Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Orwell -- Pinterest George Orwell died in 1950 after having written a number of enduring political novels. One of them, Animal Farm , was rejected by a publisher because “We don’t print children’s books.” While writing 1984 , a dystopian novel that gave full treatment to the logical outcome of a society well soaked in the brine of totalitarianism, Orwell, then suffering a fatal bout of tuberculosis, retired to the remote island of Jura . He was -- among a slew of writers clamoring for public notice, the better to sell books -- a modern version of the Desert Monks of the 3 rd century AD. One needs a certain amount of solitude and focus to turn the fables of modernity on their ears. The book, published in June 1949, was Orwell’s ninth completed in his lifetime. Orwell was a pre-postmodern democratic socialist, and 1984 centers on the ravages of an authoritarian state modeled on Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany. Beneath the surface, all models of the totalistic-state are the same,...

  Bysiewicz, Lamont and Tong -- Hartford Courant Tong, The Tong Building, and the Laz Connection “The lack of money is the root of all evil” – Mark Twain The town of Manchester has decided to purchase for $1.75 million a property owned by the parents of Attorney General William Tong. Town officials say, according to a piece in the Journal Inquirer , that the property, was “most recently appraised at up to $1.15 million… “The parents of Connecticut Attorney General William Tong own 942 Main St., under the company name WJSJM LLC. The 0.79-acre lot features a one-story, 19,600-square-foot retail building that has a few tenants, but a long history of vacancies. “According to town assessor documents, the property was assessed at $513,200 under the 2021 revaluation, with an appraisal of $733,200. The structure was built in 1940, and the town estimated replacement costs at $1.92 million.” The bottom line, as bankers might say, is that Tong’s parents stand to make a pretty penny o...

Biden -- Edition CNN As the 2024 elections begin to unfold, it may be worthwhile to issue a brief bill of particulars that explains why Joe Biden is the worst president in living memory. Biden became president on January 2021. Hidden in his bunker, out of reach of probing reporters, nearly everyone supposed that he would be a moderate Democrat president. Very quickly, he turned out to be a progressive with his hair aflame determined to undo everything that former President Donald Trump had done while in office. Biden quickly – some say too quickly -- withdrew all American troops from Afghanistan, leaving behind Afghanis who had supported the US military during what the New York Times was pleased to call “the nation’s longest war,” an undetermined number of U.S. citizens, an important airbase, and millions of dollars in military hardware. The Taliban, an Islamic terrorist group, rushed in where angels formerly had feared to tread following the swift withdrawal of U.S. intelligence...

Washington by Peale “If Washington does that, he will be the greatest man alive” – King George George Washington was the man who held together the nation in its hour of peril, it’s first President, and its most notable retiree. When the news that Washington was preparing to leave the presidency and retire to Mount Vernon, there to resume his life as a gentleman farmer, reached King George, he said, “If Washington does that, he will be the greatest man alive.” Washington did that, and he was for that reason the greatest man alive. Of the big first three – Washington, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson – a cloak of wonderment and surprise still shrouds Washington. We know that Jackson, a very tough customer, gave birth to the modern Democrat Party. We know that Lincoln, perhaps the most fully human president, both merciful and full of guile, ended slavery and stitched together the broken bones of a shattered nation. But there is something elusive about Washington. When Washington, bidding ...

Presidents’ Day this year, February 20, passed uneventfully. There were few violent protests and fewer “repeal history” parades. George Bernard Shaw, a Fabian socialist whose empathy towards the murderous Joseph Stalin ran fathoms deep, used to say, “Patriotism, if you must, but please – no parades,” knowing all the while that patriotism is a parade. Shaw’s quip is pretty much the anthem of the postmodern progressive woke era now upon us. Wokeism is, at bottom, an anti-Americanism too prudish and subtle to display itself in parades as a sort of inverse patriotism. Bourgeois sentimentality has never set well with social anarchists. Gratitude is an emotive force that still, beneath the Woke incubus, stirs the hearts of the majority of Americans disposed to celebrate Patriots Day. These are easily dismissed by Wokeists as patriotic – ugh! – yahoos. Wokeism, if you will, and please -- no patriotism. Wokeism is not a political credo. It is a political posture, a pose, an attitude v...

