Williams, More Jobs Please

President Pro Tem of Connecticut’s senate Don Williams was invited by the Chamber of Commerce of Eastern Connecticut to give a talk, presumably on the state’s faltering economy, a delicious irony, rather as if the moneyed classes of pre-revolutionary France were to invite Jean-Paul Marat to a salon to give a chat on the future of the monarchy.

Williams who, along with his comrade in arms in the House, Speaker Chris Donovan, is principally responsible for having produced a budget now nearly half a million in arrears, told the group that the state has to “ratchet it up,” shove a little more money in the direction of education and improve Connecticut’s rail lines. Improved schooling, Williams said according to an account in the Norwich Bulletin, “wouldn’t require much extra spending and could be accomplished chiefly through policy changes. Connecting Hartford, New London, and Springfield, Mass., through rail would better move people and goods around.”

The completion of that line will better enable unemployed people to move from Hartford to Springfield. It has no other use. And just now, according to a story in the Hartford Courant, students are hunkering down in 4-year and 2-year community colleges until the epoch of unemployment passes by. Our leaders, strangely indifferent to plight of the people they rule and ruin, cannot read the papers – and they most certainly cannot read the times.

The question the Democratic dominated legislature should be considering is this: What will it take, short of a revolution, to persuade these so called leaders to become serious about cutting spending?

The Blumenthal Burisma Connection

Steve Hilton , a Fox News commentator who over the weekend had connected some Burisma corruption dots, had this to say about Connecticut U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal’s association with the tangled knot of corruption in Ukraine: “We cross-referenced the Senate co-sponsors of Ed Markey's Ukraine gas bill with the list of Democrats whom Burisma lobbyist, David Leiter, routinely gave money to and found another one -- one of the most sanctimonious of them all, actually -- Sen. Richard Blumenthal."

Obamagod!

My guess is that Barack Obama is a bit too modest to consider himself a Christ figure , but artist will be artists. And over at “ To Wit ,” a blog run by professional blogger, journalist, radio commentator and ex-Hartford Courant religious writer Colin McEnroe, chocolateers will be chocolateers. Nice to have all this attention paid to Christ so near to Easter.

Did Chris Murphy Engage in Private Diplomacy?

Murphy after Zarif blowup -- Getty Images Connecticut U.S. Senator Chris Murphy, up for reelection this year, had “a secret meeting with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif during the Munich Security Conference” in February 2020, according to a posting written by Mollie Hemingway , the Editor-in-Chief of The Federalist. Was Murphy commissioned by proper authorities to participate in the meeting, or was he freelancing? If the former, there is no problem. If the latter, Murphy was courting political disaster. “Such a meeting,” Hemingway wrote at the time, “would mean Murphy had done the type of secret coordination with foreign leaders to potentially undermine the U.S. government that he accused Trump officials of doing as they prepared for Trump’s administration. In February 2017, Murphy demanded investigations of National Security Advisor Mike Flynn because he had a phone call with his counterpart-to-be in Russia. “’Any effort to undermine our nation’s foreign policy – e

Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

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