Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Bysiewicz and Lamont Governor Ned Lamont does not hear the screams, possibly because his ears are cocked in the wrong direction. Within the space of a couple of weeks, Lamont decided to open hair salons, to order hair salon owners not to use blow dryers, to reverse his order concerning blow dryers in the case of African American women, because the hair of African Americans is different than that of white women and requires blow drying before satisfied clients leave the salon, and finally to delay the heralded opening of hair salons because, we are told by Ken Dixon of the Hearst papers , “The plan to have them open on Wednesday with other retail businesses was abandoned over the weekend, after Lamont conferred with Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo, who is keeping close-contact businesses closed for the time being.”

The condition of Connecticut, most reliable political doctors tell us, is not good. And if the condition of the state is failing, its future health will depend upon a radical cure. The treatment of the body politic must be different if the same regimen will deliver a death blow. What are the possibilities of radical change in Connecticut? Slim to none. A major part of the problem is that the executive department-state workers union combine, useful to both, has simply assumed powers and prerequisites that should belong to the General Assembly. For the last thirty years, state government has been run by "strong governors" – one thinks of former Governor Lowell Weicker or present Governor Dannel Malloy, allied with obliging leaders of the General Assembly – who set our feet on the path to the future and command charge of state finances. Now all that sounds intellectually complex, but it really is simple. It means that governors, not state legislatures, are primary de...

There is a point at which serious journalism descends into pettifoggery. That point is reached when critics, betraying a lamentable want of bad taste, take something seriously that was intended in a humorous vein. One doesn’t shed tears at a joke or laugh raucously at a tragedy – not without getting thrown out of the theater. Kevin Rennie is a fine journalist when he takes seriously serious points and laughs with the rest of us at the foibles of politicians who, especially in Connecticut, tend to take themselves a wee bit too seriously, a professional hazard of almost all supermen, most of whom, at least in Connecticut, are professional Democratic politicians. Mayor Erin Stewart of New Britain is NOT one of these. And one has only to look at some of the pictures of her displayed in the Hartford Courant beside the latest effusions of Mr. Rennie – an oh so serious review of Ms. Stewart’s Fourth of July scarf – to understand that  Ms. Stewart does not take herself q...

  Somewhere on the route to education reform Governor Dannel Malloy bumped into Connecticut’s fourth branch of government, teachers unions and their affiliates in the General Assembly, among them the powerful Speaker of the state House of Representatives, Chris Donovan. Mr. Donovan, the most progressive Speaker since Irv Stolberg departed the General Assembly and left this veil of tears, leapt into politics from a stint as a union representative, and the marks of the union negotiator are etched into the fabric of his being. Some poor ink stained wretches suspect that the evisceration of Mr. Malloy’s education reforms -- the central pillars of which are frequent teacher evaluations tied to continued employment and teacher salaries tied to student performance – are, at least in part, related to Mr. Donovan’s union affections. On March 27, two intrepid reporters, Christine Stewart of CTNewsJunkie and Brian Lockhart of the Hearst chain of newspapers, set out probe Mr. Don...

According to the New York Times, not generally regarded as kind to moderate Democrats or lingering fanatics who do not wish to see Iraq dismembered by theological oppressors in Syria and Iran, Hillary Clinton is moving cautiously towards a position on Iraq that is likely to get her into Dutch with the kind of people who think Joe Lieberman has cloven hooves and a tail. Clinton told the Times in a half hour interview on March 13th that, were she elected president, she would “keep a reduced military force (in Iraq) to fight Al Qaeda, deter Iranian aggression, protect the Kurds and possibly support the Iraqi military.” In the interview, the Times' reporter thought, “Mrs. Clinton articulated a more nuanced position than the one she has provided at her campaign events, where she has backed the goal of ‘bringing the troops home.’ She said in the interview that there were ‘remaining vital national security interests in Iraq ‘that would require a continuing deployment of American troops.’”...

EXPURGATED MINUTES OF THE M.O.B. MEETING The meeting commenced on Sept 11, 2005. Present were the parties, whose names are here omitted, involved in a settlement, a polite expression for plea bargain, with Connecticut’s Attorney General Richard Blumenthal. The meeting was addressed by one of the lawyers, name omitted, who arranged the $30 million settlement deal. Noticing that the audience appeared downcast, the attorney sought to introduce a little levity into the proceedings. “Welcome to the M.O.B.,” he began, causing a few eyebrows to arch upwards. The acronym, he explained, stood for Meeting of Brokers, “Not, you know, that other thing.” Eventually, the attendees – some brokers and representatives of the three major Connecticut insurance companies involved in the settlement, names omitted, warmed to the speaker, but it was a stiff climb upwards. “Why all the frowns?” the speaker asked. “Ah, I think I know. As everyone here is aware, a brokerage house,” name omitted, “had arranged t...