Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

  The City Mouse Her friendship, but not the friend, died about a year ago today. The City Mouse knew her twenty year old friendship was over and, now it was over, she was having some difficulty imagining how it had begun. The brief note she had received from her former friend was the coffin in which their once vibrant friendship lay lifeless. She knew it. She knew she could not answer her friend, although she had prepared in her throbbing brain a point by point response that would have satisfied the most exacting prosecutor. No, there could be no answer. Let the dead bury their dead; life belongs to the living. “I wish,” she thought of answering, “we had thrashed all this out face to face. Because then, if you had seen my face as you said these things, you would have seen in my eyes how unjust they were. Letters are blind; they have no eyes. We might have smiled at each other, laughed even, and gone our different ways, our friendship intact, remembered fondly over the ta...

Bronin, Ritter, Blumethal, Murphy Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York, Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont’s fishing buddy and political guru, has fallen from the starry heights. Months after receiving an Emmy award celebrating his communication skills, an alarming report by New York Attorney General Letitia James has put a dent in Cuomo’s halo. Early in December 2020, Cuomo received the International Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Founders Award , “in recognition of his leadership during the Covid-19 pandemic and his masterful use of television to inform and calm people around the world.” James' report found that Cuomo “may have put [nursing home] residents at increased risk of harm in some facilities and may have obscured the data available to assess that risk.” The obscurantists had been very busy indeed. Pre-election reports had showed that upwards of 60 percent of all Coronavirus related deaths in New York and Connecticut had occurred in the state’s nursing homes. The...

Looney Martin Looney, for six years the President Pro Tem of Connecticut’s State Senate, has made in the pages of CTMirror the strongest and least convincing case in favor of a new state property tax. The state needs a new tax because it has, like Mr. Micawber of Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield, spent more money than it has taken in. Any half-literate state senator will be familiar with Micawber’s recipe for penury and prosperity : “Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen [pounds] nineteen [shillings] and six [pence],  result  happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery." The state of Connecticut, prone to debt, is not a person. The state can always rely on its productive citizens to bail out improvident legislators – through taxation. Its citizens, finding themselves in the Coronavirus era with diminished resources, cannot rely upon the state to trim its spending sufficiently to reduce ...

Schumer, Blumenthal, Murphy It was bound to happen sooner or later. Now that former President Donald Trump has left office – peacefully, without summoning the military to insure his illegal re-installation to a second term – Connecticut Senators Dick Blumenthal and Chris Murphy have pivoted, which is to say they have pledged to be more responsible, if not more responsive to Trump’s populist backers across the country. There are lots of them, and it would be highly irresponsible and politically unwise to continue to bait them needlessly. We are, since President Joe Biden was sworn into office in mid-January, in the midst of a tenuous unification project. At long last, we have a President, familiar with the ways of Congress, who has pledged to bring the country together again in unctuous harmony, entirely lacking during the two senators’ vigorous four year opposition to the Trump insurgency. Then too, governing, rather than thoughtless and sometimes harmful blind resistance, has now...

"The business of America is business"  -- Calvin Coolidge Governor Ned Lamont likes to talk shop with businessmen. A Hartford Courant story, “ Gov. Ned Lamont tells Connecticut businesses he’s ruling out ‘broad-based’ tax increases ,” will not please Democrat progressives in Connecticut who seem fully prepared to eat businessmen and businesswomen for lunch. The large and overbearing contingent of progressives in the state's Democrat Party caucus cannot be satisfied with sentiments such as this: “I’ve been pretty clear. I have no interest in broad-based tax increases,” Lamont told president of the Connecticut Business and Industry Association (CBIA) Chris DiPentima. And, he hastened to add, “Every governor, Republican or Democrat since, or including, Lowell Weicker, has done that and it did not solve the problem.” The problem is, of course, lavish, continuing, long-term spending -- and consequent increases in taxes. Taxes in Connecticut have been permanent, while cost ...

There was, during President Joe Biden’s inauguration, lots of ceremony, much of it older than Biden, but not a great deal of pomp. The pomp was dampened considerably by circumstances. On January 6, two weeks prior to the inauguration, the US Capitol building was illegally invaded by a platoon of discontents. Then too, Coronavirus, a national killjoy for nearly a year, is still with us. The masks on our faces, however necessary they may be, are beginning to weigh heavily on our spirits and seem to some an emblem of abject submission to a sometimes irrational authority. Lady Gaga’s rendition of the Star Spangled Banner was almost operatic. Most of us recall going mute in grammar and high school when we reached for the high notes. Gaga rolled over them like a ten-wheeler. The lady can sing. No one botched the oath of office. It remains to be seen how faithful the oath takers will be to their pledge “to execute the office of -- fill in the blank – and… to the best of [their] ability...

