Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Victor Davis Hanson “Years ago,” Victor Davis Hanson tells us in his latest column, “[President Barack] Obama invited the Russians into Syria, empowered dictatorial Syria, berated Israel nonstop and all but ignored the violence of Iran’s surrogate terrorists: Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis.   “But after Oct. 7, Israel retaliated to the mass slaughter of Jewish civilians with all-out war against Hamas and Hezbollah — rendering these once-feared terrorists nearly impotent.”And then, hauling us before a present historical tribune, he notes, “The 2024 anemic Democratic campaign and the Trump Electoral College and popular-vote victories — combined with record defections of Hispanic and African-American voters from the Democratic Party to Trump — proved a resounding rejection of the Obama legacy and his surrogates’ left-wing visions.”   This is, to be sure, fairly rough handling, but then history is a rough handler, and Hanson’s view of Obama’s “lost mystique” likely is ...

Energy users in Connecticut – all of us, poor and rich alike – must feel as if they had stepped into a mice roundabout. It is becoming nearly impossible in the “state of steady habits” for most people, including the vast middle class that absorbs the brunt of taxation, to get out from under costs directly related to 1) taxation, 2) the cost of regulations passed on by businesses to their customers, and 3) the solicitous and smoldering heap of empathy extended to all by politicians who are there “to help.”   Luther Turmelle, a business reporter with Hearst Connecticut Media Group, tells us in the Stamford Advocate , “Standard & Poor's Global Ratings on Monday downgraded the credit rating of a pair of Eversource Energy subsidiaries, according to officials with the utility.” The credit rating agency had “downgraded Connecticut Light & Power, from an ‘A’ to an ‘A- while the energy company's natural gas subsidiary, Yankee Gas, saw its rating [plummet] from an ‘A-‘ to ‘...

Netanyahu and Biden Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu is on trial, Fox News tells us, for “accepting gifts from Israeli Hollywood producer Arnon Milchan in exchange for advancing his interests, failing to report a bribery attempt from newspaper ‘Yediot Aharonot’ publisher Arnon Mozes, who wanted Netanyahu to allow a bill to pass outlawing free newspapers and offered him favorable coverage in exchange, and accepting an offer in which Shaul Elovitch, the owner of Israeli telecom conglomerate Bezeq, would grant Netanyahu favorable media coverage in exchange for favorable regulatory changes.”   Netanyahu has asserted that the charges are false, highly inflated – and political. Netanyahu’s political enemies have been gunning for him for decades.   It will all come out in the wash, political cynics believe. But there is a great deal of dirty linen in the wash tub. Consider the title and then the lede to the Fox News story: “ Netanyahu knocks Obama, John Kerry in...

  Murphy No one in Connecticut, a deep blue state, will be surprised to learn that U.S. Senator Chris Murphy survived the recent presidential election washout.   President-elect Donald Trump structured his campaign mostly on policy: patch and restore the suppurating U.S. Southern border; reduce inflation; cut excessive government spending where possible, the chief contributor to inflation;   concentrate on small businesses that do not have the political heft to survive a cumulative inflation rate of 20%; use tariffs as a political tool to redress economic imbalances that – to choose but one egregious offender, China --   have been deployed by foreign states that traditionally have been enemies of the United States to undercut pricing on the home front and thus   drive important US businesses out of business… and so on. Everyone knows the Trump political product song, often delivered with hyperbolic missiles directed at his political foes.   Democrat...

People who know President Joe Biden well knew that, when push came to shove, Biden would pardon his son, Hunter Biden, before he left office. Biden is due to leave office in less than two months.   Among those in Connecticut who know Biden well are current Attorney General William Tong and past Connecticut Attorney General for 20 years U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal.   The “ Full written statement from President Joe Biden on his decision to pardon his son ” supplied by the Associated Press may easily have been written by President Elect Donald Trump’s legal staff concerning the President-Elect’s many trials and tribulations.   “Today, I signed a pardon for my son Hunter. From the day I took office, I said I would not interfere with the Justice Department’s decision-making, and I kept my word even as I have watched my son being selectively, and unfairly, prosecuted,” the President wrote.   That sentence cannot be fairly parsed. Biden is assert...

Powell Several years ago, this writer had a brief conversation with Chris Powell, then the Managing Editor and Editorial Page Editor of the Journal Inquirer, a fiercely independent paper lately purchased by Hearst.   The question put to Powell was:  What should we do about “fixed costs” in the state budget? Fixed costs, much of it the result of contractual obligations with state unions, was, then and now, removing control over state budgets from the legislative branch to the judicial branch, the primary enforcer of contracts and legal obligations.   Powell’s answer to the question was brief and on point: unfix the costs, he said.   “With ‘fixed costs’ and government employee compensation now constituting the great majority of state government expense, and with the discretionary portion of the budget constituting only a minority,” Powell wrote in a column published a year ago, “the only way of controlling expense is to reduce the ‘fixed costs’ and the costs qualifyin...