Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

It’s all over but for the grinding of teeth – and the possibility down the road, if President Donald Trump is reelected to office, of yet another impeachment debacle. “Trump Acquitted” a Hartford paper blared on its front page – to no one’s surprise. The impeachment indictment in the U.S. House, controlled by Democrats, and an acquittal in the U.S. Senate, controlled by Republicans, were both foregone conclusions because, though the trappings of the proceedings in both chambers are quasi-judicial, the process is entirely a political affair.

“ O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams ” – Shakespeare, Hamlet Dick Blumenthal, Connecticut’s progressive US Senator, is inching dangerously close to socialist Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC). The distance between progressive radicals and socialists is now hair thin. Early in February,  Blumenthal Tweeted , “Climate change is an existential crisis. I’m proud to co-sponsor the  #GreenNewDeal —affirming our commitment to develop a plan to tackle the devastating effects of climate change, create high-paying jobs in renewable energy and address disparities in communities affected by pollution.”

In Shakespeare’s King Lear, a dethroned but wiser king, about to be dragged off to prison, says to his only faithful daughter, Cordelia, “Come on, let’s go to prison. The two of us together will sing like birds in a cage. We will be good to each other. When you ask for my blessing, I’ll get down on my knees and ask you to forgive me. That’s how we’ll live—we’ll pray, we’ll sing, we’ll tell old stories, we’ll laugh at pretentious courtiers, we’ll listen to nasty court gossip, we’ll find out who’s losing and who’s winning, who’s in and who’s out. We’ll think about the mysteries of the universe as if we were God’s spies. In prison we’ll outlast hordes of rulers that will come and go as their fortunes change.” The reporter might easily have opened his piece on State Senator Joe Markley – “ Tea Partier Or Constitutional Conservative: Lt. Gov. Candidate Owns GOP Right Flank ” – by noting, very incidentally, that Markley is one of the few, if not the only, state legislator with whom o...

The bad news, some conservatives in Connecticut will say, is that State Senator Joe Markley will not be running for governor. The good news is that Mr. Markley -- now representing the 16th Senatorial District, which includes the towns of Cheshire, Prospect, Southington, Wolcott and Waterbury – has announced he is running for Lieutenant Governor. Why not governor? “When asked why he didn’t aim for the top office,”  the Record Journal reports , “he said there are already many strong Republican candidates considering a run. I’m very interested in having some Republican elected as governor next year because we have to change direction in this state. I feel that this is the spot on the ticket where I can most be of service.”

The reader should note the quotations marks around the word “plagiarism.” The quote marks are intended to bracket the word in doubt because plagiarism often lies in the mind of the accuser. Note to the reader: I borrowed this thought from someone else, changing it slightly from “beauty lies in the mind of the beholder,” a sentiment some have traced to Plato. Was Shakespeare plagiarizing when he borrowed heavily from Montaigne and Boccaccio? Or, as seems more likely, was he merely capturing their bright flags? We are not the inventors of the words we use to encapsulate our thoughts. In fact thoughts themselves have a parentage. C. S. Lewis put it this way: You cannot invent a new primary color. The attribution game is, in some cases, a tangle that has ensnared many an “expert.”

Documents, e-mails and the like that usually provide a backdrop to political campaigns generally are not made public, unless they are subpoenaed by an aggrieved party. Following a complaint made by Republican Party Chairman Jerry Labriola, Connecticut’s State Elections Enforcement Commission (SEEC) has subpoenaed documents and communications involving Gov. Dannel P. Malloy and several of his top aides, according to story broken by George Coli of NBC Connecticut News Live . Mr. Labriola charged in his March 2014 complaint that Democrats illegally circumvented the state's ban on contractor contributions during the last gubernatorial campaign by laundering money through a federal account used to pay for mass mailings benefiting Mr. Malloy.

So, the elections are over -- for a too brief interlude. The grumps who have been complaining all along that there is no longer a breathing space between elections are right. Forward! as they say in the progressive Beltway. In our time, politics itself has become a form of electioneering. That’s what is wrong with it. President John Kennedy governed ; President Barack Obama campaigns. Campaign finance reform was supposed to settle some of these problems.

