MANCHESTER, Conn.

Surely Connecticut state Rep. Eleni Kavros DeGraw, (D-Avon) doesn't represent the entirety of Connecticut's Democratic Party. But she is evidence of the party's transition from the party of the working class to the party of the arrogant elites.

Kavros DeGraw revealed herself last month with comments at a meeting of a General Assembly committee studying relief for college student debt. The Yankee Institute's Meghan Portfolio reports that Kavros DeGraw said “most important thing is to go to college … to have long-term earning power and to be able to start building generational wealth and to succeed."

Kavros DeGraw added: “If folks aren't going to college and getting the jobs that college educations fill, what jobs are they ending up in? They're ending up in jobs that do not pay them enough. And then they do become, quote, unquote, a burden on everyone else because of the services they might need."

That's not only a mistaken view of the lives of people without college degrees, many of whom make good livings and do jobs vital to society, but also a mistaken view of the lives of people with college degrees, many of whom are in debt and stuck in dead-end jobs after earning degrees of little financial value while many others make great incomes doing little good for society.

The higher education that so impresses Kavros DeGraw is full of such ironies.

Joshua Moon-Johnson, the new president of the community colleges in Manchester, Enfield, and Middletown touts his degree in “LQBT studies," which may get his political-correctness ticket punched but won't help him convey much useful learning to students.

Meanwhile, the former chancellor of the Connecticut Colleges and Universities System, Terrence Cheng, now a “strategic adviser" to the system's Board of Regents, which pushed him out of the chancellorship because of an expense-account scandal, is even more of a “burden on everyone else," since he is being paid just as much for doing nothing much. Cheng has degrees in English and, not so ironically, fiction.

The Cheng scandal has been continuing for more than a year but Kavros DeGraw seems to have said nothing about that burden on society.

Indeed, many pompous higher-ed types strut around calling each other “doctor” but to replace a lightbulb they have to call someone who knows how to use a ladder.

The problem with college student debt, as state Rep. Tammy Nuccio (R-Tolland) explained to the study committee, is simply that college is overpriced. It costs more than it's worth.

This doesn't mean that college degrees are worthless, nor that all college courses should facilitate entry to lucrative careers. College should not only teach work skills but also broaden appreciation of life in all respects.

But the bigger education problem in Connecticut and throughout the country is lower education. Standards in lower education have been eliminated. Half of high- school graduates never master what used to be considered high school work, and they enter adulthood qualified only for menial jobs.

The drag on society is not the lack of college education but the lack of primary and secondary education, and unfortunately it's too terrifying for elected officials like Kavros DeGraw to acknowledge, so it will get worse.

WAR, NOT DEFENSE: President Trump, who claimed a dubious medical exemption -- bone spurs -- to escape the military draft during the Vietnam War, wants to look tough and to make the country look tougher. Hence his plan to return the Defense Department to its original name, the War Department. Again he is right for the wrong reasons.

The country doesn't need more military toughness as much as it needs more military smarts. Its most recent wars -- Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan -- weren't defense. They were stupid imperial adventures. The country would have been far better off without them.

The same goes for “defense" contractors. They're really military contractors, including Connecticut's home team -- Pratt & Whitney, Electric Boat, and Sikorsky Aircraft. Journalism should stop playing along with the charade.

Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years (CPowell@cox.net).

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