color and ethnic identity as an African American Muslim and labeled a terrorist based on false accusations provided by the harasser and adopted without adequate investigation by the university,” the lawsuit states.

Ahmad asked that the university provide her with an off-site proctor for her exams, but she said the university told her in April 2009 that her sexual harassment complaint had been closed and that she was being referred to a disciplinary committee. In June, she said the university dismissed her.

Ahmad filed a lawsuit against the university last week for failing to investigate her claims, instead showing “deliberate indifference” to her plight. The lawsuit claims that the college even “recklessly disseminated false accusations by the harasser that they had good reason to believe were unreliable and threatened her with arrest by the FBI.”

Ahmad’s lawyer, Bradford Conover noted that because Ahmad regularly wears the hijab, she was easily targeted for her religion. “[B]ecause of that, she ended up getting targeted based on some reckless accusations against her,” Conover said. “They never investigated it. Had they done so, they would have discovered the accusations against her were false and she had been subject to sexual harassment.”

Climate zombie Chris Coutu (R-CT)

Chris Coutu, who is running for Congress in the 2nd District, said the Two Storm Panel strayed “far from its non-political mission and into the political minefield of global warming.” “The “Two Storm Panel” had a simple, non-political task: determining how Connecticut can better prepare for and respond to major storms. Instead of simply focusing on solutions, the panel veered into politics with its recommendations for global warming,” Coutu said in a press release issued a few hours after the panel released its report.

“I don’t believe global warming’s occurring,” Coutu told the Hartford Courant. “There’s climate changes every year, there’s weather changes.”

Of course, it’s radical anti-science ideologues like Coutu who have made the scientific fact of global warming into a political issue, putting the residents of his state, our nation, and the entire planet at deadly risk. This panel is taking long-delayed action to protect Americans from the impacts of global warming caused by political inability to stop the fossil fuel pollution driving it.

“It’s global warming,” Sue Gress of New Canaan, Connecticut, told the New York Times in November. “No one wants to believe it, but things are changing. There’s much more violent weather, and we’re not prepared to deal with it.”

The Two Storm Panel’s report states that rising sea levels brought on by a warming planet “raises serious concerns about the need to protect critical infrastructure along the coast and adjacent to rivers.” Experts told the group that sea levels are expected to rise about 1.5 feet by the middle of the century and from 3 to 5 feet by the century’s end. The panel recommended new engineering standards to “better protect the built environment from the effects of extreme weather.”

“There is a reality that comes with the trend in climate change that we have to be better prepared for the future,” Gov. Dannel Malloy said. “We’re in a warming cycle,” James Skiff, the retired U.S. Air Force Major General who co-chairs the panel, told the Courant. “Sea levels are going to rise, that creates a higher storm surge.”

The letter described the discrimination as “deeply rooted in the Department’s culture,” and cited a statistical analysis showing how Latinos were “intentionally targeted” for traffic stops. It provided the example of a particular officer’s stops — 40.5% of which were of Latino drivers.

Overall, the investigation found that 19.9% of traffic stops made by the EHPD were of Latino drivers, concluding it “shows pervasive discrimination against Latinos on every level of EHPD traffic enforcement activity.” The report also said officers were able to target Latinos by focusing on customers leaving Latino businesses.

In addition to the high rate of traffic stops, the report accused some EHPD officers of conducting unauthorized immigration investigations. The report mentioned “numerous incident reports” where EHPD officers contacted Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to check on the status or seek an immigration detention of a Latino person. Investigators said the tactic was “used to harass and intimidate Latinos rather than pursue legitimate law enforcement objectives.”

East Haven is 88.5 percent white, and only 10.3 percent Hispanic or Latino, so Latino drivers are twice as likely to be pulled over than their share of the population would suggest.

The report also accused the EHPD leadership of obstructing the investigation by “creating a hostile and intimidating environment” for those willing to cooperate. The EHPD did not comment on the report. The DOJ intends to meet with community leaders but said it “may suspend or terminate federal funding if the town fails to address the civil rights violations.”

