Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Big oops! Like any washed up politician Tom Daschle cashed in after his term of service was over and joined gold plated money making machine InterMedia Advisors of Englewood, Colorado, which hired him to sooth their clients. Daschle is a limited partner and chairman of that firm's executive advisory board, and is also an independent consultant to InterMedia Advisors LLP of New York City. The job also came with a car and a private chauffer; so Daschle thought. But it turned out that Daschle was supposed to have been paying taxes on the service and didn’t, which put him in arrears to the US treasury for about three years. When Treasury thugs came looking for him, shortly after the new Health and Human Services Secretary was plucked from obscurity by the Obama administration to socialize the nation’s health system, he and his accountant “fixed” the oversight. Daschle failed to report income from the use of a car service in the amounts of $73,031 in 2005, $89,129 in 2006 and $93,096 in...

Mark Steyn says we’re on our way to Europe, a trip he’d rather avoid. But why not have a few laughs along the route to utterly predictable ruin? Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, is on TV explaining the (at this point the congregation shall fall to its knees and prostrate itself) "stimulus." "How," asks the lady from CBS, "does $335 million in STD [Sexually Transmitted Disease] prevention stimulate the economy?" "I'll tell you how," says Speaker Pelosi. "I'm a big believer in prevention. And we have, er… there is a part of the bill on the House side that is about prevention. It's about it being less expensive to the states to do these measures." Makes a lot of sense. If we have more STD prevention, it will be safer for loose women to go into bars and pick up feckless men, thus stimulating the critical beer and nuts and jukebox industries. To do this, we need trillion-dollar deficits, which our children and grandchildren w...

Courts have often recognized that the first amendment rights of students in public schools are "are not automatically coextensive with the rights of adults in other settings" -- Bethel School Dist. No. 403 v. Fraser . Indeed, first amendment rights are not automatically coextensive with the rights of adults in a home environment; just try calling your Mom a “douchbag” and applying to a court afterwards on the grounds that your Mom, in punishing you, had violated your first amendment rights. One of the reasons schools may on occasion and with good reason abridge the first amendment rights of children is because, in the absence of parents, school official act in locus parenti , on behalf of parents. The locus is important in deciding just how far a school may go in trimming constitutional rights. The authority of a school to abridge a fundamental right in law is related to the place at which the offense occurs, because the authority of school administrators lapses when their ch...

In the first few weeks of his presidency, Barack Obama has been, true to his word, an active president. He produced a “stimulus package” that represents a massive intrusion of the federal government into the private market place, an extension of a program hastily developed during the last frenetic days of the Bush administration. He has taken steps to keep his campaign promise to close the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, though it is still undecided what do with “detainees” such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed , the mastermind of the 9/11 attack on New York. The President has sent former diplomatic wunderkind George Mitchell to the Middle East to broker a peace between warring factions in Israel. And he has shown that his Middle East policy prescriptions during the campaign were serious by opening an entente with the Arab World. Iran, very much a part of that world, promises to be his stone of stumbling. The US-based International Institute for Strategic Studies on Wednesday conclud...

A minute by minute account of the impeachment of now former Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

It’s a tangled affair, but John Coleman has written the best short history of the global warming poofery. “The key players are now all in place in Washington and in state governments across America to officially label carbon dioxide as a pollutant and enact laws that tax we citizens for our carbon footprints. Only two details stand in the way, the faltering economic times and a dramatic turn toward a colder climate. The last two bitter winters have lead to a rise in public awareness that CO2 is not a pollutant and is not a significant greenhouse gas that is triggering runaway global warming. “How did we ever get to this point where bad science is driving big government we have to struggle so to stop it?”

Writing in Politico , Rep. Darrell Issa of California, the ranking Republican on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, reveals that only 7% of the so-called American Recovery and Reinvestment Act will be “injected into the economy by the end of fiscal year 2009. More than $200 billion of “stimulus” funds will be spent between fiscal year 2010 and fiscal year 2019 — long after the recession is projected to be over.” “Instead of injecting new life into the economy, we’re seeing a massive expansion of government. The bill by Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Appropriations Committee Chairman Dave Obey contains $137 billion for the creation of 32 new programs — that’s 38 percent of all spending in the current bill. Seventeen of these new programs have never been authorized by the Congress. This is on top of the $76 billion being spent to expand 60 existing government programs — 19 of which have been described as ‘ineffective’ or ‘results not demonstrated’ by the Office of Manageme...

