Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

As many students of politics know, there are two kinds of truth: political truth, and all other varieties. Political truth, unlike scientific truth, need not be connected verifiably with objective reality. Political truth sometimes dresses up in the robes of science, but bad science also leaves objective reality behind at the altar. Jonathan Gruber of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the Cassandra of Obamabots, was one of the architects of Obamacare who, unlike many proponents of President Barack Obama’s “Affordable Care Act,” went off script and, in venues he may have thought were off record, simply laid out the truth about Obamacare in such unvarnished terms that even those overfriendly to President Barack Obama in the media could not easily misunderstand Mr. Gruber’s essential message – which was: Obamacare, right from the get-go, was intentionally misleading. More importantly, he noted, it was of necessity misleading. The sales pitch of the used car salesm...

Girolamo Grumpi, obviously not his real name, is a retired journalist who lives north of Hartford and who wishes to remain anonymous. Q: It appears that the skeletons came out of the closet a few days after the election. Ben Barnes, the Head of Governor Malloy’s Office of Policy Management, said that Connecticut should perhaps expect chronic deficits in the future, and this thunderclap caught the notice of some papers. GG: Yes, Barnes may have been, if only for a moment, the Jonathan Gruber of Connecticut. Gruber, an MIT Don dripping with ivy and one of the architects of (President Barack) Obama’s Health Care initiatives, is on record as having said in various venues that Obamacare was intentionally deceiving, and necessarily so because most Americans, who are far less bright than MIT professors, would have rejected Obamacare had its architects been more honest than either Gruber or Obama. It’s true that Henry Mencken once said no one ever lost money by underestimating t...

The deficit is back. Like an aging coquette, it appears and disappears around corners, smiling fetchingly at us: Here today, gone tomorrow, back again the next day. It appears that the skeletons came out of the closet a few days after Governor Dannel Malloy, the seven members of  Connecticut’s all Democratic U.S. Congressional Delegation, members of the all-Democratic State Constitutional Offices and Democrat legislators who dominate the General Assembly were returned to office. Faced with an “unexpected” state deficit, Ben Barnes, the Head of Governor Malloy's Office of Policy Management, said that Connecticut should perhaps expect chronic deficits in the future, a thunderclap that caught the notice of some papers. Mr. Barnes may have been mistaken by some, if only for a moment, for Jonathan Gruber, an MIT Don dripping with ivy and one of the architects of President Barack Obama’s Health Care initiative. Mr. Gruber is on record as having said in various venues that Ob...

Thanks Jeff Cohen “People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war, or before an election” – Otto Von Bismarck “I am a porcupine” – Dannel Malloy The endorsements of Governor Dannel Malloy prior to Vote Day (VD) were not full throated. In fact, many Malloy endorsements made by editorial boards the members of which could not bring themselves to recommend as governor a guy who owned a yacht named "Odalisque" were so hedged about with thorns that the rose was barely visible among them. A Hartford paper’s editorial endorsement was typical of most. The paper mentioned some minuses and pluses, added up the sums and endorsed the incumbent governor. Over the years, the paper had fallen into the bad habit of reflexively endorsing incumbents, and in Connecticut all the leading positions in government – the governor’s office, the constitutional offices, the members of the U.S. Congressional delegation and the leadership of the state’s General Assembly – are ...

"The great questions of the day will not be settled by means of speeches and majority decisions but by iron and blood." - Otto von Bismarck A Hartford paper’s Sunday edition crackles with a front page story that asks and answers the tormenting question: Is progressivism dead ? The paper’s emphatic answer is – no, not yet, certainly not in Connecticut. The paper notes in passing the whupping progressive Democrats took in the off year elections, though the account spares the wounded the most important details.