Rapper Jasiri X was slated to appear, and was even going to be paid by the university for his appearance. Yet at the last minute, the rapper was told by the student government that he would only be able to attend if he didn’t perform songs like “Occupy — We Are The 99,” because these songs contain “obvious political statements.”

So the rapper at first agreed to not sing any political songs — at the political awareness rally. But when he arrived at the university, he changed his mind, and later wrote that he at that moment he decided he wanted to sing the 99 Percent-related song “even if it meant I would not get paid.” Here’s video of Jasiri X responding to the student government’s policy while appearing on campus:

MALLOY: We have a bunch of politicians, including many many governors who are calling for block granting Medicaid, which is nothing more than a sponsored race to the bottom, particularly in states where there is less of a population that’s going to be supportive of maintaining the benefits. And in essence, what some of these governors are trying to do, is to create economic incentive to move jobs to their state by winning the race to the bottom when it comes to Medicaid reimbursement.

Watch it:

The proposal would essentially convert the existing matching rate formula that the government uses to reimburse states into a block grant would give states less money than they would have otherwise received and force local governments to cut eligibility to the program. The federal government’s contribution “would be capped by a pre-set formula that does not adjust for variations in actual costs” influenced by economic recessions or unpredictable epidemics and as a result at risk populations may not be guaranteed access to needed benefits. A recent Kaiser Family Foundation report estimated that an estimated 31 to 44 million Americans could lose their health insurance coverage as a result of the change in funding.

CAP’s Bracken Hendricks and Lisbeth Kaufman report on Connecticut’s effort to lead the way on clean energy financing.

This week, Connecticut Governor Dan Malloy signed into law the nation's largest "Green Bank" program. (AP Photo/Fred Beckham)

While Gov. Christie works to dismantle clean energy in New Jersey, his neighbor, Connecticut Gov. Malloy just signed a major energy law comprising a broad-based clean energy and economic development program.  The Law, SB1243, passed unanimously with bi-partisan support, will reform Connecticut’s energy system to cut costs for consumers and transition to cleaner energy.  With a 36-0 vote in the Senate and a 139-8 vote in the House, Gov. Malloy and the Connecticut Legislators demonstrated that clean energy can gain solid bi-partisan support:

House Minority Leader Lawrence F. Cafero Jr., R-Norwalk, said in a partisan year, the energy bill “was a refreshing respite. It was a classic example of what you can do when you sit down with people on all sides of an issue.”

The law will combine the former Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) with the former Public Utility Control to create a Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) that will oversee the energy system reform.  DEEP will be run by the current DEP commissioner, Dan Esty, who is also an environmental Professor, Lawyer and Policy maker from Yale, and author of the prize-winning book “Green to Gold:  How Smart Companies Use Environmental Strategy to Innovate, Create Value, and Build Competitive Advantage. ” Esty, who spoke about the need for comprehensive energy policy at a CAP-hosted conference in November, was a major architect of the bill.

One of the Republican legislators’ most favored provisions in the law is the Clean Energy Finance and Investment Authority (CEFIA), the nation’s first full-scale Green Bank.  The proposal comes with a low price tag for taxpayers because it repurposes an existing fund within the state, with which the CEFIA will leverage much larger amounts of private capital.   It will take over the current Clean Energy Fund to drive investment and get major new clean energy projects built in Connecticut.

The CEFIA is essentially a state version of the Energy Independence Trust (EIT), which the Center for American Progress first proposed last year with the Coalition for Green Capital in a paper Cutting the Cost of Clean Energy.

The CEFIA is a huge step forward for Connecticut, but it is also an important example for the nation by demonstrating how to cut the cost of investment in renewables and energy efficiency.  By providing low-cost financing specifically for clean energy projects, the CEFIA will incentivize new job creating investments in projects, even as it lowers the price of clean and sustainable electricity.  By helping bring the industry to scale, and drive new technology “down the cost curve,” Connecticut is helping consumers everywhere.

