Connecticut, Poof

Biden and Newsom

“One of the brightest gems in the New England weather is the dazzling uncertainty of it” -- Mark Twain

It should surprise no one in Connecticut that their state, whose neo-progressive legislature and governor have chosen to adopt California as a political template, has now chosen to ban sales of the internal combustion engine.

This fatal choice is a conscious if not a conscientious one. And it is wholly political.

Meghan Portfolio of the Yankee Institute tells us, “And Just Like That Connecticut Will Ban Gas Cars.”

Of course, the state would be much better off banning the sort of people who have declared eternal war on the internal combustion engine and who seek to replace Henry Ford with Greta Thunberg, the amateur environmentalist who, along with others, decided to rid the world of fossil fuels.

Thunberg’s effort is aimed at tidying the environment. Politicians like Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont, whoever it is that runs Connecticut’s Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP), and the state’s panting politicians, always on the hunt for votes, are more modest. Their chief aim is reelection to office.

The internal combustion engine will not fall to a vote in Connecticut’s Democrat dominated legislature. The deed will be done by DEEP regulators, a private garroting rather than a public execution.

Two regulations recently issued by DEEP, Portfolio tells us, “stemmed from a Connecticut statute specifying that ‘On or before December 31, 2004, the Commissioner of Energy and Environmental Protection shall adopt regulations, in accordance with the provisions of chapter 54, to implement the light duty motor vehicle emission standards of the state of California, and shall amend such regulations from time to time in accordance with changes in said standards.’”

The law specifies “Nothing in this section shall prohibit the Commissioner of Energy and Environmental Protection from establishing a program to require the sale, purchase and use of motor vehicles which comply with any regulations adopted by the commissioner which implement the California Motor vehicle emissions standards.”

Did someone mention California, Governor Gavin Newsom’s state?

Yes, sir, it’s right there in Connecticut’s black and white statute. Henceforth, “The Constitution State” will be trotting along a regulatory path set in California, the “Eurika!” state.

In the 1860’s, Mark Twain, who had not yet settled in “The Constitution State”, rushed to California to strike it rich in the gold mines. He struck gold as a journalist instead, along with other notable writers of the day fleeing starched shirts in New England, all of them, including Bret Harte, Ambrose Bierce, Henry George, and other lesser lights, in rebellion against East Coast propriety.

San Francisco was yet a part of a burgeoning western frontier.

Now it has been annexed by neo-progressives. And, it would appear, starchy Connecticut – “the land of steady habits”, many of them bad habits – is following suit.

Neo-progressive Newsom, who has presidential ambitions, is turning the “Eurika!” state into a modern day equivalent of the “Dustbowl” state, full of fleeing businesses, homeless people pitching camps on the streets of San Francisco, energetic young flash-mob pirates who have driven Nordstrom out of the city and, of course, Thurstonites who, like President Joe Biden, the father of foreign policy opportunist Hunter Biden, hope to end the production of fossil fuels soon, very soon. Noted “Winter Soldier” and environment czar John Kerry is leading the effort, according to BBC climate change experts.

Republicans, naturally, are not happy with Connecticut’s prospective ideological facelift. Senate Republican Leader Kevin Kelly pointed out that the regulations were “half-baked” and added “This is not a sound environmental policy that has been well thought out and deliberated. Instead, what it is, is an aggressive, extreme agenda that is created by bureaucrats, unelected bureaucrats, to radically change the way people are going to move around our state… The notion that we’re going to be dictated to by California and their laws, runs totally contrary to the long history of constitutional government that was christened right here in this city [Hartford]. It’s the People’s Government, not the bureaucrats.”

House Republican Leader Vincent Candelora (R-86th) challenged Lamont and DEEP Commissioner Katie Dykes to “suspend this regulatory process and provide a plan on how we’re going to implement an all-electric vehicle system in the state.”

The virtue of enforcing institutional revolutionary cultural change by means of regulation rather than clear and unambiguous legislation is that the regulators are unelected busybodies, precisely the kinds of political manipulators Twain had in mind when he wrote, “To lodge all power in one party and keep it there is to insure bad government and the sure and gradual deterioration of the public morals.”