Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

National Democrats are, ever so gently, following socialist Pied Piper U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders back to the cave.   Connecticut Democrats, progressive to the bone, are likely to go along for the ride. The Pied Piper, it will be recalled, was hired by the mayor of Hamlin to rid the town of rats, which he did by piping them an enchanting tune. The mayor of the town refused payment, and the Pied Piper later avenged himself by piping the town’s children to a cave, where they were never heard from again. There are two morals to the story: debts incurred must be paid, and the instruments of destruction you use against your enemies easily may be turned upon yourself. Forbes Magazine has examined the detailed Congressional Democrat tax hike plan. Many of us, including Newsweek magazine, have long concluded that " We Are All Socialists Now ."   The Democrat detailed plan includes, according to Forbes , an i ncrease in the top marginal income tax rate from 37 percent to 3...

Those on the right like to joke that New England is slipping into a socialist nirvana, but recently US. Senator Elizabeth Warren, the Leon Trotsky of the movement to make New England Venezuela, has added serious notes to the charge. Kevin Williamson has exploded the Warren menace in a thoughtful piece in National Review titled “ Elizabeth Warren’s Batty Plan to Nationalize . . . Everything .” “Warren’s proposal,” Williamson writes, is dishonestly called the ‘Accountable Capitalism Act.’ … Under Senator Warren’s proposal, no business with more than $1 billion in revenue would be permitted to legally operate without permission from the federal government. The federal government would then dictate to these businesses the composition of their boards, the details of internal corporate governance, compensation practices, personnel policies, and much more. Naturally, their political activities would be restricted, too. Senator Warren’s proposal entails the wholesale expropriation of...

It seems clear that state Democrats will be running against President Donald Trump in the 2018 elections. They already are doing so.   Will this be a winning strategy? Ned Lamont is the Democrat Party nominee for governor. His hand-picked Lieutenant Governor running mate is Susan Bysiewicz. Lamont is facing within his own tribe a primary challenge from Mayor of Bridgeport Joe Ganim. A straggler, Guy Smith, has bowed out of the race. Ganim, despite his recent graduation from prison, may present a real threat to Lamont. The two Democrats will be running against each other in a party primary, the winner of which will, it seems likely, be running against Trump, if only because the primary victor will not be able to win in a general election as a Malloyalist progressive.

“I have become a socialist. I love humanity, but I HATE! people” --  from Aria da Capo by Edna St. Vincent Millay Headlines in Connecticut papers continue to show Democrats falling through the rabbit hole into their own progressive Wonderland. Headline: “Sources: Alexion Leaving Elm City – Announcement Expected on move to Boston.”

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?”

A shrewd political observer once said that Americans rarely solve their most pressing political problems; instead, they amicably bid them goodbye. Take the primary system by way of example. The primary system itself has been attended, especially during the current Presidential election, with glaring problems that pretty nearly everyone has studiously ignored. It is the primary system that has given us two of the most unpalatable presidential candidates in U.S. History. Nearly fifty percent of voters on either side of the political spectrum this year will be voting AGAINST the Presidential candidates, according to a September Pew Research poll .

So, what do politicians really think? Perhaps the more important question is: How do the rest of us know what politicians really think? The post-modern answer to this last question is: We read their emails. By their emails shall ye know them. When speaking among friends and political comrades in emails, politicians sometimes discard their masks, loosen their belts and tell the rest of us what they REALLY THINK. We owe these freshets of honesty to hackers and hacker aggregators such as WiliLeaks.

Some people think Hillary Clinton and her now faltering husband Bill, both products of the Silly Sixties (SS), are too Machiavellian for their own good . Others think Mrs. Clinton has never shed her admiration for Saul Alinsky, the political guru of the SS and author of “ Rules for Radicals ," whose own ideal of a perfect political and social radical was Lucifer, AKA The Devil, to whom Mr. Alinsky dedicated his hand-book on cultural destruction. A senior at Wellesley College, Mrs. Clinton wrote a 92 page thesis on Mr. Alinsky.  Later at Yale, a nursery bed for U.S. politicians and presidents in the modern age, Mrs. Clinton bent her knee to the radicalism of the day and, some think, began plotting an unobstructed path to the presidency. It’s been a long slog. Her meandering but methodical course has led through hubby Bill, past a few bimboes, through the Secretary of State office by way of  the U.S. Senate, over the smoldering ruins of Benghazi, over the prostrate body...

The media has lost its moral pull. The approval rating of the lowest bottom-feeding politician is several fathoms higher than that of “the media,” according to a September 2016 Gallup Poll . The media, even less than the current Democratic and Republican presidential nominees, simply does not give a hoot about approval polls directed at them, which are worth pausing over none-the-less.

We all know how it works: If you are a politician who outpaces your opponent in money and lustrous fame, you hide-out during elections, contextualize yourself by feeding the media tons of approving releases put together by a faithful staff -- and await reelection. Dick Blumenthal, presently Connecticut’s Senior U.S. Senator, is such a person. A millionaire by marriage and an incumbent, he has the riches of King Croesus in his campaign kitty. His Republican opponent, Dan Carter, is the poor boy of the current campaign for the U.S. Senate. According to a recent report in CTMirror , “Blumenthal’s campaign reported having more than $5.3 million in its war chest as of June 30, after having spent more than $1.6 million, while Carter’s campaign reported only about $70,000 in cash on hand.”

