Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Thanks to a Judicial Watch Freedom of Information suit, we now may definitively answer the question “Who knew what and when did they know it?” concerning the attack on the American Embassy compound in Benghazi, Libya. American Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens and three other heroic Americans died in the terrorist assault on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi on September 11, 2012. Almost immediately after the 9/11 assault on the compound, the attack was attributed by then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, President Barrack Obama and, most conspicuously, UN Ambassador Susan Rice to an obscure, poorly produced video that had insulted Mohammed, Islam’s warrior prophet, peace be upon him.

When he last ran for the U.S. Senate, Dick Blumenthal, fresh from a two decade stint as Connecticut’s Attorney General, was facing a deep pockets opponent in World Wrestling Entertainment’s former CEO Linda McMahon. It was generally supposed by the fortune tellers in the media that Mr. Blumenthal would easily defeat Mrs. McMahon without breaking sweat – and so he did. Mr. Blumenthal’s current re-election bid features a reversal of fortune, pun intended. Mr. Blumenthal is himself a multi-millionaire, the eighth richest member of Congress, according to a list of multi-millionaires compiled by Roll Call . Of the top ten richest members of Congress, only three are Republicans.

''Don't tax you, don't tax me, tax that man behind the tree” – Russell Long Appearing on WFSB Channel 3’s Face The State with Dennis House , President Pro Tem of the State Seante Martin Looney made an alarming admission. Mr. House noted that Ben Barnes, Governor Dannel Malloy’s Office of Policy Management chief, had said the state “might be seeing deficits for some time.” Deficits were “the new normal. Do you agree with that?” Mr. Looney drew a deep breath and, his breast expanding to the ball, rode valiantly into the valley of death.

Progressives, who sometimes have great difficulty making proper distinctions between populism and progressivism, may want to take a gander at populism Trump style, which appears to be a toxic combination of demagoguery laced with ineffable stupidity. Here is the sad tale according to Charles Cooke of National Review : “US presidential hopeful Donald Trump has said it is a “great honor” to receive a compliment from Russian President Vladimir Putin. The property tycoon hailed Mr. Putin as a man “highly respected within his own country and beyond”. It comes after Mr. Putin said Mr. Trump was a “very colorful, talented person” during his annual news conference...

On Thursday, December 10, Governor Dannel Malloy announced that he intended to violate, in order of historic appearance, the Magna Carta, the Fifth and Fourteen Amendments to the U.S. Constitution and Sec. 29-28(b) of the Connecticut Statutes. Mr. Malloy said he was prepared -- by gubernatorial fiat -- to order relevant Connecticut authorities to deny gun permits to anyone whose name appears on federal watch lists.

You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time -- Abraham Lincoln Somewhere in Connecticut, the Gods of Irony are chortling. Many moons ago, Governor Dannel Malloy proposed a major infrastructure repair program that will cost upwards of $100 billion over thirty years. Mr. Malloy’s legacy program -- assuming future legislators and governors do not pass along the debt to future taxpayers beyond the specified payment period, a fanciful assumption -- will tie the hands of Connecticut governors and legislatures thirty years out, crowding out necessary spending until the debt is paid.

Demography, it is said, is destiny. If so, the most current report from the U.S. Census should serve as a splash of cold water in the face of Connecticut legislators. Marriage in Connecticut during the period surveyed, 2010-2014, has taken a massive hit. Experts say that young adults usually delay marriage because of the burdens of college debt, the high cost of rental housing and anemic salary growth. The high cost of rentals is a measure, in part, of the scarcity of rental housing; through budget mismanagement and a disinclination on the part of the dominant Democrats in the General Assembly to attack spending, Connecticut is still resting somnolently in the lap of a recession that disappeared years ago in the rest of the country; and UConn has just announced plans to boost tuition by thirty one percent.

Saturday, December 5, 2015 Despite all the so-called “debates” that have already occurred, our presidential election will fall on Tuesday, November 8, 2016, a little less than a year from now; lots of water there yet to flow under our bridge. President Barack Obama will be using the next eleven months to put the final gloss on what we call here, sometimes derisively, his legacy; which is to say, he will attempt, despite the tear stained and  bloody flood of misery washing around his feet, to keep his old and tattered campaign pledges: withdraw all troops from every war theatre, patch the leaky roof on Obamacare, close GITMO, the military base in Cuba, and who knows, perhaps put a bow on it and give it back to his new Cuban friends, continue the destruction of the Republican Party, put a period on his long and eventful political campaign, then slip away to establish his presidential library and perhaps write another semi-fictional autobiography.  I think you can see...

A little more than a year ago, Jerry Labriola, then Chairman of the State Republican Party, filed a lawsuit and elections complaint that accused the State Democratic Party of producing an ad that had illegally used federal campaign contributions to support the re-election of Dannel Malloy as Governor. A Connecticut law passed after the State House of Representatives had commenced impeachment proceedings against then Governor John Rowland for political corruption barred state contractors from contributing to politicians with whom they might be doing business. The law was widely hailed by good-government advocates – including nearly all the editorial boards of state newspapers -- as a political corruption prophylactic.

Never letting a crisis go to waste, Democrats who favor national restrictions on guns have turned the assault in San Bernardino in the direction of gun control laws they favor. If U.S. Senator Chris Murphy is not leading the pack, he is barking loudly with the other hounds. A day after the terrorist attack in California, Mr. Murphy tweeted to the world, “ Your ‘thoughts’ should be about steps to take to stop this carnage. Your ‘prayers’ should be for forgiveness if you do nothing - again.” The Murphy tweet produced others chastising the Senator for devaluing prayer. But Mr. Murphy’s tweet was not so much an assault on the efficacy of prayer as it was a case of purposeful campaign posturing; tweeting brings out the worst in many of us. If people are unwilling to do something to stop the carnage, Mr. Murphy seemed to be saying, “their ‘prayers’ should be for forgiveness.” Mr. Murphy did not say in his initial tweet who should be forgiven or why (Baathist tyrants in Syria? Isla...

The city of Hartford, as well as other large cities in Connecticut, is tax poor, city fathers say, because it is home to so many non-taxable entities; hospitals are a prime example. Hartford cannot collect property taxes from hospitals, churches, schools and -- irony of ironies – the state Capitol, which houses the legislators who impose taxes on the rest of us. In distributing tax funds to municipalities, the state attempts to level the playing field somewhat by giving more state taxes to poor cities, thus redressing a portion of the loss. However the state, as usual, has its thumb on the balance scales. Hartford Councilwoman Cynthia Jennings, a member of the Working Families Party, noting that the state has for years been shorting Hartford for the 52 percent of tax exempt land in the city, has proposed to levy a city tax on Hartford employees who do not live in the city, which usually receives less than half of what it is due from the state’s Payment In Lieu Of Taxes (PILOT)...