Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Mamdani George Bernard Shaw, the wily old Fabian Socialist, once said about patriotism, with a wily old Fabian Socialist sneer, “Patriotism if you must, but please – no parades.” Of course, Shaw knew very well that patriotism is a parade, among other things.   The history of the word “patriot” itself shows some antagonistic stretchmarks. It was used as an insult by British patriots of uppity American anti-British revolutionists during the prospectively successful American Revolution. But, as Americans often do, they assigned a new positive meaning to the word -- and held parades during which, as John Adams tells us in post-revolutionary days, flags were flown, martial arms were displayed, the sky burst into patriotic flames, and everyone went home with smiles on their faces.   The war on the American flag – just a piece of cloth – and patriotism, and Christopher Columbus statues, is a relatively recent phenomenon celebrated by anti-American patriots, though not, Shaw...

Kosta, Yahoo One can only hope that Konstantinos “Kosta” Diamantis will be writing a memoir while vacationing in Greece.   The former Connecticut deputy budget director and head of the state’s Office of School Construction Grants and Review, we are told in numerous news stories, fled to Greece on September 17, 2026, just before his scheduled federal sentencing for a major corruption case.   Convicted in October 2025 on 21 federal counts -- including bribery, extortion, conspiracy, and making false statements to federal investigators – prosecutors tell us that Kosta abused his authority over state school construction contracts (worth about $8.5 million) to pressure contractors for bribes between 2018 and 2021.   According to a recent story in CTMirror , Diamantis sent a “rambling ten page email to his attorney in which he cast “the prosecution as ‘politically motivated.’ He also said that the Department of Justice was ‘weaponized’ against him, copying language ...

We are a couple of months in front of an off-presidential year election. Before we go to the polls, we should brush away the political cobwebs that prevent us from seeing clearly what is right under our noses, and so …   What is debt inflation?   Inflation is a contributory cause in high prices, but inflation is not the same as high prices. Inflation is a government caused market distortion, a reduction in the purchasing power of money.  Combined with currency devaluation, it can significantly erode the real value of a currency both domestically and internationally.   There are, we know, numerous ways to discharge debt. Ordinary people discharge debt by increasing their income and paying off the debt. There are different ways to increase your assets to pay off a debt. You might increase your working hours, get a raise from your boss, or turn to a life of crime and rob a bank. In any society in which criminal activity is punished, this last option is not, in the long ...

  Lamont and Gillett In proving foresight may be vain/The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men/ Gang aft agley – Robert Burns   At a minimum, the Connecticut Freedom of Information (FOI) law and its Commission, responsible for enforcing the FOI law, have been entrusted by the state legislature to assure an open political process and to guard against insufferable political effronteries to the law.   In brief, the law stipulates that politicians and administrators of the public’s business cannot do anything they like all the time; there are limits to the nearly limitless arrogance of Connecticut’s one-party state, always verging, as is common in one-party states the world over, on the razor’s   edge of imperious arrogance.   In an age in which politicians wish to conduct the public’s business privately and off the record, the internet and legal propinquity threaten to spoil the best laid plans of mice and men.   That is exactly what happened whe...

News on debates – indeed, news about any subject – is always after-event reporting. Every observant reporter and columnist knows that a modern debate, federal or state, and a report on a debate are two different events.   Most scholars agree that widespread coverage of the Lincoln/Douglas debates – note the plural – was broadly “fair” precisely because newspapers at the time were partisan. Carrying on a tradition since the first raucous presidential debate between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, the two principal combatants in the Lincoln Douglas debates could rely on a party committed media. To put it in rude terms, Lincoln had his media and Douglas his.   There were seven Lincoln Douglas debates impartially disbursed throughout Illinois. The media at the time was stenographic. Debates were reported nearly in full, but the Republican media touched up Lincoln’s remarks while leaving Douglas’ remarks as they were. The Democrat media did the same. When modern scholars a...

Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past – George Orwell   The quote most often deployed in defense of the sentiment – “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing” -- has been misattributed, Reuter’s fact checkers tell us, to Edmond Burke. A cynic might say, “Well, if Burke didn’t say it, he should have.”   Scouring Burke’s texts, the fact checkers have concluded Burke may have said something similar, but no cigar. This is what Burke said: “No man, who is not inflamed by vain-glory into enthusiasm, can flatter himself that his single, unsupported, desultory, unsystematic endeavors are of power to defeat the subtle designs and united Cabals of ambitious citizens. When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.”   For anyone who has spent much time wandering through the dim corridors of politics, The ...