Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Please join us members of the Connecticut’s 7th Senatorial District as we honor the 2019 Republicans of The Year.  Enfield’s honoree is none other than Town Councilor for District 1, a family man, a small business owner and someone whose passion and common-sense approach is well-deserving of recognition: Joseph Bosco. Our keynote speaker is Don Pesci .  Mr. Pesci is a political columnist of 35 years who has written for various state newspapers and is moderator of the blog “CT Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State.” Tickets and/or Ad Book opportunities can be purchased online or via mail. There are a variety of advertisement sizes available for the dinner program booklet. Please note, businesses and organizations are limited (by CT State Statute) to $250 worth of advertising contributions per calendar year. The limit on individuals is $50. Dinner tickets DO NOT count towards this limit. Purchase Online  |  Purchase By Mail

Following Governor Ned Lamont's presentation of his budget to the General Assembly, the question remains: Is Ned Lamont Malloy II? He may turn out to be Malloy without the quills Lamont’s budget includes hefty increases in taxes; as defined here, a tax is any dollar that moves from private wallets into the public treasury. Accumulatively, Lamont’s tax extensions – they are not a revocation of tax exemptions – closely approaches the tax increases of the Malloy administration.   Taxes under the Lamont administration will also be made more progressive according to the reliable Marxian formula: "From  each according  to his ability, to  each according  to his needs." Because of past economic sleight of hand, the neediest recipient of state dollars, it turns out, is the state treasury. In the past, when expenses have gone up and revenue has plummeted, Connecticut has increased taxes to recover ensuing deficits. Lamont repeats the process in a higher key...

“ O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams ” – Shakespeare, Hamlet Dick Blumenthal, Connecticut’s progressive US Senator, is inching dangerously close to socialist Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC). The distance between progressive radicals and socialists is now hair thin. Early in February,  Blumenthal Tweeted , “Climate change is an existential crisis. I’m proud to co-sponsor the  #GreenNewDeal —affirming our commitment to develop a plan to tackle the devastating effects of climate change, create high-paying jobs in renewable energy and address disparities in communities affected by pollution.”

I’d like to thank Bob Hurd for inviting me here so that we might have a chat together. I’d also like to congratulate Dan Champagne for wining a slot in the General Assembly. He will be stepping into state Senator Tony Guglielmo large shoes, but there is no doubt he will be able to fashion his own foot print. Welcome to the viper pit, Dan. You may want to stomp on a rumor that’s been floating around. It’s being said in some quarters that you ran for the state Senate because you missed butting heads with Mike Winkler. Michael is at a safe remove from Dan over in the House, but legislators sometimes bump into each other in the elevators and corridors of the General Assembly, not to mention its intersectional bathrooms.

Remarks by Chris Powell Vernon Republican Town Committee American Legion Post 14 Vernon, Connecticut Saturday, February 16, 2019 For the first two decades of my adult life I was a Democrat. I became a Republican back around 1991, if for peculiar reasons that may be best explained by a scene in the old Marx Brothers movie “Horse Feathers.” Maybe you remember it. Groucho has been appointed president of Huxley College and announces that the problem with Huxley is that it has been neglecting football for education. So he appoints himself coach of the football team in time to coach it for a game against Huxley’s big rival, Darwin College. There’s a very confusing play on the field and Groucho ends up in the Darwin huddle. Groucho’s son runs over to him and says, “Dad, Dad -- You’re coaching the wrong team.” Groucho replies: “I know that but our team wouldn’t listen to me.”

This Vernon RTC keynote address appeared first in NEI So then, let’s attack the question head on and ask – what do Connecticut progressives want? The right answer is deceptively simple. They want MORE – more taxes, more spending, more favorable notices in the media, even though they are showered daily with editorial encomiums, and more government regulation, provided an impermeable wall can be constructed around the murder of late-term babies in the womb. The only thing Connecticut progressives don’t want more of is less spending. They want to break down the barriers that stand between their revolutionary ambition to re-invent Connecticut as they consolidate power the way they have proposed to consolidate school districts, by eliminating the influences of what G., K. Chesterton once called “the little platoons of democracy,” mediating institutions such as town governments, churches, voluntary associations and the like. A famous caricaturist summed up the ethos of progressi...

Deducing Governor Ned Lamont’s budget proposal from meetings he has held with Democrat leaders in the General Assembly is a little bit like deducing Shakespeare from lamb chops. Here is Senate Pro Tem Martin Looney   on their talks, according to a piece in CTMirror : “’We did talk a little bit, just in general, about the nature of the sales tax and the fact it was structured when our economy was somewhat entirely dependent upon products and goods, and now it’s heavily dependent upon services,’ Looney said. ‘We did say, basically, the two options to address the sales tax are, one, a base expansion, and the second is a rate increase.’”

A Republican American story notes, “A top Democratic lawmaker is sponsoring legislation to raise the state sales tax from 6.35 percent to 6.85 percent to help cities and towns.” The top Democrat lawmaker is, of course, President Pro Tem of the State Senate Martin Looney, well positioned to sweep dedicated funds into the general fund, the graveyard of noble Democrat intentions.