Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Fazio Ryan Fazio – running on the Republican ticket for governor of Connecticut against (four) possible primary opponents and Governor Ned Lamont, who occasionally presents himself as moderate on economic issues and a neo-progressive on cultural issues – was regrettably late for a meeting in Tolland, Connecticut, as was this longtime political commentator.   The weather, trying its best to move into spring, was not obliging, and the roads were clogged with traffic, delaying Fazio, who was coming from downstate. I was late because I had gone to The Radial Coffee Company in Vernon rather than Tolland, 10 miles distant.   Barbara Broadrick, the co-owner along with her husband of Radial, was in a commiserating mood. We both like dogs.   “It’s only about 11 minutes from here.”   She and her husband had started the company a few years ago. Business was brisk and plentiful enough to allow its owners to have opened multiple outlets. The service space was rem...

"No man's life, liberty or property is safe while the Legislature is in session” -- Gideon John Tucker   All neo-progressive Democrats in Connecticut understand perfectly the progressivity principle. The principle was most clearly stated by Karl Marx in the Critique of the Gotha Program — “ From each according to his ability to each according to his needs.”   An old wise woman once expressed perfectly the spirit of neo-progressivism politicians when she told her teenage son, this intended as a criticism, “So, what you mean is: What’s yours is mine, and what’s mine is mine too.”   Neo-progressivism is the political means by which socialistic retributive economic justice is achieved. This principle was very much front and center in a recent discussion among Democrat Party leaders.   If taxes are to be redistributed from millionaires to those less economically endowed, then it is obvious that the redistributors should take care NOT to apply tax cuts or c...

    If a state-imposed regulation increases the cost of homeschooling in all state municipalities, which organ of government – the state or the municipality – should absorb the costs?   Should a state tax credit be given to homeschooling parents?   A parent who chooses to homeschool his children is not relieved of the tax paid for public education. In effect, he or she is paying twice to educate his child: once for an anonymous child who receives the benefit of the public school tax dollars that his child is not receiving, and again for the additional costs of homeschooling.   And the costs added to homeschooling by Senate President Pro Tempore Looney’s imperative reforms, according to a March 15 th story in the Hartford Courant – “Looney: We have to keep moving” -- is sizeable. Education Commissioner Charlene Russell-Tucker said, the Courant noted, “that 1,800 children left public schools for homeschooling in the last fiscal year, along with anothe...

Brownson Orestes Brownson, (1803-1876), went through the political and religious enthusiasms of his day like a hot knife through butter. His forward motion progress came to an abrupt halt when, friendless afterwards, he formerly joined the Catholic Church. Some scholars theorize that Brownson was in his day America’s Cardinal John Henry Newman, author of The Development of Christian Doctrine and principally responsible, after his own conversion to Catholicism, for founding the influential Oxford Movement in Western Europe.   During one of his intellectual meanderings from atheism, through Transcendentalism, to what Hilaire Belloc later would call The Path to Rome, Brownson, the author of The American Republic , would insist that throughout history there were only two political parties: the party of stasis, and the party of forward movement, falsely identified by our current neo-progressives as progressivism.   Brownson’s observation remains true today. But how does one...

  Lamont The recently proposed omnibus emergency certification bill -- a catch basin for previous legislative measures that had been presented to Connecticut’s General Assembly and, for one reason or another, had not passed muster – has been modified by Governor Ned Lamont’s veto and intervention.   No Democrat legislator protested the original measure on process grounds, and the most important question – “Who benefits by stuffing parts of unpassed bills into an omnibus emergency measure?”—was never answered, because the question was never asked.   The short answer to this question is, as might be expected – tax thirsty single-party partisan Democrats benefit. Their emergency omnibus bill allows Connecticut’s ruling Democrat Party to skirt normative processes, and it creates one measure from many separate pieces that may be voted into law without confronting the usual inconveniences: public hearings; debates in various relevant committees; legislative process barrie...

Blumenthal U.S. Senator Chris Murphy’s response to the largely successful assault by Israel and the United States on Iran’s terrorist regime was slightly schizophrenic when compared with U.S Senator Dick Blumenthal’s forthright op-ed in the Hartford Courant supporting the brave resistance of Ukraine in the face of continuing Russian aggression, Reality of Inhumanity I found in Ukraine .   At the beginning of Vladimir Putin’s unanswered assault on Ukraine, Blumenthal visited the besieged country and beseeched the Biden administration to send jets to Ukraine so that Ukraine might effectively answer Putin’s aggression. His pleadings went unanswered.   From his first to his most recent visit to Ukraine, Blumenthal’s messaging has been consistent and, much to his credit, persistent, even though Democrat President Biden appeared to turn a deaf ear to his pleadings.   Here is a takeaway from Blumenthal’s most recent op-ed:   Ukraine can win, preserving its s...