Actor Benicio del Toro, who plays Che Guevara in an upcoming film called “Che,” walked out on reporters who questioned him a little too closely on the real Che. "I'm getting uncomfortable," Benicio del Toro said after fielding a question about his new movie's portrayal of the Bolivian and Cuban revolutions. "I'm done. I'm done, I hope you write whatever you want. I don't give a damn,” The Washington Times reports. The reviews in Castro’s Cuba were more soothing: “'Del Toro is spectacular in the role of Che, not only in his physical resemblance but also in his brilliant interpretation,' wrote Granma, the official newspaper of the Cuban Communist Party. 'After more than five hours of screening, the Cuban public gave its endorsement with a strong ovation.'” The good news is that Che – the actor, not the real McCoy – executed no reporters. Che's preference -- the real Che, not the actor -- was a bullet to the back of the head, a grace...

In a 60-30 roll call vote, the Senate has confirmed Timothy Geithner as Treasury Secretary. According to an Associated Press report: “On this vote, a ‘yes’ vote was a vote to confirm and a ‘no’ vote was a vote against confirmation. “Voting ‘yes’ were 49 Democrats, 10 Republicans and 1 independent. “Voting ‘no’ were 3 Democrats, 30 Republicans and 1 independent.” On Jan 23, the Hartford Courant reported: “The [Finance] committee vote [in the US Senate] came a day after Geithner appeared before the panel to apologize for what he called 'careless mistakes' in failing to pay $34,000 in taxes earlier in the decade, when he worked at the International Monetary Fund. “ Geithner paid the back taxes plus interest for the years 2003 and 2004 after being audited by the Internal Revenue Service. But he did not pay taxes he owed for 2001 and 2002, even though he had made the same mistakes for those years, until shortly before he was nominated by Obama last November to be treasury secret...

The new Administration had not yet begun when a bill to enlarge SCHILD, an insurance plan supposedly for children and twice previously vetoed by President Bush, was passed by the House with no amendments allowed. One significant change is that new immigrants no longer have to verify their status to qualify for inclusion. This quasi invitation to free health care is an incentive to Mexican residents to move to the United States. Still unveiled is Senator Kennedy’s task force, which he, long determined to play a major role in health care, organized to write the health-care bill. Still another player is President Obama’s nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services, Tom Daschle, former Senate Majority Leader. Simultaneously approved by the President is Daschle’s new Federal Health Board (FHB). He will head it. Its members will be named by President Obama with the consent of the Senate. The FHB, which Daschle likens to the Federal Reserve Board, will make decisions in health care as ...

Here’s hoping that the next time Speaker of the US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi goes to confession – the lady confesses to being a Catholic – the priest in the confessional box has the presence of mind to have an economist seated beside him. Pelosi believes that contraception and other family planning services, among which must abortion must be included, “help states meet their financial needs” and ultimately reduce costs. This sunburst came during a confab with George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s “This Week.” STEPHANOPOULOS: Hundreds of millions of dollars to expand family planning services. How is that stimulus? PELOSI: Well, the family planning services reduce cost. They reduce cost. The states are in terrible fiscal budget crises now and part of what we do for children's health, education and some of those elements are to help the states meet their financial needs. One of those - one of the initiatives you mentioned, the contraception, will reduce costs to the states and to...

In 2007, the Competitive Enterprise Institute compiled a report titled “The Nation’s Top Ten Worst State Attorneys General.” Topping the list at number one was Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal; Elliot Spitzer, drummed out of office by a sex scandal, was third. Bill Lockyer, number two in the 2007 listing, has since been elevated to State Treasurer of California, which is teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. If Blumenthal does decide to run for governor, there are ten other “worst” attorneys general who will be vying for the first position. “Over the past decade,” said Hans Bader, Counsel for Special Projects at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, “attorneys general have increasingly usurped the role of state legislatures and Congress by using litigation to impose interstate and national regulations and to extract money from out-of-state defendants. The worst offenders flaunt such abuse of power, with the most notorious of the lot … boasting that he ‘has redefined th...

