Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

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Earmark Reform, Connecticut’s Corrupt-Cup Overflows

Ain’t it perfectly honest to charge a good price and make a profit on my investment and foresight? Of course, it is. Well, that’s honest graft -- George Plunkitt of Tammany Hall Corruption, we know, is a staple of kingly arrogance. In a unitary one party state, corruption corrupts absolutely, for obvious reasons. When power remains undivided in a state, the only guard against political corruption, so we have been told, is a vigilant media. A nudge from the Feds and a six month old attempt by Connecticut Republicans to reform the state’s earmarks structure has awakened the virtuous juices of a handful of Connecticut’s reporters. About six months ago, Republican leaders in the General Assembly – state representative in the House Vince Candelora and state senators Rob Sampson and Steve Harding -- issued a mini-manifesto on earmarks and ended by “ proposing the following legislative reforms which would apply to all...

Murphy on the US Iran War

Things are not going well, U.S. Senator Chris Murphy told a Hartford paper. Perhaps Murphy should bone up on his Carl von Clausewitz, the Prussian general and military theorist who wrote in his seminal work On War ( Vom Kriege ) that "War is the continuation of politics by other means." Clausewitz meant that war serves as a political instrument that secures the objectives of diplomacy when peaceful measures fail. The political goal, however, must always guide the conduct and intensity of military action. When President Ronald Reagan was asked what goal he would pursue with the Soviet Union during his presidency, Reagan answered, “We win, they lose.” Clausewitz was not simply theorizing. He was stating an incontrovertible historical fact. Diplomacy with Germany and Japan at the conclusion of World War II was much easier than it had been prior to the winning of the war. So it has been throughout history, as Murphy might say, Period! “Trump has ...

God and Man at Yale Revisited

Commentary on a pending visit of U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon to the Buckley Institute , located on the grounds of Yale University, has been scattered and occasionally scatterbrained. The Yale Daily News tells us, “In an interview, Yale President Maurie McInnis lauded the Buckley Institute for scheduling an event with U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon, whose department has investigated Yale and slashed federal funding for universities.” Driving the point home, the paper adds, “McMahon is slated to speak about diversity, gender and the government’s education policies at an April 16 event hosted by the Buckley Institute, a group that brings conservative voices to campus. The secretary, a member of President Donald Trump’s cabinet, oversees a Department of Education that has canceled billions of dollars’ worth of federal funding grants to universities across the country.” Much of Connecticut’s media is in danger in its news accounts of becom...

Good Friday, He Is Risen

For Christians, the Resurrection of Jesus, called the Christ, lies at the very heart of their belief and faith. Good Friday, then, is a very good day indeed. It is a day in which the promises of Jesus and those of the Old Testament were fulfilled. The New Testament is a gradual unfolding for Christians of the realization that God is with us -- in every sense of these words. God is “for us”; he will not abandon creatures he has made in his image. God is trustworthy, and we believe in his promises. He is alive in our lives. This is the sum and substance of Christianity. Jesus offers his disciples a foretaste of his divinity in New Testament accounts. The resurrected Jesus tells doubting Thomas, “You have seen and you believe. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.” The apostle Peter, recognized by Christians as the rock upon which Jesus built his church, was a believer in the divinity of Jesus – up to a point. Three times he denied he knew J...

The Homeschooling “Equivalency” Bill

The Homeschooling “Equivalency” Bill Studies have shown that some alternatives to public schooling – private schooling, Catholic schooling, charter schooling, and homeschooling – provide their graduates with superior educations. The Amistad Academy in Connecticut, Connecticut Commentary noted, was such an institution. Nationally, some public education facilities have been failing for quite some time to provide an adequate education, most especially in urban environments or in suburban poverty pockets, where the traditional family structure – mom, dad and children – has eroded over the years. All four alternative educational facilities have been viewed for decades as pedagogical replacement centers for parents dissatisfied with the quality of education provided by public schools. Were this not the case, the number of alternative education facilities would have diminished rather than increased during the past three decades. Much to the dismay of public ed...

Fazio In Tolland

Fazio Ryan Fazio – running on the Republican ticket for governor of Connecticut against a number of possible primary opponents and Governor Ned Lamont, who occasionally presents himself as moderate on economic issues and a neo-progressive on cultural issues – was regrettably late for a meeting in Tolland, Connecticut, as was this longtime political commentator. The weather, trying its best to move into spring, was not obliging, and the roads were clogged with traffic, delaying Fazio, who was coming from downstate. I was late because I had gone to The Radial Coffee Company in Vernon rather than Tolland, 10 miles distant. Barbara Broadrick, the co-owner along with her husband of Radial, was in a commiserating mood. We both like dogs. “It’s only about 11 minutes from here.” She and her husband had started the company a few years ago. Business was brisk and plentiful enough to allow its owners to have opened multiple outlets. The service space wa...