Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

The Homeric Odyssey, the world’s most justly celebrated homecoming story, is a fable about the salvation of more than Odysseus. The recent film The Odyssey may save Hollywood as well. People, all of whom are story-swapping creatures, still yearn for captivating narratives, and Hollywood has been drifting away from captivating narratives for decades, part of the reason it has lost a good portion of its audience. Casablanca , staring Humphry Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, was captivating; the cartoonish Toy Story, the nation’s first entirely computer-animated feature film, was merely entertaining and novel.   Literary scholars are still disputing whether The Odyssey attributed to Homer, a blind poet, was written by a single hand or whether it was a product of multiple narratives, much like the books of the Bible.   And, of course, scientifically minded historians hope to clear up any confusion through a discovery of historical facts. A movie soon to be available, The Odyssey , i...

Someone – not a fan of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s political redoubt – has given us a brief preview of DSA’s political and cultural platform.   And here it is: An oxymoron is an impossible combination of terms, such as “square circle” or “democrat socialist.”   We know from history that socialism, once matured, is both anti-democratic and anti-republican. The official title of the Soviet Union was “the union of soviet socialistic republics.” In fact, the union was a political construct that demanded at the point of a sword or a grueling stretch in Joseph Stalin’s Gulag Archipelago absolute and unquestioned compliance with an overbearing command state. The central command was Stalin and his Pretorian Guard, or Hitler and his black shirts, ruthlessly anti-democratic and anti-republican by nature.   The official shortened title of Germany’s post Weimar Republic under Adolf Hitler was the Nazi Party, the Nationa...

Roger Sherman -- a Connecticut delegate to The Constitutional Convention and the only founding father who signed all four key U.S. founding documents: the Continental Association, Declaration of Independence, Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution -- proposed on July 16, 1787 a plan of governance that solved a seemingly intractable problem. The larger and smaller states had been engaging in a representational debate that had brought the national Convention to a standstill. The solution to the problem, called at the time The Great Compromise or the Connecticut Compromise, was one of those solutions that really did solve a pressing problem.   The proposal by Sherman and Oliver Ellsworth, also a delegate to the national convention, answered the question: How should representation in the new Constitutional national Senate be apportioned among large and small states?   The large states believed that representation should be based proportionally on the contribution ...

In the age of Google, it is becoming increasingly impossible to plead ignorance, especially when the prospective dunce is a U.S. Senator.   Connecticut’s Junior U.S. Senator Chris Murphy, not up for reelection until January 3, 2031 -- plenty of time for “misspeaks” to be flushed down the memory hole of the average Connecticut voter -- has been denounced by Morning Joe’s Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough, neither of whom are ardent supporters of proto-fascist, according to left-leaning Democrats and media outlets, President Donald Trump.   The always entertaining New York Post puts it this way: “MS NOW’s Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski blasted Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) for not denouncing a controversial Mamdani-endorsed democratic socialist – urging Dems to ‘call out crazy’ within their own party … During MS NOW’s ‘Meet the Press’ Sunday, Murphy feigned ignorance when he was asked about Darializa Avila Chevalier, the contentious House candidate who called forme...

A fifteen minute conversation with any free-market economist would uncover plans to reduce the cost of everything. Below, the attentive reader will find the essence of such a discussion.   Everywhere in the United States, the law of supply and demand continues to hold sway, although we find here and there performance politicians who pretend never to have heard of it.   The Mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani, is one of the more persuasive pretenders.   The law of supply and demand holds that the cost of goods and services is directly related to the supply of goods and services. Energy, to choose one product, becomes more expensive as its supply diminishes. The same is true of housing. If the demand for housing is constant and the supply diminishes, housing becomes more expensive, further diminishing supply.   Here in Connecticut, new housing is becoming too expensive to produce. The expense may be mitigated in one of two ways. State government must pro...

 Mamdani For those unfamiliar with politics in the good old USA, it may be necessary to point out the difference between a primary and a general election.   A general election is a cross party struggle, and a primary is an interior party struggle.   Democrat Party partisans in New York City are still celebrating their victories in the New York City primary race, and they hope to extend their forward momentum beyond New York. It has been rumored that socialist squad leader Alexandria Cassio Cortez (AOC) has her eye on Chuck Schumer’s U.S. Senate seat. AOC has yet to issue a categorical denial that Schumer may be the next target of ambitious New York socialists and Schumer, for his part, has most recently dressed himself up in the usual socialist rhetorical apparel. Hey Schumer, Pelosi, Blumenthal – you’re next.   The same is true in Connecticut, where long-serving U.S. House member John Larson finds himself under primary assault from young anti-establishment D...