There are signs in the wind, Managing Editor of the Journal Inquirer Chris Powell writes in one of his columns, that the powers that be in state government are in the process of reverting to the usual template now that the economy has tanked in Connecticut. That template involves lots of talking the talk about spending cuts. But when push comes to shove, the ladies and gents in state government ultimately reach an accord that allows for tax increases. “It may be easiest for Rell to start conceding by agreeing with Democratic legislators to increase the state income tax on the rich. A tax system's progressivity is usually a fair issue. But the degree of progressivity should be fixed as a general rule and determined on its own merits, not adjusted opportunistically whenever, as now, the government class wants to fend off pressure to restore some relationship between the government's income and the public's. “Of course no one advocating raising taxes on the rich in Connecticu...

EXECUTIVE ORDER - - - - - - - REVIEW AND DISPOSITION OF INDIVIDUALS DETAINED AT THE GUANTÁNAMO BAY NAVAL BASE AND CLOSURE OF DETENTION FACILITIES By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, in order to effect the appropriate disposition of individuals currently detained by the Department of Defense at the Guantánamo Bay Naval Base (“Guantánamo”) and promptly to close the detention facilities at Guantánamo, consistent with the national security and foreign policy interests of the United States and the interests of justice, I hereby order as follows: Section 1. Definitions. As used in this order: (a) “Common Article 3” means Article 3 of each of the Geneva Conventions. (b) “Geneva Conventions” means: (i) the Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded and Sick in Armed Forces in the Field, Aug. 12, 1949 (6 UST 3114); (ii) the Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of Wounded, Sick and Shipwreck...

After an avalanche of criticism, former speaker of the State House Jim Amann has decided to look elsewhere for a job. He still wants to be governor. According to the Waterbury Republican American, “Former Republican Sen. David J. Cappiello, meanwhile, is the new senior policy adviser to super minority Senate Republicans. For $103,000 a year, he will tell them whether they should lay horizontally or vertically when Democrats steamroller them.” The ever gracious Nancy Pelosi took time in her busy schedule to bid former President George Bush farewell. His leave-taking, said the lady, "was like having a 10-ton anvil lifted from my shoulders," though it may be doubted whether such a cumbersome weight could fit on her slender and graceful shoulders. The new president, she confided to Bay area reporters, “will be great for California because he “has an entrepreneurial way of thinking, a fresh way of thinking, a commitment to the environment, a push for green jobs and reversing glo...

In a wonderfully literate preview of the Obama Era, Mark Steyn in National Review examines the pitfalls of Obamaism. “And, whether or not we get a massive federal program of rural library construction, we seem certain to get an acceleration of the grim leftward ratchet effect: “(a) more subordination of the dynamic part of the economy to arthritic government regulation; “(b) more of the remorseless annexation of health care by government, until eventually the point about whether to move to a socialized system will be entirely moot; “(c) more so-called tax cuts, a term the Democrats have successfully usurped to apply to nanny-state “credits” the government condescends to allow you in return for living your life the way they want you to; “(d) federally funded preschool and a few other entitlements that will metastasize way beyond any attempted constraints and further deform the relationship between the citizen and the state; “(e) continued incremental removal of citizens from the federal...

The unfortunately named Fredrick Dicker has announced in his New Your Post column, days after announcing that Caroline Kennedy was a sure bet to fill the departing Senator Hillary Clinton’s rather large high heels, that “Caroline Kennedy tonight withdrew her name from consideration to replace Hillary Clinton in the U.S. Senate after learning that Gov. David Paterson wasn't going to choose her, The Post has learned.” Referring to “unnamed sources, the authoritative Dicker writes, “Sources said the reason Paterson had decided not to tap the daughter of John F. Kennedy was her poor performances in media interviews and in private sessions with various officials.” Dicker is now suggesting that Andrew Cuomo may be chosen by Governor Patterson to fill Hillary's high heels.

