Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Connecticut’s General Assembly, as most people know, is non-operative; ditto the state’s court system; ditto doctor’s offices – but not golf courses. Doctors may still golf, despite the ravages of Coronavirus. Hospitals, we are told, are losing money because their elective surgeries have been curtailed. It was not long ago that the administration of Governor Dan Malloy, now in charge of the college system in Maine – closed – sent his Office of Policy Management guru, Ben Barnes, rooting through hospitals looking for additional tax funds. Connecticut, as usual, was broke at the time and thirsting for additional tax revenue. Barnes was asked why the state was showing such peculiar interest in raising taxes on hospitals, and he replied, in the accent of Willie Sutton, the bank robber, “because that’s where the money is.” Connecticut, since 1991, the year then Governor Lowell Weicker graced the state with his income tax, has been piling up budget deficit after budget deficit, largely beca...

Thomas Hooker The founding of Connecticut, as was the case of the founding of Rhode Island by the redoubtable and indestructible Roger Williams, began as a religious conflict between Thomas Hooker and John Cotton of Massachusetts. Voting in Massachusetts was limited to freemen, individuals admitted to churches after their religious views and personal histories had been affirmed by the clergy. Hooker and the Reverend Samuel Stone, looking to embrace a wider congregation, and discontented with what they regarded as a too severe limiting of religious suffrage, lit out, as Mark Twain might have said, for the territories. The two men led about a hundred protesters out of Massachusetts and in 1636 founded the Hartford settlement, named after Stone’s birthplace in England, Hertford. Thus was the Connecticut colony born, the General Court representing Wethersfield, Windsor and Hartford. Meeting in May, 1638, the Court framed a written constitution, The Fundamental Orders, establishing a go...

Lamont Nursing homes in Connecticut were sacked by Coronavirus -- the way an invading, colonizing army sacks a small, unarmed village -- while the attentions of politicians in the state were devoted chiefly to a) creating largely unnecessary space in hospitals for potential Coronavirus admissions, b) dangerously shuttering people in their houses, c) depriving Connecticut citizens of their work space, d) closing businesses unilaterally deemed   “non-essential” by the governor’s office, and e) running up an enormous state debt in the face of a recession wholly caused by poor decisions made by state politicians – but not all politicians at all times; the legislative branch of government in Connecticut was in hibernation as Coronavirus ravaged the state. Months after nursing home deaths accounted for more than half of total deaths in the state attributable to Coronavirus, the news has begun to trickle up to news services in Connecticut. “Out of the state’s more than 3,500 deaths,” Conn...

April is the cruelest month, breeding/ Lilacs out of the dead land… T.S. Eliot, The Wasteland On May 22 nd of April, the cruelest month, Governor Ned Lamont took a bow during his daily Coronavirus briefing, this time at Gay City State Park in Hebron. Front page headlines in the Hartford Courant blared: “Extremely Good News: State reports lowest single-day increase in [Coronavirus] cases since late March; June 20 eyed for phase 2 of reopening.” The governor advised Connecticut residents desperately in search of normalcy, “I used to say stay home. Now I say go to a little-used park. Go to one of the ones that aren’t on the mainstream. Go there with your family. Keep your distance, if you see a group of people coming up. That’s what spring is about, and we are going this (sic) all together.”

Hester, I have a modest proposal. I was talking to a friend of mine, a politically connected tradesman and a marine retired from service. Everyone should be advised that there is no such thing as an ex-marine. I doubt this is true in all cases, but marines, when they grow old, tend to lose some conventional inhibitions. I suppose that’s true of most of us. Conventions can be a smothering blanket, but in the winter one wants warmth. Inhibitions gone, friends are the next to ditch us. Anyway, my marine friend is full of salty expressions. Comradeship arouses in men, especially when engaged in battle or sports, the scatological imperative. People, he says, think politicians are helpful – compassion and do-goodism is after all in their job specs -- and so people turn to them when in distress, even when the distress is caused by the self-same politicians. But, my friend says, politicians the world over are concerned chiefly with acquiring power and utilizing it to their be...

  Xi Jinping How scientific is science in the matter of Coronavirus? Science is settled opinion. Medical science is settled opinion on medical matters, political science – yes, there is such a thing – is settled opinion on political matters. The one thing we do not want in any confluence of the two is confusion and mass hysteria, which can best be avoided by observing this rule: Politicians should decide political matters and medical scientists should decide medical matters. Occasionally, politicians decide that mass fright can better able convince the general population than rational argument.   The answer to the above question is simple: In the case of new viruses, science, as defined above, must be silent. There can be no “scientific” view of Coronavirus because it is a new phenomenon, the recent arrival of a stranger on the medical block. Concerning Coronavirus, there are, properly speaking, multiple views of different scientists, many of whom will dis...

