Opinion: Why are Nutmeggers so rough on their own state?

March 22, 2015

–

Terry Cowgill lives in Lakeville, blogs at ctdevilsadvocate.com and is news editor of The Berkshire Record in Great Barrington, Mass. Follow him on Twitter @terrycowgill.

Why are Connecticut residents so quick to dump on their state? Richard Sugarman, founding president of the Connecticut Forum, raised precisely that question last week in a Courant op-ed. Unfortunately, Sugarman mostly sung Connecticut’s praises and never really got around to answering the question posed in his lead, so I’m happy to do it for him.

With the exception of one miserable year in New Hampshire, I’ve lived in Connecticut since 1984. The overwhelming majority of that time has been spent in the state’s rural northwest corner, though I did spend a year in Middletown while in grad school. But I’m also well traveled in Connecticut, having visited every major city and corner of what is now my beloved home state.

Obviously, I like it or I wouldn’t have elected to live here longer than any other place in my 57 years of existence. But as readers of this column know, I’m not reluctant to point out the state’s shortcomings either. In part, it stems from my reflex as a journalist to look at more than one side. But I also don’t want to fall into the trap of so many in my native Texas who, in their rabid fealty, fail to see any of the problems plaguing their own state.

See the complete story at CT News Junkie.

Comments

One response to “Opinion: Why are Nutmeggers so rough on their own state?”

Casey Smith

March 22, 2015

Why are we so hard on the State of Connecticut? It’s really simple, Terry. It’s because the State government is slowly sucking the life out of us. Recently, the Governor floated a trial balloon about giving a non-elected State Commission eminent domain rights over the areas around our rail lines as “transit corridors”. But they aren’t talking 10 yards, 50 feet or 100 feet in either direction. They are talking HALF A MILE in either direction. Even if it was only a quarter mile in each direction, it’s still ‘way out of whack. There are businesses, homes, cemeteries, schools and just about anything else you can think of that would become subject to someone’s whim in Hartford. I live just within that 1/4 mile corridor and would certainly live within the half mile corridor. Maybe one day, the Commission in Hartford might decide that they would like my building for oh, say, an OTB office instead.

I also live in Fairfield County. We’re supposedly the “richest” county in the state, but with all the unfunded mandates Hartford that is handing down there is a slow displacement of the low income people families and the middle range or “working” families are struggling. In about six years, I hope to leave this rat race by moving to a less populated, less expensive area. I was born and raised here, but it isn’t even a game of keeping up with the Jones’, it’s now evolved into keeping up with the taxes.

Log in to Reply