Progressive Connecticut is the Eden of the Obama era. Whatever President Barack Obama has or will propose in coming years, it can justly be said that Connecticut has been there, done that. Does Washington have a Democrat controlled legislature? Been there, done that. Is the US treasury splashing around knee deep in debt? So are we. Does Washington believe that the nation does not have a spending problem, rather it has a revenue problem? That is and has been for decades the operative position of Connecticut Democrats in the legislature and their enablers in Connecticut ’s supportive media. Right on down the line, on nearly every important point in the Obama program, Connecticut has been tried in the fire. And we can report from Hell that few of the solutions to economic problems adopted by the Obama homunculi that populate our state legislature will work to enhance either our liberty or our prosperity. It would be helpful if some champion of free enterprise in the state, perhaps our gov...

The unfortunately named Fredric Dicker , a scrivener who writes for the authoritative New York Post is asserting in his column that “ Despite claims that he's still undecided, Gov. Paterson is ‘certain’ to pick Caroline Kennedy to replace Hillary Rodham Clinton in the US Senate, several unhappy contenders for the job have told friends and associates in recent days. ‘ Why so? Morose contenders, says Dicker, “based their conclusion on the view that Paterson, after nearly two months of indecision, would ‘greatly embarrass’ and 'entirely humiliate' Kennedy, anger her prominent political family and even offend President-elect Barack Obama by picking someone other than President John F. Kennedy's daughter.” Corruption busting Alaska Governor Sarah Palin , viewed by some Democrat accomplices in the media as lacking the experience to preside over the sleep inducing senate as Vice President, no doubt is preparing a congratulatory note to the inexperienced Caroline. There are al...

The Herald Tribune is reporting that Ingrid Mattson, president of the Hartford based Islamic Society of North America and one of many religious leaders chosen to speak at Washington's National Cathedral as a part of President-elect Barrack Obama’s inauguration, has an Hamas connection through the Holy Land Foundation, a group that has contributed money to Hamas: “Mattson has been the guest of honor at State Department dinners and has met with senior Pentagon officials during the Bush administration. She also spoke at a prayer service at the Democratic National Convention in Denver. “But in 2007 and as recently as last July, federal prosecutors in Dallas filed court documents linking the Hartford, Conn.-based Islamic society to the group Hamas, which the U.S. considers a terrorist organization. "Neither Mattson nor her organization has been charged. But prosecutors wrote in July that they had "a wide array of testimonial and documentary evidence expressly linking" th...

The new Speaker of Connecticut’s House of Representatives, Chris Donovan , has hired as a senior advisor, at a salary of $120,000-per-year, the outgoing Speaker of the House, Jim Amann, who has thrown his hat into the gubernatorial ring. This has upset some pro-Donovan commentators . One recalls the scene in “Sienfeld” in which Seinfeld’s buddy George, who finally gets a decent job, has sex with a cleaning lady on his desk. He is found out and called on the carpet by his new boss, who promptly fires him, eliciting the following response: “Was that wrong?” "I am not a rich guy," Amann said. "I need to work to keep a roof over my head and take care of my wife." Perhaps so, but the hiring puts a damper on Amann’s gubernatorial run and raises the interesting question: Is the run a cover for the job? How serious is Amann’s gubernatorial bid?

Put it down to a case of bad timing. Boy George, the hermaphroditic British singer, came out with a song tribute to President-elect Barack Obama, "Yes, We Can," just at the point when he was sentenced to 15 months in the slammer for having handcuffed a male escort to a wall, whom he then beat with a chain – no way to treat a lady, let alone a male escort. According to Sky News : “The former Culture Club frontman imprisoned Audun Carlsen during a drug-fuelled naked photoshoot at his flat in east London. “Sentencing the musician - real name George O'Dowd - the judge at Snaresbrook Crown Court said he was guilty of "gratuitous violence". “The judge also condemned his "premeditated", "callous", and "degrading" actions which "traumatised" his victim. “Norwegian Mr Carlsen, 29, fled in his underpants and alerted police after the attack, in April 2007." Mr. Carlsen escaped the flogging in his underwear. By Hollywood standard...

