Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, who is also running for U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd’s seat in the congress, appears to be stepping away from a measure he supported banning wood furnaces following an announcement that The Connecticut Farm Bureau Association based in Windsor opposes the outright ban, according to a story in the Norwich Bulletin . The Bulletin reported, “Blumenthal softened his stance after Sen. Andrew Maynard, D-Stonington, who is vice chairman of the General Assembly’s Environment Committee, pledged to work for stricter regulations short of an outright ban.” Members of the New London Farm Bureau Association, 691 strong, want bill 126, which they oppose, to be fast-tracked. The bureau feels that farmers, according to the story, “must defend the general public against economic hardship that would result from the bill’s enactment. The bill contains an exemption for farmers, but the farmers are fighting it anyway.” It is doubtful that the farmers will march on the s...

The reaction in the New York sector of the feminist jungle to Sen. Edward Kennedy’s defection from Sen. Hillary Clinton has been somewhat intemperate. “Women have just experienced the ultimate betrayal,” according to the National Organization for Women’s New York chapter: “Senator Kennedy’s endorsement of Hillary Clinton’s opponent in the Democratic presidential primary campaign has really hit women hard. Women have forgiven Kennedy, stuck up for him, stood by him, hushed the fact that he was late in his support of Title IX, the ERA, the Family Leave and Medical Act to name a few. Women have buried their anger that his support for the compromises in No Child Left Behind and the Medicare bogus drug benefit brought us the passage of these flawed bills. We have thanked him for his ardent support of many civil rights bills, BUT women are always waiting in the wings. “And now the greatest betrayal! We are repaid with his abandonment! He’s picked the new guy over us. He’s joined the list of...

A state budget soon will be reported out of the legislature – a little late, say some – and it will be yet another “let’s make a deal” budget. Here in Connecticut, it is virtually impossible to get folks focused on state budgets. Town budgets are a different animal, largely because municipal tax payers are occasionally given the opportunity through referendums to vote budgets up or down, a rare concession in Connecticut politics to direct democracy. There is no state budget referendum, which means that final decisions on budgets are left to duly elected legislators -- the deal makers. If the public does not like the budget, it is assumed it will vote out of office the deal makers who, so far, have conspired to raise the bottom line of the state’s budget from a modest pre-income tax budget of $8 or $9 billion – the figures are rounded and near accurate; what’s a billion or two among friends – to about $18 billion today. Now, we know for certain, through casual conversations over beer an...

Gore Vidal, who was friendly with the Kennedy family, once was asked whether he was disturbed by Edward Kennedy’s long reign as senator of Masachussetts. Not at all, said Vidal -- author of “ Myra Brekinridge/Myron-Myron ", whose heroine, sort of, was a transvestite and “ Imperial America: Reflections on the United States of Amnesia ", as well as a host of other well received books on various topics – every state “should have at least one Caligula.” Connecticut’s Caligula may be Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, whose fondest wish – to save the world by suit – was granted, according to a story in the Hartford Courant , a day after Thanksgiving, when the Supreme Court of the United States agreed to hear a suit championed by Blumenthal and other attorney’s general to force the Environmental Protection Agency to classify CO{-2} as a hazardous emission. On the local front, according to the paper, “…a second coalition case known as Connecticut vs. American Electric Power seek...

Hilliare Belloc’s advice to the rich – “Learn something about the internal combustion engine, and remember: Soon, you will die.” Caligula So, I have become a ghost, the nearest I shall ever be to a God again; for, in life, I was a God. Divinity, you know, is the highest form of politics. What is higher or nobler than a God? … But wait: Nobility has nothing to do with it, as if nobility and Godliness could ever share the same frame; a God is above that sort of thing … As a former Emperor – now, God and ghost – everything to me was permissible, and understandable. I comprehend by grasping my subject from the inside; nothing was alien to me. I am solid as earth now, though I know it does not seem so to you, because I know everything; I am in everything, and everything is in me. That is how I know; through a process of identity and self revelation. I become the thing I want to know – say, a tree, or a young boy, or a virgin – and then, at will, I revert to Godliness. You, on the other ha...