Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Chris Murphy In respect of diplomacy with nations like Iran, which regards the United States as “The Great Satan,” diplomatic blather can never be more than an incitement to retaliatory action, and Iran, during the past few decades, has shown itself to be an active enemy of Western interests. The same may be said of Putin The Terrible and Communist Party Chairman Xi Jinping of China, all enemies of the United States. If diplomacy really is war by other means, Putin, the Imams in Iran, and China’s inscrutable Great Leader, mean to win the diplomatic war by other means . The Iranian “revolution” opened on November 4, 1979, when Iranian students, during the last days of the diplomatically inclined administration of President Jimmy Carter, seized the American Embassy and detained as hostages more than 50 Americans, ranging from the Chargé d’Affaires to the most junior members of the staff. The soft diplomacy of Democrat Presidents such as Carter, Barack Obama, and now progressive insur...

Antonio Gramsci To a carpenter with a hammer,” it has been said, “every problem looks like a nail." To Karl Marx, assembling communism from a wild and variegated international socialism, every social problem in the modern world arose from economic class disparities. And if one put a class disparity eye loop to one’s eye, the Marxian theory made some sort of rough nonsense. Abraham Lincoln’s view of the relationship between labor and capital was more faithful to the realities of the modern world than were Marxian fables. There is not, nor could there be, a permanent and unvarying class structure in the United States, Lincoln said : “… there is not of necessity any such thing as the free hired laborer being fixed to that condition for life… Many independent men everywhere in these States a few years back in their lives were hired laborers. The prudent, penniless beginner in the world labors for wages awhile, saves a surplus with which to buy tools or land for himself, t...

  The Cynic The Cynic at the Diner The Country Mouse looked his friend over carefully. He hadn’t so much as spoken word to him in nearly a half century. The Cynic was much the same. The timeless features of humans – the sound of the voice, the color of an eye, the general bone structure of the face, a smile in motion – remain steadfastly constant. And, of course, though The Cynic was still tall, he had put on some pounds and his muscles were in retreat. He still had a full head of hair, tinged with white. Genetics are decisive, thought the Country Mouse. “Do you remember…” The Cynic a week earlier had begun their phone call. For the Country Mouse, this was an incantation that had always opened the mercifully locked doors of memory that connected him immediately with a specific painful or joyous moment. Before The Cynic had finished the sentence, a scene flashed like lightening through the Country Mouse’s mind. He saw them both traveling in an old row boat ladened with cem...

P.T. Barnum It’s still possible to speak freely in the United States, provided you do not rub the wrong way the feathers of Twitter or the grizzly-like spiked fur of Facebook. Both Twitter and Facebook denied use of their platform some time ago to former President Donald Trump on dubious grounds. Facebook has graciously decided to reopen its platform to Trump after its two year sentence has expired, provided Trump minds his tongue. It may be impossible, Trump critics might agree, to expect the ex-President to mind his manners. Trump supporters, pointing to the questionable rationalizations of both Facebook and Twitter, almost immediately drew from their rhetorical scabbards an adage sometimes attributed to circus impresario and son of Bridgeport P.T. Barnum – “There’s a sucker born every minute.” Most Americans know when they are being suckered and, despite the admonition that in the land of the free and the home of the brave a sucker is born every minute, no one can reasonably b...

Machiavelli, republican The question foremost in Republican minds these days, at least in Connecticut, is:  What must politically overwhelmed Republicans do to win office? It is not possible to direct affairs of state if the GOP in Connecticut remains, as it has been for some time, the loyal opposition. An obvious solution to the problem would be to do what Democrats do so well – become an opposition disloyal to the reigning power. This is the central message to the modern world of Machiavelli, the much misunderstood fierce republican of Florence in the 16th century. Florence, by the way, was in Machiavelli’s time the fountainhead of modern republicanism. The Borgias, ripe with monarchical aspirations, put in exile such republicans as Machiavelli and Dante, whose departing gift to Italy was the modern Italian language, still spoken most purely in Florence. The Borgias plastered Italy with art, and political corruption, and more political corruption. A bit like Lucrezia Borgia, ...

Stafstrom Connecticut Democrats, who dominate the state’s General Assembly, have passed a nearly 300 page pot bill. Some Republicans thought the bill might easily have been reduced to a single sentence, something of this sort: “All laws in the state illegalizing the sale and use of pot in small quantities are now repealed.” The repeal of such laws would improve crime statistics in the state and reduce incarceration rates as well. If you decriminalize the use of pot, you may no longer arrest and incarcerate those who cannot then break a repealed law. Here is Bridgeport Representative Steven Stafstrom, who helped to shepherd the preference laden bill through the state House, celebrating the imminent demise of the war on drugs: “Connecticut’s time has finally come. We take the next step in recognizing the war on drugs has failed us, and the criminalization of cannabis was the wrong course of action for our state and for our nation.” Actually, Stafstrom may not favor ending the war o...