As more renewable energy is deployed and new energy efficient products come to market, companies will take advantage of economies of scale to decrease the costs of building projects, reaping real benefits for consumers.  The CEFIA can serve as a prototype for other State Green Banks, and for federal policy like the Clean Energy Deployment Administration proposed in the Senate to commercialize new technologies and the Energy Independence Trust which will help those technologies reach the market at scale.

Though the U.S. invented and improved many of the clean energy technologies used today, in recent years we have fallen behind in the clean energy race.   It’s not that clean energy is scarce, expensive, or bad for business, as opponents would have you believe.  Rather, a lack of comprehensive energy policy combined with outdated subsidies for fossil fuels, has created an unfriendly investment environment for clean energy.

Clean energy doesn’t have to be expensive, and it is getting cheaper as it becomes more widespread.  For example, take a look at the price declines in solar as manufacturing has ramped up and installations have grown boomed:

As the price of renewables declines, the price of conventional fossil-fuel-generated electricity will continue to rise as global demand for limited reserves of coal and oil grows. But we could be doing much more to get us closer to the day when renewable energy is cheaper than polluting fossil fuels. Policies like Connecticut’s new clean energy fund go a long way to helping American consumers and businesses make this transition.

The U.S. needs smart policies, like Connecticut’s new Clean Energy Finance and Investment Authority, to harness our clean energy potential and further drive down the price of clean energy.  Gov. Malloy and the bi-partisan work of the Connecticut legislature have made a major advance in U.S. clean energy policy. The Center for American Progress salutes their leadership.  Other states would do well to follow their example.

— Bracken Hendricks and Lisbeth Kaufman

Progressive income taxation is apparently provoking some controversy in the state of Connecticut:

“Their solution is to tax the wealthy in Fairfield County, redistribute income and hope people in Greenwich and Darien don’t move to Florida,” said Christopher Healy, the state Republican Party chairman.

Empirical studies I’m familiar with suggest that this tends not to happen. But what if it did? Connecticut is the third-richest state in the United States and the fourth most densely populated. On a per square foot basis, its housing is the fourth most expensive in the country, some 40-50 percent above the national average. This has all added up to some sluggish economic growth in the face of evident economic opportunity. If some quantity of rich people leave Connecticut, the result will be to make it more affordable for other people to move there. Connecticut will still have more tax revenue than it did pre-hike, and now more people will be able to take advantage of the economic opportunities that the state affords.

Meanwhile, Florida was already a poorer-than-average state before being unusually hard-hit by the current recession. Redistributing some rich people from Connecticut to Florida could be a win-win. And that’s especially true if the mechanism to produce the redistribution also allows for the financing of valuable public services. I can’t speak to the question of what Connecticut spends its money on, but as usual this is the right question to be asking — what are we spending it on and is it useful? The evils of taxes, as such, are vastly exaggerated.

During the hearing, Committee Chairman Rep. Holder-Winfield (D) challenged Wolfgang on his fearmongering, “pointing out that laws prohibiting that kind of assault already exist” and would remain in place if the nondiscrimination measure is adopted:

REP. HOLDER-WINFIELD: You said if this bill passes, nothing would prevent the sexual predators from taking the actions that you suggest might happen. What prevents them from doing that now?

WOLFGANG: Well they’d certainly have more of a reason to do it. And men in general should not be allowed into women’s bathrooms. At issue is the fact that you have an exception for sex but not for gender identity and expression if this bill passes and men can enter women’s bathrooms.

REP. HOLDER-WINFIELD: But my question to you is, what prevents them from doing it now? Your answer, while a response, doesn’t actually indicate what does that.

WOLFGANG: Well, I mean, you know, there are laws that prevent crimes, obviously, from taking place in bathrooms in general. But, I mean, why give sexual predators a pretext? Why give them an excuse to say, “Look, I’m transgendered and that’s why I went into the women’s bathroom.” Obviously it’s – you know, there are laws for registered sex offenders.