The Country Mouse   A Conversation With A Radical Contrarian A note to the City Mouse: You know Manny Pope, who calls himself a contrarian. My expurgated interview with him is below. I’d much appreciate your comments. Q: People have called you a conservative, a rightest Republican and so on, but you resist all these titles and consider yourself a radical small “r” republican. Why so modest? MP: Modesty is the key to understanding. We stand under what we wish to understand, which means we look up modestly at the transcendent truth. The truth is always above us – like Melville’s “inscrutable blue sky,” like the stars in the firmament, like the God of our fathers.   Politicians, especially in a constitutional republic, are temporary nuisances. They come and go. They do not go quickly enough, a failing of modern politics, but eventually, through inattention, arrogant immodesty or old age, they disappear. A radical is one who goes to the root of things. Q: Like President ...

Pelosi “She’ll cut your head off, and you won’t even know you’re bleedin g ” – Alexandra Pelosi , documentary filmmaker and Nancy Pelosi’s daughter During the recently concluded US elections, Democrats lost some seats in the U.S. House, but not enough to throw the House into Republican hands. Democrats also won sufficient seats in the U.S. Senate to tip votes in the chamber in their favor; the Senate is now tied 50-50 among Republicans and Democrats, but Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris will be able to cast a deciding vote when necessary on any measure. And, of course, President-Elect Joe Biden will be sworn into office on January 20. President Donald Trump is due to leave office before that date; he has said he does not plan to attend Biden’s inauguration ceremony. The country now lies expectantly in Democrat hands; which is to say it lies in the hands of Biden, Pelosi and most likely Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, who may share Senate leadership with Republican Mitch McCo...

“Our state Capital,” said Jody Morneault, co-owner of Stackpole Moore Tryon , a landmark clothing store in Hartford, Connecticut’s Capital city, “is totally crumbling, and it’s devastated. Every corporation is closed. The government buildings are closed. Every financial service company is closed.” “We’re literally living on savings and credit cards and I don’t want to close my store so this money meant so much for me,” she said. She was sincerely and tearfully thanking politicians in Connecticut for providing her with some crumbs under the table. Lamont’s reaction to her tearful testimony was disturbingly empathetic.   “Believe, me I hear that pain,” said the man whose dicta, in the absence of fully functioning legislative and judicial branches of government, has caused widespread unemployment in the state. “I’m not much of a clothes guy myself, but I’ll get my kids over there and that should be a decent day.” But, of course, man does not live by crumbs alone. And neither do...

Howard Philip K. Howard’s powers of concision are remarkable. In a very readable Yale Law Journal piece, “ From Progressivism to Paralysis ,” Howard, author and founder of the site Common Good , writes:   "The Progressive Movement succeeded in replacing laissez-faire with public oversight of safety and markets. But its vision of neutral administration, in which officials in lab coats mechanically applied law, never reflected the realities and political tradeoffs in most public choices. The crisis of public trust in the 1960s spawned a radical transformation of government operating systems to finally achieve a neutral public administration, without official bias or error. Laws and regulations would not only set public goals but also dictate precisely how to implement them. The constitutional protections of due process were expanded to allow disappointed citizens, employees, and students to challenge official decisions, even managerial choices, and put officials to the proof. Th...

                                                       Blumenthal getting swabbed “I don’t know what other option we have” – Connecticut U.S. Senator Chris Murphy The Blumenthal quip most often repeated during the U.S. Senator’s long 46 year reign in Connecticut’s Democrat Party politics was and is: “There is no more dangerous spot in Connecticut politics as that between Blumenthal and a television camera.” His appearances are, shall we say, frequent, and he has in the past joked that he could be counted upon to appear at garage door openings, provided television cameras were present. Blumenthal began his political career in the State House of Representatives, where he toiled for two years before moving on to the State Senate for four years. He served as Connecticut’s   Attorney General for twenty years and then moved on to the U.S. S...

Archimedes' Lever " Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world” -- Archimedes Two days into the New Year, a piece written by Bob Stefanowski, What Isn’t the Matter With Hartford? , appeared in the Wall Street Journal, after which the mouth of Hell opened and belched forth fire and brimstone. The over-reaction to Stefanowski's op-ed may be understood as a preliminary shot over the bow of a future Republican Party candidate for governor. Stefanowski ran for governor on the Republican ticket in 2018, losing to present Governor Ned Lamont – Connecticut’s Sun King -- by a slender 3.17% of the vote, a more than respectable showing. Democrat voters outnumber Republicans in the state by a two to one margin. Since then, Stefanowski has kept his finger on the political pulse of Connecticut. One of the damning criticisms of Stefanowski during the 2018 gubernatorial campaign was that he was a newcomer to Connecticut politics, un...