Critical Race Theory (CRT), has been “marching through the cultural institutions,” an expression often used by Marxist Antonio Gramsci , since the early 2000s. The theory itself, according to an illuminating piece written by Christopher F. Rufo, draws upon previous work done “on updated  social psychological  research on  unconscious bias  in order to justify  affirmative actio n ; and work relying on law and  economic methodology  to examine  structural inequality   and   discrimination in the workplace .” CRT’s reliance on activism and personal narration, rather than scientific inquiry and historical research, means that it is not only a theory but an activist practice. Political radical Will Oremus argues that "The theory [is] radical... in the sense that it questions fundamental assumptions.... And unlike some strands of academic and legal thought, critical race theory has an open and activist agenda, with an emphasis on storyte...

Try to imagine State Senator Rob Samson’s surprise when he woke on June 9 and discovered, having read a rare Hartford Courant editorial,  that he was “turning to Trump-style racism.” The editorial was titled ominously, “ In trying to control what students learn, the Connecticut GOP is once again turning to Trump-style racism .” Ever since the Courant had reduced its own editorial page staff months ago, the paper had been printing, in its own editorial space, commentary written by other left of center news outlets. No editorial staff members are listed in an updated Courant staff directory . The Courant recently unburdened itself of its headquarters. The paper was later gobbled up by a New York based hedge fund, Alden Global Capital, roundly denounced by opinion writers as a frequent job slasher. But the Courant had been bleeding employees to other Connecticut news outlets for quite a while. The paper’s last editorial page editor, Carol Lumsden, was recently brought aboard th...

Fonfara Governor Ned Lamont has gotten his $46 billion budget. The State Senate vote in favor of the Lamont bi-partisan budget was 31-4, four conservative Republicans dissenting, while eight Republicans were in favor, including two top GOP leaders, according to a Hartford paper . State Senator John Fonfara of Hartford, who favors heavy taxes on “the rich”, was a voluble dissenter on the left and, following passage of the budget, he and Lamont publicly bumped political heads. Fonfara pulled out his political stops on the Senate floor. Playing to a no doubt appreciative leftist gallery, Fonfara said, “We live in a state of incredible concentrated wealth within a handful of families,” referring to the state’s multimillionaires and billionaires. He continued, “We can make those investments and not change the lives of those who are asked to contribute a little more... The status quo, the status quo budget, leaves us with status quo results.” This produced a mannerly rebuff from La...

Let’s begin by asserting an incontrovertible truth:  Things happen in politics the way they do because a dominant political organization has so arranged things to happen the way they do. That is what politics is – a deliberated ordering of the polis by a body charged with securing the safety and prosperity of the state. Corollary truths emerge from this general rule. Politics is nothing other than active measures; therefore, only those who are able in a functioning republic to pass measures through a legislature are active politicians. Those who sit out the game on the bench may add their voices to a general discussion of political issues, but voices in politics matter far less than political presence and active measures. To put it in the simplest way possible – presence is the sum of politics, and minority parties lack presence. In Connecticut, Democrats have for many years enjoyed a huge governing margin over Republicans. The major cities in the state have been owned by Dem...

I’ve been in prison for the past 25 years. And in that time, I’ve watched men come and go and come back again...and again...and again. The reasons so many offenders find themselves back in prison with such frequency are not always clear. But sometimes they are. Sometimes it’s obvious that an offender is sure to return. Yet the Connecticut Department of Correction (CDOC) does nothing to provide these people with the specific, individualized help they need. Hell, it doesn’t even have a proactive means of identifying those needs. The prison system is simply not responsive in that way. Consider the case of Chester (not his real name), an inmate I’ve known for more than a decade who is rapidly approaching another release date. Chester is a sex offender. Specifically, Chester molested the 8 year old daughter of a woman he was dating. He was caught raping the girl in the bushes of a Connecticut lake while the three were on a picnic. Clearly Chester has serious psychological problems, and ...

Annie Lamont and family Be bold, be bold, but not too bold, lest the marrow of your bones run cold – From an English Fairy Tale  It may be too soon to assert that Governor Ned Lamont is a fiscal conservative, but his posture on Connecticut’s budget puts him in company with people who are not progressives. The old saying “If it quacks like a duck, walks like a duck and swims in ponds, it must be a duck” may, or may not, apply in Lamont’s case. Budgets, as President Pro Tem of the State Senate Martin Looney has reminded us repeatedly, are subject to change until a minute after the state legislature has officially adjourned, and governors can only propose budgets that are often changed, sometimes radically, by legislators. In the next few years, Lamont and majority Democrats will be sitting pretty on a swollen budget surplus, the result of positive activity in a post-pandemic financial sector and a massive influx of federal dollars, considered by some Republicans excessive, that...

Dr. Fauci There are signs that we in Connecticut are approaching the outer boundaries of the Coronavirus pandemic. A couple of weeks ago, Governor Ned Lamont was crying from the rooftops that we should all get back to work – pronto. Lamont, some thought, was holding up the last hoop through which much of Connecticut, brought to a grinding halt by gubernatorial work stoppages, must jump so that our economically crippled state might pass over from penury to its accustomed prosperity. Connecticut’s post pandemic economy, Lamont said, was like a coiled spring. As is the case with most governors, Lamont may have a bit of a problem filling open jobs now that the spring has sprung. A good many potential workers are caught in the trap-gate of a compassionate rescue operation that pays many workers more in salaries and benefits than they might receive if they were to get back to work --pronto. The state’s “fundamentals” are strong, and Connecticut’s so called “Gold Coast,” now inundated wit...