Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

  Briefs, January 24, 2025   Pope Francis   Pope Francis is moving closer to his maker.  We will not know until death has put a period on Francis’ pontificate whether the current pope has been a faithful messenger of God’s word.   The quickest way of disposing of popes politically is to point out their attachments to worldly pursuits. When the highly political Cardinal Richelieu of France died, the pope of the day was asked to comment. He said, “If there is no God, Richelieu will have lived a successful life. And if there is a God, he will have much to answer for.”   Indeed, there is a space between God’s world and the world of men that is in some instances unbridgeable. The accounting is different in both spheres. Soren Kierkegaard used to say, “Between God’s purposes in eternity and man’s purposes in time, there is an infinite qualitative difference.”   Trump and the uses of hyperbole   It has been (55) day...

Lamont and Gillett PURA, Connecticut’s Public Utilities Regulatory Authority, was instituted to regulate the state’s energy sector, principally two companies – Eversource and United Illuminating – neither of which are energy producers.   The head of PURA, Marissa Gillett, has secured her reappointment, but her job specs have been changed.   We were told in a recent Hartford Courant story, “Gillett has been at the center of a firestorm as the utilities have filed lawsuits in a contentious atmosphere for an agency that in the past was known for being low key and not making headlines… Eversource and United Illuminating filed a lawsuit against PURA, saying that Gillett was deciding issues unilaterally by freezing her two fellow commissioners out of the decision-making process, an allegation PURA and Gillett’s political supporters deny.”   Some Gillett supporters in the General Assembly had inadvertently dotted the “i” and crossed the “t” of the suit’s claim by pr...

I am writing this for members of my family, and for others who may be interested.   My twin sister Donna died a few hours ago of stage three lung cancer. The end came quickly and somewhat unexpectedly.   She was preceded in death by Lisa Pesci, my brother’s daughter, a woman of great courage who died still full of years, and my sister’s husband Craig Tobey Senior, who left her at a young age with a great gift: her accomplished son, Craig Tobey Jr.   My sister was a woman of great strength, persistence and humor. To the end, she loved life and those who loved her.   Her son Craig, a mere sapling when his father died, has grown up strong and straight. There is no crookedness in him. Thanks to Donna’s persistence and his own native talents, he graduated from Yale, taught school in Japan, there married Miyuki, a blessing from God. They moved to California – when that state, I may add, was yet full of opportunity – and both began to carve a living for them...

U.S. Senator from Connecticut Chris Murphy was first swept into the U.S. Congress in 2007 during the Barrack Obama undertow. His defeat of long term Republican U.S. Representative Nancy Johnson raised some crooked eyebrows among fiscally conservative but socially liberal Republicans and Democrats. The Obama wave did not dissipate and, two years later, the state bid goodbye to Republican U.S. Representative Chris Shays, a fiscally conservative, socially liberal cardboard cut-out. Murphy has served in the U.S. Senate since 2013 having won a seat vacated by long-term U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman.   Presently, Connecticut’s Governor, all the members of the state’s U.S. Congressional Delegation and all the state’s Constitutional officers are Democrats. In addition, Democrats within the state’s General Assembly enjoy a nearly veto-proof majority over Democrat Governor Ned Lamont – not that the dominant Democrat General Assembly will ever need to exercise its veto. Lamont, as everyone i...

Public morality, some Connecticut Democrats are discovering, cannot be legislated or created from whole cloth.   Douglas Kechijian from Darian makes the point, respectfully, in a letter to the editor he wrote on the CTExaminer site.   Kechijian, availing himself of his First Amendment right to free speech, wrote in part: “Connecticut State Senator Bob Duff is introducing legislation to prevent ‘book banning’ and ‘shield librarians from all the crazies who are out there suing because they’re not getting their way. ‘Book banning’ is a hollow term that fails to differentiate legitimate concerns about age appropriateness and suitability in a public school setting from partisan and ideological distaste. Moreover, removing a book from a public school library via a systemic process that involves all stakeholders, including parents, is not the same as an outright publishing ban. As is usually the case, specifics matter.”   Democrat Majority Leader of the Connecticut ...

Mencken Some journalists believe it is the business of Connecticut’s media, or any media that proudly wears upon its breast a journalist’s badge of honor, to say the inconvenient truth boldly and often. A timid journalism will always avoid asking questions that make incumbent politicians uneasy, unless the politician falls on the wrong side of the ideological barricades. Connecticut’s media tends to veer left because they are pulled in that direction by a neo-progressive dark star. Should conscientious journalists discriminate properly between liberals, progressives and neo-progressives? That is an example of a good question, precisely the sort of question rarely asked or answered in public political discussions here in deep blue Connecticut. For reasons not often discussed, western and eastern seaboard states have been trending left for decades. Progressivism, much older than people think, has little to do with postmodern neo-progressivism. Bull-Moose Teddy Roosevelt, a Repu...

Trump As of this writing, it has been 17 days since former President Donald Trump has occupied the White House, and the Republic still stands.   Trump has not been idle in office. He is practicing, in the postmodern era, what Alexander Hamilton referred to in Federalist No. 70, titled "The Executive Department Further Considered", as “energy and unity in the executive.” Some would say the executive office has been on high boil since Trump had been sworn in as president, and the steaming bubbles are giving the immovable opposition – Hollywood elites, academic eggheads and aroused neo-progressive Democrat politicians, major agita.   Leader of the US Senate Chuck Schumer appeared on television the other night to protest a possible trade war with Mexico and Canada holding in one hand an avocado and a can of beer to make some point about tariffs that quickly flew over the heads of the American public.   "It’s going to affect beer, OK," said Schumer, displayin...

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 ...