Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Our national Coronavirus plague, which some dour, unscientific critics insist is no more deadly than the flu, has deposited in the hands of governors here in the Northeast an administrative power that might well bring a blush to the cheek of Gore Vidal’s Caligula. Asked by a reporter whether he objected to the seemingly endless senatorial reign of Edward Kennedy in Massachusetts, Vidal quipped – no, not at all, because every state should have in it at least one Caligula. Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York is the most visible and outspoken Vidalian Caligula in a compact of similarly endowed governors that includes Connecticut, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

Martin Looney United Technologies (UTC), yet another home grown Connecticut institution, has flown the coop – this time for Boston, Massachusetts, the state’s chief corporate poacher. The day after the announcement had been made, the state’s Democrat spinmeisters were busy putting a happy face on the event. We discover from a Hartford Courant piece that pretty much everyone in the state was surprised by the announcement. Political cuckholds are always the last to know when their best laid plans are torn asunder.

While Connecticut Democrats were busying themselves thumping President Donald Trump during the recently concluded elections – the state’s all Democrat US Congressional Delegation would not shed a tear if U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal, Speaker of the US House Nancy Pelosi and US Senator Chuck Schumer were to succeed in impeaching him – Trump has delivered the goods to The Provision State. The state’s underperforming economy may finally join the rest of the nation, much of which had recovered from the Great Recession many moons ago, in a splendid recovery – just in time too. Economists in Connecticut have not titled the coming jobs boom The Trump Bump, although a recent Hartford Business Journal (HBJ) report, “ UTC’s 4Q profits jump 73%; CEO Hayes airs separation plans HBJ ” comes dangerously close.

Overheard in the MidRoad Diner during a meeting of the Reformers Club The difference between God and Governor Malloy --“God is less concerned than [Dannel] Malloy when people question Him.” Those early body-building pics of Republican House leader Themis Klarides circulating in the desk drawers of oppo-researchers -- “I’m still waiting for one of Connecticut’s opinionators to write, maybe in a column, that Klarides can easily bench-press many of her political opponents. She likes sports, contact sports too. Otherwise, why would she have gotten involved in politics?”

Commentators and the general public will have noticed the deep trench, very much like a moat, that separates national and state politics. This severe separation is most evident among a state’s congressional delegation. It is, primarily, an assumed division of labor that demarcates zones of political influence. Only rarely, if at all, do U.S senators and congressmen comment on state politics. It might be interesting, though politically fatal, to hear U.S. Senators Chris Murphy or Dick Blumenthal comment on the present dilapidated state of their state. This will not happen. It very rarely happens that Connecticut’s Washington Beltway senators and congresspersons are asked: “Do you think, as does Governor Dannel Malloy, that Connecticut’s perpetual deficits should be reduced by means other than revenue increases?” Or “About that new ballpark in Hartford – a blessing or a curse?”

Milton Friedman once said, “If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in five years there’d be a shortage of sand.” If you put socialists in charge of countries, you soon will create shortages of toilet paper, which is the case in Venezuela, reduced to rubble by Hugo Chavez and his successor Nicolás Maduro. No one was surprised last week when Bloomberg announced that rich Venezuelans are fleeing the country – now an economic desert – for more profitable ventures elsewhere: “ Wealthy Venezuelans Are Seeking Haven in Madrid. " Something similar is happening in Connecticut. Tax money “invested” by Governor Dannel Malloy in Connecticut businesses is not working to create a welcoming business environment. “Once again, a Connecticut company making a major investment in its digital business has been lured by another state offering tax breaks and the chance to succeed in a big city,” the Hartford Courant tells us. This time it’s United Technologies (UTC)...

“I don't give reasons. I give orders!” -- Captain Ahab, Moby Dick It seems only yesterday that Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey was threatening to hold a net on the borders of Connecticut and catch companies as they fled a tax prone Democratic Governor and majority Democrats in the state’s General Assembly. Governor Malloy derided the notion. Christie, a blustery Republican, was an easy punching bag. Not so Governor Andrew Cuomo, who recently met with CEO of General Electric Jeff Immelt to discuss moving GE business from Connecticut to New York.

Some notable politician who is not Catholic really ought to come to the defense of Catholics – because they are now under assault from anti-Catholic Catholic politicians. Just as there is no anti-communist so fierce as an ex-communist, so there is no anti-Catholic quite so energetically opposed to Catholic orthodoxy as a Catholic politician on the make and in need of votes from others who may share his distaste for all things Catholic. The uninterrupted assault on Catholics, the Reverend Robert Barron points out in National Review , is bone wearingly old. Arthur Schlesinger, the reliably liberal historian and social critic, used to say that a poisonous anti-Catholicism was the oldest prejudice in the United States, an early bloom that washed upon our shore with the arrival of the Mayflower. In the Boston of Sam Adams’ day, anti-Papists used to place an effigy of the pope in a chair that was paraded through the streets – Boston’s version of the English Guy Fawkes celebrati...