The economy in Connecticut has some catching up to do.
Initial figures from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis show the state’s economy fell behind the rest of the nation in the second quarter of 2022.
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Hillary Clinton spoke at a recent Yale University “leadership” event in front of law students and faculty. University officials banned the press from attending.
The former secretary of state and two-time failed presidential candidate spoke at the “Conversation on Leadership” series with Dean Heather Gerken. Clinton graduated from Yale Law School.
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Connecticut Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate Leora Levy has received the endorsement of Mike Pompeo, who served as director of the Central Intelligence Agency and then U.S. Secretary of State under former President Donald Trump.
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A five-year plan to invest in small businesses in Connecticut is now a reality.
Connecticut will invest $46.6 million in the coming years that will help small business expansion through assistance programs across the state. Nonprofit economic development groups will receive the state grants, authorized at a recent Bond Commission meeting, that will assist small businesses with formation, growth and innovation.
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A decrease in workers’ compensation rates is continuing in Connecticut for a ninth straight year.
Beginning Jan. 1, workers’ compensation rates will fall by 3%, Gov. Ned Lamont said, as the Connecticut Insurance Department approved the filing for pure premium loss costs. However, those companies who have an assigned risk will not see a reduction.
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Connecticut GOP gubernatorial candidate Bob Stefanowski said Thursday in a press statement that if he is elected Connecticut governor that the state would never mandate the COVID vaccine for “schoolchildren, public or private employees, or anyone else.”
“It’s time that we start allowing actual science — not political science — to inform how we approach public health decisions,” Stefanowski added. “I challenge Governor Lamont to make this same pledge to the people of our state.”
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Four years ago, Democrat Ned Lamont and Republican Bob Stefanowski faced off in Connecticut’s gubernatorial race.
The same scenario is playing out this fall with incumbent Lamont, seeking a second term in office, facing off against Stefanowski, the opponent he defeated four years ago. Also throwing his hat into the ring this fall is independent gubernatorial candidate Robert Hotaling.
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As benefits such as the enhanced child tax credit end and inflation increases, more Connecticut residents are facing food insecurity.
As DataHaven reports that 17% of Connecticut adults have been unable to afford food at some point in the past year, Julieth Callejas, who serves as executive director of End Hunger Connecticut, told The Center Square in an exclusive interview that many factors contribute to the trend. The percentage is the highest in the last five years.
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A new poll commissioned by CT Examiner found the races for Connecticut governor and for the U.S. Senate are tightening as the election approaches.
The poll, published Saturday, found Governor Ned Lamont (D) leading Bob Stefanowski (R) 46-40 percent, with 5 percent favoring Independent Party candidate Rob Hotaling, and 10 percent undecided.
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Two police officers are dead and another is seriously injured after a shooting in Bristol, Connecticut, police said Thursday.
The suspected gunman waited outside as officers responded to a domestic incident call in a residential area of Bristol on Wednesday evening, Connecticut State Police said. When the officers arrived, the suspect opened fire, killing one officer on site, officials said. The other officer died in the hospital.
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More Connecticut residents are returning to work.
The latest Department of Labor report shows a decrease in the number of people claiming unemployment benefits. By adding another 2,900 jobs in August, the state stands roughly 36,000 jobs less than it recorded in January 2020 with a high of 1.7 million.
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The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recently awarded Connecticut more than $53 million from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act for water infrastructure improvements.
The state plans to use the funding for lead line replacement projects in New London and Waterbury, as well as PFAS treatment projects in New Fairfield and Danbury. Additional projects are slated for later funding.
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Child-care workers in Connecticut will soon be getting bonus payments.
The Lamont administration announced Thursday afternoon that $70 million in Appreciate Bonus Payments will be distributed to child-care providers in the state. Bonuses of $1,000 will go to full-time employees of child-care providers and $400 to part-time workers through the Wage Supports for Early Childhood Educators program.
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Epidemiologist Martin Kulldorff, Ph.D. told attendees at Hillsdale College’s Blake Center for Faith and Freedom in Connecticut Thursday evening that government health agencies that forced lockdowns and mass vaccinations to manage the COVID-19 pandemic have thrown the basic principles of public health “out the window.”
Swedish native Kulldorff, who is on leave from Harvard University and is a founding fellow of Hillsdale’s Academy for Science and Freedom, is also a co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration, a document published in October 2020 that has since been translated into 44 languages and signed by nearly one million scientists, physicians, and citizens.
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Farmers in eight Connecticut counties are now eligible for federal disaster assistance due to ongoing drought conditions.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has approved Gov. Ned Lamont’s request to widen a natural disaster declaration for portions of the state affected by drought over the summer.
