Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Ever since former Editorial Page Editor of the Hartford Courant Carol Lumsden left her position at the paper, the Hartford Courant has been renting out its editorial page to other left of center newspapers. At the beginning of February, the paper, summoning up courage, displayed a Courant editorial on tolling. It was, as one might expect, left of left of center. “The time for half-measures is over,” the Courant bravely announced. “Connecticut residents spend way too much time alone in their cars and we’re destroying the planet in the process.” Cars and their owners are now planet destroyers, don't ya know. Perhaps Connecticut’s environmentally woke General Assembly can be convinced to outlaw the use of cars by these murderers, a measure that would “vastly expand mass transit, provide green options like bike paths in cities and work to actualize a future where cars play less of a role in our daily lives.” For nutmeggers who have not yet jumped the hedge and moved to, ...

Teddy Roosevelt on Twain – “I wish I could skin Mark Twain alive.” Twain on Roosevelt – “We have had no President before who was destitute of self-respect for his high office. We have had no President before who was not a gentleman; we have had no President before who was intended for a butcher, a dive-keeper or a bully...   Our people have adored this showy charlatan as perhaps no impostor of his brood has been adored since the Golden Calf, so it is to be expected that the Nation will want him back again after he is done hunting other wild animals heroically in Africa, with the safeguard and advertising equipment of a park of artillery and a brass band. ” Occasionally, columnists back up against a thorny subject much in the way an innocent traveler in the woods backs up against a porcupine. The collision is often painful for both the porcupine and the columnist. Although the deathless struggle between Twain and TR has been known for more than a century, it is rare...

US Senator Dick Blumenthal and Hillary Clinton were Yalies together back in the day. On Friday, April 10, Blumenthal “gushed” over his old Yale compatriot, according to an item by Neil Vigdor of the Hearst Group : “Blumenthal gushed Friday over Clinton’s political stock, ahead of the former secretary of state’s announcement Sunday that she is running for president in 2016. “’She literally can make history,’ Blumenthal told Hearst Connecticut Media. ‘How many people have been a presidential spouse, a senator in her own right and a distinguished secretary of state with a record of representing a major state (New York) and our nation abroad? By any measure, she is very seriously and significantly qualified, especially as compared to some of the other contenders.’

“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 While the net worth of the hapless members of the lower 99 percent have been plummeting for some time, U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal ($$-CT), a member of the 1 percent clan, last year realized an increase in net worth, according to a story in the Stamford Advocate, “ Blumenthal at high end of Senate millionaires' club .” The story compares Mr. Blumenthal’s wealth last year with that of current U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman, a relative pauper.

Sometimes the whale swallows Jonah, and sometimes Jonah swallows the whale. No one can be sure who has swallowed whom until Ted Mann’s magnum opus, a three week series on Governor Dannel Malloy, is published by the Hearst papers. In a teaser, the Connecticut Post writes: “Reporter Ted Mann spent a year inside the Malloy administration's inner councils, a year of extraordinary access to the governor and the men and women who tried to change the very nature of government in Connecticut. Read his riveting three-week series, beginning Sunday, Dec. 4, in the Hearst Connecticut Newspapers.”

On June 27, 2007, Inspector Michael Sullivan received a report that Mayor Eddie Perez had some work done in his house by a contractor appointed to do a major job for the city of Hartford. The information supplied to him tickled his worry wart, and Sullivan arranged a meeting with Perez the following day. A record of the meeting was made. Sullivan asked Perez whether people who were doing work for the city also had done work on his house. Perez answered yes. Did the mayor pay for the work, and did he receive a cost reduction? Perez said he paid the market price for the housework done by Carlos Costa in the amount of $20,000 a year and a half earlier. There was no contract involved; the work was done by verbal agreement. Sullivan asked for a copy of Perez’s cancelled check. Perez said he would be happy to furnish a copy of the check. There was no check. Payment on the work – minus a 50% discount, according to the contractor -- was made a year and a half after the work had been co...