Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

"You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time" -- attributed to Abe Lincoln   The slam on Ryan Fazio, running for governor of Connecticut on the Republican ticket, is that he is a political nerd. Some, managing to cough up a chuckle, have compared him to Clark Kent, without bothering to ask whether he is a political superman as well. His superficial critics may have underestimated him.   It is true that Fazio is a master of detail, as may be seen in virtually all his comments on budget and spending matters. As a general rule, the voting public on both sides of the aisle tend to drowse when budget figures are produced, largely because budget makers have introduced into their calculations a welter of confusing detail that allows quite a few rhetorical escape hatches. A politician not interested in “fooling most of the people most of the time,” Abe Lincoln’s formation, will deploy ...

Antisthenes I: You’ve said there is no political problem that does not lend itself to a political solution, and yet problems associated with improvident spending that are everywhere politically caused – such as inflation, excessive spending and state debt, and seemingly endless political campaigning – are rarely addressed. Why?   C: It does not benefit an incumbent party in power committed to ever-increasing spending to settle such problems. In Connecticut especially, but throughout the nation as well, automatic spending increases, so called “fixed costs”, strip legislatures of their   constitutional obligations. Constitutionally, legislatures are tasked with getting and spending. That means that every dollar drawn into the treasury through taxation and every dollar disbursed by the legislature should be voted up or down by small “r” republican legislators. Fixed costs loosen such constitutional obligations. If fixed costs are not unconstitutional, they most certainly are...

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 ...