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The Republican candidate who hopes to unseat Connecticut U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D) asserts parents are outraged their children are failing to learn education basics while woke teachers and school boards attempt to indoctrinate them with radical Critical Race Theory and gender ideology.
In an op-ed at Fox News Monday, Leora Levy wrote that pandemic school closures, urged by the teachers’ unions and their political allies, and COVID mask mandates have been “catastrophic” for our children, particularly those from low-income families.
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Helping Connecticut process sexual assault evidence kits in a more timely manner is the focus of new federal funding.
The U.S. Department of Justice announced it will award $1.2 million to Connecticut that will be used at the state’s Forensic Laboratory for adding personnel, supplies, and equipment to aid ongoing efforts in sexual assault investigations, Gov. Ned Lamont said.
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Four female athletes are locked in a legal battle over transgender athletes that could set major precedent for the same fight playing out in schools around the country.
The four female athletes appealed to a federal court over a Connecticut policy allowing high school males identifying as females to compete against girls. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit heard Soule v. Connecticut Association of Schools this week, where the girls’ legal team argued the policy is unfair to girls and hands female sports victories over to transgender athletes.
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New England governors are pressing the federal government for a supplement aid package supporting home heating assistance to residents this winter.
Led by Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont, the governors penned a letter to congressional leaders expressing their desire to see approval of President Joe Biden’s request for the emergency supplemental funding package that would assist residents with home heating assistance.
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A new report on crime in Connecticut shows that violent and property crimes are down in the state.
Connecticut’s annual crime statistic report for 2021 was released Monday. The report compiles data from law enforcement agencies in the state, Gov. Ned Lamont said.
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A leader of Southington, Connecticut’s Families for Freedom organization told The Connecticut Star she views the district superintendent’s support for a teacher who introduced a vocabulary worksheet for high school students, instructing them in the tenets of Critical Race Theory (CRT) and gender ideology, a “slap in the face to parents.”
“We are going to be pushing for policy change because it was clear that this teacher taught outside the curriculum,” said Susan Zabohonski during a telephone interview. “Taught a biased paper without following the proper procedure. Yet, the superintendent said he’s still going to back this teacher and all teachers going forward.”
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Yale University’s Computer Science Department recently announced a $1 million donation given to them from the Bungie Foundation for a research project that fights against racist hair graphics in video games.
“It is widely assumed that the algorithms used to generate virtual humans are based in biological underpinnings that accurately reflect all races and ethnicities,” the announcement reads. “In reality, however, these algorithms are deeply biased and based on predominantly European features.”
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A historical payment is headed to Connecticut’s pension plan.
State Comptroller Natalie Braswell is in the process of transferring $3.1 billion from the state’s operating surplus into the rainy day fund, triggering a one-time, special payment of $2.8 billion into the state’s unfunded pension liabilities, Gov. Ned Lamont said.
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Improving infrastructure is the focus of new grant awards in Connecticut.
More than $31.3 million will be distributed to 77 towns across the state, Gov. Ned Lamont said, that will be used for a road safety reconstruction project, sewer and drainage upgrades, sidewalk and pedestrian safety enhancements, and various capital improvement projects.
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As Connecticut has the sixth-highest median monthly housing costs, some residents and lawmakers are fiercely pursuing measures to prevent developers from building affordable housing units in their towns.
Renee Dobos, chief executive officer of Connecticut Housing Partners, told The Center Square that more than 30 years ago the General Assembly recognized steps should be taken to lead towns to recognize they have a responsibility to make housing affordable to essential workers, senior citizens, and a wide variety of others with diverse incomes.
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If approved on the federal level, more Connecticut farmers could gain assistance for the harsh realities dealt them by the ongoing drought.
A natural disaster request was submitted to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Gov. Ned Lamont said, for Litchfield and New Haven counties where drought conditions have caused damage to farms.
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Renters in Connecticut are short on options with prices soaring.
“Currently, Connecticut has a shortage of 85,000 units of affordable housing for those families that earn an income of 80% or below the AMI,” Renée Dobos, CEO of Connecticut Housing Partners, told The Center Square. AMI is an acronym for area medium income.
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A Southington High School English teacher’s student worksheet that defined terms often associated with the concepts of Critical Race Theory (CRT) and radical gender theory drew anger from parents, students, board of education officials, and members of the community.
School board members said they were unaware of the three-page worksheet packet until they read about it on social media.
