Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

A historical revision of Harry Truman has been underway for some time. Historians are now smiling at the 33rd President. His was an accidental presidency, and his contemporaries, the political swamp of his day, did not like accidents. The more things change, as the French say, the more they remain the same. Victor David Hanson -- a classicist historian and the author of “ The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won ,” in addition to “ A War Like No Other ,” the best and most riveting account of the Peloponnesian War  (431–404 BC) between Athens and Sparta -- has written the best short account of the Truman presidency for The Washington Times . Anti-Trumpists will be spooked by the title and subtitle: “Truman as a model for Donald Trump: The outsider president succeeds because of what he does, and in spite of what he says.”

Managing Editor of the Journal Inquirer Chris Powell , the George Patton of the reality movement in Connecticut politics, examined a report issued by Governor Dannel Malloy’s Brain Trust and found it “shocking for its obliviousness.” The report, Powell argues, renews commitments to failed programs and did not recommend “a single important change that might save big money and help restore solvency to state government.” While the report acknowledges that Connecticut’s formula for municipal educational financing is broken, “… the formula, while often adjusted, has accomplished exactly what it was created to do: send more money to poverty-infested cities. This has achieved only prosperity for city school employees, not any improvement in educational outcomes." There is little direct connection between money spent on education and educational outcomes: “But then the problem with educational outcomes has never been the aid formula. The problem has always been the premise that st...