Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Weicker -- Hartford Courant G. K. Chesterton, who wrote volumes of readable journalism, used to say, “Journalism largely consists in saying ‘Lord Jones is dead’ to people who never knew Lord Jones was alive.” Former U.S. Senator and Governor of Connecticut Weicker never had that problem. But memories are perishable. And politicians, many of whom like Weicker are rich, manage to live their lives in sequestered bubbles, none more comfortable than inflated media adulation. Wealth is, among other things, a protective cocoon, a safe place for the wealthy, so long as they are able to cling fiercely to their riches with sharp talons or, at the very least, with the help and advice of very expensive but always affordable accountants and lawyers.   Chesterton’s good friend, Hilaire Belloc, could say imperatively in a poem titled Advice to the Rich – “Get to know something about the internal combustion engine, and remember, soon you will die ” – but politicians who live in the politica...

Biden -- The Guardian This writer has been asked many times to make predictions concerning the 2024 national and state elections. No predictions will be forthcoming. The United States is unmoored from dependable principles. That is why politics has become so contentious. In this kind of a political theatre, only further contention – some of it absurdly silly – is predictable. Where the two major parties agree on nothing, no one in politics may even agree to disagree. Inflation is one instance of an irresolvable contention that could be resolved by fair-minded men and women. Inflation is goring all of us. None of us have escaped its fierce bite. We are reminded every time we go to the store to buy a loaf of bread that those of us on fixed incomes – nearly all of us, since real wage increases have become rare -- are shelling out more devalued dollars for the loaf. We are spending more dollars for products and services because our money has been seriously devalued by inflation, an...

Lamont, Larson, Biden -- DailyRecordNews Connecticut U.S. Representative for life John Larson – D,1st District -- tells us in an op-ed piece printed in the Hartford Courant, “ The debt ceiling as it stands is a failed policy ,” that any notion of a debt ceiling is unconstitutional: “Prior to a [bipartisan] agreement being reached [on the debt ceiling], I led other members of Congress in urging President [Joe] Biden to recognize that the debt ceiling is unconstitutional.” As proof that debt ceilings are unconstitutional, Larson points to the U.S. Constitution’s 14 th amendment, which reads, “The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.” The language of the amendment ratified in 1868, most especially its reference to those in former slave owning states who might attempt to reject debt payments incurred for “pensions...

Hosley -- by Hosley Antiquarian and preservationist  Bill Hosley  is very well known in Connecticut, his home state. Politically, he describes himself this way: “I am and will always be a center right conservative with libertarian leanings. I cherish freedom, and believe free market capitalism has raised more people out of poverty than any force in world history.” A decade ago, these propositions would have been considered mundane. But we in Connecticut are now living in a political universe that in recent decades has been shaped by neo-progressives, the enemies of right definition. Politics, in a pedestrian sense, is far less important to Hosley than the fairly remote though still living past. He has pursued that past relentlessly through several New England states in search of living history and likely would agree with William Faulkner’s notion that the past is not dead. “The past is never dead,” Faulkner said, “It’s not even past.” Tramping through graveyards, a rich vein...

Hunter and Joe Biden -- logically ai Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa is not a rhetorical flamethrower, unlike former President Donald Trump. And so, when Grassley “revealed from the Senate floor Monday,” according to a Fox News report, that “ the Burisma executive who allegedly paid Joe Biden  and Hunter Biden kept 17 audio recordings of his conversations with them as an ‘insurance policy’”, the story should have awakened sleepy journalists who were, at the moment, otherwise occupied covering the indictment of former President Donald Trump, the media’s longstanding fixation. The “payments,” amounting to about $5 million, it had long ago been established , were for services rendered by President Joe Biden’s wayward son. Here and there in the past, a raised eyebrow had appeared in off-center publications.   Was the prodigal son a dupe of foreign powers, an undercover agent for the CIA perhaps? He sure was taking in a lot of money from China, whose fascist government has not ...