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Project Veritas, the investigative journalism group, was put on notice by the state of Connecticut with a records hold request and an indication of potential subpoenas coming their way as part of an investigation into discriminatory hiring practices at Greenwich Public Schools.
Veritas in late August published a secretly recorded interview with Cos Cob Elementary School Assistant Principal Jeremy Boland in which he appeared to admit to discriminatory hiring practices against Catholics and conservatives.
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A Connecticut family-based program has been nominated for a national award.
Care 4 Kids Parent Portal has been named for the National Association of State Chief Information Officers as a finalist in the 2022 State IT Recognition Awards, Gov. Ned Lamont said. The program, run through the office of Early Childhood, was created in 2021 to give low- to -moderate-income families a subsidy to pay for child care.
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Connecticut Republican candidate for governor Bob Stefanowski announced a “Parental Bill of Rights” that seeks to empower the state’s parents to make education and healthcare decisions for their children.
“During the last several years, the pendulum has swung too far against the rights of parents and their ability to make critical decisions for their children in terms of education, healthcare, and the teaching of moral values they hold dear,” Stefanowski said Tuesday. “As Governor, I am going to reverse that trend and restore parental rights in a significant and meaningful way.”
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by Reagan Reese Parents of a Connecticut school district are suing over a school policy which has led to their students being bullied because of their political beliefs. The lawsuit filed Wednesday to the U.S. District Court against Board of Education at Guilford Public Schools in Guilford, Connecticut, alleges that a school policy implemented in 2020 has encouraged bullying and “racial discrimination.” Because of the school policy, the lawsuit alleges that the parent’s children in the school district have been “bullied” and “harassed” over their political beliefs. The school allegedly announced a new training for educators in 2020 that focused on “race, racism, justice, equity and identity” and required educators to read Ibram X. Kendi’s book “How To Be An Anti-Racist,” the lawsuit states. The teachers were allegedly advised to assign the book to students as a part of their curriculum. The parents spoke out about the curriculum, which they believe led to their children being bullied for their own political beliefs, the lawsuit alleged. One student in middle school was allegedly disciplined by an administrator who cited his mother’s political views as the reason for punishment. The middle schooler was allegedly stabbed with a pencil by a peer, causing him to bleed, and was…
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Licensure requirements, professional development opportunities and employment compensation are among some of the weighty issues a new Connecticut task force will delve into in the coming months.
The state’s Early Childhood Workforce Development Task Force held its first monthly meeting recently and began laying the groundwork for its deep-dive conversations in the coming months.
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The Ivy League university at Yale was recently gifted $1 million by a nonprofit group to carry out a study for the purpose of drawing a connection between racism and the hair colors of video game characters.
As reported by the Daily Caller, the study will be lead by Professor Theodore Kim, and will seek to “develop new tools and algorithms to bring inclusivity to the digital screen,” as stated in a press release by Yale. The statement went on to add, with no evidence, that video game algorithms are “deeply biased” and favor “predominantly European features” whenever creating a player’s in-game avatar.
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Republican candidate for Connecticut governor Bob Stefanowski pledged last week to cease collection of the hundreds of licensing and regulatory fees small businesses and entrepreneurs are forced to pay prior to their repeal by the next legislature.
“Now I know everybody’s gonna jump up and down, you can’t do that, OK,” Stefanowski said Tuesday, according to CT Mirror. “I’m going to tell [the tax commissioner] to do it.”
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A Connecticut plan to use federal funding to expand broadband access in the state has gained federal approval.
The Connecticut Broadband Infrastructure Program, Gov. Ned Lamont said, will use $42.9 million in American Rescue Plan Act funding to expand service to underserved areas in the state and was approved by the U.S. Department of the Treasury. Broadband will be expanded, or improved, in 10,000 households and businesses.
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A new report shows that Connecticut’s law enforcement agencies use force 1% of the time.
The Institute of Municipal and Regional Policy used police use of force from across the state in its report. Kenneth Barone, associate director of the Institute for Municipal and Regional Policy, told The Center Square that the report was a challenge as it is the first of its kind and only the second state-wide analysis of use of force in the nation.
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Assistant Principal Jeremy Boland of Cos Cob Elementary School is on leave in the wake of a Project Veritas (PV) undercover video that recorded his claims of how he ensures his school does not hire Catholics or conservatives in order to guarantee “subtle” leftwing indoctrination of children.
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Project Veritas released its latest exposé in which an assistant principal in a Cos Cob, Connecticut elementary school shares with an undercover reporter his strategies to ensure he never hires “Catholics” or “conservatives” to guarantee the children in his school are exposed to “subtle” leftwing indoctrination.
