Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Achievement First Photo Presidential cabinet members, we all know, serve at the pleasure of the president.  For some odd reason, the Attorney General’s office is supposed to stand as an exception to the rule, possibly because many Americans do not wish the institutions over which the Attorney General presides, such as the FBI, to be used to punish in a partisan manner the president’s political opponents. That is more often a consummation devoutly to be wished than a practical reality. There is little indication that President Barack Obama’s Attorney General from 2009 to 2015, Eric Holder, the first U.S. Attorney General in history to be held in both criminal and civil contempt by the US House, was at any time during the Obama administration other than a true and faithful servant of his liege lord. Other cabinet members, however, are expected to pull at the partisan oars, and this is as it should be. It seems reasonable to ask – what is the pleasure of the president-elect co...

Machiavelli Q: You may be interested to know that your name has survived into the 21 st century more or less as a curse word used by democrats the world over. To say some clever political maneuver is “Machiavellian” is to say it is, in some disreputable sense, an evasion of the democratic ideal. M: And the democratic ideal would be what? Q: Rule by the people, indirectly of course. Here in the United States, the people rule through their elected representatives. M: You’ve just described a republic, not a democracy which, even the ancients knew, was not possible in large states. Athens was a democracy, Sparta an aristocratic oligarchy that survived on the strength of the institution of slavery. Both were city-states. The Florentine republic, my home turf, dates from 1115. The Peloponnesian Wars between Sparta and Athens, one intensely militaristic, the other reliant on diplomacy and trade, lasted, on and off, for about four decades, and Sparta won a temporary victory because it a...

The City Mouse The City Mouse and I had a long discussion at the Four Star Diner in East Hartford concerning Connecticut’s future prospects. The name of the diner has here been changed to protect all concerned against possible political recriminations. Asked how he would determine the extent of censorship in Europe, Voltaire said the depth of censorship can be plumbed by posing the question: What cannot be written or said? Here in Connecticut, there is much left unprinted in the state’s left-leaning media, she insisted. “Such as what?” I asked. “Well, a couple of days ago, Governor Ned Lamont adjusted his air travel ban. The ban was installed to prevent Coronavirus seepage into Connecticut from states that met a certain testing threshold, which you have said, in one of your unprinted columns, may have been set too low by ‘scientists.’ Like the weather, Coronavirus prognostications change rather quickly here in ‘the land of steady habits.’ “Presently, all air traffic is subject ...

A vote by the Electoral College on December 14 settled the question: Who will occupy the White House in January? The occupants will be President Joe  Biden and President-in-Waiting Vice President Kamala Harris. Other questions also have been settled. Since Trump is in the process of being supplanted, the thorny question often asked of Republicans in Connecticut during the presidential campaign – “Why have you not yet condemned the usurper Trump, and when do you plan to do so?” – are now moot. Connecticut Republicans no longer will be compelled to denounce the titular head of the Republican Party who, be it noted, beefed up President Barack Obama's flagging military, introduced the Supreme Court to rational reading of the Constitution by means of three new appointments, moved the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, moved some Arab states closer to Israel, greatly disappointing Iran, a leading exporter of terrorism in the Middle East, assassinated Islamic terrorist Qasem Soleiman...

The Electoral College, which progressives wish to abolish, on Monday gave president-elect Joe Biden a majority of its vote, according to an Associated Press story. The abolition of the Electoral College in favor of a popular selection of the president would throw national elections into the hands of states with large population centers such as New York and California, unsettling for future generations a problem the Electoral College was designed to solve. The founders of the Republic knew that national elections decided by large population centers would necessarily disenfranchise small states such as Connecticut and Rhode Island. Presently, electoral votes allocated to states  are based on the census. The number of electoral votes are apportioned to states according to the number of senators and representatives in their U.S. Congressional delegation -- two votes for its senators in the U.S. Senate plus a number of votes equal to the number of its Congressional districts...

Tyson, pugilist philosopher "Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth" – Mike Tyson] When he was 40 years old, way past prime for a fighter, Tyson was asked how the quote attributed to him originated. "People were asking me [before a fight], 'What’s going to happen?'" Tyson said . "They were talking about his style. 'He's going to give you a lot of lateral movement. He's going to move, he's going to dance. He's going to do this, do that.' I said, "Everybody has a plan until they get hit. Then, like a rat, they stop in fear and freeze.' " Was that his favorite quote? No. His favorite quote, unattributed, was this: “A man that’s a friend of everyone is an enemy to himself.” Both quotes have political applications and, in fact, politics and boxing are euphemistic twins. Is Governor Ned Lamont a political lightweight or a heavyweight? Likely a lightweight; his background in politics is slight....