‘All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds”  – Dr. Pangloss in Voltaire’s Candide Connecticut US Senator Chris Murphy appeared for an  interview with Bret Baier of Fox News  just as the National Democratic Nominating Convention was reeling from email disclosures that set even fierce Hillary Clinton supporters back on their heels. Mr. Murphy bullied his way through Mr. Baier’s questions but, alas, reality, that annoying spoiler of unreasoned optimism, poked its nose into Mr. Murphy’s tent. Even as the Dr. Pangloss of Connecticut Democrats was saying that all was the best in the best of all possible Democratic worlds, the convention floor was bursting with rancor and – not too extreme a word – disgust. The Democratic world had just been shaken by the release of 20,000 emails hacked from the Democratic National Committee (DNC), some of which appeared to confirm Socialist Bernie Sanders’ notion that the DNC had set its face against his cand...

It will not take Bernie Sanders long to disappear. His participation at the Democratic Presidential Nomination Convention will be his finest and final hour as a prime mover on the public stage. Mr. Sanders started to disappear as a serious political threat for Democratic Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton weeks and even months ago, when it became obvious that Mrs. Clinton would garner enough delegates to assure her nomination. Long before Mrs. Clinton had thrown off her annoying Primary incubus, her agents were doing their best to destroy the Sanders campaign, as recent emails hacked by Russian operatives and released by Wikileaks make clear.

The Presidential Nominating Conventions of both parties this election year will be unconventional, although the Republican Party Convention possibly  will be more unconventional. The rising political star of Bernie Sanders, socialist, dipped below the horizon shortly after President Barack Obama, the nominal head of the Democrat Party, his hand gently touching Mr. Sanders’ sagging shoulder, led him to the White House and there sacrificed the socialist on the altar of progressivism.

“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread” – Anatole France. Connecticut must reduce business costs in the next decade. A failure to do so will reinforce the status quo : business flight from Connecticut to more business-friendly states, resulting in fewer jobs and less revenue pouring into the state treasury -- which, as we know from bitter experience, produces budget deficits. The deficits, in their turn, lead inescapably to higher taxes or cuts in services to the state’s most needy recipients of state aid. We live in a state in which politicians captured by special interests are less concerned with the poor who live under bridges than they are with securing the votes of far richer political activists who can turn them in and out of office.

                                                                                    Q: Who are the Trump supporters? A: Right now, they are, for the most part, people who are unattached, emotionally or ideologically, to either of the two major parties. The Obama administration has abandoned altogether what used to be called moderate, Reagan Democrats. Some of these people, left in the lurch by progressives, have crossed over to vote for Trump. He is running very strong among Republican, Democrat and unaffiliated white males. Within the narrower category of alienated moderate Republicans and Democrats, there are numerous sub-groups: resentment Republicans and Democrats, people who have, in one way or another, been slighted by what they refer to, disdainfully, as the party ...

“The government doesn’t care about profits, which is why it’s always in the red. It doesn’t care much about service either, which is why there are long lines at Connecticut’s Department of Motor Vehicles. It cares only about votes.” – The Cynic at the Breakfast Table, a work in progress. On Thursday, Hillary Clinton came to Hartford, not so long ago the murder capital of New England, to agitate indirectly against Democratic presidential rival Bernie Sanders – AND FIRE ARMS. Mr. Sanders is from Vermont and does not suffer from hoplophobia , an irrational fear of guns. In the hinterland of Vermont, guns are used to shoot game; in one-party urbanscapes such as Hartford, guns are used by drug dealers, gangbangers and young school kids to kill rivals and innocent by-standers. Anti-gun Democratic politicians now seek to forestall urban gun crimes by allowing lawyers to sue gun manufacturers – good for the lawyers, bad for law-abiding gun owners and good for politicians wh...

Long ago in the post-Camelot era, President George Bush The Greater was indiscreet enough to promise during a presidential campaign, “Read my lips – no new taxes,” after which Mr. Bush proceeded to raise taxes. It was one of those moments that delighted gold-plated opposition research fellows in the Washington D.C. Wonderland. After the deed was done, Mr. Bush – and later, low tax Republicans – was kicked around the block for decades whenever a deficit raised its horned head in the beltway. Life went on. The federal debt increased at a rapid pace under both Presidents Bush The Lesser and Barack Obama . Mr. Obama has in seven years added $6.463 trillion to the national debt, at 55.4% the largest debt increase of the three presidents. By the end of his term in office, George W. Bush had doubled the debt passed along to him by the Clinton administration, adding $5.849 trillion to Clinton’s $5.8 trillion.

Connecticut’s presidential primary is coming up at the end of the month, April 26, and the jockeying has begun. Governor of Ohio John Kasich, who has managed to corral a slender 145 delegates in a primary that a little over a year ago boasted 17 Republican presidential candidates, recently made his appearance in Connecticut and was warmly received by some legislators and editorial writers. Mr. Kasich seems to be, at least here in the northeast, the preferred candidate of what Trumpeters disdainfully call “the establishment,” meaning safe Republican politicians and, one supposes, Connecticut’s left-of-center media. In preparation for the arrival of Donald Trump, the Nutmeg Media – which has never understood or approved of the conservative movement – pulled out its critical party hats.

Cassandra: Apollo, Apollo! God of all ways, but only Death's to me, Once and again, O thou, Destroyer named, Thou hast destroyed me, thou, my love of old! Aeschylus -- The Agamemnon Hillary Clinton Interview Hillary Clinton: You’re so cute, darling. What’s your name? Cassandra: Cassandra. HC: How sweet. So Cassandra, you have a question for me. Should I call you Cassie? Cassandra: I’d prefer Cassandra.