There are as many Donald Trumps as there are journalists writing about him. Bill Buckley, appearing in Danbury shortly after President Richard Nixon had returned from China, where he had “clinked glasses with Chairman Mao,” was asked what his final opinion on Nixon was. Buckley: “Which Nixon? There are at least four.” Journalism, it is said, is “the first snapshot of history.” Not to compare Trump with Ben Johnson, which would be high-comedy, perhaps I may be understood if I should say that Trump still awaits a Boswell. Former President Trump is an irritating fellow who relishes irritating nearly everyone unwilling to bend the knee to his sometimes needless confrontational, sloppy and solipsistic view of politics. Politics must be about the polis first and always -- other considerations, personal vindication for instance, following in its train. Trump’s problem at the moment is that self-vindication in politics has rarely been possible. The vindicator must be someone who has...

Bronin -- Hartford Courant The headline in a Hartford paper screams, “Mayors take on gun violence: Leaders from some of the state’s biggest cities want crackdown on firearm crimes by repeat offenders.” One of the cities is Hartford, the Capital city of Connecticut whose mayor, Luke Bronin, recently announced he will not be running for office again. The mayors,” according to the paper, “are focusing on a narrow set of criminals – often already convicted felons – who are responsible for a large share of the shootings in Hartford, Waterbury, Bridgeport and New Haven. In Waterbury according to the report, “40% of those arrested for shootings were in probation and 30% were on pretrial release.” How long, urbanites may want to know, has this been going on? How long have police chiefs in large Connecticut cities known that 39% of criminals arrested in shootings were on pretrial release, 14% on probation, and 5% on parole? During his tenure in office, did Hartford’s police chief ever ...

  Looney -- CTPost “We are all originalists now” – Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Elena Kagan Originalism, as understood by pretty much everyone but Connecticut Senate Pro Tem Martin Looney, is not a high court finding. It is a common method of Constitutional interpretation that took flight under the wings of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia . The opposite of originalism is free range constitutional interpretation: The Constitution, infinitely adjustable by the high court, means whatever the high court says it means, however far the court strays from a rational understanding of clear constitutional propositions. This prescription allows the high court to wander outside the boundaries of constitutional language to decide whether laws passed by state legislatures do or do not pass constitutional muster. The originalist mode of interpretation appears to have confused Looney. But his confusion, probably self-induced, lies to his advantage, almost always because Loone...

  Friedman -- Bloomberg Omnibus Budget Bill Consideration All the members of the state’s General Assembly, both Democrat and Republican, should have at least a few days to analyze and digest a final budget bill before voting upon it. Ample time is now devoted to public headings within the various committees in the General Assembly charged with refining the state budget. However, the refined final budget usually is presented for an up or down vote in the General Assembly hours before a vote on the final product is tallied. The Queen of Hearts proclaims in Lewis Carol’s Through the Looking Glass , “First the verdict, then the trial!” Lovers of justice may instantly denounce the perverse reversion. Present conditions in voting budgets up or down – first the vote on a finalized budget, then an analytical consideration of the proposed budget in the absence of public hearings -- should be intolerable in any representative system of governance. A Flat Rate Negative Income Tax Go...

Looney -- WNPR.org   A Looney Idea In 2016 President Pro Tem of Connecticut’s Senate Martin Looney received a replacement kidney from a donor. The new organ allowed him to regain a sense of vigor that served him well when he proposed Senate Bill 96 (  S.B. 96 ), a punishing piece of legislation that would, according to Cycle News , “automatically assume any motorcyclist killed on the road is an organ donor if they were riding without a helmet, a choice currently available to riders over 18 years old in Connecticut.” It may be a bill too far, even for the postmodern progressives in the state who support Looney. Certainly postmodern progressive motorcyclists would wince at the indignity of having their organs harvested by progressive jackals in a moral desert. Hunter Biden’s Lawyers Shakespearian scholars and legal ethicists are arguing, even today, that Dick the Butcher’s quip in History of Henry VI, Part II – “First thing we do [when we take power] let’s kill all th...