As published in the Stamford Advocate
This is Kimberly Fiorello's response to Svetlana Wasserman’s attack-letter titled, “The outdated zealotry of Kimberly Fiorello.”
Fiorello's Response Letter:
I am very grateful to Ms. Wasserman for using my own words to state my side of the debate. I so appreciate her quoting directly from my Capitol Update e-blasts.
Each week, I strive to share with people in my district what politicians are doing in Hartford, give as much detail as possible (because the devil is in the details), and express with clarity why I vote in the people’s interest.
When I ran for office I was persuaded by voters who asked me to engage in the battle of ideas. They wanted me to stand up and speak out for freedom and the American Way, grounded in the optimistic belief that humans can live peaceably together and strive to solve problems, while government performs its proper role to protect individual rights and be minimally intrusive in folks’ daily lives.
I am thrilled Ms. Wasserman quoted my statement that “the brilliance of the American system is based on fundamental trust in voluntary transactions among free people to solve problems, find solutions, and meet each other’s needs.” This just can’t be repeated often enough in our society today.
What Ms. Wasserman calls my “dogged faith in individual choice” is in fact rare and precious. Over the course of human history, regimes have regularly denied individual choice and used coercion to make people behave as leaders saw fit. It’s the strategy of tyrants and despots in ancient texts. Today, it is played out in China, North Korea (from where my maternal grandmother fled), Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, and many others.
To the extent it is played out in the United States, Ms. Wasserman must be prepared to defend the massive expanse of the welfare state going back to the 1930s and all the poverty, misery, and lost human capacity that has befallen successive generations.
The impact on our environment from the tragedy of the commons and negative externalities mentioned by Ms. Wasserman is a grave concern to me and many others, but governmental regulations fail to find lasting solutions.
(Note: Connecticut is already the most regulated state in the country. By Ms. Wasserman’s logic in which government regulations are a force for good where markets fail, why would Connecticut be having all the complex problems she says we face? Clearly, government is in full-force-regulating-mode here.)
The seminal work of 2009 Nobel-prize winning American woman economist Elinor Ostrom, “Governing the Commons,” debunked the tragedy of it all and proved that people can and do behave rationally in pursuing diverse solutions to prevent depletion of resources without government intervention. Her field study of people from Maine to Spain, from Switzerland to Indonesia, showed that the human mind is our greatest natural resource and there is no problem that we cannot solve.
Speaking of human minds, this brings me to Ms. Wasserman’s fallacious mischaracterization of my voting record on civil rights. I’m proud to stand beside the parents, who are the real champions, fighting one of the greatest civil rights violations occurring in our state — education discrimination.
While children in the suburbs receive decent public educations, how long will we collectively ignore the pleas and cries of minority parents in our cities whose children are at risk every day because their public schools are woefully failing them?
Many of these minority parents have organized themselves into groups like the Connecticut Parents Union, CPU, and Latinos for Educational Advocacy and Diversity, “LEAD”; they want school choice in their neighborhoods and they want charter schools to provide that choice.
They are infuriated by statements such as Ms. Wasserman’s assertion that “charter schools divert public school funding” because charter schools are public schools.
Charter schools serve mostly minority children, hire mostly minority teachers, deliver extraordinary academic results ... and receive the lowest per pupil funding in our state. What Stamford Charter School for Excellence has accomplished with only $11,250 per student to pay for rent, teacher salaries and school supplies is nothing short of a miracle — yet it’s a miracle that shows day in and day out what public charter schools can do.
Lastly, it is hard to believe Ms. Wasserman’s criticism of an iconic phrase in our nation’s history when she writes, “Fiorello’s faith in what she calls ‘we the people’ is the cornerstone of neoliberal economics.” Obviously, readers know where “we the people” comes from. But just for the joy of seeing it in print, let’s revisit the Preamble to the document that begins:
“We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
I and every legislator in Hartford swore an oath to uphold the Constitution to the best of our abilities, so help us God. If that’s outdated zealotry, then call me an old-fashioned enthusiast.
Please sign up for my Capitol Update weekly eblasts at www.repfiorello.com. State Rep. Kimberly Fiorello’s 149th district includes parts of Greenwich and Stamford.
Written By Kimberly Fiorello