There are those of us old enough to remember Connecticut’s balmy pre-income tax days, when the state budget was a modest $7.5 billion and income tax proponents were muttering darkly about the many “niggling little taxes” in the state’s tax grab-bag that were supposed to have been replaced by the shiny new revenue vehicle trotted out by then Gov. Lowell Weicker. After all, the income tax was passed not very long ago in the early 90’s, well within the living memory of most voters in the state, during the contentious administration of the maverick governor. Behold! Facing a budget deficit of some $6 billion, nearly the amount of the last Gov. William O’Neill pre-Maverick budget, the state legislature, according to a headline in the magisterial Hartford Courant , has now voted “To Seize Deposits” from unclaimed beer and soda pop cans. This is what bums do when they’re down on their luck, though it would be an insult to industrious bums to compare them with the robber barons in the state l...

The Associated Press is reporting that “Sixty-one detainees who have been released from the U.S. Navy base prison in Cuba are believed to have rejoined the fight, Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said. That's up from 37 previously… The new figures come as President-elect Barack Obama prepares to issue an executive order during his first week in office to close the controversial prison. It's unlikely, however, that the Guantanamo detention facility will be closed anytime soon as Obama weighs what to do with the estimated 250 al-Qaida, Taliban or other foreign fighter suspects who remain there.” It’s going to be a little difficult for President-elect Barack Obama to turn around this particular fast moving train. Even before it has been installed in office, the Obama administration “modified” several seemingly non-negotiable positions it affirmed during the lately concluded campaign. Obama won quite a few votes, not to mention monetary pledges, on the left by stating early in his...

Consider the strange case of Charles Klewin. According to a story in the Hartford Courant written by Jon Lender, a reporter on the paper’s investigative desk who has written extensively about former Governor John Rowland, if Klewin had not hired Rowland “as a $5,000-a-month consultant in 2004 after Rowland had resigned while facing impeachment proceedings, Klewin’s construction company might be $1.2 million richer today.” The tenacious Kewin, Lender tells us, almost had the money that was owed him in his hands, but it has been snatched away largely because of the efforts of the tenacious Richard Blumenthal, Connecticut's Attorney General and chief robber barron. Klewin, according to Lender, “was never drawn into the criminal acts that landed Rowland in jail,” and both the state and Connecticut courts have acknowledged that the state owed Klewin $1.2 million for work he had done to expand the Manchester Community College Campus. Klewin claimed the state owed him $3 million or more o...

It’s Sunday, January 29 of the New Year 2009 and former Governor John Rowland still had no plans to ask his friend, departing President George Bush, for a pardon, according to two scriveners for the Hartford Courant . And current senator-for-life Chris Dodd still has not released details concerning his sweetheart mortgage from the defunct Countrywide; maybe next year. Pravda is predicting an ice age. President-elect Barack Obama, no Andy Jackson he, got 90% 0f the dough for his lavish inaugural from what the Wall Street Journal is pleased to call “well heeled fundraisers.” The notorious Governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich, was finally impeached by the notorious state House of Representatives, and it is expected he will be tried in the senate and booted from office. Obama’s choice for attorney general, Eric Holter , has run into a buzzsaw, not that anyone noticed. Scorned Sen. Joe Lieberman is showing signs of rehabilitation, though he’s still on the outs with disgruntled bloggers...

According to a meticulously researched article in Pravda (“Truth” in Russian), everyone including Al Gore, the prophet of Global Warming, should get ready for a new ice age. However, the threatend calamity is not likely to effect the promising modling career of Natalia Vodianova, show above, who has been known to melt glaciers.

The authoritative Hartford Courant reports:“ Obama set a cap of $50,000 on individual contributions and has refused to accept money from unions, corporations and lobbyists, although bundlers with ties to corporate America have kicked in $5.7 million of the $27 million raised thus far, according to a review by the nonpartisan group Public Citizen commissioned by The Wall Street Journal.” That reference to the Wall Street Journal report is incomplete. Although President-elect Barack Obama has banned corporations and big donors from contributing to his campaign, the Wall Street Journal , citing a report from Public Citizen, reported that fund raisers have collected $24.8 million of the $27.3 million reported by Obama through Jan 8. “But 90% of donations received so far,” the paper reported, “have been raised by well-heeled fund-raisers, including Wall Street executives whose companies have received billions of dollars in federal bailout money.’ Wall Street Journal employees as a group, t...

