Lamont, Malloy Without The Quills?

Following Governor Ned Lamont's presentation of his budget to the General Assembly, the question remains: Is Ned Lamont Malloy II? He may turn out to be Malloy without the quills

Lamont’s budget includes hefty increases in taxes; as defined here, a tax is any dollar that moves from private wallets into the public treasury. Accumulatively, Lamont’s tax extensions – they are not a revocation of tax exemptions – closely approaches the tax increases of the Malloy administration. Taxes under the Lamont administration will also be made more progressive according to the reliable Marxian formula: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs."

Because of past economic sleight of hand, the neediest recipient of state dollars, it turns out, is the state treasury. In the past, when expenses have gone up and revenue has plummeted, Connecticut has increased taxes to recover ensuing deficits. Lamont repeats the process in a higher key.

Blumenthal’s War And Progressive Socialism

“O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams” – Shakespeare, Hamlet

Dick Blumenthal, Connecticut’s progressive US Senator, is inching dangerously close to socialist Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC). The distance between progressive radicals and socialists is now hair thin.

Early in February, Blumenthal Tweeted, “Climate change is an existential crisis. I’m proud to co-sponsor the #GreenNewDeal—affirming our commitment to develop a plan to tackle the devastating effects of climate change, create high-paying jobs in renewable energy and address disparities in communities affected by pollution.”

The Progressive Menace In Connecticut: Vernon RTC Keynote

I’d like to thank Bob Hurd for inviting me here so that we might have a chat together. I’d also like to congratulate Dan Champagne for wining a slot in the General Assembly. He will be stepping into state Senator Tony Guglielmo large shoes, but there is no doubt he will be able to fashion his own foot print.

Welcome to the viper pit, Dan. You may want to stomp on a rumor that’s been floating around. It’s being said in some quarters that you ran for the state Senate because you missed butting heads with Mike Winkler. Michael is at a safe remove from Dan over in the House, but legislators sometimes bump into each other in the elevators and corridors of the General Assembly, not to mention its intersectional bathrooms.

WHY LINCOLN REMAINS BASIC TO AMERICAN POLITICS

Remarks by Chris Powell
Vernon Republican Town Committee
American Legion Post 14
Vernon, Connecticut
Saturday, February 16, 2019

For the first two decades of my adult life I was a Democrat. I became a Republican back around 1991, if for peculiar reasons that may be best explained by a scene in the old Marx Brothers movie “Horse Feathers.”

Maybe you remember it. Groucho has been appointed president of Huxley College and announces that the problem with Huxley is that it has been neglecting football for education. So he appoints himself coach of the football team in time to coach it for a game against Huxley’s big rival, Darwin College.

There’s a very confusing play on the field and Groucho ends up in the Darwin huddle. Groucho’s son runs over to him and says, “Dad, Dad -- You’re coaching the wrong team.”

Groucho replies: “I know that but our team wouldn’t listen to me.”

The Progressives Are Coming, The Progressives Are Coming...

This Vernon RTC keynote address appeared first in NEI

So then, let’s attack the question head on and ask – what do Connecticut progressives want?

The right answer is deceptively simple. They want MORE – more taxes, more spending, more favorable notices in the media, even though they are showered daily with editorial encomiums, and more government regulation, provided an impermeable wall can be constructed around the murder of late-term babies in the womb.

The only thing Connecticut progressives don’t want more of is less spending. They want to break down the barriers that stand between their revolutionary ambition to re-invent Connecticut as they consolidate power the way they have proposed to consolidate school districts, by eliminating the influences of what G., K. Chesterton once called “the little platoons of democracy,” mediating institutions such as town governments, churches, voluntary associations and the like. A famous caricaturist summed up the ethos of progressivism when he said, “What is the point of having absolute power, if you are not prepared to abuse it?” MORE HERE -- New England Intelligencer

The Lamont Budget

Deducing Governor Ned Lamont’s budget proposal from meetings he has held with Democrat leaders in the General Assembly is a little bit like deducing Shakespeare from lamb chops.

