Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

It may be worth mentioning – and, in fact, President Donald Trump, never shy about tooting his own horn, has mentioned it several times – that the national economy has improved under his watch . An Associated Press story noted on the 4 th of the New Year, “U.S. employers went on a hiring spree in December, adding a surprising 312,000 jobs… Health care and education added 82,000 jobs last month, the largest jump in nearly nine years. Restaurants and drinking places posted a net gain of 40,700 jobs. Builders added 38,000 construction jobs, while manufacturers increased their payrolls by 32,000 workers.” Amazingly, “The torrid hiring in December far outstripped the 180,000 jobs investors had been anticipating and could help ease fears that the economy’s expansion — now in the middle of its 10th year — may be coming to an end.”

After January, Dannel Malloy will belong to the ages; which is to say, he will belong to the historians, who no doubt will be amused by the gloss on his own career provided by a lame-duck governor who has provided the epitaph that should appear on his own political tombstone: “I could have been popular and ineffective, but I couldn't in this state be popular and effective." Translation: When your disastrous policies fail the state and you become unpopular, rise above your unpopularity by advancing a false dichotomy – no one who is effective can be popular, at least not in Connecticut. A book is likely on its way.

The Associated Press called it “a striking rupture with past practice.” But it was more than that. It was an intentional slap in the face to Israel, President Elect Donald Trump, and all prior presidents who had manfully resisted the recent UN declaration made possible by lame-duck President Barack Obama’s decision to abstain from a UN Council vote that condemns Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem as a “flagrant violation of international law.” Mr. Obama’s decision to abstain from the council’s 14-0 vote, the AP reported, “is one of the biggest American rebukes of its longstanding ally in recent memory. And it could have significant ramifications for the Jewish state, potentially hindering Israel's negotiating position in future peace talks. Given the world's widespread opposition to settlements, the action will be almost impossible for anyone, including Trump, to reverse.”

“Character is much easier kept than recovered” – Thomas Paine According to a story appearing in the Waterbury Republican American , “Former state Comptroller Bill Curry, the 1994 and 2002 Democratic nominee for Governor, was even more direct. ‘No one under any cloud of investigation is on any serious list for any appointment in any White House. It simply isn’t worth the enormous political and moral hazard,’ he said. Mr. Curry was a White House adviser to Mrs. Clinton’s husband," former President Bill Clinton. Mr. Curry believes that Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy has no chance – zip – of acquiring a position in the administration of future President Hillary Clinton. 

When George Jepsen moved into the office vacated by Attorney General Dick Blumenthal, he found files cluttered with old unresolved whistle-blower cases, 699 of them, all bubbling and boiling on back burners. Very quietly and without much fuss, Mr. Jepsen closed 513 of them . Mr. Jepsen at the time told the Associated Press that the number of cases he dismissed in which “something meaningfully wrong is going on,” was small. The mass of old cases spoke volumes about the methods employed by Mr. Blumenthal. Step 1) summon – and sometimes recruit -- complainants; step 2) compile affidavits, some of which were ghost written and enhanced by Mr. Blumenthal’s staff; step 3) issue to a friendly media a torrid press release containing as yet unproven allegations; step 4) seize assets whenever possible; step 5) wait… one month… one year, two years… for the business under legal assault to collapse; step 6) when your victim has been impoverished to such a point that he can no longer affor...

“In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act ” -- George Orwell George Orwell, like Jonathan Swift before him, is one of those large writers who simply straddle ideological categories. He was fortunate enough – or unfortunate enough, depending on one’s point of view – to have been born in what the ancient Chinese call “interesting times,” the bloody and totalitarian 20th century. The revolutionist speaking truth to power often appears among us with a rope braided by the reigning powers draped about his neck. He steps towards gallows with a wan smile on his face.

“It's not what you don't know that kills you, it's what you know for sure that ain't true” --   Mark Twain The police report on the mass slaughter in Sandy Hook will not be completed until mid-March. But the absence of a final   report will not hinder Governor Dannel Malloy; and in fact, the governor told reporters on Tuesday, January 15, that he has broken off briefings from the state police, according to an Associated Press report .

There is no termination date on the tax increase contract between taxpayers and the Malloy administration – because there is no written contract. Some of the items in the contract to be signed by the State Employees Bargaining Agent Coalition (SEBAC), the state union coalition negotiating contracts with Governor Malloy, do have a termination date. For instance, the salaries of state union members, frozen for two years, will unfreeze thereafter and increase by 3% during the following three years. In such precarious times, it must be liberating for state workers to know that the “shared sacrifice” of salary givebacks has a termination date affixed to it. Actuaries hired by the Malloy administration tell us that the temporary salary freeze will save the state $ 448,402,275, according to a budget fact sheet given out to the state’s media. Because the freeze terminates after two years, the savings to the state is itself temporary, while the salary increase of 9% over three years will be...

An Associated Press poll shows President Barack Obama’s approvals trending downward. According to the survey of 1,001 adults conducted with cell and landline telephones from Sept. 3-8, public disapproval of President Barack Obama's handling of health care has jumped to 52 percent; his overall approval rating, up seven points since July, shows 49 percent now disapprove of how he is handling his job as president; on health care, forty-nine percent say they oppose the health overhaul plans being considered by Congress, up from 43 percent in July; 52 percent say they disapprove of how Obama is handling the economy; a similar number disapprove of his handling of taxes; and 56 percent dislike his handling of skyrocketing budget deficits.

The American public, at least that portion of it not presently in the tank with Democrat nominee for President Sen. Barack Obama, will not accept as sufficient Obama’s explanation of his association with University of Illinois professor Bill Ayers . Obama has sought to dismiss his association with Ayers by saying he was eight years old when Ayers was a founder and member of the Weather Underground, a group of Anti-Vietnam War era domestic terrorists that bombed targets inside the United States, including the Capitol building in Washington DC. According to a 2001 story about Ayers that that Obama ought to have seen in Chicago Magazine , “Between 1970 and 1974, the Weatherman took credit for 12 bombings, including one at the United States Capitol and another involving several police cars.” In 1970, a bomb that was apparently being built in a Greenwich Village townhouse, occupied by at least five members of the Weatherman, accidentally exploded—killing three of the group, including Ayers...

The entertaining Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, is not yet running for Pope, but this has not prevent her from correcting Catholic theologians when they fall short of modern perceptions. Most of the Catholic Church, minus Mrs. Pelosi, is unhappy with the slaughter of the innocents that has occurred in the Unites States since the US Supreme Court, in various opinions, struck down state laws forbidding abortion. The Catholic Church’s doctrine on abortion began to take form in the first century. To be sure, doctrine, as Cardinal Henry Newman insists (see "On The Development of Christian Doctrine"), does admit of development; which is to say, the doctrine, as it encounters different obstacles in its course through history, does change somewhat to meet new contingencies. But there is a world of difference between development and categorical change. During the birth cycle, developmental changes occur in the fetus, but there is no radical change – in the a...