Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

I’d like to thank Bob Hurd for inviting me here so that we might have a chat together. I’d also like to congratulate Dan Champagne for wining a slot in the General Assembly. He will be stepping into state Senator Tony Guglielmo large shoes, but there is no doubt he will be able to fashion his own foot print. Welcome to the viper pit, Dan. You may want to stomp on a rumor that’s been floating around. It’s being said in some quarters that you ran for the state Senate because you missed butting heads with Mike Winkler. Michael is at a safe remove from Dan over in the House, but legislators sometimes bump into each other in the elevators and corridors of the General Assembly, not to mention its intersectional bathrooms.

The chief executive proposes, but the legislature disposes; this old chestnut, possibly as ancient as the Republic, has never been truer. Just now, progressive Democrats in the General Assembly are setting about disposing of Governor Dannel Malloy’s no tax increase pledge, iterated numerous times during Mr. Malloy’s late gubernatorial campaign. Of course, the governor himself already has disposed of his George H. W. Bush-like vow – “Read my lips. No new taxes.” Mr. Malloy’s submitted budget boosts tax receipts by about $840 million -- still not enough, apparently, to keep up with chronic budget deficits.

State Senator Joe Markley of Southington lately has expressed an interest in heading the state Republican Party as its Chairman, which is on the order of Custer expressing an interest in leading the 7 th Calvary against a Cheyenne and Sioux encampment near the Little Big Horn River. Why would anyone want to do that?

Twice in the last 18 months, Governor Dannel Malloy has visited the Litchfield Area Business Association with a soothing message. Mentioning two devastating storms and the Sandy Hook Elementary school slaughter, Mr. Malloy told the group that Connecticut had endured “very difficult circumstances,” and yet the resilient people of Connecticut “continue to demonstrate their great charity, their great willingness to work together and pull in the same direction. And I’m very thankful for all of that.” Mr. Malloy then turned to the business at hand – the state of business in the state over which he presides as governor. Small businesses in Connecticut drive job growth, Mr. Malloy said. “Now, the area that we’re investing most of our time, at least, is small business. The bottom line is: I don’t want to be a governor who presides over years of job loss. I want to be a governor who presides over years of job gain.”

Henry Mencken, every good journalist’s journalist, was a prolific writer. Asked if he ever got tired cranking out newspaper stories and commentary, he said -- never. During his whole journalistic output, Mr. Mencken said, he felt like a little boy with two stomachs in a candy store. Many of his writings were devoted to Republican and Democratic nominating conventions, which he hugely enjoyed as a buffoonish spectacle. Of Mencken and conventions, Murray Rothbard wrote: