Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

‘All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds”  – Dr. Pangloss in Voltaire’s Candide Connecticut US Senator Chris Murphy appeared for an  interview with Bret Baier of Fox News  just as the National Democratic Nominating Convention was reeling from email disclosures that set even fierce Hillary Clinton supporters back on their heels. Mr. Murphy bullied his way through Mr. Baier’s questions but, alas, reality, that annoying spoiler of unreasoned optimism, poked its nose into Mr. Murphy’s tent. Even as the Dr. Pangloss of Connecticut Democrats was saying that all was the best in the best of all possible Democratic worlds, the convention floor was bursting with rancor and – not too extreme a word – disgust. The Democratic world had just been shaken by the release of 20,000 emails hacked from the Democratic National Committee (DNC), some of which appeared to confirm Socialist Bernie Sanders’ notion that the DNC had set its face against his cand...

J, To Dust Thou Shalt Return It was a stroke of luck, or the hand of Providence, that forced you to move from Connecticut to South Carolina. For more than twenty years, you have been out of the way of Connecticut’s inexorable getting-and-spending steam roller. Distance may not make the heart grow fonder, but it does prevent the spirit from being mauled by current events. Here in your former home state, where you reared your family, we are all pretty much clawed by an administrative machine that is at once both solicitous and rapacious.

"All this was indispensably necessary," replied the one-eyed doctor, "for private misfortunes are public benefits; so that the more private misfortunes there are, the greater is the general good" -- Candide, by Voltaire   Before progressive extremists in Connecticut’s General Assembly succeed in passing the second highest tax increase in state history, which followed by a few short years the highest tax increase in state history, warning flags were waving at them from every corner of the state. Three of the state’s largest companies – Aetna, Travelers and General Electric – offered demurrals on the budget that were airily dismissed by ardent progressives.

   After she left office in 2011, former Governor Jodi Rell relapsed into a stately silence, indicating that there just might be a life after politics. Retiring President George Bush, much vilified by then presidential aspirant Barack Obama, did the same. During Mr. Obama’s second successful bid for the presidency, then President Barack Obama reached into history’s dust bin, pulled out the well plucked bones of Mr. Bush and berated him all over again. The constant refrain of both Mr. Obama’s campaigns was that he had inherited agonizing problems from the Bush years and it would take him some time to heal the planet, close Guantanamo, bring peace to the Middle East and haul Russian President Vladimir Putin, kicking and screaming, into the 21 st century.

To a certain degree, all utopianists are eternal optimists – Panglossian optimists. The world may be crumbling about them, but their lively imaginations lift them above the debris. Realists will agree that the future does not seem sparkling for Europe just now. The latest news is that ALL of Europe, with the possible exception of stout Germany, has entered a second, double dip recession . In Greece, Spain and perhaps Italy a depression has sunk its teeth into Europe’s soft underbelly. Greece, the home of democracy, bid democracy goodbye as it tumbled into a depression, overloaded with accumulative debt and unsustainable social programs.   Euro-technocrats now direct its future. In Italy, Spain and perhaps France, the same stern number crunchers are waiting in the wings for the inevitable collapse of European Social Democracy. Here in the United States, voters from sea to shining sea have just reelected as president the most progressive, European oriented chief exe...

All budgets are plans for the future. The budget worked out between Gov. Jodi Rell and the leaders of the dominant Democratic Party in Connecticut’s state legislature, principally Speaker of the House Chris Donovan and President Pro Tem of the Senate Don Williams, will go to press a little more than two weeks before the Democratic and Republican nominating conventions to be held in Hartford on May 21-22. There are no surprises in the budget, which patterns, with almost ridged precision, the template of past budgets in which gapping holes were filled with chewing gum and hopeful views of the future. Democrats, heedless of the warning signs everywhere apparent, are convinced that a rising tide will in the near future lift all the boats, Connecticut’s little bark among them. Collectively, the Democratic legislative caucus is Pangloss, drawing hope from the future rather than the past. Pangloss was a character developed by Voltaire in Candide who, despite the horrors inflicted upon ...

On Thursday, Rep, Michael Lawlor, co-chair of the Judiciary Committee, announced with some fanfare that his committee had made a deal with Gov. Jodi Rell according to which Rell would agree not to close certain court houses and other judicial facilities in an effort to stem the rising tide of red in for which the Democratic controlled legislature is largely responsible, in return for which Lawlor agreed to allow judicial appointments made by Rell to pass through his committee. The deal arrange by Lawlor and Rell permitted three courthouses to remain open, as well as three law libraries that previously were to be closed. Rell delivered on her part of the deal; Lawlor appeared to deliver on his. The head of the judiciary committee, who had threatened to hold up judiciary committee review of Rell’s prospective appointments, began his review. Imagine Lawlor’s surprise and consternation when he learned but a day later that Senate Pro Tem Donald Williams had effectively nixed the deal. ...