Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Antifa : The Progressive Party in action. Autocrat : A member in good standing of the reigning power. Bipartisanship : A political ploy. Political parties that have been deposed by voters cling to demands for bipartisanship with all the fervor of a drowning sailor grasping at a straw. Border : A largely irrelevant demarcation line on a map indicating the presence of a largely irrelevant nation.

Commenting on the debt ceiling standoff between national Democrats and Republicans, Governor Malloy in a press release wetted the whistle of fellow Democrats in Connecticut who have for many years been urging governors to slap a significant progressive income tax on rich folk in the southern part of the state, the sort of people who figure in Democratic campaign ads chastising Republicans for being much too friendly with hedge fund managers and yacht owners. “Last night,” Mr. Malloy wrote, “President Obama laid out a clear choice for the American people. The United States can honor the debts we’ve already incurred while charting a fiscally sustainable path that makes historic cuts in government spending and asks the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations to give up some of their tax breaks and special deductions. Or, the United States can simply cut government spending in a way that harms our most vulnerable citizens, damages our economic recovery, and requires no sacrifice fr...

When is a hedge fund not a hedge fund? Answer: When the owner of the fund is George Soros, sugar daddy to various leftist causes. Mr. Soros, according to CNBC’s John Carney , is now out of the hedge fund business -- and out of reach of the tentacles of Dodd-Frank By closing their funds to outside investors, these managers will be able to escape attempts to regulate them. They won't be classified as hedge funds anymore. Despite their billions of dollars under management, they'll simply be private investors or family funds.

Do you want the government to control the Internet? It’s on the verge. On December 21st, the Federal Communications Commission, by a partisan vote of 3-2 (three Democrats, two Republicans), passed net neutrality to regulate ISP, Internet service providers. Internet neutrality, a term that would make George Orwell blush, actually is the foundational principle that initiates control of phone and cable companies, enabling the state to block access to websites or interfere with Internet traffic, according to The Wall Street Journal’s John Fund (“The Net Neutrality Coup,” December 22). Amidst government control of health care and financial regulations and other industries, it is yet another example of the abuse of the free market, where decisions are made not by a government agency but by the players who supply it and demand it. The proponents’ rationale is to maintain transparency of the Internet. It substitutes government for commercial interests as decision-maker on web conflicts. ...

The separation of church and state – an expression first found in a letter written by Thomas Jefferson to Baptists in Danbury and not in the U.S. Constitution – is one of those secular pieties rigidly observed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and others, except when it is not religiously observed. The Rev. LeRoy Bailey, who had opened First Cathedral church in Bloomfield to students graduating from High Schools within reasonable distance of the cathedral, was set upon by the ever vigilant – except when it is not being vigilant – ACLU, which persuaded a court that the reverend had overstepped putative constitutional strictures. The court shut down the operation, apparently because it felt that students gathering in a church building to celebrate a secular event in the absence of masses and ministers would somehow infect the assembled students with impermissible religious doctrines. One political observer, myself, speculated that the court perhaps believed in homeopathic ma...

In the quibble over whether corporations are persons – they are not – and whether as political or business entities they should not be entitled to full First Amendment rights, it has been forgotten how the Citizen’s United case arose. In its decision, a lower court, averting to the McCain/Feingold and other restrictions, banned the publication of a DOCUMENTARY on Hillary Clinton that was to air prior to an election. The documentary, no less partisan than any created by Michael Moore, winner of the prestigious Palm D’Or award, was – no one will deny – political speech protected by the First Amendment. In striking down the restrictive laws that banned the publication of the documentary, the Supreme Court reaffirmed the First Amendment’s protection of political speech. At a very basic level, the decision is a win for free speech rights. And those who have told us countless times that the First Amendment allows political speech that is offensive to some cannot plausibly argue that the ...

