Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Even before the votes are cast by state union members on Governor Malloy’s slightly vevised Plan A, Lisa Herskowitz, a senior assistant state's attorney in Manchester, has issued a complait to the state Board of Labor Relations questioning the proposed agreemment, according to a story in the Connecticut Post : “Herskowitz in her complaint to the labor board alleges SEBAC violated its own bylaws by agreeing to a two-year wage freeze, arguing the coalition's negotiating authority is limited to pensions and health care. “She further argues SEBAC should not have reopened the existing pension and health-care agreement, which expires in 2017, without allowing union members to first vote to authorize SEBAC to renegotiate the deal. Rank-and-file approval should also have been sought in early July when SEBAC approached Malloy about reopening talks, Herskowitz said.” The board has agreed to address the matter on August 3.

When the convention that gave birth to the U.S. Constitution had finished its work, the great charter of liberties was left on a table so that the founders of the Republic might, if they wished, sign their names to it. Ben Franklin had earlier warned his band of revolutionary brothers that if they did not hang together they would of a certainty “hang separately.” And he was not playing with metaphors. Had the agents of King George captured George Washington or any of those who had signed the Declaration of Independence, the father of our country most certainly would have been hanged, even as Nathan Hale, Connecticut’s Hero and one of Mr. Washington’s spies in New York, was hanged without benefit of trial. Mr. Hale, a school teacher, repented that he had but one life to give for his country. John Hancock’s large and audacious signature, a defy that resounds through the years like a great shout of joy, leaps out of the Declaration of Independence five years before Lord Cornwallis sur...