Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Marissa P. Gillett, the state's chief utility regulator, watches Gov. Ned Lamont field questions about a new approach to regulation in April 2023. Credit: MARK PAZNIOKAS / CTMIRROR.ORG Concerning a suit brought by Eversource and Avangrid, Connecticut’s energy delivery agents, against Connecticut’s Public Utility Regulatory Agency (PURA), Governor Ned Lamont surprised most of the state’s political watchers by affecting surprise.   “Look,” Lamont told a Hartford Courant reporter shortly after the suit was filed, “I think it is incredibly unhelpful,” Lamont said. “Everyone is getting mad at the umpires.   Eversource is not getting everything they want and they are bringing suit. It was a surprise to me. Nobody notified me. I think we have to do a better job of working together.”   Lamont’s claim is far less plausible than the legal claim made by Eversource and Avangrid. The contretemps between Connecticut’s energy distributors and Marissa Gillett , Gov. Ned Lamont’s ...

Tong and Blumenthal Here is a recent passage from the Hartford Courant , a bitter response from New York Senator Chuck Schumer on President Donald Trump’s auditing pause of some federal assistant programs: “The blast radius of Trump’s terrible, unconstitutional, and illegal decision to halt virtually all federal grants and loans [to the states] is virtually limitless. And its impacts will be felt over and over and over again by families and communities across the country.”   Schumer really should stop panting and pandering to neo-progressives in his party and state. The Trump auditing pause may last no longer than 90 days, a time limitation overlooked by Schumer. “Blast radius” is a fear provoking touch. But the radius is diminished by its intent and purpose, which is, according to a remarkably observant story in the Hartford Courant -- “ Tong calls funding freeze ‘war on the American people’ ” -- to create a limited pause in funding for specific programs long enough to allow ...

State Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff The Republican Party in Connecticut has been for years a voice crying in a wilderness of neo-progressive legislators. The state’s U.S. Congressional Delegation is wholly Democrat, the last Republican U.S. Representative, Chris Shays, having departed the scene in 2009. Democrat voters outnumber Republicans by a rough ratio of two to one; there are slightly more unaffiliated than Democrats in the state, and the state’s cities have been Democrat for about a half century.   The voice, fiscally conservative, has lately turned some heads, although the Republican contingent in the General Assembly has in the past been consistently liberal on social issues. This writer has made a sharp distinction between policies that are “liberal” and those that are “neo-progressive.” President John F. Kennedy was a liberal, as was Connecticut Governor Ella Grasso. Neo-progressivism is a mixture of Gramsci Marxism   and the traditional liberalism of Kennedy...

   Chris Murphy, Wife, Now Separated, and Biden Are US national elections too long?   Indeed, they are, and this is one of the most important, unanswered questions of the last decade and more.   The question is unanswered largely because the shortening of elections would represent a dollar lost to precisely those people who have been enriched by endless elections. In fact, “too long” is a misleading understatement. Our elections are seamless and unbroken.     Trimming the election period would benefit everyone but politicians and media elites.     The most recent American presidential election ended with the swearing in ceremony of President Donald Trump on January 20. Campaigning for the office ended shortly after the Electoral College toted up votes and pronounced Trump the winner of the campaign. That announcement should have put a period to the campaigning.     It didn’t -- and won’t. Those who lost the election will ...

Hunter and Joe Biden President Joe Biden has left the room, leaving in his wake a disputed "legacy .”     The general agreement is tha t Biden ‘ s “ F arewell A ddress” to the nation – as well as much o f his administration – has been a flop, obvious to everyone but hardcore neo-progressives . Bi den's approval rating , after he was thrown out of the pr esidential plane by anxious Democrats no longer able to defend the ind efensible, is hovering around an abysmal 35%.       To take but one instance, the deal to release Hamas abductees for hundreds of Hamas terrorists is now a n imminent possibility only because of Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu’s aggressive war effo rt. Biden's earlier proposed break in Israel’s assaults o n its enemies in Gaza and Lebanon simply would have allowed the terrorist ene mies of Israel, all supported by Iran, to regroup . The explosion of Hamas phones was pure technological and infiltration genius. Israe...