Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

    If a state-imposed regulation increases the cost of homeschooling in all state municipalities, which organ of government – the state or the municipality – should absorb the costs?   Should a state tax credit be given to homeschooling parents?   A parent who chooses to homeschool his children is not relieved of the tax paid for public education. In effect, he or she is paying twice to educate his child: once for an anonymous child who receives the benefit of the public school tax dollars that his child is not receiving, and again for the additional costs of homeschooling.   And the costs added to homeschooling by Senate President Pro Tempore Looney’s imperative reforms, according to a March 15 th story in the Hartford Courant – “Looney: We have to keep moving” -- is sizeable. Education Commissioner Charlene Russell-Tucker said, the Courant noted, “that 1,800 children left public schools for homeschooling in the last fiscal year, along with anothe...

Brownson Orestes Brownson, (1803-1876), went through the political and religious enthusiasms of his day like a hot knife through butter. His forward motion progress came to an abrupt halt when, friendless afterwards, he formerly joined the Catholic Church. Some scholars theorize that Brownson was in his day America’s Cardinal John Henry Newman, author of The Development of Christian Doctrine and principally responsible, after his own conversion to Catholicism, for founding the influential Oxford Movement in Western Europe.   During one of his intellectual meanderings from atheism, through Transcendentalism, to what Hilaire Belloc later would call The Path to Rome, Brownson, the author of The American Republic , would insist that throughout history there were only two political parties: the party of stasis, and the party of forward movement, falsely identified by our current neo-progressives as progressivism.   Brownson’s observation remains true today. But how does one...

  Lamont The recently proposed omnibus emergency certification bill -- a catch basin for previous legislative measures that had been presented to Connecticut’s General Assembly and, for one reason or another, had not passed muster – has been modified by Governor Ned Lamont’s veto and intervention.   No Democrat legislator protested the original measure on process grounds, and the most important question – “Who benefits by stuffing parts of unpassed bills into an omnibus emergency measure?”—was never answered, because the question was never asked.   The short answer to this question is, as might be expected – tax thirsty single-party partisan Democrats benefit. Their emergency omnibus bill allows Connecticut’s ruling Democrat Party to skirt normative processes, and it creates one measure from many separate pieces that may be voted into law without confronting the usual inconveniences: public hearings; debates in various relevant committees; legislative process barrie...

Blumenthal U.S. Senator Chris Murphy’s response to the largely successful assault by Israel and the United States on Iran’s terrorist regime was slightly schizophrenic when compared with U.S Senator Dick Blumenthal’s forthright op-ed in the Hartford Courant supporting the brave resistance of Ukraine in the face of continuing Russian aggression, Reality of Inhumanity I found in Ukraine .   At the beginning of Vladimir Putin’s unanswered assault on Ukraine, Blumenthal visited the besieged country and beseeched the Biden administration to send jets to Ukraine so that Ukraine might effectively answer Putin’s aggression. His pleadings went unanswered.   From his first to his most recent visit to Ukraine, Blumenthal’s messaging has been consistent and, much to his credit, persistent, even though Democrat President Biden appeared to turn a deaf ear to his pleadings.   Here is a takeaway from Blumenthal’s most recent op-ed:   Ukraine can win, preserving its s...

"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely" – Lord Acton   The word “emergency” is wrapped in laugh quotes in the Hartford Courant story “Senate clashes, passes ‘emergency’ bill. Both major political parties, we now know, have discovered the political usefulness of politically created “emergencies” during and after the COVID pandemic.   The Hartford Courant top of the fold story -- “ Connecticut Senate clashes over emergency session over warehouse workers, nonprofits, taxes, bottle returns ” -- is deliciously sardonic. We are told, “In an all-day marathon, the [Democrat dominated] Senate also voted 26-10 on mostly party lines for an omnibus, 121-page bill on a series of issues that were unrelated to each other.   Ordinarily an “omnibus” emergency certification bill would be regarded as an oxymoron because emergency certification, which usually bypasses legislative oversight and public commentary, commonly targets one rather than multiple ...

Cicero Freedom suppressed again and again regains bites with keener fangs than freedom never endangered -- Cicero   The primary system in Connecticut was initiated to purge politics of party bosses such as the formidable John Bailey. Governor Ella Grasso, the first woman in the nation to serve as governor in her own right, was a product of the Bailey system, now defunct. Under the boss system, the party boss selected candidates for major state positions and presented them for affirmation at party conventions; a delegate convention being conventional and traditional, incumbents manage to retain their seats – why disturb the political universe? – and the façade of democracy is preserved.   However, there is a downside to all primaries preceding party conventions.   In semi-anarchic modern times, the candidates chosen in primaries often are not acceptable to voters in general elections. A primary choice may be a Hobson’s choice – that is a “choice” that is no cho...