Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Sen. Dick Blumenthal General Assembly Members Have Vacated the Premises. It’s Over … For Now BLOG   The Blumenthals, father Dick and son Matt, were there in the picture featured on the front page, top of the fold, in the Hartford Courant story, “ With tone of defiance and new laws, Connecticut leaders push back hard against Trump and ICE .”   Both were smiling broadly as Governor Ned Lamont signed Bill 349 which, the Courant reminds us, “allows citizens to sue federal immigration agents if they believe that their civil rights have been violated. In addition, the bill prevents all law enforcement officers, including from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, known as ICE [Federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement], from wearing masks, except in limited situations.”   Laws restraining police are old hat in Connecticut. Police “ reform laws ” affecting the personal partial immunity of individual police officers reduce the inclination of recruits to jo...

Antisthenes Connecticut’s spending problem   Spending cuts are rare in “the land of steady [bad] habits.” A blushingly honest Democrat will tell you, “You can’t cut spending in Connecticut without cutting your own political throat – in particular, state union employee votes and the invaluable boots-on-the ground campaign assistance provided by unionized state workers, who unfailingly know which side their bread is buttered on.   An AI replacement   Connecticut’s Democrat dominated General Assembly has passed a bill regulating Artificial Intelligence (AI).   Every morning of their waking lives, socialists arise weeping tears of blood and vowing vengeance on the rich. AI is fertile ground both for the rich and hopeful aspiring entrepreneurs.   At this point, very early in the game, all AI regulations and all costs associated with them rest on shaky predictions -- because there is no such thing as a “perfect” undeveloped technology. In a sane Connec...

  Antisthenes   Interviewer: We haven’t talked to you in quite some time.   Cynic : You’ve been denying yourself a great pleasure.   I: Connecticut U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal questioned Department of War chief Pete Hegseth recently. Blumenthal’s opening interrogatory gambit was as follows: “I know you have characterized this war as an astonishing military success. But the American people aren’t buying it. One point is irrefutable: which is, Americans never succeed in war unless the American people are behind it. And if what you are seeing as success now is winning, I would hate to see what losing looks like, because none of the shifting and contradictory objectives of the war have been achieved so far…”   Cynic: Yes. Responding in a like manner, Hegseth might have said, “If, as you suggest, the U.S. military engagement with Iran, a notorious financier of   anti-American terrorism throughout the Middle East for roughly 40 years, must be called...

CT General Assembly “No man’s life, liberty or property are safe while the Legislature is in session” -- Gideon John Tucker (1826–1899), American lawyer, newspaper editor, and New York politician   The tax rebate check we were told for (weeks) was “in the mail” is no longer in the mail. Instead, the Hartford Courant tells us, “hundreds of millions of dollars will be funneled to cities and towns in order to avoid local property tax increases, as mayors and first selectmen will be urged to hold the line on spending in the next fiscal year.”   Rebates, rather than tax cuts, are instantly revocable at the pleasure of Democrat leaders in the state General Assembly. Rebates should be regarded by state taxpayers and reporters as temporary political coupons designed to bring into the Democrat Party fold hard pressed voters who surely know the difference between a permanent or semi-permanent price reduction and a temporary coupon offered at the pleasure of a provider of goods ...

The headline in the Hartford Courant likely will not be reassuring to Hartford residents: “ Longtime CT city commissioner ousted. Another leaves too; backlash immediate and sharply worded .”   Dismissed, according to the Courant, was “Bruce Rubenstein, an attorney and member of the Internal Audit Commission since 2013… not reappointed when city Treasurer Carmen Sierra” thought it proper to appoint attorney Catherine Torres to the Internal Audit Commission in Rubenstein’s place.   Asked why he thought he was not reappointed to the audit commission, Rubenstein said, “I believe that she (Sierra) knew we were talking about an audit and investigation of the pension fund; she would have known we were interested in an audit… The pension is billions of dollars … if a treasurer opposes an audit, something is wrong. I don’t look the other way with allegations.”   Sierra complimented Rubenstein as she showed him the door. She said, according to the Courant, “she had an o...

Republican State House leader Vince Candelora has a gift for summarizing in a few pithy sentences legislative attempts to solve problems majority Democrats in Connecticut‘s General Assembly have made.   Objecting to the “final” version of a bill many homeschooling parents in Connecticut find unnecessarily intrusive and needlessly complex, Candelora said the bill “really misses the mark, if we are concerned about children falling through the cracks who are being abused,” the precipitant cause of the now revised homeschooling bill favored by Democrats. “That’s what our focus should be. [The bill drafted by Democrats is] an attempt to regulate homeschooling, and that’s not our issue. Our issue is when children are in DFC [Connecticut Department of Children and Families] custody or a report of DFC abuse or neglect [has been made], how are those children monitored? The focus [of the present adjusted homeschooling bill], is registering homeschooled children. [The bill] is the first s...