Lamont  announcing fines for failing to wear masks In my mellowing age, I have become a creature of habits, some warring with others. For the past few years I have taken breakfast on Mondays at one of three diners in East Harford, West Hartford and Vernon, all of which are in compliance with plenary Governor Ned Lamont's possibly unconstitutional directives.  This morning, I found the waitress glowing as usual. Waitress: (As if greeting a cousin she hasn’t seen in months) How are you? This was said in such an upbeat tone and with such a broad smile and show of pearly teeth, that I understood her to be genuinely glad to see me and turned the question back on her. Me: I’m good (A forgivable white lie; it is difficult to sustain a conversation for more than five seconds with a morning grouch) But not as good as you . Waitress: (Doubt shading her smile) Well, we are all worried. She pointed to a newspaper I had begun to mark up with notes. Ominous headline: “ Thous...

The Country Mouse It’s been a tough row to hoe for Democrats. They have been trying, roughly for four years, to exorcise the demon President Donald Trump, by any means necessary, according to their chief exorcists, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi, New York Senator Chuck Schumer and -- to a lesser degree, because he is a lesser congressman – U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal of Connecticut. Presiding over the exorcism were the Associated Press, the New York Times, the Washington Post and other interested (read-politically partisan) left of center publications. A multi-yearlong investigation that tried to pin former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s loss in the 2016 presidential election on backroom collusion between Trump and the Russians failed spectacularly. An elaborately choreographed attempt to impeach Trump that had begun even before the demon had been sworn in as president also fizzled, as the Democrats mentioned above knew it would, the Senate, charged ...

DeLauro That didn’t take long. CTMirror reports , “One of U.S. Rep. Rosa L. DeLauro’s first acts after winning election as the Appropriations Committee chair will be to convene an informational hearing next week on the Hyde Amendment, the ban on Medicaid spending for abortion regularly renewed by Congress since passage in 1976.” DeLauro added, ““I believe it is discriminatory policy, and it’s a longstanding issue of racial injustice,” DeLauro said in an interview Friday. “It’s routinely considered every year, but I think we are in a moment.” DeLauro did not pause to explain in what sense an amendment applicable to everyone that prohibits the federal government from financing abortions may be discriminatory. The Hyde amendment is universal in its application, and discrimination always implies the partial application of the law. If the Hyde amendment were to prohibit the financing of abortion only for low income African Americans and allow the federal financing of abortions to mill...

Len Fasano “How about tolls, governor?” -- Paul Choiniere, The Day When writing about taxes, many commentators in Connecticut are not very quick on the uptake, even though the evidence of systemic destruction lies right under their noses -- indeed, in the headlines of their morning newspapers: “ Metro-North considering doomsday cutbacks as commuter rail ridership plummets during coronavirus pandemic; Connecticut ridership down more than 75% .” The rail line is now screaming for federal aid. Such a large drop in ridership necessitates cost saving measures, and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority intends to meet its debt by slashing service and dumping 900 jobs. This is the usual remedy for debt everywhere but in government, which is constitutionally authorized to conduct permanent raids on taxpayers’ wallets and, far less often, to cut costs by letting go union protected government workers. Government may also float bonds, a somewhat desperate measure to pad budgets. Govern...

Washington At some point, very far in the future – long after President Donald Trump has been replaced in office by Joe Biden – some dispassionate and truly objective journalist will write an essay on the Coronavirus political myth; that is to say, the way politicians used the Coronavirus pandemic to feather their political nests. Pre-Biden, during the Trump relapse, such brave journalism would have been regarded by approximately 90 percent of the media as reckless and unwise. This imaginary journalist will regard certain grammatical formulations as treacherous and logical impossibilities. Take, by way of example, any line common in Associated Press reports attributing business slowdowns anywhere in the nation to Coronavirus. Coronavirus is not a person; therefore, it cannot be the efficient cause of the many shutdowns that, in Connecticut, have made a wasteland of Hartford , the state’s Capital city. These shutdowns were caused by Democrat Governor Ned Lamont, operating in accor...

Biden mock-swearing-in Murphy, but not to his cabinet We shortly will be back to Barack Obama in our foreign policy. Connecticut U.S. Senator Chris Murphy is out as presumed President-elect Joe Biden’s Secretary of State and Anthony Blinken, “a defender of global alliances and President-elect (sic) Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s closest foreign policy adviser,” is in, according to a report in the New York Times .   The Times’ ballot for “President-elect” Biden is premature; a candidate for president does not become “ President-elect ” until electors meet on December 14 to cast ballots for president and vice president. Murphy had been touted in Connecticut’s media as a possible Secretary of State appointment. The senator, blushingly modest, said at the time he had no intentions of leaving the Senate and planned to run for reelection to Congress, but this is the usual demurral of young and ambitious congressmen on the make, and few political watchers, even among the most credulous of Conn...