Here is Senate Pro Tem Martin Looney  on their talks, according to a piece in CTMirror: “’We did talk a little bit, just in general, about the nature of the sales tax and the fact it was structured when our economy was somewhat entirely dependent upon products and goods, and now it’s heavily dependent upon services,’ Looney said. ‘We did say, basically, the two options to address the sales tax are, one, a base expansion, and the second is a rate increase.’”

Murphy On The Death Of Connecticut’s Insurance Industry

A Republican American story notes, “A top Democratic lawmaker is sponsoring legislation to raise the state sales tax from 6.35 percent to 6.85 percent to help cities and towns.”

The top Democrat lawmaker is, of course, President Pro Tem of the State Senate Martin Looney, well positioned to sweep dedicated funds into the general fund, the graveyard of noble Democrat intentions.

A Looney Bill: Reinventing Connecticut

Now that Democrats have reclaimed the castle from marauding Republicans, State Senator Martin Looney is flexing his considerable muscles. Looney is the President Pro Tem of the State Senate and, as such, is one of two important gatekeepers steering bills through the legislature; the other is Speaker of the State House of Representatives Joe Aresimowicz, quite literally bought by unions. Aresimowicz is education coordinator employed by AFSCME.

Looney’s political turf is Half of New Haven, which last saw a Republican mayor 68 years ago, and Hamden, politically a vassal of New Haven, home of Yale College. Looney has been in politics for a quarter century, and his tenure has taught him a thing or two. Both Looney and Aresimowicz are progressives very much in the mold of Presidential contender Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, socialist presidential contender Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the new face of Democrat socialism, a US Representative from New York's 14th congressional district, which  includes the eastern part of The Bronx and portions of north-central Queens in New York City.

A Conversation With Peter Wolfgang

“The act of defending any of the cardinal virtues has today all the exhilaration of a vice” -- A Defense of Humilities, The Defendant, 1901, G.K. Chesterton

Small “o” orthodox Christians of a certain age will be familiar with the cardinal virtues. They are: prudence, temperance, fortitude and justice – all under attack by a secular culture that, judging by Hollywood or Washington DC standards, appears to have won the battle. But, never fear, the four cardinal virtues form the breastplate of a church against which, its founder once proclaimed, the gates of Hell shall not prevail.

The Cardinal virtues, St. Augustine tells us, better enable us to pursue the good life: “To live well is nothing other than to love God with all one's heart, with all one's soul and with all one's efforts; from this,  it comes about that love is kept whole and uncorrupted (through temperance). No misfortune can disturb it (and this is fortitude). It obeys only [God] (and this is justice), and is careful in discerning things, so as not to be surprised by deceit or trickery (and this is prudence).”

Malloy, The Sanctuary Governor

“We are continuing to work with and await guidance from the appropriate federal agencies on screening measures that will be taken. With that said, if refugees – many who are children fleeing a horrific war-torn country—seek and are granted asylum after a rigorous security process, we should and will welcome them in Connecticut,” so said a spokesperson for Governor Dannel Malloy,  according to a piece in the Hartford Courant.

There are some obvious difficulties with this passage. Syria is administered by an odious dictator, perhaps even more ruthless than the father who preceded him, and rigorous screening measures such as those mentioned by Malloy are not always possible in horrific, war-torn countries.

Of course, a screening examination of even the most cursory kind is never possible in the case of illegal aliens from wretched countries such as Honduras and Guatemala who, crossing through Mexico, bum-rush the US border and thereafter become nearly invisible tucked within a welter of humanity – unless they call attention to themselves by violating a law other than the immigration laws winked at in sanctuary cities. Such difficulties have not stopped Malloy from opening the doors of Connecticut to unverified illegal immigrants, some of whom may be found in Connecticut’s sanctuary cities such as New Haven.