CT Governor Dan Malloy's New Message For 2016

To open the legislative session for 2016 the governor of Connecticut Dan Malloy has a new message: get used to a lowering of your standard of living because the pre-recession prosperity of your parents days, where wages and home prices went up, is not coming back.

"Really what the overall message today is that Connecticut's and the nations economy was changed by the Great Recession.  We all thought that, you know, that we'd get back to what was an old normal.  Well quite frankly, we're in the new normal.  And I think government has to catch up to where the people are and understand that the people have already made that adjustment.  They're not counting on an economy that their parents and their grandparents counted on where wages and home values went up steadily every single year." - Governor Malloy, opening day round-table discussion

"We live in changing times, you don't have to take my word for it, you hear it from your constituents everyday.  A visceral feeling that our country and our state are not going back to how things were before the great recession.  Families are budgeting differently. Their expectations are changing. They know that they can't rely on the same economy their parents and grandparents did, where wages and home values steadily increased." - Governor Malloy's Opening Day Address to the General Assembly 

What the governor does not tell you is that many policy makers view the economic downturn and the lowering of our standard of living as a good thing because it means we use less energy, thus saving the planet from greenhouse gas emissions (GHG).

As an example, in 2014 the state announced that it had met its goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels and credited "the economic downturn" as one of the major factors involved with helping to reach that goal.  Director of Policy for the Connecticut Department of Energy & Environmental Protection, Jessie Stratton, was working for, and speaking on behalf of the Environment Northeast Organization back in 2010 when she also credited the economic downturn for "reduced electricity consumption."

To better understand this concept of a reduction in energy consumption being a good thing we have to go back to at least 2001 when the state had announced its goal of reducing green house gas emission in the state by up to 85%.  This means a reduction in energy use, which means a reduction in the use of products that require energy to be made, which means a reduction in pretty much everything.  As an example of the vast level of green house gas reduction looking to be imposed by the state, a 2008 state document said that "Connecticut will need to decrease GHG emissions by more than one million metric tons per year for over 40 years"  which they say is "equivalent to the emissions from electricity used by over 137,000 homes each year or the emissions from over 190,000 passenger vehicles each year."

This idea that single family homes and private motor vehicles are bad for the environment is being used by the state and federal government to implement a program of "Smart Growth".  Smart Growth occurs when government attempts to reduce private motor vehicle and single family home ownership by using taxes, laws, and regulations to focus high-density development around a transit line.  An example of this is occurring in the capital city of Hartford where over a thousand apartment units have been or are being constructed in the downtown area along the newly built CTFastrak bus line.  These construction projects have received millions of tax-payer dollars in loans, grants, and other forms of financial assistance.

Policy makers like to tout the benefits of living in an apartment, next to a bus line, and not needing to own a car or maintain property, but they leave out the many benefits of home and car ownership.  For example, your options as to where you would like to live, work, grocery shop, or seek entertainment are vastly increased when you have a personal motor vehicle.  Without a personal motor vehicle your options on where to live, work, shop, and play are limited to what is on your bus or train route.  There are a number of benefits of personal home ownership as well, not the least of which being privacy, and not having to be around people that you do not want to be around.  When our buying options are limited in such a way by these state-sponsored energy-reduction Smart Growth policies designed to restrict private motor vehicle ownership and single-family home ownership this directly results in a lowering of our standard of living.

This policy of Smart Growth was not created at the state level though, it is a top down policy that extends up through the federal government all the way up to the international government level with the United Nations.  Evidence of this can be found in the various Connecticut climate change papers where various organizations affiliated with the United Nations, like the IPCC, are cited, but most specifically in the 2001 Regional Climate Change Action Plan where the topic of greenhouse gas emission is discussed, it is stated: "The ultimate goal mirrors that of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, to which both the United States and Canada are signatories."  This is relevant because the United Nations is more explicit in their desire to lower the standard of living of industrialized nations like the United States, all in the name of fighting "climate change".  In the United Nations Agenda 21 Program of Action, an action plan presented at the same 1992 Earth summit in Rio that the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change was presented, it states that "the major cause of the continued deterioration of the global environment is the unsustainable pattern of consumption and production, particularly in industrialized countries."  This sentiment is even more explicitly expressed , and quite coincidentally in almost the same terms that Governor Dan Malloy is using, in the children's edition of Agenda 21.  Rachel Kyte, the Vice President of the World Bank Group at the time of the publishing of the childrens edition of Agenda 21 is quoted as saying that children should not expect as much as their parents.  The actual quote is this:

"You can't bring up a new generation of people telling them they can have everything we have and more."

