Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

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Connecticut’s Systemic Problems Rescripted

Lamont Hartford Courant reporter Livi Stanford writes in a front page story -- CCSU president steps down – “Toro’s resignation follows the scandal-plagued departures of two Connecticut State Colleges and Universities chancellors. Last week, an independent review examining Connecticut State Colleges and Universities system’s response to sexual harassment allegations against former interim Chancellor O. John Maduko found ‘serious failures in how CSCU responded to concerns about sexual harassment and gaps in the Board’s process for selecting the former interim chancellor,’ according to an announcement Board of Regents Interim Chair Ari Santiago sent to the CSCU community.” Toro is “Central Connecticut State University President Zulma Toro [who] resigned Wednesday following an investigation into a complaint alleging the workplace culture under her leadership was oppressive, bullying and intimidating.” The reaction to Toro’s resignation is not at all unusual. ...

Mamdani vs Columbus Day

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 takes a vacation

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 ...

Politics, Straight Up

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 ...

IMPURA

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...

Lamont Fazio Debate, It Ain’t a Lincoln Douglas Debate

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...