With advancing age, people who are not skeptics say, comes wisdom, and certain infirmities, many of which have taken hold of President Joe Biden. These are visible to anyone who has eyes to see and ears to hear. The man is not who he was. And who he was still remains a mystery wrapped in an enigma. If not the worse president in U.S. history, Biden is a close second or third. According to FiveThirtyEight , an aggregate poll, Biden’s disapproval numbers from Jan 2021 to June 2023 have increased from 37% to 55%. Even radicals on the left who support his radical policies, many of them disastrous, such as his unrelenting attacks on the internal combustion engine, believe that others who are not faking American leftism, would be preferable to Biden. Present Governor of California Gavin Newsom, who ruined San Francisco as its mayor and California as its governor, has now set his eyes on the presidency as an alternative to Biden. To Newsom’s right, is Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the son of U.S. A...

Matt Blumenthal -- House Dems It would appear that someone, in some formerly smoke filled back room, is making political plans for U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal’s son, State Representative Matt Blumenthal. Is Blumenthal the younger, a chip off his dad’s block, being groomed for Connecticut’s Attorney General? And if so, what is the present Attorney General William Tong being groomed for? A CTMirror   report, Aside from cutting taxes, this budget could decide who runs for AG , suggests Matt Blumenthal may have his eye fixed on his Dad’s launch pad. Last March, the publication noted, the Government Administration and Elections Committee approved a bill that would have eliminated “active practice” language in a statute governing admission standards for the Attorney General’s office. To be admitted as a candidate for Attorney General, a prior standard required applicants to have had at least ten years active practice at the bar (emphasis mine), possibly an unconstitutional manda...

Powell, Pesci Substack The Journal Inquirer (JI), one of the last independent newspapers in Connecticut, is now a part of the Hearst Media chain. Hearst has been growing by leaps and bounds in the state during the last decade. At the same time, many newspapers in Connecticut have shrunk in size, the result, some people seem to think, of ad revenue smaller newspapers have lost to internet sites and a declining newspaper reading public. Surviving papers are now seeking to recover the lost revenue by erecting “pay walls.” Like most besieged businesses, newspapers also are attempting to recoup lost revenue through staff reductions, reductions in the size of the product – both candy bars and newspapers are much smaller than they had been in the past – and sell-offs to larger chains that operate according to the social Darwinian principles of monopolistic “red in tooth and claw” giant corporations. The first principle of the successful mega-firm is: Buy out your predator before he swallows...

“Investing” is one of those incantations often used by politicians with bodies under their beds to hide the rotting corpses. It is the moral duty of a healthy media to lift the concealing covers. Unfortunately, as Henry Mencken once put it, “What chiefly distinguishes the daily press is its incurable fear of ideas, its constant effort to evade the discussion of fundamentals by translating all issues into a few elemental fears, its incessant reduction of all reflection to mere emotion.” The same tactics are deployed – sadly but effectively -- by used car salesmen and disreputable politicians who use words not to clarify and define but to throw people off the scent. An investor is someone who places his money on a project he supposes will succeed in producing for himself a healthy profit. Occasionally, people hire investment firms to swell their profits, and these investors are acutely aware of their fiduciary responsibilities. A fate worse than death – losing a client to competito...

The ancient Greeks have a saying: “To meet a friend again after a long absence is a god.” My wife Andrée and I have known John Sideli for more than 60 years. After a long absence, we met again in Bristol, Rhode Island, where, close by in Warren, Andrée and I enjoyed a brief vacation. As the word “vacation” suggests, times spent in this way together are best savored without all the modern inconveniences: no computers, no phones, and, in my case, no newspapers -- seven days, a full week, of serendipity, and a welcomed respite from the drudgery of column writing. Andrée has always said that political writing is a bit like scrawling a message with your finger on a strand of tide-hardened beach before the tide rushes in to erase it. On day three, she smiled mischievously and said, “I’ve arranged a surprise for you. I’m sure you will be pleased. I can’t tell you what the surprise is, because then it will be no surprise.” There were no flaws in this logical construction. The surpr...