Linda McMahon, now engaged in a Republican Party primary with former U.S. Representative Chris Shays, has been around the Connecticut editorial board block before when she ran on the Republican ticket against then Attorney General Richard Blumenthal. Mr. Blumenthal had earned some twenty years of fawning commentary chits collected from Editorial Board Writers (EBW) and commentators, and it was plain from much of the adoring press reports issuing from the attorney general’s office, many of them put into print with little or no editing, that he had cashed them in during his campaign for the U.S. Senate. So then, Mrs. McMahon (LM in the imaginary dialogue below ) knows there are wolves dressed in wolves’ clothing out there eager to pounce. EBW: Quick now: Do you think the United States should assist, behind the scenes of course, in overthrowing Yahya Jammeh? LM: What? Perhaps the easiest questions to handle are those surrounding World Wide Entertainment (WWE). EBW: What abou...

Just because President Barrack Obama wants to skin the millionaires, this does not mean that he counts no millionaires among his campaign contributors. The same fat cat one per centers upon whom Mr. Obama is prepared to shower crony capitalist bucks will undoubtedly contribute lavishly to national Democratic campaigns. And even those who are not so favored will be happy to throw a few hundred thousand into the collection basket as a down payment on Mr. Obama’s elephant ears. Over the years, the purchasing power of the dollar has declined precipitously, the result of inflation brought on by the unwillingness of presidents and congresses to pay down the national debt with tax increases and spending cuts. For this reason, it takes more worthless greenback to buy ear time and a place at the table. A million bucks ain’t what it used to be. Even if all the millionaires in the United States were by some swish of the magic wand to become as greedy, selfish and slothful as Mr. Obama a...

“Exit pursued by bear” – Shakespeare’s stage direction in a play In search of lower business costs, Hamilton Sunstrand in Windsor Locks has announced that it will lay off more than 20 percent of its union workforce. The company, a part of United Technologies, plans to move jobs to Poland, not a state contiguous to Connecticut, and other former Soviet block countries where salaries are lower, regulations less punishing and unions but a blip on the horizon. According to a report in the Hartford Courant, “Hamilton President Alain M. Bellemare has told investors at previous earnings announcements that ‘we are laser-focused on executing our cost-reduction strategy’ by doing manufacturing and engineering in developing and former Soviet bloc countries.” Coincidentally, Republicans yesterday presented their no-new-tax budget , which was immediately denounced by Malloy spokesperson Roy Occhiogrosso as a threat to Connecticut’s all embracing safety net. The Republicans plan calls f...

The election of Joe Markley to the Connecticut’s General Assembly as a senator is, in the estimation of some Republican activists, on a par with dropping holy water into Hell. Mr. Markley has shed a few pounds since he first entered the Assembly a little more than a quarter of a century earlier during the Reagan ascendancy. He now looks like a svelte and convivial Mitch Miller, the hair on his head having over the years migrated to his chin. But looks, as they say, are deceptive. Mr. Markley can quote Shakespeare in polite company; he is more analytical than the usual latte lapping liberal, an adept stump speaker and dead serious about the pernicious effects increasing taxes have on a foundering economy. There is some indication that he’s familiar with Ludwig von Mises’ views on methodological individualism. Mr. Markley is a serious conservative, not at all a lightweight easily dismissed as a Tea Party insurrectionist motivated largely by undifferentiated anger, the usual critical ...

“ The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones ." So said Mark Anthony in William Shakespeare’s “Julius Cesar” during Cesar’s funeral oration. Anthony, who took no part in the assassination of Cesar, the bloody work of Brutus and others, all honorable men, was determined that the good Cesar did should not be buried with his bones and that the evil done by his assassins should not outlive them. U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd’s farewell speech before the senate serves a like purpose. Farewell speeches by senators of long standing and exit interviews recorded in newspapers are like brief autobiographies, and there never yet was an autobiographer who was not the hero of his own reminiscences. Eventually, the encomiums are overwritten by sober historians far removed from the partisan atmosphere that colors all the deeds, evil and good, of their subjects. Mr. Dodd’s errors in office lie just beneath memory’s skin . His three decades in the senate are hard...

Former Republican Sen. Lowell Weicker appeared on Face the State over the weekened to defend his friend Sen. Chris Dodd. Weicker’s defense of Dodd consists of a recitation of Dodd’s sterling record in congress and a suggestion that his recent difficulties, when thrown into the scales, are raised up by the weight of the good he has done as a senator. Other senators, among them Weicker’s good friend Edward Kennedy of Massachussets, have overcome difficulties in their careers by applying themselves to the good they do in congress. Shakespeare put all this best when he said that the good men do “is of’t interred with their bones,” while the evil they do lives on after them. In his interview with Dennis House, Weicker offered an apology to the ghost that has haunted both him and Chris Dodd. During his race against Tom Dodd, Weicker recounted that he had said some unfortunate things about him, which he now regretted. In his race against Tom Dodd’s, the current senator’s father, Weicke...