When I wrote an opinion piece for the New York Times, there was a pretty extensive fact-checking process (shout out to @jdesmondharris). Apparently, that is not the case at the Wall Street Journal, at least when a piece advances a highly partisan, fundamentally racist view...

So let's dig into just how wrong Bob Stefanowski's screed against Hartford is. To be clear, Hartford has a lot of problems! But Stefanowski diagnoses them all exactly backwards. He is consistently and astonishingly wrong...

So, yes, Harford has high violent crime *relative to other cities*. But crime has been at historic lows for a decade, so being the most dangerous doesn't mean "actually dangerous for middle class people who live in the suburbs."

(It is unsurprising that Stefanowski is more concerned with the mostly white, mostly nonresident staff of the Courant than with the Black and brown Hartford residents who *are* affected directly by violent crime.)

Bob is so close to getting it here. White flight and resource-hoarding (and the loss of manufacturing jobs to globalization and souther states with poor wages) *did* hurt the city badly.