Commentary —

 Predictions For Connecticut’s 2000:

Y2K Will Be Least Of Our Problems

By Chris Powell

A few months ago Florence King, the curmudgeonly columnist for National Review, welcomed the so-called century date change problem. What a delight it would be, she wrote, if all the machinery that was not Y2K-compliant flipped over its date numbers and, unable to push us into the new millennium, instead carried us back to 1900. To be sure, 1900 was not a perfect time, King wrote, but if we could go back a hundred years in our culture instead of having to stumble forward one more, at least we might be able to turn on the radio and hear “Taking Nellie Home” instead of “Punchin’ Out My Ho.”

No such luck, of course. Change comes, but each new year is more like the last one than the future, especially in “the Land of Steady Habits.” So these predictions for Connecticut’s 2000 are confidently offered, drawn as they have been from the events of 1999.

JANUARY: Because of the special precautions taken by Northeast Utilities and United Illuminating, electricity stays on throughout New Year’s Day, but the power grid is so revved up that no one can turn anything off for a week.

FEBRUARY: After more than a year of fruitless investigation, New Haven police announce that they haven’t been able to find enough evidence for an arrest in the murder of Yale student Suzanne Jovin, but State Police Commissioner Henry Lee announces that his investigation has determined that Jon Benet Ramsey’s death at her home in Boulder, Colo. was suicide.

MARCH: Under pressure from civil rights advocates disturbed by police shootings of criminals, the General Assembly repeals the authorization for police to use deadly force against fleeing felons and instead instructs cops to warn them that if they don’t surrender, they could get probation.

APRIL: The General Assembly resolves both campaign finance reform and the scandal at the state treasury over “finder’s fees” paid to influence peddlers, enacting legislation requiring every state resident to pay a “finder’s fee” directly to his state legislators, cutting out those awful middlemen.

MAY: Governor Rowland announces that the site of the 35,000-seat stadium to be built for the University of Connecticut football team will be moved from Rentschler Field in East Hartford back across the Connecticut River to the South Meadows in Hartford, where for 355 days per year it can be used for the Metropolitan District Commission’s compost pile, whose storage building was destroyed by fire. While blindsided again by new plans for the stadium, UConn President Philip Austin says he’s sure that the football team, which had a 4-7 record last year, can work the compost into its defensive strategy. When private financing for the “Adriaen’s Landing” project for relocating downtown Hartford comes up short, the governor proposes and the legislature authorizes $500 million more in state bonding. A $700 million plan to renovate Hartford’s crumbling schools is postponed as too expensive.

JUNE: An argument between two deputy sheriffs transporting six prisoners to the New Haven courthouse erupts in gunfire before the sheriffs are subdued by the prisoners and delivered to the police.

JULY: Capping his crusade to turn everyone in Connecticut into an indignant yet incompetent moron who can’t even tie his shoes without a lawyer, Attorney General Richard Blumenthal announces a product-liability lawsuit against shoe manufacturers, complaining that their products don’t come with operating instructions and that, as a result, thousands of Connecticut residents get off on the wrong foot each day.

AUGUST: Five handgun manufacturers sue the city of Bridgeport and Mayor Joseph Ganim, complaining that Bridgeport residents are deliberately misusing handguns for illegal purposes. “Guns don’t kill people,” the lawsuit observes, “Ganim’s constituents do.” When a Superior Court judge grants the plaintiffs a temporary injunction, violent crime in Fairfield County falls 85 percent.

SEPTEMBER: Citing vagrancy in Connecticut’s downtowns and the crowding of state prisons, a committee assigned to find a use for the former Norwich State Hospital property recommends that it be reopened as a mental institution.

OCTOBER: Besieged by lawsuits against its health maintenance organizations, Aetna/US Healthcare announces its “No Questions Asked” plan, wherein every medical procedure is covered, regardless of whether it is needed by the policyholder and prescribed by a doctor. To promote the plan, premiums are offered at a discount – $395,000 per member per year – but there are no takers until a state contract arbiter awards the plan to the union of assistant attorneys general.

NOVEMBER: For having encouraged former state Comptroller, White House aide, and unsuccessful gubernatorial candidate William E. Curry, Jr to challenge US Rep Nancy Johnson in the 6th Congressional District, Democratic State Chairman Edward L. Marcus is arrested under Connecticut’s law forbidding assisted suicide. But the charge is dismissed on a technicality when a judge whose appointment Marcus helped arrange rules that Curry was already politically dead.

DECEMBER: The US Army Corps of Engineers and US Environmental Protection Agency withdraw their objections to construction of the Eastern Connecticut Expressway when an ivory-billed woodpecker, long thought extinct, is found dead in a tree along narrow and curvy Route 6 in Andover, flattened by a cement truck that ran off the road after ramming a school bus, killing the bus driver and 17 children.

Chris Powell is managing editor of the Journal Inquirer in Manchester.