An interested person researching climate change and the United Nations will continue to come across this concept of a lowering in the standard of living of industrialized nations being a necessity to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.  At TheGoodmanChronicle.com we attempt to document how this agenda is directly affecting residents of Connecticut.

To conclude, we need to look at this recent revelation by Governor Malloy in its proper context.  The state government, along with the federal government, have been adopting policies in order to get the people to use less energy and reduce consumption.  This is why the economic changes brought with the recession are being embraced.  When we have less money, we consume less.  As we progress further in this agenda to reduce greenhouse gas emission we can expect further economic, as well as social and cultural changes, all in an apparent effort to fight "climate change".  Only an informed and vigilant citizenry can get in the way of these changes from taking place.

Toll Roads, Gas Tax Increase, and Other Schemes That Connecticut Is Mulling Over To Force You Onto Public Transportation

(This is a video presentation of the following analysis.)

Connecticut state officials met with "transportation advocates" on December 3rd, 2014 for the “Getting to Work:  Transportation and Jobs Access for the 21st Century” event, to discuss the future of transportation in Connecticut.  (Click here to watch the full three hour forum.)

Regular readers of The Goodman Chronicle already know that the future of transportation in Connecticut, if the tax free foundations get their way, is to revolve around increased restrictions on private motor vehicle use, and a focus on public transportation.  Coincidentally (or not), some of the foundations advocating a reduction in private motor vehicle use in the state, were key coordinators for this meeting.  These foundations include the Tri-State Transportation Campaign and the Regional Plan Association, both of which, as pointed out in previous articles, have received funding from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, an organization advocating a much larger agenda, one aspect of which is the reduction of private motor vehicles.

The forum opened up with a quick introduction by CT Governor Dan Malloy, discussing various aspects of the transportation situation in the state.  Along with public transportation goals, Malloy briefly mentions widening certain roads/highways in Connecticut in an effort to provide a better experience for private motor vehicle drivers.  After Governor Malloy gives his four minute introduction speech, the topic of making transportation easier for private motor vehicle drivers is barely mentioned again, by any of the presenters, for the rest of the three hour forum.  The focus of the entire forum becomes about designing communities around, and increasing the ridership of, public transportation.

The majority of people living in Connecticut have no idea that this transformation of society is occurring, as Governor Dan Malloy admits in his introduction talk:

"We've actually not told people the true size and the cost of what needs to be done if CT is to be able to compete in the next 50 years."

The key-note speaker for this forum was Robert Puentes of the Brookings Institution.  Puentes discusses the increasing poverty in Connecticut, as well as the fact that people are driving less, and attributes these situations to the economic recession.  The solution however, according to Puentes, is not to try to restore the old economy, with the same jobs, and have people driving again, but to "subscribe to a brand new growth model", and "restructure the economy" in a way that focuses on creating development, and jobs, around public transportation.


The recommendations of Puentes favoring public transportation, not only ignores drivers of personal motor vehicles, but actually make it more difficult to own, and operate, a private motor vehicle.  Like many of the "transportation advocates" in the state, Puentes' pro-public transportation advocacy is actually an anti-car philosophy.  Some of these recommendations include a gas tax increase, toll roads, and more.

Let us take a more in depth examination of some of the policies of this "brand new growth model" recommended by Puentes.

In Response To Michael Nicastro's Criticism of Agenda 21 Conspiracy Theorists

On August 1, 2014, former President of the Central Connecticut Chamber of Commerce, Michael Nicastro, wrote an article in the Bristol Observer where he criticized those residents, and elected officials, of the city of Bristol who are calling for a referendum, or a public vote, on the Renaissance proposal for the redevelopment of the downtown area.  As a Bristol resident, I have my own views on referendums, as well as what I would like to see happen in the downtown area, however, I would like to use this posting to address another issue that Nicastro brought up in his article: United Nations Agenda 21.

In the article, Nicastro denounces an unnamed group of Bristol residents, who are opposed to the Renaissance proposal, calling them "conspiracy theorists", for their concern about Agenda 21:

"One of the more vocal anti-investment in downtown groups is born out (and now tries to downplay or hide) of the UN Agenda 21 conspiracy theorists.  You know the ones where the government of the world (code the UN) is trying to steal our homes, force us all to live in dense urban environments, take away our cars, and mandate that we all use public transportation"

Nicastro suggests that this group "seriously find a different hobby", "stay off the internet", and concludes by calling Agenda 21 "bunk", or nonsense, saying "it has no place in the discussion about our downtown".

It is important to point out why Agenda 21, and its associated programs, and organizations, do have a place in the discussion of major redevelopment projects taking place across the state of Connecticut, including Bristol's downtown.