Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Someone – Regina Roundtree, a Woman On Fire -- has conceived the idea of honoring Pat Longo, long one of the principal worker bees in Connecticut’s Republican Party. Of course, she’s much more than that. Mrs. Longo immediately comes to mind whenever I recall William Faulkner’s tribute to women: “If you have something very important to do, give it to a busy woman.” On March 1, Mrs. Longo will be honored at a special dinner arranged by Ms. Roundtree at Anthony's Ocean View in New Haven. All the particulars may be found at The Connecticut Black Republicans & Conservative site (CTbrac) here . Mrs. Longo, who is to receive the 2014 “Lillian Ford Feickert Award ,” will find herself in good company. The keynote speaker of the evening will be Dr. Alveda King, the niece of Martin Luther King Jr.

Both of Connecticut’s U.S. Senators, Joe Lieberman and Dick Blumenthal, would seem to have a great deal in common with besieged U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder. Mr. Lieberman, due to retire from the Senate at the end of his term, clawed his way into the U.S. Senate from his previous position as Connecticut’s Attorney General, as did Mr. Blumenthal. Mr. Holder was cited for contempt by the two senators’ congressional colleagues in the House on Thursday, June 28. The charge brought against Mr. Holder is that the Attorney General has refused to surrender to Congress documentation the Congress has determined it must review to discover what role Mr. Holder’s Justice Department may have played in “Fast and Furious,” a disastrous scheme in which agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco Firearms and Explosives, a department under the supervision of Mr. Holder’s Justice Department, facilitated the purchase of guns by Mexican drug dealers. One of the guns, it was later determined, was use...

In the good old days, before the advent of campaign finance reform, a stretch in prison was no bar to election. Mayor Michael Curley of Boston, a colorful mob-connected figure in Massachusetts politics who made good on his campaign pledge to get the washerwomen of the city off their knees, ran the city from prison. Mr. Curley later rigged out all the washerwomen of Boston with long handled mops. It may well be the case that a stretch in jail was the booster that rocketed Mr. Curley into a long and eventful career in politics. Mr. Curley received news that he had been elected to Boston’s Board of Alderman in 1904 while cooling his heels in prison on a fraud conviction: He had fraudulently taken a civil service exam for two men applying for postmen in his district, and the stint in prison helped to burnish his reputation among the poor Irish of Boston as someone who was willing to go to the mat for those in need. During his career in politics, both as Boston Mayor and a U.S. Sena...

The unilateral changes in by-laws  It may be noted that what has been done unilaterally by the union leadership may be undone unilaterally by a different leadership. Despite a desperate attempt by SEBAC negotiators Dan Livingston and Matt O’Connor to pin on such convenient scapegoats as the Yankee Institute   their dramatic failure to sell plan A to union rank and file members, some unions, dissatisfied with SEBAC representation, are now shopping around for other unions with which they might affiliate. In mid-June SEBAC leaders charged the Yankee Institute had improperly used the state’s e-mail system to communicate with union members and referred their dark suspicions to Attorney General George Jepsen, Connecticut’s version, under the state’s previous Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, of poet Francis Thompson’s “ The Hound Of Heaven .” SEBAC leaders, working in tandem with Plan A salesmen in the administration of Governor Dannel Malloy, unilaterally changed union by-...

Governor Malloy’s “shared sacrifice” was never evenly – some might say “fairly” -- distributed. Progressive Democrats, in fact, do not believe in shared sacrifice. Their credo includes, on the tax side, a progressive income tax in which the “rich,” defined as anyone making more than $200,000 per year, pay the lion’s share of governmental “investments.” SEBAC negotiator Dan Livingston is typical of the genus. In a progressive regime, the majority of people “invest” relatively little in their government and prudently vote for Democrats, who collect little from them in tax payments (AKA “investments”) while showering them with benefits. Whatever name one chooses to put to this lopsided getting and spending process, it is not “shared sacrifice.” Nationally, the wealthiest 1 percent of the population earns 19 percent of all income and pays 37 percent of the federal income tax , a figure that excludes payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare. The top ten percent pay 68 percent of ...

A number of Democrats and Republicans have expressed interest in running for the seat that is to be vacated by present Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, who has said he will not run again in that position. The Connecticut Law Tribune explores some of the possibilities. On the Democratic side of the aisle, both co-chairs of the legislature’s Judiciary Committee, Michael Lawlor and Andrew McDonald, have expressed interest. Somewhat like Chris Mathews at the advent of the Obama administration, the two are feeling tingling sensations shooting up their legs. “George Jepsen, the former Democratic state chairman, state senator from Stamford and co-chair of the legislative Judiciary Committee, was quick to announce his interest in the race. “Others mentioned as potential Democratic hopefuls included Waterbury Mayor Michael Jarjura, state Sen. Paul Doyle of Wethersfield, Sen. Jonathan Harris of West Hartford… “’The whole landscape has shifted since I got up this morning – it’s qu...

Sen. Ernest Newton, the fourth ranking Democrat in the state legislature, pleaded guilty in a Bridgeport court on a charge he received a bribe. Prosecutors also charged that Newton used campaign contributions as a “private piggy bank.” The plea bargain surprised no one who had been following the story. Very early on, newspapers reported that prosecutors had in their hot little hands reams of recorded conversations allegedly showing that Newton had solicited and then accepted a bribe from Warren Godbolt, the director of Progressive Training Associates, in return for which the senator secured a grant for Godbolt’s non-profit agency. Connecticut is wearily familiar with such prosecutions, and charges of this kind are not lightly made. That an incumbent politician, safe in his political sinecure, would be sorely tempted to use campaign funds for private purposes should surprise no one who believes in the frailty of human nature. Now that ethicists have made a concerted effort to clean up p...