Insurance Committee Bill Takes Aim at Hartford Courant. Public Hearing Today.

The legislature’s Insurance and Real Estate Committee includes meddling in the business of The Hartford Courant among its bad ideas:

AN ACT CONCERNING THE HARTFORD COURANT.

To: (1) Prohibit The Hartford Courant Company and its legal successors from incurring any debt or issuing any dividend that is not in the public interest; and (2) authorize the Attorney General and certain persons to seek injunctive relief against The Hartford Courant Company or its successors if The Hartford Courant Company or its successors incur any debt or issue any dividend that is not in the public interest.

“The Hartford Courant has delivered quality, independent journalism to the readers of Connecticut for more than 250 years. We’ve done so – and plan to keep doing so – free of government interference,” said Andrew Julien, the Courant’s Publisher and Editor-in-Chief.“But this proposal puts the Connecticut legislature into dangerous constitutional waters. The prospect of state officials, whose actions are often the subject of media scrutiny, making determinations that could affect the operations of a newspaper is a threat to the fourth estate — a fundamental pillar of Democracy.” 

If you wonder why businesses continue to be reluctant to come to Connecticut, read that intrusion into the affairs of a state business. It attempts to destroy the First Amendment protections of a free press. it violates any notion of equal protection under the law. It also announces to the world that Connecticut’s legislature does not recognize fundamental tenets of freedom under the rule of law.

The bill is co-sponsored by committee co-chair Senator Matt Lesser (D-Middletown) and Senator Said Anwar (D-South Windsor), a demagogue who, as demagogues do, loathes diversity of opinion and freedom of the press. I know this because in June Anwar used a virtual vigil for George Floyd to call me a racist, disclose where I live, and urge that I be silenced. He failed, but he has not ceased in his efforts to intimidate and incite.