Blago has been impeached. We can breath easier. And Baltimore Mayor Sheila A. Dixon today was charged with 12 counts of felony theft, perjury, fraud and misconduct in office, becoming the city's first sitting mayor to be criminally indicted, according to a report in the Baltimore Sun . Both Blago and Dixon are Democrats, not that there's anything wrong with that. In the meantime, the Somalian pirates have run into a bit of bad luck. According to an Associated Press report, "Five of the Somali pirates who released a hijacked oil-laden Saudi supertanker drowned with their share of a reported $3 million ransom after their small boat capsized, a pirate and a relative of one of the dead men said Saturday." Somalia has not yet requested funds that the US federal government has been doling out to hard luck cases, not that there's anything wrong with that.

The Hartford Courant is still fixated on former Governor John Rowland , and the paper was pleased to announce that there is little indication President George Bush intends to offer a pardon to Connecticut's once imprisoned governor. The signed story, “Former Governor Says He Is Not Seeking A Presidential Pardon,” was written by Jon Lender, Dave Altimari and Edmund H. Mahoney, the three horsemen of Rowland’s apocalypse. The story raises a number of interesting questions, the most important of which is this: When three reporters sign off on a story, does this mean that one writes the nouns, the second the verbs and the third the adjectives and adverbs? The answer obviously is – yes. Now, no story about presidential pardons would be complete without a passing reference to former president Bill Clinton, the mother of all presidential pardoners, and readers of the Courant will be pleased to note that either Jon or Dave or Edmund H. Mahoney did indeed mention Bill-The-Pardoner. Bill is m...

President Pro Tem of the State Senate Don Williams said he was “strongly against” a move by Governor Jodi Rell to overturn an arbiter’s award to unionized prison guards that would provide them with a 3% wage increase. The increase for some workers could mount to 6.5% owing to annual increments and lump sum payments. Williams believes union concessions may be needed in the future to close an expected budget deficit of $6 billion. Apparently, asking for contractual givebacks, according to Williams, would make the unions less amenable to concessions as Connecticut’s economy continues to tank. William’s counterpart in the House, Speaker Chris Donovan, who has long labored in union vineyards, refused to say whether the House would debate the issue. “The unions didn’t create the problem,” Donovan told a reporter. Maybe yes, maybe no. Donovan’s assertion is debatable. Deficits are caused by overspending, and in this regard Donovan is more responsible for them than the unions. What the Speake...

Incoming Speaker of the State House of Representatives Chris Donovan, “resisting a radical tag,” says about himself, “I’m a mainstream politician now.” Indeed, a truer word was never spoken. For there is nothing Donovan would need to reform to bring the state in line with his paradisiacal notions of state government. His train has arrived. His eagle has landed. Progressive Democrats in the state have become the status quo, and a reformer is someone who sets his heart against the present system. The present system has been very good to Donovan; that is why he is the Speaker of the House. But the state needs reformers. More, it needs radicals. A radical is someone who “goes to the root of things” in order to effect beneficial change. What would a radical do in Connecticut? What would the radical be saying? He might be saying that the accumulated budgets of the last two decades have bought the state -- at a dear price -- a $6 billion deficit. During this time, the state has used successiv...

Even farces must come to an end. So, there was Roland Burris, scorned by Speaker of the US House Harry Reid, sitting by Reid, wreathed in smiles and nodding to the cameras, a picture that spoke a thousand words. Between them was a painting of a stern looking Mark Twain. Hovering over Reid’s tuned head, the corner of the frame piercing his noggin, was a painting of an even sterner looking Andy Jackson, founder of the modern Democrat Party. The two has reached an accommodation. Burris would be questioned under oath by the Illinois senate concerning any deal he might have made with Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich. And after he had testified under oath, Reid and the No. 2 Senate Democrat, Dick Durbin of Illinois, would be happy to… Reid said he had nothing against Burris “as an individual.” But there were these storm clouds racing around Burris’ head and, well… you know… Judicial Watch said it was going to sue the senate if it did not accept Burris as a member because the US Constitution...