"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely" – Lord Acton   The word “emergency” is wrapped in laugh quotes in the Hartford Courant story “Senate clashes, passes ‘emergency’ bill. Both major political parties, we now know, have discovered the political usefulness of politically created “emergencies” during and after the COVID pandemic.   The Hartford Courant top of the fold story -- “ Connecticut Senate clashes over emergency session over warehouse workers, nonprofits, taxes, bottle returns ” -- is deliciously sardonic. We are told, “In an all-day marathon, the [Democrat dominated] Senate also voted 26-10 on mostly party lines for an omnibus, 121-page bill on a series of issues that were unrelated to each other.   Ordinarily an “omnibus” emergency certification bill would be regarded as an oxymoron because emergency certification, which usually bypasses legislative oversight and public commentary, commonly targets one rather than multiple ...

Cicero Freedom suppressed again and again regains bites with keener fangs than freedom never endangered -- Cicero   The primary system in Connecticut was initiated to purge politics of party bosses such as the formidable John Bailey. Governor Ella Grasso, the first woman in the nation to serve as governor in her own right, was a product of the Bailey system, now defunct. Under the boss system, the party boss selected candidates for major state positions and presented them for affirmation at party conventions; a delegate convention being conventional and traditional, incumbents manage to retain their seats – why disturb the political universe? – and the façade of democracy is preserved.   However, there is a downside to all primaries preceding party conventions.   In semi-anarchic modern times, the candidates chosen in primaries often are not acceptable to voters in general elections. A primary choice may be a Hobson’s choice – that is a “choice” that is no cho...

  “Saying Gov. Ned Lamont’s plan is not enough, Senate Republicans are calling for $1.5 billion in tax and electricity relief in an election year,” the Hartford Courant tells us in its February 12 report, “ GOP unveils $1.5B   tax cut plan .”   Republicans are calling for tax cuts. Democrats are calling for tax relief . The two are entirely different. A tax cut is an uncollected tax that leaves dollars in the accounts of taxpayers who are, free market Republicans will insist, better able than tax-hungry bureaucrats to decide how dollars should be allocated. The difference between a tax cut and a tax rebate or credit , preferred by state Democrats, is the same as the difference between a price reduction and a temporary price discount. A rebate must be collected before it can be rebated. But a tax cut leaves dollars at the disposal of taxpayers. Rebates and credits can be easily redistributed by the tax collecting authority, but it is not possible to redistribute an un...

In Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield , Mr. Micawber finds himself headed to a debtor’s prison. Before it was abolished Dickens’ own father found himself in similar straights.   Micawber, chronically unable to take his own advice, tells Copperfield, “Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen, nineteen and six, result happiness.   Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.” The difference between economic misery and happiness may turn on a penny. Debt – or rather inattention to debt – accumulates, and cumulative debt is always painful.   The state Office of Legislative Research (OLR) reported in 2024, “You [perhaps one of our tax-thirsty legislators] asked for a 50-state comparison of state debt as a percent of state gross domestic product (GDP) and how Connecticut’s debt burden based on these measures has changed in the past 10 years.   “Connecticut had the highest NTSD [Net Tax Supported ...

A recent CTMirror story by veteran journalist Mark Pazniokas, “ How Marty Looney shapes CT politics, Patience and persistence ,” is, a staple of Pazniokas’ writing, both amusing and informative.   We find that Looney, whose political life spans more than 45 years, is Irish Catholic, a union supporter like his father, independent-minded like his mother, and persevering. In sketching Looney’s character, Pazniokas might easily have quoted Mark Twain: “The miracle or the power that elevates the few is to be found in their industry, application and perseverance under the promptings of a brave, determined spirit.”   There are, of course, two kinds of perseverance. Both the Devil and St. Michael the Archangel are, many Catholics believe, persevering creatures.   The success of perseverance in politics depends upon a few variables. Looney may best be described as a leftist Democrat in a Connecticut Democrat political party apparatus properly characterized as “left of ...

My inner skeptic – we all have one --is a skeptic’s skeptic. The word “skeptic” is yet to be used as a political cudgel by incumbent politicians and those who look favorably upon them, unlike such battering rams as “Nazi” and “Fascist.” Connecticut US Senator Chris Murphy has notably deployed his moral brickbat against President Donald Trump, nearly universally reprehended in New England, New York and Connecticut, the “land of steady [bad] habits.   “We must not,’ my skeptic says, “expect to see on Connecticut editorial or Op-Ed pages commentary in praise of Trump. Victor Davis Hanson, an astute political historian and commentator, wrote a book a few years ago titled provocatively The Case for Trump. The book has since been updated. The Epoch Times recently ran an analytical piece titled, “ 30 Ways Trump Impacted the US, World in First Year .” There is no question, even among Trump’s most energetic opponents, that Trump stands at the head of a transformative presidency. ...