Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Unlike the case in the national scene, it’s nearly impossible for Democrats in the General Assembly to blame Republicans for delays in passing a weapons ban bill, since Democrats control both houses of the General Assembly and the governorship. The most they can do is to express impatience concerning the deliberative nature of the legislature and promise to spook thoughtful legislators. Below, in a report written by the Harford Courant’s Jon Lender , State Senate President Pro Tempore Don Williams pledges to overcome Republican recalcitrance. Actually, what is – and should be – holding up legislation are reports from crime investigators, a report from a General Assembly panel and a report from a panel assembled by Governor Dannel Malloy. Mr. Williams is just spooking the boobs. Honorable people in the General assembly should be impatient with Mr. Williams’ impatience.

Connecticut has a new Victims Advocate in the person of Garvin Ambrose, formerly a prosecutor and political operative in Cook County, Illinois. Chicago, murder capital if the United States, falls in the middle of Cook County facing windswept Lake Michigan, arguably the most politically corrupt county in the United States.   There was nothing wrong with the state’s previous Victims Advocate, Michele Cruz, whose job was put on the sale block after she had strenuously – and, more importantly for media conscious Governor Dannel Malloy and his Malloyalists, publically – opposed the state’s new early prisoner release program,   the brainchild of undersecretary for criminal justice policy Mike Lawlor. Both Mr. Malloy and Mr. Lawlor were prosecutors before they began to dabble in politics.

You say you do not understand why governments, national and state, do not understand the simple ramifications of debt. The following YouTube explains why.

In Germany, anti-Vietnam War protestor, longtime Senator from Massachusetts, wind sail surfer, husband of ketchup multi-millionairess Teresa Heinz Kerry and Secretary of State John Kerry “recalled for young Germans Tuesday when he snuck out of the American embassy in divided postwar Berlin at age 12 for a clandestine bicycle ride into the Soviet-controlled eastern part of the city.

The president’s office is time sensitive because of term limits. No president since Franklin Roosevelt has served more than two terms or eight years in office. Mr. Roosevelt was the only president elected to a third term; his supporters pointed to the war in Europe as a reason for breaking with precedent. Mr. Roosevelt won a fourth term in 1944 during World War II but suffered a cerebral hemorrhage in office the following year and died. After more than a dozen years in office, the bloom had fled the rose.

Following Vice President Joe Biden’s visit to Connecticut, in the course of which Governor Dannel Malloy short circuited three Sandy Hook investigations -- including an investigation impaneled by the governor himself – choosing instead to put forward his own gun restriction proposals, all of which dovetail neatly with President Barack Obama’s gun restrictions, the president, according to a short piece in the  Hartford Courant’s Capitol Watch column , “tapped Gov. Malloy to serve on the National Council of Governors, making him one of a bipartisan group of 10 state governors, five from each party, on the Council.”

The doctrine of subsidiarity is easily understood. When you were a little boy or girl and left your room a bit messy, your mother would sometime invade your personal space and, noticing the socks on the floor, say something along these lines: “Hey, do you think I’m your personal maid?” This was a rhetorical question. Even at that young age, before you were muscled into picking up your own socks, you knew better than to answer rhetorical questions coming from either your mother or father, the uber-enforcer in the family whose brawny word you had long since come to respect. You respected your father’s word because his word to you was his bond with you.

Two days before the arrival in Connecticut of Vice President Joe Biden, due to stump in Danbury in favor of President Barrack Obama’s gun restrictions, the Journal Inquirer reported that Governor Dannel Malloy had gotten fed up with     dilatory probes into the Sandy Hook massacre. There are three probes in process: a criminal investigation, a legislative investigation and an investigation impaneled by the governor. The criminal investigation, already two months old, we are told may be completed sometime in the summer.   The nearly completed legislative probe has been moved from the back burner to the front burner, and the governor’s probe is approaching completion. The day before Biden’s arrival, Mr. Malloy leapfrogged all three investigations and announced his own proposals concerning gun violence. Unsurprisingly, they fit the proposals emanating from the White House pretty much in the way a political key fits a political lock.

The Journal Inquirer reports that Governor Dannel Malloy has gotten fed up with dilatory legislative probes into the Sandy Hook massacre The day before the arrival in Connecticut of Vice President Joe Biden, the governor will announce his own proposals concerning gun violence. It has been the ambition of Democrats in the General Assembly and the governor to produce a comprehensive set of reforms assuring that Sandy Hook like crimes will not happen in Connecticut again.

That didn’t take long. Dick Blumenthal, the 4th wealthiest member of the U.S Congress, has been dubbed “the most liberal member of the Senate,” according to a piece in CTMirror . Connecticut's all Democratic House delegation ranks number 4 on the liberal meter, according to the National Journal.

Following the slaughter of the innocents at Sandy Hook, there was some muttering very early on concerning a possible connection between mass murderer Adam Lanza, his penchant for playing violent video games and the killing of 20 students and 6 faculty members at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Very quickly, public attention became focused, almost fetishistically, on the kinds of weapons Mr. Lanza brought to the school – two semi-automatic pistols, a semi-automatic Bushmaster long rifle and a shotgun that Mr. Lanza left in the trunk of the car he apparently stole from his mother, whom he murdered before leaving for the school.

