Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Liberal [neo-progressive] Democrats, we are told by the Hartford Courant , are angry at Democrat Governor Ned Lamont, and their anger has suddenly overflowed. The anger directed at Lamont, by most accounts a halfhearted neo-progressive – has yet to reach Thermador.  It has been stoked by Lamont’s “high-profile veto of an affordable housing bill written by Democrats and his endorsement of former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the New York City mayor’s race.”   Lamont’s operative principle on the question of affordable housing, though he dare not say it, is that price controls generally make goods and services, including housing, less affordable and less available.   Pointedly, Lamont’s endorsement of Cuomo was a signal that Lamont had not changed his “moderate” ideological stripes. In an era in which Connecticut neo-progressives have command of most of the levers of political power, Lamont continues perversely in the tried and true fashion of past Connecticut governors. He i...

Dr. Ivan Pongracic My wife Andrée tells me the State of Connecticut is fortunate to have among us the Blake Center for Faith & Freedom in Somers Connecticut, and not just for aesthetic reasons. The Blake Center is a brick-by-brick replica, of Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello home in Virginia once owned by the founder of Friendly’s Ice Cream.   The Blake Center is an outpost of Hillsdale College in Michigan, and Hillsdale is a wonder of the post-modern world, a financially independent college that has promoted for more than 170 years “the diffusion of sound learning” as the best means of preserving “the blessings of civil and religious liberty and intellectual piety.”   On June 26th the Blake Center hosted Professor of Economics Dr. Ivan Pongracic, William E. Hibbs/Ludwig Von Mises Chair of Economics at Hillsdale College who, it was promised, would guide the audience, 120 strong packed elbow to elbow, in “an assessment of socialism’s failure.” Pongracic believes that...

Moody’s Ratings has, once again, downgraded its credit outlook for CL&P, Connecticut’s largest electric utility, according to the Hartford Courant .   And Moody’s Vice President and Senior Ratings Officer Jeff Cassella pulled no punches in pinning the tail on the donkey.   Cassella explained in blood-soaked prose exactly why Moody’s had lowered CL&P’s rating from 3A to Baa1: “The downgrade of The Connecticut Light and Power … primarily reflects a Connecticut regulatory jurisdiction that is currently the least credit supportive utility regulatory environment in the U.S. This environment has been characterized by higher political scrutiny as well as inconsistent regulatory decisions and rate case outcomes … Given the challenging Connecticut regulatory environment, it is uncertain whether CL&P will be able to consistently maintain strong financial metrics going forward.”   Downgrades increase business costs because banks consider ratings when companie...

On June 22, Jessica Bravo and Ken Dixon of Hearst Connecticut Media reported: “While Trump said the U.S. military completed the operation [a bombing raid that destroyed Iran’s nuclear enrichment sites] that resulted in the sites being totally ‘obliterated’ on Saturday night and ‘must now make peace,’ with an Iranian regime that is the ‘bully of the Middle East,’ national political figures led by U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy warned that Trump is now putting the United States at-risk. Murphy, D-Conn., called Trump ‘a weak and dangerously reckless president’ who is now putting America ‘on a path to a war in the Middle East.’"   Pointing to “briefings he has received,” from whom Hearst does not tell us, Murphy declared that his intelligence shows “Iran poses no imminent threat to the United States. ‘That makes this attack illegal,’ Murphy said in a statement. ‘Only Congress can declare pre-emptive war, and we should vote as soon as possible on legislation to explicitly deny President T...

Connecticut’s General Assembly biennial session has ended. Conservatives and right of center moderates in the state will be put in mind of Gideon Tucker’s quip: “No man's life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature is in session.”   Connecticut voters, too many of whom have left the state for greener pastures elsewhere, have long understood the inverse connection between taxes, state regulations and a vibrant economy. Just as wide awake voters know that a tariff is a hidden tax on consumption, so the same voters know that a regulation is a tax and a drag on productivity. Profits and creative business development are casually linked. When business profits are drained off by taxes and regulations, creativity, the lifeblood of successful business enterprise, is curtailed.   Voters also know that whatever you tax tends to disappear. If you raise the tax on millionaires – the so called “idle rich” progressive politicians intend to plunder to pay for their impro...