This first video of Project Veritas’ (PV) newly launched Education Series reveals how Jeremy Boland, assistant principal at Cos Cob Elementary School, part of Greenwich Public Schools, ensures he maintains a staff of primarily young, leftwing teachers who will introduce the children to “subtle” indoctrination of principles that align with the current Democrat Party.
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Joe Biden’s “Inflation Reduction Act,” which seeks to “gaslight Americans into thinking it is something that it is not,” will allow Biden and Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) “to tax middle-class American families, to the tune of $10.6 billion in new taxes,” wrote Connecticut Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate Leora Levy in an op-ed Sunday at the Hartford Courant.
Levy, who emerged the victor in the Connecticut GOP primary race to unseat career Democrat Blumenthal, put Biden’s signature legislation into perspective.
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A viral video of Yale University’s Pediatric Gender Program Director has started a firestorm on social media after the Director revealed that children as young as three years-old are being treated with gender medical intervention.
In the video, Dr. Christy Olezeski, current Director of the program, reveals that the program “works with gender-expansive individuals 3 to 25 and their families,” and aims to “help individuals who are questioning their gender identity or who identify as transgender or non-binary.”
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A program that provides taxpayer funding for qualifying Connecticut students to attend community college has been extended.
PACT provides funding to students to cover the difference between state and federal grants, community college tuition and mandatory fees, and, for the first time, allows part-time students taking six or more credits to qualify for the program.
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The Biden Department of Education is investigating a complaint made by the parent of a Farmington, Connecticut middle school student who claims school administrators failed to protect her “nonbinary” child from bullying.
According to a report Sunday at the Hartford Courant, Melissa Combs, mother of Miles (fictitious name), an eighth grade student at Irving A. Robbins Middle School (IAR), who identifies as ‘nonbinary,’” filed a “19,000-word, 54-page complaint” with the U.S. Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR).
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Connecticut’s gaming revenue continues to grow and evolve since the heaviest pandemic-induced shutdowns impacted the income source two years ago.
A five-year analysis of the state’s gaming-derived revenues, gleaned from data via the state Department of Consumer Protection, shows how COVID-19 intermittently impacted the bottom line during the heaviest lockdowns before regaining momentum.
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A recent report reveals that many Connecticut residents living with disabilities are unable to afford basic necessities.
The United Way of Central and Northeastern Connecticut released a study that shows 48% of disabled residents in the state are living in ALICE (Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed) or poverty-level conditions and struggle to afford basic housing, child care, health care, and transportation.
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Connecticut is implementing a new training program that is designed to give workers the skills necessary to fill jobs in high-priority occupations.
CareerConneCT, a $70 million program, backed by American Rescue Plan Act funds, will operate 19 various job training programs, Gov. Ned Lamont said. The training programs are aimed at giving workers affected by the COVID-19 pandemic short-term training to get them the credentials needed to work in various sectors of the workforce in higher quality jobs that are in demand.
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Connecticut State Police law enforcement officers grappled with 150 drug equipment violations in 2020, according to the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS).
This equals 12 per month in 2020.
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Connecticut GOP U.S. Senate candidate Leora Levy observed Senator Richard Blumenthal’s (D-CT) mockery of Americans expressing concern over Joe Biden’s creation of 87,000 new IRS Agents in his legislation that will increase taxes on middle-income Americans and will do nothing to reduce inflation.
“I think the IRS is going to target the highest income Americans,” Blumenthal minimized concern over the Inflation Reduction Act on CNN’s State of the Union recently. “As the saying goes, that’s where the money is. That’s where they’re going to look to collect. The idea that there’s going to be this army of IRS agents defending descending on the average American is just preposterous.”
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Three Midwestern states scored best in the nation in analysis of laws restricting speech about government. Wisconsin, Michigan, and Iowa outranked every other state by wide margins.
That’s the conclusion of a report issued by the Institute for Free Speech, a national nonprofit research facility that focuses on First Amendment rights. Wisconsin’s score of 86% out of a possible 100% was followed by Michigan (77%) and Iowa (75%).
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The real crisis in the U.S. labor market is not, as we keep hearing, that there are not enough people who can work. The real crisis is all of the working-age people on the sidelines, not even looking for a job. Yes, the unemployment rate is low, but that statistic covers only people who have looked for a job in the last four weeks. The labor force participation rate, which measures the share of working-age people working or at least looking for work, shows a long-term decline, especially for men without a college degree. This is especially true in states like Connecticut. When able-bodied men are not even looking for work, a host of social problems ensue — from crime, to drug addiction, to family breakdown.
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