Democrats from Connecticut to California think the country’s most urgent objectives include nullifying immigration law and authorizing anyone to use any bathroom regardless of his sex — indeed, to use the men’s bathroom on Monday and the women’s bathroom on Tuesday, everyone else’s privacy be damned. Somehow the destruction of economic competition — an issue determining prices, wages, and employment — is of little concern to Democrats.

Connecticut may provide the foremost example of this phenomenon, as Gov. Dannel P. Malloy and his Insurance Department are facilitating consolidation in the medical insurance industry, particularly the combination of Indiana-based Anthem with Connecticut-based Cigna and Connecticut-based Aetna with Kentucky-based Humana.

The governor has just signed legislation, enacted hurriedly and irregularly, to keep secret the information submitted to state government by these insurance companies. And Malloy is standing by his insurance commissioner, Katherine Wade, a former lobbyist for Cigna who is married to a lawyer for the company, as she creates scandal by refusing to disqualify herself from ruling on Cigna’s combination with Humana.

The chief executive of the Connecticut State Medical Society, Matthew Katz, predicts that if the insurance mergers are completed, Anthem-Cigna will control 64 percent of the state’s medical insurance market.

Yes, the governor is in a tough spot with the insurance companies, as he is with business generally as state government becomes more expensive even as it increasingly fails. (The Department of Motor Vehicles remains an incompetent mess, and education and welfare policy are producing mainly ignorance and poverty.) Since insurance companies are financial and data-processing businesses, they are fully mobile, and there is much speculation that Aetna, a mainstay of Hartford for more than 160 years, will be prompted by its combination with Humana to leave Connecticut for Louisville.

So the Malloy administration seems to have taken the position that the insurers should be allowed to do whatever they want, no matter the cost to the market, lest Aetna and Cigna move out. That leaves protecting the market to the federal government.

But like Malloy, President Obama is far more concerned about bathroom rights than economic consolidation, and the antitrust division of his Justice Department has been ineffectual. Of course, Republicans welcome such consolidation too, but at least they don’t piously declare that bathroom rights are more important.

Police misconduct tolerated

Last September four state troopers were caught on video inventing criminal charges against an East Hartford man, Michael Picard, who had been peacefully and legally protesting their drunken-driving checkpoint in West Hartford.

Picard was carrying a video camera that was confiscated by the troopers while they detained him for about 40 minutes. But the troopers didn’t notice that the camera was still running. It recorded them admitting that they had no grounds to arrest Picard but wanted to get back at him, and then discussing what charges they could make up. They settled on trespassing, reckless use of the highway by a pedestrian, and creating a public disturbance — charges the video makes ridiculous, though they are still pending in court.

Picard posted the video on the Internet and in January filed a complaint against the troopers, and anyone who watches the video will see and hear an open-and-shut case of police corruption, officers condemned by their own voices.

But five months later the state police have failed to investigate the incident, apparently hoping that it will fade from view if news organizations don’t follow up. The Hartford state’s attorney’s office has shown no interest either. The governor should straighten them out, and if he doesn’t, the U.S. attorney for Connecticut should.