CDF: Connecticut Department of Frustration, what’s your problem? Caller: Not a problem, just an observation… ( Click ) CDF: ( To Ms. Obstruction, her boss at CDF, seated next to her ). I love to get rid of these observant menaces. I usually hand them off to the Department of Motor Vehicles. They always have a crush of business down there, even more so now that some of the crew is working from home… Hello CDF. Caller: I’m a lobbyist, and I’m calling for… CDF: Hold on a sec sir, I’ll connect you with the governor’s office. ( To Ms. O ) Money talks, “Them that’s got shall get” and all that jazz... Hello, CDF.

Q: I find this line in one of your recent posts : “The political response to Coronavius has returned us to pre-Magna Carta days. Quite suddenly, the three branches of government, once constitutionally separated, have collapsed and been subsumed by chief executives unchallenged by legislatures or quiescent courts.” Would you care to expand on that? A: I’m not sure any expansion of the idea it would matter a bit. The posts found in Connecticut Commentary are columns still sent to a number of Connecticut papers. The columns are not being picked up any longer. Nor, I should point out, are columns written by Chris Powell, a thorn in the side of the state’s unitary media. Elsewhere I’ve said that modern journalism is ten percent thought and ninety percent repetition. Powell is a ten percenter; something in the man does not love nonsense. But, as you might imagine, his ten percent is not often repeated in the state’s media echo chamber. The Register Citizen papers used to run both ...

Bysiewicz and Lamont Governor Ned Lamont does not hear the screams, possibly because his ears are cocked in the wrong direction. Within the space of a couple of weeks, Lamont decided to open hair salons, to order hair salon owners not to use blow dryers, to reverse his order concerning blow dryers in the case of African American women, because the hair of African Americans is different than that of white women and requires blow drying before satisfied clients leave the salon, and finally to delay the heralded opening of hair salons because, we are told by Ken Dixon of the Hearst papers , “The plan to have them open on Wednesday with other retail businesses was abandoned over the weekend, after Lamont conferred with Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo, who is keeping close-contact businesses closed for the time being.”

Every family should have at least one hypochondriac in the fold.  Ours was a distant uncle who washed his hands multiple times before and after meals, and sometimes between meals. He was fastidious about his silverware, examining it minutely for water stains and polishing it at table with his napkin, much to the annoyance of my mother, even though the silverware was as spotless as a saint. One Christmas, the dining room table crowded with family and friends, my mother, attempting to extract a roast from the oven, brushed her hand on the pan, yelped, and dropped the roast to the floor. It spun around like a top and came to a rest touching the radiator, which was not spotless. She shot me daggers and said in a pained whisper full of menace, “DON’T TELL ANYONE ABOUT THIS!”

Our national Coronavirus plague, which some dour, unscientific critics insist is no more deadly than the flu, has deposited in the hands of governors here in the Northeast an administrative power that might well bring a blush to the cheek of Gore Vidal’s Caligula. Asked by a reporter whether he objected to the seemingly endless senatorial reign of Edward Kennedy in Massachusetts, Vidal quipped – no, not at all, because every state should have in it at least one Caligula. Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York is the most visible and outspoken Vidalian Caligula in a compact of similarly endowed governors that includes Connecticut, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

By Daria Novak The current Wuhan Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has focused much-needed attention on China’s dual-use bio-research programs. “Dual-purpose bioresearch refers to bioscience research that can be used for beneficial purposes or abused for harmful ends,” wrote four Chinese scientists from Wuhan last summer, according to a Journal of Biosafety and Biosecurity. One of the researchers, Yuan Zhiming, is director of the Chinese National Biosafety Laboratory and a researcher at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). The three other researchers include another WIV researcher, Ma Haixia, a Chinese Academy of Sciences researcher Liang Huigang, and Xiang Xiaowei of the Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan. Together they explained that China lacks a law solely dedicated to biosafety regulation, or a complete supervisory system for handling new biotechnologies. These scientists are not the only ones aware of the deficits in China’s biosafety regime...

Blumenthal During a 2018 New Hampshire Public Radio interview, U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal was asked by his host, Robert Siegel, the following question: SIEGEL: Your letter says that Michael Flynn may have violated the law in his phone call or calls with ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Are you alleging violations of the Logan Act, a 1799 law that no one's been prosecuted under? BLUMENTHAL: There may be violations of that law but potentially of others as well. If there were improper statements or lies to the FBI agents who interviewed him, there are very, very serious questions about his compliance with our laws and also ethical standards. When talking to Blumenthal, NPR hosts should always pay close attention to the qualifiers. Blumenthal, for two decades Connecticut’s Attorney General, is no stranger to rhetorical caveats.   Blumenthal told his NPR host that Flynn “may be” in violation of the Logan Act and there are “questions about his compliance” with the laws o...