REP. HOLDER-WINFIELD: And so those laws would actually exist if the crime was committed after entering the bathroom, even if this law passed – if this bill passed, is that not correct?

Watch it:

As HRC’s Meghan Stabler writes, while momentum for the bill is building, “[s]imilar bills in the past had passed both the Judiciary Committee and the Senate yet died in the state House of Representatives.” A similar bill in Maryland “dropped its public accommodations language in an effort to boost support.”

In 2004, the Connecticut passed a transgender-inclusive hate crime law and in 2000, the Connecticut Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities (CHRO) issued a declaratory ruling “indicating that transgender people are protected under existing Connecticut sex discrimination laws.” Still, there currently exists no explicit law “protecting transgender people from discrimination in employment, education, housing, and public accommodations.” (H/T: Equality Matters)

I never like to visit a place without checking out its local parking regulations. So I found the New Haven zoning ordinance and I looked up the quantity of parking that you need to build in order to construct something in the designated zones for “General High-Density Residential”:

One parking space per dwelling unit (except that only one parking space shall be required for each two elderly housing units) located either on the same lot as the principal building or within 300 feet walking distance of an outside entrance to the dwelling unit to which such parking space is assigned, and conforming to section 29 and the remainder of the General Provisions for Residence Districts in Article IV.

To repeat my usual spiel, this will tend to reduce the economic efficiency of the city in which the rule is in force. What’s more, it will drive the market price of housing higher than it otherwise would be will driving the market price of parking lower than it otherwise would be. Since cars are expensive and poor people often don’t own them, whereas well-to-do families may own several, this amounts to a regressive transfer from the poor to the rich. On top of all that, artificially cheap parking is bad for the environment.

Also note that the density we’re talking about here is not in fact very high:

Maximum gross floor area: No such building or buildings shall have a gross floor area greater than 0.5 times the lot area; except that this floor area may be increased by 0.1 times the lot area (up to a maximum of 1.7 times the lot area) for each one percent of lot area by which the building coverage of the principal building or buildings is reduced below the maximum of 25% of lot area set by subparagraph (c) above.

Does it really make sense for the government of an under-populated and economically depressed city to be saying “no thanks” to real estate developers who might want to make a very large investment in the city? There’s a place in life for economic distortions, but that place is not when the distortions are also pro-pollution and your city has a poverty rate way above the national average.

For quite a long time now people have been urging Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal to run for hire office, but he always seemed reluctant to go for the prize until this year Chris Dodd’s troubles forced him out of the Connecticut Senate race and Blumenthal in. Today’s New York Times story perhaps tells us what Blumenthal was worried about. It seems that while the Vietnam War was happening, he first sought and received a number of deferments and then, like George W Bush before him, got a relatively cushy stateside assignment (in Blumenthal’s case in the Marine Reserves instead of the Air National Guard) rather than combat duty. At times he’s simply alluded accurately, though arguably misleadingly, to having served in the “Vietnam era” (they actually gave out a medal for this even to people who never went to Vietnam, I believe my uncle Paul has one) but he’s also at times plainly told audiences that he served in Vietnam. He didn’t. It’ll be a blow.

And of course it’ll be a largely irrational blow. US Senate elections are not nearly as complicated as voters generally seem to think. If you live in Connecticut and you generally like Barack Obama’s legislative agenda that Blumenthal—or almost any other Democrat for that matter—can be counted on to reliably support said agenda, with some exceptions for idiosyncratic Connecticut-related concerns. Conversely, even a relatively moderate Republican like Rob Simmons will mostly act to obstruct said agenda and will generally vote in favor of the agenda of the next Republican president. Which is just to say that partisanship predicts a lot about legislative behavior and past military service or past baffling and opportunistic deception predicts very little. But of course the famed swing voter doesn’t see things that way.

Meanwhile, if you want to see a really crazy story about lying check this guy out.