The very title of the story in CTMirror was ominous: “ Howls as Malloy tries to shorten leash on watchdogs.” And in the lede paragraph, a dark joweled Richard Nixon is resurrected from his bed of infamy: “Governor Dannel Malloy is attempting the most dramatic makeover of the state's watchdog agencies since their creation as post-Watergate reforms in the 1970s.” Watergate redivivus !

It is abundantly clear from remarks made by the members of Connecticut’s U.S. Congressional delegation, both before and after President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address, that the litmus test of effective gun legislation is that such legislation should prevent future Sandy Hooks.

Thoughtful Catholics will feel a loss at the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI. Orlando's Catholic Bishop John Noonan said of him, "Everyone went to Rome to see Pope John Paul II. You went to Rome to hear Pope Benedict." The pope’s intellectual remains are immense; he wrote books the way columnists write columns, all of which are accessible to non-theologians. His three books on the life of Jesus are worth his whole papacy. Here is a review of one of them: "The Pope’s manner of writing is pastoral and deceptively simple. He writes with authority not only because of his station within the Catholic Church, but also primarily because he is a suburb theologian. In the late Middle Ages, theology was considered the “queen of sciences” because it contained all the other sciences, including what we moderns would call textual exegesis." More here    

We’ve all heard the line that America is becoming an entitlement society or welfare state, with half of U.S. households now receiving some type of government benefit. But a CBS 21 News investigation has taken that stat one step further to show you how much people are actually getting for free.

Governor Dannel Malloy’s State of the State message gave little indication of his plans for the future. From a budgetary or strategic planning point of view, there wasn’t much “there” there, but the speech evidently was framed for a national audience. During his first term, Mr. Malloy raised taxes massively. The progressive wing of his party, those in Connecticut who have a stake in ever increasing spending, cheered him on from the sidelines. When deficits repeatedly appeared following his first union friendly budget, Mr. Malloy quite publically took the pledge: No new taxes. He said several times on the post-election stump he would not raise taxes to liquidate a deficit of about half a billion dollars during a special legislative session. He didn’t.

Former State Senator Len Suzio announced today that he has been appointed to the Advisory Committee for the Office of Victim Advocate. "I am extremely happy to be appointed to the Committee. The OVA plays an important role advocating for the victims of crime in Connecticut. Last year I had the opportunity to meet and work with the State Victim Advocate, Michelle Cruz as we sought to reform the "Early Release" law that allows violent criminals out of prison long before their sentences are completely served. All too often violent criminals are out of jail before their innocent victims are out of the hospital." said the former state senator.

Governor Dannel Malloy likes to tinker with the language: He prefers “budget shortfalls” to “deficits” and quibbles over “tax increases.” If you extend a tax due to expire, have you “increased taxes?” As a general rule, most taxpayers would agree that if the net amount of taxes due the government is larger in year 2 than it was in year 1, they have experienced a tax increase. Governors who plan to run for re-election naturally would prefer softer, more ambiguous language; so, deficits become “shortfalls” and a jump in tax payments from year 1 to 2 becomes a reinstitution of a tax due to expire, certainly not a tax increase.

THE FOLLOWING MEDIA RELEASE WAS ISSUED BY CONNECTICUT ATTORNEY GENERAL GEORGE JEPSEN ON FEBRURAY 5, 2013 Attorney General Leads Multistate Coalition Challenging Standard & Poor’s Ratings Structured Finance Securities Backed by Subprime Mortgages Contributed to Financial Crisis For immediate release TUESDAY FEB. 5, 2013 WASHINGTON -- Attorney General George Jepsen announced today that the U.S. Department of Justice, 16 states and the District of Columbia have filed lawsuits against Standard & Poor’s Financial Services LLC (S&P), for alleged misconduct by the credit rating agency involving structured finance securities, which were at the heart of the nation’s financial crisis.

Michael Lawlor, Governor Dannel Malloy’s Undersecretary of Criminal Justice for Connecticut and the architect of the state’s troubled early release Earned Risk Reduction Credits program , has given us a peek into Mr. Malloy’s views on pending legislation affecting gun control.   According to Mr. Lawlor, a number of areas need to be addressed by the legislature. They include :

It was the intention of certain members of the General Assembly from the very moment the Bipartisan Task Force On Gun Violence Prevention And Children's Safety was formed to “e-cert” the normal legislative process, State Senate President Pro Tempore Donald Williams said in a recent interview . The emergency certification of a bill bypasses usual legislative hearings and requires, as the name itself implies, an emergency to justify it. Generally, e-certs are reserved for times of crisis such as natural disasters or when action cannot be delayed because of an approaching timeline. In this case, the “emergency” was triggered by a timeline set by legislative leaders who had tasked the bipartisan task force to complete its recommendations to the legislature before February 28, so that a bill could be produced on that date. Apparently, it is the assigned date that has created the emergency, which begs a question: If the task force completes its work on the 29 th rather than the ...

State Senator Beth Bye, an anti-gun-toting advocate, was soundly drubbed by critics for “responding to her constituents” on Facebook and Tweeter while a hearing on gun control was in process. The Courant quickly came to Ms. Bye's defense, demoting to tweeterdom former Courant columnist Susan Campbell , who worked pressing the usual liberal grapes in the Courant vinyards for upwards of 25 years : “And though nearly all of her posts concerned the testimony, she [Beth Bye] offered a brief, cryptic comment to a snarky tweeter who suggested a jokey drinking game — everybody was to drink when they heard the term ‘law-abiding.’"