What happens when there are no consequences for misconduct?

With Connecticut full of repeat criminal offenders on the loose, and with juveniles stealing cars and committing mayhem with impunity, having realized that government won't punish them, almost anyone might have a clue about where social disintegration is coming from.

But few Democrats in the General Assembly have a clue. They already have enacted laws erasing records of most criminal misdemeanors and many felonies for offenders who have not been convicted in the past 10 years. Last month Democratic legislators proposed prohibiting landlords from rejecting prospective tenants on account of criminal records more than three years old. And last week Democratic legislators proposed prohibiting colleges and universities from asking applicants about their criminal histories and school disciplinary incidents.

In asking applicants about their misconduct, colleges and universities want only to protect themselves against people who don't know how to behave.

But misconduct among young people is, along with poverty, racially disproportionate. So instead of considering how to reduce poverty and misconduct — indeed, instead of considering why poverty policy long has failed — Democrats have decided that Connecticut should just prevent the public from learning about misconduct, as if what people don't know can't hurt them.

That premise is straight out of the platform of the totalitarian regime in George Orwell's "1984": "Ignorance is strength." But the public's ignorance is strength only for the regime. After all, the less the people of Connecticut are allowed to know about crime, the less Connecticut's regime will have to explain why its claims that crime is down are so contrary to the social disintegration seen nearly everywhere.

Critical questions lacking

What's left of journalism in Connecticut often seems incapable of asking critical questions even when grotesque ironies fall from the sky with a heavy thud right in front of them.

The other day New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker reported that the city clerk who was telling federal immigration authorities about suspicious marriage license applications had good reason to be suspicious but lacked city authority to tell the feds and thus had violated city rules. The mayor said the clerk had retired rather than account for what she had done.

But no one asked the mayor why it was wrong for the clerk to violate city rules when New Haven itself, as a "sanctuary city," long has been obstructing enforcement of federal immigration law, issuing identification documents to illegal immigrants to facilitate their lawbreaking and forbidding city police from assisting federal immigration agents.

Other than the city's commitment to nullification, there's nothing wrong with anyone's reporting to federal authorities suspicion of lawbreaking.

Meanwhile Governor Ned Lamont has proposed legislation to remove the "drive-only" designation from the driver's licenses Connecticut issues to illegal immigrants. The governor and fellow nullifiers fear that the "drive-only" designation on Connecticut licenses may expose an illegal immigrant if he is stopped by police in states that don't nullify immigration law.

No one in journalism seems to have asked the governor how the legislation to ensure that Connecticut driver's licenses keep facilitating illegal immigration squares with his comments in two national television interviews last month, wherein he acted as the drum major for the Democratic Party's sudden but pretend pivot on illegal immigration. In those interviews the governor said immigration policy should be much stricter, the southern border should be closed, and he had offered President Biden the use of the Connecticut National Guard for border security.

A spokeswoman for the governor says the driver's license legislation means to show that Connecticut is a "welcoming" state. That's the euphemism for a nullifying state.

As a result the governor may be seen outside Connecticut as one of the Democrats returning to sanity on the immigration issue while back home he remains the enabler of the open-borders extremists who control the party in Connecticut.

Only critical questions from journalists back home may stop the governor from playing both sides of the issue.

Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. He cab be reached at CPowell@cox.net.