Mt. Washington Steamboat We were attempting, in part, to recover the joy and peace we had experienced during an earlier trip to Lake Winnipesauke in Laconia, New Hampshire. When we arrived at our destination after a four hour drive, we discovered – or rather my vigilant wife Andrée discovered, with a shriek -- “Oh no, Dublin’s dog bag is not here!”   She was, as usual, right. The bag containing Dublin’s food and other necessities for seven days was resting placidly on our dining room table in Vernon, Connecticut, awaiting transportation to Laconia.   “You’ll have to go back and get it.”   The going and coming took eight hours. Naturally, there were traffic delays owing to highway work that, as best I could tell, ended about 3:00 in the morning. I arrived back in Laconia at 4:00, the typical weary traveler. I felt as if I had just crossed the Sahara Desert on a tortoise. One of the worksites took a half hour to travel 0.2 miles to an exit, but when you find you...

The anarchist, quasi-Marxist, anti-capitalist, prone to violence, virulent anti-Jewish “protesters’ on the left in Governor Gavin Newsom’s California will ratchet up their reactions to the police authority everywhere in the United States if they are not effectively checked by rational congressmen. Not all the protestors in Los Angeles fall into the above category, of course, but there is an undeniable undertow in the movement that directs the course of events.   Long ago, when discipline in public schools was enforced by teachers, parents and school administrators, disciplinarians agreed on the importance of what then was called “reality testing.”   Suppose a student, for instance, had interrupted the order and discipline of a class by, say, shouting an obscenity in the midst of a teacher’s presentation.   In the absence of a response other than a verbal chastisement, the student would, it had been supposed, continue the misbehavior until he or she had been effect...

“Children’s Committee ranking member Rep. Anne Dauphinais, R-Killingly, read excerpts from books she said can be found in Connecticut school libraries,” according to a story in CTMirror .   Decorous Democrats in the state House objected to the selected texts read by Dauphinais as being vulgar, and CTMirror began its story with a terse warning: “Editor’s note: This story contains graphic sexual language that some readers might find offensive.”   Dauphinais’ chief objection was that Democrat legislative overseers had prevented a robust debate on a library bill she thought should not have been smuggled inside an implementer bill, a strategy often used to sidestep robust and clarifying public debate.   “Under the legislation, which passed the House early Tuesday morning as part of the biennial budget,” CTMirror tells us, “school boards and library governing bodies would be required to create a policy for considering requests to ban books, and they would not be al...

Connecticut U.S.  Senator Chris Murphy’s campaign walk-talk is 9 years old, according to the Hartford Courant.   Murphy’s walk across Connecticut is supposed to be a listening tour. It should surprise no one that Murphy, while talking to potential voters on his tour, hears what he has been telling reporters so instantly ever since President Donald Trump defeated Vice President Kamal Harris during the latest presidential campaign.   Here is Murphy telling his reportorial Boswell what he has heard while wandering through Connecticut: “I have run into a number of people who have been scared, feeling a little powerless. A number of people stop me to ask what they should be doing to try to stop him [Trump] from trampling our democracy with (young adults) that worry that democracy won’t be around for their kids. It is a real, intense worry that I hear and I believe that we are going to survive this moment but it does require everybody to stand up and join the movement.”...

Former Connecticut Governor John Rowland, Connecticut publications are reporting , has been pardoned by President Donald Trump.   The Trump pardon differs in important respects from a slew of pardons issued by former President Joe Biden at the end of his aborted presidential campaign. Biden issued his pardons before he was forced off the presidential ticket by disgruntled Democrat leaders such as U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and, Republicans suspect, former President Barrack Obama.       Rowland was indicted and convicted twice, CTMirror has reported. The governor resigned “July 1, 2004 at nearly the midpoint of his third term. He pleaded guilty to a corruption charge on Dec. 23, 2004. Three months later, he was sentenced to a year and a day in prison, ultimately serving 10 months… He was indicted a second time in 2014, accused of soliciting congressional candidates in 2010 and 2012 to secretly pay him as a consultant in campaigns for his old 5th Congres...