We are all a bit stupid about the economy. That is because economics really is the dismal science -- except for two groups of people: Ron Paulites, along with Andrew Jackson, the natural enemies of fiat money, and George Sorosites, ambitious malefactors of great wealth who in this age of get rich quick schemes want to get even richer quicker. Most of the rest of us fell asleep in economics class when the talk turned to inflation, deflation and fiat money. We thought fiats were cars. George Soros, the sugardaddy of the left best know as a short-buyer who broke the bank of England, and Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises, were wide awake in class. So was Peter Schiff, now running for the US Senate against too long-time incumbent Chris Dodd. Von Mises, the author of “Human Action,” still the best economic book in our fragile Western world, died with empty pockets; Soros continues to rake in the dough. He will die a rich man, his mouth stuffed with dollars rather than earth, after...

A report from the Connecticut Post by Peter Urban suggests that the attempt to defame Army General David Petraeus by MoveOn.org has created a backlash: “House members voted 341-79 on Wednesday to condemn ‘in the strongest possible terms the personal attacks made by the advocacy group MoveOn.org impugning the integrity and professionalism’ of Petraeus.” Among those voting in favor of the condemnation were all five Connecticut representatives, including freshman Rep. Chris Murphy. Through direct contributions and independent expenditures, the group provided Murphy with $500,000 for his successful campaign against former Republican Rep. Nancy Johnson. The U.S Senate , Chris Dodd dissenting, condemned the ad in late September. Federal Election Commission filings show that MoveOn.org since last year spent more than 90% of $3 million in independent expenditures targeting a dozen Republican candidates, including Rudy Giuliani and John McCain, both of whom are running for president. The group...

John DeStefano, mayor of New Haven, is said to be the “Big Idea” candidate. The corollary to that proposition is that his opponent, Gov. Jodi Rell, is the caretaker candidate, a nice lady but somewhat derelict in the matter of ideas. The kind of people who admire DeStefano think big all the time. Every minute of the day, and twice on Tuesdays, a Big Idea slices into their brains, causing them to shout “Eureka!” If one could take a can opener to their foreheads, one would find any number of Big Ideas squiggling around in their brain pans. Dan Malloy, the mayor of Stamford, was rejected in a Democrat primary because DeStefano’s ideas were bigger and more adventuresome than Malloy’s. Every time Malloy, in hot debate with DeStefano, popped out with a Big Idea, he was trumped by DeStefano, who shouted from the primary podium, “Mine’s bigger than yours!” DeStefano’s most gargantuan idea touches on property tax reform. It is said, by the Big Idea people, that the little people in Connecticut’...

Clarice Feldman, an attorney in Washington, writing in the American Thinker , uncovers some -- but by no means all -- of the dark and unwholesome roots of the Foley scandal. "Pardon me, but I smell something very peculiar in the way we have learned of the disgrace of Rep. Mark Foley. "The email scandal which led to the resignation of the Republican Congressman is reverberating throughout the capital and the nation, as Democrats attempt to capitalize on bad news for Republicans. The seamiest of the released emails, which Foley has not denied, are right up there with Rhodes Scholar and Illinois Democratic Congressman Mel Reynolds’ taped phone conversations lusting for 15 year old Catholic school girls in their uniforms. "But Democrats are attempting to make hay by alleging that the Republican leadership may have known about the inappropriate emails and covered them up for months. Their hope, no doubt, is to discourage turnout by disillusioned evangelical and other voters s...

In the end, the difference between the senatorial races in Connecticut and Rhode Island proved to be more important than their similarities. The Rhode Island primary race pitted Republican U.S. Sen. Lincoln Chafee against conservative opponent Cranston Mayor Stephen P. Laffey; the Connecticut race pitted Democrat U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman against progressive candidate Ned Lamont. The cheering sections for each insurgent were far different. Lamont’s campaign was pushed forward by progressives warming their hands around blog bonfires. Lieberman parted company with the progressive wing of his party – the Democrat Party no longer has a conservative wing – on the issue of the Iraq war when he publicly supported President Bush’s view of the conflict, a posture that aroused the antipathies of progressives at a time when the war was retrogressing. National Republicans – not conservatives; they are not the same thing – formed an important part of Chaffe’s cheering section. Fearing a loss of suppo...