Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Antisthenes Connecticut’s spending problem   Spending cuts are rare in “the land of steady [bad] habits.” A blushingly honest Democrat will tell you, “You can’t cut spending in Connecticut without cutting your own political throat – in particular, state union employee votes and the invaluable boots-on-the ground campaign assistance provided by unionized state workers, who unfailingly know which side their bread is buttered on.   An AI replacement   Connecticut’s Democrat dominated General Assembly has passed a bill regulating Artificial Intelligence (AI).   Every morning of their waking lives, socialists arise weeping tears of blood and vowing vengeance on the rich. AI is fertile ground both for the rich and hopeful aspiring entrepreneurs.   At this point, very early in the game, all AI regulations and all costs associated with them rest on shaky predictions -- because there is no such thing as a “perfect” undeveloped technology. In a sane Connec...

  Antisthenes   Interviewer: We haven’t talked to you in quite some time.   Cynic : You’ve been denying yourself a great pleasure.   I: Connecticut U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal questioned Department of War chief Pete Hegseth recently. Blumenthal’s opening interrogatory gambit was as follows: “I know you have characterized this war as an astonishing military success. But the American people aren’t buying it. One point is irrefutable: which is, Americans never succeed in war unless the American people are behind it. And if what you are seeing as success now is winning, I would hate to see what losing looks like, because none of the shifting and contradictory objectives of the war have been achieved so far…”   Cynic: Yes. Responding in a like manner, Hegseth might have said, “If, as you suggest, the U.S. military engagement with Iran, a notorious financier of   anti-American terrorism throughout the Middle East for roughly 40 years, must be called...

CT General Assembly “No man’s life, liberty or property are safe while the Legislature is in session” -- Gideon John Tucker (1826–1899), American lawyer, newspaper editor, and New York politician   The tax rebate check we were told for (weeks) was “in the mail” is no longer in the mail. Instead, the Hartford Courant tells us, “hundreds of millions of dollars will be funneled to cities and towns in order to avoid local property tax increases, as mayors and first selectmen will be urged to hold the line on spending in the next fiscal year.”   Rebates, rather than tax cuts, are instantly revocable at the pleasure of Democrat leaders in the state General Assembly. Rebates should be regarded by state taxpayers and reporters as temporary political coupons designed to bring into the Democrat Party fold hard pressed voters who surely know the difference between a permanent or semi-permanent price reduction and a temporary coupon offered at the pleasure of a provider of goods ...

The headline in the Hartford Courant likely will not be reassuring to Hartford residents: “ Longtime CT city commissioner ousted. Another leaves too; backlash immediate and sharply worded .”   Dismissed, according to the Courant, was “Bruce Rubenstein, an attorney and member of the Internal Audit Commission since 2013… not reappointed when city Treasurer Carmen Sierra” thought it proper to appoint attorney Catherine Torres to the Internal Audit Commission in Rubenstein’s place.   Asked why he thought he was not reappointed to the audit commission, Rubenstein said, “I believe that she (Sierra) knew we were talking about an audit and investigation of the pension fund; she would have known we were interested in an audit… The pension is billions of dollars … if a treasurer opposes an audit, something is wrong. I don’t look the other way with allegations.”   Sierra complimented Rubenstein as she showed him the door. She said, according to the Courant, “she had an o...

Republican State House leader Vince Candelora has a gift for summarizing in a few pithy sentences legislative attempts to solve problems majority Democrats in Connecticut‘s General Assembly have made.   Objecting to the “final” version of a bill many homeschooling parents in Connecticut find unnecessarily intrusive and needlessly complex, Candelora said the bill “really misses the mark, if we are concerned about children falling through the cracks who are being abused,” the precipitant cause of the now revised homeschooling bill favored by Democrats. “That’s what our focus should be. [The bill drafted by Democrats is] an attempt to regulate homeschooling, and that’s not our issue. Our issue is when children are in DFC [Connecticut Department of Children and Families] custody or a report of DFC abuse or neglect [has been made], how are those children monitored? The focus [of the present adjusted homeschooling bill], is registering homeschooled children. [The bill] is the first s...

“Every time I see or hear Murphy, I feel my brain cells dying” -- a Facebook commentator   The   Hill reports – “ Murphy tells US, world progressives to take 'lessons' from Hungary elections ” – “Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) on Saturday urged progressives in the U.S. and around the world to ‘learn from each other’, saying the defeat of former Prime Minister Viktor Orbán in Hungary can offer a roadmap for rebuilding democracy… Murphy told the crowd at the inaugural Global Progressive Mobilization conference in Barcelona that the U.S. faced “the most significant threat” to democratic institutions since the Civil War, and Americans were “watching the courage of the defenders of democracy” in Hungary and other parts of Europe… The Connecticut Democrat, who sits on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, painted the picture of an America ‘in crisis,’ likening President Trump’s actions to a ‘totalitarian takeover.’”   Possibly some Democrats in Connecticut regard Murphy...

The title of the story in the Hartford Courant read: “Connecticut Senate Democrats pass tighter restrictions on ICE agents, right to sue agents.” And the lede said everything worth saying: “HARTFORD, Conn. — Prompted by shootings and heavy-handed tactics [by ICE], the [neo-progressive Democrat controlled] state Senate voted on party lines Tuesday night for a new state civil rights law that would allow Connecticut citizens to sue federal immigration agents…The controversial measure would permit civil lawsuits against federal officials if citizens believed that their civil rights had been violated.”   That is to say: Neo-progressive Democrats in Connecticut, leading by the nose a disappearing remnant of liberal state Democrats, intend, through constitutionally questionable legislation, to remove partial immunity from federal law enforcement agents – so that non-citizens of the United States may sue in court federal agents who wish to detain them. Connecticut’s new “civil rights l...

Ain’t it perfectly honest to charge a good price and make a profit on my investment and foresight? Of course, it is. Well, that’s honest graft --  George  Plunkitt of Tammany Hall   Corruption, we know, is a staple of kingly arrogance.  In a unitary one party state, corruption corrupts absolutely, for obvious reasons. When power remains undivided in a state, the only guard against political corruption, so we have been told, is a vigilant media.   A nudge from the Feds and a six month old attempt by Connecticut Republicans to reform the state’s earmarks structure has awakened the virtuous juices of a handful of Connecticut’s reporters.   About six months ago, Republican leaders in the General Assembly – state representative in the House Vince  Candelora and state senators Rob Sampson and Steve Harding -- issued a mini-manifesto on earmarks and ended by “ proposing the following legislative reforms which would apply to all...

Things are not going well, U.S. Senator Chris Murphy told a Hartford paper.   Perhaps Murphy should bone up on his Carl von Clausewitz, the Prussian general and military theorist who wrote in his seminal work On War ( Vom Kriege ) that "War is the continuation of politics by other means." Clausewitz meant that war serves as a political instrument that secures the objectives of diplomacy when peaceful measures fail. The political goal, however, must always guide the conduct and intensity of military action.   When President Ronald Reagan was asked what goal he would pursue with the Soviet Union during his presidency, Reagan answered, “We win, they lose.”   Clausewitz was not simply theorizing. He was stating an incontrovertible historical fact. Diplomacy with Germany and Japan at the conclusion of World War II was much easier than it had been prior to the winning of the war. So it has been throughout history, as Murphy might say, Period!   “Trump has ...