They say that there are two most important days in our lives, the day that we are born and the day that we find out why. Many people are never fortunate enough to experience that second day. I was born on June 5, 1980, and I started working for Oak Hill, the state’s largest private provider of services for people with disabilities, on April 30, 2001. I was 20 years old, and I had no idea what I was doing or what I was getting myself involved in.

Decades of research continue to confirm the obvious; poverty is bad for children. As evidenced by a 2015 report from the Urban Institute, the more time children spend living in poverty, the worse their outcomes are across nearly every domain. Compared to their peers who are never poor, the nearly 40 percent of children who experience poverty at some point during their childhood fare worse in educational achievement and employment, teen births, and even involvement with the criminal justice system.  When we fail to alleviate generational poverty we prevent our children﹘and our society as a whole﹘from reaching their fullest potential.

To close observers of state politics, Gov.  Ned Lamont’s budget proposal was no surprise. More cuts in vital services and investments, but no tax increases for the wealthy. The General Assembly will undoubtedly produce a rather different document, but for now the governor’s budget is still the only game in town. However, progressives might look to Washington for inspiration.

Is it right to force a 25-year old man or woman to share intimate health details with his or her parents or spouse, for instance, when he or she is being treated for a sexually transmitted disease, substance use, or depression?

I have always admired people like Joe Biden — people who are not only capable of genuine, physical expressions of affection for perfect strangers, but who also seem to relish in it. Sure, I consider myself a compassionate person and I can physically express love and affection without hesitation with my wife and kids. But I have something of a mental-block for it when it comes to strangers and even for people in my church and my friends, and I recoil with horror at the thought of bringing that sort of feeling into the workplace.

For every dollar invested in high-quality early childhood education, the public saves $13 in the place of costs for special education, public assistance, unemployment benefits, and crime. Expanding eligibility for families in the Care4Kids program would greatly improve the lives of not only children and families but Connecticut taxpayers as well.

My interest in politics was sparked by a college course.  It was late 80s – early 90s and my professor made no attempt to disguise for his distaste for Reaganomics, epitomized by the “trickle down” economics policy the president embraced.  I graduated into the worst job market in decades and, brief Internet bubble aside, the years have shown the falseness of the premise that putting money in the hands of the top 1 percent of shareholders, investors and titans of industry would make its way down to stimulating economic prosperity for the majority of Americans– the recent tax cut to wealthy people and corporations included.