Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Governor Dannel Malloy began his education reform proposals by challenging the usual pedagogical assumptions. He likely will end his term as governor by supporting a union led, reform-resistant status quo. Malloy is at swords' points with Democratic leaders in the Democrat dominated General Assembly on the matter of tax increases. Progressives in the General Assembly want a bevy of tax increases. They have proposed toll taxes, an increase in the progressive tax on Connecticut’s idle rich and an increase in the sales tax, among others. Democrats are now touting the benefits of a sales tax increase. Without such as increase, progressive Democrats in the legislature and Malloy now say, fire  and brimstone resulting from Malloy’s cost reductions will reign down upon the heads of every man, woman and child in Connecticut who has not yet fled for other less punishing states.

"The esthete stands in the same relation to beauty as the pornographer stands to love, and the politician stands to life” – Karl Kraus. It’s a great puzzle for those who think seriously about getting and spending. During his second winning campaign for governor, Dannel Malloy took tax increases – but not increases in borrowing, the last refuge of spending scoundrels -- off the table. Echoing George H.W. Bush’s boast at the 1988 Republican National Convention, Mr. Malloy invited Connecticut voters in so many words to read his lips: NO NEW TAXES. And yet, even Mr. Malloy’s own Office of Policy Management guru, Ben Barnes, has told us that we shall have to get used to sluggish tax receipts, at least for the foreseeable future. Mr. Malloy has pledged to hold Connecticut’s Municipalities harmless, and so it will be difficult for him to pass the state’s budget woes to towns by reducing their revenue allotments. He has pledged not to renegotiate state ...

The easiest way to write a dumb law is to pass a bill uninformed by certifiable data. Following the massacre of school students at Sandy Hook Elementary school, U .S. Senator Chris Murphy , newly sworn into the Congress, issued his first media release of the New Year in the course of which he vowed to fight “ to strengthen Connecticut’s economy” and “grow jobs in science, technology, manufacturing, and defense.” And with a nod in the direction of bloodstained Newtown, the junior U.S. Senator from Connecticut pledged “to be a leading voice in the national conversation to end the kind of gun violence that shattered precious young lives and devastated a community in Newtown, Connecticut just three weeks ago.”

So, the elections are over -- for a too brief interlude. The grumps who have been complaining all along that there is no longer a breathing space between elections are right. Forward! as they say in the progressive Beltway. In our time, politics itself has become a form of electioneering. That’s what is wrong with it. President John Kennedy governed ; President Barack Obama campaigns. Campaign finance reform was supposed to settle some of these problems.

Martha Dean, the Republican nominee for attorney general, made a fruitless plea to Courant reporter Mathew Kauffman at the end of his front page story, “Martha Dean Embroiled In Custody Battle: Experts In The Case Say It Has Taken A Toll On Martha Dean's Son,” a heartfelt cry into the belly of the beast: "’You're straying into territory that involves a 12-year-old boy and somebody who has lied profusely,’ she said, repeating a frequent assertion she has made in court about her ex-husband. ‘This is serious stuff. Do not go there. This is not appropriate for journalism. It has nothing to do with running for attorney general. It's just the luck that I got stuck with, in having married somebody like this, and we're trying to do the best we can to get through this.’" But go there Kauffman did. At the center of Kauffman’s story is a psychological evaluation of Dean plucked from Superior Court documents that trace a messy divorce. Messy divorces, almost always ...

A new UConn poll from the Center for Survey Research and Analysis at the University of Connecticut shows that 50 percent of voters support a constitutional convention to amend the state constitution, while 39 percent oppose the measure. Even more dramatically, the poll shows that sixty-five percent of voters support citizen ballot initiative, always an admission that state legislators, the prisoners of special interests, no longer represent the will of the people. According to the poll’s director, Christine Kraus, "The constitutional convention question appears to be a referendum on the performance of the General Assembly." A ballot initiative would, in essence, transform the entire population into a citizens’ action group. It is for that reason opposed by – guess who? – Tom Swan, the executive director of the Connecticut Citizen Action Group, among others. Swan, Ned Lamont’s campaign guru, fears that a convention might propose a direct initiative ballot that will tamper with...

The recent decision by U.S. District Court Judge Robert Chatigny giving Ross’ discharged lawyers an opportunity to mount a new defense showing that their former client is mentally incompetent has lengthened the distance between Ross and the death chamber. Much like the man who murders his parents and then throws himself on the mercy of the court as an orphan, Ross’ former defense counsel intends a novel plea. With the help of a psychiatrist who has not examined Ross – and who may be writing a book expounding his piquant theories -- they will argue that Ross has been made incompetent by his long stay in the death house. The prospect of execution, Samuel Johnson once said, clears the mind wonderfully. It is Dr. Stuart Grassian’s considered opinion that it drives men nuts. Grassian is a psychiatrist who has studied inmates' psychopathological reactions to solitary confinement. Trials are legal instruments designed to affix guilt and punishment. Ross’ very first jury rejected claims by...